He laughed. “I haven’t asked you yet, but I already know; you’re mine. I’m yours. Everything else is transient, but I’m not letting you go.”
“You barely know me.”
He laughed. “I’d say I know you pretty well right now, Abby.”
She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t be ovulating anyway—not right now. I think we’re safe. Next time we do this you are wearing a condom.”
He laughed. “Nope. I don’t have any. I don’t sleep around and I haven’t been with any woman in years so I don’t need condoms.”
“Rhys,” she glared at him and he laughed again.
“If it will make you feel better we’ll do other things until I can make a store run for a box—or two.” He certainly was going to get inside her again—and he planned to do it a lot. He was a gifted man and he had no trouble keeping her under protective duty while bedding her. In fact, he would say having her body underneath his was going to be a really safe place for her to be for a long time.
Chapter Four
Abby had showered before returning to the room where Rhys was working on something he wouldn’t talk about. She had noticed him doing it before and she felt like she was more of an interruption to whatever his own focus was right now. She would have felt guilty for that but it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t have a choice in entering this protection program thing, and on some level, knowing what she knew now, she didn’t think she would refuse to go anyway.
She was an interruption and he wouldn’t be able to deny that if she asked. Maybe that’s why she didn’t ask, because she didn’t want to hear him say it. she hated that feeling of disrupting somebody’s life, but here she was about to do it again. She had forgotten before because the man was pure attraction and she couldn’t resist the feelings she had around him, but she wouldn’t forget this time.
“We need to talk, Rhys.”
She watched him as he closed the laptop and looked at her with full attention. She liked that he paid keen attention to her when she spoke. It wasn’t as if the guys she worked with didn’t pay attention, it was just a different kind of attention—a business, professional based attention whereas with Rhys, despite this being important in a life or death business kind of situation, the man looking at her made her feel all sorts of tingles in her body. One look from him could make her forget everything—including the danger she was in. But she was sure she didn’t have that effect on him—not because she thought he didn’t find her worthy of his lust, but because he was a man who stayed focused on his mission. There was no way he could have made it through years of military life if he hadn’t been the kind of man to stay focused.
Despite his good looks, his blatant animal attraction drawing mannerism, she had to put her own mind back on why she wanted to talk to him in the first place. Sexy or not, she didn’t need a man in her life who needed a child with legal benefits to feel like a man.
“I just want to make sure you realize you can’t control me. I’m not a child; you’re not my father. I like you, but I don’t want to be with a man who needs a child with legal benefits to feel like a man.” There, she had said what she needed to say. She really didn’t have anything else to say—at least not that she could think of anyway. She had been so focused on getting that weight off her chest that she hadn’t thought too much past what came after the first revealing statement. She usually planned and was structured, but right now that’s all she had to go on.
He looked at her with a stern glare that had her insides wobbling, teetering on fear and arousal
“I don’t need a child with legal benefits, Abby. I like that you’re strong, independent, capable of surviving, but in this I have to have the final say. I need doors open so I can hear you if something happens. Make no mistake about it, he will find us here and an already closed door could be the death of you.”
That made sense; it really did. But it was something else in his words that had fear pulsing down her spine. “How do you know he’ll find me here?”
“Because once upon a time I was him—the man who found the impossible and went in hot, came out clean. By clean I mean a completed mission.” He leaned his forearms on to the table and clasped his hands together. “This is a mission for him, personally and professionally. He won’t stop until he completes it. I won’t stop until he’s dead, but I can’t focus if you don’t follow the rules”
She nibbled on the corner of her bottom lip before nodding. When he put it that way she understood him and his actions more.
“And stop doing that,” he pointed at her mouth. “Because I don’t have condoms and that there is tempting me to strip you and come inside you gloved or not.”
“Oh.” While the thought of him doing just that was intriguing she didn’t want babies and men without condoms brought babies.
“No glove, no entry.” She shook her finger at him. His lip turned upwards in one corner. “No additional entry,” she clarified.
He chuckled. “You don’t want babies, huh?”
She shook her head no. “Not now, not ever.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t want any either, but know that if you do get pregnant I will be there. I don’t do the absentee dad thing.”
“Good to know,” she nodded.
“And just so you know I’m not leaving you even if you don’t get pregnant.”
“Very good to know,” she smiled with a wink. “So what are you working on? Come on, share.”
“Sharing is caring, huh?”
She laughed. “Sometimes.”
He shrugged. “Sure, why not?” He seemed to be willing which made her happy that he trusted her. “I’m trying to find the people who killed my parents.”
Her heart sunk at his words. “How long have you been searching?”
“Too long,” he admitted with great sorrow in his voice. “I was away. The bastards,” the anger in his eyes intensified. “They chained them to chairs, beat them and burned them alive.”
She gasped.
“I shouldn’t have told you. It’s too graphic.”
“No. I mean it is, but that is what happens at the start of the video game we’re working on.”
His head shot upwards. “What?” He growled the word ferociously.
“There’s a couple. Their son is in the Army and off fighting some jungle war. The man and the woman are tortured but the man doesn’t talk. They burn her first, but he still doesn’t talk. I thought it was too graphic but the creator wouldn’t let it be omitted and the powers that be said more money could come if it stayed.”
He emitted a low, yet lethal growl.
“The son returns and the game is his mission to find the killers when he finds out about the cover up.”
“What happens? Who did it?” The anger in his voice sent a tinge of fear up her spine.
“We were still developing. He was so secretive that he gave it to us piece by piece. I was surprised he inked the contract like that, but he did.”
“Now that he’s dead what are they going to do? Did he keep notes or something?”
“No,” she shook her head. “He said paper made trouble. It was hard and frustrating to have to fact check so swiftly while still designing. After he died we were told to just make up an ending—which by we I mean me.”
He stood up so swiftly that the chair fell over and slid across the stone floor. “That,” his voice was full of rage. “That is what pushed the hit on you full throttle. They think you know and they want you dead.”
“I…this is real? It’s just a game. We design games.” She felt the quiver in her voice as she spoke. Fear staked a claim on her because this, this game, was going to get her killed over something she didn’t even know.
“This is real. This is my family.”
“If this is real then we have bigger problems here. My last conversation with this story building boy genius was off. He said something that just made me wonder why the game was headed into something that would make it that much longer, but I
dismissed it because it’s not like we haven’t designed super long games before. It’s just that I thought we would reach an ending and that would end this game, but something he said made me think it would bring about another game like this. He said soon we would know the end and it was going to go from CIA to the White House.”
Rhys let out a loud yell as he swept his arm out knocking the bowl of fruit off the granite top of the island.
She jumped at the sound the porcelain bowl made while shattering when it hit the floor. This was just a game in her mind. This ending that was coming, with a hint that it would go to the White House, in her mind, meant they would have another game to put together just like this one—which was getting on her nerves. But this wasn’t just a game. This was real. This was Rhys’ family here, and that meant their boy genius wasn’t just trying to put a game out there; he was trying to put the truth out there. Somehow he must have known with the chatter that would come about this epic new game that somebody was going to recognize the story, and somebody was going to see that justice got served. Unfortunately, this real life turned game was going to get her killed just as it had gotten boy genius and the senator killed too.
She wanted to help him, but she didn’t know how.
“Rhys,” she waited until he looked at her with eyes full of the rage in his heart. “He didn’t keep notes but I took notes when he told me things. I also kept notes on the code names that weren’t optional and the ones we were able to change along with what we changed them to. My notebook,” she pointed. He nodded his understanding but he didn’t say a word. She ran back to her room and grabbed the five-subject butterfly decorated notebook before jogging back to him.
She sat down and watched as he up righted the chair and returned it to the office like table. This room wasn’t the kitchen, but he had it set up in a way that allowed him to fix sandwiches and eat without having to step away from his work.
She opened her notebook and turned to the section marked ‘characters’.
“Our leading man is Rick, no last name. He’s a Cuban-American,” she held up her hand. “A name like Rick…I know, but that’s what we got as a name and that was a name that wasn’t changeable. His code name was Spirit.”
He grunted. “In real life Spirit is Arapaho, red, and very Native in looks.”
She nodded. So Spirit was real too then. She read off the other code names while he gave her the real life counterparts.
“Our bad guys, those are difficult because all we had for the top of their bad guys are code names. Black Dog, Tracer, Halo and Red Knight.” The names were pretty cool and fitting for the characters at least. She had figured people would love playing whichever character they picked to be theirs in the game, joint or computer assisted wouldn’t matter here because the names were cool and should the players want to play the bad guy instead of the good guy in a group playing they could still have kick butt names.
She looked at her scribbled notes because she had to write swiftly with the notebook on her lap for four hours. Her hands were hurting but those were the rules—no electronic notes. This was from a guy who believed paper brought trouble.
“I’ve heard Tracer, Red Knight, and Halo before. I haven’t heard of Black Dog.”
“Hmm,” she turned a page. “One of the good guys, two actually, that names were changed were Lilith and Night Force One.”
He groaned. “Lilith was a woman with the CIA. She was killed two years ago while working in Afghanistan.”
“And Night Force One?” She questioned, more curious than not as to how real life became fiction. How a tragedy became a game. And how what she knew might just help Rhys solve a decades old crime.
“That would be me during my Special Forces days.”
“That explains the character. He’s the master of disguise, the man who can get in, do the job, and get out, but he’s also super lethal like you can be when you’re angry.”
He shook his head. “How did this guy get all of this?”
“I don’t know. Until today I didn’t realize this was real life turned into gaming. But I think he did it like this so he could get the information out there.”
“It was his idea of a cover operation but they still found out. Maybe he knew they would. Maybe…”
“What?” She hated when his mind trailed off to silent thoughts because it meant she was left hanging on the outside.
“Maybe he knew they would get me to protect you.”
“What?”
“The program you’re in, even though it’s Special Conditions and these guys are top level, they are not skilled to go up against somebody with my kind of training. Maybe this guy knew he was going to die. Maybe he knew the details of this “game” would reach me. Maybe…just maybe he orchestrated this knowing he was going to die.”
“Did he have to take me into hell with him?” She balked. Okay, the guy wanted to right past wrongs, but did he have to put her life and other people’s lives in danger just to do it?
Rhys shrugged. “Seems to me he went into this knowing he was going to die. Seems to me if he knew that he should have, one, not involved civilians, and two, left better notes.”
She sighed. “Yeah, and not used me.”
“Yeah, I agree, that’s what I meant by civilians.”
“Oh,” she nodded.
“But it does seem he targeted you. I just don’t know why.”
She snorted. “You’re the best in your field here and I’m one of the best in mine. I fact check, design, build, and I’m always behind the scenes and rarely noted by my real name in the credits—that’s my choice by the way. I do end up credited on games, but I go by my code name on every game I help design. Ghost Ninja, that’s my code name. My dad kind of gave me the Ninja part because he would call me his Butterfly Ninja—sweet but lethal. The Ghost part came when I was um…playing with um…hackers,” she shrugged. “Ghost Ninja because I can get in and out. I can sit there like a ghost, invisible, observing everything, and Ninja because I can destroy the competition. Fortunately I focused more on the legal side of life and not the illegal side. Fact checking became my thing, building and design was something I was good at too, but I loved the fact checking part. The fact that I could get into databases that shouldn’t have been gotten into was just another perk to the hiring process for the gaming place I landed in. My work helped keep us ahead of the game. Most of our buyers are military, want-to-be military, or prefer to handle the hard military life from the comfort of their sofa. They like facts mixed with their fiction and help us get that. Mostly it’s just checking facts legally, but I have had to dive in on some things and go a little deeper than some legal channels would permit—nothing too out of this world or anything like that, just a little deeper.”
He shook his head. “These guys think you know more than you do and they…he shouldn’t have put you in danger like this.”
“Why would these criminals let us get this far? If they were watching him, which I think they probably were, why let us start building the game in the first place? Why not just kill him before he made contact with us?”
“They may not have been watching from pre-contract. The contract may have made them start paying attention to him. I need more information on him, his past, in order to figure that part out. But I think they waited because the lower level guys aren’t the ones they cared about. You must be close, or something your boy genius was about to give you was going to hit too close to home for higher level people…whatever it was they are ready to end this completely.”
“By ending me,” she stated. “Because they think I have the end game in my head.”
He nodded.
She exhaled slowly. The thought occurred to her that this game really was worth killing for and unfortunately for her she was, as Rhys had said, a “marked target in a very deadly game.” She felt anger hit her hard. “Well if I’m going to hell I’m taking them with me.”
He grabbed hold to her hand swiftly, stopping her from leaving th
e table. She had gotten up fast, trying to escape into her room so she could cry out her anger, but he refused to let her go.
“You are not going to hell.”
“I don’t believe in heaven.”
His glare was stern and decisive. “I mean they are not ending your life. You got me?”
She nodded. “They could end us both, Rhys.”
“Not this time,” he nearly growled those words out. “Not this time.”
She leaned in and kissed his lips. “Then let’s take them out before they take us out.”
“No. Not you, not this.”
“You can’t do this alone. I can’t survive this guy that’s after me without you. Neither of us can do this alone, but together we can destroy them.” She stressed the last part of her sentence, punctuating each word with the calm sense of anger she now felt within her. Together they could win this. Together they could give an end game that left them both alive.
“Then together we find victory, or we find death.”
She nodded. “Victory,” she said because that sounded a heck of a lot better than them dying. Of course he was both a skilled warrior and a realist. He knew nothing was promised, no outcome could be guaranteed, but he would fight until death to make sure those responsible for his parents’ murder were punished and that she would be able to wake up every day breathing. He was protector and warrior. He was a man without borders, without boundaries, without mercy. He would do whatever it took to win this not just for himself, but for her too. Together they would take these guys down.
Chapter Five
Abby had awakened early, showered and ate the breakfast food Rhys had prepared. She cleaned the kitchen. He cooked, the least she could do was help clean up. Then she went to the back room where she was sure he was at so she could spend a little time talking with him about their plan. She had barely made it into the room when he knocked her to the ground.
“Stay down,” the harsh timbers of his voice sent fear cascading down her spine. Something was wrong. Somebody was out there. Had the guy found them already? How could he find them so quickly?
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