Her Covert Protector (Rogue Protectors Book 4)

by Victoria Paige

  “In case you missed the memo, we’re in a fucking dungeon.” John looked around. They’d done a quick assessment when they were first thrown in this hole. The only way out was up the stairs. Four guards roamed the halls. But John had seen as many as twenty soldiers congregate in the living room, especially during their first round of interrogations. He had a feeling he and Bristow were being paraded as prized catches.

  Catch and release. For all the times this had to happen, it had to happen when he promised Nadia he was returning Monday. Tomorrow.

  Fucking Ilya. Did the businessman lure them here on purpose? Did he really have information at all regarding the brains behind the Argonayts? Their endgame. Ilya said the information was too delicate to communicate even through secure channels. They had to do it face to face.

  Fucker.

  “I can hear you fuming over there,” Bristow said.

  John sighed. He was so fucking tired. And the SEAL’s stomach rumbling reminded him that the two big rolls of bread this morning were not enough sustenance.

  “That’s called thinking,” he answered.

  The SEAL levered up and sat against the wall. “While you’re at it, can you find a way to get us out of here? Or sweet talk and rustle us some more food? Man, what I wouldn’t give for a cheeseburger right now …”

  His own hunger pangs gnawed at his gut, so he tuned out Bristow’s irritating yammering and fell asleep.

  The clanging of the door jerked John awake, and he glanced over at his cellmate. He must have passed out while Bristow was droning on about food. Footsteps shuffled down the steps. When he saw who it was, his heart jumped to his throat.

  “Nadia?”

  He blinked. She was standing in front of him in a loose dress, but it couldn’t hide the bulge at her stomach. “You said you were coming home Monday,” she accused.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he roared.

  He started choking. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Wake up, fucker!”

  John’s eyes flew open and gripped a wrist while trying to get his mouth free from the hand, ready to flip his attacker over, when he registered it was Bristow.

  And the man stunk.

  For that matter, John figured he did too.

  He jerked his head to acknowledge he was awake and in control. Bristow removed his palm, and sat back, eyeing him warily. John scooted against the wall, his heart still pounding, his heaving lungs making his ribs ache.

  “The fuck’s wrong with you?” Bristow whispered harshly. “You’ve been off since we left the U.S.”

  He leaned closer and whispered in Bristow’s ear. “Broken condom.”

  When John pulled back, the SEAL was staring at him, mouth gaping open in a comical way. “Fuuuuuck. Is it her?”

  “Don’t know who you mean.”

  “Stop your denial.”

  “Let’s say it is … theoretically.”

  “Holy cow … I still can’t …” Bristow gave a low whistle and couldn’t hide the mirth in his eyes. “Way to liven up our stay here.”

  “Would you stop it?” he snapped. “They might think you’ve gone crazy.”

  “Well, that’s certainly an excuse to let me go.”

  “Or ship you off to Siberia.”

  Bristow started laughing, then suddenly stopped and cleared his throat. “Do you need to talk to someone?”

  John eyed him suspiciously. The corners of the SEAL’s mouth were twitching. “Glad I can be a source of amusement for your boring stay.”

  “Seriously, man.” The other man shrugged. “I mean, there’s nothing else to do over here. I can pretend to be Dr. Phil.”

  John might never live this down but the urge to unload was overpowering. He needed to figure this shit out that was completely foreign territory.

  “I already broke a promise to her,” he said quietly.

  Bristow moved his head closer. “Sorry for my foul breath, but spit it out, G.”

  “I told her I was returning Monday.”

  “Damn. That’s tomorrow. Is it serious?”

  A defensiveness rose inside him. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out because I sure as hell don’t know how to do real shit like this.”

  “You mean relationship shit?”

  “Yeah.”

  His fellow prisoner sat back. “Enjoy the feeling.”

  “Oh, and you’re an expert on feelings?”

  “Oh…ho…ho…” Bristow’s brows rose. “Someone is being testy. And I’m no expert. Far from it.”

  The dungeon door slammed open and footsteps hurried down the steps. Hulk appeared and glowered at them. “No whispering.”

  John and Bristow stared at each other. No question. They were being monitored.

  Sixth day of captivity

  “I’m saying, man, you can’t have it both ways,” Bristow said. “Something’s got to give. I know marketing California wine has its appeal, but the constant travel’ll get old.” Even if their captors probably knew they were not wine merchants, they decided to continue playing their roles.

  “You just want my job.”

  “Told you I don’t. Like this freelance shit. And you?”

  “I’ve got responsibilities.”

  “Well, looks like you’ll have more depending on how the wind blows.”

  Anxiety pinched his gut. The idea of becoming a father was front and center in his thoughts. Maybe the lack of food was making him paranoid. He cycled between thinking he was overreacting and reacting just right. He knew Nadia was on birth control, but the pill was only as reliable as the person who took it.

  “But that still can’t be the reason why you stay together. Just saying … It isn’t fair.”

  To the kid. John felt the same way.

  He sighed. “I think we’re jumping too far ahead.”

  “Best to be prepared for all possibilities.”

  Tenth day of captivity

  John was close to losing his damned mind, and he couldn’t blame the lack of food or water. Earlier that morning they were each treated to a big bowl of oatmeal and a bag of jerky. He and Bristow scarfed those down, hoping they were finally going to be cut loose.

  But, five hours later. Nothing.

  “Hmm … I wonder if that was our last supper?” Bristow asked.

  He glared at the SEAL. “I can make it yours.”

  Instead of a smartass comeback, Bristow looked apologetic. “Sorry, man.”

  In the past few days, he was riding a razor edge of anxiety. Though they hadn’t been interrogated again, John felt a pall that had fallen on the mobsters. Yesterday, he and Bristow were hosed down. Scar-Eye probably didn’t want them dying of a flesh-wasting disease, so even when his balls shriveled up in the stream of ice-cold water, he welcomed getting the layer of grime off his skin. From what he’d gleaned from the men talking, their boss’s op didn’t go exactly as planned, and there was going to be an attempt to salvage their objective.

  There appeared to be a reduction in guards at the house, and there were fewer people in the computer room unlike the first few days that John and Bristow were here. Were they getting ready to move? What about him and Bristow? Were they fattening them up to be shipped off to Siberia?

  The nightmares around Nadia were constant. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see her in his mind. Her belly round with his baby, and even one time, she was holding hands with a little girl.

  Fuck. He had to get back to her. He wasn’t giving up. John was getting out of this hellhole. The longer she believed he brushed her off, the harder it would be to set his plan into play. She was the only woman in his long life as a CIA officer who made him hunger for a home.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  Bristow’s face brightened. “Finally. Have you snapped out of your melancholy?”

  He glanced at the SEAL. “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Just saying. So, what’s the plan?”

  Fourteenth day of captivity

  John drop
ped to the ground after getting pistol-whipped on the back of the head.

  Their great escape failed.

  He and Bristow would have been successful, too, if Scar-Eye had not returned with more men after three days of absence. Hulk was left in charge and thought John and Bristow were his docile pets. The man found out that attack dogs should never be pets.

  Scar-Eye loomed over John, pointing the barrel of his Kalashnikov between his eyes. “This just proves you’re a spy. Only a man with your training could take my biggest man down.”

  John and Bristow executed their escape plan after one of their hose-downs. The aftermath of their botched exit left Hulk with two holes, bleeding and yelling like a stuck pig. Two guards lay dead on the ground.

  “Maybe I like watching action movies,” John responded, and then, “You okay, B?”

  “I’m good,” Bristow grunted. His partner in crime was also flat on his back with a gun pointed to his head.

  Scar-Eye’s gaze trailed down the length of Garrison’s drenched t-shirt, athletic shorts that had seen better days, and to his bare feet. “Maybe I should let you walk on broken glass.” His mouth curled cruelly. “Let me see you act all die hard, huh?”

  John hid his frustration with their attempted escape with a crooked smile. “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

  “Can we just kill them?!” Hulk roared from his position against the wall and being tended to by his comrades.

  The smaller man’s fingers tightened on the trigger. “At this point, it would give us less trouble.”

  “Just tell Maxim they tried to grab the guard’s guns,” Hulk shouted. “That they shot themselves.”

  Despite his dire situation, Garrison’s ears perked at Hulk’s slip, naming the mastermind behind their abduction.

  “Now I take issue with that,” Bristow grumbled from his dicey position on the floor. “That’s a false narrative.”

  John chuckled darkly. Defiant until the end.

  And as he stared down the barrel of a gun, his chest contracted painfully at the loss of a life he could have found with Nadia.

  And if he had a kid?

  His lungs compressed into a heavy weight.

  Fuck. He wasn’t okay with this.

  “Any last words?”

  He wasn’t going down without a fight. No matter how futile this seemed.

  A blast rocked the house, throwing Scar-Eye off his feet. Flash-bang grenades erupted and filled the room with smoke.

  Simultaneous gunshots exploded and an exchange of artillery fire followed but was short-lived.

  John kept his position on the ground as he tried to see through the fumes, alert to react.

  Two figures materialized from the haze.

  Roarke and Spear.

  A whoosh of relief escaped his lungs.

  Off to the side, Levi and another guy John didn’t recognize tended to Bristow.

  John was grinning so wide, his jaw hurt. “It was about time you motherfuckers got here.”

  Kade loomed above him. “Do I need to carry you?”

  “Hell no.”

  The other man extended an arm to give him a hand up. “Then we got here at just the right time.”

  8

  Motherfuckers.

  Take that!

  Breaking into Huxley’s computer was easy. Finding the Crown-Key itself was trickier. But almost two weeks later, Nadia was finally able to break the encryption on a sector of Huxley’s code repository in the cloud and secured the Crown-Key source code on their own CTTF server. She harnessed part of her own decryption program and her familiarity with Huxley’s character to break into it. Part of hacking involved guesswork.

  She passed it into their own encryption program when Kelso walked in. “Hey, nerd girl, you ready?”

  “Yes, just locking up.” She blew the hair from her face.

  “You worked hard on this, Nadia.” Kelso came up behind her. “Any more info on that malware you found lurking around the sector you decrypted earlier?”

  “No, but I was able to set up a shield so they couldn’t access the code.”

  Kelso peered over her shoulder and at multiple split screens. “How do you read that shit? All I see are brackets, parentheses, and gibberish words.”

  “It’s another language to me.”

  Kelso chuckled. “That’s why guys over here are intimidated to ask you out. You’re smarter than they are.”

  She angled her gaze at him. “And I have no patience for men who are intimidated by a woman with a brain.”

  Her friend gave a snort. “Gotcha. I’ll clue them in.” After a few seconds, his face turned serious, although mirth still gleamed in his eyes. “Have you informed Homeland Security?”

  “Yup. Sent them a secure transmission.”

  “Good,” Kelso said again. “No lead on the device yet?”

  She sighed. “None.”

  The detective checked his watch. “Your dad must hate me and Gabby by now. You haven’t had a break in two weeks.”

  “I’ve had worse. And the rest of the team worked just as hard. Any insight from the Hux Technologies employees you interviewed?”

  “Nothing solid. Kenneth Huxley is the classic introvert.”

  “Except when he’s entertaining.” But Nadia knew it was a mask. The real Ken liked solitude and to tinker on his programs. “I feel bad for them. I don’t think anyone is in a position to take over.”

  “Yeah.” Kelso pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Enough work talk and let’s get out of here. Let me feed you at least.”

  After packing up and locking her lab, they passed a group of the night-shift detectives who gave them a knowing look.

  “Ugh, you’ve been seeing me home for a week now. Where’s Levi?”

  “What? You sick of my company already?”

  They made it out to the parking lot. “No. Just wondering where he is.”

  “He had an emergency.”

  “Are Kelly and the girls all right?”

  “It’s work related.”

  Nadia tried to keep from asking another question. John didn’t show up that Monday as he promised. More than two weeks later, there was still no communication from him. He tried calling her the morning he left, but, as usual, his paranoid ass refused to leave a message. She hadn’t heard from him since. Good thing her determination to solve Ken’s murder left her no time for anything else. He was murdered in one of his Santa Monica properties and then his death was staged back at the penthouse. But why? Was that where he kept the Crown-Key device? A wave of dizziness hit her, and she stumbled while walking.

  Kelso gripped her arm. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Haven’t eaten since lunch.”

  “You’ve been working too hard. Have you been drinking water?”

  “No,” she smiled sheepishly. Kelso was such a drill sergeant about water intake even when he plied her with sixteen-ounce caramel macchiatos as incentive to prioritize his requests.

  In the past three days, the detective had been picking her up for work after his workouts at the gym and taking her home in the evenings. He and Gabby had been working overtime like she was. With Homeland Security already involved, it could become stickier and more complicated if a rogue nation was involved.

  When they got into the SUV, he immediately handed her a bottle of water.

  “Fancy eating gyros?” Kelso asked.

  “At the Athena Loft Deli?” It was a Greek and Mediterranean grill with an attached grocery. “At this point, I’ll eat anything. And Dad mentioned picking up pomegranate paste if I get to a store that had it before he did.” Nadia uncapped the bottle and drank a healthy dose of water. She was parched despite guzzling too much caffeine not two hours ago. Kelso threw her a look and gave a shake of his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, really.”

  “You finished that bottled water.”

  “I thought you wanted me to hydrate.”

  “Carefully,” Kelso
shot her a look again. “Anything over four ounces every half hour is wasted.”

  “Where the hell did you read that?”

  “Somewhere,” was his flippant reply. “Besides, we’re going to hit traffic.”

  As they merged onto the 101, heading for the Middle Eastern neighborhood near her place, Nadia wanted to pound her head on the dashboard. “Shit.”

  “Yup,” Kelso said wryly. “If your bladder is as tiny as Woodward’s, it’s going to be either a tolerable ten minutes or a tense forty-five.”

  Up ahead, the braking red lights of vehicles taunted her.

  “No,” she groaned. She was already feeling the pressure from the caffeine, and it must be mental, but she was immediately hit with an urge to pee.

  The detective glanced over at her with sympathy. “Maybe half an hour.”

  Thirty-five minutes later, Kelso took the exit for Vermont Avenue. “I can’t believe you made me fucking do that.”

  “It was an emergency,” she protested.

  “It’s an abuse of authority.”

  “Would you prefer I peed in your car?”

  “It’s LAPD property. What do I care?”

  Nadia laughed despite her full bladder. “You’d care if Gabby made you sit in it.”

  “I always drive,” he muttered.

  She had whined at Kelso, forcing him to use the police lights so they could use the shoulder about a mile from their exit. They’d been crawling on the freeway for thirty-five minutes and the caffeine plus water made it an unbearable journey. Besides, she was in this predicament because she was working overtime and she hadn’t eaten. She felt justified enough that she was working for the benefit of the city.

  “We’re almost at the deli, but I see some nice shrubs over there,” Kelso said when they passed a gas station with landscaping separating it from the road.

  “Don’t be a smartass to a woman who’s barely holding on to her bladder.”

  Kelso mumbled something.

  “What?”

  The vehicle went over a speed bump.

  Her bladder didn’t like that.

  “Eh, I think I just peed a little.”

  Kelso glanced at her in horror. “Say it isn’t so, Powell.”