Her Covert Protector (Rogue Protectors Book 4)

by Victoria Paige

  Nadia didn’t dare ask him what he meant because it was clearly etched in his eyes.

  And she was a little bit afraid.

  Because John was everything that was exciting to her, and in his determination to change her mind about giving them a chance, she was afraid that he would be successful. But what if he realized it was not what he wanted and craved his nomadic existence again.

  Where would that leave Nadia? She wanted stability; she didn’t want uncertainty.

  John cursed under his breath. “You’re still hesitant.”

  She sighed. “Do you blame me?”

  “No. This can’t be solved in a morning.” He glanced at his watch. “And there’s only so much I can say, but we’re out of time. The guys will be here soon. Go get dressed.”

  “You don’t want them to see me in your shirt? Wouldn’t that be more your caveman speed?”

  “I’d rather they not see your nipples or imagine you without panties.”

  “They’d never—”

  “They’re men, Nadia. Fuck it, I don’t even want to think about it.”

  She was surprised how strongly he felt about that. He let her go and walked over to where he dropped the gym bag. Returning to her side, he handed it to her and nodded his head toward the staircase.

  John was lucky she found his bossiness hot, otherwise, his crotch would be meeting the contents of her coffee cup.

  She gave one of her dramatic turns and strutted out of the kitchen. Let him drool over her swaying ass.

  And when she heard his strangled groan, she smiled wickedly.

  12

  Nadia was stubborn as fuck, but John couldn’t blame her for resisting his advances to pick up where they had left off. The truth was, he hadn’t tried to win a woman over since his freshman year in college. He was rusty. Sure he’d done it on assignment or when he was undercover. It was so easy to lie and not care that he’d lied.

  John tried to stay away, but after having her again after Huxley’s party, he knew it was useless to resist the sexy walking contradiction that was Nadia Powell. She was a nerd at heart, but she had the moves of a siren. Sassy on the streets, scorching between the sheets. A lethal combination in John’s book. Whatever conscience he had told him to leave her alone to find a decent man, find the California dream and raise two-point-five kids.

  A roar inside him protested it wouldn’t be any man but him.

  Jealousy was a dormant feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He thought he was practical, logical, and pragmatic. Man, was he mistaken.

  But what exactly could John offer her?

  Nadia wasn’t a risk taker, and it seemed a lot to ask her to take a chance on him. He’d read her file. He knew of the time when she was twelve and was yanked away from the security of a Virginia suburban neighborhood when there were leaked CIA files that might have exposed her father. It was eight months of safe houses until they landed in Seattle and then finally made their home in Los Angeles. John was a reminder of that life when everything was uncertain.

  He refilled his coffee and headed to his bedroom to change into faded denims, a crewneck tee, and military boots. There was an image he wanted to project especially with the detectives coming over to talk about the case. If they needed to head somewhere after this, he wanted to be ready. Grabbing his tablet, he made his way to the first floor and was surprised to see Nadia already seated at the dining table, on her laptop, and tapping away at the keyboard. She had on red cat-eye glasses and her blond hair was piled up in a high ponytail. She was wearing one of her nerd-themed t-shirts. He walked over to where she sat and slid out a chair beside her.

  “Watcha up to?”

  “Checking to see if there’s an update on those other DBs.”

  John woke his screen and checked communications as well. Bristow had already sent him the files on the three assailants from yesterday. “I got them.”

  She glanced up. “Bristow?”

  “Yep.”

  “See, you can depend on him. I don’t know why you keep yanking me into your ops.”

  Nadia raised her mug to take a sip while shooting an inquiring brow his way.

  “You’re prettier than Bristow.”

  She started coughing, may have spewed a bit of coffee on her screen before glaring at him. “You did that on purpose!”

  “Sorry, babe, that was hard to resist.”

  The gates sounded on its tracks, so Garrison checked the surveillance app on his phone. “Speak of the devil. They’re here.”

  Not long after Bristow and Levi showed up bearing to-go paper bags that smelled of pancake and bacon, the detectives arrived. They all scattered around the dining table to review their own data before the briefing commenced. Kelso handed Nadia a large to-go cup of caramel macchiato, and it irritated John how her face lit up. How did he miss this about her? So he was competitive as fuck when it came to wooing a woman.

  Trying to swallow the annoyance boiling inside him, he asked, “Shall we get started?”

  The detectives glanced up from their position behind Nadia’s seat while she accessed the results from their forensics lab.

  “Yes.” Kelso eyed him shrewdly. “It appears that you’re more aware of our cases than we are. How about you tell us what you know about Maxim Vovk and why he’s after the Crown-Key?”

  A corner of his mouth lifted. “My trip to Ukraine with Bristow yielded interesting intel.”

  “That must be some intel gathering.” Nadia’s eyes were full of scorn. “How did five days of business end up being two weeks of silence?”

  John glanced briefly at Bristow who suddenly got up to check out the untouched Styrofoam containers of food.

  “For starters,” he replied evenly, directing his gaze back at Nadia. “We got abducted as soon as we got off the plane and thrown into a dungeon.”

  Shock registered in her eyes, as the entire room went silent. “You didn’t think to mention this yesterday?”

  Kelso appeared equally taken aback by his announcement, while Gabby didn’t show surprise.

  John continued holding her eyes. “I didn’t want to make an excuse that I didn’t keep my promise to you.”

  “That’s a pretty damned good excuse. Are you all right?” Her gaze flew to the SEAL. “You, Bristow? You okay?”

  “John and I were roughened up, but we’ll live,” he quipped. “I could eat pancakes and bacon for a week.”

  Kelso turned to Levi. “That’s why you and Roarke were suddenly called away?” And then looked at his partner. “And that’s why you were distracted this past week? I thought he wasn’t picking up overseas jobs any longer. That he was banned.”

  “Someone higher than the JAG authorized the op,” Levi said.

  “And Dec wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t Garrison and Bristow’s lives on the line,” Gabby said.

  The SEAL grinned. “We’re honored.”

  “Any idea why you guys were held?” Kelso asked. “Was it the Brotherhood?”

  “The men who captured us were members of the Argonayts,” John said. “When we were rescued, Bristow managed to retrieve several hard drives and computers. We found the plot to secure the Crown-Key and that they had a person on Huxley’s security team.”

  “Cain Morris, right?” Nadia asked.

  “Yup.”

  “But why did they feel the need to detain you?” Kelso asked.

  “Ilya, our asset in Ukraine had this same information and was about to hand it over, but he was too high profile in Kiev society to kill, and it was too late to stop us from leaving the U.S.”

  “So they abducted you guys so you wouldn’t interfere with their plot to steal the Crown-Key,” Gabby postulated.

  “That. And tried to find out what we already know … without leaving permanent marks on us,” John said.

  “As if we’re going to admit to having our asses kicked,” Bristow said.

  The men chuckled. The women glared.

  “How can you all be so cavalier about
this?” Nadia snapped.

  He shrugged. “Only way to stay sane in this job.”

  Kelso asked, “So what can you tell us about Maxim?”

  “Maxim Vovk was the leader of the Argonayts, the Ukrainian hacking ring, which the U.S. government believes is responsible for the SillianNet hack last year.”

  “There were speculations that the Kremlin was behind that,” Gabby said. “The government couldn’t prove it, right?”

  “To prove it would expose several of our assets in Russia and eastern Europe,” John admitted. “Many of them are deep cover, and such documentation—if revealed—would start a witch hunt. We couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  “Okay, so with Maxim dead, would that mean whatever they’re planning is also dead because their activities are not sanctioned by the Brotherhood, right?” Nadia asked.

  “The Brotherhood is a collective name for Ukrainian organized crime,” John said. “They’re closely related to their Russian counterparts and usually do business together. In reality, they’re made of several groups. A few of them would get together for a job and then disappear after it was done.”

  “Yes, we see that happening here,” Kelso replied. “That’s why they’re so hard to pin down.”

  “Their ability to adapt is what makes them dangerous, so there’s no telling what Maxim’s death will do,” John said. “Someone else could take over. We need to know exactly what that Crown-Key software can do. Nadia?”

  She gave a shake of her head as if attempting to refocus her attention on their meeting objective, making John momentarily doubt if he spilled the circumstances of the Ukrainian trip too early. But it was relevant to their case, and he hated keeping secrets from her that would affect how they moved forward in his plans for her.

  “I’m still deciphering the extent of its capability.” She exhaled a heavy breath. “But it’s not looking good.”

  “She’s already given us a brief rundown about how it could propagate and bypass a company’s security,” Gabby said. “We’ve informed Homeland security of this, but we’re not getting priority.”

  “They’re dealing with cyber threats elsewhere.” John kept his face neutral when he said this. In reality, he and the admiral agreed to keep the DHS on the periphery of the investigation. “My opinion?” he continued. “You’ve got all the resources you need right here.” He nodded at Nadia.

  “Your confidence in my skills is endearing.” She gave a small smile that slightly lightened the cloudiness in her eyes.

  “You have no idea,” John murmured. He immediately felt a blast of displeasure coming from the detectives. He returned their narrowed gazes with one of disinterest. He understood Gabby’s protectiveness, but Kelso could just fuck off.

  Bristow cleared his throat. “Maxim Vovk’s last date of entry into the U.S. was Friday a week ago.” The SEAL named the unidentified assailants from yesterday. “They’re Russian mercenaries who have been in the U.S. for a while—associates of the Russian Bratva.”

  “Could that be our link to Moscow then?” Gabby asked. “You think the Kremlin is behind this?”

  “We know they made an offer to Huxley,” Bristow said.

  “Really?” Nadia asked. “That’s not in our files. You have supporting data?”

  “Yup, sending you a drop,” the SEAL replied. “Those are from the disks we retrieved from the house where we were held.”

  “Okay, that’s an important piece of the puzzle,” Gabby said. “So, back to my question earlier. With Maxim gone, should we still be concerned about a looming cyberattack?”

  “We’re not sure if someone has the Crown-Key device, so I wouldn’t be complacent,” Nadia told her. “We’re not sure if it has any part of the source code installed in it.”

  “Shit,” Levi, who’d been quiet through all this, spoke up. “Does CTTF have anyone looking for it?”

  “Huxley has several properties in the U.S. and around the world,” Gabby said.

  “And Cain Morris is still missing,” Nadia informed them. “And he’s not tripping any of our surveillance on his accounts.”

  Bristow looked up from his laptop. “If you study the intel I sent you, he’s got experience forging identities, so, don’t be surprised if he already had one waiting in the wings when they axed Huxley.”

  “This is what doesn’t add up,” Gabby said. “Why kill Huxley if they don’t have everything yet?”

  John had been trying to piece together what little bits of info he could remember from his time in captivity, so he floated up a theory. “The men who held us said Maxim botched the operation and would be trying to salvage it. What I could infer from that statement is that they managed to get the Crown-Key and either killed Huxley before verifying that they could get to the source code, or they killed him accidentally.”

  “Two shots to the chest don’t seem accidental,” Gabby said. “Nadia found malware that tried to sneak around to grab the program when she managed to break into Huxley’s code repository.”

  “It could be a tracking malware alerting them that the source code was now unlocked, and that’s why they attacked yesterday to grab Nadia” John said.

  “And you were watching us too?” Kelso asked. “You knew they were going to make a move?

  “It was a hunch,” John said. It had been a struggle to let it play out the day before as he fought the urge to steal Nadia away and lock her up safely.

  “Looks like we need to operate under the assumption that our enemies do have the Key and intend to use it,” Gabby said. “Let’s identify the potential targets.”

  “Energy infrastructure is the most vulnerable right now,” Nadia said. She was struggling to concentrate on the meeting and trying to ignore how John turned her resolve on its head after the bomb he dropped earlier. How could she hold that against him? He was abducted, thrown in a dungeon, and tortured. The coffee she’d drunk this morning turned sour in her stomach.

  “There are water treatment plants,” Kelso speculated. “Not long ago a hacker changed the ratios of chemicals in the water to unsafe levels.”

  “Government databases. The Office of Personnel Management had already been victimized.”

  The public didn’t seem alarmed by the breach. If they only knew that every single background check that was done by the government was stored in those databases. Hmm … databases. Her analyst’s brain went to work on the files Bristow had sent her. Working on a hunch, she let the rest of them identify potential threats.

  “Defense contractors and research facilities that are developing new technology for the military are high-value targets for rogue states,” John said.

  “So, let’s throw in the CIA and the National Security Agency,” Bristow smirked.

  “Financial institutions,” Gabby added. “In short. If this gets into the wrong hands, there would be chaos. We have two kinds of perps. The ones whose purpose is to cause instability in the country, and the ones who are in it for the money. Both have the potential to cause chaos.”

  “All right, so we concentrate on the Argonayts,” Kelso said.

  “That’s our best chance to find the Key,” John agreed and split a look between the detectives. “I’m going to work with Nadia to offload the rest of the hard drives we were able to collect from the house where we were held. I have a feeling we’ll get more intel from them.” He turned to her. “But priority is the source code and finding the device.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say she didn’t take orders from him, but, at this point, that was going to sound petty. She didn’t know how to process both the emotion and information she’d gotten in the last five minutes. Besides, the hunch she had just came back with a hit.

  “Guys.” She glanced up from her screen. “The partial print lifted off Thomas Brandt’s homicide scene matches the print of one of our assailants from yesterday. That’s not a definitive win, yet. But that’s something.”

  “Fucking A,” Gabby said and fist-bumped Nadia. “Put in an order for de
tailed DNA cross-analysis on both Huxley and Brandt’s cases and match it against our DBs from yesterday.”

  “Already did,” she said.

  “You’re the best, nerd girl,” Kelso added.

  “Excellent work, babe,” John cut in. “One more thing. There’s a likelihood that the Order will retaliate. We were hoping to capture Maxim to flush out his brother Dmitry Vovk. It’s our belief he’s the real mastermind behind the Argonayts hacking ring, and his brother was simply a puppet. I’m hoping he shows his face Stateside and we can link big brother to the whole plot and arrest him.”

  Somehow Nadia didn’t think that putting the mafia boss behind bars was exactly what John had in mind.

  After the meeting broke up, Bristow left with Levi. They were taking some much-needed R and R but staying close to LA in case John needed them. The detectives were giving last-minute instructions to Nadia who was given permission to telework although she preferred to have all her gizmos around her. But she missed her own bed and was freaking tired from lack of sleep.

  “I can run you home,” Kelso said.

  “I got her,” John answered behind them.

  “All right,” Gabby glared at John with suspicion. “Is there something going on between you and my crime analyst?”

  “This is your business, how?”

  “Guys—” Nadia started, even raised her hand in a weak wave.

  Kelso gave a humorless bark of laughter, but it was Gabby who answered, invading John’s personal space. “Oh, it is when it’s you.”

  “Did I interfere when you and Roarke mixed business with pleasure?” he asked.

  “That’s different!”

  “Diff—”

  “Guys!” Nadia cut in in exasperation. “Goodness.” She yanked Gabby away from John and positioned her beside Kelso, so she could yell at them together. “John’s right, it’s none of your business if I sleep with him—”

  “Technically, there was no sleeping—” John drawled.

  Nadia spun on the infuriating man in the room. “You shut it, Garrison!”

  A brow hiked. A corner of his mouth tipped up. “Sure, babe.”