by Dale Mayer
Inside Devlin hope bloomed, and he felt that complete sense of brotherhood he never had anywhere else. He gave them each a curt nod and said, “Good timing.”
“Always. We got your back.” Ryder glared at Devlin as he stepped past, going into the small plane. “How the hell did you think you could leave without us?”
Easton didn’t bother saying anything. He just shot Devlin a look and walked past.
Corey grinned. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I turn around, and your butt is hanging in the wind.”
Devlin stared at Mason. “Is this your doing?”
“I might’ve made a suggestion that they could go home on your flight. What they do when they leave the base is up to them. Besides, everyone here wants to know what the hell is going on. Sabotage at a military base is serious business. We can’t afford to let her work fall into the enemy’s hands.”
“And yet it’s still not official?”
Mason waved a hand. “Some things take time. Give me something to take to them, then we can make it official, otherwise this has to be unpaid leave.”
Devlin boarded and closed the door behind him. Mason was right. Devlin was already sticking his neck out.
And he had to, for Bristol’s sake. He walked in and took a seat beside her.
She looked at him with pleasant surprise. “You going home?”
He nodded. “My whole unit is.”
She smiled, seeming at a loss for words.
“I’m supposed to be on four days’ leave. I’m going stateside to give you a hand. These guys are my unit so they’re being sent back and will be in Coronado.”
“Nah, I’ve got four days too,” Ryder said. “And I don’t have anything better to do with my time.”
Easton said, “Me three.”
“Hey, Bristol, any chance of getting a beer at your place?” Corey asked with a big grin. “We also eat a lot.”
In shock, her gaze went from one man to the next to the next. “Why?”
“We’ll figure it out. Chances are good Colleen wasn’t the target, but you and your work were. Colleen’s death was likely an accident, and they meant to sabotage the project,” Devlin said. “And we’re here to ensure the killer doesn’t get a second chance.”
Chapter 7
“I never considered that …” She shook her head. “Oh, my God! How does anybody get into something like this? It’s not how I envisioned my life. When I said I didn’t want to come on this trip, I meant it. And I’ll work through my nights because I know how damn short on time I am. But I could’ve made it, had things gone smoothly, with Colleen to help.”
Ryder nodded. “You’ll need to figure it out on the flight home.”
“I presume the company won’t provide any kind of security for you?” Easton said.
“I never asked for any,” she said quietly. “Not that the company will do anything for me now. Security was never an issue before. But then this is my first big contract, so I’m new to this. And apparently bit off more than I could chew.”
“Not at all. Someone is making sure you choke,” Devlin said.
“Not to worry,” Corey said with his hard-to-keep-down grin. “We won’t let anybody get a second chance.” Corey looked over at Devlin and smirked. “I see you’ve been hanging around Mason just a little too much.”
Devlin shot him a hard frown.
She didn’t quite understand what the reference was. But she wouldn’t allow any slight to Mason. “Mason’s a really nice guy. Tesla is a friend of mine. I don’t want to hear you saying anything against him,” she scolded Corey.
He chuckled. “I’d never do that. Mason’s a great guy. And Tesla”—he shook his head—“she’s dynamite.”
“She is that.”
Devlin looked at Easton. “Buddy, how’s your hardware skills?”
“Guns and bombs?” Easton asked quietly. “Can’t say too shabby with either.”
“I didn’t quite mean it that way. You’re an expert with both of those. I meant computer hardware.”
“Pretty damn decent. Why?”
“Devlin, do you really think so?” she asked doubtfully. “My work isn’t really firepower stuff.”
“Of course it is. You got that technology down so far, it’s incredibly accurate.”
“Those drones are actually all working well. The firing boxes didn’t get shipped yet, so with any luck, they will be fine. But as for the rest of the drones, we’ll put them together.”
Corey gave her a winning smile. “Right. I’m not as good on computers as Easton and Ryder are, but I’m really handy with mechanics.”
“Anybody who can handle a screwdriver and follow a few simple directions would be a big help,” Bristol said quietly.
Devlin quickly explained to his guys what the problem was.
Easton shook his head. “Now that is some shit.” He stared out the window as he contemplated the implications. “This is definitely sabotage. And that’s a screwy deal. I presume we’re talking big money here?”
She nodded. “The biggest. I’ll be bankrupt if I can’t make the deadline.” Her lips quirked. “Like I said, I bit off more than I can chew.”
“Could you have made it without any of these problems?” Ryder asked. “I’m always happy to help the underdog but prefer it to be a reasonable fight from the beginning. Or were you seriously in dreamland?”
“I honestly thought I could do it.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “But there have been a series of setbacks. And then this.”
In a sharp tone, Devlin’s voice snapped, “Setbacks?”
She turned her head toward him and opened her eyes. “Yes, software bugs, viruses, possibly hacking.” She shrugged. “I haven’t been able to do a whole lot with it as something else would pop up. I’d solve one problem, and then another would appear. I was so damn close to having this put together, ready and done.” She shook her head. “I would’ve made the original deadline, if not for all those problems.”
“All were normal research-and-development issues?” Corey asked. “Because everybody figures in a certain amount of time into every project for stuff like that.”
She shook her head. “No, at least I wouldn’t say so. All just little stuff. Like I couldn’t get the shipment of plastics because the warehouse was broken into, and they had to redo most of the molds as everything had been stolen. That shouldn’t have anything to do with me. It was their problem. But at the same time, it delayed me by weeks. The final software is the issue. My servers crashed. I lost time immediately when that happened. I have an extremely expensive server bank for all this, but I’m pretty damn sure somebody was hacking it. I lost forty-eight hours rebuilding a security system they couldn’t get into. And since then I’ve been free and clear from any hacking attempts or viruses.”
“Sounds like a long-term sabotage to me,” Ryder said, his voice hard, implacable. “And something you should have looked at a while ago.”
“I brought it up with Brent. I asked for assistance, and he said it was my problem.” She stared at Ryder, frowning. “I had two fantastic programmers, and they both took jobs elsewhere—on the same day.” She knew exactly how that sounded, what it meant. “I finally understand that people don’t want me to finish this contract. This business is brutal.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “As Tesla well knows.”
She could feel when all the men just kind of relaxed at the name Tesla, because sure enough, that woman had been to hell and back with her own programs. “We’re targets no matter what we do,” Bristol said. “I just put a bull’s-eye on my forehead when I got the contract.”
“Was there a lot of competition for the job?” Devlin asked. “I don’t mean this in a negative way, but why did you get it?”
“I was up against some big guys,” she said. “But my prototype has exactly what they wanted. They were frothing at the mouth to get it. They didn’t want to wait.” She smiled. “And that was for renditions earlier than Bertha.”
>
“Bertha?” Corey exclaimed. “I know what it is, but why call it that?”
She heard the snickers from the other men. “You guys don’t like her name?”
“What kind of clunky name is that? Makes me think of Big Bertha,” Corey said.
She smiled a secret smile. “Exactly.” She’d meant it to look that way, because then nobody would know what she really looked like.
Instantly the men sat forward. Nothing guys liked better than stealth toys. At least, she didn’t think so. And Bertha’s flying model was anything but clunky. But Bristol didn’t want to say any more because, although they were on this plane, and it felt secure, other men were here—though seated farther down at the back of the plane, not crowded around in the group they were in, but it wasn’t exactly safe.
She motioned at the other men, and Easton nodded. So far nothing had been said that would get her in trouble, but she didn’t want to start now.
Neither did she want to say anything to get these men in trouble. They’d been wonderful to her. Especially Devlin. She closed her eyes again and asked, “You guys mind if I just nod off for a few minutes?”
She relaxed back and let herself drift into that half-asleep, half-awake state where she did most of her designing work. A troubleshooting, problem-solving state where she could just let go of her current world and drift into one where none of this mess existed. If ever she needed to be there, this was the moment.
In her head she went through the logistics of building the number of drones she’d promised and fixing the software so it ran as it needed. It was possible, if she had the parts. But she needed capable hands, and people to build the drones, install the software and chips, and test the drones. And then there were her software issues.
She still had a few tweaks left to make, not many granted, but she knew how difficult those few could end up being. Just because she assumed it would go fast didn’t mean it would. Problems always arose. And she was pretty damn sure she understood what had gone wrong with the training drones. She just had to figure out how and why, and if any signs of that same problem were in the others. And if there were, she had to figure out how to get rid of it.
She’d spent her whole life building and creating. She found it very hard to deal with the other aspects—kicking out people who had their nose in your business when they shouldn’t. Espionage in her field was unbelievably bad. And she’d spent a lot of time building security systems to lock down her projects. She had no way to know who it might be at this point. She thought somebody might have remotely taken over control of the drone, just to make her look bad.
The problem was they’d succeeded in a big way.
*
Devlin watched her rest. He could see her eyes moving under her lids, so he knew she wasn’t in a real sleep, just half-and-half, preserving energy. On a computer, you called it Sleep Mode. But on humans,…well, not so much. What she really needed was several good hours of recovery time in a deep sleep to get past the emotional trauma of what just happened. She’d been under a lot of stress for a long time. Obviously small problems had built to bigger ones until this biggest of all messes. That alone had to be killing her, but she had an air of almost calmness to her that he didn’t recognize.
Yet he knew she was taking the death of her friend pretty hard. He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Colleen had been a target or if she had actually been the one sabotaging Bristol’s work—either alone or in cahoots with someone else. If that was the case, and she was meeting up with that person at the base during the training session, maybe her partners decided to take her out. A splitting of ways, so to speak.
Still he liked his original theory: Colleen having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or they could have assumed she was Bristol and taken her out. It would’ve been a shock when they realized Bristol was still alive, in which case, her life remained in danger. And if somebody made one attempt, chances were very good they were about to make a second.
And he wouldn’t allow that. In his world, he fought—long and hard. Right to the end. And he knew every one of his men would agree. That was how they were made. SEALs don’t stop; they do what they do best: they go to battle. So, whoever Bristol was up against, they’d better watch out because they’d taken on the wrong woman. They had assumed she had nobody around to help her. They were wrong; she had friends in very good places. And not one of them would let her be taken down without an all-out war.
Chapter 8
“Bristol?”
That voice drifted into her subconscious. One she’d been dreaming about only minutes before. She opened her eyes and blinked owlishly up at Devlin, realizing something had shifted. She straightened in her seat and looked around. “Are we here?”
“Yes, we’ll be landing in a few minutes.”
She wiped the sleep from her eyes and made a trip to the bathroom. When she returned, she sat down and buckled up again. “I’m really glad I managed to sleep. I hadn’t realized how tired I was,” she confessed.
“Nothing’s better than sleep to heal a lot of what’s wrong with us.”
They were another two hours landing, clearing, loading her gear and everyone’s personal baggage into vehicles, driving to hers, and then to her place. She lived half an hour out of Los Angeles. Although what she called the outskirts was the boondocks to him. Devlin chose to ride in her car, with the rest of his unit in the others, escorting her drone hardware.
“Is your lab at your home?” he asked.
She nodded, tossing him a grin. “Yes. It’s one of the reasons why I live where I do. I have space.” She glanced behind them to see the rest of the men following. “They don’t really have to come, you know.” She tilted her head at Devlin. “I feel bad about taking their leave.”
He laughed a hard bark that made her wince. “It’s better they have something to do on their days off anyway. Ryder’s coming out of a bad relationship. Corey would likely just party or get into trouble, and Easton … Well, he’s one of those guys who would much rather fill his time wisely than spend it alone.”
It took her a few minutes to digest all that. She realized they might as well come and help. She could sure use the hands. “Then thank you, all of you, for coming and helping.”
“I need your address so I can send it to Levi.”
“Levi?”
“Yes, he’s sending Harrison and Rhodes your way. Both of them are aces with computers. Harrison’s elite when it comes to software and hardware.”
She frowned. More people. She needed them, but were they all safe to let into her lab?
He shot her a glance which she caught from the corner of her eye. She took a turn off the highway, checking to be sure the guys were still behind them. Her small car versus their two vehicles—one large Jeep and a truck. She just didn’t get it. What was it about men and Jeeps?
But that was a thought for another day.
“It’s tough to trust strangers,” Devlin said, “but you have to trust someone, so it might as well be me. Levi is a good man, and he has good men. Levi’s nothing if not ambitious. Between him and Ice, they already have a corner on some of the most black-ops private-security missions going.”
“Ice,” she repeated. “That’s right. I’ve heard that name before. Isn’t she some kind of top-notch helicopter pilot or something?”
“The best.” Devlin nodded. “I’ve never had a chance to ride with her myself. Kind of wish I had. She is supposed to be something.”
“She walked away from the military too?”
“Let’s just say she stuck with Levi.”
“Ha.” And that was something Bristol understood too, even though she’d never had a relationship where she’d been willing to do the same. But if she ever did, if it was worth it, she’d walk away too. She couldn’t help herself from sneaking a glance at the man beside her. Yeah, she was a fool.
“Address?” he prompted.
She rattled it off. “They need clearance to get inside.”
“Big. I’ve got a full-size hangar and a large testing pad outside. I needed the acreage in order to test drones,” she said. “I have various places I take them out for some finite tuning, but I have enough space for the drones that I can actually run them at home.”
As they drove farther and farther away from the outskirts of the big city, into more open country, he said, “I think another friend of mine actually lives out here too.”
She glanced at him. “Sounds like you know everybody.”
“No, but Hawk and his sister own property in this area. She runs an animal rescue. When she first hooked up with Swede, another SEAL, she and her brother were living out of state. But she and Swede couldn’t stand being apart as often as they were. It was too far for him to travel back and forth, and she couldn’t leave her animals, so the siblings sold that first property and bought another down here.” He studied the neighborhood. “I’m sure it’s nearby.”
“There is a rescue not too far from my place. I can’t remember the name of it, but they handle animals of all kinds.”
He laughed. “That’s likely it. You might’ve seen Swede in Afghanistan. He was the monster-size guy.”
“I remember him,” she exclaimed. “You’re saying that’s his place?”
“I believe it’s part his. He and Mina hooked up. Both the brother and sister needed to buy the property, so I think they all own it or something like that.” He shrugged. “No idea how it works. The three of them do really well together. And, of course, Hawk is currently engaged to his sister’s best friend.”
“Oh, that’s perfect then.”
“Do you think so?” He laughed. “That was the dig that Corey made earlier about Mason.” He quickly explained a little bit about Mason’s Keepers.
She laughed. “Good for Mason. There should be a little bit more light and sunshine in this world with all this nastiness.” She flipped on the turn signal and headed right. “We’re almost there.”