Defenseless (Somerton Security #1)

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Defenseless (Somerton Security #1) Page 13

by Elizabeth Dyer


  “Pretty much.” What else could she say? At best he wouldn’t understand her reasons for staying, but at worst he’d think them a liability. And maybe they were. Georgia wasn’t sure, but she’d made a decision she couldn’t take back. It was done, regardless of what Ethan thought.

  “Right. And I suppose your feelings for Parker had nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh yes, one night of hot sex and I’m making tactical decisions with my vagina.” It was so, so much worse than that. “What really bugs you, Ethan? That I stayed? Or that I surprised you?”

  “I gave you the choice, didn’t I?”

  “Why? If you were so damn certain I’d leave, why give me the choice at all?”

  Stony silence met her question, as if Ethan hadn’t thought about the implications of his own actions or questions.

  “Your assignment, your call.”

  Georgia rolled her eyes. How many times had she heard that in the office? How many times had Ethan used it as a way of giving his operatives more autonomy, more input on cases? It was a thin excuse, and he knew it.

  “I think I’m entitled to a few reservations. I assigned you to Parker twenty-four hours ago. Hardly enough time to get close.”

  “Oh, so sorry. I must have heard you wrong when you told me to form an attachment.”

  “You know damn well I didn’t mean like that,” he said on a harsh whisper.

  “Guess you should have been more specific,” Georgia replied, bringing the cup of coffee to her mouth to stem the tide of everything she wanted to say. She sighed. Technically, Ethan wasn’t out of line. He may have been clumsy in his approach, but he wasn’t wrong. Georgia knew damn well there were rules against sleeping with clients. “Look, we had a rough day. By the time we got to the motel, all the residual fear, tension, and adrenaline had to go somewhere. It didn’t mean anything.” The words carried the metallic tang of a lie—or a truth she just didn’t want to believe.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Ethan sighed, then glanced toward the bathroom. Turning back to her, he said, “The situation you faced yesterday was extreme, and you’re hardly the first pair to succumb to the moment. But Parker’s different. Sensitive. What was a convenient release for you may well have been more to him.”

  “And you’re concerned that my staying is going to encourage his attachment,” Georgia said, neatly ignoring the fact that Ethan was treading dangerously close to calling her a slut. He got a pass, but only because he thought he was protecting Parker.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a sanctimonious bastard, you know that?” She’d let Ethan question her morals but not Parker’s intelligence.

  “I’m just worried about him, Georgia. Parker’s not like us.”

  What? Not jaded? Not used to being hurt? She’d noticed, thanks. And look where it had gotten her.

  “You don’t know him half so well as you think you do, Ethan. No,” she said when he opened his mouth to argue. “The truth is, the only person too close to this situation is you.” Georgia reined in her temper, struggling to stem the tide of choice observations she desperately wanted to make. There just wasn’t time. Parker had emerged from the bathroom and was headed toward them. “Parker is capable of a hell of a lot more than you think he is. He saved my life yesterday. Most would have hesitated, would have frozen. He didn’t.”

  She spared Parker a smile as he approached, hoping he wouldn’t read the tension snapping like static between Ethan and her. “He did what had to be done and held it together long enough for us to get somewhere safe. You coddle him, and worse, you undermine his faith in himself.” She shifted her focus back to Ethan, pinning him with a hard look. “Before you spend any significant time worrying I might hurt Parker’s feelings, you ought to take a moment to consider the damage you’ve done to his confidence. Parker trusts you, Ethan. So much so that when you act like he isn’t capable of defending himself, he actually believes it.” Georgia pushed past Ethan before he could say anything and went straight to Parker. “What, did you get distracted by all the chrome handles? Fascinated watching the water swirl down the bowl?”

  “Nah. I have this weird ritual where I actually wash my hands. They were out of paper towels, though. See?” he said, sliding a palm against the back of her neck.

  She elbowed him in the ribs, suppressing the shudder the cool of his hand against the warmth of her neck elicited. “You are disgusting.”

  “What? It’s just water.” He shrugged, a more relaxed grin creeping across his face, as if he’d just been waiting for equilibrium to be restored, for them to move forward as though Georgia had never thought of leaving. And that was fine—a good working relationship, a casual trust, those could be assets. But nothing too personal, she reminded herself as she, Parker, and Ethan slid into the exiting crowd, following the ramp down and toward one of the open gates.

  “How’d you get here, Ethan?” Georgia asked as they reached an intersection. “We came in on the train . . .” God, she didn’t want to make the trek back to the station. If anything, it had gotten colder and grayer since they’d arrived. She hated being frozen to the point of numbness. Dreaded the tingling burn of returning sensation to her extremities. But she’d much rather endure the experience from the warmth of a car.

  “I’ve got a clean car in lot D; we’ll head that way. Change vehicles when we get to town and go from there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Parker said, taking a right and heading toward the parking lots beginning to clog with exiting vehicles.

  Ethan saw his approach a fraction of a second before Georgia did. Intercepted the gun the guy pulled out of an oversize Redskins coat. The gunman was a little shorter, but with the twenty or thirty pounds of muscle he had on Ethan, the struggle over the gun erupted into a brawl in seconds.

  “Ethan!” Parker yelled.

  “Get Parker and go!” Ethan grunted, still struggling with the gunman. Around them, people were backing up, starting to yell and point.

  “Gun!” someone screamed.

  “That guy’s armed!”

  Georgia grabbed Parker by the sleeve, tried to haul him toward a break in the crowd.

  “No!” He pulled away, heading back toward Ethan, who finally got in a clean hit, disarming the gunman and laying him out on the sidewalk with a vicious blow to the head.

  “We need to go,” Ethan said, tucking the gun into his jacket and grabbing Parker by the elbow. “Now.”

  “Hey man, nice job!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Did someone call the police?”

  Morbid curiosity had the crowd surging around them, pushing in until Georgia couldn’t take a step without brushing against a stranger’s shoulder.

  “Stay with me.” She tucked in tight next to Parker, grabbing a fistful of his back pocket. The last thing they needed was to get separated.

  Ethan stepped in front of them, using the breadth of his shoulders to push his way through the crowd, and picked up his pace toward the parking lot.

  A muzzle flashed, the muted but distinctive sound of a suppressor filling the air. Three shots caught Ethan in the torso, picked him up off his feet, and threw him a few steps back into Parker and Georgia. Ethan hesitated a second, then through what Georgia could only assume was a potent mix of training and sheer stubborn determination, flung his failing body at the attacker.

  “No!” Parker screamed.

  Barely keeping her feet, Georgia linked her arm through Parker’s elbow and swung him around, dragging him into the terrified and panicked crowd. In seconds it swallowed them, concealing them from the shooter . . . and he from them.

  They were blind.

  Sirens wailed in the background, and the crackle of radios came to life as the crowd surged and fled, chaos raining down upon the stadium.

  “Georgia, stop!” Parker shouted. “We can’t leave him!” He tried to pull away from her, but the force of the panicking crowd, thousands strong, kept him moving forward. As the throng of innocent
civilians shielded their escape, herding them away from danger and a gravely injured Ethan, Georgia allowed grim gratitude to slide through her. Without the cover of a panicked mob, they’d have been shot in the back by now. Without the stampede of terrified people, she probably wouldn’t have the strength to muscle Parker away from Ethan.

  Ethan. She pushed away the thought. Nothing she could do for him now but hope and pray he’d survive long enough for authorities to arrive, for someone to help him.

  Georgia’s priority had to be Parker.

  She shoved him forward, daring a glance behind her. Pandemonium. Chaos. People running and screaming and crying. But no shooter, at least not as far as she could see.

  “Georgia, stop!”

  “No.” The crowd was beginning to thin as people veered off in different directions, toward different parking lots and exit points. Too soon they’d be exposed. The people in front of them parted, a couple of taxis idling at the curb. She yanked open the door and muscled Parker into one.

  “Morgan Boulevard station,” Georgia demanded, wedging in next to Parker. The driver, as if immune to the chaos around them, just nodded and pointed his car into the crowds, honking and cursing at people to get out of his way.

  “We can’t just leave him,” Parker said, though the fight had gone out of him, reality descending like lead in the back of the cab. “We can’t just leave him,” he repeated.

  “We can’t help him, Parker. We have to hope . . .” The word turned to ash in her mouth, choking her with the futility of such a thing. “He needs medical care, far more than we could give him,” she whispered, mindful of the driver who was still laying on his horn and honking like a native New Yorker.

  “They shot him. They shot Ethan.”

  “I know.”

  Parker clenched his eyes shut, breathing deep, his breath fogging the window. When he opened his eyes again, he looked at her, calm and resigned. He brought his hand up to her cheek, brushing gently against her skin. His fingers barely trembled when he pulled them away, wiping the blood against his jeans. “What do we do now?”

  “Nothing’s changed,” she said, forcing herself to believe it, even though she knew everything had. “We go. We figure out what’s on that drive. We stop whoever’s doing this.”

  And they’d have to do it, she realized, without any of Ethan’s knowledge, resources, or connections.

  They were on their own.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Parker and Georgia rode the Metro back into DC, silence yawning between them from the moment they grabbed two empty seats near a central door. Somehow, the loud chatter of the crowded train—word of the shooting was spreading quickly, even to those who hadn’t been present when it happened—made the thin and brittle stretch of quiet between Georgia and him all the more pronounced. Parker wrestled with the urge to ask what they were doing, where they were going. She’d said in the cab that nothing had changed, that their goal was still the same. He didn’t think she believed that any more than he did, but every time he glanced at her, ready to demand a plan, a path forward, he saw the face of a woman wrestling with those very questions.

  For the first time, it occurred to Parker that perhaps Georgia felt Ethan’s absence every bit as strongly as he did—maybe even more. As she sat there, twirling the bezel on the watch, she had to know that now everything was up to her. She had to decide where to go and what to do—choices Parker was certain Ethan had already made, possibilities he’d meticulously planned for, now rested squarely on Georgia’s shoulders. And while Parker understood his program, knew in a very technical sense how to live off grid, he had no idea how to actually put that knowledge into practice.

  So he kept his mouth shut. The least he could do was give her a bit of time to acclimate.

  It was hardly a fair trade. A few minutes of silence in exchange for the rest of her life. Tension buzzed at the base of his skull like angry wasps, the beginnings of anxiety threading through him. Ethan. Georgia. Not to mention his own life. All hanging by the thinnest of threads—and all because Parker insisted on proving time and time again he was too smart for his own good.

  How many people had already died needlessly because of his program? How many more would share in that outcome?

  Even if they came out of this, even if he and Georgia managed to not only figure out who wanted him dead and why, but also prove it, nothing would be the same. Ethan was either dead or dying, and all because of his technology.

  A technology he no longer had faith in. A program he was no longer sure should even exist.

  In a matter of hours, everything Parker had believed about himself, about the world and his contribution to it, had been destroyed.

  He pushed away the thoughts before they consumed him.

  There were at least a few things he could do in the meantime. Pulling his phone from his pocket, Parker launched his web browser and searched for headlines surrounding the shooting at FedExField, desperate for any mention of Ethan, terrified he’d find only a vague reference to a single fatality. Five minutes of scrolling and scanning yielded little. Reports were still evolving, details thin and contradictory. One outlet mentioned a man taken to the hospital with “severe injuries” while another mentioned a “mass shooting.” The only thing clear was that no one really knew what had happened or why. At least not yet.

  Did the rest of the team know? They’d left hours before the end of the game, going their separate ways per Ethan’s instructions. Shit. They may not even realize an attack had occurred, let alone that Ethan had been shot.

  Closing the web browser, Parker opened his test version of Jungle Gem, the familiar opening tones soothing his nerves. Thumbing over to the messaging board, he began typing out the details of what had happened.

  “What are you doing?” Georgia asked.

  “Updating the rest of the team.” Though “update” might be overstating things. Even though he’d been there, standing behind Ethan as the shots had caught him in the chest, Parker knew little more than anyone else. He closed his eyes, desperate to recall details. Had Ethan taken all three dead center? Had any hit his shoulder? Grazed his arm? With startling clarity, Parker realized he knew basically nothing. Couldn’t recall anything beyond the simplest sensory details. The roar of the crowd. The smell of the powder. Ethan’s surprised grunt. Remembered terror flooded him, catching his breath at the bottom of his lungs and pulling it to his stomach until breathing became a struggle. Random details, lots of information. But nothing useful. Nothing relevant. The story of his life.

  “No,” Georgia whispered, pulling his phone away from him. “It’s too dangerous to make contact right now.”

  “What? Why?”

  Georgia leaned toward him, her voice a harsh whisper. “Think about it, Parker. Three people among tens of thousands. That was a coordinated hit. How did the shooters find us? Know which gate to be at? How did they even know we were at the stadium to begin with?”

  “What are you suggesting?” A stupid question, of course. He knew damn well what she was suggesting, what she was worried about. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe it.

  “Look, I get it. This is your team; you know these guys. Trust them. But that’s the problem. You’re too close to this.” She sat back against her seat, letting her head fall against the Plexiglas window.

  “No. No way.” He knew those men down to their most basic, ingrained traits. Lethal? Yes. No question. But traitors? To their country or to those they called brothers? Not a chance. “You don’t know them, Georgia. But I do, and I trust them. They need to know what happened. If Ethan made it to the hospital . . .” He couldn’t bear to contemplate the alternative. He just couldn’t. “Ethan’s at risk. Someone needs to be there to protect him while he’s down.”

  Georgia studied him for a long moment, reluctance pulling her brows together. “Send it to the wrong man and we’re more than risking Ethan’s life.”

  “I trust these people. Worked with them, lived with them day in and da
y out for years. They wouldn’t do this.”

  “But someone did,” Georgia snapped. “Someone you know. Someone you work with. That’s the reality, Parker. Someone close to you wants you dead. How can you be so certain it’s not one of them? Especially given the nature of the ambush—no one should have been able to find us there.”

  Parker shook his head. There had to be another explanation.

  “It’s my program,” he said. “It must have profiled Ethan, churned out the most likely scenarios. Once it established FedExField as a possibility, the rest would be easy.”

  Georgia stopped turning the bezel on her watch, focusing entirely on him. “Explain.”

  “The basics are pretty straightforward. The program is designed to look for patterns, look for connections.”

  “Like an analyst,” Georgia said as the train rocked around a curved track of rail.

  “Exactly. Except the program doesn’t have human limitations. It doesn’t sleep; it doesn’t eat. There’s no human error. If there’s a connection to be made, no matter how thin, the program will tag it, then add it to a dedicated database tasked solely with the operation at hand.”

  “Our elimination.”

  “Yeah.” Parker nodded.

  “So basically, there’s a supercomputer spending every second of the day trying to predict our next move, trying to kill us.”

  Never, in all the hours Parker had spent developing this technology, had he thought it would be used against him. Used to hunt down and kill his friends. His family. Because that’s what this team was. And now it was on him to put a stop to it.

  “The program doesn’t actually sit on a supercomputer, thank God. All we need is my program running a trillion FLOPS a second.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind, not important.” Parker waved her off. She didn’t need the technicalities, he reminded himself. Just the cold, hard truth. “But basically, yes. The program is trying to predict the most expedient way to kill us.” Expedient but not subtle. Parameters could have been geared toward discretion and efficiency, but a hit at a crowded stadium hardly qualified as restrained. Which meant whoever wanted him dead wanted him buried yesterday and was willing to take enormous risks to achieve it. Voicing his thoughts, Parker said, “Ballsy, coming after us at a crowded game.”

 

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