by S. M. Butler
It was really too bad she couldn’t keep him. He was by far the best twenty-first birthday present a girl could have. But he didn’t live here, and she didn’t need the complication of a relationship in her life right now. Not with how things were at home with her family. She needed to figure that part of her life out before bringing a man into it.
Blowing out a quiet breath as she regained her own courage, she set the note on the pillow. She resisted the urge to lean a little further over to lay her lips against his again, afraid that it might wake him. Then she left the bedroom, quietly shutting the door behind her. Once she managed that, she got her shoes, grabbed her purse from the coat rack, and slipped out of the hotel room.
Thankfully, there was no one on the floor as she made her way to the elevator. And once she made it inside the thing, she leaned back against the wall and put her hands on her face like she could turn herself invisible with that simple gesture.
Her heart weighed like a hundred pounds as the elevator took off, descending down toward the lobby. Why was it so hard to leave? Why did she want nothing more than to curl back up with Jordan in that big bed?
She sighed as the elevator opened out onto the lobby. First, she had to call a car. Then she had to get out of this hotel and get home. Thankfully, they’d never exchanged actual full names or phone numbers. This was a one-nighter that would stay a one-nighter.
Clean break.
8
Daylight streamed in through the blinds and suddenly, Jordan regretted asking for the east-facing room. He groaned and felt for warmth, but there was none to be found. His eyes shot open. He was alone. Penny was gone.
The strange thing was that he hadn’t woken up when she’d left either. What the hell happened to him last night? Well, he remembered the actual events, but he’d never been able to sleep in a room with another person, let alone the same bed. Yet, somehow, he’d passed out holding his little mouse and woken up without her. He usually prided himself on never letting anyone get the drop on him. Old habits never died completely. But he hadn’t even heard her moving around or leaving.
His hand hit something on the pillow. He frowned. A piece of paper was folded neatly and placed right where he could see it. She’d left him a note? He jacked up to a sitting position, snatching the note off the pillow. He blinked away the half-focused sleep in his eyes and tried to focus on the words on the page.
Sorry I had to leave. Work comes early. Thanks for a great time. I had fun.
~Penny
He stared at the note for a minute, his mind blank as the words registered in his head.
She had fun.
Anger surged inside him, but it tempered as he realized he’d probably written this exact note to a dozen women in his past life. This was karma, no doubt. He crumbled the note in his hand, but then he regretted that and smoothed it back out against his thigh.
He couldn’t be mad at her. How many times had he done the same thing to a woman? How many times had he stolen their entire lives while they slept in the bed, only to leave a note like that? No. He couldn’t be mad that she played him as neatly as he’d played a dozen other women.
He left the note on the bed as he got dressed, trying not to think about how hard she’d made him, how tight she was as she’d ridden his cock, or how dirty that pretty mouth of hers really was. But he was back, sitting on the bed again as he reread that note.
I had fun.
Fun.
The delicious melody of her voice echoed in his head. He growled and tried to push away the picture of her, arched and naked, as he had slid into her body over and over. But it was stuck on an autorepeat, playing every time when he blinked. He pushed to his feet and shoved the note into his pocket as he stalked into the living room.
He grabbed his jacket from where he’d left it the night before. The reader was still tucked in the pocket where he’d left it. He sighed as he took one more glance around, remembering the feel of her warmth, the feel of her softness pressed against him, the way she cried out when she came, the words bursting out of her mouth begging for him to fuck her harder.
He’d never felt anything like her before. Never met a woman like her. She wasn’t anything like he’d expected. Seducing her wasn’t what happened, even though that had been the plan… she’d seduced him. Now he was standing in the middle of his hotel room, completely obsessing over why she left like she did and how he was going to see her again.
Except that he couldn’t. She was the mark. He’d accomplished the mission. Now he had to go, report back to Muldoon’s sister that he did it, and move on. His heart squeezed tightly with guilt. He might have just ruined her life to accomplish his mission.
He let himself think of her once more, the way her body had accepted his, the way she’d made those beautiful little moans of pleasure, and the way her body seized when she came. Then he kicked the thoughts out of his head and stepped out of the hotel room, letting the door hit his back as it closed.
Clean break.
As Jordan’s ride landed on the rooftop of a high-rise, he glanced out at the rooftop. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but there was no one there to greet him. But why would there be? He’d gotten a text with the floor and the room number and there had been no other communication.
The Ghost flying the helicopter said nothing as Jordan got out of the thing. None of the Ghosts ever spoke. He wasn’t sure what Nathan did to them to make them silent, but they didn’t laugh, they didn’t speak, and most of the time, they didn’t even look at him. If it was anything like what he’d gone through to become a Reaper, maybe the trauma of the experience silenced them. God knew that process was not a fucking vacation. Being burned alive would be more fun.
The helicopter rose up as Jordan got clear, climbing high into the air and eventually disappearing into the sky. Ten floors later, he stepped out onto the floor he’d been told to go and found the room with the right number.
As he opened the door, he stopped cold, fury rising hot like boiled water within him, and very nearly walked right the fuck back out. The room was a near duplicate of the lair’s briefing room in Jubilee and, in one of the chairs around the U-shaped table, sat Scott Muldoon.
He clenched his fists tightly, thinking of Bea’s injuries from the Lewis case. She’d been ambushed and captured because Scott had betrayed them. Though he’d known Scott was back into the fold of the Company… goddamn, it was hard to look right at the man he’d thought once as a friend, a colleague, and remember what he’d done.
“Fuck. What are you doing here?” Scott growled, crossing his arms.
The man had changed over the last… what was it now, a year since that night? He looked so much older, thinner, exhausted. His brown hair brushed against his jawline now, instead of the short crop he’d had before. He’d lost the glasses, though really, they were redundant after the Reaper matrix did its thing over the body. His hazel eyes were sunken deeper into the sockets, almost haunted.
“That lovely sister of yours didn’t tell you either?” Jordan smirked as he dropped into the nearest chair., though anger seethed beneath the surface. Maybe he could enjoy this a little bit, to make up for being blindsided. He leaned back and flopped his feet on the table, his black boots plunking against the wood. “Apparently, we’re working together.”
“God damn it,” Scott muttered.
“So, how ya been, Scott? Fucked any more friends over lately?”
“Oh, fuck off. Still wearing those ridiculous shirts, I see,” he shot back, slouching more in his chair, like a sullen child. “I’ma kill her for this.”
“Doubtful,” came the cool reply from the door. Bridget Muldoon’s heels clicked across the floor with a tablet pressed against her chest. “You’re nothing but a big teddy bear, Scott.”
Teddy bear? Scott Muldoon, the former computer genius for the Reapers, that conspired with Daniel Lewis to kill his entire team, was a teddy bear? He glanced from one sibling to the other, noting the similarities in facial shape
, the cheekbones, the eyes, though that was probably more about the color than anything else. Scott’s were far more experienced… haunted.
Scott shot her a glare that she apparently ignored as she accessed her tablet. The screens lit up around them, filling with images. For a moment, Jordan’s chest ached as he saw a passing photo of Penny, the pain lingering even as the photo vanished.
“Here’s the deal. Reilly has a vault in the back of his gallery. It’s only got three keys. Reilly is one. Lawson has the one. Inside, there’s a second vault. There’s something in that vault I need, and it will take both of you to retrieve it.”
Jordan crossed his arms over his chest, trying to ignore how similar the position was to the man across the room from him. He wanted to reach across the table and strangle Muldoon. Inside, he cursed that stupid contract he’d signed, the one stating that he’d follow Nathan’s orders. Because Nathan’s orders now included Bridget Muldoon’s and he was pretty sure she’d be upset if he accidentally choked out her brother.
“What’re we stealing?” he asked instead.
Scott continued to sulk on his corner of the room. Jordan frowned. Scott had always been the talkative guy in the group. On missions, he used to talk everyone’s ear off to the point where Jack had offered to cut his tongue out a few times. Now, he wasn’t at all that happy-go-lucky guy he used to be. Not that Jordan cared that he wasn’t. Jordan imagined that getting on Nathan’s bad side wasn’t the best idea Scott ever had.
“A computer,” she replied. “Well, the data from the computer. It’s kept in the second inner vault.”
Ah, including Scott made more sense now.
“What’s so special about it?” Scott asked.
“We think that inner vault room houses his personal network and we might find detailed manifests of the containers you tracked for me. Like what is really in them and if we can use it to bring him down.”
“How do you know about it?” Jordan asked. “I would think something that important, he would keep it under wraps.”
“I found it,” Scott replied quietly. When Jordan glanced at his former friend, Scott swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough. “When I pulled the data for the container manifests. I traced the orders back to that gallery.”
“So, the key card I copied accesses the vault?” Jordan phrased it as a question, but he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” Bridget said. “Reilly is very careful. It took us weeks to trace anything back to that gallery, and we know what we need is in that vault.”
Jordan frowned. There was something in Bridget’s expression, a hardening of her soft features, a determination. What was her angle in this? This determination had its origin in something else, but he wasn’t sure what. Reilly was part of the group that hired an assassin to kill Axel Martinez, like Daniel Lewis was before he was killed. The group that had manipulated and turned Scott Muldoon into a traitor.
Was that why she was doing this? To avenge her brother’s bad choices?
“Penelope Lawson is one of two people other than Reilly that accesses the back vault, because she runs the gallery when he’s not there.”
Jordan snapped out of his thoughts when he heard the name of his little mouse. He winced internally. Not his. Not now, not ever. “That’s why you needed her card, specifically.”
“Yes,” she replied. “The other belongs to his head of security, Sam Alcott.”
Jordan slapped a lid on his emotions, even before he registered what they were. He shot an angry glance at her brother. “So, we have the card. Why do I need him?”
Scott stiffened but said nothing.
Jordan added, “I’ve broken into dozens of super secure vaults on my own.”
Scott’s expression broke into smugness. “The security system for the inner vault is a Titanium 3000.”
Jordan let out a low whistle. Titanium 3000 systems were rare, because they cost more than most mansions to install, and they were nearly invincible. “That’s a pretty sturdy system. Never done it personally, but there’s always a first time.” The words were far more confident than he really felt.
“Most of the security system is computer-based. Cutting the power will only activate the redundancy systems. Any wrong move and the system will retaliate with force.” Scott stared at him pointedly. “Your flashy acrobatics won’t work unless the systems are powered down.”
Flashy acrobatics? Jordan rolled his eyes. “Hence the key card to get through the security. But… why would I need you if I have the access card?”
“The key card only accesses the outer vault,” Bridget said before her brother popped off another round of idiocy. Sitting here not with his fingers squeezing his throat was an exercise in such restraint that Jordan thought his head might explode from the sheer strength it took to sit still. “Lawson doesn’t have access to the interior room. There are another six security measures to get through at that point, including biometrics, heat sensors, and some other things we’re not completely sure of at this point. Sierra is still working on getting the system’s specs for us.”
To employ that kind of system… Jordan fought the breath that caught in his chest. Reilly was hiding something huge… and poor Penny… she had no idea who her boss was, and he’d put her right in the middle. He willed his heart to stop racing. He blew out a breath, reminded himself that he was doing his job and that was all he could do. But nothing stopped the rush of guilt that plagued him, knowing that he’d subjected Penny to potential backlash if Reilly managed to trace her involvement to Jordan.
“So why didn’t I steal Reilly’s key card?”
“Because it’s his eye and his thumb,” Bridget replied. “Biometrics. We can’t duplicate it, so we need to disconnect the lock, which creates a whole host of new problems. Lawson’s card gets us close, so we just need to close the rest of the ground.”
“What about Alcott’s keycard?”
“He always has it on him and knocking him out would raise too many questions to Reilly,” Bridget said with a swift shake of her head. “Listen, we’ve gone through all the alternatives. As much as I hate to involve folks that probably don’t have any idea about this war being waged right in front of them, we have to take the advantages where and when we can get them.”
Stomp on the innocents to win the battles. That was what she was saying and damn, it was such a Nathan thing to say that Jordan’s stomach turned. Hell, though… his hands weren’t clean in this at all. He had no right to judge anyone else’s.
“These are the preliminary technical specs we have on the Titanium 3000 system,” Scott said as he reached over to tap a few buttons on the console near him. The screens changed to show rows and rows of light blue lines on a dark navy background. Jordan couldn’t have said what they meant and wasn’t that telling of why Bridget wanted Scott on this?
As if she knew what he was thinking, Bridget pinned him with a hard stare. “Tell me, Agent Levi, how many degrees in biomechanical engineering do you have? Computer science? Electrical engineering?”
He pressed his lips tightly together and said nothing. The Titanium 3000 was the newest security system out there right now. So new that Sierra was still working on finding the complete manual for it. The most expensive system out there. He could crack just about anything, but that system was complex. He’d need someone like Scott. He just didn’t want it to be Scott. It didn’t look like Scott wanted it to be him either, if the stiffness in his posture and the sullen expression were anything to go by.
Jordan shifted his gaze back to Bridget. “So, we get into the vault, then what?”
“The computer is protected from remote duplication, so you’ll need to get access to the outer vault, let Scott in so he can crack the security measures on the inner vault without tripping alarms. He will bypass the security measures on the network and dupe the hard drive from the system we need.”
“You’re going to take the computer apart and put it back together again?” he translated.
“Yeah, I couldn’t do that,” he replied. “At least not without ending up with extra screws.”
Neither laughed at his joke. People needed a better sense of humor these days.
His thoughts strayed to Penny, who had laughed at every joke he’d cracked during their night together. Right up until she snuck out and left him with a damn note on the pillow. He really had to get his head back into this game. What was done was done. He couldn’t take back what he regretted in his life. Or he would have erased half his damn life.
He sat up stiffly and pushed thoughts of her out of his head. “Sierra has the key card information. When I get back to Jubilee, I’ll just need to make the duplicate and we should be good to go there.” His chest tightened at the thought of what he’d done to get that key card. This whole thing would blow up in Penny’s delicious face, and it would be entirely his fault… Yet, there wasn’t one thing he could do about it now.
“You’ll do it here to save time. We have the same equipment as your little chop shop,” Bridget replied. Her smile was tight as she added, “After all, we supplied the originals.” We. Her. Nathan. The Company. Which was the “we” she meant there?
His lab at the lair was top notch. He had made countless fake IDs and passports there for the team. Good ones, that passed even the tightest inspections. He frowned as a look passed between Scott and Bridget. Sibling familiarity or something more? A secret shared.
“What’s the rush?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on Scott, even though he was asking Bridget. Scott met his stare back, without blinking. Another new change. He’d always been able to outstare Scott in the past.
“That’s not your concern,” came her reply.
Her phone rang and she made a face he hadn’t expected to see. Was that dread? Annoyance? No, it was something else entirely. Anger. Hurt. Whoever was on the other side of that line, she didn’t want to talk to. She silenced the phone and shoved it back in her jacket pocket. “I assume you two can work the details out on your own? Preferably without killing each other?”