by Madelon Smid
“The three of us had synergy, became more than the parts of the whole. We grew off each other’s ideas. We grew together. Jake started JDI, Inc. in his sophomore year. Sam and I worked for him, until he encouraged us to branch out on our own. My security software has made me rich, some would say filthy rich. But money is only as good as what you do with it. The one thing I’ve strived for my entire life is to take the high ground, to leave only good where I pass.”
“Like a legacy,” she concluded.
“It doesn’t have to have my name on it. No one needs to know. It’s enough for me to know my energy passing through this time period left positive energy behind. Now, if you press any closer against me, I’m going to act in a very positive way and kiss you senseless, so I suggest we move.”
Realizing she’d propped herself against him pelvis to collarbone, she pulled her hand free of his. With a jerky step back, she tightened her lips, did up her buttons, and switched her hide gun from the thigh holster to her right hand pocket. Hoping Josh hadn’t noticed the slight tremble in her fingers when she fisted them around the stock, she moved out of the door ahead of him. Right now, the armor she wore to fight off her sexual attraction to him was thinner than a thermal survival blanket. She wished she had one of the silver sheets to deflect Josh’s magnetic pull on her senses.
****
He followed her instructions and stayed just inside the door while she took in the street below. It looked dark and quiet. Leaving ahead of most of the guests meant no innocent bystanders milling about. She looked back and called him, as if he’d been held up inside, fell into step just ahead of him, her body shielding the greater part of his. He knew she didn’t like stairs. She’d explained they gave a sniper a perfect head shot. She moved down them quickly, always directly in front of him. His driver stood by the door to the limo. They’d almost reached the bottom when light flashed in a window across the street.
“Drop,” she shouted. Tackling Josh, she drove him to the ground, her body covering his. Bullets spit chunks of cement into the air around them.
She rolled them down the last steps. The limo driver gave a raw cry and fell to the pavement. The blood spilling from his throat stopped pumping as his next breath never came. His eyes widened, then went blank.
“Belly crawl to the limo.” With her hovering over him, bullets still seeking a target around him, he followed her orders, crabbing the few yards to the passenger door. She reached up and swung it open. “Go in, stay on the floor, I’m coming in over you.”
Josh hit the control for the power seat and slid it all the way back. He took a last look at his dead driver before he curled himself onto the floor. A bullet dug into the leather paneling on the door, another cracked the window.
His instinct to shield her fought with reason. If he wanted her safely free of this, only his cooperation with her expertise would make it happen. He felt Cat climbing over him, her knees and elbows digging into his side. She slid into the driver’s seat, made what he would have considered an impossible maneuver, curled over the steering wheel, and floored the gas petal.
“Stay down.” Her hand settled on the top of his head and pressed his face into the seat. The passenger door flared wide, slamming shut when she took the corner. He recalled her briefing his driver to leave the car idling every time he exited. Now he knew why.
Despite her instructions, he levered himself into the passenger seat, belted himself in, and looked behind them. “We’re being followed,” he informed her.
“I know,” she snapped. “I just don’t know by whom.” She spoke into her headphone, using terse shorthand to get an immediate response. “It’s not Gribb’s guys. They’re working their way through the crowd.”
“It could be one of the agencies trying to guard our backs or Maddox.”
“Agents would have contacted us or laid down cover fire till we got clear. If it’s Maddox, he’s not working alone. He couldn’t get from the kill site to a vehicle to follow us that fast. Whoever is driving is no amateur. Shaking him will be a challenge.” She raced through an empty intersection on a red light, hit the brakes, and flew into an alley on the left.
Josh gripped the dash to avoid slamming into it. He expected to hear the screech of metal on brick, but they emerged at the other end unscathed. Hope fluttered in a light breeze of relief, sagged when headlights brightened the inside of their SUV.
“Still on us. Find a crowd we can hide in. What’s happening in D.C. tonight?”
He tugged his smart phone out of his trouser pocket. His fingers flew across the face of it. “There’s a Renaissance fair. No too far out. Wait. The National Classic is on.”
“What?”
“College football. The game’s just ending.”
“The game then. The parking lot will be pandemonium.” She made a sharp right at the next yellow light. “Give me the exit number.”
Seven minutes later, with the car still on their tail, but not gaining enough to get a shot at them, she pulled onto a street adjacent to RFK Stadium. Cars streamed out of the parking lots heading in two directions. She infiltrated the first line with a few aggressive moves, burying them in a sea of vehicles. Within minutes, waves of traffic floated them out the other side. She stayed in the heaviest stream until they were miles from the stadium. Josh gave her another exit that would bring them close to his address.
“Whoever followed us will probably circle back for a second chance.” She negated.
“I have to go back,” he insisted, pulling out his phone. “The government contracts are safeguarded, but if they access my loft and get my computer, they’d get pieces of my new design.” He hit speed dial for RG, explained the situation in a clipped voice, and listened.
“RG’s sending in a couple of guys to take a look. He says give them a half hour, and they’ll have the building secured.” He thrust his phone in his pocket. The inside of the vehicle filled with silence. He breathed deeply, trying to deal with the adrenaline flooding his system. He felt like a ton of lead sat on his chest. He crossed his arms and stared ahead out of the windshield. His body brittle, his brain enraged, he thought he might snap. Fear oozed from every pore, burned up every synapse. The thought of her acting as his a human shield, being hurt, built his response to volcanic levels.
He snapped on the interior light, searched her for signs of blood. Glass from the blown out window sparkled along the top of her shoulder, glinted in her hair. A small stream of crimson trickled down her cheek. Her hands were abraded from hitting the sidewalk. He could find no bullet holes hemorrhaging blood. He shut off the light, crossed his arms, and resumed his battle for control.
“Are you mad because I ordered you around?” Her question carried a hint of interest, a whole lot of defiance.
“Don’t be an ass.” He didn’t trust himself to say more.
“So you’re upset because someone shot at you?”
She wouldn’t leave it alone. “Calling me upset is like saying a nuclear bomb is slightly lethal. I’m beyond furious.”
“You sound so together it’s hard to tell.” She hit back.
He stared at her so hard he wondered why he didn’t burn her with his rage. “You have no business putting yourself between me and a bullet.”
She blinked, took her gaze from the road to look at him. Her mouth formed a circle of disbelief. She clamped her lips together, looked ahead, and then said in the coldest voice he’d heard from her. “That’s the job description. What did you think would happen when you hired me for your bodyguard, when things got tough I’d go for a manicure?”
“It’s not my job description. You’re supposed to remain alert, aware when I’m immersed in work, recognize threats I mightn’t. Even I know the sound of gunshots, will move when they’re fired at me. Do you know what it does to a man to see a woman he…” He paused, floundered for words, settled for “…he thinks highly of, put herself in danger to protect him?”
“Most men who hired me would take it for granted.” A sc
raping of ice disappeared from her voice.
“Well, I’m not most men.”
“And I’m not a woman, in this instance. I’m a trained, professional—your bodyguard.” She emphasized the words with spaces. “RG would expect me to do the job.”
“Fuck RG.” A passing street light lit up her astonished expression. He’d shocked her with the profanity. He’d never sworn in front of her before.
“Consider your friend Jake, then. He just about fired me for not guarding Siree on my day off. He would certainly string me up if I let any harm come to you while I’m on duty. Consider the reaction of the State Department, the Pentagon, Homeland Security. You’re a valuable commodity.”
“And you’re not?” He couldn’t adjust to her mindset. He focused on her answer with the same intensity he’d bring to unravelling a substitution cipher.
“I’m dispensable. The security of the nation doesn’t rest on my shoulders.” She shrugged them. Glass shards tinkled onto the gear shift.
“You really believe that?” He digested her words. “If you’re supposed to keep me safe, it seems it does. You need to stay alive in order for the equation to work.” He settled deeper into the seat, the tension still zinging through him. “About that, what’s the plan now?”
“We just stay vigilant, keep you alive until the good guys catch the bad guys and remove the threat.”
She sounded so blasé he wanted to put his hands around her throat and strangle her. “You’re fired. I’ll tell RG to get a man.”
“So, thinking with your primitive brain, you lose your girlfriend and your aid for the Senate hearing tomorrow, and throw away three weeks of work developing my cover. Are we breaking up?” She mocked him with tragic eyes and a sorrowful mouth.
He combed back his hair, felt glass fragments bite into his fingers. He pulled his hands down and looked at the spots of blood. “Max is dead.” His voice shook. “He’s been driving for me for six years. He has a wife and two daughters. I can’t control the situation. I can’t stop the nightmare.”
“I’m sorry about Max. The bastard had no need to kill him.”
“More collateral damage the government factors into everything.” Bitter tones smoked his voice. He glanced at the clock in the dash. It still worked, though cracks scored the glass panel over it. “You can go back now. By the time we get there, it will be secured.”
“I know, Josh.” Her voice came out of the dark, warmer than usual, a tiny note of tenderness taking the edge off his anger. He poked a finger into the bullet hole in his door, wondering why a few gentle words from her could smother his smoldering rage.
Chapter Five
Josh’s instincts shouted he needed to secure his newest design the minute he entered the loft. The shooting had slapped him up the side of the head with just how vulnerable his programs could be if he wasn’t around to protect them. He’d seen Maddox as a madman taking a potshot and sloughed off the attempt as a onetime effort. A bullet burrowing into the doorframe inches from him resulted in a dramatic re-assessment.
If he’d been killed tonight, or prevented from getting back to his equipment, Maddox could have seized his hardware and hacked into his new design. Eventually, he would have wormed his way through Josh’s spyware and into the government systems. The nation’s secrets could be discovered and put up for sale.
This meant building a self-destruct code into every government system, not just safeguarding his own, something he’d always hoped to avoid. But destroying his programs was the only way to keep them out of the wrong hands if someone found his zero day. No matter how good the design, there was always a flaw or weakness in the codes a brilliant hacker could exploit. If that happened, Josh would have zero days to outwit the person. A built-in destruct code would crash the system and safeguard the secrets, but it posed its own dangers. If triggered, the agencies he protected would be left blind and deaf. He had to accelerate the development of his artificial intelligence prototype—Adapt to Protect or ATP-1 to warp speed.
For the most part, it too had been left vulnerable. He’d been careless, focusing on the prototype without formulating additional spoof-proof ways of protecting the platforms he built. He had to think beyond what the best hackers could do, past the complex security codes imbedded in the millions of ones and zeroes of his programs.
But the practicalities of life came first. They’d shed a trail of glass splinters from the limo to the loft. Removing shards from their hair, cleaning and dressing Cat’s hands took priority. One piece of him held back. Facing the damage inflicted while she protected him started the burn of anger again. She didn’t need his anger. Another side of him just wanted to grasp her and make love until they’d proven they were alive.
Locked in ambivalence, he attacked cleaning them up like a computer problem, focusing on the end result with total objectivity. He sat her on a stool at the kitchen island, lay down a big bath towel. “Bend forward,” he commanded.
She complied without comment, leaving him questioning his easy victory. She might be formulating a letter of resignation. He couldn’t fault her thinking. Body guarding him had already endangered her twice. A picture of Max lying in his own blood crowded his mind.
Aborting at this point wasn’t feasible. Like she said, they’d invested a lot of time in setting the stage for his assassin, no use in wasting it. His decision had nothing to do with the deeper need to have her near, feeling in some way he could keep her safe. It made no sense. Always the realist, he streamed his irrational behavior through his mind, blaming the adrenaline overflow for his confusion.
She stifled a soft sound and he refocused. The comb, caught in a knotted strand, pulled her scalp painfully. “Sorry,” he grunted. “Just about done.” He exchanged his instrument of torture for a boar bristle brush and went over each strand, until not a glitter remained.
He walked to the other side of the island. “You can sit up now, turn your stool around, and lean back.”
Again, she complied without question.
He remembered how gorgeous she’d looked tonight, making the rounds of the room with him. Lit up like a Mardi Gras parade by her white smile and sparkling eyes, she’d added a little weight to the Creole accent. She’d charmed twice the money High Ground generally received from the men in the room.
Each time he stroked the brush through her hair, long strands twined like tendrils of a tender plant around his fingers. He slowed his brushing, went from sensible to sensual in three beats of his heart. Now he wanted to linger and enjoy. Her eyelashes lay like luxurious fronds on her cheeks. Her soft lips parted on erratic exhalations. He heard a faint moan. He reached over her to run the brush from the hair at her temple down the gold-shot lengths to where it ended just above the towel. The odd piece of glass, discovered and loosened had long since fallen. He brushed for the sheer bliss of seeing her relax. He felt the punch of knowing he could do that for her. She lifted her hand to her neck, tightened it, and rotated her head. “Almost finished?”
He loosened the last strands from his hands, stepped back. “All done.”
“Your turn now.” She slid from the stool and indicated he should take her place.
“Not till I look at your hands.”
She muffled a sound between a grunt and a murmur as she bent to pick up the brush. “No. I want to shower first, there’s no sense in dressing them and then getting them wet again.”
He took the brush from her hands. “Then go shower and come back here. I can get the glass out of my own hair.” He bent his head over the towel and wielded the brush with much more vigor than he’d used on her.
****
Cat closed the door to her bedroom and moved toward the bath. She stumbled, clutching her side. Sitting while Josh brushed glass from her hair had tested her. With adrenaline fast draining from her body, the searing pain across her abdomen became more intense. The warm trickle running from her waist down her hip and thigh meant she’d been hit.
Josh’s tender administration, hi
s hands running through her hair, the slow steady arc of the brush, the heat of his breath striking her forehead had dulled the pain. With her head tilted back and her eyes closed, she’d lost herself in a fantasy of him, until the increase in blood flow forced her to move. She pressed her hand over her wound and bent her body, hiding her injury from him. After his explosive reaction to the glass and a few nicks on her face, she refused to inform him she’d been shot, as well. She dropped her coat to the floor. Thankfully, her dress absorbed most of the blood, leaving the cream coat covered only in streaks of dirt and gunpowder residue. Stepping out of the bloody dress, she faced the mirror in her bathroom, assessing the damage. A deep breath of relief pushed out between her clenched teeth. A flesh wound. The bullet had ripped across the tender skin at her waist, tracking across the top of her belly, then passed through the front of her dress. She stepped into the shower, shampooed her hair, and soaped her body with haste. A watery line of blood continued to ooze from the long furrow. She eased into a long robe and confined her dripping hair in a towel. Her field kit was stashed in a drawer below the sink. She cleaned and sterilized the long burn, stroked on antibiotic cream. Her teeth snapped together as she inserted a syringe in her hip just below the shot and jabbed the plunger home. Additional antibiotics would ensure she stayed on duty.
The attack on Josh had upped the danger level of the mission. She needed her faculties at one hundred percent. In minutes, she moved back into the main room. She placed her field kit on the kitchen bar and held her hands out to Josh palms up. She hoped caring for her injuries would soften the blow to his masculinity.
With narrowed eyes, he scrutinized her. Gray irises flashed silver, then softened to the gray of a Scotch mist. He pulled out her tweezers and an LED light and went over every inch of her hands, before applying the antibiotic cream. He worked with a delicate touch, yet finished the job quickly.
When he lifted the gauze, Cat pulled her hands away. “I can’t have my movement restricted.” She eased evidence gloves out of her pocket and fitted them over her hands. “I have to check in with the men stationed outside. I expect RG will arrive shortly. I’ll get dressed and prepare my report.” She gave Josh a quick once over, then with a slight shake of her head got back to the job.