Rules In Deceit

Movement registered in her peripheral vision at the automatic gate. A firefighter. He’d presumably been assigned to check the rest of the building for signs of structural damage and flames. Dressed in full protective equipment, including face shield, he stopped just outside the gate and tried to pull it up manually. Wouldn’t work. That gate didn’t open for anybody unless they worked in the building. He’d have to get the fire code from her boss, Sullivan Bishop. Stiffness drained from the muscles around her spine a split second before the gate lifted on its own. “Everything okay down here?”

Braxton turned, maneuvering the gun behind his back. Out of sight.

“We’re fine. How’d you get in? That gate is supposed to be sealed.” Warning bells rang loud in her head. That wasn’t right. Nobody could access that gate—not even emergency personnel—without a Blackhawk Security operative key card or individualized code. She dropped her voice as the firefighter advanced. Too fast. Alone. “Braxton…”

The firefighter lifted a handgun and took aim. At her.

A strong hand pushed her to the ground as a bullet ripped past her ear. The garage turned on its axis. Braxton took position in front of her as he returned fire. Pain shot up through her knees, loose asphalt ripping holes in her leggings, but Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. Digging in her jacket pocket, she wrapped her hand around the keys to her company SUV near the shooter and hit the panic button.

Headlights flashed; the alarm blared. It’d only distract the shooter for a few seconds, but that was all she needed. The gunfire died. She shoved to her feet and sprinted for Elliot Dunham’s SUV. Blackhawk Security’s private investigator usually left his keys in the front seat, and she silently prayed he hadn’t changed up his routine. “Come on!”

Footsteps echoed close behind her as bullets two and three barely missed their mark. Chunks of cement nicked at her exposed skin, and she raised her arms to protect her face. Wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against a bullet, but instinct and adrenaline drove her now. She rounded the tail end of Elliot’s SUV and wrenched the door open. No keys. She dived inside, ripping the visor down. The keys dropped into her lap.

Braxton took cover behind the hood, squeezing off another shot. Then a third.

“Get in!” Elizabeth pulled the driver’s side door closed and started the engine. Shoving the SUV into Drive, she paused as the shooter positioned himself directly in front of them.

Hiking himself into the back seat, Braxton tapped on her shoulder. “Liz, go!”

The firefighter raised his gun, taking aim. One second. Two. And fired.

She froze as the bulletproof glass held against the shot. Then unfroze as rage coursed through her. The shooter had come for her, targeted her. Lifting her foot from the brake, she slammed on the accelerator and steered directly into the shooter. The growl of the engine drowned the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Pressure built in her lungs. “Hang on back there.”

Her leather seat protested against his grip on the headrest. “Liz…”

The shooter pulled the trigger two more times, each bullet caught in the windshield, a split second before he launched himself out of the way of the vehicle.

Elizabeth spun the steering wheel toward the still-open security gate. Bouncing in her seat as they catapulted over the gate’s tracks, she fishtailed out of the garage. Blackhawk Security grew distant in the rearview mirror. Two familiar faces stepped into the middle of the road behind them, but she didn’t have time to stop and explain everything to her team. Braxton had been telling the truth.

Someone was targeting her, but she wasn’t the only one she had to worry about now. She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror, to the father of her unborn baby. “Fine. You can take me to whatever safe house you’ve set up until we figure out who you think is trying to kill me. But to be clear, it’s not because I trust you.” Elizabeth took a deep breath, her ribs aching from the explosion in the conference room, then forced her attention back to the road. “It’s because you got me pregnant.”

“I STILL CAN’T believe it.” Braxton couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Someone had tried to kill the woman he vowed to protect, but it was more than that. Adrenaline drained from his veins in small increments, but not enough to clear his head.

Wow. Liz was pregnant. And he was the father. She’d told him before the explosion, but he hadn’t been able to process that until now. It’d been kind of hard to think when the bullets were flying. Reaction—that was what he was good at. But…he was going to be a father. A smile threatened to overwhelm his features, pure joy exploding through him.

“Someone just tried to kill us. Twice. Can we please focus on that?” The weight of her attention pinned him against his seat from the rearview mirror. “I think we have bigger problems to talk about.”

“I think the fact you’re pregnant is pretty big.” He swayed with the SUV as she wound through neighborhoods, around strip malls and into the edges of the city. Days of staying off the grid, months of grueling physical training, years of working for the NSA…none of it had prepared him for this. A baby. He compressed the safety button on the stolen gun and set it beside him on the seat. They were going to have a baby. “Might as well not have used protection at all.”

“Yeah, apparently, latex wasn’t strong enough for your swimmers.” A hint of a smile played across her mouth, the first softening of her guard since he set sights on her in the conference room. “If you’re thinking about asking me whether or not I’m sure the baby is yours, I’ll save you the time. Yes, Braxton, she’s yours. No, Braxton, I haven’t been with anybody else since the night you took me to bed then disappeared without a word. And, yes, I’m keeping the baby. I plan to raise her on my own without help. Any other questions?”

“It’s a girl?” He ran his palms over the baseball cap and interlaced his fingers at the crown of his head. He turned away from her, surveying the curve of the street but not really seeing where they were. The muscles across his back strained under the self-induced pressure. He didn’t know what else to say, what to think. They were having a girl?

“I found out the sex a couple days ago.” The vulnerability in her voice compelled him to face her again, but she’d turned her gaze back to the road. Snow and ice kicked up along the SUV. She rolled her lips between her teeth. “This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. I tried to find you, but four months is a long time waiting for you to come back. Figured you’d moved on and I could do the same. When I got tired of the NSA interrogating me about your whereabouts, I changed my name in every federal database I could hack and relocated.”

He’d known about her search effort but ultimately decided to stay away. It’d been the hardest decision of his life and the only way to keep her safe. Until four days ago when he’d learned about Dalton Meyer’s murder and that Oversight’s feeds had been hacked. Until he’d uncovered the program’s surveillance logs. Someone had put her in their crosshairs.

Intense pressure built behind his sternum as she took a sharp left. The city came into focus for the first time since Braxton had gotten in the vehicle. A familiar line of bare trees surrounding Fairview Lions Park cut off his air. A good foot of snow covered the all-too-familiar horseshoe pit and most of the green and purple playground where he’d spent countless nights as a kid after his father had lost the house to the bank. Right there, under the small rock wall. He forced his attention back to the rearview mirror as a group of homeless made their way down the street, back to her, his anchor. No point in studying the weathered faces as they passed. His old man had most likely died from his addictions a long time ago. Wasn’t important. The past was dead, and he sure as hell would make sure it stayed that way. “Did you also figure moving here was enough to keep me from finding you?”

“I’d accepted you weren’t coming back.” Liz cocked her head. “In retrospect, I guess Anchorage had been on my mind since you told me you’d never step foot in this city again. It’d worked until an hour ago.” She glanced at him—almost too fast for him to catch it—then back to the road. “You never told me how you managed to find me.”

“You’re predictable. I knew you’d never change your first name.” Not after what she’d told him about her mother and the long line of Elizabeths in her family. “As for your new last name, I remembered your favorite TV show growing up. Wasn’t hard to sift through the short list of Elizabeth Dawsons and track you down from there.”

Nothing would’ve stopped him from finding her.

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.” Her knuckles tightened over the steering wheel. There wouldn’t be a next time. Not if he had anything to say about it. She turned the SUV east, leaving the park and memories he’d worked hard to bury behind. “So are you going to tell me where this safe house of yours is or are we going to drive around all night?”

“Make one more loop around the neighborhood.” Braxton studied the cars behind them. They hadn’t been followed. Whoever had taken shots at them in the parking garage probably hadn’t been able to make it past the wall of police officers and emergency personnel surrounding the building. At least, not in a hurry. On top of that, her team had seen them race from the scene. His pulse hammered at the base of his skull, and he wiped at the dried patches of blood along his forehead. He should’ve known the bastard would come at her at Blackhawk Security. As far as he’d been able to tell over the last few days, that was where she’d spent most of her time. Day and night. Protecting her clients just as she’d protected millions of lives during her contract work for the NSA. And now with a baby. “Have you told your team?”

“No. Not yet.” Her shoulders rose on an audible inhale. Hesitation tightened the cords running down her neck. She made another turn, seemingly refusing to look back at him. “I was thinking of telling Sullivan about the baby today, but then someone blew up the conference room and it sort of slipped to the back of my mind.”

A laugh escaped from his control. She always did have a way of downplaying stressful situations with sarcasm. “Understandable.”

“I work in network security now.” Liz ran a hand through her hair and levered her elbow against the driver’s side door. “My clients come to me to assess their firewalls, encrypt the information on their servers, basically make their networks unhackable. I analyze shell corporations and perform background checks for everyone on my team. I can’t think of a single person who would want me dead.”

“All I know is someone tried to kill you back there.” He wouldn’t discount the possibility the threat was tied to Blackhawk Security. They had to consider all the angles. Past, present, someone invested in the outcome of the firm’s military and private contracts. The list of suspects with the kind of knowledge and training that shooter had to have was endless, but military training was a definite. He needed access to her client files. “And I’m not going to let them succeed.”

“Do you think this could be linked to my contract with the NSA?” Her voice wavered. To someone who hadn’t memorized every inflection, every emotion, it would’ve gone unnoticed. But not to him. He knew her inside and out, down to a cellular level. Even with filtered moonlight coming through the SUV’s tinted windows, he noted the color draining from her face. Hell. The nightmares. How could he have forgotten about her damn nightmares? Her throat worked to swallow. “Maybe a family member or someone who’d gotten a look at the files?”

Her fear slid through him, and his body reacted automatically. Ready for battle to protect what was his. One breath. Two. “You still have nightmares.”

Not a question. He was there during Oversight’s trial run. He’d witnessed how it’d affected her.

“Assuming the person who shot at us in the garage is the same person who hacked those feeds, which might not be the case, you should be able to use my backdoor access to narrow down a location.” Him? Liz twisted the steering wheel to the right a little too hard. He fell back against the seat and reached out for his gun before it fell to the floor. Okay, so she didn’t want to talk about what kept her up at night, but he couldn’t find this bastard on his own. He needed her to run the program. “The only problem is the access opens a two-way door. The second you lock on to a location, he has yours.”

“Don’t you mean he’d have our location?” he asked.

“No, Braxton.” She set her jaw, chancing a quick glance into the rearview mirror. “I told you the day I terminated my consulting contract with the NSA. I’ll never touch that program again. If you want to trace those feeds, you’re doing it alone.”

Braxton didn’t answer.

“Turn right at the next street. Third building from the end of the road.” The apartment he’d leased under a fake name off one of those online sites where home owners rented out their homes wasn’t much. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. But it would get the job done while he was back in Anchorage. However long that would be. He studied Liz as she pulled the SUV to the curb then shouldered his way out of the vehicle behind her. She stepped onto the pavement, hand supporting her head where shrapnel had cut into her during the explosion. A groan worked up her throat, and his blood pressure spiked. He stepped into her, her rough exhale skimming across his neck as rain pounded onto his shoulders. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing.” She dropped her hand and stepped away. Her right hand shook slightly. She tried to hide it by curling her fingers into her palms, but she couldn’t hide from him.

She was scared. Rightfully so, but he’d die before he let anything happen to her. Or their baby. “I’m not going to let that bastard lay a finger on you. I promise.”

Silence settled between them. Tight, thick and full of distance.

“I only agreed to your help because someone was shooting at us, and I didn’t want to die.” Liz shook her head. “So I don’t need your promises. I need you to keep me alive until I figure out who wants me dead.”

Chapter Three (#u91195bcc-8762-5a6b-b75e-14e24253278a)

Elizabeth hefted the SUV’s gate above her head and lifted the black duffel bag standard for all Blackhawk Security operatives from the dark interior. Mostly supplies. A couple changes of clothes, ammunition, food storage, emergency flares. The basics of her new profession. Never knew what kind of weather or client would come calling. Although they’d borrowed Elliot’s SUV, and the clothes weren’t going to fit her. “If you’re not going to trace Oversight’s feeds on your own, fill me in on your plan.”

They’d wound a lot of circles through neighborhoods, parks and strip malls, finally ending up at what looked like an apartment complex. The shooter hadn’t followed them. She would’ve spotted him through the maze of routes they’d taken. The SOB who’d taken a shot at her was most likely licking his wounds and devising another way to kill her. If Braxton had been telling the truth about the shooter’s target. She paused at the thought. She took care of network security for a start-up security company. Wasn’t exactly the kind of job that would land her in a killer’s crosshairs. But if this had anything to do with her work for the NSA…

No. It couldn’t. She’d left that life behind months ago. Besides, those files were classified. It’d take someone with much higher security clearance than the director of the NSA to access them. That’d been part of the deal. She’d signed dozens of nondisclosure agreements about the program’s trial run, and the federal government would hide Oversight’s existence at all costs.