“This is your doing?”
She glanced over at Mason in response to his question. Gave him a wry smile, as they walked toward the stadium. “I had to keep busy doing something, otherwise it would’ve been obvious I didn’t intend to do what they wanted me to at all. So I layered in commands all over the place.”
“Clever.”
Dangerous, too. But neither of them mentioned that part.
They fought their way through, the crowd streaming from the stadium thinking there was some kind of fire. Or another problem.
“Victoria is on the lower east gangway.” Dakota walked ahead of them like the teacher at a field trip. She stowed her phone back in her pocket. “They’re escorting the Secretary of State back to his motorcade.”
Talia looked at Mason to see if he thought that was a good idea. Maybe not, but there wasn’t much he could do to argue about it. She liked that he was the kind of guy who took the world as it was. Some people spent their whole lives fighting for a change. And maybe there were times they saw it realized, but most of the time things just didn’t work that way.
He seemed content to have his quiet life. To be here for his family, at least for now. Maybe he wanted more later. Like when Rayna was grown and out of the house—when she didn’t require as much from her father. He probably had goals and things he wanted to do. The list of places she still hadn’t been was extensive, and she was looking forward to her next vacation. She was going to Cologne in Germany, then to Italy on the train.
Did Mason like to get lost in strange places?
An older couple walked between them. After they’d passed, Mason snagged her hand. He tugged her close enough to say, “What?” without shouting. “What’s that look on your face?”
“Do you know that ‘cappuccino’ is a universal language?”
He almost laughed. “What does that mean?”
“You can basically walk into any café or coffee shop in any country in Europe, and if you say ‘cappuccino,’ then they’ll usually know what you mean.”
“Sure, assuming that’s what you want to drink.”
“I’ve learned to love them.”
He grinned. “You like to travel?”
“Definitely. Bustling streets with stores all in a row. Or tiny hillside towns. Cobblestone is a plus. Those places where you have to ride a bike and you wear one of those scarves and it blows behind you in the wind.”
“I can see the attraction.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Perhaps he meant for her to read between the lines, or maybe not. She could banter, but didn’t have the brain power for deep thoughts after the day they’d had. How did he? He’d nearly drowned. Then again, maybe this was nothing but banter for him.
She wanted to know. But how did she ask which it was?
“I—”
Dakota cut in. “Are you two going to make googly eyes at each other all day, or are we going to catch this guy?”
She twirled around to her teammate, standing there with a giant grin on her face. Talia’s cheeks flamed. As though she’d been caught by her mother doing something she shouldn’t have.
“Let’s go.” Dakota turned away again, and they followed her.
Inside the breezeway, a suited man with a badge on his belt strode over. He called out, “Agent Armstrong,” and made a beeline for Mason. “This your doing?”
Talia said a relieved prayer to God of thanks for the fact they weren’t still holding hands. What a disaster that would have been. This guy—whoever he was—wouldn’t have taken him seriously after that.
Before Mason could answer, Talia moved past him. “Is that tablet connected to the Secret Service’s network?” She reached for it before the man, who was behind the first guy looking like an aide, could react. “Thanks.”
The first guy blustered. “Agent Armst—”
“This is one of my people.” Victoria strode toward them.
It was all Talia could do to not rush to her. To launch herself into the director’s arms like a crazy weirdo reuniting with her long lost sister, or something.
“She’s on loan from the NSA.”
Talia could have sworn Victoria actually winked at her. Then the gleam disappeared from her eyes, and she faced the DC assistant director. “The Secretary of State is away with his detail.” She turned to Talia. “Now find me Yewell.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Talia moved away a couple of steps and got into the tablet. This was her forte, not all the other stuff she’d been forced to do. She found people. She did the tech work for this team, and she got the results they needed to bring the bad guy to justice.
She heard a new voice—probably the aide. “It has a passcode—”
Talia waved one hand. “I’m already in.”
She got to work trying to figure out where Yewell was. Security cameras? That would mean a program to find someone whose face matched his. She didn’t have an image of the man. But she could probably get one.
She chewed on her lip as she fished through the Secret Service’s real time updates. Then she found one that had come from Stanton’s team. Hadn’t they been on the search for Yewell, while she and Mason and her team tried to find the hacker?
What a nightmare that had turned out to be.
“I’m just supposed to hand over control of this operation…”
She tuned out the assistant director’s arguing with Dakota and Victoria and ran through what Stanton’s team had come up with. She found a sighting on the street. A man matching Yewell’s description getting into a car outside the building she’d been held in. Was this how they’d found her? Seemed like there was enough time in between that they could’ve found out another way. Or maybe it had been Alvarez. It didn’t mean Stanton was dirty, even if it was possible. A thin chance didn’t come close to being proof.
They had bigger problems right now.
“Sir, if you’ll just—”
The other guy cut Mason off.
More arguing.
Talia found a signal running through the network connection in this building and out to the internet via Wi-Fi. “It’s still active.”
If Yewell knew everyone was being evacuated, would he…
“Oh no.”
She heard the others gather around her, but no one said a word. No one was willing to break her concentration. Talia sat on the ground, set the tablet in her lap, and started typing upon the on-screen, awful keyboard with her fingers like it was a regular keyboard.
God, please don’t let me make a mistake.
“If I can just…” She found the connection.
Devices placed around the building, a thread.
She worked them apart. One by one.
Severed the connection between them so that they could not be connected to from any device remotely on the—
An explosion ripped through one corner of the building.
. . .
The ringing in Mason’s ears competed with the sound of screams like it was a sport. He blinked. Tried to get his eyes to focus while he straightened his arms to push off the ground. Talia was huddled underneath him.
She looked up as he moved, blinking herself.
“Okay?”
She made a face he’d seen Rayna make. “No. How many times are you going to do that?”
Mason said nothing. She was okay. He helped her stand, not that she needed assistance. More because he wanted to reassure himself that she was all right.
Victoria and Dakota got up. Both headed toward the source of the explosion. Victoria waved her arms. “Everyone clear the area!”
“Oh, no.”
Mason glanced at Talia. She looked up at him, but his attention was on her hands.
The tablet was shattered.
“I can’t find the signal now.”
“You think more bombs will go off?”
“That, or it already went through and I interrupted it enough that only one went off.” She bit her lip. “I hope nobody was badly hurt.”
He glanced in the direction the bomb had detonated. Smoke laced the air around a pile of rubble. The assistant director from DC was in a huddle with other agents. He waved his arms wide as he spoke to them.
Sirens rang on their approach.
Good. They needed more people here to help.
“You saved lives.” Mason tried to reassure her. “That’s what we have to concentrate on.”
She nodded but didn’t exactly look convinced. “I need a—” Talia shifted before she’d even finished talking, her glance far off where people moved around. Fled the scene. Helped others. “That’s…”
She took off. He saw it coming and moved with her. Looked to where she was looking. Who had she recognized? He glanced back and saw Dakota over by the blast damage, on her phone again. She mouthed something he didn’t need to be told. Like he was going to leave Talia?
When he turned back, Talia was a few feet in front of him. Mason pulled his weapon, checked how many rounds he had left—not many—and readied it. Just in case.
“Hey!” She raced after a man running away from them, carrying something in his arms. A laptop?
The guy stumbled. He dropped the laptop, which cracked against the concrete. He swore, swiped it up, and kept running.
Mason forced his legs to move faster. This guy wasn’t an athlete. He closed in, gripping his weapon in one hand, and launched himself at the guy in a sideways tackle. His shoulder hit the small of the man’s back. He wrapped one arm around the guy’s waist as they fell to the ground.
His arm hit the ground first. Pain spiraled from his elbow, snaking up that arm. Mason twisted so the bulk of his weight landed above the man’s hip. Then he rolled. The man rolled with him, in front, all the way around to Mason’s left.
He got up and held aim on the guy. “Give her the laptop.”
Intention sparked in the man’s gaze. He didn’t want to give anything up.
“You’ve done all the damage you’re going to do.” Mason stared right back at him. “It’s over.”
The muscles around the man’s mouth flexed. Some kind of a reaction. Did he think he was going to make more progress than one explosion?
People stared as they moved past him, the downed man and Talia. Cops would be here soon.
The assistant director elbowed his way between two people and came over. “This Yewell?”
Mason shook his head. “One of his people.”
“He’s their tech person,” Talia said. “He probably sent the signal that set off that bomb.”
Mason kept his attention on the man on the ground. “On your knees, hands on your head.” He still hadn’t given up the laptop. It lay across the man’s lap, forgotten. Maybe it had been broken to the point of being useless. But maybe not.
The man shifted to his knees.
“Sir?”
The assistant director nodded. He strode around to the man’s back and glanced aside at two approaching cops. “Cuffs!”
Mason shifted closer to Talia, still facing the man and not taking his gaze off him. “Think you can get anything from that laptop?”
“It’s possible.”
The man made a face, evidently not thinking much of Talia’s statement.
“I don’t know if there will be enough time. Or if it’ll lead us to Yewell.”
Dakota strode over. “Yewell’s people hit the convoy as it left. This—” She waved at the commotion around them. “—was simply a distraction at this point. Set off the devices here, and cause confusion. Get the Secretary of State on the road.”
“Stanton?”
“He called Victoria.” Dakota wasn’t happy. “Yewell is still out there, and Alvarez is unaccounted for.”
Talia shifted, but he couldn’t comfort her. All he could do was keep aim on this laptop guy and bide his time until the man was in custody. When Yewell was found.
There was no time to relax. They still had so much work to do. People were hurt here, and those responsible were still out there.
Mason thanked God that the bulk of the crowd had left the stadium because of the fire alarm. Before the explosion had ripped through one section of wall. Then he prayed no one had been standing right there when it happened. Likely there were casualties. Ambulances were already loading up the injured.
Dakota folded her arms across her chest. “A witness said it was a jacket that exploded.”
Mason didn’t look at the assistant director. He didn’t have time to say he’d told the man as much.
The cop handed over cuffs, and the assistant director had the laptop guy stand. Mason held his gun aimed at the man as he was secured. Watched for the slightest twitch of muscle that might indicate harmful intention.
He wasn’t willing to risk Talia. Not now that she’d proven she was precisely who she seemed to be. Mason hadn’t been testing her, not intentionally. No one thinking of entering a relationship should do that. But as people learned to trust one another, they demonstrated, in both big and small ways, that they were trustworthy. And she definitely was.
Strong.
Vulnerable.
Classy.
Funny.
There wasn’t an attribute Mason looked for that she didn’t check off the list. He wanted her in his life. For sure. Maybe even permanently.
The assistant director turned the laptop guy around and started to walk away with him. Both cops went too. Mason lowered his gun. Dismissed from his assignment here, he hauled Talia close to him. She rested against his chest and wrapped both arms around him.
After a minute or so in the embrace, she leaned back. “I need a computer if I’m going to find Alvarez.” She paused a second. “Assuming he’s still with Yewell, I should be able to use that to track him.”
He nodded. The threat here was done. The man and his laptop were in custody. “You’re sure no more bombs are going to go off?”
She nodded.
On to the next thing then, he supposed.
“Just real quick before we go…” He stowed the weapon, then lifted both hands and touched her cheeks. Mason pressed his lips to hers. When she moved closer, he deepened it but still held back, not wanting to get carried away.
When she leaned back, he said, “The Secret Service office?” Surely Stanton would let her on one of their computers. Or he’d be too busy to notice until afterwards.
“Let’s go.” She turned away but not before he caught a glimpse of a smile on her face. She grabbed his hand and held it as they strode back to Victoria and Dakota to explain what they were doing.
Victoria nodded immediately. “Good.”
Dakota tossed him a set of keys. Mason caught them in mid-air.
“We’ll keep you posted.” Talia set off.
She pretty much tugged him along in her haste to get there to find both her friend and Yewell.
“How are you doing?”
She blew out a breath as they neared the car. “I’m about ready to collapse. But this is almost done, right?”
He nodded and pulled the front passenger door open.
A shot rang out.
Before he realized what had happened, Talia collapsed into the car. She landed awkwardly on the seat, gasping.
Blood on her hands.