Chapter Nine

Sami

The waitress returned with our food right then and gently cleared her throat. I realized I’d leaned in, all but throwing myself across the table to get closer to him.

Right. We were tucked into a corner of the restaurant but still very much in public. I had to force myself to sit back down before I embarrassed us both.

Once the waitress left us again, I picked at my fries in silence for several moments. It wasn’t embarrassment that kept me from meeting his eyes. It was the conversation before the almost-kiss. I wanted to tell him about my past, about what my mysterious benefactor wanted me to do. I wanted him to tell me it would all be okay. We could figure things out.

But I knew it wouldn’t play out like that. My heart wouldn’t take it if I told him everything and he decided I was too much trouble or had too much baggage to be worth his time.

Nothing could make me like you less.

My belly jittered. Nobody had ever given me that reassurance before. My family’s love had always been predicated on my achieving their impossibly high standards. Until Class Alpha, my friends had only been friends when it was convenient for them, and as soon as it wasn’t, they’d dropped me like a bad habit.

Except Adrian. He’d been the one constant in my life for the past few years. It would be nice to have another.

I finally lifted my gaze to Harvard’s. A banked heat still simmered in his whiskey eyes from our near-miss kiss, along with something softer. Tender. Sincere. He gave an encouraging smile. “You mentioned once that you’d spent some time in jail for hacking?”

Yes, I had mentioned that. We’d been cooped up together for days, looking for any trace of Jean-Luc and Dr. Claire Oliver in Nigeria when, hopped up on caffeine and the adrenaline high of hacking into the CDC, I’d spilled the beans. He hadn’t treated me any differently in the weeks since then. If anything, we’d grown closer. So what made me so sure he would drop me now if I told him the whole story?

And still, I hesitated. I mean, who could blame me? My own parents had disowned me because of my past mistakes.

I released a long breath. Now or never. “When I was in middle school, I fell in with the hacktivist group A.K.A.”

He pushed aside his plate and sat back. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I’ve heard of them.”

I gave an abrupt laugh. “Who hasn’t? They were behind every major hack at the time. I joined early on under the name Charade. It started with small things. Pranks, really, but those pranks became more and more illegal. Still, I idolized A.K.A.’s organizers, Khaos and Paradox. I thought they were these amazing nerd warriors, wielding keyboards like swords against all the injustices of the world.”

“And they weren’t?” he asked.

I shrugged and popped a fry into my mouth, even though my stomach had twisted itself into uncomfortable knots. “For a while, they were. Our hacks drew attention to all the things that needed attention. We were changing the world. Then one day, they disappeared. There were rumors of FBI raids, and people freaked. I disconnected from the group and didn’t think anything more of it because I was small potatoes…but then the FBI showed up on my doorstep.”

Harvard said nothing for a long time, then winced. He picked up his beer and took a long drink. “They couldn’t get the major players, so they went after you.”

“Yes.” My throat was so tight it was like being strangled. “And others like me. They wanted to make an example out of me, and so I spent the rest of my teenage years locked up in a juvenile detention center. When I got out at eighteen, I’d lost all my scholarships, my friends, and my parents.”

“They abandoned you?”

“I tried to go home, but the gate was locked. My dad answered the intercom and said he had disowned me. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family since.”

“I’m so sorry, Sami.”

I shrugged. Tried to play it off like it was NBD, but, God, it still hurt. “That’s their choice.”

“No,” Harvard said firmly and set down his beer so hard it clunked against the table. “It’s their loss.”

Stupid tears rushed to fill my eyes and blur my vision. I thought I’d cried myself out where my parents were concerned, but nope. Apparently not. “Thank you for saying that.”

“No, I mean it.” He got up and circled the table to sit in the empty chair next to me. He thumbed away an escaped tear and cupped my face in his hands. “Everyone makes mistakes. Especially teenagers. If they can’t see past that to the amazing woman you’ve become, they don’t deserve you. And you deserve better.”

For almost seven long years, I’d carried the weight of my parents’ rejection like a boulder chained around my ankle. It was my fault for not being smarter, better, more like them. But with nothing more than a few words, Harvard snapped that chain.

He was right. It was my parents’ burden to carry, not mine.

Besides, I had other burdens of my own making to worry about.

I met Harvard’s gaze. I should tell him. He could help me fix this, but shame burned up the back of my neck and kept me silent. I’d taken money from a stranger and promised a favor in return. Even if the favor wasn’t sexual, it still felt a lot like prostitution. I didn’t want him to see me in that light. Not when he looked at me as he was now, his gaze full of tenderness and heat.

Harvard rubbed his thumb across my bottom lip, and the contact made my nipples tighten. The things I wanted him to do to me would definitely get us kicked out of this place.

He grinned, his dimple flashing, and dropped his hand from my lips to tug playfully at the collar of my shirt. “I’m not surprised you wanted to save the world, Wonder Woman.”

“Still do,” I admitted with a little shrug.

“So that’s why you joined Class Alpha.”

“Well, it wasn’t my original intention. I thought I’d get Tucker Quentin’s attention with my skills and wind up on his cyber security team. I never expected he’d put me here.”

“He didn’t,” Harvard said softly. “I chose you.”

I stared at him for a handful of disbelieving heartbeats. “You chose me?”

“After you hacked us, Quentin put your name on a list of potential candidates and told me to choose.”

Finally, I’d get the answer to the question I’d wondered since I received the invitation to join the training program. “Why me? I don’t have a military background.”

“Neither do I,” he said, and that dimple winked again. “Unless you count all my hours of playing Call of Duty.”

“Which is an awesome game.” I shook my head, refusing to let him distract me. “But that’s not the point. You must have known there was something hinky in my background after putting together my dossier. I’m good, and most people wouldn’t have known I’d hidden things, but you are worlds better. I’ve never seen anybody work a computer like you do. I’m a master, but you’re a god.”

“I did know. Or at least suspected.” He inclined his head and reached across the table to drag his plate toward him. He picked up a fry and pointed it at me. “But you were good enough to hack Quentin Enterprises and hide your background, which meant you have the ability to reach my level. Probably even surpass me. I told Quentin to do whatever he could to recruit you because we didn’t want you as an enemy.”

“So you knew I was hiding something this whole time, and you could have found out what it was, but you never pried?”

“You want the truth?” Harvard asked. “I’d have thoroughly researched your history if you had refused Quentin’s offer of employment. I didn’t want you as an enemy. But once you were here and it was obvious you weren’t going to leave, it wasn’t necessary. I figured you’d tell me in your own time.”

I laughed uncomfortably. “How could you possibly know I wasn’t going to leave? I didn’t even know for a long time.”

“That first run, when you refused to give up, when you stopped to help Gavin? We knew then you were in for the long haul. Ever notice the guys that didn’t do so hot on that first run are no longer with us?”

I snorted and reached for my own plate. “I didn’t do so hot on that run. It almost killed me.”

“It almost kills everyone, but physical fitness isn’t what we wanted to see that first time. We were looking for grit, and you showed it in spades.”

Picking up my burger, I sent him a sidelong glance. “Did you really hurl when you first ran it?”

“Oh, yeah. My first few months with HORNET were torture. I was a broomstick. No muscle mass at all.”

I took a bite of my burger to hide the fact I was studying his arms and chest. He was still lean, but nobody would mistake him for a broomstick now with those ropes of muscle and the cut abs I knew he had hiding under his T-shirt. “I can’t picture it.”

He sighed and hitched up to take his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. He scrolled through until he found what he was looking for, made a face at the screen, and then passed it to me. It was a video of him and Jean-Luc. Harvard wore a silly party hat and a half-amused, half-exasperated expression while the Cajun horribly serenaded him.

“My twenty-fourth birthday,” he said and picked up his burger for another bite. “About a month after I joined HORNET. That wasn’t my skinniest or whitest, but I don’t have any pictures of me from my CIA days.”

Yeah, okay, he was super skinny in the video. I recognized the shirt he wore. It was red with the words Red Shirt Running Team on the front and (I’m probably not going to make it) on the back. He still had that tee, but it fit him very differently now, stretching across his chest and straining around his arms. In the video, it all but hung off him like a dress.

I smothered a laugh behind my hand. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, but holy crap. He had been the stereotypical nerd—skinny, pasty, with clunky glasses and no fashion sense.

Well, he still had no fashion sense, but that was okay because neither did I. Tonight his T-shirt said, It’s okay, Pluto. I’m not a planet, either.

He rolled his eyes at my giggle and snatched the phone back. “Go ahead and laugh. I do.” After another glance at his phone and a grimace, he put it face down on the table. “But in my defense, I spent most of my life prior to joining HORNET in a dark room, sitting on my ass in front of a computer.”

Since he didn’t seem upset, I let the laugh out. “They certainly whipped you into shape.”

“Yeah, and it wasn’t pretty. Jean-Luc used to say—” He stopped short, and his smile faltered. His mood shifted, and there was no mistaking the sudden aura of anger around him.

Okay, this had gone on long enough. Ever since Jean-Luc had disappeared last month, disobeying orders to search for Dr. Claire Oliver, he got that sour expression on his face whenever the Cajun came up in conversation.

I knew they shared a history. They both came from the CIA. Jean-Luc had been a spy while Harvard had been an intelligence analyst, but they had worked together on many missions before leaving to join HORNET. They had been close friends until Jean-Luc took off to Nigeria, chasing the love of his life into a biological hot zone without telling Harvard. Now, I couldn’t tell what they were. Harvard was still pissed at being left behind, and poor Jean-Luc seemed absolutely bewildered about how to go about fixing the problem.

But maybe it wasn’t Jean-Luc’s problem to solve. Just like it wasn’t mine. Harvard was working through something, and, even as much as we wanted to, neither Jean-Luc nor I could help him.

I placed a gentle hand on his forearm. “You can’t stay mad at him forever.”

“I can try.”

“Why? Jean-Luc was one of your best friends.”

“He didn’t trust me enough to tell me where he was going, what he was doing.”

“He was protecting you.”

“And who was protecting him? Marcus?” He made a sound of disgust. “Guy can’t even take care of himself right now.”

This was true. Marcus Deangelo, HORNET’s lead negotiator, hadn’t been the same since his best friend was killed during our training mission gone wrong in Martinique. Marcus drank too much, took too many risks, and basically had a “fuck this” attitude about life. He was spiraling into a dark place. Of all the people Jean-Luc could have asked for help during his foolhardy solo rescue mission, he’d chosen unstable Marcus, and it had nearly gotten him killed. I could see why that would rankle Harvard, but I still didn’t understand his deep anger over it. You’d think he’d just be relieved everyone had made it home safely and in one piece. It hurt to see him so angry, and I hated how vibrant Jean-Luc wilted a little bit every time Harvard brushed off his apologies.

Something more there, but he obviously wasn’t in the mood to keep talking about it, because he plastered on a smile and changed the subject to Star Wars. He did that a lot—wielded his geekery like a shield when things got too heavy.

I let it drop. I couldn’t get involved. Or more involved.

“So what about you?” I asked, trying to make the question light and conversational. “I know you were CIA before HORNET, but what about before that?”

He twisted his beer bottle between his fingers, leaving wet rings on the reclaimed wood table. “I wasn’t an angel, either.”

“What did you do?” He obviously hadn’t been arrested like I had, but his expression was full of old regret.

“Everything I shouldn’t have. Growing up, I had this friend. My best friend. He—well, he wasn’t good for me, and I wasn’t good for him. Together, we were toxic.”

“What happened?”

“We caused a lot of damage. Hurt a lot of people.” He sucked in a sharp breath and lifted his beer in a kind of salute. “I felt bad, and he didn’t. He had no conscience and used people like throwaway items. When I realized what he was capable of, I found an escape.”

“To the CIA?”

He said nothing for a long moment, then finished his beer. “Yeah, which wasn’t much better.” Strain showed through his smile. “You know, we should probably head home. I’m beat.”

I squashed a surge of disappointment. Of course he was exhausted. He had spent the past day traveling. I could see it in his eyes, and here I wanted to keep him up all night.

Talking, I mean.

Just talking.

Nothing more than that.

Neither of us could afford more than that, and we both knew it. Which was why when he dropped me off in front of the dorm, I climbed out of his SUV without kissing him. I wanted to. I think he even wanted it, but he was too much of a gentleman to go there. I waved as he drove away, then felt like an idiot for it.

Who waves like that? Ugh.

The dorm was silent. None of the guys had made it back from The Snaz yet, and, truthfully, I was glad for it. I needed time to think. Maybe I should’ve told Harvard about what I’d been asked to do, but he had enough on his plate.

This was my problem. I’d handle it.

I grabbed my laptop from my room and settled on the couch in the common area, feet tucked under me. I hesitated only an instant before signing on to the email account my benefactor had set up for me all those years ago. As I expected, there was an email. I opened it, planning to only reply and not read it, but the first sentence jumped out at me from the message:

I know what you did.

My heart took a swan dive into my stomach. No. It wasn’t possible.

The FBI got you on a minor charge. That NRA thing was child’s play compared to your actual crimes. You are a thief, and I have proof. That money I gave you? It was some of the money you stole from…how many banks was it? Ten? Twenty? Do you even know? No, I don’t think you do. You took that money and used it, and now there is a digital trail leading right to you. Give me HORNET’s network or the FBI will come knocking on your door again.

I scoffed at that. Wasn’t much of a threat. I’d already spent my teenage years locked up. I knew how to survive in that environment. If they thought prison was enough to scare me into hurting HORNET, they didn’t know as much about me as they thought. I pulled up a clean email and typed a succinct reply that boiled down to a fuck you.

Their reply came in a text message bubble on the side of my screen.

All those guys you think are your friends have secrets, too. Jeremiah Wolfe. Remington Hale. Gavin Rider. I’ll ruin every one of them.

Fire burned up the middle of my chest and left a sour taste on my tongue. They were bluffing. They had to be. Wolfe couldn’t have anything in his past bad enough to ruin him. He was too good. He was a better human being than me by miles.

Another text popped onto my screen: And Harvard? You have no idea who you’re dealing with or the secrets he’s keeping from you. Go back on our deal, and I won’t simply ruin him. I’ll destroy him. He’ll go up in flames and take HORNET with him.

My stomach rolled over. I knew Harvard had secrets. He’d been cagey enough about his backstory at dinner to make me think they were bad ones.

My fingers shook as they hovered in indecision over my keyboard. I scrambled for a way out, a thread I could pull to unravel the web he’d woven around me, but I saw nothing. I couldn’t let my bad decisions blow back on Class Alpha or HORNET. But no matter what I did, what choice I made, they would be caught in the fallout. My only option was to follow through and then try to mitigate the damage.

I squeezed my eyes shut and typed my response: Okay. I’ll do it.