Chapter Twenty-One

Harvard

“What the fuck happened out there?” Tucker Quentin’s Hollywood-handsome face loomed large on the screen in HORNET HQ, but he didn’t look like a former movie star now. His blue eyes were ice chips, and he could probably crack granite with that hard set of his jaw.

“We were attacked,” Gabe said evenly. Always the unflappable commander. No wonder his SEAL buddies had nicknamed him Stonewall back in the day.

Tuc swore long and creatively. “Defion?”

“We don’t have that information yet.”

“It’s unlikely,” I spoke up, and every eye turned to me. I was still smeared with fake blood and looked like I’d been through hell, thanks to the artistic makeup skills of Gabe’s wife. I tried to wipe it on my sleeve, but I was going to need high-grade solvent to get the crap off.

Our ruse had worked beautifully. Quinn had wanted to show the trainees that the bad guys didn’t always look like the bad guys. And Class Alpha had handled the situation surprisingly well. None of us knew Gavin was a budding negotiator. I don’t think even he knew he had that in him, but no doubt Quinn would capitalize on that strength in future training sessions.

The whole thing had been going like clockwork…

Until it wasn’t.

Because of Sami.

She’d launched the drones. Was it the appropriate response? I wasn’t sure. She said—and Quinn corroborated—that three HTs attacked her, so she launched one of the UCAVs to defend herself. She said she had no radio contact with her team. She said the only way to stop the UCAV was to crash my surveillance drone into it. Everything she said during her debriefing added up, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been holding something back.

She’d been lying about something.

Why would she lie?

“Harvard!”

The sharp snap of my name brought me back from that dark corner of my thoughts. I looked up at Quinn, who was bugging his eyes at me in a pay-attention-you-dumbass kind of way. Then I shifted to face Tuc on-screen. “Sorry. I was thinking. What did you say?”

Tuc exhaled forcefully through his nose. I hadn’t often seen his last nerve, but we were definitely riding it hard now. “How do you know it wasn’t Defion?”

It could be Defion. Their hackers had been trying to get into our network for months. But, although it made the most sense, I didn’t think they were behind tonight’s events. These attacks were petty and mean-spirited, and their motive was simply to create chaos and destruction. While Defion might want to create chaos as a distraction, their hackers would go about it clinically. No emotion. Tonight felt deeply personal.

“I don’t,” I said. “Not for sure, but this…” I searched for a way to put my gut instinct into words. “It doesn’t smell like them.”

He arched a blond brow. “You can smell them?”

“No. But also, yeah. In a way. Every hacker leaves a digital trace behind that you can sniff out if you know what you’re looking for. On the way home, I took a preliminary look at the diagnostics for both drones before they crashed, and this hack was more sophisticated than anything Defion has thrown at us. They don’t have a hacker with this level of expertise.”

“Who could do something like this?”

“Only a handful of people around the world. I could. Sami could.” I loathed to say it because of that niggling feeling she was hiding something, but I wasn’t about to lie. Not when lives were potentially on the line. “There’s a new hacker on the scene going by the name Nomad, and I think he’s the strongest candidate. For the last year or so, he’s run a dark web market called ShadowBazaar that sells anything a twisted imagination can conjure up. His main targets are large corporations like Quentin Enterprises.”

“I’m aware,” Tuc said. “You’ve mentioned him in your cybersecurity briefings, but I thought he specialized in ransomware. You think he’s going to ransom our drone back to us?”

“No. If he’s behind this, I think he’s going to auction it to the highest bidder.”

“Then we need to be the highest,” Tuc said flatly. “I want you on ShadowBazaar every second of every day until you see it go up for sale. Get it back, no matter the cost.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And make fucking sure our network is solid. I don’t want Nomad or anyone else getting in again. What the hell do I pay you for?”

I somehow managed to hide my wince as the screen went blank. He was right to blame me. I let down my guard, and someone got into our network.

“Aw, ignore him,” Sean Carreras, who was on semi-permanent loan to us from one of Tuc’s other teams, gave my back a hard thump. “Hollywood’s pissy because he doesn’t like sharing his toys. By tomorrow he’ll be all sunshine and rainbows again.”

“If that man is ever sunshine and rainbows,” Gabe said drily, “I’ve yet to see it.”

Sean flashed a toothy grin. “Then you’ve never gotten him drunk. He’s a lovey-dovey drunk. It’s adorable.”

I shoved out of my seat, and the chair scraped loudly against the floor. “No, he’s right to blame me. I fucked up. My trainee fucked up. It won’t happen again. I’ll fix this.”

“Harvard—”

I didn’t give Quinn the chance to finish the thought. I walked out and headed straight home.

I had work to do.

Hours later, I heard her hesitant footsteps on the front porch.

Sami.

Had to be her. Who else would it be? I didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her. I didn’t want to see her or anyone else.

I straightened away from my workbench and stretched out my back. Since I’d walked out of the command center earlier, I’d thrown myself into scouring ShadowBazaar for any sign of the Noisy Cricket. I saw credit card numbers, drugs, and even assassins for sale on the eBay-like site, but so far, no military-grade weaponry. Realistically, it could be days or even months before it went up for auction, though I hoped not. I didn’t think Tuc had enough patience to keep me around for months. I needed results, and I needed them now.

But staring at a screen as auctions came and went wasn’t going to get results. Maybe if I gave Tuc something new, it would appease him until I found the Cricket, so between auctions, I tinkered with my newest drone prototype.

“Harvard?”

I actually ached at the sound of her voice.

Guess I did want to see her after all. I took off my glasses and rubbed at my gritty eyes. Life had been so much simpler when it was just me and my electronics. When I didn’t let myself care.

Electronics were simple. Easy to understand. Just circuits and voltage. A binary language of zeros and ones. People, on the other hand, were so damn hard.

She didn’t knock again. I really hadn’t expected her to. She barged in like she owned the place and put her hands on her hips. “What happened at the debriefing? Did they fire you? Am I out of the training program?”

“No.”

She released her breath like she’d been holding it and leaned against my workbench. She frowned as she studied me. She probably didn’t even realize it when her leg brushed my arm, but I sure as hell noticed. My nerve endings lit up like sparklers whenever we touched.

Her scent, dark and floral, wrapped around me and drew me closer like a beckoning finger. I remembered the feel of her under me the other night in my back seat, the smell of her arousal filling my senses. I was so far in over my head with this woman.

“I’ve missed you,” she added softly. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Had things to do.”

“Did you find the Cricket?”

“No.” I didn’t mean to be so short with her, but I was too raw. If I gave her more than one-word answers, I might spill everything I was feeling, and that would be messy.

“Do we have a suspect?”

“Yeah.”

She hesitated a beat too long. “Who?”

I finally turned in my seat to face her because I didn’t like the note of panic in her voice. “What are you hiding?”

Her mouth opened in a sexy little O of surprise. “What?”

“Did you lie during your debriefing?”

“No.” She didn’t blink.

Was she lying? Or was I projecting my own half-truths? Which was a distinct possibility. I’d lived a lie for so long, maybe I didn’t know what truth was anymore.

Jesus, I was being an ass, and I couldn’t seem to stop. “You should go. I’m not fit for company right now.”

She didn’t move. “Harvard, the other night, before the training mission…” She picked at her thumbnail. Something she always did when she was anxious. “Did it change anything between us?”

Fuck, yeah, it had. Because I used to be able to look at her without wanting to taste her. I used to be able to talk to her without hearing her breathless cries of pleasure echoing around in my head. I used to be able to stand next to her, breathe in her scent, and not pop a boner.

And I was a douchebag for treating her like a leper now.

“I’m sorry.” I traced a finger down the side of her arm. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s changed. I’m in a shitty mood is all. Spent too much time up in my head today.”

She offered a smile and picked up a stray wire from the bench. “Are you building something for the team?”

I had to swallow to find my voice. “Yeah, a new drone.”

Wariness darkened her blue-gray eyes. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s never been connected to our network. Or any network, for that matter.”

That wariness shifted to interest. “Can I see it?”

I huffed out a laugh. Yes, people were hard, but not her. She was so exactly my kind of people. Reaching over, I tugged back the sheet I’d thrown over the drone when she first knocked. She hopped off the bench and turned to look, and her gasp of delight did wonders for lifting my bad mood.

“It’s a hornet!”

“Camouflage. Thought it was appropriate.” I picked up the device, which was only slightly bigger than an actual hornet. “The problem is it’s so small that any decent camera I put on it makes it too heavy.”

She held out her hand. I placed the drone on her palm, and she lit up like a kid on Christmas. Yup, she was definitely my people. “Does it fly?”

“Without a camera? Yeah, beautifully. The idea is a trained operator will be able to make it move like a real hornet, adding to the camouflage.” I pinched one of the camera prototypes between my fingers and held it up for her to see. Maybe I was scowling at it. Probably scowling at it. This camera problem had been my biggest concern until recently. “If I can just get the damn camera light enough—”

“Is it safe to fly?”

“Like I said, never connected to a network. It’s currently unhackable.”

“Then I want to fly it.” She bounced on the balls of her feet. “Can we take it out for a test flight? Please. I want to see it move.”

She was gorgeous, all but sparkling with excitement. I would’ve given her the sun, the moon, and all the stars right then if it were in my power to do so. Hell, if she asked me for all of that right now, I would kill myself to make it happen just so I could see this look of absolute delight on her face every day.

“Please,” she said again.

I stood and draped an arm around her shoulders. “There’s absolutely nothing else I’d rather do right now.”