McLean, Virginia
Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.
Valerie had forgotten how boring surveillance was. As a kid, she would bring a library’s worth of books and work her way through them while her papá sat watchful, occasionally pointing out something of interest for her to take notes on. Security shift changes, garbage pickup schedules, what time the target left work, car makes and models, and license plates all had gone into her sparkly purple notebook.
Now, she sat in the near dark, reclined in the passenger’s seat with Scott next to her behind the wheel of an old-but-clean gray Camry Dan had left at the apartment for them. Even bundled up in a parka, scarf, and fleece beanie that hid her hair, she shivered.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked, taking a sip of hot coffee from the travel mug Tara had given her, and savoring the short-lived boost of heat.
“Nah.” Scott didn’t take his eyes off the massive red-brick colonial sitting on maybe an acre in McLean. Duncan had parked in the driveway and gone inside a couple hours earlier. They’d followed his white BMW to the upscale neighborhood when he left Aggressor at six p.m.
Her boss’s choice to live in one of the wealthiest zip codes in northern Virginia didn’t surprise her, but his proximity to the CIA’s Langley Headquarters did.
“How much do you think that place would go for?” Scott asked, shaking his head. “It’s got to be at least five thousand square feet, more if the basement’s finished.”
“Probably several million,” she said.
He shook his head. “Who needs that much house?”
She couldn’t imagine. Her apartment was probably smaller than the garage.
Scott had parked as far as possible from the nearest streetlight, and she could barely see his frown under the pale wash of the setting moon as he glanced at her. He turned and rummaged in the back seat, producing a small first aid kit. “I knew Dan would have one,” Scott muttered. Inside he found a Mylar blanket. “Wrap this around yourself under your jacket,” he said, unfolding the crinkly silver fabric. “It’s too shiny to wear over your shoulders.”
Duncan’s street was lined with empty cars—apparently even wealthy folks with three-car garages had too little space, or too many vehicles, to park all their cars inside—which provided great camouflage for her and Scott, but in a neighborhood like this, people wouldn’t hesitate to call the police if they noticed anything suspicious.
She opened her parka and wrapped the ridiculous blanket around her middle, and then zipped her jacket to cover it.
“Better?” Scott asked, taking her gloved hand in his.
His touch, even through multiple layers of fabric, warmed her more than the blanket. “Yes, thanks.”
Conversation had been sparse between them all evening, and she had no idea why. Okay, admittedly, awesome sex when the future was so uncertain, and without the ability to sneak out the morning after—not that she’d wanted to—could make things awkward. But he’d seemed fine until their afternoon breakfast. Something in his demeanor had changed while they were discussing hackers. He’d gone from openly admiring to emotionally shut down in a matter of minutes.
Was he one of those guys who didn’t like it when a woman knew more about something than he did? She had seen firsthand how vicious a man could be when his masculinity was threatened, but she hadn’t pegged him as the type. Still, how well did she really know him?
“I’d like to stay until at least thirty minutes after all the lights in the house go out,” he said. “Will you be okay that long?” Whatever had changed, he still seemed to care about her.
“Yeah. The blanket is helping.” She watched out the window, counting her breaths until she worked up the nerve to say, “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot.” His gaze roved the neighborhood.
“How did you get into the Marines with your conviction? Was your juvenile record sealed?”
He released her hand and shifted in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Juvenile records are generally not public, but law enforcement and the military still have access. Lucky for me, the Marines were desperate for warm bodies to go to Iraq. I had earned my GED in juvie, and they decided, given the circumstances of my crime, my dad’s history of abuse and such,” he waved a hand in the dark, “that I was an acceptable risk. Worthy enough to fight and die, at least. During the troop surge in 2007, they let in far worse than me. Maybe not in huge numbers, but most people have no idea.”
“You say that like you’re one of the bad guys.”
He shrugged.
She brought her knees to her chest and hugged herself, wishing she could think of something to say that would change his mind, and cringing at the harsh crinkling sound made by the blanket. “But you wanted to enlist?”
“Hell, yeah. I wanted to get as far away from Montana as possible, get a fresh start.” He gripped the steering wheel, twisting with gloved hands. “I had a lot to prove. To myself. To the world…” His self-deprecating laugh ushered in that preternatural stillness that seemed to be his native state. “What’s more badass than the Marines when you’re an eighteen-year-old boy, right? No matter how small you are, nobody questions your toughness if you’re one of the few, the proud. At least, that’s what I thought then. I guess I mostly still do.”
She regretted calling him cute now. He’d clearly been teased—maybe even bullied, probably by his dad too—for his size. If she’d met him when he was eighteen, would she have been drawn to him the way she was now? They were both different people then. And yet, maybe not.
“Did you like it?” she prompted, hoping to keep him talking.
“I fucking loved it.” Still staring through the windshield, he said, “I loved every minute of it. ‘Embrace the suck,’ is one of the Corps’ mantras. But everything in my life before the Marines was ‘the suck.’ Prison—shitty as it was—was a step up from home. The Corps? That was the good life. That was my family.”
Her throat tightened. They had so much in common, but until her dad was killed, Valerie’s life had been easy. If one ignored that Papá had sucked her into his underground world, he’d been a good father. Kind, patient, caring, playful, stern without being too strict. And he’d loved Dad to distraction. Valerie knew what a loving relationship and a happy home were like.
Scott had never had it easy. He’d been an innocent boy raised in a violent home, driven to make a terrible choice. And he’d paid for that choice in so many ways. Valerie was the one who’d broken the law and never paid for it. Not through the legal system. Losing her dads and the years that followed had been their own form of punishment, but she’d had food on the table, a safe place to live, and no jail time, no record. Was karma finally catching up with her now?
Except it had given her Scott, and he was a far better man than she deserved, even if he didn’t see it.
“Why’d you get out?” she asked.
His harsh laugh punctured the relative quiet of the car, the puff of air from his lips faintly visible in the chill. “Getting blown up has a way of changing your perspective. By the time I was fully recovered, the mission had changed. I wasn’t sure I fit into it anymore.” He rubbed his left hip. “And honestly,” his voice turned low and rough, “I doubted my ability to protect my teammates, so I chose not to reenlist.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, amazed and grateful that he had opened up to her so completely.
He cleared his throat. “Me too.”
At some point, he must have changed his mind about his skills or he wouldn’t be working with Steele now. She could only hope it provided some of the brotherhood and sense of family that the Marines had given him.
What she wouldn’t give for her own tribe, for people she could trust to have her back, for Scott to be the first—the heart—of that elusive group.
They sat in silence for another half hour as the moon slipped toward the horizon, dropping the night further into darkness. Her thoughts raced round and round like a greyhound on a track, desperately searching for some magical way to prove her and Scott’s innocence and coming up empty.
“He’s moving,” Scott said.
Down the street, partially blocked from view by rows of leafless branches, the BMW’s lights flicked on, and the car backed down the long asphalt driveway.
Her heart sped up. “Did you see if he was alone?”
“Yep. Just him.” Scott peered through the pair of night vision goggles—NVGs—Dan had left in the apartment for him and watched the luxury car through the windshield. “What do you think? Did they forget the cranberries?”
Five minutes later, she and Scott had tailed the car to a nearby VABC store, Virginia’s commonwealth-run liquor retailer, and parked in a dim corner of the lot with a view into the brightly lit storefront through floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Watch for a drop, a brush pass, or anything unusual,” Scott said, raising his large Nikon to his eye and peering through the telephoto lens. He snapped photos continuously as they both scrutinized the man’s every movement.
“Catch anything?” she asked once her boss had returned to his car. Impotent rage ran through her like an earthquake, causing tremors from head to toe. How could Duncan toss her to the wolves and then go about his life as if he hadn’t thoroughly ruined hers?
“No.”
She heaved a disappointed sigh, even though she knew better than to expect to catch him in the act on their first day of watching him. “Me either.” Realistically, it’d be a miracle to catch him doing anything illegal…ever. She and Scott could sit surveillance for the rest of their lives, hiding in the shadows, phishing Aggressor’s employees, and never get what they needed.
Mexico was looking better by the minute.
As soon as he’d locked the door to Dan’s apartment, Scott pinned Valerie to the wall and kissed her. Sitting beside her all evening without being able to touch had been a new kind of torture. Not to mention a distraction that made it hard to do his job.
She responded to his overture with an enthusiasm as addictive as heroin. What was it about her? She tasted like heaven and had a body like the Devil’s own temptation. Every slide of her tongue, every caress of her hands down his backside sent him spiraling.
Reluctantly, he pulled away and paused to catch his breath, head hanging low. “You’re dangerous.”
“I’m not the only one,” she said, her beautiful brown eyes sparkling with desire and amusement. “You’re distracting me from work.”
He gave her another quick kiss, forcing himself to release her from the cage of his arms and step away.
She set her laptop on the breakfast bar and moved the stool out of the way to stand in front of the screen. “I’m tired of sitting.”
A small, green sticky flag covered what he assumed was the camera lens at the top of her screen. “What’s that for?” he asked, pointing.
“In case someone hacks my computer. This way they won’t be able to get video if they activate the camera.”
Jesus, was nothing safe?
Within minutes, she had downloaded all the photos from his camera and they sifted through them. The images from their surveillance were a bust. Nothing about Hollowell’s transaction in the liquor store appeared suspicious, even when they zoomed in. Of course, a simple exchange of words was all it would take for him to set up a meeting or a drop. “We’ll have to keep following him,” Scott said, pushing away from the counter to start the coffee maker.
Valerie sighed and continued to peruse the downloaded images. She inhaled sharply and then frowned. “You took pictures of me?” Her gaze met his over the wide counter. “Why?”
Shit. He swallowed hard, but really, how shocked could she be? She knew he’d followed her for weeks. Still, it must have felt like an invasion. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“This one I get.” She turned her computer so he could see the photo of her getting into her Prius. “And this one,” she said, switching to an image of her talking to a blond man at the rock climbing gym.
He was pretty sure he knew where she was headed, and his stomach dropped. “But this one?” She pointed to the screen, now showing her in that professional-but-oh-so-sexy red dress she’d worn for her visit to Janus.
“Or this.” A close-up of her face as she walked away from Janus beaming with satisfaction appeared on the monitor.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he blurted. Heat spread from his neck to his scalp. “It’s not like I was going to build a shrine or anything…creepy. As a photographer, I have an eye for beauty. I wanted to capture yours.”
An answering blush tinted her cheeks, and she swiveled the laptop in her direction again, her gaze darting to the image. She bit her lower lip as she studied the picture.
Scott abandoned the coffee maker and moved around the bar to stand next to her, careful not to get too close. He shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to touch her. “In the beginning, you had me fooled,” he said.
Her chin came up and her brow dropped, and he plowed on. “You dressed to be ignored, and it worked. Even on me at first. You were an assignment, nothing else. Pretty, but otherwise unremarkable.”
Her lips thinned.
“Which is exactly what you wanted,” he reminded her. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that she hid behind her dumpy clothes to help the men she worked with forget that she was a woman. As much as that was possible. The fact that she felt like she needed to go to such lengths made his fists clench. But then, he’d been a Marine. He understood how subtly—or overtly—hostile a predominantly and historically male culture could be for a woman. He’d just never given it much thought until now.
“But that day,” he continued, “after you got past the Janus guard, I saw a new side of you, smiling and fearless and confident. And fucking stunning in that dress… I couldn’t help but snap a few photos.”
Returning her gaze to the screen, she ran her fingertips lightly over the glass. Did she even realize how much he gave away with that picture? His feelings might as well have been written in neon given the lighting, the focus, the way he framed her face.
It was as if he stood naked before her, but this time it wasn’t his clothes that were missing, it was every defense he’d ever built, every barrier he’d ever erected for concealment. He realized now that he’d begun to fall in love with her that day, and it was obvious in every pixel of her image.
He stood rooted to the ground, his breath shallow, head spinning. He could no longer deny it. I love her.
Fuck.
“I was playing a role,” she said finally, scattering the jumble of thoughts in his head. “That’s not me.”
“Bullshit.” He shifted close enough to catch her light floral scent and pointed to the picture, fighting the urge to bury his nose against her neck. “That is you. That’s you after pulling off the lie, when you thought no one was looking. The only other time I’ve seen you look that honest, that unguarded, is during sex.”
Spots of color rose on her cheeks again, and the memory of her coming apart while he took her against the wall made him uncomfortably hard.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again, biting her lower lip as she returned her focus to the computer monitor.
“Take a good, hard look at yourself, Valerie,” he said. “You are more than your failures, more than your scars, more than your past. You are that woman,” he tapped the monitor, “and she’s incredible.”
And now that he’d pretty much given away his hand, Scott wished he had some kind of ghillie suit that would make him invisible in Dan’s living room.
“Thank you,” Valerie finally said, her voice soft as a puff of air. She stared at the image for several heartbeats before giving him a curious look. “Taking pictures is a lot like being a sniper, isn’t it?”
Talk about being blindsided. His pulse drummed in his ears. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on.” She met his gaze with a skeptical brow, warming to her topic. “You need the patience to find the right position, the ideal angle. You have to sight your target and adjust your aim. And then you have to lie in wait for the perfect moment to take your shot.” Her expression softened, and she reached up to trail her fingers through the hair above his left ear. “But in this case, no one dies.”
He kept his hands jammed in his pockets as his throat closed up. She had just nailed him.
How had he never seen the parallels between his old life and his new hobby?
But in this case, no one dies.
For him, photography was a therapy of sorts. A way to help him deal with what he’d seen and done. An excuse to ignore everyone around him for hours at a time without appearing crazy. A way to frame the world exactly as he desired.
A way to preserve a target rather than destroy it.
“Don’t make me out to be something I’m not,” he said. “I don’t regret a single kill. Every one of them was a threat.”
“Protector,” she whispered with a nod.
Her fingers wrapped around the back of his neck, and he couldn’t look away. He began to feel decidedly un-calm standing so close to her.
The desire to kiss her overwhelmed him. With every cell in his body he wanted to pin her to the wall and sip the vitality from her lips, lick it from her skin. To plunge deep into her body and tap into her vibrant sparkle. Not to steal it from her, but to share it with her. To let it heal him from the inside out.
The apartment was suddenly too warm, too small. They didn’t have time for this distraction, and he couldn’t afford to let his feelings get in the way of the job they had to do.
He stepped out of her reach before he did something stupid, like haul her into his arms and confess his love.
By three a.m., Valerie had everything set up for several of her phishing attacks on people at Aggressor. She even had one ready to go for Cathy Hollowell on the off chance that the woman and her husband used the same personal computer. Duncan might not keep anything on his home drive, but people got careless and arrogant all the time. It was worth a shot.
Valerie would send the emails later in the morning during typical business hours to arouse less suspicion.
Listening to a running loop of Santigold and the Renegades through her earbuds while she worked, the tasks had kept her busy enough to ignore her confusion over Scott. She’d wanted to be creeped out—or at least pissed off—by the pictures of her on his camera, but the images had been more artistic than stalkerish. She couldn’t explain it, but the mood of the photos had been decidedly…admiring.
Not only that, he’d somehow taken her from pretty—enough to occasionally turn heads or distract a guard with her cleavage—to almost beautiful. And, God, his words. She shivered at the memory of those words. You’re that woman, and she’s incredible.
For one breath-stealing moment she’d had the sense of something important and wonderful hovering between them, but then she’d ruined it, like a speck of glitter in the air that turns out to be dust lit by the sun.
She’d spoiled the moment with her obviously unwanted observations about the similarities between photographers and snipers. Hadn’t she thought herself clever? And, more importantly, like she finally had some profound insight into what made Scott tick.
Stupid.
Could she honestly be shocked he wasn’t happy about being psychoanalyzed? No wonder he’d backed away.
She let out a long sigh.
Her computer dinged softly through her headphones and she stopped absently combing hacker forums for news to check the alert.
Yes! For whatever reason, Eli had connected to the Aggressor corporate network in the middle of the night.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she fired the commands to launch a malware program through Eli’s connection that would give her a backdoor into Aggressor. She was proud of the scripts she had written and excited to see them out in the real world. Also nervous, since this could be the most important hack of her life.
Scott mumbled something from behind her. She removed the earbuds and looked over her shoulder at him.
He roused from the sofa and rubbed his eyes, checking his watch as he stood. “What’s going on?”
“Eli logged in,” she said with a grin.
Blinking, his demeanor went from soft and groggy to upright and alert in an instant. “Oorah. Now what?”
“I used the connection to upload a virus to the Aggressor server. He got us past the firewall, and my scripts will set up an administrative username and password that resides in the compiler.”
Scott squinted.
She waved a hand. “Sorry. Basically, they shouldn’t even notice it’s there, and it’ll be nearly impossible to get rid of without wiping their systems.”
“What about antivirus software?”
“That only works on known code. All of my scripts are clean as virgin snow. I rewrote my old functions from scratch and didn’t borrow from anyone else. So even if the Aggressor admins added the phrases from my old work to their antivirus database, it won’t help them.”
“Smart.” He tilted his head side to side, his neck popping loudly in the quiet.
She scrunched her nose at the ghastly sound.
“Sorry. Bad habit.” He strode into the kitchen and opened the pantry, staring idly at the boxes and cans Tara had left behind for them. “How long until you’re in?”
“I’m in now.”
He whipped his head toward her, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. “That fast?”
She laughed. “Faster than a speeding bullet.”
“And potentially just as destructive,” he said without rancor as he snagged a box of pita crackers from the shelf.
“True. Or helpful.”
He conceded her point with a half nod and set the crackers and a tub of hummus on the bar across from her. “Hungry?”
At the sight of the food, her stomach rumbled. “Yes, but I need to start digging around at Aggressor, see if I can find the emails Duncan sent me. I’m hoping there’s a backup somewhere.”
“Eat and type.”
“Yes, sir.” She tapped her fingers to her brow.
“I wasn’t an officer.”
Reaching for a cracker, she caught his gaze. “So?”
“So. Only officers get saluted.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Tradition. It dates back to medieval knights showing respect and good intentions, and the military—especially the Marines—is hardcore about its rituals.”
“I know nothing about the military. If you weren’t an officer, what were you?”
“Enlisted.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Education.” He frowned at his fingers, which were splayed on the counter. “Officers have to have a bachelor’s degree.”
“Oh.” She’d had no idea that was how the military worked, but she absolutely understood the resentment that came with limited opportunity.
Just one more thing they had in common. One more reason she connected with him. Maybe even loved him.