Chapter 10 #3
Sam didn’t blame them. The instant he put on his spurt of growth, he’d used his size and strength to get what he wanted whenever he could. Life was tough; no one knew that better than he did. You used whatever goddamned tools life gave you and hoped like hell you came out ahead.
But Nicole was somehow different, though she didn’t need to be.
She had, like, a fucking nuclear bomb at her disposal.
The most powerful weapon in the world—female beauty that was off the scale.
He couldn’t even begin to imagine any heterosexual male ever saying no to anything she wanted. In essence, she was a princess.
And yet there was none of that in her interactions. She didn’t assume any kind of female superiority or expect special treatment. She worked hard for everything she got and didn’t whine or look for protection when life got tough.
Amazing.
A woman in a million and she’d become his. So he better goddamned keep her safe.
“Go back a little further,” Sam urged. “Maybe he’s looking for something that came in a week ago, or two weeks ago. Is there anything that could raise a red flag?”
“No, Sam.” Nicole shook her head. “I keep telling you. I’m simply too new at the game.
Confidential or even economically important data is either translated in-house or would be given to a partner of long standing with access to high-level encryption, not to me.
Wordsmith is a year old. No one’s going to send me anything sensitive.
It’s true that we get a lot of economic texts but as I said, most of them are to comply with European Union rules that require a version in English, and we get the work because, frankly, I charge less than a European translation agency, and the dollar’s really low right now.
So we get a lot of legally mandated translations of board meetings, some company prospectuses, the odd literary translation.
Some technical stuff.” Nicole lifted her shoulders helplessly. “That’s about it.”
He wanted to pound the steering wheel, pound someone’s head, pound something. If they couldn’t get a handle on what the fuckhead was looking for, they could never stand down from the Defcon I level of alert they were at now.
Defcon I was a level that was preparatory to war.
Sam didn’t mind going to war. He’d sure as hell go to war to defend Nicole, but he needed to know who he was fighting, otherwise he was just spinning his wheels.
Not to mention the fact that you couldn’t keep up a maximum level of alert forever, not unless you were a soldier.
Nicole would eventually chafe at staying forever by his side—his left side to keep his shooting hand free.
Sam was used to worst-case scenarios because in his personal experience, the worst thing that could happen often did. He was alive to danger at all times, but he was also aware that it came off as paranoia to civilians.
Right now, Sam wanted to keep Nicole in his apartment, lock her up nice and tight till he had a better handle on this thing. He defied anyone who wasn’t Special Forces, and using C–4, to get through his security and even then, he had a built-in emergency signal sent to his cell in case of a breach.
But he couldn’t keep Nicole locked up in his house forever, much as he’d like to.
She wouldn’t stand for it. And the police wouldn’t stand guard outside her house forever, either.
Sam could pick up the slack after the police stood down, but he couldn’t station his men 24/7 for an indeterminate amount of time; he didn’t have the manpower.
If they didn’t figure out what the fuckhead who’d attacked her wanted, Nicole would walk around with a bull’s-eye painted on that beautiful smooth forehead, because she simply wasn’t the kind of woman to cower, to stay put when he said stay.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Nicole mused. “Maybe I did leave the chair pushed away from the desk and this guy was looking for something else entirely. Like money, or…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to him.
“Well, that’s the thing,” she said, blowing out a little breath of frustration.
“I don’t know what there could possibly be worth stealing in my office.
I never keep money there and there’s just nothing that has much resale value.
But maybe he wasn’t looking for something specific, maybe he was just a thief making the rounds of the offices that were easy to break into.
God knows mine seems to have an invisible sign that says, ‘This one’s a snap to break into—come and get it. ’”
She slanted him a wry glance.
“No.” Sam was already shaking his head before she finished talking.
“It would be nice to think that, but he wasn’t a common thief, honey.
Burglars don’t carry weapons. It’s like a kind of rule.
The sentence for armed robbery is more than twice that of burglary.
This guy was armed to the teeth.” It had to be asked.
“Do you think—do you think he could have been waiting there to rape you?”
The thought had of course already occurred to him and it was horrifying. Not as bad as the thought of her being killed, but it was right up there in the same ballpark of horrible things in a world in which horrible things happened on a regular basis.
Nicole stared out the window for a long moment, face somber, thinking.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so.
I think if somebody wanted to—to rape me…
” She swallowed heavily. “I think if that was what he wanted then he’d have been already, um, aroused.
I think he’d have made it clear in the first second that’s what he wanted.
He held me tightly against him, but I didn’t feel, um, an erection.
So, I’d say no, rape wasn’t what he wanted. ”
Sam’s grip loosened slightly on the wheel. It was a miracle it hadn’t snapped off in his hands.
So rape was out. That was good.
Now he only had murder to worry about.