Chapter 2
LEX
Ihave seventeen minutes before my next conference call, a corporate espionage case threatening to dismantle a decade of work, and a bodyguard who looks like he should be on the cover of an outdoor magazine instead of running a security detail.
This is not what I asked for.
I walk the gravel path toward whatever cabin they've assigned me, and I don't look back.
Looking back would imply I care whether Hayes Donovan is keeping pace, and I absolutely do not care.
The crunch of his boots behind me is steady, unhurried, like a man who's in no rush because he already knows exactly where we're going.
Which, of course, he does. This is his property. His territory. And the fact that he let me walk ahead like I'm leading when we both know I have no idea where cabin four is located tells me something about Hayes Donovan that his boyish face and easy smile tried very hard to hide.
He's smart.
I hate that.
"Left at the fork," he says from behind me. His voice carries without raising. Calm, clear, a voice trained to be heard over chaos. "The path on the right leads to the training facilities. You won't need those."
I turn left without acknowledging the instruction.
The path narrows through a stand of ponderosa pines, and the air changes.
Cooler. Sharper. The Nevada mountain air is nothing like the recycled climate control of my San Francisco penthouse, and my lungs are pulling at it greedily, which irritates me because I don't want to enjoy anything about this arrangement.
Two weeks. Warren insisted. Two weeks at this off-grid security compound while his team and the FBI work the internal investigation.
Two weeks away from my office, my boardroom, my operating rhythm.
Two weeks under the protection of men who live in the mountains like it's the 1800s because apparently that qualifies them to handle a sophisticated corporate threat.
The cabin comes into view through the trees, and I slow.
It's not what I expected. Cedar and stone, single story, with a covered porch and a green metal roof that blends into the tree line.
It looks like it belongs here, like the mountain grew it.
Clean lines, solid construction, windows positioned for light but not for visibility from the trail. Someone built this with purpose.
Hayes moves ahead of me to the door. He produces a keycard from his pocket and holds it to a panel I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't looking. The lock disengages with a quiet click.
"Sully, our tech specialist, wired the cabin two days ago," he says, pushing the door open and stepping inside first. His body fills the doorframe for a moment, shoulders rolling as he scans the interior before stepping aside to let me in.
A room-clearing habit. Automatic. "Biometric lock is set to your fingerprint, my fingerprint, and Deck's.
Keycard backup. The windows are reinforced, the walls are insulated beyond standard, and there's a panic button on the nightstand and another under the kitchen counter. "
I step inside. The cabin is warm, wood-floored, simply furnished.
A queen bed with a thick down comforter and more pillows than a mountain cabin has any right to.
A stone fireplace. A small but functional kitchen.
A bathroom through a door to the left. My suitcases are already positioned beside the bed.
Someone brought them in while we were walking.
It's comfortable. Annoyingly so.
I set my bag on the kitchen counter and pull out my laptop. "The Wi-Fi situation?"
"Satellite-boosted. Sully set up a dedicated encrypted connection for this cabin. It won't be as fast as your office, but it's secure and it'll handle video calls."
"Cell service?"
"Spotty at best. Satellite phone in the top drawer by the bed for emergencies. If you need to make calls, the lodge has a boosted signal. I can escort you."
"I don't need an escort to make a phone call."
"You do while you're here."
I turn to look at him. He's standing just inside the door, hands loose at his sides, taking up more space than a man his size should reasonably command.
And that's the problem, isn't it? He doesn't look like what I expected.
I expected someone like the men on my corporate security team.
Older. Thicker. Forgettable. Men who blend into the background like expensive furniture.
Hayes Donovan does not blend.
He's tall enough. Six-two, maybe. Athletic in a way that suggests function over vanity.
The black henley he's wearing stretches across his chest and arms like it was bought a size too small, and the rolled sleeves show forearms that are corded and tan.
Light brown hair a little long on top, pushed back carelessly.
A trimmed beard that frames a jaw strong enough to be aggravating.
And those eyes. Hazel with gold flecks, framed by laugh lines that deepen when he's amused, which appears to be often. He has dimples. Actual dimples.
He looks like a man who's never had a bad day in his life, which I know isn't true because I read his file on the drive up. Twelve years of Pararescue. Combat deployments. A Silver Star he never talks about. A teammate he couldn't save in a training accident his second year. He's carried weight.
He just doesn't wear it the way the older operators do. And that makes people assume he hasn't carried any.
I know the feeling.
"Your security briefing," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing my legs. "Go ahead."
He doesn't react to being given permission to speak in his own cabin on his own compound. Another point for him. Most men would bristle. Hayes just leans his shoulder against the doorframe and starts talking.
He's thorough. I'll give him that. He walks me through the compound layout, perimeter security, communication protocols, emergency procedures, and extraction plans.
Three different routes depending on threat direction, each one mapped to terrain features he describes with the specificity of someone who's walked every inch of this mountain.
He covers my schedule for the two weeks.
Morning briefings, afternoon sessions on threat awareness and personal security (I almost object, but the look on his face says he's expecting me to, so I don't give him the satisfaction), and free time that isn't actually free because he'll be within earshot at all times.
"At all times," I repeat.
"My cabin is forty yards east of yours. Direct sight line to your front door. If you leave this cabin for any reason, day or night, I go with you."
"And if I want privacy?"
"You'll have privacy inside these walls. Sully's system monitors the perimeter, not the interior. What you do in here is your business." A pause. "But if your door opens, my phone alerts me, and I'm on your porch in under thirty seconds."
I study him. He delivers all of this without posturing, without the puffed-chest performance I've seen from a hundred security professionals who wanted me to feel impressed by their protocols.
Hayes is just stating facts. This is how it works.
These are the rules. There's no negotiation in his tone, but there's no condescension either.
It's infuriating because I can't find a legitimate reason to dismiss him.
"Questions?" he asks.
"Your commander said you're the best available operator." I uncross my legs and stand. "Are you the best available? Or are you simply the only one not otherwise committed?"
The question is deliberate. Cutting. The kind of thing I'd say in a board meeting to test whether a vice president has spine or just a title.
Hayes doesn't flinch. Doesn't bristle. He pushes off the doorframe and takes two steps into the cabin, closing the distance between us to something that would be unprofessional in most contexts.
Close enough that I catch his scent. Pine and gun oil and something warm underneath, like sun-heated skin.
Close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze.
"I'm the best you're going to get, Ms. Morrison." His voice is quiet. Even. No ego in it, just fact. "And by the end of this, you're going to be glad about that."
My pulse does something unhelpful. A quick stutter-step that I haven't felt in years, not since before the divorce, not since before I locked down every part of myself that responds to men who think confidence is the same as competence.
But Hayes Donovan isn't just confident. He's confident and correct, and those two things together in a man seven years younger than me is a problem I did not budget for.
"We'll see," I say.
He nods once, steps back, and the cabin breathes again. "Dinner's at the lodge at eighteen hundred. I'll come get you at seventeen-forty-five."
"I'm capable of walking to a building."
"Seventeen-forty-five," he repeats, and then he's gone. The door closes with a soft click, and I'm standing alone in a mountain cabin eight hundred miles from my corner office, listening to the wind move through pine trees and the fading crunch of his boots on gravel.
I exhale through my teeth and sit back down on the bed.
My phone buzzes. Warren Park.
"Tell me you've settled in," he says when I answer.
"I've settled into a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a bodyguard who looks like he graduated college last spring."
"Hayes Donovan has a Silver Star and twelve years of—"
"I read the file, Warren."
A beat. "And?"
"And he's competent. Annoyingly."
Warren, who has known me for six years and survived every one of them, laughs. "Give him a chance, Lex. Cross doesn't put his B-team on high-profile details."
"I don't need a chance. I need results. What's the status on the internal investigation?"