Chapter 12
Kat’s office was her domain. Large monitors lined one wall in front of her desk.
She had an elaborate keyboard and ergonomic mouse.
Her desk chair cost a small fortune. Miles bought Kat anything she needed because Kat was the frontline for cybersecurity at Gray Tower.
She was still cleaning up a mess left behind by the previous Head of IT Security, a guy who had betrayed the company.
Ever since then, Kat had discovered issues: sloppy work, incompetence, and intentional security holes.
This was one of the reasons why Alex had decided to help Nathan.
They just didn’t know for sure who was watching their operations.
“Hey,” Alex greeted.
Kat’s door was open, and she could see her friend typing furiously. It looked like a screen of random letters and numbers, but Alex knew better. Kat was a gifted coder and had created several of the programs that helped keep Gray Tower’s systems secure.
Without looking up, Kat said, “Hey, give me like a minute.”
Alex stepped into the office, closing the door behind her. She couldn’t afford anyone overhearing this conversation.
“Done,” Kat said, spinning around in her chair. “What’s up? You haven’t visited the Woman Cave in a while. I was getting worried you forgot where it was.”
Shaking her head, Alex said, “You know I’ve had a rough time lately, and I’ve had a backlog of work.”
“I thought you loved those types of challenges?”
“I do. Things have been different since my kidnapping,” Alex admitted. “I’m sure I’ll bounce back after time has passed.”
“I’m so sorry, Alex. I’m the one who needs to be coming to you. You’ve been through hell. I remember when Jack and I got back from the island…I had nightmares for months.”
The island.
She wanted to ask Kat about her experience with Nathan. It’s not that she didn’t trust him. She wanted to know more about him.
“Your experience was terrible, too,” Alex said. “You had super soldiers after you. Thank God Nathan was there.”
Kat nodded.
“Yeah. And we lucked out that I ironically had the backdoor code to the suits.”
“You all worked well together.” Alex paused, trying to slow her breathing as she asked the next question. “What was Nathan like? I read the reports about him, but I never got any real impressions of him. You’ve never mentioned much about him except that he was a great help.”
Kat cocked her head as if deep in thought before saying, “He was serious. You could see he was loyal to the Conglomerate but also smart enough to know something was wrong. If he hadn’t, we’d have been dead.
When we told him about the Conglomerate, he looked like his whole world had come crashing down.
I guess it had. He thought he was out saving the world, and instead, he was working for the bad guy. ”
“That must have been awful.”
“Yeah. He held it together, and he was easy to work with, despite everything going on. He has leadership capabilities, and we know that he’s an elite soldier, considering the Conglomerate would only give a suit to the best.”
“He would have made a good addition to Gray Tower,” Alex noted. She needed to steer the conversation to the super suit code. “I wonder why he ran instead of staying with Gray Tower. I know Miles would have loved to study that suit to see the Conglomerate’s upgrades.”
“I have my suspicions he still has business to attend to.”
“Business?” Alex questioned.
“Revenge. I’d be mad if I found out my whole world was a lie. How would you feel if you found out Gray Tower was the bad guy?”
Alex flinched. She had never thought of it that way. She would be heartbroken. Sad. Furious. Poor Nathan. She’d have to talk to him about it. He had no one to talk to, and those emotions were festering. Alex knew because she was there years ago until she met Miles, and her world changed.
Miles.
She wanted to cry, thinking about what she was going to do, but it had to be done.
“Hey, speaking of the super suit,” Alex began carefully, “Miles needs your notes and patch for it.”
Kat froze, a frown crossing her face.
“Really?” she asked cautiously.
“Uh, yes,” Alex pushed. “He needs to review it. Don’t ask me why. He wouldn’t even tell me.”
Kat’s frown deepened.
“He knows the security protocols for this, right?” she asked. “Because we’ve had too many security breaches to put this on the network.”
“He knows,” Alex reassured her.
“Okay. Then, I’ll have it for you in a few minutes.”
“Thank you. And please, don’t talk about this with anyone. It’s so high level, I’m surprised he didn’t send a set of security guards with me.”
Alex smiled, trying to play the last part off as a joke, but what she didn’t want was Kat to start talking to Jack. Then, it would be all over before she and Nathan got started.
She picked up a USB key from Kat, promising to immediately deliver it to Miles.
It was all lies, and she felt awful. She tried to keep focused on the end game: destroying the super suits.
However, with the betrayal of Kat’s trust fresh in her mind, Alex still was uneasy.
This wasn’t her. She didn’t do things like this.
But would she if it meant Jack never had to go up against one of those soldiers again?
How about Mercer? Or Gabriel? Ryan? Logan?
Kat might understand then. Her fiancé meant everything to her, and Alex knew she worried about him every time he got called out for a mission, even though that wasn’t his primary job.
Feeling better, Alex made a detour to Miles’ office, citing the need to bring some equipment home for work.
Everyone from the secure sublevel floors was searched coming in and out of the area.
If she wanted to take anything—like a USB key—home with her, she’d have to have it logged.
However, she was going to say she took a different key home as well as a few other things to cover up the fact that she was smuggling home some of the most sensitive data Gray Tower possessed.
Getting permission from Miles was easy. In fact, he was so focused on a conference call that he nodded in response and waved her away. Again, she felt awful, but she reminded herself of the good it would do for Gray Tower.
By the end of the workday, she was freaking out, but again, nothing happened when she gave security the documentation for the devices she was taking home.
Even though she didn’t know everyone at Gray Tower, everyone knew her.
Security barely glanced at the items before they waved her through to the elevators and said, “Have a good day, Ms. Thorn.”
Alex smiled politely and felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest when she left the sublevels and headed to employee parking.
She was driving out of the Gray Tower complex when she realized she had no way of contacting Nathan.
What exactly was she supposed to do now?
She was pulling into her garage when a text buzzed on her smartwatch. She glanced down at it.
Unknown: Well?
Alex frowned, wondering if it was a wrong number, but that thought quickly left after she thought about Nathan. He was very capable of finding her phone number. The message felt cryptic enough to be him. Still, she didn’t want to assume. So, she dug out her phone and replied cautiously.
Alex: Well, what?
Unknown: Did you?
Alex: Did I WHAT?
Unknown: Get it?
Alex: Who is this?
Unknown: Your friendly psych ward patient.
She couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing. It shouldn’t have been funny. Nothing about what he had gone through was amusing, but she loved that he was surviving through humor. It had been something she had tried many times, though she had never been successful at it.
Alex: You’re a real comedian.
Nathan: I’m here all night.
Alex: Where are you? I need to talk to you.
Nathan: Because you have it?
Alex: Maybe.
Nathan: Well, come inside. We’ll talk.
She frowned. What did he mean by “come inside?” Did he break into her house again?
After Nathan’s text, she was not surprised to see him sprawled out on her living room couch, watching her TV like he owned the place. Shaking her head, she plopped her purse on the kitchen counter and walked over to him, her hands on her hips.
“Make yourself at home,” she said sarcastically.
“Thanks. I will.”
Nathan grinned, stretching out on her leather sofa.
Alex studied him, realizing how big of a man he was.
He had gained weight, even since the day he had first broken into her house.
His cheeks looked fuller, and his chest filled out the T-shirt he was wearing better.
At over six feet tall, he felt huge to her average height.
He also looked handsome as hell, and that wasn’t helping one bit.
Patting an open spot on the sofa, Nathan waved her over, saying, “We need to talk.”
“We do, huh?” she asked coyly.
“Yeah. Sit and get out of those ridiculous heels.” He pointed to her Jimmy Choo pumps Miles had given her last Christmas. “And I thought I had been tortured.”
More jokes? She didn’t realize Nathan would be so…funny. He seemed so serious. She had expected him to be a no-nonsense kind of guy—like Gabriel or Mercer. Instead, the man was a hoot.
She tried not to smile as she sat next to him, immediately feeling the heat between their bodies.
They were too close. He was too big, too much of a man.
But she wasn’t scared of him, not Nathan.
No, she was sweating because he smelled too good: spicy, woodsy with a bit of citrus.
It probably wasn’t cologne, more like deodorant or soap, but she didn’t care. It was intoxicating.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Oh…yes,” she said, flustered.
She hadn’t meant to sit there gawking at him.
“You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to. You can still back out. I won’t be mad.”
“No, I’m sure,” she said firmly, reaching into the inside of her suit jacket and pulling out the small USB drive.