Chapter Thirteen

S hiloh paused in the doorway of the covered deck. The twinkle lights had been switched off, and the bright sunlight filtered into the space where just the night before she and Oaks had spent a mind-blowing evening.

Seeing it in the light of day didn’t prevent the echo of what they’d shared.

Or what she’d felt.

With quiet footsteps, she crossed the deck and sank to one of the chairs. What was she going to do?

She didn’t even know if her feelings were real . She was in such a rough place in her life, had spent months alone, cut off from contact with others. It was difficult to trust her feelings now. That tingle in the area of her heart when she thought about Oaks might just be a false emotion.

The wall of glass on one side of the deck provided a beautiful view of the ranch with a flat green pasture dotted with a few black cows. Beyond that, a deep blue mountain loomed up like a majestic overseer of the land.

This place was unlike anything she’d ever known or seen before. To say it offered a new type of peace was an understatement.

Shiloh released a soft sigh and soaked in the view and the silence of the place. Or maybe she just soaked in the memory of Oaks and what they’d shared here.

A soft knocking sound on wood made her twist in the seat to see the very man she was fixated on.

Oaks tilted his head in a silent question. “Everything all right?”

She waved for him to come in. “Of course. What’s going on?”

As he came toward her, his eyes hooded with that same look of desire she’d seen on him the night before. Instead of bending to kiss her, though, or starting anything close to what they’d done together before, he simply reached out for her hand.

She gave it to him, and he tugged her to her feet.

Again, he didn’t pull her into his arms or kiss her.

She didn’t know why she was so disappointed, but she was.

“What’s going on?”

He eyed her. “Something came up. A project.”

Her brows pinched. “With the security agency?”

He nodded. “We can use your expertise if you’re willing.”

Excitement jolted through her, something she hadn’t felt in far too long. The things she uncovered about William towards the end were scary. But when she began working for William’s company, she enjoyed the thrill.

“I’m happy to help.”

He offered her a tip of one corner of his mouth. “C’mon.”

Walking behind a man with a backside like Oaks’s was as much of a hardship as being in this peaceful place. Each step he took made the hard plane of his buttocks twitch in the most enticing way. Every room they passed through on the way to the office was quiet and still, the décor simple and yet refined.

When they reached the office, Colt was at the long table. Several laptops were set up at the ready.

At her entrance, Colt glanced up. Shiloh was struck by how handsome he was. All the Malones bore a rugged beauty, though Willow could only be called a bombshell. But Colt had a darkness in his eyes that she didn’t see in Carson. Though he hadn’t shared much with her on the trail, what he had told her made her understand those shadows in his gray eyes better.

Oaks’s shadows were different. She suspected he’d worked through more of his.

She drifted toward the table. “What can I help with?”

He turned the laptop to show her the screen. “Carson was doing a background check on someone, and scareware took us out.”

“Ohh. Let me have a look.” She drew the laptop closer.

“We’ll provide you with a contract and pay.” Oaks’s words made her look up sharply at him.

“You don’t need to pay me. You’re providing me with protection services.”

Something flickered in the recesses of his gaze. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll get an agreement written up now while you get to work.”

She eyed him for a moment and then nodded. It was easier to agree than to argue. Besides, she could have him deposit the funds in a secret account that William would never be able to trace to her. Once all this was over, when she finally left the Black Heart Ranch and was free, she would require money to live.

After he walked out, she slanted a look at Colt. He was absorbed in whatever he was doing on the other laptop and not paying attention to her. As she set to work, she realized their system setup could be improved.

“I can make some changes to your security while I’m in the system,” she told Colt.

He paused to give her his attention, brows raised. “Considering what just happened, I’d say we can use it.”

The minutes turned into an hour. When she finally broke into the system, she let out a small noise of success.

“You got in?” Colt peered over her shoulder.

“Yes! It took a while. Whoever did that knew what they were doing.” That brought another question—what enemies did Black Heart Security have?

She imagined the enemies of the people they protected might target them as well. She didn’t like being the reason for that drone showing up on the ranch.

All the more reason to dig her way out of this wreckage.

As soon as she ensured the Black Heart Security system was secure, she could go into her own account and update the authentications needed to secure William’s files. She’d been updating the credentials every day on the device Oaks supplied her with, but since she was already logged in here, there was no reason why she shouldn’t.

Colt returned to his own work. Somewhere outside the house, she heard an engine rumble to life.

Stealing another look at Colt from the corner of her eye, she made sure he wasn’t paying attention to her. Then she set her fingers to the keys, opened a clandestine window and logged in to her own private account.

Seeing that the files were secure brought relief to her nerves. Lately, those nerves had been frayed, snapped, snipped and fried. When it came to her life, she would take any peace she could.

Off and on for the past six months, she’d been logging in to an old email just to ensure she wasn’t missing anything. Nobody knew about the account she’d used in college, and it only received the occasional spam these days. At this point, she was just being paranoid about checking it. But she checked it anyway out of habit.

Same old empty inbox. Even the spam folder was barren.

Suddenly, in the corner of the screen, a chat message popped up.

She blinked. Who would be messaging her on this platform?

Holding her breath, she twisted her lips in concentration and clicked on the chat.

At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at. The person messaging her used an unfamiliar name, and they’d only sent an image.

She focused on the image, trying to make out what the subject matter was.

When she enlarged it, she realized it was an aerial map.

There were tiny red pins dropped at various spots and—

Oh god, no.

It was a map of the Black Heart Ranch…and those little pins were targets.

The house, the barn…the veterans’ building. All the vets. The family.

A chat message popped up. Somehow, Shiloh managed to stifle a gasp of surprise but felt her body rock in her seat.

She sliced a glance at Colt, who was absorbed in his work, oblivious to her.

Gulping down the bile hovering too high in her throat, she skimmed the message.

But wait—there’s more.

She could almost hear William’s voice speaking the words in his cocky way. Her heart pounded, but she only had to wait a split second before a new image popped up. This one made all the blood drain out of her head. Her mind swirled, and the room rotated around her.

An image of Oaks dressed in his usual jeans, a canvas coat and a cowboy hat. She’d seen him wear these garments at least three times since coming to the ranch.

But there was a red light on his chest in one photo. In the next, it was centered on his forehead.

Heart pounding, she enlarged the photos and peered closer.

It’s photoshopped. Someone added those dots. They aren’t real.

But the message was clear. William wanted the files she had or Oaks was a dead man.

If William got to Oaks, she could never live with the guilt. Forget about her feelings about the man who rescued her by claiming her as his wife.

This was all her fault. When she realized that William was making deals with the Russian mob, funding their terroristic activities, she should have gone immediately to the police with the information. Instead, she’d spent six months in hiding in hopes of giving the intel to the right person, all because she didn’t trust others. She’d been such a coward.

She would never be that person again. She would be brave, and that meant taking action to save Oaks—or at least not take him down with her.

She didn’t realize she’d set her fingertips to the keys until she felt the smooth plastic. Quickly, she typed the words and then paused to stare at them, her heart a wild bird trapped in her chest.

Let’s set up a meeting.

Her finger hovered over the button that would send the message to the man she only wanted to see on a news story as they dragged him off to a life sentence in prison.

Should she send it? What would happen if she didn’t?

Oaks would die.

She hit send.

Her pulse hammered in her ears as she waited for a response. Those little red pins on the map of the Black Heart Ranch swam before her vision, but the red dots on Oaks’s head and chest made her insides shrivel in terror.

How about lunch? It will be like old times.

She bowed her head over the keyboard, memories of so many lunches with William. Times he’d wine and dine her, wooing her with how worldly and intelligent he was. She fell in love with his head for business. When it came to tech, he was a visionary beyond his years.

He could have gone so far with brains like his, and instead he’d turned to a dark world that she wanted no part of.

She wasn’t proud of the na?ve woman she had once been, but her next move would change all that.

Her mind darted ahead to what she must do. She set her fingers to the keys and typed her reply.

Name the time and place.

There’s a diner in the middle of town. How does breakfast sound?

* * * * *

Carson’s personal office was dim, lit only by a single lamp that illuminated the wood desk where dozens of papers were spread out on the surface.

The surveillance footage from the handler’s murder, along with maps and images of all the people and businesses associated with William over the years created a makeshift crime investigation board. Oaks and Carson had spent hours poring over all the information and digging up more as they began to connect the dots.

Laid out this way, Oaks saw how damn huge this case was with multiple people involved.

He folded one arm across his chest and scrubbed his knuckle across his upper lip. The sharp stubble of his five-o’clock shadow created a rasping sound. Carson stood on the opposite side of the desk, focused.

“This guy’s been a snake in the grass for months, slithering just out of sight.”

Oaks nodded in agreement. “Just inches from the feet of the authorities. With all of his connections, no wonder. They hide him.”

“And kill those who might talk.”

They both looked at the photo of the dead counterintelligence agent. The handler Shiloh was meant to pass off the files to had been trained to handle threats just like this…yet he’d lost his life.

Oaks shuddered to think of what would have happened to her if she’d made it to that meeting. It was shocking that she’d managed to stay alive.

“We need to think hard about those files Shiloh has locked down.” Carson lifted his gaze to Oaks. “How safe do you think they actually are?”

He rubbed a hand over his nape and squeezed his stiff neck muscles. “She’s smarter than anyone I’ve seen when it comes to tech. Hell, none of us have been able to see what she’s even doing on her laptop.”

Carson gave him a narrow look. “Yeah, wasn’t the point of her having access giving us access?”

“Guess my idea backfired. But she’s already told us what she’s doing with the security logins and countdown timer. I don’t think she’s hiding anything else from us. When it comes to William, I have no doubt that he’s tried to unlock the files himself, and when that failed, he more than likely employed others to try to hack them.”

Oaks grew silent again, sweeping his stare across the desk. The faces of several Russian mafia kingpins gazed out from those photos with such cold and heartless intensity that he could almost feel the ice in their souls. These men lived to create hell on earth for humankind and would stop at nothing to sow terror.

He let out a snort. “They make Vanya look like a fairy princess.”

Carson eyed him. “Tell me something, Oaks.”

“I’m listening.”

“You don’t really want your marriage to be fake, do you?”

He jerked his head up at the question. Their stares connected, and questions popped into his own mind.

“I’ve asked myself that very thing,” he admitted, words coming slowly.

“And?”

He released a long breath. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when this is all said and done.”

“But you care about her.”

He studied his brother’s serious face for a moment. “I do.”

The echo of the same vows he’d spoken to the woman bearing his name—his false name—gave him an odd feeling that somehow the fake arrangement had shifted into a real one. It was also an echo of the conversation he had with Decker earlier in the barn and seemed to need as few words too.

His gaze slipped to the desk again, hovering over a photo of William in a slick navy suit. Everything about the guy was polished. He was the kind of businessman who backed politicians and rubbed elbows with the most powerful men in the world. Yet he was just as dirty as the kingpins staring up from those photos.

“He’s been flaunting himself for far too long.”

Carson nodded, understanding who he referred to. “But he made a mistake stepping on our turf and sending that drone here.”

Anger blazed through Oaks, a flame snapping on the head of a matchstick. “What’s the plan then? Storm in with guns and take him down?”

Carson let out a snort. “You’re suggesting we become mercenaries now?”

“Mercenaries are paid for the jobs they do. We’re doing this for…” He lapsed into silence as he realized they didn’t exactly have a reason for doing this. Fury wouldn’t get him far in this case, and the fire inside him died out.

He was doing this for Shiloh, with the backing of his brothers and Black Heart Security. The threat against the country was something the CIA already knew about. Which meant people were already on their radar.

“We can hand over everything we know to the military. Let them handle it.”

“I’ve made some contacts.”

Oaks heard the gravity in his brother’s statement and nodded with equal seriousness. His brother was a rule breaker but only in extreme cases. This wasn’t one of them. He’d be the first man in line to hand-deliver intel when it came to a threat against the country they’d served.

“While we wait for one of your guys to get back to you, we can search for William. If we find out where he is, we take a team in.” Oaks had visions of tossing the guy into a black bag and dragging him out. Throwing him into a trunk would be too kind to make up for the terror he inflicted on Shiloh, and the world under the guise of business.

Oaks leaned against the desk. “We hit him at his weakest point.” With the interrogation tactics used on their enemies. A grim smile stretched over his face.

Carson gave him a second glance. “Where is he weakest? His home? Office? Or any number of the places he meets up with his contacts?”

“His home will be a fortress, but cutting wires to cameras isn’t too hard.” Oaks pointed at a photo of the California mansion. “My concern is the thugs he seems to travel with.” The photograph showed William getting into a car with three huge, burly guys standing guard right behind him.

Carson shrugged, dismissing his concern. “That’s a one-man job if you’ve got the right jump in the game.”

True. He, Carson and Colt were all former SEALs. They knew how to handle themselves, even when the odds were low.

Oaks contemplated the maps, photos and scans of intel scattered on the desk again. “As for the files Shiloh has in her possession, I agree with you that it’s a good idea to give her what she needs to safely transfer them electronically. We can’t take the chance that the files could be wiped out by William if he finds a way to do it before we take him down.”

“You’re right. I’ll talk to Colt about giving her what she requires.”

“I’m thinking a password-protected flash drive. As a backup to that, she can use a second cloud that’s locked up like a vault. Put her eggs in different baskets.”

“Solid ideas.”

“Also…I think we need to dangle the files in front of William…then sweep in for a takedown.”

They both shifted their attention across the desk to a grouping of photos all showing places where William stayed on a regular basis. His mansion in Silicon Valley, a Chicago loft apartment and a penthouse in New York City.

Oaks listened for sounds from the conference room where Colt and Shiloh were both working, but the house was silent.

“So we set up an exchange with William, then take him down.”

Carson wasn’t shocked by his idea. Oaks wondered how long he’d been thinking about the same plan.

He met his brother’s stare. “Can we really get Shiloh on board with this, Oaks? She’s been keeping the files on lockdown for so long, I can’t see her just agreeing to transfer them to a flash drive or a cloud—or suddenly coaxing William out by offering them to him.”

“I think she’ll see the benefit of having the files in multiple locations. As for William…she wants him stopped. Especially after he basically sold her to Vanya.”

“Good thing you were the highest bidder.”

“Or I’m one lucky bastard. Having all the key elements at hand—fluency in Russian, and an ID and story to match—made it possible.”

With a grunt of amusement, Carson twisted away from the investigation layout on the desk as if everything was decided. “What if she doesn’t want to offer William the files to lure him out? It’s a dangerous game for her to play.”

“Let’s plan a meeting to talk to her first thing in the morning. I’ll find a way to make her comfortable with the idea.”

He didn’t mention how he’d be alleviating her anxiety—by giving her orgasm after orgasm. When she was a boneless, shaking mess, and crying out his name, he could convince her to trust him with her life.

Memories of their evening together on the enclosed porch filtered into his head and heated his body with desire.

He needed to find Shiloh and remind her that he could keep her safe like no other…and make her feel good like no other too.