“You’ve set your mind toward something and God help anyone who tries to challenge you or to step in your way to your goal. Would you please stop reminding me that you are leaving? I can hear the clock ticking down the time, woman, without any reminders of how quick you’ll ride out of town.”

“Then what is the problem, Glenn? You should be happy Shadow wants to come out and play. He is intelligent, I’m telling you, he can interact. There are other forces in this house. You are going to gather a lot of proof, and then there’s your theory on the cave. I want to help; I admire that you help people with this specific brand of trouble.”

He rested his head against the open truck door. “You almost sound like you want to keep him, Tessa. He’s a shadowman, not a puppy. He’s awake because you are here. Do you want him to follow you since you called to him, so he can wreak havoc on any man you decide to go to bed with?”

“Ew! Stop spinning it like that. A person can only stay terrified for so long before fight and flight is gone; and then you find out what is haunting you.”

Glenn leaned against the side of his truck. “Get in or stay here? I think it’s time to get you out of here, before another minute passes closer to sunset when your buddy Shadow will grow stronger. I know what kind of spin to put on it. I’ve seen poltergeist like this; never a shadowman.”

She leaned against the truck right beside him, stretching out her long legs and cocking them at her ankles. She didn’t look inclined to get in his truck. She shrugged. “My spin, Shadow is on guard against the other shadowy creature, the one in the basement with claws and looks a lot like some kind of creepy primate. If there are demons in the shadowland, that thing would be one. Maybe Shadow is like an angel from the shadowlands.”

“Are you stoned? Did you pick up any of Sam’s stash?”

“It’s all a mystery; isn’t that what the paranormal is? Isn’t that what drives you into the spooky hunt?”

“It’s not safe for you here. Get in my truck, Tessa. It doesn’t sound like a request because it’s not.”

“Just because this is the backdoor of Podunk and there’s a cave back there . . . don’t fall down the evolutionary chain. I’m staying to hack the house.”

“In the van? Cause you won’t go back into the house.” He shook his head, not able to understand why he didn’t brute force it and put her in the seat. She was the expert in brute force now. She didn’t answer him, so he qualified it for her. “Say yes, Glenn. Or I will go caveman on you and take you from this house right now.”

She smiled at him. “Yes, Glenn. I like that about you, when you’re wise.”

She reached for his hand, pulling him away from the truck and toward a path in the shade of woods behind her house. After walking through the woods, and perching on a jutting rock about waist high beside the cave, she cocked one tawny brow. “Guess you have some time on your hands then, big guy; waiting for your friends to return?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’m unplugged. I’m on the pill. I’m on vacation. What do you think I have in mind?”

He turned and settled his hands at her waist. He slid her forward from the rock, closer to him. “Spell it out for me, Tessa.”

“I’m here to see you, Glenn.” She slid her fingers down his side, catching the edge of his shirt and lifting it up.

Never, out here in the middle of nowhere, in all the times and despite his attraction had she ever laid her hands on him. She was spelling it out without words. It was like something out of his dreams.

Her hands stopped and one pointed up at the camera pointed at the mouth of the cave. “How wide is that angle? Is that off?”

He pulled her up against him, tighter, pulling her more on him than on the rocky ledge. “It’s off. But we’ll be firing it up here before too long. Don’t get shy now.”

“Let’s go to my hotel room.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Spell it out for me, Tessa, what it is that you want from me.” When she said nothing, wincing a bit under his glare, he grunted. “Not hot sex in a hotel room until one of has to crawl to the door for the pizza dude and then back into bed, so you can wrap me up like that and walk away?"

She wiggled against him. “You want to. Why make it sound like a bad thing?”

“You don’t belong in that hotel room. And Cole’s right next door! Don’t start trouble, babe, like you did when you got up close and personal with the camera saying, Have a toke Big Brother. What you are doing is illegal and you can’t use it. Have another hit off the peace pipe. . . . Tess, don’t tease him.”

She hopped off the rock. “Don’t remind me. I’m not exactly comfortable out here. At least the black hat headhunter can’t find me out here. I can handle Cole.”

“You will be with him soon enough. Go hack a heart, stuck in all those shades of gray and find out it’s not Big Brother? Oh hell no, that’s not who you’re dealing with.”

“Who? Please define that variable.”

“Who would be your biggest nightmare to work for?”

“Yori Korschovf and Medatron.”

“Yes please let’s discuss the Russian mobster with a price on your head! The flipping army of cyber-terrorists at his beck and call. You thinking you could save people with your white hat to discover he wants your hat blacker than his heart?”

“Hey! I didn’t tell you that.”

“You could have, Tessa, if you really trusted me, if you wanted more than just my body.”

“I like more than your body, Glenn. The first draw in is your sharp mind. Your humor next.”

The sun dropped close to the horizon, casting them in shades of gray.

“You could have told me at any point when we’ve been alone. I’m more of a canned hack sort of a dude. You’re more like the person who cans them. But I’m not gonna sit back and watch him come for you; I’m not gonna watch you fight alone.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, Glenn.”

He heard a horn blast from her house. “Stay in the van. If there was some way to turn the spooks in this house on the cyberspooks after you in real-time, I’d give up my chance to prove anything about the portal in this cave. If you can figure that out, then let me know. Otherwise, stay in the van and hack the house.”

He brushed his lips over hers. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She walked back through the woods toward her house with him. “Would you do me a big favor, Glenn, so I don’t have to go back inside the house?” She paused even though he nodded. “Find Sam’s stash. Look in the living room and the upstairs bedroom probably has a bong too. The next owner can have everything in there, or donate it, but not his flipping stupid drugs. Find them and flush or burn them, please get them out and don’t put temptation in my hand.”

“See, babe? How easy it was to trust me?”

The team of paranormal investigators stood around the open van doors. The demonologist blessed their heads, protecting their minds from the demon in the house.

Before Glenn turned away from her, leaving her to hack the house, he pointed to a radio on his hip. “If your buddy Shadow comes to the van, call me immediately.”

Tessa jumped from the van to the ground in front of Glenn. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him in tight, before whispering in his ear. “Be careful, please be safe.” She swallowed hard. “Please make them go, Glenn.”

She released him and hopped back in the van. As the team of paranormal investigators entered the house two by two, the show unfolded in front of Tessa with cameras and wireless microphones like a scary movie. Immediately upon the men entering the house, paranormal activity spiked.

She fuzzed the house with white noise, trying to locate the entities. Mostly she watched Glenn, couldn’t stop watching him, couldn’t stop wondering how he could stand there and calmly ask questions of the entities without running away.

Books from the computer room shot off the shelves as each one blew about like its own little tornado, whipping around the two men in that room. Another angle showed the upstairs as a chair rocked wildly as if by a hyperactive invisible child. A white mist floated down the stairs, thud thump, thud thump, thud thump, and the men on the camera whooped when it turned into a full body apparition.

Her fuzzing paid off and she picked up her radio. “In the basement, in a room behind the furnace . . . be careful.”

She glanced at a screen where the cave flickered with lights in the darkness. A long trail of people marched inside. Transparent yet in full color and costume, Indians disappeared into the cave. “Oh my goodness.” What else had Glenn mentioned? The forsaken cemetery right up the road and close to her house?

She wanted to leave the van. She wanted to join Glenn. She didn’t want to run into Shadow. Not if Glenn really could run him off where she would never have to worry about him showing up again in her life at some point.

The backdoor of the van flew open.

Tessa screeched and slapped her hand over her heart. She could understand only too well why Glenn had not wanted her to bring her gun. She would have shot the intruder dead before asking any questions.

A man in front of her pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Can I help you?” she asked the dude she did not recognize. A shade of unease rippled down her spine. She reached for the walkie-talkie again, even though a blinding flash of light and loud ringing temporarily took away her sight and her hearing.

The man grabbed her arm. “With the technology, should have known that.”

Tessa jerked her arm, planning to pull away from him. “Hey!”

He pressed a gun to her ribcage. “Yori better pay me extra after all this.” He nodded, indicating the haunting in the house over the monitors. “Listen to me, lady, it’s been one hell of a freaky night. Don’t push me.”

He jerked her arm, keeping the gun against her side. He pulled her out of the van and toward the gravel road. In the middle of the night, he marched her toward the forsaken cemetery. He muttered along the way, “First I track your cell phone.”

“My phone is off,” she sneered, looking for her way out, a way to get away from him in the forsaken mausoleums and tombstones hidden away in the woods. She’d steer this dude into the fields of corn and run toward the cash crops and the traps she knew Sam would have left. She could deal with Yori, she repeated in her head, trying to believe it would all be okay.

“Well your cell was cloned; and I thought it would be you when I busted into the bathroom at the hotel. But it’s all good because I found someone equally sweet for Yori.”

He shoved her one last time, releasing her toward an old beater of a truck parked up on the abandoned railroad tracks.

Tessa looked at the man, black hair damp and no shirt on, stretched out in the back of the truck. “Cole?” she asked in disbelief and jumped into the truck bed with him. She touched him as he lay there immobile, bump on his temple and bleeding from his forehead. He didn’t move.

She turned toward the man with the gun. “What did you do to him!”

“I suspected it was like that, having adjoining hotel rooms.”

Think, pounded across her logic. Focus. Push his buttons, not him pushing hers. Crisis management training . . . cajole the man with the gun. Let him believe she was on his side. A henchman for the leader of the cyber-terrorists? “God help me,” she whispered, despite not believing He would.

The man pointed the gun at her again. “Get in the front and leave loverboy in the back.”

A dark blur sped past the truck bed, solidifying into a six-foot inky black shadow of a man. Shadow!

The gun in the man’s hand barked a blaze of fire from the snout where a bullet spit out and passed through Shadow. The bullet whizzed by the blond man in hot pursuit of the shadowman. Glenn!

She jumped out of the truck bed, standing between the henchman and Glenn. Shadow stood between her and the henchman.

“Oh hell no,” Glenn growled.

The man with the gun readjusted his grip, sweat beaded on his upper lip, Shadow not two feet from him. “Get in the truck,” a whispered threat to Glenn where the gun now pointed.

Glenn stepped up closer to her. He pointed at Shadow. “He will. He’s quite the attack dog. You want her, you gotta deal with him.” Glenn stepped up another step. “Right after you deal with me.”

Glenn now stood a meter from her. He held out his hand to Tessa, palm up. As soon as she placed her hand in his, Shadow shoved the henchman back against the truck. The gun fired again, this time pressed back at the wrist against the truck. A bullet blew through the henchman’s temple, blowing out his brains onto the truck window.

Glenn pulled her face against his chest, his heart thudding like he had run from her house ten times. “Great, another ghost to hunt.”

Sammy had shot out his brains, left a note. Had Shadow helped him pull the trigger? Was he indeed dangerous as Glenn had tried to warn her?

The man with her wrapped up tight in his arms, growled again. “Your buddy was running the wrong way from the cave.”

“My buddy,” she repeated at a loss.

He leaned over, running his hand over Cole’s black hair and then checking his pulse. He lifted his cell phone to search for a signal. “I’m gonna call the cops, Tess. I know you want to run right now. The cops don’t need to be seeing you and dragging you anywhere for questions or your mobster will find you. But Shadow will follow you, babe, if you run right now. Not sure which is the lesser of two evils.”

He pressed in numbers on his cell, letting her know he had a signal.

He dug in his pocket and pulled out this truck keys. “I’ll wait here with Cole. Go get the evidence because the cops that will come will seize it. Tell the hunters to split and I’ll call them. Know it, even if you can’t see it, that the shadowman is with you. He’s never hurt you, Tessa. Take him to my house.”

He pressed in the last number on his cell. “Go!”

“Are you nuts?” she asked him.

Glenn hopped in the truck bed with Cole. He tossed his hands up in the air. “Like I wanted any of this to happen?”

“There’s a problem,” he said into the phone.

Tessa spun on her toes and ran through the cemetery to her old house. She didn’t see Shadow, not since the gun fired and killed the man hunting her down. She reported to the ghost hunters without going into the house. The men dumped all the tapes and dvds into the truck with her as she asked. No reason for the cops to seize it, but she wasn’t going to question Glenn. Once upon a time, she’d partied with or warred with some of the cops in this area.

As she sped down the gravel road, fishtailing, she realized her snooping would be obvious now. She’d never seen Glenn’s house. But she’d seen a map to it and she was no stranger to this area. And she’d gotten way too curious about the man after they started chatting, after she let him into her head.

She pressed a button clipped over the visor and his garage door slid open. After it slid shut behind her, she looked to see if she could see Shadow sealed in the darkness with her. She shivered. Then she shivered again, considering why Cole Stone had cloned her phone. Which one was creepier?

When Glenn had invited Cole into their private message, Cole had admitted he was a headhunter and no longer carried Big Brother’s badge. He knew what she’d been up to, hacking hearts in her test environment. He seemed to know where she was headed and why. Who was he and what did Glenn have in common with him, other than hacking her once upon a time? Glenn had been distressed upon seeing him laid out and immobile in the truck bed. So had she been and he wasn’t her buddy.

She opened the truck door, a moment of light, before shutting it and searching the darkness for her buddy. Glenn had made it sound extra creepy. Maybe it was.

She opened the door, leading into his house, walked in and flicked on a light.

Tessa walked through the front rooms until she came to a room with a desk. There were three LCD screens, three laptops, two docking stations, a notebook, and a CPU tower. No way was this for a LAN party, not setup for multiple people to sit in here. Despite what all else Glenn was now, he was still a hacker. At that moment, she realized, she did love Glenn Reston.

After more investigating, she stepped into the master suite where one wall was completely windows and one wall a huge aquarium. She stared out the glass and up at the unobstructed view of the stars in heaven.

Stuck in the great vastness, she drifted into proportion with the universe and felt invisible. “God, if You really are up there, this, like those ghosts, is mean and not funny. It’s inconvenient; I’m trying to change careers here. I have a lot going on. Falling in love is not on my objective statement. It’s messing with my rational thinking; please fix it if You want me to save people with implantable medical devices.”

Glenn’s landline rang once, twice. She didn’t intend to pick it up. If it was a woman wanting to talk to Glenn in the middle of the night, there was no telling what she might say to her. She heard his answering machine pick up after the fourth ring. She heard Glenn saying, “Pick up, babe.”

She ran into the other room and picked up the phone. “What’s going on?”

“Cole is at the hospital, in the emergency room right now. How are you?”

“I don’t see Shadow. How is Cole?”

“Concussion; they’ll probably end up keeping him.”

“How are you, Glenn?”

“I gotta get my privacy raked over the coals. Go to sleep, babe. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Who are you going to say shot the dude? Shadow? Yori will find out about you now! You don’t want on his radar. You don’t want him even a tiny bit curious about you.”

“Talk about it later, Tessa. I gotta go now. Later.”

She hung up after he did, then she stared at his landline off and on for the next two hours. She didn’t dare turn on her cell phone. She did dare however to call her friend. He would laugh his silly head off when he found out she was totally illogical right now and in love. Seeking the voice of reason, she called David.

He picked up on the second ring. “Glenn Reston, I don’t know you, but Tessa does.”

“It’s me,” she said quietly.

He grunted. “You missed it. Yori went after the senator, hacked his heart. I saved the day, well the night, I’ll have you know without hacking in tandem with you.”

“God,” she whispered. “How much worse will it get?”

“Thanks a lot, Tess. It hurts to know you didn’t think I could.”

She snorted. “Get real. So he’s okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Great job, dude. I don’t need to remind you of all people, but watch out for eye in the sky in the city. Get out of there, David. Yori sent someone after me tonight. He’ll come for you.”

“Not like the cyberwar?”

“Like a dude with a non-digital first-person-shooter-gun for hardware.”

“We still meeting up at tryouts?”

“Yeah, code junky. I’ll see you there.”

“Where are you laying low? With Glenn? I knew you were interested in more than his landscape designs.”

“He hunts ghosts too!” She growled. “I don’t need this epiphany right now. You know the life, we’re gone a lot, called away a lot, nights and weekends are good times to break in and test the system. Lots of travel, conventions . . . not a good thing if you have someone you don’t want to leave.”

“He knows that about you though. Maybe he likes hacker chicks.”

“In theory, but it’s not something a guy wants to hear. Gonna go for the career, big change going on right now . . . and by the way, carpe noctum, oh baby, I’m hot for you?”

David laughed. “Say that to him and he’ll take off your clothes. Like you said, big change going on right now for you. Seems like a good time to me. Why not find out how big of a change? I can’t wait to meet the dude that does this to you.”

“Be safe, David. Get poofed. I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll call the senator. I know I don’t want Glenn as a target of Yori’s because he’s aiming at me.”

“Why not let Glenn decide that? He’s a big boy, Tess.”

She snorted. “Bye, David.”

She heard a motorcycle and peeked through the front window. Glenn pulled into the driveway riding Cole’s bike.

He walked in the front door and grinned at her. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

“God help me,” she muttered. She wanted to push him back against the locked front door and have her wicked way with him.

“Maybe He is, Tessa, ever think of that?” Glenn walked over and sat beside her on the couch as dawn blossomed into morning.

“Let’s say my car didn’t break down.”

“But it did. Why say otherwise? You rode into Haven with Cole.”

“Glenn, if my car hadn’t broken down, if I wasn’t hanging at Haven?”

“You like Haven, Tessa, you told me so.”

“Please stop making this difficult.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation that ends with you reminding me you are leaving. This is the way it’s going down between us. Your car broke down, and then you started riding with me. I’m hunting out your ghosts, cutting you free from that. Yori Korschovf is physically hunting you down, not digitally. You’re here in my house and not a hotel room, but you brought along a visitor from the shadowland. How do you think that will work out, Tessa? I hunt shadowfolk.”

“I haven’t seen him. It’s daylight now.”

“Want me to kiss you so he comes out?”

“Uh, the kiss sounds nice. Seeing Shadow again sounds creepy. What happened with the cops? State, local, who?”

“You won’t like it.” He grabbed her hand. “The shadowman’s power level should be about drained, I should hope, with all the activity he surely burned a lot of energy moving around last night. Come outside with me, Tessa, and I’ll tell you what Cole won’t be telling you today.”

“Why would they seize your evidence?” She walked hand in hand with him to the garage where he fired up a dirt bike.

“Because that is right up their alley. Get on. We’ll go spin and then talk.”

“Who raked your privacy over the coals?” She didn’t swing over behind him. Instead she cocked her hands on her hips, digging in. She’d had more than enough trouble with cops around here long ago and they had gone to great lengths to decimate her privacy.

“Calm down and let’s go.” Glenn pointed over her shoulder toward one side of his garage. Shadow stood with inky black head cocked, watching them.

“I don’t want him here! I don’t want a shadowman following me around, a bigger snoop than all of you who punked me!”

“That’s right. You don’t want Shadow around you. I’ll take you back out to that house and the cave tonight, so you can send him on his way. Tell him to go, to get out of your life.”

She swung on behind him, ready to flee from Shadow, and slid her arms around his waist. She didn’t want Shadow to hurt Glenn if the shadowman could. She didn’t want to hear what Glenn had already deemed she wouldn’t like.

He kicked it in gear, zooming out over beautiful landscaping and into a woods. He drove in and out of the woods on his property, over dirt bumps, until the kiss of wind and adrenaline rush gave her a feeling like she had wings. She laughed and squeezed his waist harder. He splashed through the water and parked beside a creek.

She laughed again. “That was a nice flight. Are you trying to tweak my mood before you tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

“Maybe.”

She swung off the bike and crossed over to a fallen log. She held out her arms for balance and walked up a downed tree, walking over rushing water in a swollen creek. “Spit it out, handsome.”

“Come down from there. Cole isn’t a cop, Tess. You know that. What you don’t know is who he works for, who I called last night.”

She walked up a bit higher over the water. “He cloned my cell. He doesn’t know the meaning of privacy. He should consider working for Homeland Security.”

“You should consider it.”

“Not funny, Glenn. Tell me.”

“I don’t have to; you figured it out yourself.”

Tessa lost her balance and fell off the log into the water. She splashed down into swift moving water, yanking her USB necklace and holding it up and safely out of the creek. The cold current pulled her, water level almost waist high.

Glenn walked out into the water, thigh high, and held out his hand to her. “There was a reason I told you to come down. Who did you think the call would be to last night? Cole was hurt. Yori Korschovf is involved. He’s after your code; he's after more than your head.”

She grabbed his hand and he pulled her close to him, offering the warmth of his body in the cold water. She asked him, “You two trolls up to the same old tricks, scaring the bejezus out of unsuspecting and unavailable females? What are you doing, Glenn, involved with Cole and Homeland Security?”

He pulled her hand, pulling her over slippery slime on rocks at the bottom of the creek. “Don’t insult me, woman. I don’t have anything to do with DHS. But if you go hack a heart for tryouts, you’ll be mired in shades of gray, stuck or against another powerful enemy. You’ll be working for the Department of Homeland Security as cyber CT, with their hand reaching out to control yet another area, medical implantable devices.”

“No, no, no. That’s my favorite hacktivist hammer, coming down on the Patriot Act. DHS is not what the recruiter at DefCon said.”

“That’s why I thought you needed the facts before you walk away.”

Water dripped from her jeans to form little rivulets of mud in the damp dirt. She blew out a deep exhale and sat sideways on his bike before her knees gave way again. “If you knew this, why didn’t you tell me before I resigned from my job in a city I liked?”

“Tell you in an IM that Homeland Security is looking at you hard; that they are out to get you one way or another? So you can ghost? Tell you long distance over the phone? So you can cancel the line and ghost there too? You set this as your goal, and you didn’t want to hear anything anybody had to say about you leaving the good life you had. Didn’t I suggest you think long and hard about it? Didn’t I offer to drive up there and meet you?”

She groaned her dismay.

“But then you got it in your head to come here and finally deal with this house before you move on, while you are in-between salaried positions. And I’ve been praying for that for a long time, Tessa. After Sam committed suicide and made you a widow, then I really got determined about praying you onto this path.”

Tessa rubbed small circles over her pounding temples. “After what happened with the henchman, do you think Shadow helped Sammy pull the trigger?”

He moved up next to her, rubbing large calloused palms up and down her arms. “I don’t know. It’s crossed my mind. Now tell me what you think about a career at DHS.”

“I think I need to call David and warn him.”

“Who is David?”

“Curiosity is an affliction most hackers have in common, black hat or white. David is the dude I share a room with at most conventions. It’s works out great for me. It appears as if I am with someone, yet I’m not. David appears to be with someone, which gives him more opportunity to scope and troll, looking for another dude who shares the same values.”

“He’s gay?”

“Among other things like brilliant and a digital wizard of the highest realm.”

“I think I’m glad he’s gay if you admire him so much.”

“We work for a senator, Glenn, protecting his heart from being hacked. There’s a bunch of us on that security detail. David is planning to tryout too. Now please take me back to your house so I can call him and then the senator. I’m gonna split.”

“You sure you want to do that, Tess? Take Shadow with you wherever you are going to hide next?”

She groaned again and pounded her head against the wall of his muscled chest. “No more ghosts haunting me. Please help me figure it out, to stay out of range of eye in the sky so neither Yori nor DHS can find me. You’re doing a lot for me, making the landscaping beautiful, and fixing the house so the next owners will have a bright promise of happiness and not a haunting. Do you think I want you to blip right next to me on their radar? Come on, Glenn, I like you way too much to leave you as a target.”

“You did that before. Told all your friends to back away from you because you were a target and not to come near you and become one too. And then you stayed in that house and the siege that ensued as you stood alone and fought a war.”

She held up one hand. “Okay, don’t go freaking me out. I cultivated a certain slickness in security so this exact thing can’t happen again.”

“Cole won’t let DHS swoop down on you, okay. DHS won’t sit back and watch you work for Korschovf either though. And me, I already told you, I’m not gonna sit back and watch you fight alone again. If you would have spent some real-time with Cole, he would have asked you to work with him. He’s tired of the bureaucracy BS and he wants the same thing you do. You could partner with him and stay in the career field you are now so lethal in.”

She sighed. “Do you really think there is some way to break Shadow down into a binary equation and send him as packets through to Yori? A header with Boo! Hacking a heart isn’t sci-fi anymore, but sending a real ghost through the airwaves? Pick Shadow up with white noise and fuzz Yori’s network? I think Shadow might kill him and the world would be a better place before another Hitler type comes into even more power.”

Glenn slid his fingers to the edge of her shirt, lifting it until her navel ring showed, on up until the four flash drives dangling from the necklace were exposed to his view. “You have an arsenal. Please tell me the code the Russian mobster wants isn’t one of these.”

“I can’t do that. I patched his insulin pump. He is more interested in the worm that I developed to reverse-engineer his patch, the code to exploit his medical implant. I have here the true state of security for Medatron medical implantable devices. It just so happens to be Yori’s ICD setup in the program. He really shouldn’t have tried to turn my white hat blacker than his soul.”

He tapped her USBs within his fingers. “Seed this then. Throw it up on mirrors. Put it up so many places, as fast as it’s taken down, so you’re not the only hacker, ethical or otherwise, as a threat to Korschovf.”

“I don’t want to can this one. Comment the readme with replace unique looping frequency emitted by the hardware specific medical implant? Poison the honeypot and follow the trail? Uh, no. This is long range, no trace, no trail, assassination.”

He released the USBs, his finger trailing across her waist to circle her navel ring. “Want to camp out here, Tess?” He pointed up at the canopy of trees. “No one will find you here.” He reached for a leaf and pulled off the tulip tree flower before brushing it against her skin where his other hand worked her stomach into multiple somersaults. “No one will interrupt us.”

His silver eyes burned molten hot like liquid chrome. He widened his stance so she was between his legs where she sat on his bike. He reached for the button at her fly. “You should probably get out of these wet clothes.”

“I thought you were offended when I came face-to-face with you this time and found out I wanted you out of your clothes?”

“That’s when I thought I still had to find a way around the firewall that surrounds your heart. Now I know I don’t have to. You let me in, now that firewall is around us both. That’ll work for me too, Tessa.”

“Tell me how you are connected to Cole. You guys seem like day and night. I can’t see the common thread other than hacking me a very long time ago.”

He brushed his lips over hers. “I don’t wanna have a convo about Cole right now or any other hacker. My hands are full with a sexy one right now.”

She reached to unbutton his fly. “So are mine.”

“For the love of—!“ a male voice exclaimed.

She jerked her mouth and her hands from Glenn. She slapped one hand over her heart and glared at Cole who had walked into their camp. “How did you find us?”

Cole walked right over to them and pointed at Glenn. “Focus, little brother, on something other than trouble. Haven is full of Korschovf’s men and evenly matched with those from DHS. I know you are trying to stay out of your house, to not be found because of her, but you better keep your pants on and get your priorities straight.”

“Little brother,” she repeated to hear again the missing piece of why these two men were connected other than hacking her once upon a time.

At the same time though, Glenn shook his head. “I know you are as sore as bear who had his head bashed in, but my priorities are straight. Now go away, big brother, and mind your own business before I knock in your head too like we’re about thirteen.”

Cole tossed up his arms. “You think I enjoyed being scared to death by the shadowman lurking in your house? Do you think I would have hiked into your camp solely to invade your privacy? Korschovf and five other men are camped a couple acres behind your house in an RV.”

Tessa glared at Cole and then at Glenn before glaring back at Cole. “A bet and a hack split between brothers.” She shook her head and brought her index finger and thumb down on an invisible joint and put it to her mouth, sucking in air. She held it out to Cole. “Have a toke, big brother.”

Glenn covered her hand in his where she was holding it out like to pass a joint to Cole. “I told you not to tease my brother.”

“Not funny,” Cole stated with a shake of his head. Then he pointed at her. “You’re coming with me now, so I can hide you away until tryouts.”

Glenn slid her around on the dirt bike and then swung on in front of her. “Plans change, Cole. She’s not safe in any city right now. I’m not handing her over to you. I say we go back to my house and launch our own attack, the three of us.”

“Take her into a gunfight where they’ll come for her?”

He kicked the bike in gear. “She has a very lethal long range weapon. Up close and personal, she has a viciously protective buddy from the shadowlands. And I’m prepared to hunt out any other ghosts that come into my house.”

He turned around and serious silver orbs studied her face. “Do you want to finish this?”

Tessa blew out a deep exhale. “Yes, Glenn. Cole looks rough around the edges today. Do you want to give him a ride back first?”

Glenn snorted. “So you can warrior up and head toward the Russian mobster’s RV as soon as I ride out of your sight? No, Tessa. I’ll leave you with Shadow and bet everything I own he won’t let anything inside to hurt you.”

He opened the throttle and she hugged him hard. As they flew over the bumpy terrain, she caught his voice low and intense, but the words zipped by her. Was he praying? She heard him mention her name again and again.

When he pulled into his garage, he lifted her off the bike in a hurry, taking her into his computer room. He booted up and logged on before reaching over to a shelf where he opened a case with a pistol inside. He slapped in a clip and cocked a bullet into the chamber. Glenn handed her his gun.

He held up one finger and then walked from the room.

Gooseflesh spread up her right arm as the air on that side of her grew frigid. “Shadow?” she whispered awaiting him to solidify next to her.

Glenn returned as she plugged in her purple USB. He held a shotgun in one hand and another pistol in the other. He nodded at the dark silhouette of a man. “Don’t let anyone touch her.” He leaned down and kissed her hard and fast before spinning away.

She heard his bike start up again as she picked up his laptop and carried it to the wide window off his kitchen, overlooking his back yard. Tessa pointed the antenna she found on his computer desk at the large pane of glass, broadcasting the signal to reprogram Yori’s insulin pump if he came within 500 meters of this house.

Leaving it running, she walked back into his computer room to pick up the gun. When she returned to the laptop, she saw Shadow leaning against the window as if he was on guard. She shook her head. “You have to go, Shadow. I’m really into Glenn and you have to get out of my life. No more lurking, watching everything, listening to everything, no more, Shadow, do you understand me?”

The six foot shadowman lifted one arm and his dark silhouette clearly showed his finger pointing out the window. She looked but couldn’t see anything. Within a minute though, she heard the rumble of a motorcycle and watched it as the men drove toward the backyard and then past it.

Was Glenn taking Cole and going after Yori? “No, no, no!”

But her vote must not have counted, because Tessa heard the boom boom of an automatic shotgun. Then a dut-dut-dut of an automatic gun fired into the otherwise quiet country. Another gun fired a distinct pop before so many guns fired that she shivered from the real-time version of a warzone like from her favorite game.

Although she handled the gun, ready to join in if the action came closer, her logical mind knew that the program running on the laptop would stop Yori’s heart, shoot it full of insulin, even before Yori would come into her gun sights.

“Shadow, can you go make sure Glenn stays in one piece? Cole, too? If you are some kind of guardian angel from the shadowlands, then they need you more than me. It’s two against six, Shadow. Go tip the scales in their favor, plenty of fear and fury out there for you to feed on.”

The shadowman flashed forward in a black blur like he hacked through the wall in a game.

She blew out a deep exhale, scooping up the laptop in one arm and holding the gun with the other before walking out the backdoor. If Glenn was hurt, she was going to shoot him! She set the laptop on a boulder in Glenn’s very lovely landscaped yard. “Come on, Yori, bring it!”

The occasional rounds firing in the distance quieted. She cocked her head, listening. Was that a man screaming? Had Shadow made an appearance at the gunfight? Nothing happened, no sound at all on the breeze, no sight of what was happening out in the bright sunshine where Glenn had disappeared. If he was hurt . . . she sniffled and her eyes burned.

The next noise thumping against the silence sounded like a helicopter approaching. Tessa rubbed her sweaty palm against her jeans and wrapped it around the handle of the gun. She ran past a boulder, flowers, bushes, and a fountain. She ran toward the whoosh whoosh whoosh of a helicopter landing. She ran downhill and through a woods.

Two hot drops of wetness fell from her eyes when she cleared the trees. Glenn! Dudes in black surrounded him, swarming from the helicopter and onto the RV.

She blew out a shaky breath as she stared at him, taking inventory, making sure he was in one piece. When silver eyes swung her way, like he could feel her touching him, knew she was there, she blinked her eyes rapidly. She ran toward him.

Tessa hugged him and then stepped back from him and punched his shoulder. “Damn you, Glenn!”

“I love you, too, Tessa.” He grabbed the gun out of her other hand. “I’ll take that back now thank you. He attacked my brother, too, woman. You didn’t really think I’d take you into a gunfight?”

“Where is Yori?”

“Korschovf is dead in that RV. I don’t know if Shadow attacked him and gave him a heart attack or what. He wasn’t shot.”

Cole broke away from his conversation with a couple other DHS men.

She shook her head at him. “This is how you watch out for your little brother, guardian angel?”

“I’m glad you’re okay, too, Tess. We need to talk.”

“Bring it,” she said and pointed her finger at the ground in front of her.

Glenn grunted. “Nothing. That’s what he’s bringing you.”

Cole laughed. “But I will, little brother. Let’s startup our own security business, Tessa. Heart hacking potential will grow more and more golden; let’s get in on the ground floor. You can work from here. We can do most of it remotely. Let me know.”

Glenn glanced at Cole. “The perk of a nosey big brother in Homeland Security, he takes care of all this so I can take my lady and go.”

Glenn slid his arm around her waist. “See, Tessa? Plans change sometimes. What do you say we take Shadow back to your house and send him on his way? Before I change my mind and decide I want to keep him around and learn more about him.”

She shook her head. “He has to go, Glenn. I’ll get you a puppy and some new-fangled ghost hunting device.”

“Hmm,” he said as they walked through the trees toward his house. “Are we negotiating terms?”

“I’ll help you prove your theory. I don’t know about riding on.”

Glenn shook his head but he couldn’t seem to wipe the grin off his face.

“What?”

“I can tell you about riding on. My bike even. It’s on like page thirty of your diary.”

Tessa inhaled sharply. “Glenn, you hacker, what am I going to do with you?”

“I can suggest any number of things, Tess. But you’d have to marry me, those are my terms. I’ll take you on, trouble. Say yes Glenn before I go all caveman on you and remind you how much you like my body besides my brain.”

“Yes, Glenn. Now bring it.”

“My pleasure. Yours too, babe.”

Happily Ever Afters!