“Set up targets and defense strategies? You sound kinda like Yori.”

If she had set out to insult him, she couldn’t have struck truer. Cole tried not to growl when she compared him to the brilliant Russian mafia boss leading up a revolution in the cyberwar. Her shot lodged dangerously close to his heart.

Perhaps because he said nothing, she prodded him again. “Why is that, Cole? Who pays the bills if I work with you in medical security?”

Although he pulled back a bit and lowered his face to her green eyes, Cole locked onto her hips so she couldn’t physically run from his house. “You won’t like it.”

“You don’t wear a badge anymore?”

“No.”

She sighed as if greatly relieved, like him being a cop would be her worst possible scenario. “Well?”

He did not want to tell her.

“Is this the problem you mentioned that we’d have to settle before we could move forward?”

“No.”

“You say no a lot.” She dropped her guard again, playful once more, and rubbed sensuously against him. “You’re not gay, right?”

He snorted. “You are obviously great for my ego.”

She sent twin dimples winking at him. “Good looking guy like you? Be about right you’d be gay. Maybe you need to be knocked down a notch or two?”

“You are as cocky as me, woman.”

She shrugged. “And you turned me down flat or I wouldn’t have awoken several states away but still in my clothes.”

“That still stings does it?”

“Do you think I sink my fangs in dudes every day?”

He snorted again. “Do you think I take passed out babes to bed every day?”

“I’m not passed out now.”

“Sheesh, Tess.” He backed her up until her knees hit the couch and he collapsed on top of her. “I do like your boldness; don’t get shy now.”

He became the aggressor, but she still asked, “Are you planning to say no again?”

He didn’t answer, his mouth busy on her neck, moving lower.

She locked her legs around his hips and squeezed him. “Cole?”

“Thought you didn’t want to hear no. How about hell no?”

“That’s not the problem you mentioned,” she groaned as the part which was obviously not a problem nudged her right back. “What’s the problem you mentioned that we have to get past?”

He growled and lifted his gorgeous face to pierce her with his blazing blue regard. “Is your offer only valid if it’s you doing the hunting? Don’t tease me, Tessa, I’ve been chasing you for too long. This bubbling hot chemistry between us isn’t the problem. Or maybe it is.”

“I’m on the pill,” she volunteered but his groan did not encourage her to believe she was helping the problem.

“You are the devil’s very own temptation, aren’t you? I’m about five minutes or less from having you naked and writhing under me and you want me to tell you now!”

“You’re scaring me. I’ve never been this strongly attracted to any guy. How bad can it be?”

“I don’t want to talk about politics and religion right now.” Although she stiffened under him, legs dropping from around his waist, Cole continued even though he said he didn’t want to dive into those murky depths. “I don’t want to show you Christ’s code right now. I want to make love to you.”

He cupped her face when she glanced away from him. “No, you will listen. We can’t do this because you don’t share my faith. There would be nothing to stand on together after hot sex. I can’t even seem to show you the way if I get too close to you.”

“That’s a serious problem, Cole. I don’t believe anymore that God is looking out for my happiness and wellbeing. That belief went the way of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and my belief that my government has my best interests at heart.”

He stiffened this time, levering his weight off her and onto his arms. “I know the undercover narcs and the drug dealers raked you over the coals, but that doesn’t mean the entire American way is a lost cause. You must firmly believe in freedom of speech. You swing that hacktivist hammer pretty damned hard at Homeland Security.”

She scoffed. “That’s because they are Satan’s spawn.”

“Hello.” Oh his handsome face looked mighty mad.

“No,” she shook her head. “Please don’t say it.”

He lowered his face to hers. “I work for them.” He growled. “Stop looking at me like I have a tail and a pitch fork. Five minutes ago you were looking at me like I was a medium rare steak and you were part vampire.”

“Get off me,” she ordered. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

“Hey, you dated a cop in the city while you worked for corporate America. You don’t hate all lawmen. Give me the list of targets and we’ll work on defense strategies, so we can move past this!”

She shoved at him and he rolled off of her onto the floor beside the couch. He did wrap thumb and forefinger around her ankle like maybe he knew she was about to run out of his house. She fanned her shirt away from her passion-hot skin. “All this was simply so I’d give you Yori’s list of assassination targets.”

“That so didn’t sound like a question, Tessa. You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you, so you can keep your heart safely encrypted from me?”

Tears stung her eyes, only making her madder. She stood up, but he didn’t let go of her. Instead of kicking him like she was tempted to do, she leaned over to the kitchen counter and grabbed pen and paper. “Look, you privacy stealer, the list of targets will be in my handwriting.” She licked the paper. “I’ll toss in DNA, too. Satisfied?”

“Not at all,” he stated quietly.

She wrote fast, sloppy, but spelling out the powerful elite from across the globe with medical implants made by Medatron, those who Yori Korskovf had specifically mentioned to her. She flipped the page and wrote some more. She pulled the pages off and they floated to the ground onto his stomach. She lifted her shirt and jerked the purple USB stick from her necklace before dropping it too. “Bye.”

She yanked her ankle, but he held fast as he asked, “Where do you think you’re running to now, Tessa Kendall?”

“Unshackle me,” she pleaded, fury shaking her voice.

He let go of her like her skin burned his hand. Cole was on his feet in a blink. “Oh no you don’t. I am not the same breed of male as Sammy.” He looked part outlaw, part rebel, and as dangerous as they come. His words, however, did funny things to the pit of her stomach. “Love and wife don’t have to hurt.”

She tried to move past him, but he slid in a step closer. Her proximity alarms blared warnings into her brain. “Get out of my way so I can collect my laptops and leave.”

“I can’t.” His baritone sounded as pained as the deep blue of his eyes.

“Why not?”

“Korskovf has ordered you snuffed if you show up in the city via facial recognition software. Your Russian mob warmonger is paying top dollar for you, dead or alive, if you show up anywhere near the tryouts for his enemies, the U.S. government and their cyber CT team. Anyone who is anyone in this game, all the players know who you are. Is it too much too fast for you yet?”

Her knees gave out and she plopped down on the couch right there. One hot tear fell from her eye before she swiped furiously at her face. Crying had always only served one purpose for her, to crank up her anger to the maximum Nth degree.

Cole lifted both hands up and to his sides like he surrendered.

Tessa lifted one hand in front of her face, stop-sign fashion, so he wouldn’t come any closer.

He sighed, bent down to retrieve the pieces of paper with target names in her handwriting, but he tossed them onto the gas logs of his fireplace and clicked on the flames. The fire greedily ate the paper, turning it black and curling it into a gray ash. Just the same, he tapped it with his toe, tearing it to smithereens never to be repaired by any forensic science. The air conditioning kicked on to combat the extra heat in the summer. He bent again to scoop up the purple USB.

Tessa was on her feet before her brain gave her legs the go ahead. “Don’t destroy my code.” She held her palm up and out to him.

He sent her a lopsided grin. “So you don’t believe you can burn out the parts of your life not to your liking anymore?” His large hand settled on top of hers, the purple USB between their palms.

She kept her hand lifted, kept the heat of his palm against her skin. “There’s a worm on here. One keystroke at a 500 meter range to reverse-engineer a vulnerability patch on Yori’s insulin pump.” She blew out a hard exhale. “I was tweaking it, playing it with, perfecting it at Haven when you came over to shoulder surf.”

His fingers curled, slipping in-between hers, the purple USB still between their palms. “Maybe,” he suggested, “I should keep it. You look mad enough to snuff him.” His other hand lifted and he spread five fingers. “The number of days left until tryouts. Just stay with me, Tessa, and let me get you there safe and sound.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I do. I’ve been your guardian angel for a decade now. I’m quite skilled at keeping you out of the trouble you seem to find no matter where it is on the map.”

“Trouble finds me. I don’t look for it, Cole.”

He smoothed the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “That’s because in real-time, Tessa, you are far too beautiful to ever be invisible.” His hand shifted and he cupped her face. “And in the cyber-world? God help us all if you get bored or lonely.” He scooted closer to her, inside her minimum distance proximity barrier. “Maybe you aren’t supposed to travel through life alone. Everybody needs somebody, babe. Do you think God wants bad things for you?”

She swung one arm toward his door and the outside world. “I have a haunted house. How many people can claim that?”

“You’ve got me there,” he nodded. “Glenn will take care of it.”

“Why? Does he think it’s penance or something from ancient history?”

“You have to ask Glenn that.” He frowned. “I’d rather you didn’t, but I can’t stop you from talking to him.”

“Hmm,” she muttered. She stared at Cole’s dark good looks. “You and Glenn seem like an odd pair to be friends. It’s just my opinion, but you guys are like day and night.” Her lips lifted in a crooked smile. “Is hacking me the only thing you have in common?”

“Please, God,” Cole uttered. “No more. I don’t want to hit her with any more this fast.”

“What? Did you dudes kill someone together?”

“No.”

“Ah, your favorite word.”

“Glenn is my friend above everything else. It doesn’t hurt though that he is my younger half-brother.”

“No. No. No.”

“Yeah, babe, it’s true.”

Her temper nuked out again. “You two big dumb jerks had a bet about me a decade ago.”

“Guilty. Calm down.”

“Oh I don’t think so,” she growled. “I’m just warming up to the topic.”

“Fine.” Cole snagged the purple USB from her hand and tossed it on the couch.

“Hey,” she started to protest, but his hand disappeared into her shirt to pull her USB necklace up and off. She squeaked her surprise. Before she could sputter again, he had her scooped in his arms, marched to the glass back door and slid it open.

He ignored her struggles and walked outside right to the edge of his pool. He held her over the water. “Chill out.” He dropped her!

Cool water soaked her body as she submerged. Tessa kicked to the surface, sputtering, although the slick chilly wetness felt heavenly and she did have a fondness for water.

Cole, however, had the nerve to look furious as he rudely pointed one finger at her and growled, “You make me crazy!” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Cool down your sweet and spicy temper,” he advised, but he was the one looking hot under the collar now.

Tessa dove back under and swam to the shallow end. She stood and brushed the dripping hair from her face. She smiled at Cole and slid off her heavy wet jeans. She laughed and tossed them at his retreating back. Mood vastly improved, she soaked and swam for the next hour.

Cole watched her look up at the security camera overlooking his pool before she crooked her finger and wagged it as if calling him to join her. Nope. He’d read her journal, practically had it memorized. Playing with her in water would be like playing with fire. He’d called her the devil’s own temptation and she’d called his job Satan’s spawn. The truth had not set her free.

He sighed. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d shattered her illusionary belief of how easily she could be invisible in the city. Not with Yori Korskovf hot on her heels. Mood vastly darkened, he watched her play in his pool for the next hour. He tried to find the silver lining . . . better his pool than Yori’s sandbox.

Sooner or later, she’d have to come inside. Sooner or later, she’d realize she had no clothes to change into. Sooner or later, Cole would be tempted again. He hoped he had the strength to show her the high road he walked on now.

As if his thinking it had caused it, the sexy wet temptress stepped out of the pool, out of the range of the security camera over his backyard, and slipped inside his backdoor. A gentlemen would hand her a towel, came another thought in his head. “The high road, huh?” Cole grunted and grabbed a towel from the bathroom.

He walked out and she bumped squarely into him in her beeline to the bathroom. His hands shot out to grab her before she fell back from the force. The towel dropped to the floor at their feet. Cool wetness and the scent of chlorine soaked into his shirt.

A slow red flush spread up her neck to her lovely face. Her tawny curls, burgundy with water, hung heavy and slightly beyond her shoulders. Her soaked shirt hung to her thighs where long lean legs, strong legs he knew after she had squeezed them around him earlier, stood bare for his inspection. She laughed though after he took two quick steps back from her. She scooped up the towel and rubbed it over her hair. “May I please borrow a shirt?”

He retrieved a shirt, which would surely be miles too big for her and a pair of sweats.

She smiled at him again and accepted the clothes. “Thank you ever so kindly,” she stated. She grinned over her shoulder before disappearing into the shower. She left the bathroom door slightly ajar.

Cole sighed, mood vastly improving at the sign of intimacy. Whether she realized it or not, he was almost past the firewall around her heart.

She padded barefoot to the living room and snagged the purple thumb drive off the couch. She scooped up her USB necklace, slid it over her head yet under her shirt. Tick tap. Tick tap. Tick tap. She disappeared into his bedroom.

By the time Cole answered the front door and accepted the pizza, he felt in control enough to approach her. He found her leaning back against stacked pillows, laptop on her crossed legs, purple USB plugged in and blinking. He sat beside her and stared at the LCD screen. “Working on the worm? Aren’t you lethal enough?”

“Testing it is all. With what all you’ve told me, I have this creepy feeling kinda like a warning sounding in my heart. I know it’ll work, but it needs to work faster.” She changed screens. “This is the program I wrote to patch Yori’s insulin pump so he couldn’t be hacked.”

Tessa sharing her cryptogram? “Hrmm.”

She changed screens again. The broadcasting signal, secure because of her code, changed into a faster looped signal. She changed screens once more, and the looped signal swung back and forth wildly, code beneath scrolling too fast for his eyes to keep up with. “This one,” she smiled. “Is about as close to perfect as I can tweak it. His insulin pump should reprogram and shoot straight to his heart, and within a minute, his heart should explode. In theory at least. What do you think?”

She passed the laptop over to his lap and hopped from the bed. “I smell pizza. Thanks, dude.” She disappeared down the hall to the kitchen. “Hungry, Cole?” she called.

He stared at her laptop resting on his legs. Maybe she had a fever? Or maybe she was testing him, a privacy stealer as she had labeled him.

Cole changed screens. At the top of a document, she had typed him a message. If quitting your job is too much to hope for, then take it, so we can move past this. Underneath, a report in Sarbane-Oxley style, the names listed of Korskovf’s prime assassination targets as well as her opinion of the how to obtain the best defense for the medical implants belonging to the global political elite. His heart seemed to flip over, thumping hard and heavy. She clearly had no problem whatsoever hacking his heart.

Cole shut off her laptop, unplugged her arsenal, and joined her in the kitchen. He slid open the closet off the pantry and tossed her USB weapon in his safe. He turned to her and nodded his head toward the safe. “You sure?” He shut the door after her nod and then he twirled the combination.

After he sat across from her, she nodded toward the second bedroom. “No bed, but it’s quite the command center.” She paused before springtime green eyes captured his gaze. “Do you work from here, mostly, remotely?”

Tessa wanting the scoop on National Security? Would she actually consider working with him? He grinned at her. “Afraid if you had to go into the office, you’d be spitting in your superior’s faces?”

She frowned. “How can you work for Homeland Security?”

“I didn’t write the Patriot Act, Tessa. I simply enforce it. Do you think DHS would be better off if the right people didn’t stay in power there? Do you think you’d have any rights left at all if people like me quit? Do you seriously believe you wouldn’t have been arrested by now, at least taken in for questioning, without me as your guardian angel?”

She folded her hands on the table and stared at him hard, her eyes probing and prodding as if she could read the license agreement on his soul. “If I were to . . . let’s say, arrive at the airport with my passport. Would I have any problem flying out to Russia?”

He groaned. “Your name is on the list of possible terrorists. You would be stopped. I didn’t put your name on the list, Tessa. Your ability to hack trouble did.” He cocked one brow at her. “Please tell me you don’t have your passport on you? That little RFID chip would make finding you much easier.”

She hopped to her feet. “See. Satan’s spawn.”

“I didn’t personally put the spychip in your passport. That is the current price to pay if you want to travel the globe in real-time. Where is your passport?”

“Several states away in the trunk of my dead car with my clothes, bleeping out a signal not accurate as to my location if Yori’s looking for me.”

“Turn off your cell phone, so there’s no signal there. I know you registered it under a dude’s name and an address in Alaska, but how long do you think it will take Korskovf’s little cyberarmy to get past that when he gets tired of waiting on you to give him your decision?”

“So you know I work for a senator in my spare time, on his security staff to protect his heart from being hacked?”

Cole blinked several times, taking that in. “No. I didn’t know that. Are you on call so you can’t shut off your phone?”

“Nah. I’m on vacation.” She laughed. “Ever so close to DC yet still in Virginia.” She picked up her cell and shut off her phone.

He swallowed the last of his pizza and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He hitched a thumb toward his garage. “I have helmets, Tess. Put on your shades and my leather jacket, don’t look up into the security cameras monitoring traffic or the eye in the sky and I’ll spin you around.”

She glanced down at the baggy shirt and sweats, a long ways off from the power-suits he had pictures of her wearing when she worked as head of security for corporate America. “I’d love to, thank you ever so kindly.”

He smiled. They’d established a truce. “Good. I don’t think we’d make it five days cooped up together in this house with no outlet.”

Twin dimples winked at him as her green eyes sparkled. “Bring it, Stone.”

Indeed, he wanted to be this woman’s lover. He didn’t want to settle for a one-night, okay maybe a five-night stand. He intended to show her he could be counted on for the long haul. There was no possibility of it if they didn’t share the same basic belief system. He retrieved the helmets, though, as if that was what she had meant.

While she disguised herself, he fetched a dual jack and another pair of earbuds for her iPod so they would share that too.

“Hold onto me,” he said when she hopped on behind him. “Don’t multitask, lady, or we’ll wreck.” From then until well into the night, he drove fast, zinging in and out of traffic, showing her DC and the famous sites.

He ignored the cell vibrating in his pocket at least three times. On the fourth, her hand slipped over the vibrations. With music thumping in both their ears, she tapped one finger on it like it was driving her crazy that he wasn’t answering it.

He flicked his remote to open the garage door. After the heavy door sealed them off from the world, Cole pulled off his helmet and grabbed his cell from his pocket. Glenn had sent a multimedia stream of the six-foot shadowman in her haunted house from his ghost hunt. The shadowman had interacted with the investigators, answering questions whether the skeptic in Cole would accept it or not.

Tessa peered around his shoulder. “Shadow.”

He shook his head. “Would you rather have a kitten or a puppy for a pet?” He pointed at the screen. “This one has to go.” Instead of waiting for her answer, he called Glenn for a more detailed report.

When he hung up, he found Tessa leaning in the doorway, staring at his command center. Being unplugged might be killing her a little.

She sighed and turned to face him. “I don’t want Shadow hurt. I just want him to move on.”

“Well taking you from the area has definitely caused my little brother’s hunt to become much more challenging. The shadowman, Shadow, has not left yet. In fact, the misty cloud and sometimes Civil War soldier apparition is still there as well as the demon. Only the ape-like shadow haunting your house has been chased out. I’ll have to pray to keep my dreams blessedly sweet after seeing the evidence Glenn sent me.”

“Next time Glenn calls, I want to talk to him.”

“Gonna hammer on my brother now, babe?”

“Not after he’s doing all this for me.” She shivered. “I’m wanna thank him.”

She flicked on the big LCD TV in the living room. She channel surfed before stopping on a fairly famous preacher. “With all your reason and logic, you can’t believe this?”

“If anyone asks for money before they tell you what God is saying, I don’t buy it.” He tapped one finger over her heart. “It’s free, Tessa. It’s a gift.” He grinned and quoted her. “Open your mind. At least your ears and eyes so you can see the truth.”

She snorted and changed the channel before stopping on a chick flick.

He stretched. “I’m wiped out after driving us here last night.”

She waved one hand toward the bedroom. “Then go to sleep.”

He snorted this time. “My bed smells like you. You think I’d be able to sleep?” He stroked her cheek. “In real-time, Tessa, you are much more dangerous than the handful of digital trouble I protect.”

She leaned into his hand on her face. “Thank you for keeping me from being arrested by your fellow neo-Nazis.”

He shook his head. “A positive stroke and a low blow in the same sentence.” He sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Tessa?”

She obviously did not have the answer either. Instead, she shot him a lopsided grin. “Run? Break out your gun?” She laughed then until she had to wipe her eyes.

“What?”

“Got handcuffs?”

Cole stood. “Goodnight, woman.”

He came back in a blink with a pillow and blanket. “You need to take the bed. Watch the tube in there. Surf cyberspace; I don’t care what you do to entertain yourself as long as you stop tempting me. I’m only human and you make it hard to show you the high road I’m on. Go game and shoot dudes in the head. Just make sure you keep hiding with your slick tricks and avoiding any alias you’ve used in the past. Stay away, far away, from Yori Korskovf and the cyberwar for now.”

“What? No goodnight kiss?” She giggled before she stood up and walked into his bedroom.

Tessa no sooner logged online, than Glenn sent her an IM. She had let the program sign on, but only used that alias with Glenn.

Flash: Feel better yet?

Pixie: Thanks 4 what u r doing.

Flash: How do u like Virginia?

Pixie: UR brother’s bed is nice & comfortable.

She waited for a long, long time for Glenn to reply. She heard Cole’s phone bleep with a text message in the other room before Cole groaned.

He appeared in the doorway, shirtless and sexy as sin.

“Tessa, please don’t tease my baby brother.”

“I’m not!”

He walked over to her computer and pointed at the IM box. “What do call that then?”

“The truth.”

He growled and dropped onto the bed beside her. “Glenn is not going to call me out because I’m sharing my bed with you if I’m not.” He punched the pillow and turned his back to her.

“He’s just shocked that I know you are brothers.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

Her computer bleeped when Glenn finally sent a reply.

Flash: Happy now?

Cole’s phone bleeped again too and he growled again as he read the text. He sat up and pointed it at her. U happy now? “Great. Now he’s matchmaking. Stop causing trouble, babe. He knows as well as you do that I’m hot for you.”

Cole shut her laptop and pulled her over to snuggle like a spoon beside him. He shut his eyes. “Go to sleep.”

As if she weren’t in the room, Cole added, “God, please give this woman sweet dreams only. If You don’t send her into slumber soon, then I don’t know what will happen.”

Tessa shut her eyes and wiggled until she felt completely encompassed in warm safety. She couldn’t recall ever feeling so protected. She sighed happily and fell asleep.

She settled into a routine over the next four days of hacking, attacking and counterattacking with him, before riding on his motorcycle. Glenn called every day with a report until her yard was landscaped and the evil was cleared out of her house; she placed it on the real estate market. At night, Cole would wrap his arms around her, kiss her temple, and say his prayers aloud. Tessa couldn’t remember ever feeling as safe, or as intimate, with anyone, all without the benefit of sexual satisfaction.

She awoke alone on the morning of the fifth day. Time for tryouts for the cyber CT team. She found Cole in the kitchen wearing a gun in a shoulder holster. He slid a cup of hot coffee in front of her. Then he slid her purple USB from his safe next to her mug.

“Should I bring my gun?”

“Only if you want arrested before you enter the building.”

“Why do you have yours on?”

“To protect you.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

“I don’t have anything to wear.”

He sighed and placed his hand over hers. “Don’t be nervous, babe. Just like going to church, you’re clothes won’t matter.” He tapped her forehead. “What’s up here will.”

Tessa dressed and joined him in the garage.

He was in his car, though, not on his motorcycle.

She opened the passenger side, but Cole said, “No. Get in the back. Korskovf will be running everything and everyone he has to spot you.”

She cocked her hands on her hips. “I don’t want in the back.”

“Tough.” He started the car.

"You’re paranoid,” she stated but slid behind him in the backseat.

It seemed as if they hit every red light into DC and Cole’s fingers drumming on the steering wheel, “Come on, come on,” did not settle her nerves.

He parked in a space underground that said, Reserved for DHS. If she wasn’t nervous a second ago, her belly twisted like a pack of snakes had slid under her shirt. For this highly unusual invitation-only hack off, would she have immunity in there or would she get busted? God, she prayed silently, can You do the one thing I’ve been asking for a week? Can’t Cole quit his job?

Cole grabbed the handle and opened the back door for her. He watched her exhale two quick breaths like she was stepping into a gun fight. He smiled when she slid out, appearing calm and collected, game face securely in place. Although he didn’t want to rattle her, like placing a blanket over her head, Cole slid one arm around her waist and hurried her to the elevator.

He walked through the security scanners first, holding back his coat to show his gun to the guards working. She may not be known here, but he was. They let him pass into the waiting elevator.

He glanced at Tessa as an alarm over the security walk-through bleeped loud warnings and red lights. Cole humphed. They had no idea how dangerous she really was. The guard waved a wand over her four times, each time it sounded alarms at her stomach. She finally lifted her shirt and showed the man her navel ring. The security guard may not have seen it, but when the man grinned and waved her into the elevator, Tessa’s evil grin sent a shiver down his back. Although there was no sign of her USB necklace, she was packing something other than the tiny jewel-encrusted guns dangling from her navel ring.

She’s gonna get me fired, he thought. Instead of saying that, he caught her glinting green eyes and said, “Knock one way way out of the park.”

When the elevator doors dinged and slid open, Cole pulled off his gun, dropped his keys and phone in a basket, and walked through the next set of security scanners. He lifted one brow when the female officer made Tessa take off the belly ring. She tossed it to Cole and walked through the scanners, then the bone scan, with no detection. Did she have the purple USB or not? He rubbed his forehead. He didn’t even want to know where she was hiding it. Should he take notes to tighten Homeland Security?

She signed her name at the next desk and entered a canteen where other candidates waited. Green eyes scanned the room again and again. She walked past the coffee toward cake. Instead of taking a piece however, she tore off a piece of aluminum foil from the cake stand. She slipped her palm over it and slid it into her pocket.

His boss thumped him on the back. “Ah so you brought her, Stone. Will she do something as outrageous as you and take down the electricity to this block?”

Cole caught and held her eyes, sending her a nonverbal warning not to spit in his superior’s face, before he introduced her. She appeared perfectly harmless, he thought. His Vini Vidi Vici shirt, swallowing her curves, slipped off one shoulder where a pink lacey bra strap showed for a second before she pulled the shirt back in place. She shook his boss’s offered hand though and managed not to throw up as the man expounded on how much more privacy could be tightened in America.

She stared at the ink pen in his boss’s front pocket. “May I borrow that for a minute?”

Of course the man agreed. While he walked over to the coffee pot, Tessa unscrewed the pen and removed the metal clip from the side. She handed it back to him and he slid it into his front pocket. She smiled and said to his boss, “People like you are exactly why I’m here to tryout.”

Cole shot her a smile, although wondering if she might get him busted before her showdown at high noon. Surely not . . . Cole had immunity here; Tessa did not. She disappeared undamaged from the room into where all the potentials were called. A heavy door to the room clicked shut. He expelled one deep breath. He’d gotten her here safe and sound.

He joined his co-workers behind another closed door where they could observe monitors without being observed. Each participant trying out sat at one laptop. There was nothing normal about this hack off. If they had managed to get something inside the building, it was considered fair game in there. This is where it always got entertaining as Tessa was not the only one to produce supplies. One dude pulled out a little wooden gun with wooden stakes as bullets. Did he think this was a vampire hunt? Maybe he should try working with his brother chasing ghosts instead.

Tessa slid the aluminum foil through the pen clip, a crude but successful antenna.

The man conducting the tryouts said simply, “Impress me with mayhem.” He depressed a button on a two-foot tall clock. The second hand jumped forward.

Tessa did not plug in the USB but jumped onto a griefer’s server. The security scanner company for this building? She changed the radio frequency and attempted to piggyback into the security cameras in this building. Access Denied. She hammered it again, taking control of the computer and the cameras in this building as well as the security scanners.

The federal agent running the class stepped behind her, shoulder surfing.

“What is she doing?” his boss asked Cole.

Not hacking a heart, but Cole shrugged. “Not sure.” He watched her fingers fly, entering line after line of commands without missing a keystroke.

Tessa toggled between cameras until zooming in on one screen. She triggered the security scanner alarm on the first floor, the second floor, this floor. Only the underground level avoided the chaos as guards talked on the radio to each other and waved people through the constant flood of flashing red lights and loud wailing sirens. He could hear the one on the third floor, blaring on the other side of the door.

Tessa slid the end of the pen clip into the hole on her wireless card, the antenna pointing toward the door. Alarms continued to wail outside as the cameras showed people in general mayhem from the ever-present lights and alarms. She plugged in the USB to bring up the recorded signal.

She toggled back to the cameras, switching to the one in the elevator. Yori Korskovf looked directly at the camera as if he meant to look her directly in her eyes.

“Shit!”

His boss ordered, “Tell me that’s not Korskovf walking off the elevator onto the third floor!”

“Wait for it,” Cole countered.

An Asian youth lifted his fingers from the keyboard and grabbed the little wooden gun. “Turn it off.”

A camera on her screen showed Yori waiting on the elevator, waiting for the security scanner frequency to be turned down or off.

The guy with the gun pulled the trigger and two wooden darts lodged in Tessa’s right hand.

The fed instructor pulled a gun and pointed it toward the Asian man. Other agents flooded into the room. Cole stepped outside and watched another agent demand that Korskovf exit the elevator and walk through the wailing scanners.

Yori hedged, right outside the scanner, and yelled, “Phong!”

His young protégé was led at gunpoint out of the tryout room and down a hallway in front of him as Yori stepped through the screaming scanners to watch Phong being led away.

Yori fell to his knees after he stepped from between the tall scanners on either side of him.

Cole opened the door to the tryout room where he found a fed with a gun pressed to Tessa’s temple as he demanded she shut off the alarms. She hit one key with her left hand and the screaming alarms and red lights stopped. Bright red blood soaked into the words Vini Vidi Vici where her right hand rested against her chest. She lifted her left hand in surrender at her side.

Yet the federal agent demanded to know why Korskovf was on his knees and clutching his stomach.

The camera on her screen showed Yori fall face forward as blood gushed from his mouth.

Cole barked, “Back away from her!” He didn’t need to await a guard’s assessment of the Russian mafia leader’s pulse. Tessa had assassinated him in under a minute.

Clicking from only one keyboard filled the room. Vroom! The power to the building shut down. Tessa nodded once toward the guy. “David.”

The guy nodded back. “Tessa.”

The federal agent had lowered his gun for a second. Cole pulled his when the emergency lighting kicked in. Yet Tessa jumped to her feet and swung her bloody right hand to catch the point of his gun. Her left hand snagged the gun from the equally surprised fed’s hand.

Cole growled. She was trying to protect his blasted job!

The bearded man named David walked past her laptop and slid the purple USB from the port to his pocket as all the tryout candidates were led into the hallway.

Shouts sounded from the hallway as a connecting door was opened. Only Cole, Tessa, and the fed stood in the room, two of them with guns drawn. Cole slid the other agent’s gun from her hand and laid it on the table beside her laptop.

“Jesus, help her,” Cole said quietly as she staggered forward a step, her hand bleeding profusely onto the floor. “Time to go to the hospital, Tess.” He slid one arm around her waist as she lifted her right hand to her mouth like a wounded animal and tried to pull the wooden darts from the back of her hand. Bright red smeared across her lips.

Another set of paramedics beside the ones trying to revive Yori rushed into the room to attend her.

His boss strode into the room and tipped from heel to toe. He thumped Cole on the back once. “Best damn tryouts in a decade.” The main power had still not been returned to service and his boss said, “I hope our recorded backups got all that. We may need to tweak our disaster recovery plan.” He turned toward Tessa, “Pretty slick tricks, Miss Kendall, with the radio frequencies. You killed Yori Korskovf.” It was not a question.

“Prove it,” Cole stated. “I’m pretty sure one of your candidates hacked the backups and erased them.”

Tessa shrugged and stared at his boss. “I don’t have any idea what you are talking about. My hack was simply to set off the scanners.”

The federal agent sneered at her. “You are under arrest.”

Once upon a time, Cole had worked with the man. “You’re not serious,” Cole asked him.

“Nope, just trying to finish off your cardiac arrest. Isn’t she the one who hacked your heart a decade ago?”

The paramedic finished wrapping her hand and laid her back on the stretcher.

His boss nodded once. “I hope she can still use that hand after this.”

Cole prayed under his breath and followed the stretcher out of the building and into an ambulance. He climbed in the back and glanced to make sure David wasn’t driving. At this point, he was paranoid. Just the same, he started praying aloud while texting a message to Glenn to do the same.

While Cole paced and waited at the hospital, while the woman he loved was operated on, Glenn burst through the door. Cole had sent a helicopter to pick him up, a perk from his job at DHS.

Glenn took in the blood on Cole’s gun, shoulder holster, shirt front and pants. “You all right?”

Cole walked right past Glenn toward the young bearded man walking in the surgery waiting room. “David,” he growled. “Who are you?” he demanded from the man who hacked in tandem with Tessa.

David held out his hand. “On your team, sir.”

Cole exhaled. He knew the code between hackers, he was a hacker, but he still wanted to know. “I have neither the time nor the patience to look you up right now. You’re fired unless you tell me.”

David frowned. “DHS sucks anyway.”

A surgeon entered the room and called, “For Tessa Kendall?”

David stepped past Cole and Glenn. “How is my cousin’s hand?”

Cole scoffed. “She has zero family.”

The doctor flicked one glance at each of the three men before staring at David. “Are you her emergency contact? The one the senator told me to find?”

“Yeah.” David followed the doctor from the waiting room.

Glenn caught Cole’s elbow. “Easy, bro. I shouldn’t have to explain politics to you!”

Cole tossed up his hands. “That’s it; I quit!”

Tessa, right arm wrapped and taped against her chest yet above her heart, leaned against David who steered her into the waiting room. She bypassed Cole and wrapped her left arm around Glenn. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

When she turned toward Cole, she smiled. “Did my ears deceive me or did you quit your job at DHS?”

He slid his arms around her. “We can create a couple of openings in security with the scientists working to uncover the secrets of invisibility.”

She tipped on her toes and squeezed him so hard he was afraid her hurt hand would start bleeding again. Near his ear, she whispered, “Then I will admit God is real and He has a plan for my life because that is precisely what I’ve been praying for this last week in your house.”

Cole laughed. “Want to get married, Tessa?”

Glenn nudged him but pointed at Tessa. “She’s drugged up right now, Cole.” Glenn grinned at Tessa. “You stoned, future sister-in-law?”

She leaned against Cole, but answered Glenn. “I love him. Your brother and I are leaving to become invisible.”

“I love you, too, Tessa.” Cole laughed, swung her into his arms, and walked out of the hospital into the bright rays of sunshine lighting their path.

Happily Ever After