Tessa stated, “You can’t hide from eye in the sky and facial recognition these days. Attack, counterattack. I’m not really Big Brother material, but I’m on my way to tryouts. And I do plan to get in by hacking a heart.”

Glenn hitched his thumb over his shoulder at her. “Make sure she doesn’t get snuffed, Stone.”

Cole stared at her red-gold curls whipped into a riotous mass after the motorcycle ride. He looked from her black cap down her body where she had some slick accessories hidden from view. “I intend to. I’ve been watching out for her for so many years, I don’t know what else I’d do. She’s a digital handful of trouble.”

She snorted. “I’m invisible.”

“Not entirely,” he disagreed, thinking of a few more ways she might hide herself away without stepping into the honeypot. Then he looked her up and down pointedly. “Not hardly.” He laughed. “Not even close.”

“I’ll show you,” she invited in little more than a whisper. She pointed toward the back wall of computers in the other room. “May I?” she asked Glenn.

Glenn pointed too, toward his server room on the other side of his office. “Take it easy on the equipment, Tessa. I think you’ll appreciate Haven.”

“Quite the hangout,” she agreed and strolled out to order a large cup of sweet coffee.

Her cell phone rang out with a song before she answered. Cole sat at a computer next to her and blatantly eavesdropped. Although she sounded alarmed, “Get closer to him,” she lifted her shirt and pulled off a thumb drive. She still listened while plugging in and booting off the memory stick.

“What’s happening?” he asked her.

“A problem. A big one.”

He watched while she logged in on a computer in front of him also. She remotely logged into a server.

After groaning, she explained to him. “My friends are closing in on the senator with their long range antenna. This is for real, so I want them close enough to make sure it works in more than theory.”

“The senator?” he asked as she worked on reverse-engineering a looped signal. Cole recognized the radio transmission continually engaging in wireless communication . . . a denial of service attack. Low level of attack, but theory suggested the uninterrupted pinging could drain the battery life of a pacemaker. Good thing he was sitting down, because he had been sure that hacking a heart was going to be her way into the cyber counterterrorism team.

Her phone sang out again. She snagged it to her ear. “I’m ready.”

“What are you doing?” he demanded, neither caring if she was on the phone nor if her fingers were busy on the keyboard.

She didn’t answer him until the attack was over. “I’m on his payroll, you know, the senator’s. I told him the heart can be hacked and he hired me and several others to make sure it doesn’t happen to him. He’s the biggest proponent to maintain U.S. citizens’ right to privacy. I don’t want anything to happen to that man.”

“You didn’t call to warn him.”

“We decided not to scare him to death and took care of it on this end. It’s part of what he pays us for. If we couldn’t though, say a higher level of attack like induced V-Fib, and then we would have to let him know . . . if he didn’t drop over dead immediately. Medatron, the maker of these implantable cardiac devices, left the door wide open with vulnerabilities.”

“So it’s happening now. Not in the future? Not your way into a government job?”

She cupped her hand around his cheek. “Yes and no. Untraceable assassinations are happening. There is no squad for this though. I still think it’s my way into a new career, counterattacking hackers cracking medical devices.”

Tessa stood and stretched. “It’s been a long day since I left the city. My brain is tired now. Will you please take me back to the hotel?”

Cole told Glenn goodbye and drove Tessa to the hotel. His mind spun with the possibilities. Although she was simply using the scientific theory proposed by others, he did not know attacks on medical implants were being used already for assassinations. He knew it was coming, but not that it was here. “You are brilliant, babe.”

She winked at him from her hotel doorway. “Don’t tell anyone, Cole Stone, or I’ll hack your heart.”

“You did a long time ago when you weren’t even trying.”

He spun on his heel and entered his hotel room. After lighting candles he’d brought along, Cole exhaled slowly; time to execute his own plan, if not code, to access her unhackable heart. He tossed the baseball cap onto a dresser, started music playing low in the background, before knocking on the door connecting their rooms.

She laughed and swung it open. The smile on her face died when she looked past him at the flickering candles.

Cole swung one arm toward his room. “Come inside, Tessa. I’ve wanted to see you by candlelight for years.” Strange how bold she could be, how brave in unknown territory of security, but candlelight exposed a flash of pain in her green eyes. “Relax, babe.” She didn’t though, so he asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Is sex on the menu?” she whispered.

That surprised him, but no more than when she stepped into his room and kicked off her shoes. She thought to reduce it down to primal urges? Oh no, he wanted her body but he intended to have her heart first. He’d waited years for her, for this chance, not for a one night stand.

Cole held out one hand to her. “How about we start with a dance?” He caught her in his arms and slow danced around the room. When her body relaxed against his, he lowered his head to her ear and murmured compliments. She stiffened like he had been cursing her. Ah, a vulnerability.

“What do you want from me?” she pleaded.

“Everything you have to give. Everything you are. Let me in, Tess, or I’ll find my own way in.”

“Yeah, I almost forgot you were a brute force kind of guy.” She glanced at the candles and then at the bed.

“Do you forgive me?” He let a full minute pass, turning her in circles as they danced, before he added, “I’m a different man now. You needed time and I’ve given it to you as you rocketed ahead in your corporate career. You’ve tasted freedom and what I’m offering you won’t be like you said your marriage was, not like a choke collar tightening around your lovely throat.”

He pressed his lips to the thrumming of her heart at the base of her neck. “Forgive me, babe.”

Her soft hands stopped twirling in the hair at his neck and slid up to pull his mouth to hers. As the kiss spiraled them toward heaven, she moaned. “Mmm. I’ve never been this hot for someone.” Her hot tongue licked up his neck before her teeth closed on his tendon. “I am hungry, Cole. For you.”

His heart thudded while blood from his brain rushed to a lower region of his body. He waltzed her back until her knees touched the mattress. He pressed her back more and leaned over her body on the bed. “Tessa, tell me you forgive me.”

Her body told him she was starving as she pulled his mouth with hers so he stopped speaking. She bucked her hips up into his. She moaned into his mouth again and Cole almost forgot why it was so important to win her forgiveness. He tore his mouth from hers, staring at her in candlelight.

“Cole, don’t you want this?” she asked even as she rubbed against his straining jeans.

He groaned. “For a long time, Tessa.”

“What’s the problem then?”

“I don’t want one night with you. I want you to come to Virginia, to my city, to my house. I know it’s close to where you are testing.”

Be it his words, the candlelight, the music, or simply the needs of her body, Tessa agreed. “I forgive you. Don’t burn me again.”

His body burned now as much as he suspected hers was. “I won’t.” When he kissed her again, he forgot he wanted to show her how very different he was now. His high code shut off and his body took over.

She grabbed his hand and the edge of her shirt before resting his hand over dangling guns of her navel ring. She slid her hands up his shirt. “Let me rock your world.”

He groaned as his fingers slid up the USB necklace.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

“Go away, Glenn,” he growled without moving from the top of her. When the fist at his door kept pounding, Cole growled again and looked down at the woman under him. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, red-gold curls mussed from their tousling on the bed. She looked like he’d plundered her. Her breaths heaved in and out, as did his, like they had run from Haven to the hotel.

Cole swung to his feet and adjusted his shirt before opening the door.

Glenn glanced past him at the woman on his bed. One blond brow arched. “Am I interrupting I hope? My fellow ghost hunters are here and want to meet Tessa. They want to hear about the hotspots in her house so they can setup equipment tomorrow.”

Sure enough, a dozen men waited past Glenn in the hallway. Cole closed the door to unlock the latch. He turned to Tessa. “There’s a pack of men out there wanting in. You up to it?”

She groaned but brushed the hair back from her face. “Do I have a choice?”

“Yeah, babe. I can tell them to get lost.”

She laughed. “That’s what I like about you, Cole Stone.”

“What’s that?” When she shook her head without answering, he opened the door to a pack of paranormal investigators. Maybe it was a good thing because he had abandoned his code to the heat of the moment. He wanted so much more than a moment with this woman. She needed to wrap up her unfinished business here, so she could move on and leave the past permanently in the past.

An hour later, Tessa puckered her lips and blew Cole a kiss. She said goodbye to the ghost hunters and shut the door connecting Cole’s room with hers. The idea of attacking the spirits in her spooky old house diminished her sexual hunger. Instead she showered and crawled into bed. Probably a good thing they had shown up when they did, Tessa admitted to herself. If they had been a few minutes later, she would have had Cole naked.

Cole Stone was not on her list of things to do. He was not a part of her career goals. He made her want to dream of forever with him in Virginia, when in reality it was only where she intended to test for the cyber CT team. Why did she have to be so attracted to him? Yet as she closed her eyes, Tessa dreamed that no one had interrupted them earlier.

In the morning, she could feel heat creep up her face when she opened the connecting door to his room.

One black eyebrow rose in silent question, but the bright gleaming smile he shot her suggested he might know. His navy eyes sparkled, his hair jet black and wet from a shower. He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. “Good morning, beautiful.”

“Hi,” she replied, deciding shyness was an odd feeling. “I wanted to know if you are hungry. For breakfast,” she qualified and then blushed hotter.

He laughed, but they left the hotel to search out food. After eating, Cole plugged a dual jack into her iPod so they both could wear earbuds. They spent the rest of the day otherwise unplugged, riding his motorcycle.

By that evening, when they arrived at her century old house, Tessa wondered how Cole had managed to weave this spell over her. The man enchanted her. The man understood her. The man excited her. Her encrypted heart bleeped out a high alert warning, but her mind whispered it was too late.

Glenn greeted them and explained that equipment had been set up in all the hotspots. He opened the back door of a van. “Welcome to the command center.”

“Wow, Glenn!”

Cole laughed. “She’s been unplugged all day. Betcha she can’t wait to hack the house.”

Tessa sat down and began to fuzz the house with white noise.

Glenn tapped her shoulder. “This is Paul; he’s a demonologist. He wants to say a blessing over you to protect your thoughts from the demon inside the house.”

Tessa glanced at Cole as the demonologist chanted in Latin and rubbed oil on Cole’s forehead in the shape of a cross. When Paul turned to her, chanting and rubbing oil on her head, she looked back at Cole.

“It’s okay,” he reassured her. In the next minute though, he looked like he wanted her doused with holy water.

“I have to go inside,” she said to all three men. “I don’t want you to hurt Shadow. I merely want him to move on.” She shot Cole a lopsided grin. “I don’t want him to follow me though.”

Cole pointed at the house where the other paranormal team members broke into groups of two and entered. “That creepy six foot shadow thing from last night? You’ve named it?” His voice dropped a tone deeper. “You want to protect it!”

“Yes,” she replied simply.

Cole raked one hand down his face. “Stay here and hack the house.”

Glenn shook his blond head. “No. Let her come inside. Let her help us bury the past, clear out the spirits haunting her.”

Let her? Not rising to the bait of either man telling her what to do, she held out her hand to Cole. When he slipped his fingers into hers, she stepped from the van.

“I hate this, Tessa. I’m a skeptic and not comfortable with the things in this house.”

“Well, you won’t be skeptical about it after tonight.”

Glenn and the demonologist walked up the steps and into the house before them, but Tessa stayed close behind. Last night when the paranormal investigators busted into Cole’s hotel room, she had listened to their opinions on provoking the spirits in the house in order to get a faster response. She did not want this ghost hunting to take weeks or even days.

Tessa gulped. Despite the teams of hunters in the house, not one thing odd happened. She felt Cole relax his guard after thirty minutes passed without any response from the spirits in her house. She hoped he’d forgive her later. “Shadow! I command you to show yourself.”

Cole no sooner stiffened his posture, his guard, than Tessa pivoted and wrapped her arms around his neck. She tipped on her toes and kissed him passionately.

A six-foot tall shadowman materialized beside her. A rumble like an earthquake rattled the walls. Although the demonologist chanted in Latin and swung the decanter of incense, Glenn uttered, “A jealous spirit?”

As if in answer, books in her old computer room shot off the shelf like a hurricane blew them into the dining room.

Cole’s arm tightened around her waist when she would have pulled away. His mouth lifted from hers. “Tell him, Tessa. Tell him with words that you are with me.”

A loud ringing like electronic feedback rang out from the fireplace. She cocked her head toward the noise. “Shadow isn’t making that sound.”

A short chimpanzee-shaped shadow jumped from the kitchen toward the dining room. When it leapt at her, Shadow lifted one dark hand like he had the power to fling the other shadowman. The monkey shadow hit the window in the kitchen, thrown back into the connecting room.

“Lord have mercy,” Cole whispered. “It’s protecting her.”

The demonologist charged forward, chanting still, and squirting holy water on the chimp-like shadow mid-leap at them. Sparks like a dozen positive and negative jumper cables had touched lit up the room. After another squirt of holy water, the kitchen window exploded as the monkey shadow detonated from darkness to light and dissipated.

When the demonologist moved toward Shadow, Tessa yanked away from Cole to stand in front of the shadowman. “Don’t hurt him.” She pivoted toward Shadow. “Go. If the cave is a portal, please go, Shadow. Don’t follow me. Don’t stay and be banished like that mean one.”

Glenn shook his head. “She’s reasoning with it.” He picked up his walkie-talkie and bleeped, “Are you recording this?”

“Yeah,” came an astonished male reply.

Shadow did not dissolve into darkness though, but moved in the blink of an eye to where she had stepped away from Cole. One large shadowy hand shoved Cole back a step.

“No!” Tessa stated firmly. She stepped in front of Cole. “No. He’s my future. I love Cole.”

Shadow pointed then toward the ceiling of her computer room, then toward the ceiling of her living room like reminding her of the web cameras once planted in this house.

“I know. I forgive him.”

Thud thump. Thud thump. Thud thump. Booted footsteps clomped down the stairs from an upstairs bedroom.

Tessa, came a graveling growl as if the evil vibrated from every corner. Join us.

She clamped her hands over her ears, but the unearthly voice called to her again.

Glenn shouted, “Leave her alone.” His hands shot out to his side for balance as the floor seemed to lift them up like a wave crashed through the living room. He turned to Cole. “Get her out!”

Tessa turned and ran from the house, ran like the devil chased her, ran through darkness and a woods to the opening of the cave behind her house. Red flashes strobed from the back of the cave. She whimpered, “Shadow?” She saw the shadowman then. “Goodbye.”

A flash of bright white light like a sun exploded knocked her to the ground.

Cole lifted her to her feet. “The shadowman is gone.”

She buried her face against his chest. “I’m terrified of what is still in the house.”

“I know, baby; I know. The teams in the house are working on exorcizing the demon. Then this will be finished and we can move on toward your future.”

She sniffled and pushed back from him. Had she actually told Cole she loved him via telling Shadow? She worried that over in her mind until they reached the van, the command center, where everything inside the house was being recorded. She glanced at a camera monitor showing the cave. “Great,” her declaration of love and her flat out admission of fear were both recorded.

On another monitor showing the stairs leading to the second floor, a white mist pulled together to form a man’s shape. Glenn asked questions, but Tessa could hear no answers. She did hear Glenn say, “The holy grail,” as the mist solidified into a full-bodied apparition of a man in Confederate Civil War clothes.

The walkie-talkie in the van bleeped. Glenn said, “Play the digital recording back while I’m here in real-time. Listen carefully for any answers to my questions from the apparition.”

While she rewound the backup recording, Cole slid headphones over his ears. Was he trying to protect her from another scare? Cole’s dark-toned skin was already at least two shades lighter like he had enough scares to last a lifetime tonight. Last night, the paranormal teams had explained that in order to interact with entities, a person had to come face-to-face with the past and the history of the place where they hunted ghosts. Cole must have heard something unpleasant because he paled one more shade lighter.

Tessa handed Cole the walkie-talkie and listened to his report. “He died on the land, running away scared from the Civil War. He misses his family. He doesn’t want to leave the house; he wants you to leave, Glenn.”

Glenn replied over the airwaves. “Gonna help him move on just the same.”

Pink light tinted the horizon outside the van doors. Surely it was time for the ghost hunters to pack up and leave?

While Cole worked on fuzzing the house with white noise, trying to help the teams of paranormal investigators locate the demon, the hair on the back of her neck lifted as if an icy finger scratched her nape. An evil growl called for her again and again.

Even as she wondered if only she could hear it, Cole pulled her over on his lap. He kissed the top of her head. “I hear it, too, Tessa. Only God knows how you lived through years in this house.”

How would Tessa go forward into her future to tryout for the cyber counterterrorism team? How would she go forward with Cole? Would she be bold as brass in chasing her dreams of career and man? Would she shut him out, shut the door on a past filled with pain? Would she cut off her budding feelings for Cole, reach for her career goals only and leave him in the past where he had once wounded her? Would she move forward, cold but with class? Would she move forward bold as brass?