Kissing him might always sweep her away. But that was okay. Gray would always catch her.
“Do you forgive me?” he murmured against her mouth.
“Yes.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. His chin. The tip of his nose. Laughter bubbled up in her. “Gray, you’re going to live.”
“I’m going to live,” he agreed. “But, more importantly, I’m going to try. I’ll be everything you deserve, I swear. I’ll find a way.”
“Just be you.” She reached up, ghosting her fingers over the soft stubble above his brow. “That’s enough.”
“Deal.”
CONALL
For a week, Conall had watched Tobias Richter’s disappearance ripple through the TechCorps.
His absence was like a black hole at the heart of their world—visible at first only through inference. Messages piled up in his many inboxes. Pressing questions were left unanswered, security concerns ignored. Follow-ups started to drift in, cautious at first and then increasingly terse.
I would appreciate a response.
This is time sensitive.
Per my last three messages …
Conall had assumed at that point that someone would connect the dots and send up an alarm. Maya had been the one to point out the ironic reality: no one involved in day-to-day operations at the TechCorps had the authority to question Tobias Richter’s whereabouts. He might have chipped every employee on the Hill, but he didn’t have a convenient tracker embedded under his skin.
Tobias Richter came and went as he damn well pleased.
Conall had started to think they’d been delivered a miracle. If Cara Kennedy had a scrap of sense left in her, she’d be across the Mississippi by now. Conall sure the fuck would have been, in her shoes. And with no idea what had happened to Richter, the TechCorps could spin themselves in increasingly dizzy circles for weeks as his status slowly morphed from not here to actively missing to presumed dead.
Then again, they had been delivered a miracle. Gray was on his feet and walking around, apparently no worse for the wear. Savitri was over there now, assessing his progress and adjusting his healing protocols. If Conall had to choose one miracle, that would be the one: Gray, alive and healing.
And it looked like that was the only miracle they were going to get.
Maya was seated next to him in the warehouse, idly scrolling through her catalog. They were ostensibly in charge of the kids while Nina and Knox scoped out Ava’s contacts, but the kids didn’t exactly need babysitters. They were tiny, overserious adults in a way that depressed Conall—and that was saying something, considering how young he’d been when the TechCorps had swept him into their program.
At least these kids would get a chance to be kids. That was worth a gut shot or two.
It was an idyllic scene. And Conall was about to ruin it. Sighing, he nudged Maya. “Something just happened.”
“Hmm?”
She had a distracted, dreamy look on her face. Conall wanted more than anything to let her stay in whatever blissful daydream about Gray she was currently having. Maya deserved happiness. Hell, given the past week, Maya deserved to take Gray into a locked room and stay there with him for a year, if she wanted.
But Maya was the only one who could tell him how much shit they were in.
“There’s been some weird chatter this morning,” he told her, trying to ease her in gently. But there was no gentle way to say this. No way to soften the blow. “Cara Kennedy is DC-025, right?”
“Yes.”
“She just turned herself in.”
Maya’s head turned slowly. By the time she was facing him, her expression was blank and her eyes dangerously hard. “Show me.”
The message was short. A company-wide memo, restricted to Level One security, it consisted of two concise lines.
DC-025 remanded to acting VP of Security for comprehensive debriefing.
Impose radio silence.
“I don’t know what the fuck it means,” Conall said as Maya stared at the tablet. “Radio silence? Do they mean internal comms?”
“They mean everything.” Maya was still looking at the tablet, but her gaze was unfocused. “It’s code. It means the topic of conversation is too sensitive for anything but in-person communication. But this is a multi-department L1 memo.” Maya finally lifted her gaze to Conall’s. “Make sure there’s no trace of you in the system. Because they suspect they’ve been compromised.”
“Fuck.” Not that there was much risk of leaving a trace behind—Conall had too much respect for his former classmates at the TechCorps to get sloppy. But of all the times to lose their eyes on the inside …
“Yeah.” Maya rubbed a hand over her face. “Okay. Well, it’s not great. But it’s not necessarily as bad as it seems, either. If they think Cara just showed up to be a good little girl and hand over all Richter’s secrets so they can decommission her…” Maya smiled grimly. “God help whatever sucker they promoted to Richter’s place.”
Conall barely heard her. Nina had pushed open the door and was holding it for Ava’s mystery contacts. The tall woman at the front had to be Syd. She looked like she was in her mid-forties, which probably meant she was closing in on sixty. Tall, tough, and sporting a leather jacket and beat-up jeans, she was exactly what Conall had always imagined Nina would age into in twenty years.
But she wasn’t the reason his brain had stuttered to a halt.
The man who prowled in behind her was a metric ton of broody in just under two meters of man. Salt-and-pepper hair cut brutally short, an equally trimmed beard dusted with silver, tanned skin, and a scowl that challenged the world to fight him clashed with the brightest blue eyes Conall had ever seen. He moved with liquid grace, assessed the room with a wariness Knox would envy, and looked like he could kill you in fifteen ways with his pinky finger.
“Conall,” Maya whispered. “You’re staring.”
“How are you not?” Conall retorted. Fuck, the bastard made Gray look warm and cuddly. Though, to be fair, Gray was kind of warm and cuddly now. At least around Maya.
This bastard sure the fuck wasn’t. He looked positively grumpy. Conall was half in love already.
Maya shot him a sympathetic look before raising her voice. “You must be Syd. I’m Maya.”
“Good to meet you.” Syd strolled over, and she had that same easy grace. Like a panther on the prowl, her predatory gaze assessing him and Maya in turn to decide whether they were potential prey. Her lips quirked a little as she eyed the tablet in Conall’s hands. “You’re the tech? I heard you’re pretty good.”
Conall cleared his throat and tried not to look at the guy, who was hovering behind Syd with all the brooding subtlety of a lion with a sore paw. “I’m not bad.”
“Maybe you can talk to Max before we go.” She jerked her head at her second. “We’ve been having some trouble with our satellite out on the farm. Even when we can connect to the GhostNet, our upload speed is shit.”
“Sure, I know some tricks.” He leaned sideways on the stool to peer around Syd, straight into the full supernova power of all that glowering sexy. “We can chat if you want.”
Max made a noncommittal noise. Something between a growl and a grunt, all low and rumbly and hot.