Damon hated to think so because that group had been using their abilities to wipe out top CEOs, transfer money, then doing arms deals, buying nuclear weapons, and completely annihilating small villages, as they took over any land they wanted. Terk’s team was nothing like that. With a shake of his head, he abandoned his bed early in the morning and got down to work.
Damon sat here at his makeshift desk in their temporary headquarters, hidden away, wondering what he was doing and whether it was doing any good at all. He’d always been a firm believer in operating for the government for the sake of keeping the American people safe, and now he had to wonder if he hadn’t become a liability and if the American government was trying to keep the American people safe from him. A sobering thought.
He slowly sat up, stretched a bit, used the facilities, and then came back. The coffee was long gone, and Tasha was still pounding away on a keyboard, as he had come to expect. She was damn good. A hacker, a team hacker at that, she had even had a hacker boyfriend going through high school. He’d gotten caught and done time—a lot of time, for stealing money from banks—while she’d been far more interested in hacking into the game systems that she’d been working on at the time, trying to figure out how the gaming community was using certain code to make things happen.
While her boyfriend had gone to jail, she’d been given a slap on the wrist, and the government had recruited her. She’d laughed at them, thinking using her skills for the government would be the last thing she’d be interested in. Unfortunately, around the same time, her parents had been killed by a bomb planted in the family car. Immediately she realized that she had no way of knowing if it was intended to kill her too or as a way to punish her. She didn’t know if it was because of the work she had been doing—or, more likely, that of her boyfriend—and her name had been linked to his after all.
She only knew that she was in danger, and it could quite possibly be from other countries because her boyfriend hadn’t been particular or choosy about which banks or countries he stole money from. It wasn’t like she had any of the money though. It had all been forfeited, the bank accounts seized. And, at nineteen years old, she’d become a somewhat reluctant employee of the government. A government hacker. She was talented and had risen quickly but was definitely known as nonconformist. She didn’t fit into the office routine or handle authority well. She was a maverick.
Damon smiled at that because he knew mavericks. He knew a whole black ops group of them, and he had to admit that she would definitely fit in. No females were in that group to date, and, call him sexist, but, when it came to the type of work he did, it was harder for him to see a woman go out there and get herself slaughtered. And considering Tasha’s strengths were computers and technology and software code, he figured she was right where she needed to be. And he was damn glad to have her.
“Stop staring at me,” she said crossly. “You know I hate that.”
“Are you sure you’re not psychic?” he muttered, as he set about making a fresh pot of coffee.
“I don’t have to be psychic to feel those laser beams in my back. You always were like that.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he protested.
“Yes, you were. You were always watching me, studying everything I did. Did you think I didn’t know you didn’t trust me? Well, I did because you made it crystal clear. And now you really don’t trust me all over again.”
He froze at that. “Jesus, is that what you thought?”
She twisted around and shot him a hard look. “What else was I supposed to think?”
He flushed slightly at that because, of course, it was something completely different. He’d just been waiting for the group to disband and for the jobs to be over, before approaching her on a personal level. They worked well on a business level, but anything that screwed that up would affect the entire team, so he’d avoided any personal relationship. He was even careful with teasing, not wanting her to think something that wasn’t there. The fact of the matter was, it was there, and only now did he find out that she’d been thinking the opposite.
She turned her gaze back to the computer.
“Don’t you go blind watching that?”
“Nope,” she snapped. “Do you go blind staring down a sniper rifle?”
“Nope.”
“Right, so you do you, and I’ll do me.”
“And never the twain shall meet, huh?” he asked sarcastically.
She didn’t answer but gave a shrug.
He’d often thought that something was between them, definitely a rapport, which he’d worked hard to keep on a business level. Maybe that had been a mistake. If ever there was a time to find a bond between them, it was now because he had to trust her and, if he didn’t have that trust—well, he didn’t want to think about it.
He walked over, sat beside her. “Listen. I always trusted you.”
She looked at him again, but her gaze was hard to read. “Really? You were ever barely even friendly.”
“I was friendly. We joked all the time.”
“Sure, … and, at the same time, we didn’t. It never went any further than that.”
He winced. “That’s because I was always trying to keep our relationship professional. Anything personal tends to upset the apple cart, and it was so necessary that the team be in sync that I couldn’t do that.”
“Right.”
He heard the disbelief in her voice. He groaned. “I was planning on contacting you as soon as we were disbanded to see about going out for dinner.”
He watched as her fingers stumbled on the keyboard, before she quickly corrected her mistake and tore right back through whatever the hell it was that she was doing.
“Uh-huh,” she said, definitely a noncommittal answer.
He groaned. “I’m serious.”
She just nodded.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“There’s never been the slightest sign of you being interested at all,” she stated. “You’ve always been standoffish and difficult.”
“Of course I was,” he said, with a muted laugh. “How else was I supposed to keep my interest down and not have you aware?”
“What was wrong with me being aware?”
“Because the others would have noticed.”
“Well, I highly doubt that anybody noticed anything,” she replied curtly. “So, well-done.”
“Ouch. I’m really not trying to be difficult over this.”
“Well, you failed.”
“You don’t have to be so snappy either, you know?” he said. “Everything has changed now. It’s critically important that we clear the air and trust each other … completely.”
At that, she crashed her fingers down on the keyboard and then dropped them to her lap and glared at him. “But you don’t trust me!”
He stopped, then hesitated. “You’re wrong. I do trust you. Who I don’t trust is me … around you.”
That shut her up, and she just stared at him, her eyes wide.
He nodded and shrugged. “I’ve always been attracted to you, but it wasn’t in anybody’s best interest. It was never the right time. I tried to keep it all on the down-low, so you wouldn’t know, and obviously I succeeded … too much.”