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I clicked through the files. It was more of the same: trafficking drugs, selling weapons of war to whoever had the most money. This was what Anton got mixed up in? The idea made my stomach hurt. “I knew that whatever Anton was doing wasn’t legal,” I said, not able to look away from the screen. “But this—?” I clicked my tongue against my teeth.
“It doesn’t make him a bad man,” Adrian said softly.
I glanced at him. The only time I’d heard the former SEAL talk so gently in the last few days was to Elias or one of the twins. But I wasn’t a child. I didn’t need to be shielded from the hard truths of life. I’d faced them head on over and over again in the past few years. “It doesn’t make him a good one either.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he put his hand over mine and steered the mouse to the last file. “Open that one,” he said, but it was hard to hear what he had said with his hand over mine. His touch was warm, and the skin of his palm was work-rough. What would it be like to have that hand touch other parts of me?
I nearly jerked at my own thoughts. Where had that come from? I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know how attractive Adrian was, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d imagined another person touching me. Let alone felt a wave of desire at the prospect of intimacy.
I cleared my throat and opened the last file like he wanted. Adrian let his hand fall away, and I missed that little bit of warmth. “What the hell?”
I looked at the screen—this file wasn’t like the others. Instead, it was another ciphered message. “Get me a piece of paper?” I asked, and when he did, I started translating the message. The English nonsense became Waathanian, one letter at a time, with a few stops and starts as this was a much longer message than the one before. Once I created something I understood, I translated it back into English for Adrian. “There are originals,” I said. “‘Hayes keeps everything. He’s paranoid. He doesn’t trust anything but his servers.’”
Adrian was quiet for a moment. “Servers…like at the company headquarters? That would have top of the line security, yeah?”
I hummed in agreement. “On a locked intranet system, I have to imagine.”
He nodded. “Well…shit.”
My sentiments exactly.
When Drake and Layla came back from their walk, Drake was limping. “What the hell happened?” Adrian asked.
“He tripped over a tree root,” Layla said, obviously trying not to giggle.
“I’m fine,” Drake insisted, but when we got him sitting on the couch and took his shoe off, it became obvious he wasn’t fine at all. His ankle was already starting to swell and turn purple. “Shit.”
“You need to get an x-ray, as soon as possible.”
Drake wanted to try icing and elevating it first, believing it could just be a bad sprain. In the meantime, he insisted we talk to him about what the program had decrypted. “Was it anything useful?” he asked.
“The Hayes Group’s headquarters is in Atlanta,” Adrian said. “I think that’s my target.”
“Our target,” I said softly.
Adrian startled. “I don’t expect you?—”
“Do you know how to access a server on your own? And decrypt a file on the fly?” Adrian’s jaw tightened—I was starting to like when that happened; it meant I was surprising him. He shook his head, and I looked at Drake. “Can you?”
“Probably not as well as you,” he said, “but I can.” He glanced at his ankle. The swelling hadn’t gotten any worse, but the color was nearing plum. “Though I don’t think I would be able to run if push came to shove.”
“So, I’ll have to go.”
“But—”
“You know it’s the best way,” I said, and as much as I could tell he didn’t want to, Adrian nodded.
“We should call Nate, Gabe, Owen, and Zach,” Drake said. “Get their take before we make a decision.”
Layla’s gaze bounced from Drake to Adrian, and then back to me. “Why don’t I settle the twins in the nursery, and then I can check on Elias for you,” she offered. “Take him a snack.”
I smiled and thanked her. “He has the rest of his apple from before, and if you’ve got something with salt? Plain potato chips or crackers?”
“You got it.”
While Layla headed up the hallway, snacks in hand, Adrian and Drake called their friends, who I quickly learned were other former members of their SEAL team. Adrian quickly briefed the others, and like when he was fighting Hayes’s men outside the diner, I got to see him in “SEAL” mode. Before, I had been so filled with terror and adrenaline that I didn’t have time to truly…appreciate it. The men, even through a video call, looked to Adrian. They listened to him. Their bond was as obvious as their respect for their former leader.
“The goal is to get Nataliya into the building to do what she needs to do,” Adrian said, “and get back out again in one piece. With as minimal risk as possible.” He glanced at me, and something fluttered in my belly at his dark, appreciating eyes. “She’s got a little boy who needs her even more than we do.”
