Page 65 of Nixon’s Promise

He was standing in his kitchen reading over the contract Alec had offered. The fifty-plus pages of legal jargon was giving him a headache.

“There’s a message in one of the threads. Seems to be written in some sort of code,” Jameson noted.

“Tried and failed to break it,” Alec admitted.

“Can you please explain to me how in this day and age, with the brightest code crackers at your disposal, no one was able to cypher this message?” Jameson asked Alec.

“Our cryptologist came up empty,” Alec answered.

“Just one? You have one crypto on this?”

“We’re spread thin,” Alec explained.

“Hate to point out the obvious, but if your crypto couldn’t crack it, we’re not going to be able to,” Weston commented.

Nix shoved the contract aside. He shuffled papers around until he found the coded message. It was a jumble of letters and symbols, some words, and numeric sequences. There was a total of seven words on the entire page he understood. And those seven words didn’t make a coherent sentence no matter how he arranged them.

“And this was run through the computer?” Nixon asked, not understanding how DHS and their high-tech programs couldn’t decode the message.

“They—"

Alec didn’t finish his statement. His hand went to his hip. Nixon, Chasin, Weston, Jameson, and Holden followed suit. Six pistols were drawn from their holsters and leveled in the direction of Nixon’s back deck.

One wide-eyed woman stood on the other side of the closed sliding glass door, in shock.

“Fuck!” Nixon exploded. “Lower your weapons.”

Goddamn it.

McKenna.

25

My heart was pounding. Or had it stopped altogether? I wasn’t sure because I didn’t think I was breathing. I’d never been on the business end of a gun before and now there were four. No, there were five, maybe six. Fucking hell, there could’ve been fifteen and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

The sliding glass door opened with such force the frame shook. That scared the shit out of me, too.

“Jesus Christ, McKenna.”

“S-s-orry,” I stuttered.

“Fuck. Are you okay?”

Was I okay? I wasn’t riddled with bullets, so I thought I was. Though I wasn’t sure if my heart had found a proper rhythm yet. But Nixon looked pissed-off with a capitol P so I didn’t think I should tell him.

“Did anyone shoot at me?” I was still stammering.

“Christ,” he clipped. “No, baby, no one shot at you.”

“Then, yeah, I’m good.” Suddenly Nixon yanked me forward and I collided with his hard chest. “I’m so sorry, Nixon. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you guys. I sent you a text I was on my way over to pick up lunch orders.”

“She has six fucking guns pointed at her and she’s apologizing,” Nixon muttered and hugged me tighter.

“I didn’t see the text. I’m so damn sorry we scared you.”

We stood there awhile, Nixon just holding me, and I was enjoying the feel of him wrapped around me while I calmed down.

“Goddamn, you were right.” Came a loud male voice.