Page 16 of Special Agent Rylee


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Chapter Twelve

About this point in the evening, Rylee would have liked to wrap Jake in tissue, stick a big red bow on his forehead and hand him over to the lunatic who wanted him so badly.

He was driving her insane with his questions. And her infected tongue was so busy flapping that her brain had gone into quarantine. What the fuck was wrong with her? She’d never had any problems keeping information to herself or getting out of any situation she didn’t like. Hell, her modus operandi was to just walk away.

Now… here she was trapped in this sticky situation where her job was to keep the fool safe without letting him know she was an agent, a bodyguard… more like a goddamn babysitter.

He had no freakin’ idea what was happening around him. Like a babe in the woods, he went about his life without any clue at all. If he thought Maddie was a threat, he had no idea as to the other players she had files on, people who wanted the knowledge he carried and would go to any lengths to get it. The app this man had designed was worth billions, and in the wrong hands could change the future – bigtime.

There were agents from various countries, spotlighting him, whose mandate was to get the information, and they didn’t intend to wait until this product circulated in the usual way. They wanted their piece of the action now so they could undercut the U.S. and sell his brainchild as their own.

Their FBI bureau had been notified of various sightings of these individuals known to CIA and other federal departments. Kidnapping and torture were just some of the tricks these mercenaries have been known to use in the past.

Thank goodness his partner understood the danger Jake was in and had come to them, asking for protection. If Leo hadn’t approached the Bureau, explained the peril and brought them up to date on the previous happenings where Jake had fought off more than one incident, who knows what could befall him on this trip. He was like a crowing turkey, perched on a fence just waiting to be knocked down.

“Are you always this quiet while you eat?”

Unaware of just how long she’d sat with her head in the clouds, she pacified his grouchiness with a grin. “Only when the food is this good. Have you ever eaten rack of lamb so tender?”

“You’re right. It’s probably the best I’ve tasted.” He coughed and his expression underwent a change, one that caught her attention. Trained to read people, she understood he was battling over something. “Actually, that’s not the truth. This is the only rack of lamb I’ve ever tasted so I have no way of judging. My family couldn’t afford food of this quality.”

“Where are your family?” The files she’d received were scanty about his earlier life. He’d been born to Canadian immigrants now living in Portland, Oregon. He’d left home young, at the age of fifteen. Their investigators had picked him up again a few years later at a college in Seattle where he took lessons in computer technology. Again, the files were insufficient for the next couple of years.

Then, about five years ago, he showed up in Miami where he’d worked on different construction projects. All the while, according to his partner Leo, he was an entrepreneur building an earlier app which he sold. Wealthy but still managing to stay under the radar, he’d begun working on his newest project. The design everyone wanted to own.

Once Leo and Jake had realized the far-reaching realities of Jake’s app, they’d discussed the best place to approach and decided their own government had priority.

The simple explanation for such an intricate invention was that once opened, the app could detect any article of certain dimensions made from steel within ten feet of the phone. Which means, any hidden weapon could be scanned and show up on the screen.

Thinking of all the possibilities such a discovery could have, the uses to not only law enforcement, but also the military, was mind-boggling. A device with this design could save millions of lives.

It was partially the reason Rylee finally agreed to this mission, to protect the man who had all that knowledge in his head until their industries could fabricate the design and put it out amongst their own forces. Once released, it would be too late for others to beat them at owning the technology.

His male voice, low and with a slight accent embedded in that sexy, husky tone, caught her attention.

“My parents still live in Portland where I grew up, though I was born in Canada, in the city of Winnipeg. I go back there periodically to visit good friends and get a taste of reality, but my life is here now.”

“Did you go to college?” Thinking to keep him talking, she asked him questions she knew the answers to.

“For a while. I went to Washington Tech in Bellevue, ten miles east of Seattle. I learned a lot from the few years I attended. But I was more interested in the school of life.”

Shocked from her complacency, she interrupted, “Excuse me?”

His face became very sad, and it caught her unexpectedly. She felt the muscles around her stomach tighten. An odd ache began spreading in her chest, which made breathing different… painful, unless she took shorter breaths. Instinctively, her hand lifted to massage her chest and suddenly aware of its direction, she clenched her fist and forced it back on her lap.

“I met a special friend when I was fifteen. Katrina was young, pretty, a kooky, overly happy person – and brilliant. We hooked up, not in the way one might think, but as family. Both of our own were dysfunctional from different circumstances, but we were young and stupid and turned to the street.

“Scared, lonely, we thought we knew it all, and we protected each other. She was a genius with computers, self-taught I might add, smarter than anyone else I’ve ever met. That includes most of the teachers at the college.”

Not wanting to interrupt his flow but interested, she asked, “Her family didn’t search for her?”

“Not that we knew about. Her background was much worse than mine. My parents had money problems and bad health. We’re in touch now, and we’ve ironed out our earlier differences. But her story was horrific, her parents both psychotic nutcases. She ran to the streets because she hated being confined… anywhere. Her story would make anyone cry – the beatings and other abuses that included being locked in closets, trunks and confined places when she was growing up. So, she had a huge dislike – or rather an actual fear of any kind – of walls and roofs. If I wanted to be with her, and I did, we had to live on the streets.”

Rylee had run across cases that included the type of cruelty as he was describing, and she knew how it affected the victims. Many were never able to overcome their disabilities with confinement. Her voice reflected the sadness he felt. “It must have been a horrible way to grow up.”

He glanced at her and his green gaze softened to a misty haze of tenderness. “It was. She couldn’t live alone, and so I went with her. For years we stayed together. While she battled her growing dependence on heroin, I learned everything she could teach me. At first, I didn’t really pay much attention, you know. To a young guy with mostly girls on his mind, techy shit wasn’t all that important. I cared more about my skateboarding skills.

But as time wore on, and she worked on me; I caught her love of the digital world until I was completely hooked. Hell, back in those days, getting enough power to charge her laptop and our phones was all we cared about. And of course, her drug supply. I can’t tell you some of the rotten things we did to get her the money. After a few years, I saw her deterioration. My hopes of her getting bored with the drugs and moving on was just a pipedream. Once I grew old enough to understand she’d never change, I left her with new friends and headed to college to build a life.”

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