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Fucking hell. She knows she is not supposed to disappear. The whole point of staying with me was so that I could keep an eye on her. I felt myself getting more and more agitated, wondering if this was her being rebellious, or if she was actually missing.
After numerous calls and texts, she finally appeared. She came gliding through the front door with her headphones in. She had her hair crammed under a hat and she wore tight leggings that perfectly wrapped around her curves; she was zipped into a tight fitted athletic jacket that accentuated her breasts. She looked like a sleek panther, her hips swaying as she walked into the kitchen.
“Where were you? You can't just up and leave like that.” I grumbled. I was mad she had disappeared, but I was having a real hard time holding onto my irritation as she sweetly responded.
“I was just blowing off some steam. I’m fine really.” Emma opened the fridge and pointed to the OJ. “May I?”
“You don’t have to ask. What’s mine is yours.” I shook my head. “While you’re here, I mean.” She was getting more under my skin this morning than she had last night.
“Right.” She tried to conceal a smile as she poured herself a glass. She sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop.
I came over and leaned on the table. “Are you being good?” I prodded. “Staying out of trouble?”
She shifted uncomfortably, “Uh, yeah.” And she gave me a look.
“What are you working on?” I prodded again. I wanted to see how tight-lipped she was going to be.
“You know I can’t tell you that.” Her shoulders were tense as her eyes scanned me, evaluating. “I’m just doing boring ol’ data management. Nothing exciting, Mason.” The sound of my name in her mouth made my core tighten hungerly. But she was doing well. She was keeping her head down and not saying too much. Though I could sense she wanted to.
The team I ran was a black op cyber security team, and she was one of a handful of analysts who supported the team. I knew she was good, but I was also worried about her. I didn’t want her to accidentally stumble into something she wasn’t supposed to see. That’s why our division was under the radar, because sometimes the government needed us to do things, that were exactly that, under the radar. If she started digging too much, just like the general public, she might not like what she found. She’d find information, documents, contracts all containing more of what I’d been forced to put her through the other night; intimidation, torture, and secrets.
Emma was far too sweet to be diving that deep. No, she needed to stay on the surface where she could breathe, and let me troll the underwater for those predators. She had to have blind faith in the system, trusting that her team leader, me, wouldn’t let anything come up from the depths to hurt her.
I caught her eyes, and she was studying me. “Do you work with Viktor?” She asked cautiously.
Fuck.
She’s not being quiet at all, she’s being cautious about how she asks. “Sometimes.” I responded somewhat truthfully.
Except the truth was that I worked with him extremely closely. He was the main person I reported to. Viktor currently had me working to get more information from a terrorist group that was acquiring military weapons at an alarming rate. Emma shouldn’t be getting tangled up in that anymore than she already was, certainly not with her track record. I could see her getting unknowingly tangled up in bigger charges, and wrongfully taking the blame for things she wasn’t even a part of. She had to be smarter than this if she was going to last in this position. And she had to last in this position, or I couldn’t protect her anymore.
“I’m going to work from home today.” I let her know as she made her way up the stairs, presumably to shower.
“Oh?” She spun around with her eyes with a question in them.
I felt the corners of my mouth twitching. “So I can keep an eye on you.”
She chewed on her lip for a moment and then went upstairs without another word.
After she had showered, she came back downstairs. She sat quietly, working for a long time, before she finally spoke.
As I sat across from her, I opened a new secure chat line as her team leader and initiated with her. She perked up right away and began to type furiously.
Analyst04: Where the hell have you been? You didn’t respond and I got freaking assaulted and kidnapped. I think I have a lead on something too. The guys that hacked me were in Iran.
Fuck.
She wasn’t lying low at all. I gritted my teeth and typed out a response, watching for her reaction.
CSTeamLeader: You shouldn’t be going down rabbit holes. You need to lie low. Just keep your head down and do the work.
She huffedand furiously typed out a response.
Analyst04: This is big. I know it. I think someone from the agency is allowing these breaches. It’s too coordinated and repeated. Something is not right.
CSTeamLeader: Leave it. Do your job. There’s a reason you have the security clearance you do.
Analyst04: If you would just let me look at some of the contracts, maybe I could get a better idea of what they’re after.
