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“I was thinking that I barely know you, but I…” She yawned, cutting herself off. “I can’t keep my eyes open. Can you stay and nap with me? Or do you have to go to work?”
Blood pounded through my ears as I wondered what she was going to say. But she was already falling asleep. Her breathing deepened, soft puffs of air blowing across my chest where her head was pillowed.
Kissing the top of her head, I closed my eyes, letting the peace of having her in my arms lure me to sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
vaughn
Leaving the iced latte and chocolate-filled croissant I picked up at the bakery for Abi on the bedside table, I kissed her one more time before forcing myself to go. Walter had already left me a few encrypted messages, but I couldn’t get to them yet.
As I walked to my car, I sent a mass email to my students, letting them know all classes were canceled for the day. It was just after nine, so I still had a little time before the first one of the day, but I had more important things to deal with.
“Boss.” Walter picked up on the second ring. “The wife has been checking up on you.”
I paused with my hand on the door, my blood turning to ice. “And?”
“She’s got nothing. But Samara has been using up favors trying to get intel. The wife got curious.”
Which explained the cameras my sister had put up around campus and in Abi’s dorm. Her concern for her friend was commendable but annoying as fuck. With both Samara and Anya asking questions about my newest alias, Daria would want to move up the date for her reunion with her old academy friend.
Opening the door, I slid into the driver’s seat. “Has his level of security changed?”
“No, not since Samara was last here. The wife is uneasy, but not about him.”
“How long have they been calling in favors for information?” I was already driving back to my rental, but mentally, I was making a checklist for what I needed to do to get Abi out of Creswell Springs.
“It only reached me this morning, boss. But from what I’ve learned, several days. At least since Monday.”
Fuck. Of course, when Samara had seen me. She hadn’t found me in town or on campus, but I’d been ready for her to slit my throat in my sleep all week. She was a loner, just like me, but unlike me, she had our mother’s full attention. Even if she didn’t know it.
“Keep me updated hourly,” I instructed. “Regardless of their security levels, you are on high alert, Walter. You move him if someone sneezes wrong. Him and the two kids.”
“Nova took the kids to Colombia. A spontaneous visit to see her parents and niece. Ryan is supposed to follow later today, tomorrow at the latest. My sources say this visit to Nova’s brother’s is more likely to do with a bad batch of coke another syndicate is trying to peddle. Five overdose deaths on the same shit in the last two weeks. She went down to check the product personally while Ryan attended to business on this end.”
“And you’re just hearing about this?” I bit out.
“Unfortunately. Nova is a hell of a queen.” His admiration for her was thick in his voice, but he wasn’t wrong. My brother chose well when he picked his life partner. “Very little information gets to me about her and Ryan. You’re lucky I get what I can, when I can.”
Pissed about the intel delay, but relieved the children were at least temporarily out of the potential war zone, I told Walter to keep his eyes and ears open before disconnecting the secure call. For the next several hours, I kept Abi’s cameras up on my television screen while I worked from three different computers.
Anya asking questions and Daria trying to slip into my system was not a coincidence.
While I slowly tore down Polina’s firewalls, I watched Abi sip her iced latte and nibble on her pastry. The coffee was decaffeinated, but she didn’t need to know that. Her period wasn’t due for another week, but I wouldn’t take a chance of her not already being pregnant. She and our baby were my top priority.
I sent her a few texts throughout the day, encouraging her to stay in bed and rest. Seeing her smile each time she looked at her phone, knowing it was because of me, kept me going as I tore through another layer of cybersecurity. I hacked with one hand while making arrangements for our departure with the other.
My plane was in Oregon in a hangar at a private airfield that only five other people in the world knew about. My surrogate mothers weren’t aware the place existed. Neither did my biological one. Those who did know about the airfield wouldn’t speak about it to anyone because they had more secrets than I did that needed to stay hidden.
Pausing long enough to have a pizza delivered to Abi for dinner because I didn’t want her to leave her dorm room, I took a moment to reassure myself she was okay. She was tucked into her bed, texting her friend Hayat. They’d had a brief call earlier, but it only lasted thirty seconds at most before Hayat had to hang up.
Once I knew Abi was fed and resting again while watching a K-drama, I finished up our travel plans. I had billions of dollars in my bank accounts, but that wouldn’t mean shit while I was off-grid for as long as it took to deal with Daria and Polina.
They were in their sixties, and they hadn’t lived as long as they had without skills. Anya and the two of them were the few left from their graduating class at the academy that had turned them into vicious killing machines. I wanted this war over so I could move on with my new life with Abi. Getting cash fast was a necessity and a headache, but by eight o’clock, I had it waiting for me on the plane, along with two pilots.
I still had at least one more wall of Polina’s security to wade through so I could see what she was doing. Multiple extra layers had been added, all of them recent, from the few time stamps I could find. That she’d added them at all told me she was hiding something from me specifically because I was the only person who would be cautious enough to find them. Patience was the key, but mine was in short supply as the hours ticked by.
My phone reserved for Walter chimed. Staying focused on the current cyber minefield I was in, I picked up. “Yeah?”
