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Seemed Kyle wasn’t the only person interested in getting inside that secret storeroom.
His mind ran through a list of who else would want to get their hands on what Williams might have hidden away inside that space—though he already had his suspicions.
The list of possibles was long. Terrorists, foreign agents, opportunistic criminals—there were plenty who’d happily seize any advantage they could get. It would be faster to gauge who itcouldn’tbe. Couldn’t be Williams himself—he was still locked down in federal custody. Couldn’t be Michael Becks, Arrieta’s lead henchman. Kyle wouldloveit if the former SEAL was there—he’d love to face Becks down once and for all and vent some of his rage against the man who had likely pulled the trigger on Nick—but Becks had gotten himself arrested for some petty crimes in Florida. He was currently serving eighteen months in a federal penitentiary.
It couldn’t be anyone there as part of a legit investigation. For all the info Williams had shared as part of his plea bargain, he’d kept his mouth shut about this place. Kyle and the others had had to find out about it through different means. And even if someone in law enforcement had put the pieces together independently, they’d have come in with a warrant and a whole team to search the place top to bottom. They wouldn’t have disguised themselves as a busboy and snuck in.
So: someone who knew enough about Williams’s organization to be aware of this storeroom, with a motive to get their hands on the data, who was the same size and shape as the busboy Kyle had seen earlier…
Yeah. There was really only one option.
Exhaling slowly to settle himself, Kyle grasped the door handle.
“Dammit.” The curse echoed from inside the storage room.
A decidedly feminine voice. As he’d expected.
Kyle reached for his weapon in its holster at his waist and clicked off the safety, easing the door open and peering inside. Boxes and old furniture stacked nearly to the ceiling lined three walls of the small room. A metal filing cabinet sat on a diagonal out toward the center of the space, as if it had just been shoved there. The noises he heard were coming from behind that file cabinet.
Kyle moved closer, finger poised on the trigger as he aimed his gun at the “busboy” in front of him. Except now the baseball hat was gone, revealing long, russet hair. Hair he was all too familiar with.
“What the hell are you doing here, Natalie?”
* * *
“What the—?” Natalie Matthews whirled around to find the barrel of a Glock 9mm pointed directly between her eyes. She held up her hands and swallowed hard. “Kyle. This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Really?” He watched her, his hazel gaze hard as granite. “What do you think it looks like?”
Good question.
Natalie should’ve known better than to trust her handler when he’d said this would be an easy assignment. She chewed her bottom lip and narrowed her gaze, trying to find a plausible excuse for her presence that kept her cover intact. She went for the first thing that popped into her head. “I work here now.”
Nice, Natalie.
“Right.” Kyle’s flat tone said he didn’t believe her for a second. “I thought you were in witness protection.”
“Yeah, well. That didn’t exactly work out.” Truth was, she’d never entered the program at all. That had been a charade her handler had manufactured when Kyle and his team had caught up with her while she was on assignment. They’d demanded answers, she’d refused to give them, and they’d turned her over to the authorities. Her handler had stepped in at that point, inventing the witness protection story so no one would question it when she dropped back off the map. But she wasn’t about to tell Kyle that.
Kyle’s eyes swept her in a slow appraisal, and she felt his attention like a physical touch. It had always been that way where he was concerned. That instant, irrevocable awareness between them, despite the fact that she’d been married to his brother.
Oh, she’d loved Nick, truly and deeply. But they’d been reckless and naive when they’d gotten together. Her childhood hadn’t been the easiest, and she’d had to work so hard for every little thing. When Nick had come in and swept her off her feet, she’d been overwhelmed. No one had ever loved her like that before. And he was such a good man—the best she’d ever met. She’d thought it was love. Ithadbeen love. Just…not quite the passionate, heart-and-soul love a woman should have for the man she married. By the time he introduced her to Kyle and she realized what her heart was telling her, it was too late. She’d vowed that Nick would never know—that she’d be the best wife he could have hoped for. And that, most of all, he’d never realize how drawn she was to his younger brother.
Nick had been a pretty boy, cover-model handsome with a dazzling smile and perfect hair. Kyle was bigger, rougher, more manly. Although he was two years younger than Nick, people often thought he was the older brother. His nose was a bit crooked, as if it had been broken once or twice, and the planes of his face were too angular for classic good looks. Still, from the cut of his strong jaw to the long, sooty lashes fanned out over his cheeks, he was H.O.T., especially when he was angry.
Which he was at the moment.
“I was, uh…” Natalie looked around her. “Just filling out my time card.”
“Really? Behind the file cabinet?”
“I dropped my pen.”
“I see. And you always dress like a guy for your new job?”
“You never seemed to have a problem with how I dressed before,” she said, brow raised.
Kyle’s jaw visibly tightened, the corded muscles in his neck straining. “I couldn’t care less what you wear, Natalie. You stopped being someone I cared about the day you decided to take up with that murdering asshole Becks.”
