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“Don’t stop on my account,” he said, folding his arms behind his head.
Natalie stopped with her pizza halfway to her mouth, staring. His position highlighted all the magnificent cuts and contours of his well-honed body.Damn. The man was gorgeous. A new hunger started that had nothing to do with food.
Kyle yawned and closed his eyes, seemingly unaware of her heated stare. “I like a woman with a healthy appetite.”
She devoured half her slice in one bite, hoping it would distract her from her desire to lick him all over.
“Hmm mmmm mmm,” Natalie mumbled around her food.
“What was that?” He peeked one eye open and smiled.
She swallowed hard, forcing the food down her constricted throat. “Nothing.”
He laughed. “Nick used to do that—ever since we were kids. He’d get annoyed with me or Eli, and he’d wait until his mouth was full and then tell us what he was thinking when he knew we wouldn’t be able to understand. It was the perfect revenge—he knew it drove us up the wall not to know what he’d said.”
“Yeah, he used that trick on me, too,” Natalie said with a smile. “He was such a little shit sometimes.”
“Sometimes? Tryallthe time.”
“When I first met him, I almost didn’t believe him when he said he was a SEAL—it didn’t seem to match with his personality. But I know how much he loved it. What about you? You never told me why you joined the Navy.”
“It was the natural choice. Both my big brothers had enlisted. The Navy seemed like the right place for me. And after what happened to Eli in Iraq, I thought that if Nick and I were both SEALs, we could be there for each other.” He winced. “For all the good it did.”
“Nick always appreciated you looking out for him,” she said softly.
“You sure about that?” Kyle stared down at his hands. “I think I just got on his nerves most of the time.”
“Nope. He told me so.” A lie, but what would it hurt? Nickhadbeen annoyed, but Kyle clearly needed to know he’d made a difference. She took a sip of soda. “Any other questions about the virus?”
“Yeah,” he said, eyes closed once more. “How the hell do we stop it?”
“The Agency’s still working on a solution. At least the virus is dormant, for now.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in there.”
Natalie finished her pizza, then threw the empty box and their trash away. “The important thing will be to find the solution before he sets off the trigger.”
“Trigger?” Kyle pushed up onto his elbows, watching her as she fussed around the room. Whenever she was nervous, Natalie cleaned. It made her feel like she had some kind of control in all the chaos. “What kind of a trigger?”
“There’s usually a code with these kinds of viruses, one that wakes it up and tells it to start working. It’s a nightmare scenario, when you think about it. Millions of virus replicas, each burrowing into the internet simultaneously. The CIA said, if they don’t catch Arrieta in time, they’ll have to hire hundreds of extra techs just to keep basic services going—and even then it’s a crapshoot. We don’t think of how many things in our lives depend on an internet connection. If service is down, things stop functioning…including medical devices, traffic signals, security systems. It’s not just about inconvenience. People will die.”
“Man. I’d like to rip Arrieta’s head off his body with my bare hands.”
Natalie gave him a flat look. “Taking him alive, remember? That’s the deal.”
“What?” Kyle wrinkled his nose. “People can live without their heads. Chickens do it all the time. I remember once on the farm, there was this rooster named Roscoe who—”
“Stop. Please. This is not a conversation I want to have.”
“But—”
“No.” She gathered fresh undies and her pj’s from the duffel bag of clothes they’d bought for her at a Walmart along the way. No sense in unpacking, since they’d be leaving again first thing in the morning to head back to DC. “I’m going to take a shower. Try not to kill anything before I get back.”
“I’ll do my best,” Kyle said, his tone dry as desert sand. He grabbed the remote. “Let’s see what’s on pay-per-view.”
“Nothing good, most likely.” She walked into the bathroom and started to close the door, then hesitated. Instead of clicking on the TV, Kyle rummaged around in his own bag and pulled out a book: the latest crime thriller hitting the bestseller lists.
She couldn’t help but smile. “I didn’t take you for a reader.”
