Mission Read online

The blasted woman didn’t move from the porch as she texted rapidly. “Why would you be joining the meeting with Dean?”

  “Do you want a ride or not?” Sten’s mother wouldn’t approve of his less than chivalrous response.

  Her phone pinged. She read the text. And then swung her battered backpack over her shoulder. “Okay.”

  The woman didn’t trust him? Sten opened the passenger door but not before he noticed how Izzy looked around before climbing into his truck.

  And when she twisted her head to slide her backpack off, he spotted a major red welt that was still seeping on her right cheek and swelling around her eye. It looked fresh—real fresh, like it just happened.

  Sten swallowed every profane word he knew from being a Marine and growing up with four older brothers. No wonder she was nervous. God, he hated the violence he had seen against women and children. “Get in a fight at Starbucks over your latte this morning?”

  Her head snapped back. With the height difference of the rig, she was eye-to-eye with him. Close enough to see that her eyes were grass-green with glints of shimmery blue and extraordinarily thick, long eyelashes. She flinched when he leaned closer to take a better look at the deep red welt below her right eye marring her pale skin dotted with freckles.

  “Not Starbucks? Violence at your local punk club last night? Do they even exist anymore?” He kept the bullshit going, calming his voice like he did with victims—people with whom he had too much experience in too many warzones. “You know—people slamming themselves together, throwing chairs?”

  The words were inconsequential—a distraction from the shock and pain. He instinctively knew she wanted no questions or any sympathy. Her shoulders almost touched her ears, and her white-knuckled grip on her backpack screamed, “Don’t mess with me or I’ll kick you in the balls.” And he wasn’t taking any chances since she was in perfect and painful kicking position.

  When he got up this morning, he knew he’d be defending himself against Lars—but not from a woman who weighed less than one hundred pounds soaking wet. The idea of Izzy wet and slippery flashed in his brain. He shut the carnal image down fast.

  “It’s none of your beeswax.”

  Now his head snapped back. None of your beeswax? Not fuck off? Who was this woman who looked straight out of the Addams family with her long, jet-black hair, pale white skin, and severe black clothes, talking like she had just stepped out of a Disney movie—freckles and all. And why did he care?

  “Did you call the police?”

  “We’re going to be late.” She scooted into the rig, but not before Sten got a whiff of a flowery, feminine smell and the look of vulnerability before she shuttered her eyes.

  Slamming the door, he scanned the street for a threat. Nothing. He climbed into his rig and did a U-turn.

  “You’re going the wrong way. Downtown is north.”

  “I need to make one stop.”

  “I thought you were in a rush.” Her voice was deep and husky for the slight figure she hid under all the heavy black clothes. Yeah, he noticed. And that was the only reason why it chafed that she didn’t trust him to give her a ride or confide who hit her.

  “This won’t take but a minute.”

  Sten drove four blocks and pulled into a parking spot directly in front of the store. This was still a sketchy neighborhood, and with Izzy taking a fist to her face, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. 7-Eleven?” Izzy blew out an exasperated exhale, lifting the fine wisp of hair that had escaped from her severely pulled back ponytail like dandelion fluff in the wind. “You’re stopping for breakfast?”

  Sten ignored the rolled eyes and the disapproving headshake. “Lock the door.” He slammed the door before hustling inside. He could feel the hot hole her bright eyes were burning into his back as he walked into the super-bright and super-loud store.

  Grabbing two bags of frozen peas, he emerged in under two minutes. He tossed the peas on her lap before starting the rig.

  “There is a clean t-shirt in my gym bag under the seat if you want to wrap the bags before you put them over your eye. You’re going to have an awesome shiner tomorrow.”

  He placed his arm on the seat behind him to pull out of the parking spot, observing the single tear and the way her pale throat swallowed hard.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. With four older brothers, I’ve had a little bit of experience with black eyes.”

  The little smile cost her—her face contorted in a wince. Sten gripped his hands tighter on the steering wheel to prevent himself from touching Izzy Benson, a woman who needed comfort but would hammer him if he tried.

  But it just might be worth it. Maybe.

  3

  Izzy steeled her spine, thrust her chin forward, and tried to summon her courage when she spotted Reeves waiting for her outside Dean’s conference room. Why did she feel as if she were being sent to the principal’s office again? Trouble had been her middle name from an early age, at least according to her mother. According to her father, she got into trouble because she bored quickly. No matter what the reason, Izzy braced herself.

  “What the hell happened?” Reeves growled and then looked at Sten with a murderous glare.

  Older brother types weren’t as great as they were billed. She could feel Sten behind her, looming like a shadow she couldn’t shake—his radiating heat and the fresh outdoorsy scent of male enveloping her. Two concerned, over-protective men hovering—made it difficult for a girl to keep up her tough goth act.

  “Don’t look at me.” Sten’s deep baritone resonated down the long hallway.

  She didn’t need to turn, aware that macho Rambo was giving Reeves the high sign to tread lightly. After her behavior this morning, he must be expecting that she was going to go berserko. Thank God, he hadn’t asked her any more questions during the long, tortuous ride downtown. He kept stealing glances at her, gauging her distress. Who could blame her for acting paranoid? She’d started her day with a fist to the face by a man in a ski mask.

  She was just beginning to adjust to her new reality, where men lied and manipulated and broke women’s hearts. But not this foreign world where men stalked and beat women who dared to resist.

  “It’s nothing. I ran into the corner of the kitchen door. You know what a klutz I am…still getting used to the space.” God, she hated lying to Reeves. But if she told him the truth, he’d go after Charles, risking his own career. When she moved to Seattle, she’d let Reeves believe she was running from a violent boyfriend. He’d never buy the random mugging story for today’s incident which meant she’d have to keep up the klutz story in her meeting with Mr. Dean.

  Charles had never hurt her physically. He was far too controlling and cunning to use physical threats. He’d used charm, expensive presents, and avid interest in her work to lead her into his trap. And like in a bad romantic novel, the inexperienced geeky girl fell for the suave, sophisticated playboy. She should never have involved Reeves, but she had no one else she trusted. Nowhere else she could have access to the equipment she needed to complete her revenge.

  Reeves, with a hard glint in his almost black eyes, his nose scrunched up, scrutinized Izzy like Emily did when she was focused on mastering a difficult passage on the cello.

  “You really think I’m going to believe that bullshit?”

  Izzy’s stomach roiled, reacting to the vehemence in Reeves’s voice. She needed to hide a little longer. She needed time to prepare. It was only five days until Defcon, the biggest hackers’ conference in the world, where she planned to vindicate herself. Either she would be proven innocent, or she’d be in prison.

  “No more lies, Izzy,” Reeves thundered.

  The two ibuprofens mixed with the espresso shots were playing havoc with her stomach. Please don’t let Reeves make a scene in front of Richard Dean. If she had to leave Seattle, where would she go? Not home where her mother was finally pleased that her weird daughter had a boyfriend. Her mother
most likely would believe Izzy’s famous boyfriend over her own “difficult” daughter.

  “You’re going to tell us everything,” Sten stated.

  What? She wasn’t processing clearly with the sensation of someone banging a metal garbage can inside her head. Why would she share anything with Sten Jenkins? She wasn’t one of Richard Dean’s daughters who were protected by the Jenkins’ Security company. No way was Sten Jenkins, all muscle and arrogance, going to be privy to anything about Izzy or the stupid mistake she made of falling in love with a suave and sophisticated sociopath.

  The door to the conference room was opened by a young man in an expensive shiny suit. She recognized the look from venture capitalists who approached her regularly trying to convince her to sell her ideas. She probably should have taken one of them up then agree to work for Charles. But she couldn’t see herself running a company—she much preferred the individual contributor/researcher role she had working for Charles.

  “Mr. Dean will see you now, Ms. Benson and gentlemen.” He nodded to Reeves and Sten.

  The man was her age but wore a perfectly tailored suit with his blond hair gelled into place. Entering Dean’s business was nothing like the tech world she inhabited where there was no dress code except to be as odd and different as possible.

  “Right this way.” His officious, high-pitched voice caused Izzy to grit her teeth. Not the best choice as the pain stabbed straight to her eye.

  Richard Dean rose from his chair at the head of a long glass table with hard metal edges. The enormous modern room was all windows, with a floor-to-ceiling view of Puget Sound which, at the moment, was barely visible, covered by a blanket of fog and mist.

  Izzy smiled, suppressing the wince which came from the pain of moving her facial muscles. In disguise and with her face swollen like Quasimodo, she was meeting a man whom she had admired since she was a young girl. This was the man who had changed the interface of computers.

  “Ms. Benson, come sit here.” The striking man with silver hair patted the seat by his left side which meant he’d be directly looking at her bruised and battered face.

  Izzy gulped. “Please call me Izzy, Mr. Dean. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  The assistant waited by the long steel credenza that lined the entire interior wall. “Ms. Benson, what would you like to drink? Coffee, water, tea, juice?”

  Izzy debated whether more caffeine would help her brain, but with her stomach whirling, she chose the safer option. “Water would be great. Thank you.”

  Sten Jenkins, unlike Izzy, wasn’t intimidated by Dean. He ambled slowly across the spacious room to shake Dean’s hand. She tried not to look at his broad shoulders filling the blue oxford shirt or the way his blue jeans hugged his muscular backside. There were some powerful genes in the Jenkins family because all the brothers were built for Hollywood or underwear modeling.

  “Sten, I just got off the phone with Thomas.”

  “Thomas?” Sten tilted his head to one side, giving her a perfect view of his chiseled jaw and aquiline nose. How could any man look that perfect? Izzy reminded herself that she had believed Charles was perfect.

  Dean chuckled. “I suppose you don’t call General Harkness at Cyber Command by his first name. And I’m very pleased with your decision, but does Harry know?”

  Cyber Command—the center for military cyber security under the Department of Defense? Her stomach bottomed out, plummeting to her toes like she was riding in an out-of-control elevator. She had been found out. Her work in Charles’s company was under a highly classified DOD contract.

  “I need to speak with Lars before Uncle Harry.”

  What did Sten Jenkins’s family have to do with her? Lars was Sten’s twin. And Harry was Sten’s uncle who directed the family’s security firm and served as a father figure for all the Jenkins brothers since their father’s death almost two decades ago. Her heart pounded, making the pain behind her right eye throb. Was she being investigated by the DOD? Surely, Reeves would have warned her.

  Sten Jenkins lowered himself into the leather-and-steel chair directly across from her, making it hard not to meet his keen gaze. His massive size dwarfed the chair.

  Reeves sunk into the chair next to Izzy.

  Dean leaned back and smiled. “Izzy, I’m not easily impressed, but your resume is outstanding. Stanford at age fifteen. Finishing your first Ph.D. at nineteen. As you may know, I dropped out of college to start my business.”

  Izzy squirmed as Sten’s head jerked to look at her. So, she was a freak. But she was no criminal.

  “I was surprised that you left Avantus to join us. Didn’t Charles recruit you away from Google to work on the Maven project?”

  A wave of nausea rose in her throat. Dean knew of her work for Avantus. Dean knew Charles. She swallowed hard, trying to keep from puking. Of course, Dean would know Charles Worthy. Everyone knew the wunderkind with his four start-up companies. And no one knew Izzy Benson.

  One saving grace was that Dean couldn’t know of her intimate relationship with Charles. He’d demanded that she keep the relationship undisclosed to save her from media and colleagues’ scrutiny. What a fool she had been for believing Charles wanted to protect her. Emily was the only person who knew Charles’s identity which she now counted as a boon.

  “Sten, are you familiar with Avantus?”

  Sten never stopped staring at her. “Avantus is using machine-learning algorithms to interpret drone-surveillance imagery. The company has managed to stay out of the controversy of using Artificial Intelligence in military operations. You have DOD security clearance, Ms. Benson?”

  Why was he asking about her security clearance? What had he discovered about her? Paranoid fantasies of being dragged out of Dean’s office in handcuffs flashed before her. Now she could never ask Reeves for help in clearing her name. She had planned to share her algorithm with him if she couldn’t stop Charles from selling it to North Korea or Russia.

  “I have top secret level security clearance from my work at both Google and Avantus.” She didn’t add, “which you are totally aware of,” since she had been vetted before joining Dean’s Software Company.

  All male eyes were now on her, and she felt the heat moving up her neck and across her chest. Darn her pale skin—it acted like a lie detector, preventing her from any subterfuge.

  “But why leave Avantus?” Dean persisted. No wonder the man was a success. He was as tenacious as a colony of busy ants.

  She gulped the burning acid from her stomach moving upward. The noose was tightening around her neck. They didn’t still hang traitors, did they?

  “I discovered that my work interests lie elsewhere.” Away from her cheating, conniving, criminal boyfriend.

  “But I thought your second Ph.D. thesis was on machine learning?” Dean asked.

  Izzy could feel the scorch of Sten’s intense focus zeroing in on her. It was as if he were slowly undressing her, leaving her sitting naked with every secret exposed. She could feel herself unraveling, wanting to believe that she’d soon wake up and be relieved that this was a bad dream.

  “I never finished that Ph.D.”

  Dean laughed. “At twenty-five, you still have plenty of time. My daughter Sophie would say your arrival in Seattle was serendipitous. And I must agree. We need your help.”

  “My help?” Izzy’s voice quivered. “How could I possibly help you?”

  Not taken into custody?! All the threats by Charles weren’t about to implode?

  Reeves elbowed her. “Don’t be upset, but I shared with Richard that you’re one of the best hackers I know. And from me, that’s saying a lot.” Modest wasn’t Reeves’s middle name.

  Izzy sat straight up. “But I’ve never done anything illegal.”

  Sten rubbed his strong chin, giving her a speculative look.

  This was exactly how Charles would take her down—by her incredible reputation in the tech and hacking world. He’d claim she couldn’t resist the challenge of proving her talent, tak
ing her skills to the next level—to the criminal level.

  “Of course not.” Reeves patted her arm. “You would never do anything against the law. Izzy was my sister’s roommate at university. And Izzy is family.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to do anything illegal.” Dean leaned forward in his chair. “On the contrary, this is a government-sanctioned operation. We need you to set a trap for whomever is trying to hack into my security system for the Predator drones. So far, our encryption and firewalls have stopped them. But there are rumors on the dark net that a version of our software is for sale to the highest bidder. We want you to pose as if you’re representing a secret buyer. You’ll need to examine their ‘package’ to assess whether or not it’s a real threat before approving the buy.”

  “You want me to do what?” Was Charles also trying to sell Dean’s drone software besides her AI work?

  “Sir, I’m confused by this change in the plan and Ms. Benson’s involvement. I thought she was here as Reeves’s assistant.” Sten’s voice turned cool, slightly dismissive.

  “That was the plan until I learned of her abilities. And Thomas agrees with the change.”

  It seemed Dean was powerful enough to get what he wanted from the military. And he wanted her, based on Reeves’s recommendation. She wasn’t sure yet if this was a good thing or not.

  “Not exactly sure if I have the connection correct, but Charles Worthy is Thomas’s cousin’s stepson. And Thomas is quite enthusiastic to have Izzy joining our team. He said that Sten should report to him once you and the team have everything in place.”

  Panic blasted through, making her weak behind her knees, even while sitting down. It wasn’t surprising that Richard Dean knew Charles. It couldn’t be a coincidence between Charles and the general—what were the chances?

  How was she going to trap Charles now? A master of manipulation, what lies had Charles spun for the general? Her lungs constricted as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. What if the general was involved? Is that why Charles had won so many defense contracts? Was this a bigger conspiracy than she first believed? Now Charles would know for sure she was in Seattle—was that how this morning’s attacker had found her?