Dark Deception (DARC Ops Book 11) Page 8

  After just a few minutes that dragged on forever, Asher slowed down to the speed limit. He turned off on a county road that meandered southwest off the highway, slowing down still more as they meandered along a dark, two-lane asphalt road that paralleled the ocean for a while before veering slightly northwest. Ellie’s fingers moved to the edge of the seat, gripping the fabric hard as she tried to tamp down her fear. She glanced again at Asher, marveling at his sense of calm, his face devoid of worry, as if he were on a casual night drive with his date. He glanced at her and then back out the windshield but not before the dark stain that marred his face reminded her of his close call.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  He shrugged. “It’ll stop.”

  She tried to ignore his handsome profile, and the uncomfortable and unwelcome surge of something—gratitude?—that swept through her. And why? She turned toward him again.

  “Asher, why are you protecting me?”

  11

  Asher

  He said nothing for several moments. Ellie fidgeted as she waited for him to reply. He really shouldn’t, but she deserved some kind of answer. She’d already proved she wasn’t going to put up with his non-answers for much longer. “The people I work for, we’re . . . a relatively secret organization, but I can assure you that we’re not bad guys in the truest sense of the word.”

  She grimaced. “What the hell does that mean?”

  He swallowed. “It means . . . it means that what we do is condoned—”

  “You work for the government?” she accused. “Is that what you’re telling me?” She shook her head with a grunt. “And you do know that I’m a contributor to an underground newsletter that exposes government corruption, and—so you work for the government on black ops or something?”

  “Not always,” he said quietly. “But we are about doing what’s right, about justice, and let’s just say that your digital snooping ran the risk of exposing our organization, too. We needed to make sure . . . well, I’ll be honest with you, Ellie. We can’t be exposed.”

  “So you’re the same kind of group as Guardian Knights?” she scoffed. “Why am I not surprised? If you’re not doing anything wrong, what difference would it make?”

  He sighed with frustration. He hadn’t exactly been honest with her, and she sure as hell didn’t want to share information with him. Why should she, when he didn’t reciprocate? In the motel room, it had only taken her fifteen minutes to track where her money had gone. She knew where it was and how to get it back. So he was surprised when she spoke—and by what she told him.

  “Before working on locating my money and getting it back, I did a little more digging into the Knights. I found some documents marked confidential but didn’t have time to get into them before . . . well, before all hell broke loose. I did track a couple of invoices, some paperwork that went through a shell company, and then another . . . I was right, Asher. They might be supplying weapons to top bidders around the world. Or selling something even worse. They may be hiding a domestic terror group. They might be doing a lot of things that they shouldn’t be doing. Who’s behind it, and how to prove it, I have no idea.”

  She paused and stared at him, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. He didn’t blink.

  “You know why I’m telling you this?”

  Again, he didn’t answer.

  “Because I’m trying to show good faith. Something you might want to try.” Ellie took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then continued. “I couldn’t tell if it was a particular person in the security company, or the entire company itself acting as a cover.” Again, a pause. “I need more time to . . . explore. Do you understand? That’s why I need my computers. I need to get back home—”

  “Not going to happen,” he interrupted. “You said you did your best to hide your digital footprint.” He glanced at her and she nodded. “They found you anyway. And it doesn’t look like they’re planning on giving up any time soon. You can’t go back there. They’ll be expecting that. The people you hacked are obviously very good. Good enough to hack you back. And worse.”

  She sighed again, staring out the passenger window. “I know.”

  “I’m guessing this is the first time your hacking has compromised your safety?” She didn’t respond. “I’d even venture to say that the fact that they discovered your intrusion so quickly scared the crap out of you. Could they be associated with the government? Could they be associated with an underground network bigger than you imagined? Could they—”

  She turned toward him. “I’m going to be brutally honest. No offense, Asher, but I don’t trust you. If you can’t be honest with me, why the hell should I trust you?” He turned toward her as she shivered. Not from cold. It was warm in the truck. No, Ellie was shivering from fear. It was written all over her face. “How do I know that you’re not associated with the people responsible for this?”

  How indeed. And he couldn’t prove it to her. “You’ll just have to take my word for it, Ellie. Until I contact my . . . my boss, for lack of a better word, I’m not at liberty to discuss any more.”

  He slowed the truck and approached a dark, four-way stop sign at a deserted intersection near the edge of civilization. Asher looked left and right, and then proceeded. He wasn’t taking any chances that a highway patrol officer or state trooper wasn’t waiting out here, ready to pounce on a driver ignoring the law.

  She grunted, a half laugh, a half snort.

  “You may not trust me, Ellie, but think about this. I’ve had numerous opportunities to torture you, kill you, and dispose of your body, but I haven’t. Why is that?”

  She didn’t respond, but with a sigh, pulled a cell phone from her back pocket, tapped the screen, and—

  “What the hell?” He stared at her, eyes wide. He slammed on the brakes so abruptly that his seatbelt locked, digging into his collarbone. Asher slammed the truck into park.

  “What?”

  He stared down at the phone and he saw the moment recognition dawned. “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh, shit indeed.” Without hesitation, he pressed the button for the interior cab light, snatched the phone from her hand, slid open the back of it, and examined it carefully. “They can ping—”

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I forgot—”

  “They could also have placed a tracker under the battery when the phone wasn’t in your possession, so don’t take the battery out, or they’ll know we found it.” Shit, shit, shit, shit!

  “I should have . . . fuck . . . why didn’t I think of this before now?”

  Asher pressed the button that rolled down his window and tossed the phone onto the side of the road, where it half-buried itself in the sand. “It won’t take them long to track that signal, and if it is bugged, or if they’ve been pinging it . . .”

  She nodded, refusing to look at him. Was she still frightened? Ashamed? He cursed under his breath again, gripping the steering wheel so hard it creaked. Damn it. Of all the stupid . . .

  She was a hacker. She should damn well have known better. He sucked in a breath, running a hand over his face, then put the truck back in drive. She was also a civilian, who had gotten caught up in something she was ill-equipped to handle. It was his fault. He should have made sure.

  Asher made a U-turn, then sped off the way they had come for a hundred yards before taking another road that snaked its way southwest, away from the phone yet still away from Boston. He took another turn onto an even more rural road and continued through the darkness illuminated only by his truck headlights. No traffic.

  “Where the hell are we?” she finally asked.

  “Not sure.”

  She didn’t ask any more questions after that. A headache blossomed in his temple. Unbelievable. This entire babysitting task had turned into a mess. He glanced over at her, the strain on her face visible in the glow of the dashboard lights. With a silent oath, his jaw tight, he tightly grasped the steering wheel, every once in while muttering under his breath.


  They’d been driving for nearly an hour, but Asher was still cursing himself, Jackson, and anyone else he could think of, in his head. He tried to calm himself, tried to find his equilibrium, but it eluded him. Giving up, he let the movement of the truck gently jostle his body and gradually felt his muscles relaxing. He was exhausted. Not physically. Mentally. How was he supposed to protect her against an invisible enemy?

  He glanced at her. Ellie’s eyes were closed. She wasn’t sleeping. No. She had retreated—mentally, much like he had. It was only when the truck bounced up and then pulled to a stop that she opened her eyes.

  He pulled into the parking lot of another motel. This one looked decrepit and old, but the vacancy sign glowing in the lobby office window was nevertheless a welcome sight, even though it flickered erratically. Paint peeled from portions of the wood siding along the length of the one-story building units. The awning covering the office had faded with time and torn near the front, the edges of the jagged tear dripping threads that blew gently in the breeze.

  “Wait here.”

  She didn’t respond as Asher quickly climbed from the truck, locked the door, and then walked across the cracked asphalt to the registration office. His senses on high alert, he scanned the darkness, listened for anything that wasn’t normal. A squealing tire, a rush of footsteps, the sound of the metallic slide of an automatic preparing to fire. Nothing moved in the darkness. An owl hooted way off in the distance but nothing else.

  In a matter of minutes, he returned to the truck, grasping an old-fashioned, diamond shaped plastic key fob. He unlocked the doors and grabbed their meager belongings. With a sigh of relief, Ellie slid from the truck cab. Her knees almost buckled as her feet hit the ground, and he extended a steadying hand. She looked straight ahead, ignored him. Damn. He needed to pull it together.

  12

  Ellie

  Asher unlocked the motel room door, and they stepped inside. The smell of age, mold, not to mention old, smelly carpeting that gave off a cigarette odor rose up and struck her senses like a slap in the face. She wrinkled her nose and glared at Asher. He shrugged.

  “Best we can do for now. There’s a hamburger joint across the road on the corner. You hungry?”

  She shook her head. How could he even think of eating after everything that had just happened?

  “I think I’ll take a shower,” she mumbled. Maybe a shower would help ease the tension in her muscles. She felt horrid. Not just physically, but emotionally. Guilty. Worried that she’d not only truly stepped in the shit this time, but dragged someone else into it with her. Her mind reeled with questions. She knew things had changed. That her life had changed. Without warning, without notice.

  She’d tried to hide her fear and uncertainly from Asher, but by the looks he’d been sending her the entire drive, she hadn’t been successful. She didn’t like these feelings, these emotions. They were foreign to her, and she hated them. Weak. They made her feel week and vulnerable, and she despised every moment of it. Usually, when on the trail of a hot story or an important discovery, she felt nothing but excitement, that surge of adrenaline that comes when you’ve finally found something that you’ve been looking for. This time? No, this time, she felt nothing but an increasing sense of dread.

  Ellie no longer had control of her own life. She was at Asher’s mercy and didn’t like that either, not one bit. Tears burned in her eyes, and she quickly turned her head and blinked them back. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. Wouldn’t appear weak, even if it felt like that inside.

  Asher saw them anyway. She could tell by the way his expression softened. That annoyed the hell out of her too. She didn’t need his damned pity. She brushed past him as she rounded the bed and headed for the bathroom, but inadvertently bumped his arm as she did so. A sensation she could only compare to an electrical shock jolted through her, warming her in ways that were good and bad, and scary as hell, all at once. Shit.

  Asher reached out and clasped her arm, preventing her from going further. He pulled her back toward him, so close her breasts nearly touched his chest. Heat blasted from his body. Before she could react from the surprise of his touch, he wrapped his arms around her and just held her. Ellie’s eyes fluttered closed, and for that one brief moment, she allowed it. She even allowed her head to dip forward, her forehead to rest against his chest, reveling in his heat and comforted by contact. The scent of laundry soap, fabric, and an even slighter hint of manly sweat wafted toward her, and she resisted the urge to melt against him.

  She couldn’t let her guard down. Not ever. Not even with Asher. And yet she wanted to, so, so badly.

  After allowing herself those few seconds, Ellie abruptly pushed away, blinking back those stupid tears that once again threatened. She glanced up at Asher, him looking down at her now, a slight frown marring his brow. “You know I don’t want to be here, you do get that, don’t you? That I—”

  She felt the gentle pressure of his lips against hers. Ellie froze for several seconds, amazed at the softness of those lips. And then, God help her, she relaxed into him, lifted herself slightly on her toes, and returned that pressure, tentatively at first, and then deeper. From out of nowhere, heat bubbled and grew deep inside, her blood carrying the heat to every part of her; first her belly and then into her core, racing through her body, causing her nipples to harden and her cheeks to blossom with it. She would allow this, relish the physical contact, if only for another moment or two. She deserved a bit of comfort, didn’t she? These feelings; this sense of almost-desperation was nothing more than the aftermath of an adrenaline surge. Her reaction to stress.

  The thought sobered her. Despite the tingle in her nipples, the blood thrumming through her veins, and the surprisingly tender touch of Asher’s lips against hers, Ellie broke it off and stepped away. She gestured lamely toward the bathroom. “I need . . . I need some alone time.” Her voice sounded funny. Then again, her entire body felt off-center. How the hell had he generated such feelings of desire in her? This was no time for . . . her pussy clenched with desire, and she felt a surge of dampness. Damn it.

  “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  She didn’t say a word. Not that she could have, even if her throat didn’t have a gigantic lump growing in it. She didn’t regret it. Not the comfort, not the kiss, not even the surprise of her obvious desire for him. Her body told her to give in—to step back into Asher’s embrace, to wrap her arms around his waist and indulge in the warmth and strength his body offered. Yet another part of her told her to turn away, to run into the bathroom, to close the door, and lock it securely behind her.

  Ellie chose the latter, but her body didn’t move, her mind screaming for her to remember how that caress felt, how his hard body felt against hers. Reminded her of the flame that she’d felt, deep inside . . . No cold shower would squelch those feelings. But as she stared at him, praying her expression didn’t display her deepest thoughts, Ellie couldn’t help but notice the way his T-shirt clung so snugly to his chest, or the musculature of his arms . . . her mind drifted . . . what did his cock look like fully aroused? Likely huge and bulging with veins, a head glistening with moisture. Would his balls feel full and firm under her exploring grasp?

  She stood frozen, half turned to the bathroom door as her imagination ran wild. The sensations of his lips suckling her nipples, his tongue swirling, making them harden and pucker beneath his . . . his warm palm cupping her breast, or the sensations of his fingers stroking down her abdomen and dipping beneath the waistline of her jeans. And those—

  Stop it!

  She gestured toward the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower. If you want to go get something to eat, go ahead.” Asher said nothing in reply, and she forced herself to step into the bathroom and close the door. She leaned against it, her face flushed with heat and her pussy throbbing with desire. No, this couldn’t happen.

  Knees trembling, Ellie stepped toward the shower. She ignored the streaks of rust stains around t
he faucets. She ignored the cracked tiles around the soap dish. She wanted . . . needed to feel hot water skimming over her skin, washing away his scent. Washing away her desire. Her knees trembled. The thought of a cold shower was not appealing, though it might have been more effective. She turned the faucets, adjusting the temperature, then quickly undressed, placing one of the bath towels from the rack above the toilet onto the floor, then stepped over the rim of the tub.

  Warm water caressed her skin. Ellie closed her eyes and eased her head back, relieving the tension at the back of her neck and upper shoulders. Water coursed down her breasts, her belly, and her legs. It felt so good. More relaxed, she turned around. The warmth pounded against her back, further relieving both sexual tension and fear—for a few precious moments. Then she opened her eyes and reached for the shower curtain.

  And froze.

  Asher stood in the doorway, staring. His mouth fell open, as he gaped before finally speaking. “I thought you might need . . . umm, I have . . .” his words trailed off as he lifted his hand with what looked like one of his T-shirts clutched in it. A clean one.

  Ellie would have laughed at the expression on his face, if she hadn’t been standing there completely naked. Her face burned more the longer Asher stared, the look on his face morphing from embarrassment to something . . . else?

  She should’ve shouted at him, should have told him to get the hell out, yanked the shower curtain closed to hide her exposed body, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. She returned his stare. Every fiber in her body was more than aware of what he wanted, what she wanted, too. So she allowed him to look his fill, his gaze sweeping her body, taking his time, forging a trail of heat everywhere his gaze traveled over her body. Of course, he saw her nipples hardening. Of course, he saw the pulse that throbbed in her throat. Of course, he saw her mouth drop open and heard her breath escape in a sharp gasp and still she didn’t—couldn’t—move.