Page 26 of Blind Trust
“I do.” Working for Walsh, with the team, had been a blessing after his time in the Army. An answered prayer. So why was he leaving? What did it say about him that he couldn’t get a grip on his emotions when it came to Lyla? He caught Naomi watching him and somehow felt like she could read his thoughts. He averted his eyes and squinted at the ring he hadn’t noticed before on Naomi’s left hand. He glanced up, and she was beaming. “When?”
“Two nights ago!” She wiggled her newly adorned hand in front of her face. “I won’t bore you with the details, but there were roses everywhere, soft music—he hired a cellist, can you believe that? Our families were there, and it was just magical.”
He smiled. “I thought you weren’t going to bore me with the details?”
Naomi rolled her dark-brown eyes at him. “Whatever. I know you’re a romantic. You just keep it buried deep, deep, waaay deep down, but the right woman will bring it out of you.” She clamped her lips shut, the spark of excitement from a second ago replaced with remorse. “Garcia—”
“It’s fine.” But the heat warming his cheeks said otherwise. “I’m happy Will finally proposed.”
“Me too.” She gave her left hand an admiring glance before meeting his eyes. “Have you talked with Chad recently?”
“Yeah.” He opened the back door of his truck and put his rifle bag away. Shame filled him at his admission. Chad Johnson was another Army officer in the EOD unit and the closest friend Nic had in the Army, but their conversations barely numbered a couple times a year.
“You going to his birthday party next April? The big three-five, and what does the brother want to do? Jump out of a plane.” Naomi laughed. “He’s crazy, but I think it’s kind of cool that even after everything, he won’t let anything hold him back.”
Nic’s jaw tightened. It was easy to admire Chad when you didn’t have the whole story. Chad wasn’t crazy, and if he’d only held back...Nic couldn’t help but think of how different everything in his life would be.
He closed his door and faced her. “Depends on my schedule, I guess.”
Naomi opened the driver’s-side door of her car and sat in the seat and looked up at him. “One of these days, I hope you’ll see that the loss was hers and not yours. And in case my instinct is right and the reason you killed a paper target isn’t just about work but maybe the five-foot-something firecrackeratwork”—her expression told him he wasn’t going to like what was coming next—“I think you need to recognize she’s not Brittany.”
Nic knew Naomi wasn’t trying to be cruel bringing her name up, but it didn’t stop him from feeling like that paper target he’d shotholes through. “I know that.” Lyla was nothing like Brittany. Polar opposites, actually. Lyla loved risk, thrived on the unknown, and Brittany...she hadn’t been able to accept the risk of what his job in the EOD entailed. “I’ll try to make it work for Chad’s birthday.”
“Good.” Naomi smiled at him like she knew why he added that last part. “Because it won’t be the same without you. You’re the other half of the dynamic duo.”
He shook his head and met her fist bump with one of his own before he closed her car door. He waited until she pulled out, then got into his truck. Starting the engine, he took a deep breath. He needed to make it work with Lyla too, but he wasn’t sure a candle would work this time.
Nic walked into the SNAP office and felt the charge of electricity that vibrated his nerves, telling him something was wrong. The second he stepped into the fulcrum, his instincts were confirmed when he found Jack with his arms crossed, stance rigid, and gaze zeroed in on what was happening in Walsh’s office.
The glass-and-steel grid wall allowed Nic to see Lyla sitting with Walsh, looking frustrated, and his stomach pitched. What had she gotten herself into this time?
“What’s happened?”
Before Jack could respond, Kekoa let out a frustrated growl that turned them around. Inside his office, Kekoa was hunched over his computer. Normally Nic would be baffled by how fast the Hawaiian’s mitts could fly over the keyboard, but the fury behind their speed right now told him something wasreallywrong.
“Jack—”
The door opened, and Nic turned back as Lyla walked out, her gaze meeting his before dropping to the floor in front of her. Walsh followed, threading his arms through his wool coat. He looked between Nic and Jack. “I don’t know what Jerome Miller had planned or who he put up to this, but I want them caught and prosecuted.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack’s hands dropped to his side. “Kekoa is working to remotely wipe all information from Lyla’s laptop. He’s confident the safeguards he’s set up on our work computers should be enough, but just in case, he’s also running a tracking program to trace back any attempts to breach the system. He’ll keep an eye on that as well.”
Nic’s head was spinning. Someone tried to hack into Lyla’s laptop? When? Where? She didn’t look up, but he saw the scowl etched in her forehead.
“I’ve got a meeting at the Pentagon. If anything pops up, send someone to find me.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said.
Walsh was not one for dramatics, which meant the strain in his words wasn’t for nothing. It wasn’t until Walsh walked out of the fulcrum that Lyla’s posture shifted. Eyes up, she headed straight to the conference table, pulled out a chair, and sat.
“I’ll be right back.” Jack passed Nic, sending him a proceed-with-caution look before he stepped into Kekoa’s office.
Nic shoved his keys into his jacket pocket and took a slow stroll toward Lyla. She was moving some papers around on the table as a distraction to avoid him. Was she still mad about earlier, or was this about what just took place in Walsh’s office?
“Okay.” Jack walked over, pausing to grab his laptop from his desk before joining Lyla. “Why don’t you fill Garcia in on what happened, and then we can go over all the information we have on Genevieve Miller.”
Nic took the seat next to her and noticed the way she wrinkled her nose like she’d rather do anything but fill him in.Stay calm.
“Earlier when I left the office, I noticed a vehicle was following me.” She straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin up like she was posturing for a fight. “I used some evasive driving techniques to be sure, and when they stayed on me, I figured it might be the same person who put the brick through my windshield. I didn’t want to lose them, so I pulled down Barrows because there’s analley most people don’t know about where I could catch them in a dead end. It worked.” The pride in her voice dimmed when she met Nic’s tight expression. “I was going to get the license plate for Kekoa, but then Genevieve Miller got out and told me she had something for me. A flash drive that came from her brother, but there was just some article on it about a counterfeit ring—”
