Page 50 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
“Those shoes will look good on you, An—” he stopped himself before he called her Angel.
“Damn right they will. I hope nobody steals them off my doorstep before I get home.”
Gideon winced. He’d never liked the apartment she lived in. There was no doorman, it was just a walk-up in what he considered not the nicest part of Manhattan.
“I see that look on your face, Gideon Smith, but we’re not going to get into your Neanderthal worries. Now you’re going to tell me what my scripts have found.”
“That was not the deal. The deal was that if I told you how I got your cloud password, you would tell me why you came to Tillamook, Oregon.”
She huffed again. “Fine. But after that, will you tell me what my scripts have found? Please?” she wheedled.
“I promise.”
She gave a small nod. “The anomaly I found wasn’t on any of the existing eighteen clients I was working on.”
“How long have you been a contractor with Risk Guard?”
“I got the contract three weeks after Neil’s christening, so about five months, almost six.”
“What’s your position there?”
“My job is to play black hat. Companies that call Risk Guard ask them to do a threat analysis against their firewalls and security systems to see how protected they are. That’s where I come in. It’s been pretty easy. I’ve been able to break into almost everyone they’ve sent my way.”
Gideon grinned. Of course, she had.
“And the eighteen you’re working on now?”
“I’m using the same standard scripts that I’ve used to break into the others. I should have cracked about five by now, so that’s why I want to know where I stand.”
“We’ll get to that. I still want to know what brought you to Oregon.”
She gave him a cagey look.
“You promised,” he reminded her.
“I know I did, and you promised I would be part of your operation to take down Risk Guard, especially Miles Albright. How do I know you won’t go back on your word?”
“I don’t do that.” Gideon was offended.
“Yeah, yeah you do. You inferred that we had something. You led me to believe that we weren’t just some kind of fling, that we were building something more, and then you kicked me to the curb. If that’s not going back on your word, I don’t know what is.”
It felt like that time he’d taken a bullet dead center in his Kevlar vest. It knocked him down, he lost his breath, and it hurt like hell.
“You’re absolutely right. I did that. You don’t know how sorry I am. I want to talk about that. I need to talk about that, I was wrong in so many—”
“Stop. Just stop, Gideon. I can’t listen to this right now. I’m in pain, and you rehashing the worst moment of my life will gut me. Let’s just focus on the now. Are you telling me when it comes to your work I can trust you?”
Gideon nodded. He couldn’t say anything else.
“Okay, you asked why I’m here in Tillamook, right?”
Gideon nodded again.
“It’s just going to sound a little crazy.”
“Jada, you were kidnapped and three people were killed. We’re past the realm of crazy and are at the point of deadly.”
“Well okay then. I need to start at the beginning. Risk Guard found me by word of mouth and I signed the dotted line in two business days. The money was crazy good, so I didn’t do my normal deep dive on the company.”
