Covert Intents: A Branson Family Novella (7 page)

“She’s welcome here. That way I know she’s safe.”

He didn’t want to tell Cameron there was no way he was letting Rachel go anywhere right now if he had any other choice. Fortunately Cameron didn’t push the issue.

“The man who grabbed her, he was after the microchip?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure it was a case of mistaken identity, considering her office is on the same floor as the rest of the computer engineering division.”

“But she’s secure there with you?”

More than. “Yes, it’s no problem.”

“Harrington, I don’t have to tell you that she’s my cousin and you better not be putting any moves—“

“I’ll report in tomorrow.” Seth didn’t want to let Cameron get any further in his warning, given this afternoon’s actions.

And the actions he planned to continue tonight.

“Until then, you can just report that Ms. Branson is safe with me,” he continued. “If there’s any update in what they find on campus or her townhouse, please let me know.”

“Damn it, Seth—“

Seth disconnected the call. Although Cameron Branson had been at Omega longer than Seth he wasn’t Seth’s boss. And despite what any of the Branson siblings thought, Rachel did not need a keeper. She was an adult, capable of doing whatever she wanted.

She walked out of the kitchen. “Done with your call?”

Seth nodded, transfixed as she began to unbutton the shirt of his she was wearing. In just a few moments it dropped to the floor.

Yes, Rachel was capable of doing whatever she wanted. And right now evidently what she wanted was him.

He was more than happy to oblige.

CHAPTER NINE

A
text from Cameron woke Seth the next morning.

Ryan Powell is awake. Juliet, Sawyer and I will meet you at the hospital in one hour for questioning.

At least it wasn’t a message about Rachel, although Seth couldn’t help but wonder if some of the questioning would be directed at him. Rachel turned to him with sleepy eyes as he got out of bed.

“Everything okay?”

He smiled at her. “Yes, but I have to go into work for a while.”

“Janitor work or other work?”

“Other work. Actually, I’m going to the hospital to question Ryan Powell. He woke up this morning.”

He expected concern or even distress. What he didn’t expect was for Rachel to flush and turn away. “Oh.”

It was none of his business. Set
h
kne
w
it was none of his business, even after last night. But he still sat back down on the bed so he could look at her and figure out what was behind that little statement.

“
Oh
?”

She shrugged, pulling the sheet up to her chin. “It’s nothing.”

“Is there something between you two?”

“No.” She pulled the sheet up even further, past her mouth. “Really, no. It’s just, before you got to the restaurant on Thursday, Ryan kissed me.”

Now it was Seth’s turn. “Oh.”

She dropped the sheet and scooted closer to him. “But he didn’t kiss me because I wanted him to. He was acting all weird.”

She wasn’t telling him all of it, Seth could tell. “And? Did you like it? Is that what you’re all flushed about?”

“No!” She got that out quickly. “I just…”

“Yes?”

“I hadn’t been kissed in years and then was kissed by two men in the same night. Not my normal Thursday evening.”

Seth chuckled, something relaxing in him. She wasn’t interested in Powell, just a little overwhelmed by the attention. He leaned over and stole her lips for himself.

“I’m amazed complete strangers aren’t coming up to kiss you, as appealing as this mouth is.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You try to hide behind glasses and books, but it doesn’t take much to see how sexy you are. I think most men are just intimidated.”

She sat straight up in bed. “B
y
m
e
?”

He grinned. “By the fact that you can sometimes be so caught up in your books, or research, or whatever you’re doing that you don’t even really see men who might be interested in you. You’re focused on other things. Competing with that concentration can be intimidating.”

“I sa
w
yo
u
.”

“Thank goodness.” He slid her under him and kissed her again. Hot. Wet. Anybody who didn’t want to kiss her was definitely an idiot.

But right now he needed to get up or he was never going to make it to the hospital on time. Cameron, Juliet and Sawyer were going to have enough questions for Seth without him running late and an I-just-had-mindblowing-sex-with-your-family-member look on his face.

“We will continue this later, okay? I’ve got to deal with Powell first. And I’m glad you don’t like him. Because it looks like he’s probably one of the bad guys.”

“Really?”

“Unfortunately. Someone is setting up a sale of the microchip. Powell would be a good candidate.” Seth didn’t want to mention Lydia or Dr. Hudson as suspects in case he was wrong.

“But someone attacked him.”

“The concept of honor among thieves is usually a lie, I’ve found. More like everyone take whatever they can from each other.”

She nodded. “I guess I should go home.”

“No, I think you should stay here. Nobody knows where I live. You’ll be safe here. We’ll deal with your house soon.”

He smiled as she settled back into the pillow. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Be careful and hurry back.”

“I will.”

#

Three
of the four Branson siblings were lined up like a firing squad at the entrance of the hospital. Dylan, their oldest brother wasn’t there since he wasn’t an Omega agent any more and didn’t live in D.C., but Seth imagined he would be here if he could.

“So, Powell is awake?” He said to them by way of greeting, hoping to side-step the conversation he knew was coming.

He didn’t even make it through the door.

“Are you sleeping with Rachel, Harrington?”

He would’ve expected it more from Sawyer or especially Cameron, but it was actually Juliet who asked the question.

“You guys. Rachel is a grown woman.” He took a step back as they all took a step forward.

“She’s the baby of the family,” Cameron said.

“She’s in her mid-twenties. That’s not much younger than any of us.” Seth tried to keep his eyes on all three of them at the same time. Cameron was the biggest, but Sawyer -for all his easygoingness in most situations— could also throw a punch that would take a man down.

Juliet scared him most of all. He’d seen her close-quarters combat skills on the training floor at Omega. She could probably take all three of them down before any of them could get a hit in. Taking out just Seth would be no problem at all.

“She lost her parents,” Sawyer pointed out.

Seth tried to restrain from rolling his eyes. “She lost them while she was i
n
colleg
e
. And while it’s still sad, that’s hardly a little orphan Annie tragedy.”

“We care about her. We respect her.” Juliet again.

“Hey, watch it.” This time Seth took a step forward. Enough. “So do I. Don’t insinuate otherwise.” It was one thing for them to be protective. Quite another to automatically suggest he didn’t respect Rachel. He did.

That got their attention. They glanced at each other briefly. Evidently Seth had passed some kind of test. All three of them relaxed their posture.

“Is she safe?” Sawyer asked. “Okay after the incidents at her house and office?”

They loved Rachel, obviously. She was family.

“Shaken up, for sure,” he told them. “The guy at the office scared her and then I had to break cover to intervene. Of course, she swears she could tell I wasn’t just a janitor, even before yesterday.”

Juliet nodded. “Rachel’s smart. Very intuitive. I’m almost certain she’s on to us being law enforcement.”

“It’s only the fact that she thinks it couldn’t possibly be all three of us that keeps her from asking outright.” Sawyer chuckled.

Cameron grinned too. “That won’t hold her off forever. Eventually we’re going to have to get clearance to tell her.”

Seth felt tension release inside him. If her family also wanted Omega to provide her clearance for knowledge about the covert operations division, that would make things so much easier. Better.

No more lies. It opened up the possibility for a relationship.

He thought of waking up every day next to the beautiful, shy woman he’d left in his bed this morning. He couldn’t think of many things more appealing.

“Are we done with the Inquisition here?” he said. “Maybe we can go work on solving the case by questioning Powell?”

“Sawyer and Cam have already been in there playing good cop/bad cop,” Juliet said as they walked through the door.

“I was bad cop.” Sawyer grinned.

Juliet ignored her brother. “We were trying to keep your cover intact if possible. But Powell’s not willing to talk to us, no matter how much we insinuate that we know.”

“You think me going in there and shaking things up will get him to talk?” Seth was willing to give up his cover, especially since the sale must be imminent with everything that was happening.

“The guy is definitely scared,” Cameron chimed in as they walked down the hall. “To be honest, I think he feels like he’s in over his head. But he has no idea how to get out.”

Seth wasn’t without pity for the younger man. “Fine. Then we get whatever info we can from him and help him get out.”

The Bransons murmured their agreement and Seth entered Powell’s room. The man, twenty-four years old and with a good future ahead of him before he got greedy with these buyers, looked much worse for wear.

Someone had done a number on him. No wonder he was scared.

One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, the other side of his face filled with scrapes from where he’d been held against some hard surface. One arm had been broken and now rested in a cast.

Powell obviously wasn’t expecting Seth to walk through the hospital room door. And, because he hadn’t seen Seth in his street clothes on Thursday, Powell didn’t place Seth right away.

Seth walked over and stood silently at the window until the other man figured it out.

Despite the beating and the painkillers in Ryan’s system, it didn’t take too long. “Wait, aren’t you the janitor?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“You’re a cop.”

“Yes.”

“When those other cops came in here I thought they were just fishing for information. I didn’t think they knew anything.” Ryan shifted and winced in pain. “I guess you know a lot more than I thought.”

“We know you’re in way over your head, Ryan. You need to tell me what you know, how deep you’re involved, and let us help you.”

Ryan looked away and Seth thought he might not give up any information, but then he looked back toward him.

“Last year, when I finally was given full clearance in the lab, I was contacted by a man who wanted to know if I was interested in making a little side money.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I still don’t. We’ve only ever spoken via phone or email, never met face to face.”

Seth wasn’t surprised. “What did he want you to do?”

“Nothing terrible. Bits of information here and there. Nothing that was of critical importance or top secret.”

“And you gave it to him?”

Ryan cringed. “I needed money. I have nearly a hundred thousand dollars in student loans from undergrad and graduate school. He was paying very well for stuff that really wasn’t important. I just figured he was reverse engineering some stuff and needed the info to make it easier. But I swear, none of it was state secrets.”

If that was true, and Ryan hadn’t let it progress any further, then he wouldn’t be in real trouble with the law. Theft was bad news but not nearly as bad as selling government research secrets. That would be considered treason.

But minor theft wouldn’t have left this kid so badly beaten and in the hospital. There had to be more to it.

“But it escalated,” Seth prompted.

Ryan nodded. “That other stuff… I don’t think it was what the buyer wanted at all. I think it was just to reel me in, to force me into a place where I couldn’t say no when something big like the microchip became available.”

“We caught a transmission to a suspected terrorist cell that originated somewhere on campus and mentioned the microchip, that’s how we got clued in to the situation.”

Ryan looked sharply in Seth’s direction then winced in pain. “I never instigated communication with the buyer, only received info from him. If you intercepted a message offering to procure and sell the microchip, it wasn’t from me.”

Seth believed him. “Who do you think it was from?”

“It could be a number of people. I didn’t know there was anyone else the buyer had in his pocket, but he obviously does.”

“Intel leads us to believe it is either Lydia Williams or Dale Hudson.”

Ryan shrugged. “Both of them had access. Especially Dr. Hudson. Lydia’s a grad student like me, but Dr. Hudson would have complete access to everything.”

Plus, Hudson was having an affair with Lydia. Were they working together? Was he keeping Lydia close to prevent her from figuring out what he was doing?

Omega agents were tailing both Lydia and Hudson. If either of them did something odd, it would be reported immediately.

“I haven’t told you everything,” Ryan whispered.

Seth’s eyes locked back with Ryan’s. “What?”

“The microchip is basically code-breaking hardware. If it gets into the wrong hands it could cripple the U.S. Government — allow hackers to break into government computers, military installations, even make changes in air traffic control reception.”

Seth already knew all that. It was why he had been undercover as a janitor for two months. “Yes. So?”

“Without the initial algorithm it’s pretty useless. There’s no baseline for the microchip to begin its progress.”

“So it takes two parts in order to make it work.”