Dangerous Games (Aegis Group, #3) (3 page)

Yes, she was whining, but so what?

“Someone just broke into your hotel room, violated your privacy, and maybe stole from you. You’re entitled to go home if that’s what you want to do.”

“Stole—oh my—no!” Andrea bolted to her feet and out into the room. She nearly tripped over a pile of comforters.

“Andrea, wait.” Zain grabbed her hand, pulling her into the short hall leading into the room. “The cops are going to want to photograph everything as it is.”

She wiggled her hand in his grasp, but he wasn’t letting go. He tugged her closer, until her breasts brushed his chest when she breathed. That contact alone was enough to remind her again that this was an incredibly attractive man.

Terrified. Aroused. Whining. What else could she add to this day?

“My laptop. Did you see it?” She grasped a handful of his jacket with her free hand.

“No, but it could be in here somewhere.” His brows drew down and little lines creased his brow.

“Oh, God. Miranda is going to kill me.” She dropped her chin almost to her chest and her forehead thudded against Zain’s shoulder. His arm circled her waist, his warmth seeping into her.

“Why? What was on it?”

She could not only hear, but feel, his voice this close.

He’d asked a question.

She should really answer.

What was the question again?

Oh right. The laptop.

“Concepts for the spin-off game. I was supposed to show them tomorrow. It’s why I had to come. Shit. Shit. Shit.” She lifted her head from his shoulder. Fifteen minutes ago, he’d terrified her. Now she secretly hoped he knew the answer to the meaning of life, besides forty-two. “What do I do?”

She didn’t honestly expect an answer, but he seemed to consider her question for a moment. Her head buzzed as though she weren’t getting enough oxygen.

“You have a few options,” he said, “but first you need to decide if staying here is what you really want to do.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“That’s not...I don’t know you well enough to make a guess.”

“Just, tell me? I need to hear something.” She grinned despite the dire circumstances. “Help me, Captain Hook, you’re my only hope.”

He snorted and for a moment the corners of his mouth quirked up in something resembling a smile before disappearing.

“You should probably go home.” All sense of mirth was completely gone. The arm around her waist tightened and his thumb caressed her knuckles. She squeezed his fingers, grateful for the comfort. “Whoever broke in here wasn’t an amateur. They knew enough to completely disarm the door and wreck this place without making too much noise. It wasn’t a random act. You were targeted, and judging from the amount of destruction, I’d say there’s a lot of anger behind this. The thoroughness suggests this was a paid gig, but money might not be much of a motivator, due to the amount of rage poured into this.”

Andrea nodded. It was a sound assessment. He ticked every logical box she could think of and some she hadn’t. But she had no intention of going home with her tail tucked between her legs. Crystal might fault Andrea for being quiet and mousey, but she hadn’t jumped into a male-dominated industry with a long history of hostility toward women because someone told her to. Andrea had made that choice on her own before she ever met Crystal or Miranda.

Maybe she didn’t need Crystal to install her spine after all.

“If you want,” Zain said, breaking her line of thinking, “I can hang around until you’ve made your statement and drive you to the airport?” The corners around his mouth creased as he frowned. Yeah, she didn’t like that suggestion either, and yet he was willing to put that plan into action.

“I’m not leaving.” It was time to channel Crystal. Be spunky, sassy and full of spitfire.

“Andrea, I protect people for a living. You really should think about your safety.”

“I know, and this terrifies me. I’m about five seconds from bawling all over you, but you know what? I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of chasing me away. We made a damn good game, and it’s not my fault whoever did this can’t see beyond a pair of boobs. So, no, I don’t need a ride to the airport. I’m staying. There’s hotel security, right? I’ll just...stay with people. Safety in numbers, right?”

She straightened her spine and lifted her chin, despite the quake of fear deep inside her chest.

“Okay.” Zain released her and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

She shivered without his arm around her. What a time to meet a good-looking guy.

“If that’s what you want to do, then we should get you downstairs.” He flashed the con app at her.

“The panel. Shit.” She slapped a hand against her forehead.

“It’s your call.”

“I should do it. Right? Miranda will be down there, expecting me. But I can’t go dressed like this, can I?” She swished the skirts. “Forget it. I might need to pretend I’m a warrior princess just to get through this.”

What would Princess Leia do, anyway? Probably fire off a warning shot. Well, this was her warning shot.

K
evin kept his ball cap pulled low. In a packed room of nearly five hundred, remaining anonymous shouldn’t be an issue. He wasn’t taking chances, though. Andrea was as dumb as a woman could get, a lot like his mother, but Andrea’s shadow was a different story.

She’d arrived to the panel on time, composed and with a man. A man Kevin hadn’t seen in his six weeks of observing both Andrea and Crystal.

It was all wrong.

She was supposed to flake out—or better yet—show up and be a wreck. It would make it that much easier for the plants in the audience to rile her up and cause a scene. Her demise would be so much sweeter if everyone saw how pathetic she really was, if they played up how much of a victim she was. No one felt sorry for the ones who screamed.

Instead, she’d sat quietly through the panel, answering two or three questions aimed at her, but never once appearing flustered. His plants weren’t given the chance to ding her with questions because the moderator had steered their questions to the other designers on the panel.

Figured the one time he wanted to actually hear her talk was the one time she wasn’t given the opportunity.

It was a good chance to observe her shadow, though. The man against the wall in the brown pirate coat and boots with the steampunk gears was clearly with her. Kevin didn’t pay the costume any mind, it wasn’t what the man was wearing that was the issue, it was how the he carried himself. There was a finely tuned awareness of every person in the room. It was in the way he stood, hunter-still and poised to strike.

Kevin had known men like this in juvie and later in boot camp. Super soldiers. Meat grinders. The same kind of men Kevin had served with briefly, at least until they kicked him out. Stupid fucks.

His father had been that same type. At least until the drugs. Kevin hadn’t known his dad pre-drugs. He only had the drunken stories his mother could remember. She’d loved the man his father used to be, but not the man he’d become. No, that man was an abusive prick who couldn’t have died fast enough. Kevin’s father had needed putting down. That was a necessity. His mother, on the other hand, that’d been for himself. He visited them from time to time, on the rare occasion that he went to Speckle’s house. They were buried out back, near the fence. Kevin liked to piss on their graves.

Damn, this panel was running too long.

He checked the time.

They weren’t going to allow Andrea to answer any more questions.

Great.

Any other time, he would have been thankful to the moderator for not making him listen to her. Figured the one time he needed her to make a scene was also the only instance the moderator had a brain enough to not bore the audience with her droning.

The plan had to be aborted until Kevin could regroup and assess this new player. Speckles would be pissed, but the success of their overall mission was more important than ruining one girl’s day. Besides, they had the laptop. In short order, they’d have all they needed to move into phase two.

Kevin tapped out a text, calling off the handful of men he’d paid and planted in the audience. What was a couple hundred dollars to the success of a lifetime?

He lifted his phone and snapped a few out-of-focus pictures of the pirate captain.

Whoever he was, he should have minded his own business.

Zain leaned against the wall, staying out of the way. The hall was packed for the Hottest Games of the Year panel, and anyone who was anyone in game design was on that stage. Andrea sat sandwiched in the middle of seven men who’d proceeded to play keep-the-mic-away from her over the last hour. It was the most disgusting example of chauvinism he’d seen at the con yet, but from Andrea’s account, it wasn’t the worst.

Panels weren’t typically Zain’s thing, which was the only reason he could think of for why he hadn’t picked up on the petty bullshit earlier. He just didn’t understand it. Sure, the GamerGate idiots could explain until they were blue in the face how women were ruining the industry, but it didn’t make one iota of sense to Zain. Now, if they were talking women in the forward ranks, pressing into terrorist lands—yeah. He’d probably be against including women, due to the higher risk they faced from enemy combatants—not because of their skill level. But here? This was the stupidest sixty minutes of wanking he’d ever had to endure.

He hoped this was a one-time issue, that whoever trashed her room was just a petty thief and not something more sinister, but he’d been in the protection game for far too long to not play it safe. Or was that his dick talking? He’d watched her vlog, been interested in her games and now—after meeting her—which head was he thinking with?

If Andrea were truly in danger, which was a real possibility in this post-GamerGate world, maybe he should recommend hiring the company. Pulling in one of the guys. He was just a computer geek, after all. Yeah, he ran some ops because of the connections he’d built, but he wasn’t the right guy for the job and he sure as hell had a personal interest in Andrea that weighed on his conscience.

“Thanks, everyone, for coming out.” The rest of the moderator’s speech was drowned out by cheers, clapping and the stampede of nerds to get to the next standing-room-only event.

A small crowd gathered around the tables set up on the risers for the panelists. Zain studied each in turn, from the avid fans clutching games, to the idealists who wanted to pitch a concept. There were three mean-looking twenty-somethings, but no one Zain would peg as dangerous or a threat. No one who would break into a girl’s room and trash it out of rage or a sense of purpose.

Andrea squeezed herself between the chairs and the backdrop, precariously walking the narrow ledge of room along the back of the risers. She managed to slip out of the spotlight with the kind of grace some people honed with the express purpose of melding into walls.

“You good?” he asked.

Andrea glanced up from her phone. She stared at him like he’d grown a second head or sprouted a third eye.

“You’re still here,” she blurted.

“Well, yeah.”

What the hell kind of men did she know?

Nope.

Stop that thought.

He didn’t want to know what kind of men she hung out with because then Zain would likely want to punch their lights out. He’d already discarded two email drafts to Andrea’s boss, Miranda. If things were as bad as Andrea said they were before the conference, then something should have been done about security or at least ensuring she wasn’t left on her own.

Andrea continued to stare at him without comment. Her eyes were so much bluer in person.

Zain rolled his shoulders, ready to be out of the heavy coat.

“I have some theories about who might be behind the break-in,” he said without any preamble. “I want to reach out to a couple contacts and see what I can dig up.” Andrea hadn’t retained his services, his boss would flip, but Zain couldn’t turn his back on someone in need, and that wasn’t his dick talking.

“Wow. You think it’s that serious?” Her thumbs hovered over the forgotten phone screen, her lips parted and gaze darting about the room.

“Someone broke into your hotel room, trashed it and stole your laptop.” Zain cleared his throat and shoved down the urge to comfort her. What’d happened in the room was a fluke. The way she’d looked at him, the zing of attraction, it was all in his head. She was a freaked-out woman in need of some help, and he would not take advantage of her. Even though all he could think about was her lips, the way they twisted in a wry smile. She always looked like she had some secret she wasn’t sharing, and that only made him want to know.

“That happened, didn’t it?” Her shoulders slumped. “I keep thinking,
it can’t be real
, you know?”

“It was wrong, and it happened. The head of security texted me that the cops have gone over everything. They left a card for you to call if you had any questions. If you change your mind and decide to go home—”

“No.” Andrea shook her head. “I can’t leave. I mean, what kind of message will it send if I run?”

“Is making a statement worth risking your life?” It was a bit of a logic jump. He didn’t know for sure if it was Andrea in danger or the intellectual property she’d had in her possession, but something about her triggered all his protective instincts. He’d rather be safe than sorry.

“It’s not that serious, is it?” Her face scrunched up, and damn if she wasn’t the most innocent thing he’d seen in an age. Zain needed to stay far, far away from her. Life had chewed him up, spit him out, and bashed the remains with a baseball bat.

“You said there were threats.” He hooked his thumbs in the ornate gear work belt circling his hips.

“To Crystal, yeah, but she always gets that kind of heat. I still can’t believe this is happening.” She covered her mouth, eyes going round. “Oh, God. The cocktail party tonight.”

“The what?”

“There’s a...a Dark Matter Games thing tonight. They own Grunge, the company I work for. Cocktails and everything. I bought a
dress
. I have nothing to wear except this.” Andrea buried her face in her hands.