Street Game (38 page)

He shouldn’t have been surprised by anything she did, but he was. Jaimie was thorough. When she began digging, she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.
What’s in the file?

I have no idea. Jaimie’s private files are encrypted. I wouldn’t be in the databases except that she gave me a password to use on this particular machine for the various databases she’s tapping into.

Javier, how much trouble is she in?

There was another long silence.
Honestly, boss, it’s hard to tell with Jaimie. She covers her ass, and I don’t think a computer working on her encryption could break it in a hundred years—she’s that good. But she’s got stuff here I’ve never seen before. And Mack.
Javier hesitated.
She’s not working alone.

The words were a punch in the gut. Mack cursed under his breath.
Are you certain?

She’s not only backing up her work; she’s sending it to someone else.

Damn her. I swear I’m going to wrap my fingers around her throat and strangle her.
Mack flexed his fingers and shot Jaimie a glare. Joe watching him be damned. He would shake her until her teeth rattled. Why hadn’t she told him?

Boss. If you kill her, do I get all this cool equipment?

I’m not in the mood, Javier. Who is it? Can you get me a name?

Not a chance, Top. Remember that encryption program Jaimie was telling us about? Well, she uses it. I can’t hack her mail.

Do whatever she did to get into Paul’s. You were there. She talked you right through it.

Not exactly. She knows the code, not me. She told me what she did, not how she did it. She has a backdoor into the program, boss, not me. I could search for . . .

Yeah, I get it. A hundred years.

More like a thousand, boss.

It felt like a betrayal to him. She had been corresponding with someone else, sharing her data, her conclusions, her suspicions—with someone other than him. And she hadn’t told him. Had he really lost her trust to that extent? The blow was enormous. He stood up so abruptly his chair nearly fell over. Kane caught it, shooting him a strange look, but Mack paced away from them, wishing them all gone. Needing them to be gone so he could be alone to reason out the why of it. Why had Jaimie kept this from him?

It seemed impossible to separate his emotions, as intense as they were. Jaimie was his. His world. They’d talked about resolving their issues. Hell, they’d shared the best sex he’d ever had in his life. Everything was right. But this . . . Why hadn’t she told him she wasn’t working alone on trying to expose Whitney and whoever was backing him?

Kane, get them out of here.

What’s wrong?

I’ll tell you later.
After he strangled her.

He stalked across the room, vaguely aware of Kane closing down the meeting with the others, filling them in on the plan to retrieve the weapons. Mack stared down at Jaimie’s face. So innocent. So pale. Her midnight black hair, so dark it gleamed bluish black whenever the light hit it, only made her skin look almost a pearl white. Her lashes were thick and long and every bit as dark as her hair. There was even a curl on the ends of them, hardly surprising when her hair was so naturally curly.

He reached down and pushed the coil of tubing from around her arm and gathered her into his arms. She stirred, her lashes fluttering, lifting. Her eyes were so blue, like the deepest sea.

“Mack,” she said his name softly, a drowsy, slumberous, oh-so-sexy note.

Her smile was slow, drawing his attention to her mouth. The one he spent far too much time fantasizing over. His stomach did a slow roll in time to her smile. “That’s right, baby. It’s Mack. I’m putting you to bed and sending everyone home.” He bent his head to brush a kiss over her forehead. “You’d better not be giving other men that particular smile.”

“I reserve it just for you,” she assured.

He carried her across the room to their bed. He was glad they hadn’t gotten rid of the twin-sized thing she’d been sleeping in. The bed was tucked along the side wall. Kane would have something to sleep on with Ethan in his bed.

I’m assigning Brian to Sergeant Major. We’ll put him in his room. There’s no way to trace him there,
Kane said.

Sounds good. I’ll need Javier and Gideon to go with me to Washington.

I knew you were going to go,
Kane said, resignation in his voice.

You might want to see if Joe can communicate telepathically. If so, put him on the roof when we’re gone. If not, Lucas would be my next choice.

Anything else?

Don’t get anyone killed while I’m gone.

I’ll do my best, boss.

CHAPTER 16

“What are you doing?” Jaimie asked, coming up behind Mack. She’d known the moment he’d left her bed.

Light was creeping into the windows. The sun could barely make it through the thick fog drifting in off the ocean, casting gloom over the early-morning light. She’d followed him on bare feet down to her workroom after making a cup of tea, more to give herself time to assess her feelings than for the need of her early-morning cup.

Lying all night in Mack’s arms, his body wrapped tightly around hers, with Ethan and Kane lying only a few feet away, had been a kind of hell. He had touched her continually. Her breasts, her ribs, her belly, his hand sliding between her legs, fingers moving inside her. She had the marks of his mouth against her neck and even on her breast, his hands and mouth keeping her aroused and on edge, but he’d never said a word. Never took her over that edge, even quietly beneath the covers. She’d never felt so aroused in her life. Every square inch of her body felt sensitive and needy.

“Trying to hack into your files,” Javier answered her without looking up from the screen. “Using your own program of course.”

She was glad he hadn’t looked up. Her nipples were peaked and hard beneath her thin top and lacy bra. “I see.” She wrapped her arms around Mack’s neck and leaned against his back, careful to keep her tea from spilling, needing to hide her body and feel his warmth at the same time. “Are you getting anywhere?”

“No.” Javier shot her a look of pure malice over his shoulder. “I’m thinking of pulling out a gun and shooting your hard drive.”

“Why didn’t you just come ask me?”

“Would you have given me your password?” Javier challenged.

“No, and I’m thinking of throwing you out of my house and banning you from ever using my equipment again.” Jaimie actually had to work to keep her voice normal. Her tone had gone throaty, almost husky. She didn’t look at Mack when he turned his head to glance at her over his shoulder. She couldn’t. Afraid he might know. He did know. He arched his back enough to put pressure on her sensitive nipples.

She gasped and straightened, trying to look casual, but that slight brush of her breasts against Mack’s back sent arousal sizzling through her veins, from breasts to thighs. She looked down at her hands and found she was trembling. He looked so completely composed while she was a wreck.

She moved away from Mack’s solid frame, putting a little distance between them, to perch on the long desktop. Swinging one leg, she sipped at her tea, glaring at Javier, mostly to avoid looking at Mack.

Javier threw his hands in the air, palms out in surrender. “Mack made me do it. Direct order. You know I always obey.”

“Lightning is about to strike,” she said. She braced herself to look at Mack. It was strange, but she could actually taste him in her mouth. When she drew in air, she felt him in her lungs, as if their energy had knit tightly together and somehow she had left part of herself behind in Mack’s body. She kept her gaze squarely in the middle of his chest. “What do you need, Mack?”

There was a silence, forcing her to meet his eyes.
You. Right now. Naked on the floor writhing under me. Screaming. You screaming for me.

She honestly didn’t know if he sent the words into her mind or if she’d answered her own question, but his eyes were predatory. Hungry. He looked as edgy and moody as she felt.

Mack jerked his head and Javier sighed, stood, and then stretched. “If I’m going to be any good to you, I need rest.”

Mack nodded his assent. “We leave in a couple of hours. Have your gear ready. You can sleep on the plane.”

Jaimie’s stomach tightened. She waited until Javier left before she looked at Mack. “You’re leaving?” She had to set her teacup aside so he wouldn’t see her hand tremble.

He stepped close to her, so close she could feel his body heat. His eyes darkened, glittered at her as if she riled him. “You knew I’d have to go. What did you think? That Griffen can live on the run indefinitely? We don’t have a choice here.”

“We could do what I was going to do in the first place, Mack—go to the newspapers, put it on the Internet.”

“They’ll destroy you, Jaimie. Your reputation, everything. You know they will.”

His hand dropped to her knee, just rested there, but she was terribly aware of the heat generated by his palm through her thin drawstring pants. “I hate the mysterious ‘they.’ ‘They’ rule our lives. What are we going to do? Sit around and wait for them to kill us off one by one?”

His gaze met hers. There was absolute purpose there.

Jaimie’s heart jumped. “Mack.”

“I need to know everything you’ve got on Earl Thomas Bartlett, along with every company he’s associated with as well as friends and acquaintances. And don’t tell me you don’t have a file on him, Jaimie.”

She didn’t want to do this, give him the information he needed, but she knew she would. She’d much rather pretend she had found nothing at all, but instead, she nodded slowly. “He’s big, Mack. I know Homeland Security is supposed to have taken over everything, and coordinate with all the various security offices, but you and I both know that’s not altogether true. There are splinter groups that protect their superiors by being very compartmentalized. Everything Bartlett is associated with is shrouded in secrecy. I take it Javier gave you his name.”

His smile was almost worth it. He looked at her as if she was amazing even as he nodded his head. “Javier found a reference to him on the computer you let him use. How did you find him?” His hand moved, made little circles just above her knee.

Jaimie wasn’t certain he even realized how much he disturbed her with his touch, how her body responded even though they were talking about something so important. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “His name kept coming up. There was an obscure newspaper article I read. It should have been on the front page, but ended up buried. I knew the reporter had stumbled onto something big. Bartlett’s name is on several small shell companies. Each owns a private jet and seems legitimate. In fact, the companies file taxes and never turn much of a profit, everything very under the radar.”

“What kind of companies?” His hand moved up her thigh, those lazy circles getting wider. Closer. More compelling.

Jaimie could have stopped him. All she had to do was put her hand over his. He seemed to be just smoothing the pads of his fingers over her inner thigh absently. Her womb spasmed and she felt her panties go damp. She ached for him.

“Jaimie,” he prompted gently.

She forced her mind onto briefing him. “Quite a few of the companies are to do with foreign investments, but what I found the most interesting is the research facilities. Bartlett has ties to Donovan Corporation, built just outside of this city. Whitney is the majority stockholder in that company. Bartlett’s name appears on a company in Oregon as well as several tracts of land in Wyoming, Colorado, California, and Nevada. The land in Wyoming is supposedly used as a secret military training facility, as are all of the rest of them. We know the facility in Wyoming was really a research lab for Whitney’s experiments, specifically his breeding program, because Kane was stationed there.”

Mack’s hand moved to the hem of her top and pushed at it. His fingers brushed against bare skin right at her waist. “Bartlett is the name tying all of these places together?”

Butterflies flooded her stomach. She swallowed hard but continued. If he could breathe normally, then so could she. “I believe that there are more secret places supposedly used for military training, but Whitney remains hidden and this fictitious Bartlett is helping him.”

“You’re talking about the CIA.” His voice was soft. Sexy. He leaned into her just a little, bunching her shirt in his fist, raising the material inch by slow inch. He was looking at her body, not at her.

She was having difficulty breathing no matter how hard she tried to stay cool. “Bartlett’s got to be their money man, Mack. And he doesn’t exist anywhere.”

“But you know who he is.” He made it a statement as he bent forward until she could feel his warm breath against her belly.

Jaimie closed her eyes. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Had his voice shaken? She didn’t know. His lips were against her skin as he spoke. She could feel them, velvet soft, moving over her tummy. He moved into her, forcing her body back to give him more room.

“Because he was arrested and charged with murder and espionage and convicted. He was serving out his sentence in a military prison. According to his records, he attempted suicide by hanging himself and lost brain function. At that time he was transferred to a hospital for the insane and is currently residing there.” She dared to touch him. To put her hands in his hair, that thick mass of short hair that felt so good moving over her skin.

“He does all this from the hospital with no brain function?” His tongue moved in her belly button. His fist yanked her shirt up over her breasts. He frowned at her. “Why the hell do you always wear a bra?”

“I’m modest.”

“Take it off.” He stood there, wedged between her thighs, angling her body back over the desktop, his fist holding her cami up. “Take it off for me, Jaimie.”

Her fingers trembled. She glanced at the stairway, but she unhooked the front clasp and let the cups part in the middle, spilling her breasts out into the open air. There was relief as the cool air touched her skin. “I thought I was briefing you.”