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“Look, Lucas overreacted.” She mustered up a brittle smile. “I agreed to this meeting to appease him. I apologize for wasting Dìleas’s time, but a bodyguard isn’t necessary.”
Ryder eased back in the chair and crossed a leg over his knee, looking completely at ease while she was a train wreck. He pulled his cell phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat and swiped the screen. “You told Lucas you thought you’ve been followed, more than once, in the past few weeks.”
“Well, I could be imag—“
“Someone broke into your home, yet nothing appeared to be missing.”
“Maybe I left the door un—“
“You created an innovative avionics software platform for the US military’s Next Generation fighter, which is rumored to be far superior to the capabilities of America’s enemies and may be targeted for sabotage.” He tilted his head a fraction, his gaze narrowing as he pinned her to her chair with a cool stare. “Did I leave anything out?”
“Okay, fine!” She glared at his smug expression.
Add arrogant ass to his resume.
He returned the phone to his coat pocket. “You need protection, Nathalie.”
What she needed was time and space. Away from Ryder. To think this all through.
He couldn’t have reappeared in her life at a worse time. She and the rest of her colleagues at Williams were under enough stress as it was trying to get their software demonstration ready for the DoD in just a week and a half.
She rubbed her forehead with a weary sigh. “I’ll think about it. Right now, I have to get back to work.” She’d call Lucas, make some excuse for why she didn’t need Dìleas’s services.
Ryder’s lips tightened. Just a fraction. “If this is personal—“
A loud knock on her door interrupted.
Nick Moore, her head of information security, poked his head in, glanced at Ryder, then turned his attention to her. His face looked grim, worry creasing the corners of his blue eyes. “I need to speak with you. Right now. We have a situation.”
Chapter Four
NicksteppedintoNathalie’soffice. Behind him trailed Don Lambert, Williams’s vice president. Their faces had bad news written all over them.
Ryder stood. “I’ll wait in the lobby.” His gaze narrowed on her. “Our conversation isn’t over.”
She lifted her brows.Says who?
Before she could tell him otherwise, he’d nodded to Nick and Don and slipped out.
“Who was that?” Don closed the door behind Ryder.
Don and her father had formed a battle-tested friendship during their service in the Air Force. After retiring as a lieutenant colonel, he’d come to help her dad get Williams Advanced Avionics off the ground. If he’d been hurt when Ben decreed Nathalie succeed him as president, it had never shown.
Was it her imagination, or had his hair become thinner and more gray than brown? Why hadn’t she noticed before now?
“Ryder Montague.” A name she never thought she’d say out loud again. “He’s from a security agency Lucas Caldwell recommended.” Don knew Lucas, so she didn’t have to explain further.
“We may need them,” Don replied. He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a soft cloth before placing them back on his nose.
“We don’t need them,” Nick snapped. “I can handle it.” He scrubbed a hand over his short, blond buzz cut, a relic from his twenty-plus years as an enlisted cyber systems operations specialist in the Air Force.
Nathalie looked back and forth between the two. “What’s the emergency?”
Splotches of red mottled Nick’s pale skin. “Someone accessed our network last night.”
“As in, hacked into our system? Did they steal anything?”
Several people in the company worked on their designs, so by necessity, much of the information was stored on the company network behind firewalls.