Page 58 of Ground Zero

Maverick turned to her, his jaw hard and his expression serious. “Sheridan, that evidence on the USB drive—what are you going to do with it?”

She met his eyes and saw the vulnerability there.

He was asking her to choose between her duty as a federal agent and her growing belief in his innocence.

The decision weighed on her.

“For now? Nothing. It stays with us until we know who we can trust.” She picked up the drive and pocketed it. “But, Maverick, eventually I’ll have to account for this. We need to find proof of who really planted this evidence.”

“I know.” His voice was quiet, grateful. “Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it that.” She desperately tried to keep things professional even as her heart pulled toward him. “Call itreasonabledoubt.”

But she knew it was more than that.

Somewhere between that first tackle on the beach and this moment, she’d stopped seeing Maverick as a suspect and started seeing him as . . . what? A partner? An ally?

Something more?

She pushed the thought away. They had less than forty-eight hours to stop a terrorist attack. Whatever was growing between them would have to wait.

If they survived.

CHAPTER 33

Maverick paced to the kitchen table, where Sheridan sat behind the laptop.

“May I?” He nodded to her computer.

She hesitated before sliding the computer over.

He dropped into the seat beside her, and his fingers found the keyboard.

“I can create a small anomaly in Norfolk’s visitor management system,” he murmured. “Nothing major, just enough to trigger a security review without causing panic.”

“Why not just wait for Trey to answer your text?”

“If Norfolk goes to heightened alert, he’ll be more receptive to warnings about a real threat.”

“Makes sense,” she murmured. “But won’t that be traced back to us?”

“Not if we route it through enough proxies.” He continued typing. “We need to make them nervous, not suspicious.”

Sheridan glanced at him. “You’re committing a federal crime.”

He met her gaze. “I’m saving lives. Sometimes the rules have to bend.”

“Danny would have agreed with that statement.”

For the next twenty minutes, Maverick created a digital probe that would trigger Norfolk’s intrusion detection systems without actually breaching anything important. It was delicate work—too subtle and it would be ignored, too aggressive and it would trigger the wrong kind of response.

“There.” Maverick let out a breath as he watched the script being executed. “It’s done.”

“Now what?”

“Now we watch what they do.”

Sheridan crossed her arms and nodded. “So we wait.”