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2

E ighteen years later

Chad Warwick’s gaze dropped from his boss to his loosely clasped hands resting on the tabletop. Skills honed by his years in the military and the FBI kept him from showing any sign that the bomb Stella Matthews Zatoro had just dropped had any effect on him other than the requisite mild interest that would be expected.

Lifting his gaze, he let his lips form a curious frown. “I thought it had already been decided that Jun was going to go with me to open the new office in California, and Sabina was going to stay here. Didn’t they toss a coin or something?”

Stella glanced at her husband, second-in-command of HICC, the private security firm the two owned and operated. Hunter nodded as he rocked the couple’s three-year-old son on his shoulder. It was Mateo’s nap time, but the little boy was probably more used to being in HICC’s large compound just south of Washington, DC, than his own home.

“They did,” Stella confirmed. “But Jun and Sabina spoke to us yesterday and asked for the change. As you know, we initially asked Sabina to take on the role of the West Coast cyber lead. We were willing to accommodate the switch and send Jun so long as they were both happy about where they landed. Now that Sabina wants to go and Jun wants to stay, we’re back on track with the original plan.”

Chad fought hard to keep his carefully curious frown from turning into a real one. It wasn’t that he thought Sabina O’Malley wouldn’t be good at the job. The things that woman could do and find baffled the mind. There was zero doubt she was one of the smartest people he knew, if not the smartest person he knew.

But in the two years he’d known her, it had become obvious to him that she was hiding something. He was confident that whatever it was, it wasn’t nefarious or a threat to the company. The background checks on all employees took months. They were so deep that he suspected Stella and Hunter knew everything from the age each employee lost their first tooth to their preferred color of underwear.

All the same, the muscles between his shoulder blades twitched every time Sabina was near. Kind of like they had each time he’d known one of his military ops wasn’t going to go as planned. Or when, as an FBI agent, he’d known a suspect was lying to him. Not a particularly comfortable feeling. Then again, neither was the unwanted attraction he felt toward her. Or the self-loathing that came with wanting a woman he was sure was keeping something from him.

“I assume you don’t have a problem with this?” Hunter asked. “We know it’s last-minute, but as the office isn’t set up yet and we’re not running any business from it, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

In his mind, Chad translated Hunter’s statement into what the man meant. The decision had already been made. If Chad had a problem with it, he needed to get over it. Fast.

Very fast. After six months of planning, their private flight to California was scheduled to take off in four hours.

In retrospect, he should have expected something like this to happen. From the day Stella and Hunter had approached him to lead the opening and operation of their new West Coast office, everything had fallen into place. Like well-positioned dominoes.

The unique opportunity they’d offered him had turned into a once-in-a-lifetime one when they’d agreed that Mystery Lake, Chad’s hometown, would be the right spot to make their home base. Within days of reaching that decision, they’d found a 1,200-acre piece of property that suited their needs. Located high in the Sierra foothills 150 miles east of San Francisco, the varied terrain was perfect for the operatives to train on. The parcel even had a few usable outbuildings, so they hadn’t needed to start the build-out from scratch.

But the property hadn’t been the only deciding factor. Mystery Lake had already been in the process of upgrading and enlarging the local airfield to better serve the skiing and hiking tourist seasons. Those upgrades had finished three weeks earlier, and the new airport was now big enough to land any of the planes in the fleet owned by HICC. In addition, while housing wasn’t plentiful, what could be found was generally affordable.

Best of all, though, at least for Chad, was that he was going home. As a young man, he’d needed to leave his small town and spread his wings. But now, at the age of forty-two, going home to Mystery Lake felt more right than anything had in a long while.

Yeah, everything had gone so smoothly that he’d gotten cocky and a little too comfortable. And now he was paying the price. Having Sabina switch places with Jun wasn’t something he would have anticipated, but if he’d expected something to go wrong, maybe Stella’s announcement wouldn’t have been quite such a shock.

He forced himself to give a casual shrug. “Of course it’s not a problem. A little bit of a surprise, but not a problem.” He wanted to ask if Sabina had given them a reason for the sudden change but thought it might make him sound like a schoolyard gossip. If he wanted to know—which he did—he needed to ask her himself. And he would. The flight to Mystery Lake was six hours, and it was just the two of them. Plenty of time to poke and prod for answers.

Then again, if Sabina didn’t want to tell him, it wouldn’t matter if the flight was six or twenty-six hours. For someone who chattered a lot, she had a knack for not saying anything at all when she didn’t want to. Not that she was vapid—she was too smart for that. Ask her about any current event and she had an informed opinion. Ask her about what was happening in a remote corner of any country and, if she didn’t know off the top of her head, she’d find the answers within hours. Sometimes minutes. Ask her to opine on movies, art, and culture and she’d happily engage. But ask her about herself? Well, that was a different beast altogether.

After two years, he still had no idea where she grew up, if she had any siblings, if she was close to her parents, or where—or even if—she went to college. No one could dodge a personal question better than Sabina. Which, back to his twitching shoulder blades, made him suspicious. And wary.

“Did she need to make any changes to what we’d already agreed with Jun in terms of the equipment or setup?” Chad asked, moving the conversation to the more comfortable topic of logistics.

Stella bobbed her head. “A few minor additions to the equipment inventory, but she was happy with the setup.” Sabina and Jun had been working together since before Chad had joined HICC. It came as no surprise that the two cyber experts had similar requirements. Unfortunately, the setup he and Jun had agreed to—having the cyber labs in the main building—now meant that he’d be seeing Sabina every day.

Even worse, the main building wouldn’t be ready for them to occupy for another two months, and he’d offered up his own home as their base of operation. He’d now have the dubious pleasure of welcoming Sabina into his space as they—along with Colton Manning, the logistics lead—oversaw the final updating and retrofitting of the new compound.

Chad sighed inside and gave in. It would be whatever it would be. He liked Jun, but to Chad’s mind, there wasn’t anyone better than Sabina. At least he’d be getting the best cyber expert out of the change. Things could be worse.

“Sounds good,” he said. “I assume she’s all set with housing and everything, but if not, I’ll help in any way I can. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to run back to my apartment and pick up the last of my bags before heading to the airfield.”

Stella nodded and rose. He followed suit and started toward the door.

“Warwick,” Hunter said.

Chad had been about to grab the doorknob, but he dropped his hand and turned. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. HICC has been more successful than Stella or I could have ever imagined, and while there have been both bad and good times, we wouldn’t change a thing. But times do change. Life changes, priorities change.” Hunter tilted his head and rested it on his sleeping son’s shoulder. “We don’t want to pull back from the good work we’re doing, but we also want to be able to spend more time as a family. And we want our employees to feel like they can do the same. Opening the California office might seem like an expansion. It might even turn out that way. But what we’re really hoping is that we’ll be able to split responsibility for the jobs between the offices so that neither is overloaded. For more reasons than just the skills you, Sabina, and Colton bring to the company, you all are a dream team to lead that effort. We know you’ll help us continue to build the company we want to build. So, thank you.”

Chad wasn’t often at a loss for words, but he struggled now. Hunter rarely said more than what was strictly needed. That he’d said what he had told Chad more about the importance of the new venture than anything discussed in the past six months. This office wasn’t just about business, it was about family, too. Despite the unease he felt about Sabina now being part of his team, a sense of rightness settled inside him. He wanted the same thing they did, and he was going to do his best to make it happen.

Three hours after leaving the DC headquarters of HICC, Chad stood on the tarmac of the private airfield. Workers were loading the final pallets of equipment into the belly of the plane that would take him and Sabina to Northern California while a smaller plane idled behind it. Colton stood beside him watching the same scene, although the man would be flying to LA rather than to Mystery Lake.

“Who are you taking, Colt?” Sabina asked, coming to stand between the two men, a small aloe plant in one hand.

Colton nodded to the smaller of the two planes. “Bertha,” he answered.

Sabina made a little “hmm” noise before hooking an arm in each of theirs, jostling a little dirt from around the aloe. A small shock of desire traveled through Chad as her skin brushed against his. He might believe she was hiding something from him, but that didn’t mean his body had gotten the message that she was hands-off.

“Good choice,” she said. “Bertha’s small but fast.” Before any plane made its maiden flight for HICC, it was christened with a name other than its official registration numbers. The one he and Sabina were taking was Agatha. No one seemed to recall where the name had come from, but to everyone, even Stella and Hunter, she was just Agatha.

“You’re bringing that?” Chad asked, nodding to the plant.

Sabina looked down at the small, slightly sad aloe, then up at him. “I am. Roger, meet Chad,” she said, holding the plant up while keeping her arm looped through his. “Chad, meet Roger. He’s been with me for years,” she added with a grin.

“He’s a little small for being years old, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Hush,” she said, curling Roger closer to her belly. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

Chad stared. She stared back. Then she winked and turned to Colton.

“How long will you be in LA?” she asked. A shop in the City of Angels was customizing several company cars and SUVs for them. Colton was traveling there to oversee the final modifications before bringing them north to the new facility.

“Three weeks. Maybe a month,” he answered.

Chad tried to ignore the feel of her body beside his by returning his attention to Agatha and keeping it focused there. But of course, Sabina wasn’t having it. Her hip bumped into his upper thigh, forcing him to turn and look at her again. “What?”

Wisps of her strawberry blond hair flew into her face thanks to a sudden gust of wind, and he fought the urge to brush them back. A storm was brewing, not unusual for DC in August, and he hoped they’d make it out before it hit. Agatha could take thunder and lighting, but the flight would be much more comfortable if they could avoid it.

“Surprised to see me?” she asked, her blue-green eyes dancing at the thought of catching him off guard. He wasn’t a fan of surprises, and everyone in the office knew it.

He shrugged and swung his gaze back to the workers loading what looked like the last pallet. “Stella and Hunter told me you and Jun switched places. I may be old, but I’m not so old as to forget a conversation from three hours ago.” He wasn’t old at all, but he was six years older than Sabina.

Colton chuckled, and from the corner of his eye, Chad saw Sabina make a face. “Try as you might, Sabina, you aren’t going to get under his skin,” Colton said. If he only knew.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Colt,” Sabina said with so much faux innocence both men snorted. At some point shortly after he’d joined the firm, Sabina had decided he was too serious. She’d been trying for the better part of two years to get him to crack and loosen up. It wasn’t going to happen. She was already under his skin—though not in the way Colton meant—and if he let go of his control even a tiny bit, he wasn’t sure what would happen. And again, back to that not liking surprises thing. Not even—especially even—if he surprised himself.

“Why the last-minute switch?” Colton asked the million-dollar question. Chad didn’t move, but his senses leaped to attention as he waited for her answer. Not that he thought she’d give an honest—or complete—one.

Sabina lifted a shoulder. “I decided a change of scenery would be good for me.”

He fought not to slide her a look of disbelief. Sabina was not a woman who acted on whims. She might have decided a change of scenery was good for her, but there would have been a long train of logic behind that decision.

Even knowing she’d never expose her thought process, a small, masochistic part of him wanted to ask. With a deep breath, he shoved that urge down and stepped away from the pair. Her arm slid from his and he turned to face the two people with whom he’d been entrusted to head this new venture. He intended to get to the bottom of Sabina’s sudden decision, but he needed a plan to break through her considerable defenses. A plan he didn’t yet have, so it would have to wait.

“Ready, ladies and gentlemen?” he asked with a grin.

Sabina and Colton smiled back.

“More than,” Sabina said.

“Oh yeah,” Colton responded.

The sound of Agatha’s loading door closing behind him echoed across the tarmac. “Bertha and Agatha aren’t exactly covered wagons, but let’s go forge our way to new adventures out west.”