Page 19 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)

O livia’s jaw dropped as she took in the recreation room. “Seriously?” She walked across the tile and slapped her brother on the side of his head.

He jumped from the black leather sectional. Drops of energy drink flew from the can he held and landed on his long-sleeve T-shirt. “Jesus, Livvie. What was that for?”

“I swear, Kane, if you call me one more time and complain about sitting around work and waiting for orders, I’ll throat punch you.

” She darted her gaze to the three tables in the center of the room—pool, foosball, and Ping-Pong—and to a big screen television with a gaming system underneath.

A full kitchen with a see-through refrigerator stocked with drinks and snacks took up an entire wall.

“Being stuck in this adult male playground does not look like something to bitch about.”

Edgar tugged the cover over the corner of the pool table.

“You should have heard how much they complained when this was just a small kitchen with no toys. Ain’t going to lie, though.

I enjoy when I get to kick the president’s ass.

That is, until we’re interrupted.” He looked at Olivia.

“I checked in on Ava again before I came here. I asked her a question, and she squeezed my hand. That’s a good sign, correct? ”

“Yes.” A very good sign .

“Sorry I’m late.” Ryan strode in with a stack of laptops in his hands. “I was guiding Hudson around traffic on the beltway. They should be here in twenty minutes.”

Olivia sank into a wooden chair at the end of the long table near the kitchen.

“Hudson is VIPER’s medical support, right?

And he’s married to Tessa, who used to be a paramedic but now heads up fundraising at Washington Medical Center.

” She recalled Kane telling her about them and their son, a toddler whom everyone still refers to as “the baby” even though he was a year and a half old.

“Right.” Ryan explained why they were called back from wedding planning and how the tractor-trailer accident delayed their return.

Dread coursed through Olivia. “You think they’re targets too?”

“We don’t know yet and aren’t taking any chances.”

Nic nodded and turned his gaze to Olivia. “We protect what’s ours.”

Ours? As in Nic’s or VIPER’s? Confusion-laced panic rushed into her chest. Being Nic’s for a night had sounded divine when she’d been miles away from her brother. Being part of VIPER and its secrecy and danger and everything it entailed scared the crap out of her.

Ryan cleared his throat. “Chris and Linc are in the gym blowing off some steam, thank the devil.”

Nic chuckled. “Is Chris asking you every fifteen minutes for updates on Richardson?”

“More like every five.”

Olivia remembered seeing a headline a few weeks ago about an appeal Richardson had lost. “He’s Scarlett’s stepfather, right? Isn’t he in prison?”

“Yes, to the first. No, to the second, and that’s classified intel that’s not public knowledge.” Ryan adjusted the technology load in his arms. “Let’s get started. Gage is with Lucy because she woke up from a nightmare, and Patience is with Gran, so it’s just us.”

“Does anybody sleep around here?”

“The demolition twins finally passed out.” Ryan sat at the other end, popped open the multiple laptops and looked at Olivia. “We have information about your job.”

She leaned forward in her seat. “And?”

“With everything going on tonight, my team and I have been busy, so Nic did some research into the hospital’s network.”

She spun to Nic. “You know how to hack?”

“My degree from West Point is in computer science. I’m not as good as Ryan, although he and Scarlett have taught me a lot.

It took me a couple of hours, but I was able to get past your organization’s firewalls.

There’s evidence someone tampered with your documentation and calendar.

Ryan double-checked my findings. They’re accurate. ”

She placed a hand on her heart, which beat in overdrive.

She didn’t know what made her happier—that Nic had forgone sleep to help clear her name, he believed her, or she had the evidence to do the clearing.

But she did know he was more than a bossy soldier with a pretty face and a bionic body.

He was smart and supportive too. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t want to tell you in case I was wrong.”

“And you aren’t, which means if the hospital’s security team had looked into it like I’d asked, they would have found the breach.”

“Not necessarily. I knew exactly what I was looking for.”

Ryan looked up from his laptops. “I did a quick dive into the hospital’s cybersecurity team’s credentials and its investment into network security.

Based on the lack of resources and talent, the red flag Nic found wouldn’t have been discovered.

I also did some preliminary digging into Jonathan Garrity.

I haven’t found anything criminal yet, but his knowledge of your whereabouts is a red flag. ”

Olivia bit back, “No shit.” She’d known Jonathan since she’d started working at Southern Memorial.

It had taken a year in their evolving relationship from colleagues, to friends, to lovers, to figure out the guy was shady.

If only she had figured it out as quickly as Ryan.

Maybe the key to foresight wasn’t possessing a sixth sense. Maybe it was three laptops.

Ryan set his fingers on the center keyboard.

“Nic had asked local PD to check for signs of a tracker on your car. Nothing. And I accessed video footage from the rental car garage and traffic cameras for your route to the beach. It doesn’t appear that you were followed.

Your phone didn’t have a tracker in it either. ”

“My phone? You have it?”

Nic sat next to her and touched her arm. “Your accident seemed suspicious, and I figured there was a reason you stomped on it, so I took it and gave it to Ryan. Maybe he can salvage the data.”

“Of course I can,” Ryan grumbled.

Olivia turned to Nic. “Thank you for rescuing my phone. That’s incredibly helpful. There’s a message on there from a patient I need.”

“From Harlee Slater? I got it. Your incoming call record indicated she contacted you shortly after your plane landed.” Ryan read from his center screen.

“World champion barrel racer. Got into a near-fatal accident a few years ago. Lost her husband and her horse. Disappeared from the public eye for a while but has been spotted training again recently.”

Damn, Ryan was good.

“You were the doctor who got her back in the saddle?” Kane reached for a banana from a large bowl of fruit in the center of the table, not waiting for an answer. “Nice job, Livvie. That must look good on your resume. ”

“It does, but I don’t care about what treating Harlee will do for my career. I care about her.”

He handed the banana to Olivia. “You look pale. Eat this while you tell us why you were meeting her at the beach?”

“Well…” She peeled the banana.

Nic leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well?”

“I’ll get to that, but first I should backtrack to where I left off in the conference room before I got all swoony and passed out.

” She pinched the top of the banana and peeled down the skin.

“I was suspended from the hospital because of my alleged mistakes. Jonathan suggested I should start fresh somewhere and proposed that we move to DC.”

Kane choked on his energy drink. “You’re fighting for your job, right?”

She glared at him. “Of course, I am.”

“Good girl.”

Heat rushed through Nic at the thought of another reason he’d like to call Olivia a “good girl.”

She rolled her eyes at her brother. “Do you think I’d really give up without a fight?”

Shit. Now Nic was thinking about how he’d punish her if she rolled her eyes at him.

Olivia stared at her banana. “Jonathan’s the one who thought I should give up.”

Yet another reason Nic wanted to rip the asshole’s head off.

“Jonathan had this plan about the two of us moving to DC and working at the hospital downtown. While I like the idea of being closer to Gran and Kane, I made a promise to Harlee to get her back on the professional rodeo circuit. When I was put on suspension, Jonathan said it was a sign that I needed a fresh start and proposed. I told him off for not supporting me, fumed for a few days, and then booked a flight to come here. I dumped him the second time when he surprised me at the airport with news that he’d signed a contract with the downtown hospital, convinced them to hire me too, and mentioned to my director in Atlanta that I was considering another position. ”

Nic smacked his steel knuckles into his flesh-and-blood hand. “Jerk.”

Olivia brought the banana to her mouth. “I may have used those words a couple of times when I told Jonathan where he could shove his proposal and his job offer.”

Nic tried to look anywhere but her lips. It didn’t work. “And you didn’t tell him why you were in town or where you were heading?”

“Nope.” She bit the tip of the banana.

Nic swallowed. His libido revved. He didn’t dare look at Kane. If the lust coursing through his body showed a thread of evidence in his eyes, he’d get punched again. “At the hospital, Jonathan said he figured you’d driven to your friend’s house. Why wouldn’t he think you’d gone to Kane or Gran’s?”

“Don’t know, and that’s strange because he talked incessantly about meeting Kane. He was kind of obsessed with him. He may have asked me to marry him, but I think Kane and his bionic leg were his real loves.”

Kane nudged his shoulder against hers. “What’s not to love?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Where should I begin?”

“With how smart I am?”

She reached over and flicked him in the head. “I need to finish my story before Patience’s special healing juice wears off and I’m useless again, so dial back the cockiness. ”