Page 41 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)

“ A re you fucking serious?” Nic ignored the biofeedback Scarlett’s news ignited. “Olivia has a fucking tracker with a camera in her?”

“ And maybe a listening device. I won’t know for sure until we examine it. She’s delaying while I work to override the locks so we can get to her. Natalie’s code is good, but if she was high when she wrote it, it might be easier to crack.”

“Hurry, Goddammit.” If anything happened to Olivia…

No, he wouldn’t let it. He always got the girl, usually without much effort. This time, he’d die trying to get the one he loved.

Natalie snapped her fingers. “Pay attention, Nic, or I swear I’ll let your girlfriend die.”

Despite the situation, he liked hearing Olivia referred to as his. “What do you want?”

Natalie darted her gaze around the stairwell. “Protection.”

Oh, she needed protection all right, and not from the shitty way she’d feel in the morning after the drugs left her system. That is, if he let her live until morning. “Who do you need protection from?”

“The Diablos. The cops.” She held her palms out to her sides and shook them. “Following Jonathan to that coffee shop has landed me in a world of shit. ”

Nic crossed his arms over his chest. His heart thundered against his fist. “Explain.”

“Jonathan told me he made a deal with the Diablo drug cartel about a year ago to infiltrate VIPER by way of Olivia in exchange for a ton of cash. The plan was to woo her into marriage, move to DC, become besties with her brother and you guys, and learn VIPER’s secrets.”

“He was contracted to date her?” Jonathan was lucky he was already dead.

“Holy fuck.” Kane let out a snarl. “My sister was targeted because of me.”

Nic felt Kane’s realization deep in his soul. Every decision had consequences. Even honorable ones like joining a classified fighting force to serve your country.

Natalie rubbed her thumb and fingers together.

“The deal sounded like a real moneymaker. For every piece of intel Jonathan transmitted to the Diablos, he’d get a bonus.

Olivia fucked up that plan. He was so desperate to win her back after she dumped him at the airport, he arranged a scenario where she’d be stranded and scared, and she’d call her big, strong ex for help.

Instead, you found her and got her shot. Way to woo a woman, Nic.”

His pulse spiked high enough to short-circuit his biofeedback function. “Keep talking if you want help.”

“The Diablos…” She shot her gaze to the door, as if one of them would appear. “They gave Jonathan one more chance to win her back—at the coffee shop. He failed and they threatened his life. Jonathan told me he wanted you out of the way so he could try again.”

Nic didn’t have to ask how Jonathan knew about him and Olivia. The camera in her tracker likely recorded every conversation they had.

And everything they did.

Fuck. Olivia had fled the gossips in her hometown only to land in the middle of a whole new level of intrusiveness. He wouldn’t blame her if she ran from him as quickly as her boots would carry her.

She’d already been targeted because her brother was a super soldier.

She’d have a bigger target on her back if she were married to one.

Christ, if he had ignored the damn connection when they’d first met, she wouldn’t be in danger.

And he wouldn’t be thinking about marriage, but hell did he love the idea of putting a ring on her finger.

“Keep her talking until we get the whole story.”

He acknowledged Edgar’s order. Instead of wrapping his hands around Natalie’s neck, he placed his hand over his heart.

“VIPER will protect you, I swear. I’ll get it in writing from my director, but we don’t have time for that right now.

My buddy, who’s a police officer, said he saw some men who looked like they could be Diablos lurking in the parking lot.

” He wouldn’t be surprised if his lie was true.

“We can’t protect you if we don’t have all the details about the threat. ”

“Oh shit.” She glanced over her shoulder at the window. “How many?”

“Fifteen.” The age they’d been when she’d stolen baseball from him.

“I can’t get away from that many. I barely escaped two earlier.”

Nic’s patience stretched so tightly it hurt. When his mother had gotten whiny and glassy-eyed like this, she’d drone on for hours. Olivia didn’t even have minutes. “Talk before I have my team round up the Diablos and let them torture the information I need out of you.”

She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. I offered to help Jonathan with another shot at Olivia by taking you out in exchange for payment. I never intended to end you, though. I intended to kill her. Instead, I wound up shooting Jonathan. ”

“How?”

“This afternoon, he called and told me to meet him at some stables not too far from here. When I got there, he was arguing with a woman on a horse. She was accusing him of jamming her calls so she and Olivia couldn’t connect and calling him a lying bucket of horseshit for not bringing Olivia like he’d promised. ”

That explained Harlee’s radio silence. “What happened next?”

“Jonathan stomped away from the woman on the horse when he spotted me. He said the Diablos were terminating his contract and he was afraid they were going to terminate him too. I spotted a gun under his jacket and got the feeling I was a loose end he was tying up, so I shot him.”

Linc snorted. “Just when I thought she couldn’t get any more unhinged.”

“As I was running away, two Diablos who had tracked Jonathan to the stables grabbed me and tossed me in the back of a van.” Natalie glanced at the fingerprints on her shoulder.

“I pretended to be unconscious so I could listen to what they said. Want to hear what I learned from them before I escaped?” She leaned closer.

“The Diablos had Jonathan put a tracker in Olivia that can record through her skin and clothes.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled back from her stench. “I know. Tell me something I don’t.”

Surprise flashed in her gaze. “But do you know that the tracker hasn’t been transmitting video or sound for the past two days? It’s designed to store data on the device in case that happens, and they really want the footage of some technology demonstration she saw at the White House.”

“Olivia wasn’t present for the presentation.” Kane muttered a thanks to God for that. “How did they know about the party plans? ”

Scarlett gasped. “Shit. I mentioned it after we discussed Richardson and Chavez’s marriage last week. Olivia was still in the room.”

Nic’s patience snapped. “It doesn’t fucking matter how they know. What matters is they think Olivia has the information they want. In. Her. Body.”

Nic forced his expression into a mask as cool as the temperature in the stairwell as he fantasized about wrapping his hands around Natalie’s neck. “Did the Diablos say anything about an ambush at the airstrip?”

“Yes. I escaped from the van while they were taking part in it.”

“If they wanted Olivia’s tracker so bad, why didn’t they snatch her then?”

“I didn’t catch everything they said, but from what I could make out, that was a demonstration so they could get more footage on the tracker.”

And once they got that tracker out of Olivia, Nic would take pleasure in smashing it into pieces. “That still doesn’t explain why they didn’t take Olivia afterward.”

“Some guy named Ray wants her to operate on the woman who fell off the horse. His new wife is a rodeo fan and wants to see her compete again.”

“Ray is the person who was mentioned in Jonathan's communications with the Diablos,” Edgar said. “We’re working to identify him.”

The reminder teased Nic’s brain, as if he was missing something obvious, but he didn’t have time to sort it out. He was done with this waiting for more intel shit.

The cold, powerful fury coursing through his veins scared him.

He didn’t ask for permission. Didn’t care what the consequences would be for his actions.

As long as Olivia didn’t bleed out from someone slicing into her beautiful body with a scalpel or whatever harm the Diablos had planned for her, he’d gladly suffer the fallout.

He visualized his target.

Fire.

A V-Strike streamed from his wrist. It hit Natalie in the center of her thigh. Lunging forward, he caught her before she hit the ground and hauled her against the windowpane.

Ignoring Edgar’s reprimand, he gripped both of her wrists in his steel and yanked them above her head. “Tell me, Natalie. What exactly did Jonathan share about my superpowers?”

She quaked as she turned her cheek into the glass. “Some…something about lasers you can’t see shooting out of your arm and leg.”

“Sounds like science fiction, but let’s have some fun and say I can shoot lasers out of my limbs. Do you think they would hurt?”

“Y…yes.”

He squeezed her bruised shoulder. “Would you like to imagine more lasers hitting your body?”

A yelp squeaked from her throat. “No.”

“Who is the threat in the operating room and how do the Diablos plan to get the tracker out of Olivia? Oh, and I’m going to need that code to unlock the doors.”

He wouldn’t need it for the windows though.

Olivia spoke through the mind comms. “Nic, I need you.”

“Dr. Darren. You’re shaking, and you are exhausted. Give me the needle before you kill this patient.”

Olivia ignored Dr. Morgan and focused on keeping her hands steady.

“Olivia. ”

“Nic.” She blinked back tears at the sound of his voice. “Scarlett told me to delay the surgery, but Harlee’s heart rate dropped.”

“Is she okay?”

“She scared us, but she’s stable now.” Despite the danger she didn’t understand, Olivia fell in love with Nic a little more for asking about Harlee first. “But I can’t delay any longer.

I already dropped a sponge and hid it with my foot so it would take the surgical technologist longer to make sure we didn’t leave anything inside Harlee when we close up. ”