A_Father's Sacrifice Read online

  Sighing, Dylan lifted his arm to look at the lighted dial of his watch. Almost seven. Damn it. Alfred had talked Natasha into letting him sleep.

  He didn’t have time to sleep. He needed to get back to work. He was almost done mapping the nerves. As soon as Natasha and Campbell finished debugging the program, he could enclose the delicate prototype in its protective case and turn it over to NSA to be transported to their ultrasecure medical facility.

  The only thing he cared about was implanting the computer interface into Ben’s spinal cord. The actual operation wouldn’t take but about twelve hours. But then they had to wait to see if his little body accepted the foreign object, and if the fibers’ computerized stimulation actually worked on human nerves. So many ifs.

  Once Ben’s surgery was successful, Dylan planned to wash his hands of the damned interface, the government and everything and everybody connected with it.

  Maybe then, he could feel assured that his child was safe.

  He slipped out of bed, doing his best not to disturb Ben. His mobile radio chirruped.

  That’s what had awoken him, he realized as he unhooked the radio. “Yeah?” he whispered.

  “Dylan, are you in Ben’s room?”

  It was Alfred, and Dylan didn’t like his tone. He glanced back at Ben, who was still sleeping peacefully, then slipped through the door to the hall.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Dylan pocketed his phone, frowning. Alfred sounded worried.

  The door to Natasha’s room opened and she stepped out, dressed in a black sweater and black pants and carrying her work boots. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and her toes peeked out from under the pants legs.

  Dylan dragged his gaze away from her delicate pink toes. “You were supposed to wake me an hour ago. Why didn’t you?” he challenged her.

  She didn’t answer his question. “Mintz just called me. What’s up?” She set her boots on the floor and stepped into them, securing the Velcro fasteners.

  Dylan shook his head just as Alfred entered through the east door.

  “Robby and Hector just notified me that they’ve finished examining the fence and sweeping the area with infrared detectors, looking for human life. If someone got in, they’re gone now.” He frowned. “Problem is, Hector found a few fibers caught on a wire—on the inside. They would have been torn away as someone climbed out.”

  “Did Hector get photos before he removed the fibers?” Natasha snapped.

  “Robby did.”

  “Good. Let’s get them to the FBI photo-analysis lab. They can let us know if it looks like the fibers were planted.”

  Dylan watched Alfred. Something more was bothering him. “Alfred, what else? This isn’t about just a broken piece of fence.”

  Alfred shook his head. “Come with me.”

  “Damn it, Alfred. What is it?”

  Alfred didn’t speak. He just turned on his heel.

  Dylan glanced at Natasha. “Wake Charlene and tell her to watch Ben.”

  Natasha nodded.

  When Dylan got outside, Robby was waiting with Alfred. The three of them started toward the west side of the house. Natasha caught up with them halfway down the hill.

  Robby pointed as they approached the secured basement door that led to the back stairway that joined the living quarters to the lab. Reflective orange tape blocked off the area right around the door.

  “There are footprints leading up to this door.” He glanced at Alfred.

  Alfred met Dylan’s gaze. “The door is unlocked.”

  “Unlocked? Are you sure?” Anyone could have gotten to Ben. He rounded on the young guard.

  “What have you found?”

  Robby stepped carefully up to the orange tape and pointed. “They’re right here, sir. I’ve taken pictures, but unfortunately, they appear to be generic rubber garden boots that can be bought anywhere. We’ll be lucky if we can estimate the size of the intruder’s feet.”

  “Thank you.” Alfred dismissed him.

  Dylan stared at Alfred, fear for his son’s safety burning a hole in his gut. “What can we do? Shouldn’t we be searching? We’ve got to find this guy before—” He couldn’t even form the words.

  “Dylan—” Alfred started.

  “How did this happen? Where were your damn guards?” he snapped.

  Natasha met Mintz’s gaze and her chest tightened. Exhaustion lined his weathered face. He’d cleaned up but although soot and mud came off easily with water, worry didn’t.

  Mintz knew what she knew. The suicide truck hadn’t been the real threat.

  “Dylan—” Mintz’s worn, rough voice cracked.

  She held up her hand. It would be better coming from her. Then Dylan could focus his blame on her, not his friend. He was going to need Alfred to help him get through this.

  She didn’t have the emotional investment that Mintz had in Dylan or Ben. The sting behind her eyelids tried to belie that thought, but she ignored it.

  “Dylan, look at me.” Her voice wavered.

  His intense blue gaze snapped to hers, sending that ripple of shock and awareness through her. She was beginning to expect it, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it.

  She touched his forearm. The muscles under his skin stretched taut as steel bands. “Dylan. Whoever did this is long gone by now. All of this is a message.”

  Dylan scowled at her and jerked his arm out of her grasp. “What the hell are you talking about? What message?”

  “Whoever sent that truck and broke into the compound is telling us he can get to Ben any time he wants.”

  Dylan turned to Mintz. “Alfred, tell her that’s not true,” he said. “I’ve got the best security money can buy. Now that we know someone’s targeting us, we’ll be prepared. Hire more guards. All I need is one more week. Maybe less.”

  “Dylan—the door was unlocked.” Mintz’s voice was gravelly with emotion. “Whoever did this knows a lot about the layout of the house.”

  Natasha took a deep breath. “Mintz is right. They had to have access to the house. Ben is not safe here.” She looked at Dylan. “You’ve got a traitor on the inside.”

  Chapter Five

  Dylan’s face drained of color as he absorbed the truth of what she was saying.

  Witnessing his horrified anguish and his fear of his son’s life, Natasha wanted to cry, but she was an FBI agent. FBI agents didn’t cry.

  “You and Ben have to leave right now,” she said.

  “That’s not going to happen.” Dylan glared at Alfred and Natasha.

  The two of them exchanged a glance, which only upped Dylan’s anger.

  “You just want me to drop everything and leave? I don’t suppose either of you have a plan for moving the prototype interface.” He didn’t even pause for an answer. “That’s what I thought. You know it can’t be moved. We’re at a critical point. It’s not completely assembled. All the microfibers are exposed. If we try to move it, they could be damaged or broken. I could lose a week, maybe more, just repairing the damage.” He shook his head.

  “Ben doesn’t have a week to spare. I don’t care what you do or what it costs, buy me time. Call NSA, the FBI. Get us enough protection that this doesn’t happen again.”

  Alfred nodded. “We’ve got to address the inside security, too.”

  “I can’t believe there’s a traitor on my staff. Who could it be?”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Alfred muttered. “Okay. I’ll review everyone’s work history and question them on their whereabouts tonight. We need to go over the telephone logs and view all the security disks, too.”

  “Hours of work,” Dylan said.

  Alfred looked at Natasha. “What if we pull your two agents inside? They can review the disks and telephone logs. Plus, knowing that the FBI is on-site might slow down our traitor.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said.

  Dylan nodded his agreement. “Get them ri
ght on it. If I’ve got a traitor on the inside, I want to know it now!”

  Alfred started around the orange tape, speaking into his mobile radio.

  Dylan moved toward the door. “Natasha, come with me.”

  “Dylan,” Alfred called. “Not that way. We’re processing the stairwell for any possible trace evidence.”

  “Is Campbell in the lab?”

  “No. That whole area is sealed off until we test the stairwell.”

  More time lost. “How long?”

  Alfred looked at his watch. “Probably no more than an hour.”

  “Good.” He started up the hill to the front entrance.

  Natasha fell into step beside him. “What now?” she asked. “You could use that hour’s sleep.”

  “I’ll sleep when Ben can walk without braces.” He rubbed his burning eyes. “But why don’t you grab a nap?”

  “I’ll sleep when you sleep.”

  The picture evoked by her words sent a spear of desire through him. He shook it off, disgusted with himself. He didn’t have the strength or the time to spare for useless, distracting sexual cravings. “Since we can’t get to the lab let’s go have breakfast with Ben.”

  “You go ahead. Ben barely knows me.”

  “He’ll want to see you.”

  Natasha turned and walked with Dylan through the front doors and across the atrium to the kitchen. She suppressed a yawn. It had been a long night.

  Dylan’s eyes were red and his face was haggard. But the fire still burned in him—the fire of determination, of obsession. He’d bring that single-minded concentration to anything he did.

  Her brain fed her an image that shocked her. It was as if the moment in her room when he’d touched her forearm had morphed into a different universe—a universe where he pulled her close, his hands pressing her body intimately to his and his mouth covering hers in a burning kiss.

  Dylan glanced sideways at her and she snapped back to reality. Her cheeks felt warm. She hoped they weren’t turning pink.

  “Sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”

  “I asked you how much you trust your fellow agents?”

  “I’d trust Storm with my life. I don’t know Gambrini, but my boss, Mitch Decker, hired him and I’d trust Decker with my soul.”

  “That’s a lot of trust.”

  She met his gaze. “Decker saved my life. So did Storm.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “How long will it take you to build a tracking system?”

  He wasn’t going to be happy with her answer. “I could probably get a good detector-tracer in place within twenty-four hours.”

  “How much will that slow us down?”

  “Not much. That’s why it takes so long to set up.”

  “What if you had the whole system?”

  “Obviously I can work faster, but there’s a point of diminishing returns. Say my jobs were rated highest priority. That means at times, your jobs would grind to a halt.” She shrugged. “Plus if Storm and Gambrini are going to be reviewing security disks and checking telephone usage, that will slow the network that much more. It all burns time.”

  She paused, doing some rapid calculations in her head. “I can set my jobs at high priority, but not highest. That way you can still work without much perceptible slowdown. Unless I run into an unexpected situation, I might be able to get the supertracker in place in eight to ten hours, maybe a little less.”

  “Fine. I can afford six hours or so.”

  “First of all, you just cut my estimate by two hours, and second, please promise me that you understand I can’t guarantee anything.”

  His lips compressed into a thin line. “Just make sure nobody gets near my computer model of the interface software—they could wipe out years of work in a few seconds.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Dylan…” She put a hand on his arm, stopping him at the door to the kitchen. She glanced around before she spoke. “I’ve been thinking about who the inside source could be. I need a rundown of the staff and their schedules.”

  “I thought you were going to let your partners take care of that.”

  “I just need an overview.”

  “Okay. Campbell has weekends off, although lately he’s been here 24-7, other than a day off here and there. His mother is not in good health. Charlene takes off every other weekend. The guards have rotating schedules. I couldn’t begin to tell you all of those. You’ll have to get them from Alfred.”

  “Charlene and Campbell don’t leave the estate except on their weekends off?”

  “Sure, sometimes. They can go shopping, to doctors’ appointments, whatever. Campbell can pretty much come and go as he pleases. Charlene has to get someone to watch Ben.”

  Natasha nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

  He pushed through the door to the kitchen. She slipped through behind him.

  “Daddy!” Ben’s face lit up like a star going nova. He squirmed in his toddler chair.

  Dylan’s face mirrored his son’s delight. “Hey, sport,” he said, smiling. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Daddy, look! Pancakes!” Ben grinned and held up his spoon, which dripped with syrup.

  Natasha chuckled. Ben’s face and hands were stickier than the plate.

  Charlene, who’d been sitting beside Ben, got up and moved down a seat. Dylan nodded his thanks and sat next to his son. “Can I have a syrup kiss?”

  Ben dropped his spoon onto his plate with a clatter and reached for his daddy. Dylan scooped him up and hugged him. Ben rubbed his sticky mouth against his daddy’s cheek.

  “Eww—you’re all sticky!” Dylan laughed.

  “Eww—you’re pricky!” Ben giggled as he rubbed his palm over Dylan’s chin and cheek. “Lotsa pricky!”

  “Then I guess we’re even.” Dylan sat and propped Ben on his leg.

  It was obvious this was a morning tradition for the two. Natasha felt a hollow ache inside her. She hardly remembered her parents. Certainly not any private loving rituals or jokes. And although there had been certain rituals in some of the foster homes she’d been in, those hardly qualified as loving.

  As heartwarming as Dylan’s exchange with his son was, it was private—between the two of them. She felt like a voyeur.

  Ben turned his sticky grin to her. “Good morning, Tasha!” he cried as Dylan handed him his spoon.

  Surprised that he remembered her name, Natasha smiled. “Hi, Ben.”

  “Look, Tasha, pancakes! You like pancakes?”

  “Sure I do. They look good.” Above Ben’s head she caught Dylan’s eye. He smiled and nodded toward a chair.

  She couldn’t get over how his smile transformed his drawn features. Even with a day’s stubble of beard, he looked like a dark-haired angel.

  “I should get started,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the family quarters. “I have some printouts I can study.”

  “Sit down. You’ve got to eat.”

  “Got to eat, Tasha. So you’ll grow.”

  She laughed. “I’m pretty much grown-up already. But I might eat one—just to keep up my strength.”

  Ben stuffed a spoonful of pancake soaked in syrup into his mouth. “Daddy says I hafta keep up my strength, too.”

  “You look very strong to me.” She sat just as a plump middle-aged woman appeared with two plates of steaming pancakes.

  “We’re very strong,” he said. “We went through the bushes.”

  “Yes we did, but we weren’t supposed to, were we?”

  Ben ducked his head for an instant. “I got orders not to do that anymore.”

  “Orders, eh?” She chuckled and raised her gaze to Dylan’s. He was still smiling, only now it seemed aimed at her. Something sharp and sweet shifted inside her. His beautiful smile was lethal. Her cheeks burned.

  “Daddy, I want to sit with Tasha.”

  Apprehension sent her heart racing and the heat in her cheeks faded. Why did Ben want her to sit with him? She’d only held a child once, and that was when she’d c
arried a scratched and dirty Ben to his father.

  Dylan stood, lifting Ben with him, and walked around the table. As he set him in Natasha’s lap, he whispered in her ear.

  “He’s just a little boy. He’s not going to hurt you.”

  She cut him an exasperated glance, and tried to ignore the disturbing, exciting heat of his breath on her ear. Then she put her arm around Ben’s little waist and balanced him on her lap. He immediately dug into her plate of pancakes.

  “Hey, sport. Leave Natasha some food. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

  “Play with me today, Daddy.”

  “I can’t today, sport.”

  Natasha heard the pain in Dylan’s voice.

  “But I will soon. I promise.” He pressed his lips against Ben’s hair.

  Natasha held on to Ben tightly as waves of conflicting emotions poured over her. The smell and feel of Dylan so close to her, the unfamiliar and yet comfortable weight of Ben on her lap, and the hollow realization of how much she’d missed, having lost her parents.

  “And you…” He touched her shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Eat.”

  Charlene had finished her breakfast and was watching them. When Dylan left the room, she wiped her mouth and folded her napkin.

  Without acknowledging Natasha, she came around the table. “Let’s go, cowboy. We need to get all that sticky syrup off you and start your morning therapy.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know. But remember what your daddy said?”

  Ben dropped his spoon with a clatter and crossed his little arms.

  “Ben?” Charlene stood over him, her fists propped on her hips.

  “He said I gotta be strong.”

  “Go on, Ben,” Natasha murmured. “Do what Charlene says.” She didn’t look up but she nevertheless felt the daggers Charlene’s eyes shot at her.

  “Where’d Daddy go? I want Daddy.” His voice was about to crack.

  “Hey, Ben.” Natasha bent enough to look Ben in the eye. “Can I have a syrup kiss?”

  The toddler tried to keep frowning, but then his mouth quirked up. “Okay.” He leaned over and put his syrupy mouth against her cheek.