Countermeasures Read online

  Sawyer dialed a prearranged number. It was neither Juliet’s nor Evan’s cell phones, just in case someone was listening in on their ends.

  “Damn it, Sawyer, you should’ve checked in last night.” Sawyer rolled his eyes at the lack of traditional greeting from his sister.

  “I sent the text saying we were out.”

  “A one-word text lets me know you’re alive and is completely acceptable under many circumstances. But you’ve now been at that motel for more than eight hours.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Jules—”

  “If I pulled something like that, you’d throw a fit. You know it. So don’t try your charming act on me.”

  His sister was right. If she had checked in with only one word, Sawyer would’ve been worried. But that was because of what happened to her the last time she was in the field. Sawyer didn’t want to bring that up.

  “You’re right, sis. I’m sorry. I should’ve provided an update once we were secure in the motel.”

  “Fine. Don’t do it again.”

  “So what’s happening at Omega? Anything suspicious?”

  “Sawyer, it’s the craziest thing. I’m filtering through every system I can, trying to see who might be logging in any suspicious activity. But I’m not finding anything.”

  “What about me reporting in, then the building blowing up? Does everyone believe I’m dead?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. When I looked up the handler’s computer file for your case, the original safe-house location was back in the system. And the last transmission logged is from you, notification that you had made it to the safe house and were planning to stay there for the next few days.”

  “That’s what I said. But I was referring to the second safe house, the one that is now mostly a pile of ash.”

  “I know. But according to the log-in report, there was never a second safe house mentioned.”

  “So if our bodies had shown up dead at the second safe house?”

  “Nobody at Omega would’ve had any idea how you got there.” They both paused. “It gets worse, Sawyer.”

  Sawyer rubbed a hand over his face. “Great.”

  “I’ve only got reasonable computer-hacking skills, and whoever is changing all this in the Omega system is way out of my league.”

  “Does that mean the mole is some computer nerd within Omega?”

  “I think it might not be a mole inside Omega at all, Sawyer.”

  “What?” Sawyer definitely wasn’t expecting that.

  “Based on how the IP addresses are being bounced around and log-ins are being used, I think it may be someone outside Omega completely. Someone hacking a limited part of our system.”

  “Why would someone just hack a limited part of the system?”

  “Anything going too deep would set off all sorts of alarms and red flags. But just getting in, making some small changes and getting back out? If I hadn’t been specifically looking for it, I never would’ve seen it.”

  “Damn it, Jules. What the hell does this mean?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Sawyer, I have to ask you some questions about Megan. Questions you might not like. Can she hear you?”

  Sawyer looked into the other room, where Megan was once again bent over the desk hard at work on the countermeasure.

  “She’s working in the adjoining room. Not listening to me at all.”

  “No offense, Sawyer, but are you sure? She’s Dr. Zane Megan Fuller. Two degrees from MIT. Her IQ is twice ours. Is it possible that she’s doing one thing, but also aware of your conversation?”

  Sawyer shook his head. He did not like the direction this conversation was going. Especially not after last night. “Just hang on a second,” he told Juliet.

  Sawyer walked over to the doorway between the two rooms. He noticed that Megan still hadn’t eaten her breakfast, although the coffee was already finished.

  “Hey, I’m going to close this door. I’m talking with Juliet and don’t want to disturb you.”

  Megan held up a hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look up from what she was doing or actually respond. But honestly, Sawyer hadn’t expected her to. He closed the door between them, grabbed the phone from the bed, then walked into the bathroom and shut that door for good measure.

  “All right, Juliet, now I’m sure Megan can’t hear me. What the hell are you trying to imply?”

  “Look, all I’m asking is for you to keep an open mind.”

  “Spit it out, Jules.”

  “I know what changes have been made to the system, so I know what I’m looking for. Some of the suspicious changes are coming from an untraceable IP address, which is to be expected.”

  “But?” Sawyer prompted.

  “But some of the changes are coming from your Omega log-in ID, Sawyer, from your phone. For anyone who searches deep enough, it looks like you are the one who made the changes in the system.”

  “But I didn’t do anything like that. I’m not even sure I would know how to.”

  “I know that, baby brother. But there has been someone with you this whole time who very definitely does know how to.”

  Megan.

  “It’s not her, Jules. I’m positive about that. It’s someone else—whoever the mole is at Cyberdyne.”

  “I know you don’t want to believe it, Sawyer, and I don’t blame you. But the last change in the system, erasing the second safe house and reentering the first? That came from your phone’s log-in ID. After you and Megan had broken out of Cyberdyne.”

  Sawyer muttered a foul expletive under his breath. It was one thing for his phone to be used while they were still at Cyberdyne. Sawyer didn’t want to think it had been taken from him without his knowledge, but it was possible.

  But since they’d left Cyberdyne? No one had been in possession of his phone except him. Although Sawyer had to admit there had been minutes where Megan would’ve had unrestricted access, also. And if the Omega system changes had come from his phone...

  Sawyer slammed a fist against the wall. Damn it, had Megan been completely fooling him this entire time? Had last night just been part of the plan to get closer to him?

  If so, she’d certainly done that.

  “Sawyer...” It was Juliet. Sawyer had completely forgotten he was on the line with her.

  “I’ll call you back.” He hung up without saying anything further.

  Sawyer walked out of the bathroom and opened the adjoining door to the rooms and stood in the doorway. As usual, Megan didn’t even look up from where she was working and paid no attention to Sawyer whatsoever.

  Sawyer tried to relax the tension flowing through his jaw and shoulders. Megan wasn’t doing anything suspicious. The opposite, in fact. Hard at work—as she had been for hours—on what he had asked her to do: finish the countermeasure.

  As she leaned over the table to reach for something she needed, Sawyer watched as the hem of his T-shirt slid up, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of her upper thigh and the rounded curve of her buttock.

  His body instantly responded, memories of last night flooding through him. Evidently his body didn’t care if Megan was guilty or not. But damn it, Sawyer refused to believe she was guilty. The hours he had spent with her had shown him who she was. She was brilliant, quirky and often awkward. But she was also kind and patient when others couldn’t keep up with what she was saying—which was a lot of the time.

  Sawyer had seen her face when her apartment had been robbed and last night when she was so exhausted she didn’t even know where she was—nobody outside Broadway was that good of an actress.

  And damn it, she came back for him last night in that building. There was no way she could’ve known how close that bomb was to detonating. Not to mention, if her entire MO had been to kill him, then that would’ve been the easiest place to do it.

  No, his gut—and he’d been trusting it too long to stop now—told him Megan was innocent. Whatever the circumstances were regarding the hacks at Omega, Megan wasn’t the one doi
ng it. There had to be some other explanation.

  Sawyer couldn’t be without her a second longer. He strode over to the table, took what was in her hand and laid it down as gently as he could. He scooped her off her feet, noticing the surprised look on her face as he kissed her almost brutally. He carried her into the bedroom, removing clothes from both of them as he went.

  His lovemaking, unlike last night, was unceremonious and almost desperate. Sawyer used it as a weapon to cut away at the accusation that Megan was the traitor.

  Because that would mean Sawyer had already lost her forever. A panic unlike any he’d ever known crawled through his gut at the thought. Sawyer pushed those overwhelming feelings away and concentrated on losing himself inside the sweet softness of Megan.

  Chapter Twenty

  Megan lay sprawled on the bed, unable to will any of her muscles to move. What exactly had that been about? She would’ve thought that after last night they had gotten all of that lovemaking stuff out of their system.

  Evidently not.

  But this had been something different. And while Megan had enjoyed every second of it, it was almost as though it had been tinged with desperation. And of all the adjectives she’d use to describe Sawyer—sexy, charming, personable—desperate did not make it anywhere on that list.

  “This sort of behavior,” Megan said, waving her arm around at the bed from where she lay on the pillow next to Sawyer, “is not helping me get the countermeasure completed.”

  Megan expected some lighthearted or even sarcastic remark from Sawyer. But instead he rolled over so he was lying completely on top of her, face just inches from hers, his weight propped on his elbows.

  “You are trying your best to complete the countermeasure, right, Megan?”

  Megan wasn’t really sure what he meant by the question. Was he making some sort of joke she didn’t understand? She wasn’t particularly skilled at bedroom talk. “Well, not right at this second I’m not.” She smiled at Sawyer, but it faded as he continued to just stare at her intensely.

  “Sawyer, what’s going on?”

  Megan could see Sawyer clench and unclench his jaw, and he seemed to struggle for words. She reached her hands up from between them and cupped his cheeks. “Just tell me. Has something else bad happened?”

  Megan didn’t think there was anything bad left to happen.

  Sawyer still hesitated. “Megan,” he finally said. “I need you to be totally honest with me. I will do everything I can to help you, but you’ve got to be honest with me.”

  Megan had no idea what he was talking about. “Honest about what?”

  “Since we left Cyberdyne, and even before, have you used my phone?”

  “The one that you left in the safe house that blew up?”

  “Yes? Did you use it at all?”

  “No.” Megan frowned. His questions did not clarify the matter at all. “I had my own phone. Why would I use yours? Plus we thought someone might be using yours to spy on us. Double reason not to use it.”

  Sawyer’s brows were furrowed together. “For texts, Megan? To send any information? To log in to any systems that my phone would have access to?”

  And there it was, the real question he had wanted to ask. Had she used his phone to log in somewhere she shouldn’t have been?

  Megan had always considered her intellect a blessing and a privilege. Her ability to look at random pieces of a problem—even with some pieces missing—and figure out how they worked together as a whole was her gift.

  But she very much wished she didn’t have that ability right now. She was able to understand what Sawyer was hinting at without him having to say the words outright.

  Sawyer thought she was the traitor. That she had used his phone to access Omega’s system and plant false info.

  “Get off me. Right now.” Megan said it softly, slowly.

  “Meg—”

  “Right now!” This time her voice was much louder, barely lower than a yell.

  Sawyer rolled to the side and Megan flew off the bed, bringing the sheet with her and wrapping it around herself.

  “You think I’m the traitor?” Megan whispered, backing away from the bed.

  “Megan—”

  “And you just did that—” she gestured to the bed “—with me, thinking I was a traitor?”

  “No.” Sawyer shook his head, sliding toward her. Megan took a step back. If he touched her now she would shatter into a million pieces. “No, I knew you weren’t. Megan, I knew you weren’t. That’s why I made love with you again.”

  Megan just clutched the sheet tighter to herself. “Then why would you ask me those questions, Sawyer?”

  Sawyer reached over and pulled on his jeans. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. Megan felt as if cold was permeating her entire body.

  “Megan, Juliet told me that there’s not a mole inside Omega at all. The system has been hacked and that’s how the information was given to me about the false safe house. And it looks like my phone has been used to access info in the Omega system since you and I broke out of Cyberdyne.”

  “And you and I were the only ones to have access to your phone during that time.” Megan whispered the obvious statement.

  “Yes.” Sawyer looked up from his hands and stood up. Megan took another step backward.

  “But even when Juliet told me that,” Sawyer continued, “I knew it wasn’t you. I knew there had to be something else. Some other way my phone was being used.”

  “Then why ask me that, Sawyer? Why?” Her voice broke on the last word.

  “Megan, you’re so much smarter than me. Than all of us. If you had done something stupid, or under duress, or because you were scared, I just wanted to give you the chance to tell me. To let you know that I would help you, protect you in any way I could.”

  The tears Megan couldn’t keep back finally fell. He hadn’t really believed she was innocent. He had made love to her thinking she was a liar and a traitor.

  “Megan.” Sawyer took another step toward her, but stopped when she held out an arm in front of her. “I handled it wrong. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you what Juliet said about the phone and together we would have figured out how it could’ve happened and what it all meant.”

  Megan nodded, but didn’t say anything. Yes, that was how he should’ve handled it.

  She needed to be away from him. She felt as if her heart was breaking, which was silly because they’d only spent one night together. But she needed to be alone where she wouldn’t feel so exposed and vulnerable.

  Megan knew she really couldn’t blame Sawyer for reacting to the news about the phone hack like a cop. That was what he was. The same way she tended to overanalyze everything because she was a scientist. That was what she was.

  But right now she was simply a woman who had been accused of something terrible by the man she had just given herself to so completely mere hours—minutes—before.

  So, yes, her brain could understand Sawyer’s questions and his need for them. But her heart was having a much more difficult time.

  * * *

  SAWYER WOULD GIVE everything he owned to never see that look on Megan’s face again. She had been so strong through everything—harm to her body, seeing her possessions destroyed, losing her job—and now Sawyer’s heart broke as he watched the tears flood out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. She looked at him as if he had just killed something precious.

  And Sawyer was desperately afraid he had.

  “I’m going to get dressed and get back to work,” Megan whispered.

  “Megan—” Sawyer reached for her wanting to do something, anything, to take away that look in her eyes.

  “No,” she told him, taking another step away. “You’re law enforcement. I get it. But right now, I just need you not to touch me.” She turned and fled into the bathroom. Moments later Sawyer heard the shower running.

  Sawyer sat back down on the bed. How had he screwed this up to such a monumental degree? His
gut had told him Megan didn’t do this. He should’ve just trusted that and left it alone. Or talked to her about all the possibilities. God knew with her giant brain she could come up with some ideas about what could have happened that he’d never even considered.

  Instead he had taken her to bed and then promptly accused her of treason. Just what a woman always wanted.

  Sawyer got dressed. He should be thankful Megan hadn’t told him to go to hell and stormed out of here refusing to finish the countermeasure after the way he had just behaved.

  But she didn’t. And she was going back to work on it. Because that was just the type of person she was.

  Sawyer grimaced. He had to make this right with her. But damned if he knew how.

  He decided to call Juliet back while Megan was in the shower.

  “As of right now, we work based on the assumption that Megan Fuller did not use my phone and log-in ID to make any of the hacks at Omega,” Sawyer told Juliet without greeting.

  “Sawyer—”

  “No, Juliet. She didn’t do it. It happened some other way. We have to figure out what that is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Sawyer hadn’t thought it would be that easy to convince his sister.

  “Sawyer, you’re there with her. I’m not. If you say you know she didn’t do it, then I believe you. I’ll start running other possibilities.”

  “Thanks, Jules.”

  “I’ll take care of things on this end. You guys just get the countermeasure finished.”

  “We will.”

  “And, Sawyer, you two be careful. There are still too many unknowns in this situation for my peace of mind.”

  Megan was coming out of the shower as Sawyer hung up with Juliet. She was wrapped in a towel.

  “I need my clothes.” Megan grabbed her bag and went back into the bathroom without another word. When she exited a few minutes later, she was fully dressed in her own clothes.

  Sawyer guessed she probably wouldn’t be wearing just his shirt anytime soon.

  “Megan, I’m sorry—”

  “Look, Sawyer, like I said, I can’t blame you for assuming the worst. That’s your job, I guess.” She threw the bag down and crossed to the doorway of the other room. “But right now, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know if I’m ever going to want to talk about.”