Risky Love (Dirty Hacker 2)

Alex’s hands froze, and she whirled around to him, a frown tugging on her lips. “What are you doing?”

“Watching you.”

“No.”

Rowan arched an eyebrow. “No?”

She didn’t even blink. “Hovering will only get you one thing.”

“What’s that?” he asked, indulging her game.

She grinned. “Throat punched, Hawke.”

Rowan wisely leaned away. He knew a serious woman when he saw one. Her grin widened before she turned back to her monitors, typing again. Leaving her to it, Rowan sidled next to Ryder and watched them work. The food he’d eaten on the plane felt laden in his stomach. He both wanted to be with Mia, and wanted to hunt the killer and make the world safer. “I have no idea how you do this,” he said to Ryder.

Ryder glanced sidelong. “Do what?”

“Sit and wait while she works,” Rowan admitted, crossing his arms, feeling as impatient as he felt even before Mia was found. “I’m not used to waiting around for the answers I need.”

Ryder chuckled and his attention shifted to Alex. “Years of working with her has helped me realize that she works far better alone, so I know better than to hover. She doesn’t like that.”

Rowan snorted. “You should have warned me.”

“And miss the enjoyment of seeing someone else on the receiving end of her sass? No, thank you.”

Rowan laughed. He caught Alex and Jeff using technical language he didn’t understand, but he saw the flow between them. They worked well together, definitely complemented each other. He turned to Ryder again. “You’ve got quite the impressive set-up here.”

“The team I’ve got is better than the set-up, believe me,” Ryder stated, but pride in his company and his group glowed in his stern eyes. He gave Rowan a long, curious look before he asked, “Have you ever worked in the private sector?”

Rowan shook his head. “The CIA scouted me right after the military. You never went that route?”

“Nah,” Ryder said without pause. “Too many politics. Not my style.”

“I never understood that until Mia went missing.”

Ryder didn’t respond, instead glancing back at Jeff’s monitor while he worked feverishly. Rowan didn’t elaborate more than he already had. His lines were blurred when it came to his loyalty to the CIA. Fuck, everything was blurred now. The day Mia went missing, every single thing in Rowan’s life changed. And then Alex came back into the picture, and the moment he placed his hands back on her body, his priorities shifted. She felt too good, too real.

Nothing scared him now.

Long minutes went by while Alex and Jeff continued to chat back and forth, their fingers banging against their keyboards. All they needed was one clue to break the case and expose Lewis for the animal he was.

“Alex told me about you and your case in Paris,” Ryder eventually said, breaking the silence. Rowan looked at him, and he went on. “I’ve got a team in New York City, if you’re ever looking for a job.”

Many things intere

sted Rowan about this statement. But most of all was that Alex had talked to Ryder about him. He was so close to sitting down and talking with her about what happened next for them. Rowan knew he couldn’t walk away so easily this time, but he also knew it wasn’t only his choice to stay. Alex’s past had created a stone wall around her heart that he wasn’t sure he could penetrate.

When he parted his lips to respond to Ryder, Alex interjected, “Okay, I’m in. It’s definitely Lewis’s hard drive. He’s got personal files on here.” Rowan snapped his head her way as she told Jeff, “Breeze through those unsecured files and take these two secured files here.” She hit a few buttons on her keyboard then hit enter. “There are three other files here that are locked up tight that I’ll work on.”

“On it.” Jeff started opening the documents of each file, scanning the contents on the hard drive. “Twenty bucks I get a hit first.”

“I’ll take that bet.” Alex scooted her chair closer and flexed her fingers, and Rowan knew in the seconds that followed that she’d probably forget anyone was even around her, becoming focused on her work. She was digging as far as she could to find Lewis’s secrets. And she went deep, considering Rowan stared at the digital clock near the monitors on the wall watching the time slowly go by.

When he got bored of that, he grabbed a coffee in the break room and made her one too. She didn’t even look up when he placed the mug next to her, but when he settled next to Ryder, who leaned against the table, one arm folded, the other holding his cell phone, she sipped her coffee.

Rowan smiled. Maybe she wasn’t totally unaware to his being there.

Another hour ticked by, and Rowan watched the numbers and code and brackets flash by him with absolutely no understanding of what Alex was doing. Christ, she amazed him. It occurred to him then, he wanted to know more about her, the little things no one knew.