Her Covert Protector (Rogue Protectors Book 4)

The sun was just hitting the horizon when Nadia pulled into the resident’s entrance of the SkyeLark apartments. Before entering her code into the security panel, she glanced at her side mirror, watching a black Explorer roll to a stop at the curb behind her. She was used to Levi James shadowing her at work and looking in on her and her dad. She waved him off, letting him know she was secure.

Nadia knew he would wait until she was safely behind the apartment gates.

North Spaulding Street was quiet at this ungodly hour of the morning. She wished her favorite grocery store was open so she could save a trip, but such was the life of an LAPD crime analyst.

Crime didn’t have a schedule, and neither did she or the people she worked with. She pulled her Subaru SUV through the entrance and rounded the complex, coasting into her parking spot. Cutting the engine, she dragged her weary form from the vehicle and made her way up to the third floor where the promise of sleep awaited. When her boots hit the second level, she remembered to tiptoe past the door of the apartment in front of the staircase. But when she ascended a few more steps, the sound of a knob being turned reached her ear.

She suppressed a groan. So much for making it past her nosy neighbor.

“Good morning to you, Missy,” Clyde’s cigarette-roughened voice greeted her.

Nadia ducked back so she could see her neighbor. Clyde was pushing eighty and the oldest resident in this cozy apartment complex. But the man had an alert mind and kept up his daily walks and poker nights with his buddies who also lived in the building.

“Hey, Clyde.”

“Overnight call out?” he asked.

“What else is new?”

“Which mobster is it this time?”

Nadia bit back a smile. “Not every DB is a mobster.” DB meant dead body, but Clyde in his inherent nosiness, must have memorized a cop lingo book at one point in his life and understood every LEO term she threw at him.

He stared at her dubiously. “That’s not what I’m reading on the internet.”

“Not if you keep reading the Hollywood Tattler.”

“Touché,” Clyde gave a disgusted snort. “You’re right. The End of Days cult in the Valley has been warning of a Los Angeles Armageddon if people don’t repent for their sins. They said the Ebola scare two months ago was just a warning.”

Nadia yawned. It was a real yawn and not an effort to get rid of Clyde. “Well, you can sleep better at night. All perpetrators involved in the plot have been arrested.”

“Looks like you’re ready to crash,” Clyde observed. “Catch some z’s and catch you later.” Without waiting for her reply, he shut the door.

Clyde could be chatty. At times he could be abrupt like he was just now, but she was used to his quirks.

Nadia continued to trudge up the stairs. There were four apartments on the highest floor. She rented one and her dad had leased another. The remaining two units were occupied by Clyde’s buddies.

Grumpy old men surrounded her—no, not really. They usually made her laugh and were only sometimes grumpy. A smile touched her lips.

The sun cleared the horizon, and its rays reflected on her apartment’s windows. She glanced at her watch before she fished out the keys to open her door.

Six.

She didn’t have to be back in her lab until noon that day. Entering her digs, she booted the door close and headed straight for the kitchen. She lowered her patch-laden backpack on the counter before opening the fridge. An unfamiliar foil-covered plate sat in the middle shelves. Unfamiliar because Nadia hadn’t put it there, yet familiar in a way she knew who put it there.

A beep on the phone alerted her to a text message.

Even without looking, she knew it was from her dad.

“Goulash in the fridge.”

Going on a hunch, she headed to the pantry and opened it. A smile formed on her lips. Her father also stocked up her cupboard. They kept separate apartments and agreed to do their own groceries to maintain a semblance of independence as well as sanity. And yet, a dad would always be a dad. Always worrying if Nadia was taking care of herself given her long hours with the LAPD.

She exited the backdoor of her kitchen to go see her father.

The apartments on the third floor shared a rooftop garden. The majority of the plants were vegetable crops, and the rest were flowers. She made her way to Stephen’s unit and let herself in. He was sipping coffee and browsing the news on his mini tablet.

“Morning.” She walked over to him and kissed him on the brow before heading to his fridge to grab the carton of milk, which she knew he kept for her as well. Maybe this semblance of independence from each other was a myth in her mind. “Thanks for the groceries. You didn’t have to do that.”

He merely smiled.

“Didn’t expect you to be up already,” she continued. “You’ve been bingeing on Hodgetown until the early hours of the morning.” Stephen had a habit of sending her random texts of his activities for the day, which was how she found out he was cheating on her by streaming their favorite series and watching it without her. Nadia didn’t always respond, especially when she was on the job, but it had always been that way with her dad. It had been the two of them for the longest time until Clyde and his buddies butted into their lives.

“Have you started season four?” he asked.

“One episode.” Nadia poured herself a glass of milk and settled in front of him.

“Well, you have to catch up,” her dad said. “There’s—”

“Don’t tell me,” she cut him off with a warning glare. He also had a habit of spoiling a show. Like he couldn’t wait to tell someone about his theories. Nadia longed for their lazy weekends of all-day television. With the explosion of streaming, it was a wonder they did anything else when they spent time together. They loved the same science-fiction and horror shows. Hodgetown was the perfect combination of the two genres, and they had bonded over the series.

“I wasn’t,” he defended. “But please tell Gabby to tell Theo his acting chops are getting better and better with each season.” Gabby Woodward was a detective on the LAPD task force that Nadia was attached to and, technically, her boss. Theo Cole was her son and the star of the hit series.

“Okay.”

“Maybe drop a hint that she should guest star on her son’s show.” Gabby also used to be a popular teen actress of a zombie apocalypse series that still had a cult following to this day.

Nadia laughed and sipped her milk. “You know, we give her a hard time about it at work, especially since everyone who’s above thirty remembers Gabby in Dead Futures.”

“Not only that.” Stephen lowered his tablet and rested his elbows on the table. He took off his spectacles, letting them hang from his fingers, and leaned forward as though he was about to tell her a great idea. “The studio would be crazy not to capitalize on the sensational headline from a year ago.”

“Daaaad,” Nadia gaped. “I can’t believe you’re all for exploiting that.”

He shrugged. “There’s a three-part mini-series on that baby swap scandal, right?” That story, so mind-boggling, it could only come out of Hollywood.

“That’s not a done deal yet. Gabby and Declan are not too keen on the invasion to their private life, but Theo is all over it.”

A yawn escaped her.

Her dad frowned. “That’s the second day this week you hit the late shift.”

“They needed someone to break into the deceased’s laptop.”

“Foul play?”

“It appears to be suicide, but Gabby isn’t calling it yet. The guy was on the news recently…” Nadia rubbed her eyes. Thomas Brandt was an executive with SillianNet, a software company that had been embroiled in a hacking scandal the year before.

“Go to bed, sonyashnyk, before you get called again. You can tell me what a whiz you are this weekend. We’re still on this Saturday, right?”

She loved his pet name for her. The Ukrainian word for sunflower. Looking at her father, no one could tell he was a former CIA asset who’d been a Ukrainian scientist forced to work in a Soviet-era bioweapons lab. Because of his defection, Russian death squads targeted them, and the assassins had been successful in killing Nadia’s mother. Stephen and Nadia escaped execution when the agency had given them new lives and identities in the United States. She’d been six-years-old at that time, and her memories were blurry. She didn’t find out about their circumstances until years later.

Recently, a faction of the Ukrainian Brotherhood targeted her father, intent to exploit his work. Technically, the threat was over, but just as a precaution, Levi had been assigned as her security escort. The LAPD also assigned regular patrols around the apartment complex.

“Yep,” she said. “You’re going to regret watching Hodgetown all by yourself.”

“I’ll watch it again with you.”

“If you promise to hold your silence for the duration of each episode—”

“The Locke Demon appears to have—”

Nadia shot him a quelling look. The Locke Demon was her favorite character—as well as that of half of the Hodgetown fandom—from last season. A creature who used to be a man and cursed to be the guardian of the Ethervale, the thin curtain that separated Hodgetown from the dimension of monsters. In the finale of last season, the demon hesitated in killing Billy Mayhem, Theo’s character, when he was trapped in the Ethervale.

In the opening episode of season four, the demon let Theo escape back into Hodgetown, so she was hopeful for the creature’s character arc. She chugged down the rest of her milk and stood. “Well, I’m gone.”

“Have the goulash for lunch.”

“You didn’t have to put it in my fridge, I would have come over.”

Her dad looked at her dubiously. “Chances are you’d be running late, and I wouldn’t see you for the next few days.”

He knew her so well.

Potomac Reservoir, Maryland

John Garrison pulled his SUV into the parking lot of the Potomac Reservoir. Fishing was not his preferred hobby. In fact, he didn’t know if he had one. John was always on the move with no free time to indulge in leisure activities, although he’d taken up a few for the purpose of supporting a cover identity. The person he was meeting definitely loved fishing, and John couldn’t fault this ideal spot for a clandestine meet. Two men standing side by side, shooting the shit for hours on end, waiting for a bite on the hook, certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary for a place like this.

He was getting his fishing gear from the back of the silver Toyota Highlander when his phone rang.

“Garrison.”

“Victim is Thomas Brandt,” Levi’s voice came over the line.

“Fuck. Nadia has his laptop?”

The SillianNet executive had been on the NSA watchlist ever since hackers breached their network monitoring tool via a software fix they provided to their clients. A routine task much like how one would apply a software update to a computer, it had infiltrated countless companies’ networks, paralyzed their operations, and caused billions of dollars in lost revenue and productivity.

“Yup. Gabby made sure she was the one who processed all the computers and disks that were in his office.”

“Good. We need to dig into his files.”

“I’m sure Nadia can get something out of it now that she’s in possession of the computer.”

“Keep me posted.”

Before Garrison could hang up, Levi asked, “Are you not going to ask me about Nadia?”

“You’ve been giving me reports,” he said. “Is there something else you’re leaving out?”

“Those were official business. Are you not interested in her personal life, like where she’s hanging out after work, what time she got home this morning—”

“No—”

“Who she’s dating?”

The line crackled with silence, and that question hung between them for a stretch of seconds.

“None of my business.” John’s grip on his phone was so tight, he was surprised it didn’t shatter. “I need to know two things about Nadia Powell. That she and her father are safe, and what she can get out of Thomas Brandt’s computers.”

He ended the call without waiting for a response from Levi.

His phone buzzed with a text. “Sure, boss.” Sarcasm jumped at him from those two words.

John tucked the phone back into his windbreaker and slammed the back of the SUV closed while cursing Levi James. The man was pussy-whipped trying to win his wife back, he didn’t need to spread his misery around.

It had been eight weeks since he’d slept with Nadia, and three weeks since he’d seen her when he asked for Stephen’s help with the bioweapon antiviral. John was perfectly fine with the status quo, and that included keeping his ass away from the west coast.

Balancing his fish and tackle box in one hand and his fishing rod in the other, he headed to the rendezvous point, keeping his head on a swivel. One could never become complacent, especially when the person he was meeting was the acting Director of National Intelligence.

He spotted the DNI’s bodyguards, and they nodded to him in their own fishing spots equidistant from an older man standing rigid at the edge of the water. John would recognize that military stance anywhere, even if the DNI was wearing a mariner’s cap and a suede jacket. The Indian summer left Maryland weeks ago. Fall moved in quickly, bringing with it a chill to the air, and the cloudy sky blanketed the Potomac river in desolation.

John strode to his side and dropped his tackle box. “Admiral.”

Benjamin Porter turned slightly his way. “John. Been a while.”

“Three months isn’t that long between us.”

“True.” The admiral stared off into the lake. “I was hoping we wouldn’t meet under these circumstances again. Coming out of retirement after having only been in it for two years to clean up after my predecessor isn’t really fun.”

“Things went south when you retired.”

Porter sighed. “I’m not planning to stay un-retired. I’m just glad my wife is more understanding.”

Garrison finished setting up his line and whipped it into the water before glancing at Porter. John was aware of the admiral’s predicament. His wife Pru didn’t want to get married to a man who kept secrets from her after her first husband turned out to be the leader of an Asian crime syndicate. John had known Porter a long time. In fact, the admiral was the very person who told John to stop being idealistic and get a reality check. It was the admiral who told him that to be a successful spy, you needed to live and breathe the job. Porter didn’t straight out say that having a family made you weak, but John could read between the lines.

The people you loved could be used against you.

The people you loved would hate the secrets you kept from them.

Ultimately, it was a losing situation, and it would only be a matter of time before resentment and bitterness eroded a relationship. That is, if the enemy didn’t destroy it first.

“Is that why you haven’t fully committed to the Director position?”

Porter shrugged. “I told the president that my agreement was temporary. He was desperate when my predecessor mucked things up by replacing you and your team.”

“Yeah, the agency is not a big fan of publicity.” John had to bite back a smile at how casual Porter mentioned the President of the United States.

“But it appears our problems didn’t end with the Z-9 bioweapon threat.” He glanced his way again. “Am I right?”

“Yeah. Thomas Brandt committed suicide.”

Porter regarded him for a beat, and then, “Can’t say we didn’t see that coming.”

“I’m assuming you mean that our Ukrainian friends got to him and made it look like suicide, because his profile points to an egomaniac who thought he could get away in compromising the nation’s infrastructure. Taking his own life is unlikely.”

Although with the bad press and the lawsuits, who knew what the man’s mental state was. One malware could cause companies millions of dollars of downtime and headaches to repair their infrastructure—the U.S. government included. The breach was blamed on the Russian mafia-backed Argonayts—a segment of the Ukrainian underworld that specialized in cybercrime, extortion, and murder. Word on the street was this led all the way up to the Kremlin. John wouldn’t be surprised. Brandt knew too much of their operations and with the feds breathing down his neck, the Argonayts considered him a loose end.

“Is that why we’re meeting here?” Garrison asked. “You don’t want the FBI to know the CIA is doing its own digging?”

Porter turned to him and smiled. “This is not even going to touch the agency. You’re doing this personally for me.”

“Fuck,” Garrison said. “Don’t fancy being banished to Antarctica.”

“With your penchant for going rogue, I’m surprised you haven’t been already.”

John blew out a breath. “You want me back in LA?”

“Why do I sense hesitation?”

A tug on John’s fishing line allowed him time to form his answer. He reeled in a catfish. It was a tiny one, so he unhooked it and threw it back in. “I don’t like circulating in one place for long.”

“Is it because of the place or the people?”

“Place. I’ve worked with the same operators for a long time. You know that. Roarke, Bristow …”

Garrison met Porter’s steady gaze. The admiral studied him. Garrison returned his regard with an unflinching stare. He could play this game all day, and Porter knew it.

“LA is huge, but people start to recognize you,” John added. “Especially since I use Roarke a lot. Damned Ranger had to marry into Hollywood royalty.”

“Yes, that’s a shame,” Porter stated baldly. “But Gabby Woodward and their son could be gold mine assets.”

“No,” John clipped. “I’m not using the kid.”

Porter returned his attention to his fishing line and was quiet for a while. “You’ve changed, John.”

“Surely you’re not insinuating that I’m turning soft.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Fuck no.”

“Good. Then I’ll need you to secure another asset before the Ukrainians get to him. Feds haven’t had any luck with him.” The admiral made a tsk sound. “The problem with these cyber-tech millionaires is they’re suspicious of the government.”

Garrison chuckled. “Could it be they’ve already hacked into our secret databases and know how twisted our institutions can be?”

“As acting DNI, the thought of that gives me nightmares,” Porter said.

“Who’s the asset?”

“Kenneth Huxley.”

“Shit. That man’s got an ego the size of Texas.”

“Not many people can boast of hacking into Homeland Security’s database and not end up in jail,” Porter said dryly.

Garrison snorted. “Smith should be the one in jail. You never dare a legendary pen test genius to break into your security.” In business, penetration testing was done to test the security of a company’s IT infrastructure.

Smith was the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. At one of the cyber security conferences, the Secretary dared Kenneth Huxley to break into the department’s database. Scotch at a bar may have been involved.

Needless to say, the hacker was successful, and DHS ended up with a huge embarrassment. In Huxley’s defense, he claimed what he did fell under ethical hacking.

“You need to convince him to put his Crown-Key technology under DHS protection. I cannot stress how dangerous this would be if it ends up in the wrong hands.”

“You’ve heard chatter about it?”

“I’ve been in this game for a long time,” Porter said. “Cyber-warfare has taken center stage in the last decade. Companies developing technology for our military and intelligence community are also vulnerable.”

The NSA’s cryptologic centers around the country had been defending against cyberattacks from rogue states like Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. It had been a constant battle.

“With Brandt’s supposed suicide and the SillianNet hack last year, getting a bead on where Huxley is going with his Crown-Key technology with its ability to infiltrate secure networks is a matter of national security.”

John was annoyed at the anticipation he was feeling at the thought of returning to LA and struggled to keep an expression that gave away nothing. Like him, Porter knew how to exploit personal weaknesses in the name of the greater good. “I actually know just the person who has access to him.”

The admiral angled his eyes at him and smiled.