Page 18 of Harry

He hung out with his team on Sunday. Rory not being there made him miss her more. The guys didn’t make a big deal about Rory not being there, but he felt their questioning gazes. When he headed out, Wild followed him to his car.

“Hey, everything okay?” Wild asked.

“Yeah. Everything is great.”

“So Rory…”

“We decided not to push it. I don’t want to do something that will mess us both up.”

“Good idea. I do like her,” Wild said.

“Same. I like her a lot. If she wasn’t in the military, I might have asked her to move in, which I know is too early.”

Wild laughed. “Don’t tell Ava that. You know she was living with me when we got together.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t with you. She slept in the extra room.”

Wild glanced over his shoulder, his lips thinned by the time he turned back. “I would have moved her in if the situation had been different. She had nowhere to go. I didn’t want her homeless.”

Harry nodded. “There’s something…” He trailed off, not sure what to say.

“What kind of something?”

“Sometimes, when she doesn’t know I’m looking, there’s this look that crosses her face. Like she’s dealing with something big. I’m fairly sure it has nothing to do with me. It’s just that I feel this tension coming off her, and I want to ask what it’s about, but I don’t know.”

“So you’re sure it’s not about you?”

“Yeah. It’s not about me.”

“Okay, so what do you think it’s about?”

He shook his head. “That’s the thing. I don’t know.” He hoped it wasn’t terrible. He wanted Rory to be able to talk to him, but they didn’t know each other well. Maybe in a few weeks, she would feel comfortable telling him what was up.

“I’m here if you need to talk.”

Harry bumped fists with Wild, then took off. His buddies were great, and he was glad he’d been placed with such an excellent team. On Monday, they learned they were headed to Alaska for training. With things heating up in Russia, they needed some winter weather training. It was four days of cold, windy, blizzard-like conditions. Moving through the ice and snow was a bitch, but they proved they could work efficiently in the terrible conditions.

When they arrived home on Saturday morning, he couldn’t wait and texted Rory.

Just got back from Alaska. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Hopefully, she’d had a good week and made a decision about work. He didn’t want to be the reason she left the military. Putting himself in that situation would eventually end up with one of them feeling cheated. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel bad about how they’d gotten together.

Chapter 13

Rory had obsessed long enough, and she needed to get more information. She entered the building, her mind warring with copying the hard drive for the computer versus ignoring it all and walking away. Normally she wouldn’t show up on a Saturday but had an excuse ready. Still, her being here looked odd. This facility had extra security. The cameras watching their every move from driving into the parking lot until they left were obvious. There were a few exceptions, like the room where she’d found the laptop wasn’t monitored. At least she hadn’t seen any cameras set up around or inside the room.

If she got caught with that laptop, she didn’t know what would happen. She’d tucked a memory stick at the bottom of her bra and couldn’t believe she was sneaking it into the facility with a memory stick. Knowing what was on that computer seemed imperative, and she didn’t feel like she had time to go through the files here in the facility. There was no way she could take the computer out of this place unless she wanted to be questioned. Whoever had brought it in had to have extra special clearance.

Her heart pounded and her stomach turned when she stepped into the room where she’d found the computer in the cabinet. She hurried, not knowing how much time she had. After putting on gloves, she opened the cabinet and snapped a photo to know exactly how it was set up. She retrieved the computer, her hands shaking the whole time.

It only took her a minute to open the computer. The battery was low, so she plugged it in and copied the folders to the thumb drive. That the computer didn’t have a password surprised her. Maybe they didn’t think they needed a password since the computer was hidden at the bottom of a stack of thick manuals.

About ten minutes after she’d entered the room, she heard a door slam down the hall. Every muscle clenched. Another door slammed down the hall. Who was in the building besides her. She hadn’t seen Laelyn’s car in the lot, but what if someone else had driven him?

She rushed to finish copying over the files and ejected the drive before closing the computer and unplugging it from the wall. She had the computer back in the cabinet and the folders back in place, closing the cabinet and opening another cabinet when the door flew open behind her right as she pulled off the gloves on her hands.

She might have let out a slight yelp as she spun to come face-to-face with a guard.

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