Page 7 of Guarded from Treachery

I’m not sure why I can’t get her out of my mind. Isla’s not the first woman I’ve helped through the course of my career—both in the Army and now with Blade and Arrow Security—and I’m sure she won’t be the last. But there’s just something about her that’s different. Something about her I can’t forget.

“Why don’t you just call her?” my teammate, Erik, asked when I brought it up in the gym the other day. “It’s not like you can’t find her number if you want.”

He was right. I could. Easily. There isn’t much I can’t find online, whether it’s hacking into police databases, building web crawlers to find information on the dark web, or cracking passwords so I can access a suspect’s computer remotely.

That’s one of the reasons I was asked to join the new branch of Blade and Arrow out in Texas, so I could bring not only my skills as a Special Forces operator, but help the team get critical information through more creative methods. I call it ethical hacking because I never go about it with the intent to harm, but rather to help keep our clients safe.

But tracking down personal information about a woman I’ve only known for a couple of hours? Calling her without her permission? It feels… wrong.

Yes, I checked out the hospital and police records. But it’s not like I looked at Isla’s medical history or ran a background check on her. I just wanted to know if she was safe.

“She didn’t give me her number,” I reminded Erik. “So it would be kind of creepy for me to just call her up out of the blue. I don’t want to freak her out even more than she probably is already.”

So I haven’t called. And she hasn’t called me.

Yes, she has my number.

After the police were done with their questions, I handed her my business card and told her to call if she needed anything. As I gave it to her, I explained how I was in Dallas for a private security job with my company, and that we specialized in investigative and protective services. How we could help if she found herself in trouble again.

I haven’t heard from her since. So thatshouldbe reason enough to assume she’s okay.

Itshouldbe reason enough to set this thing with Isla to the side.

I should be able to focus on the schematics for our upcoming security system install for a new client in Austin instead of thinking about the color of Isla’s eyes and wondering if it’s real.

They’re violet, for the record. Not dark blue or gray, but a deep amethyst, rimmed with the longest lashes I’ve ever seen.

And it wasn’t just the shade that was mesmerizing. It was the trust in her gaze as she allowed me to put my arm around her, to help her back to her office building, when she had every reason to avoid a man’s touch. And it was the way she kept looking to me for reassurance as she answered the officers’ questions, like somehow I was making the stressful experience better.

Not that it matters. Isla’s in Dallas and I’m here.

And I have more pressing things to think about than a brief encounter with a woman I’ll never see again. Like the security install I’m supposed to be finalizing before we head to Austin next week and monitoring the dozens of cameras on the Blade and Arrow property. As the lone team member on site right now, it’s my job to make sure there aren’t any security breaches and that all the women who live here with my teammates are safe.

So I need to concentrate on that. My job. My team. The women who’ve become like family. The really important things.

Shaking out my shoulders and rolling my neck, I shift my focus to the computer screens set in a semicircle around me. There are five of them, two with my actual work, and three more with dozens of live camera feeds running.

While we have an extensive alarm system around the twenty-five acre property, complete with drone detection radars, motion sensors that can distinguish between animals and human intruders, and our most recent addition, an unscalable perimeter fence, I still like to look at each camera every hour or so myself.

I’m halfway through them all when there’s a knock at my office door, and a second later, a soft, “Matt? Is this a bad time?”

Spinning around in my chair, I turn to face Lucy, who’s hovering in the doorway with a tentative smile. “No, of course not.” I return her smile with one of my own. “Just checking the property. And procrastinating. What’s up?”

She laughs. “Funny you say that. I’m procrastinating, too. I should be writing, but instead, I’ve been cleaning the apartment. And reorganizing. When Xavier gets back from Houston, he’s not going to know where anything is.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind.” And I mean it. Xavier is so in love with his new wife, she could do pretty much anything and he wouldn’t care. Paint the apartment walls pink? He’d tell her it looks cheery. Buy all new furniture? He’d agree it needed to be replaced, even though it’s basically brand new.

“Well.” Lucy’s expression softens with affection. “Probably not. He didn’t even complain when I moved the living room furniture around last week and he forgot about it, so he ended up doing a flip over the ottoman in the middle of the night when he went to the kitchen for a drink.”

Chuckling, I reply, “I wish I could have been there to see that.”

“Oh, you should have heard him cursing.” She pauses. “He was okay, thankfully. But I felt so bad. He could have been hurt.”

“Nah, not Xav. He’s trained better than that.”

Like me, Xavier used to serve as a Green Beret, and while we weren’t in the same battalion, we trained together at Fort Campbell for years. If he could survive the most treacherous locations in the Middle East, I’m not too worried about an unfortunate encounter with an unassuming ottoman.

Lucy laughs. “That’s what he said. He wasn’t mad about the ottoman being moved, but tripping over it.” She pauses. “Anyway. I know you have lots of work to do. But I was about to make lunch, and I thought you might like something, too?”

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