Page 45 of Dangerous Devotion

He gave her a smile but something moved in the depths of his eyes. Something like suspicion.

“Yes, we did. At the gas station.”

“I thought so.” She offered him her most charming smile in hopes of disarming something besides the mock explosives they were running drills with.

She slapped the heel of her hand off her forehead. “I’m sorry. I forgot you were stationed here. When I got word I was doing the training, it never crossed my mind.”

“I get it. I didn’t know you were our expert.” He returned her smile.

May relaxed a little, and they stood chatting a bit about the training. Feeling better about the encounter, she continued down the line of men, giving them advice and discussing important points.

The weight of more scrutiny pressed into the back of her skull. She stilled, mind whirring. Then she slowly pivoted to see who was watching her.

Her stomach pitched into a nosedive as she found herself locked with Major General Simpson.

He saw me talking to the kid. He knows we followed the bomb.

That was ridiculous. Simpson couldn’t know.

He strode toward her in a measured pace, his unform crisp and his face unreadable. “Didn’t expect to see you so soon, May. Last I knew, you were halfway across the country.”

She offered him her friendliest smile, injecting what she hoped would be the perfect amount of warmth to disarm the man’s suspicions without appearing like she was trying too hard, but it felt brittle on her face. God, where was AJ? She needed to get out of here.

“It was a last-minute invitation,” she breezed out, taking advantage of the moment to exhale the breath she’d held for far too long. “My father called to say he was supposed to take the training, but he couldn’t make it.”

That was the story Kit gave them when she fabricated some correspondence between some higher-ups in the US military and her father.

“I know he’ll be sorry to miss seeing you.”

Hell, could this situation get any more unstable? She felt like she was standing on a fault line in the middle of an earthquake, juggling canisters of C-4.

Simpson looked hard at her. She reminded herself that just because he had rank didn’t mean he had the ability to weasel out her lie.

Luckily, one of the trainees let out a low exclamation that drew her attention. The perfect escape.

She waved to Simpson. “Looks like I’m needed. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Then something even worse happened—something not even the best hacker in the country could cover up.

AJ was coming her way, in plain view of Moore…and Major General Simpson.

TEN

Henner’s eyes homed in on May standing halfway across the parking lot. In a blink, he picked up little cues about her emotions.

Her back was too straight. The stiffest he’d ever seen it. And the way she reached up to brush her hair over her shoulder was surely a sign of her irritation.

When he swept his stare over the group, he saw what set her off…and it wasn’t a bomb.

Fuck.

What was the fucking chance that Simpson attended the training?

The major general wandered over to a cluster of men in uniform and braced his hands behind his back in a casual stance. But nothing about the way he regarded May was as nonchalant as he was letting on.

He’d spent time on a lot of military bases all around the world. Rarely did he ever cross paths with anyone with a rank higher than colonel. The higher-ranking officers didn’t condescend to leave their offices. So what was a man with this much rank doing at a training?

The answer came to him swiftly—it had already been poised at the back of his mind.

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