Page 1 of No Stone Unturned

Chapter One

Lexi

If my mom texted me a picture of my own engagement ring one more time, I was going to lose it.

Apparently she was trying to send them to her best friend, Candi Schmidt, but Mom and her new phone were still coming to an understanding, so she’d texted me the same picture seven times in the last five minutes. It was my picture to start with, and I’d only sent it to her after she bugged me for a week, threatening that if she didn’t get a photo, she’d post an engagement announcement on my behalf in theWashington Post.That horrified me enough to snap a photo of my ring and send it to her. Unfortunately she now wanted to share it with all her friends, which essentially meant the entire greater DC area. I had seriously been considering hacking her phone so it went exactly nowhere, but it seemed that wasn’t necessary. For now, I gritted my teeth and tried to be happy that the photo was coming back to me, over and over, instead of to her ginormous circle of friends.

My phone dinged again, but I ignored it. Mom was just excited for me, but she was tellingeveryoneabout my engagement, while I’ve struggled with tellinganyone, even close friends and family. Her enthusiasm was starting to make me feel weird about the mixed-up feelings I was having about getting engaged. I’m a geek girl who loathes attention, and telling people that Slash and I are engaged inevitably leads to screams, hugs and a thousand questions about a wedding I haven’t even thought about yet. The stress was getting so acute that not even reciting Carl Friedrich Gauss’s Theory of Reciprocity could take the edge off my social anxiety.

My name is Lexi Carmichael and my life was a bit weird even before I got engaged. My fiancé and I are both uberhackers—me for a private cyber intelligence company called X-Corp and Slash for the NSA. His nickname is short for backslash in hacker lingo, and only a few people know his real name because of the covert nature of his intelligence work. He’s recently taken a much more visible position, and is now the youngest director of the Information Assurance Directorate in NSA history, followed around the clock by his own special Secret Service detail.

My own job isn’t exactly lacking in excitement either. X-Corp is based in DC, but despite the virtual nature of my job, I travel a lot to secure my clients’ assets. I used to think that being an expert in cybersecurity meant a safe, quiet job behind a desk. I’ve discovered that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a new world out there, and security is more often than not managed by strokes on a keyboard. Since humans are often the weak link in cybersecurity, I’ve had to do considerable work with people to keep data safe and secure. All that means both Slash and I are at the forefront of protecting national security, as well as business interests. It sometimes puts a strain on our relationship, but we decided to take it to the next level and commit ourselves to each other anyway.

At this particular moment, national security wasn’t even on my radar. Instead I was focused on the engagement party Slash had informed me was inevitable. As the news of our engagement filtered out, our friends and family wanted to see us in person to congratulate us and see the new house we’d recently moved into together. Although we’d planned the party for this Friday, I was obsessing and stressing because this would be the first one I’d ever thrown in my own house. Slash was helping, which meant we were muddling along, trying not to kill each other in the process.

“Do we really have to allow people to bring a guest?” I asked him for the third time, studying the spreadsheet while chewing on the eraser at the top of my pencil. We were sitting at the counter with mugs of coffee and a printed spreadsheet of all the things we had to do for the party. I’d carefully divided the spreadsheet into three parts—my responsibilities, Slash’s jobs and our joint tasks. Inviting people was part of our joint-task column, so here we were, hammering it out.

He glanced up from the spreadsheet and my breath caught in my throat. He was unquestionably the best-looking guy I’d ever dated. Okay, he was pretty much theonlyguy I’d ever dated seriously. Still, when he spoke with his sexy Italian accent and gazed at me with his deep brown eyes, all logic left my brain. I knew that sometimes he used that to his advantage.

His mouth quirked slightly at the corner, probably because he could see the glazed look coming into my eyes. Yep, Seduction 101, that’s exactly what he was doing. Even though I was fully aware of it, it was still working.

“Your brothers have girlfriends, right?” he replied. “Guest plus one is standard.”

“Who cares about plus one?” I groused. “I don’t even know who their girlfriends are this week.”

He didn’t respond, so I let out a loud huff of annoyance before reluctantly adding two extra people as the unknown guests of my brothers. “We’ve already got sixteen people, including my parents. It’s too many guests. We’ll never fit them all.”

“We have a big house,cara. We’ll fit and have room to spare. Besides, it’s possible some people won’t come. You can stop worrying.”

I’d never stop worrying, because I’d rather endure a dozen Microsoft patches than attend a party. But here we were—party planning central.

Forcing myself to keep my mind on the task at hand, I resumed studying the spreadsheets. “Do I have to iron napkins?” I asked.

Slash looked up from the spreadsheet. “What?”

“The napkins. The book said formal events required ironed napkins. But now that I think about it, we don’thavenapkins to be ironed.”

Slash started to say something and then shut his mouth. After another beat, he asked, “What book?”

“Party Planning for Dummies. They have separate chapters for formal and informal events. Formal events require cloth napkins. Do I need to buy some? More importantly, I’ve never ironed a napkin before and the book isn’t terribly clear on how to do it properly.”

Slash put his hand over mine, stopping me before I could write it down. “We arenotbuying or ironing cloth napkins. This isnota formal gathering. This is a casual party with close friends and family. It’s being catered, so we need to do little more than show up.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t mind the showing up part.”

“I like it better than the party planning part, I admit.” He put a hand on my back and made circles with his fingers. “We’ve got this. We’ll email the invites, pay the caterer, keep the house clean, and we’re done. People will come, congratulate us, look at the house, eat, drink and make small talk. One evening—over and out.”

He made it sound easy. I only hoped he was right. In hindsight, I should have known better.

Nothing is ever easy when it involves me.

Chapter Two

Lexi

Every time there was an occasion that called for something fancier than jeans or work clothes, my anxiety skyrocketed. Part of the problem was I don’t understand fashion. At. All. Hemlines, necklines, and sleeves—short, half-length, or otherwise—completely mystify me. Trying to match shoes and purses scares me. Being in a room with people looking completely put together with expertly applied makeup and perfectly coiffured hair is like my own personal hell.

But sometimes, it was time to suck it up and deal. My engagement party was one of those times. Sighing, I pushed away the doubts and pulled on a white sundress that Basia helped me pick out, along with a cropped baby-blue cardigan that was remarkably close to the color of the rare blue diamond in my engagement ring. I added a small pair of silver earrings and debated whether to pull my long brown hair up in a ponytail. I wanted to, but since this was an informally formal event, I left it down. I swiped on some lip gloss and mascara, then paced nervously while Slash finished shaving. He patted on some aftershave and stepped into the bedroom, pulling on a white, short-sleeved button-up shirt, watching me with an amused look on his face.

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