Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (3 page)

His body met hers at the juncture of her thighs. His groin in exact alignment with hers as she stared up at him wide-eyed.

The slant of the moonlight and the position of his body cast her face in shadow, defining her features in shades and angles, like a scene from the old black and white movies he used to watch with his Grandpop.

Her breath was coming in short, soft pants and drew his gaze from the shadowed planes of her face to her chest. Her sweater was damp, her nipples beaded in the chill night air clearly visible.

Her hair was the color of midnight, woven together in a loose braid as thick as his wrist and resting on the curve of one very fine breast.

Totally inappropriate of him to notice, and dwell on.

They had this
From Here To Eternity
thing going on that was fuzzing his brain and making it difficult to concentrate.

The moonlight bathed her face in a silvery light, her gray eyes shone with some undefined emotion. The crisp scent of cucumber and the ocean rose from her body. She was like his own personal siren, drawing him to her and pulling him from the clutches of the sea.

Yeah, he’d figured out that one. His last memory was of tumbling into the cauldron of the surf.

As he absorbed the impression of her body beneath his and the soft shush of the surf behind them, he wished he was better with women. Wished that the men in his family weren’t cursed. Wished that he knew what romantic words to whisper in her ear so they could stay here all night alone in the darkness, moonlight shining down on them and the ocean surrounding them, just man, woman, and nature.

He traced the delicate features of her face with his gaze, her deep shadowed eyes, her slightly upturned nose, and the sheer perfection of her mouth.

Oh, what he could do with her mouth, to her mouth.

His cock had risen with the nature of his thoughts. But unfortunately he had more pressing problems, not to mention he was probably scaring the crap out of her.

His head pounded like a son of a bitch. The last time he felt this badly he’d woken up from being drugged and had lost about five hours of his life. Then lost everything.

Suspicion kicked in. What the fuck?

Then his brain revved back into gear. “Hanlon’s razor,” he murmured under his breath. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Namely his.

No one knew he was going to be here, on this beach, surfing in the dark. Not even him until about thirty minutes ago.

He thought he noticed an instant of surprise before her perfectly arched brows crinkled into her forehead. The surf rolled and broke behind him. He could hear the water approaching when she exploded into action.

“Get off me.” She panted, and dug her heels into the sand, trying to buck him off.

“Yeah, sorry. I won’t hurt you.” He let go of her wrists.

“It’s coming.”

Zeke twisted around looking for the threat, needing no confirmation that her terror was real. “What’s coming?”

“The...the...the....”

Her feet scrabbled against the sand.

He looked around again and didn’t see any threat. But her motion underneath him had re-awakened his body.
Hell-o.
A wave broke and headed toward them.

“Wa-ter.”

He realized then she was not just wet but soaked and trapped beneath him. Great...he’d been living out his teen fantasies while the girl froze to death. That’s why the men in his family were cursed.

“Yeah.” He tried to get up but she wiggled and squirmed so much that every time he attempted to shift off her, she bucked him in a different direction.

“Get off. It’s coming.”

“Hold still, dammit.”

The water curled against their toes and she shrieked.

“Jesus.” Zeke rose to his knees as she scrabbled out from under him. “Are you nuts?”

She rolled backwards, kneeing him in the balls and then she jumped to her feet.

“Who’s the one who went surfing at night, genius?” she sneered.

She had a point.

Zeke rubbed at the bump on the back of his head. While he might agree in theory, he didn’t take kindly to being yelled at.

“Look....” He glanced up at her from his spot on his knees.

The moon picked that moment to shift higher in the pitch black sky, shining down upon her face, bathing her features in starlight, shimmering off the radiance of her skin. Something about her looked familiar.

Shit.

Of all the beaches in all the towns, why’d she have to walk onto this one? Yeah, he was stealing from
Casablanca
.

No one in this Nowheresville, California town should look familiar to him. Except her.

The boondoggle. The fool’s errand to keep him busy. The sole reason he was here.

Terrific. He’d been rescued by his surveillance subject.

Four

The guy rubbed his hands over his face. I tried, really tried, not to notice that his biceps bulged and flexed with each movement of his hands.

What the heck was wrong with me?

I never noticed stuff like that. Maybe it was all the years alone with my mother, maybe it was the sheer absence of men in my life, but physical features weren’t something I usually fixated on. Muscles, testosterone didn’t even register on my personal Richter scale. Yet here I was ogling this guy.

This stranger.

I had a natural wariness of people, thanks to my stepfather, thanks to hiding for the last thirteen years. An innate sense of caution that was difficult to overcome. For years, every stranger held potential danger. Trust was a difficult commodity to come by.

Weirdly enough, I didn’t feel threatened at all.

Maybe because
I’d
saved
him
.

And maybe I was completely delusional. Because it seemed as if when he’d knelt at my feet, his head tilted while he stared at me, there’d been a spark of recognition.

A trigger, a random thought, an “oh, there you are.”

Then the spark flew away on a gust of wind, and he looked at me with total disgust.

Which was not a response I was accustomed to either.

People tended to look on me with amusement, with a sort of veiled sense of superiority. They thought because my life revolved around moon cycles and essential oils that I was somehow less intelligent.

I let them think that because it enhanced the illusion my mother and I had succeeded in creating. So different from the real me that even if the monster somehow heard of me, he would dismiss the information as irrelevant.

Claire had been a math prodigy, had already been recruited by Caltech as a seven-year-old.

Sunshine Smith concocted herbal potions and aromatherapy remedies for tourists.

The odds of anyone connecting the two very different people were astronomical. Sunshine had a new birthday and even though every year my mother made a big show of celebrating on the new day, in my heart, I always had my own bittersweet private celebration to mark another year’s passing and to remember my grandparents. To never forget them. To never forget him.

And to remind myself that I would never be a victim again.

We’d run from my stepfather, but it hadn’t ended there. He’d found us, time and again. But finally after three different states, and three different identities, we’d discovered how to disappear. And for the last nine years our cover had held.

Our life had certain restrictions, but at least we were alive. Mama was safe. And I...I was, surviving.

I was always restless around the anniversary of my grandparents’ murder and our desperate flight, but this year my discontent, my melancholy was worse than ever.

I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong. I was young. I wanted to be out exploring the world, not cloistered in this little town far away from any action. I’d had a taste by dropping in at the local community college and auditing a few classes at Cal Poly. I couldn’t outright enroll there on the off chance that he was checking college admissions.

But an audited class in physics or mathematics or biology here and there was fine. I’d almost blown it when I’d challenged a professor on the newer fifth law of thermodynamics.

“Are you okay?” He stumbled to his feet awkwardly, took one hesitant step forward before grimacing. Bet his balls ached. It was small of me, but seeing his expression of total disgust when he looked at me had hurt.

“F-f-fine.” My teeth clattered as the cold set in. My gaze shifted to the waves behind him and he finally got that something about the water disturbed me.

“Thanks for...rescuing me.” His expression had morphed to one of uncertainty.

My shoulders shook with the force of my shivers, rocking me as I edged back, away from the black water. I needed to bolt.

My sense of panic had receded into slightly frantic distress, but a low level buzz of discomfort still zipped through my system. The stress competed with a sense of loss that had nothing to do with my inability to attend college and stretch my brain, and more to do with an aching unrelenting emptiness in my arms now that he was out of them. How could I miss something I’d only had for the briefest of moments?

I wanted his attention off me. I was pretty sure he was harmless but what if I was wrong? The rush of the surf behind him gave me the distraction I needed and I gestured with a shaking hand. “Your board....”

“Not mine. Borrowed.” As if he didn’t want me to think the slick surface with a nearly naked hula girl sporting large breasts on the fiberglass bottom was his.

“....is floating away.”

He looked at me, then turned to sight the board, his body tense, as if he were trapped between two opposing forces.

“Shit.” He ran toward the water, and made a grab for the borrowed board. He called over his shoulder, “Don’t leave.”

***

Zeke realized he probably looked like a total idiot racing toward the surf. Way to impress her. Except, he shouldn’t be trying to impress her, he was supposed to be surveilling her. Watching out for her. Not impressing her. Not interacting with her. Just keeping an eye on her.

The wash of surf against his legs was frigid, wicked cold. “What the hell was I thinking?”

After a few aborted attempts to capture the wax-slick board, Zeke finally got ahold of the lead and pulled it onto the beach.

He dragged the board to his stuff, but she was gone.

Zeke stared at the wet hotel towel. She’d been afraid of the water. Seen a potential threat in the harmless little wave that had teased the cotton edge.

Nothing in the file on Sunshine Smith about thalassophobia...even though she clearly had a massive fear of the ocean. But the file had been pretty damn light. Just a name, address, and a grainy picture that captured the arrangement of her features but not her essence.

He stood staring dumbly after her as she scurried along the shadowed path to the parking lot, and he wished things were different. Wished he wasn’t under suspicion of supplying encryption programs to wackos, wished he was here on vacation—of course what dumbass goes surfing in the middle of the night?—instead of secretly tasked with watching over her. Wished that he had the normal experiences of a normal twenty something guy and could talk to a woman he found attractive.

His first response to her departure was a frantic, “No!” He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted another minute, or five, in her presence while he was conscious rather than un.

Shit. He should be happy she hustled off the beach since he wasn’t supposed to have contact with her. Instead he had feeling of loss so profound it shook him to his core.

Zeke tugged his sweatshirt over his head, slung the towel around his neck, hefted the board under one arm, and trudged toward his rental SUV.

And suppressed the urge to run after her.

Five

October 20

8:00 am

Seattle, Washington

Oliver Krychef waited in the customs and immigration line at SeaTac, in the state of Washington. Snippets of different languages, Russian, French, Italian, Cantonese, Vietnamese, eddied around him as passengers weary from transpacific flights waited to be welcomed into the United States.

This was the most dangerous leg of his return to the U.S.

He inhaled slowly, carefully, drawing in the scents and sounds of international travel. The aromas of green tea, burnt coffee, cigar smoke, heavy pungent odor of curry, and even possibly borscht, all masked by generous spritzes of floral perfume and stale body odor.

Officially he was entering from Vancouver.

He’d packed very carefully for this mission, making sure that nothing in his bag would draw the attention of the U.S. customs agents. Clothing, some toiletries, all Canadian of course, and a bottle of duty free Lucky Lager.

In truth, failing his superiors was far more dangerous than entering the United States. This gauntlet might stop him from entering the country if his paperwork and fake passport didn’t stand up to the new homeland security protocols. Which would be a disaster. His credentials should be above reproach since his superiors were as invested in him achieving his objective as he was.

Oliver Krychef was on the U.S. State Department’s watch list. He’d been kicked out of the country a little over a year ago and he was still angry about it. Fortunately his forged passport identified him as Lars Andersen, and he’d altered his appearance slightly. A little nose job and padding in his cheeks and chin. This particular airport didn’t have advanced facial recognition technology according to the man who facilitated his entry back into the country.

But if his contact was wrong, Oliver was
trakhal
.

Blood pumped faster through his veins, and he could literally feel his blood pressure rising with the sheer fury he felt toward that bitch. She had ruined his career. Both here in the U.S. and in his native Russia. His superiors were not happy with him. And when they were not happy, bad things happened.

Ten years of work destroyed because she couldn’t handle it when she found out that he’d injected their daughter with the DNA-altering drug. Their child, Liliya, was incredibly intelligent. Of course, that was inevitable with their combined IQ. The formula had been designed to work on confidence centers, enhancing traits and making the individual stronger. He’d only thought to both augment his daughter and test the drug. All scientists knew you could not obtain accurate results on yourself so he had bestowed the honor on Liliya.