THIRTEEN
Aiden held his palm over Leila’s mouth, making sure she wouldn’t scream. His other arm snaked around her waist, pulling her tightly against him.
It hadn’t been hard to find her. She’d really had only two options: her apartment and her lab. Sure, she could have gone to any hotel, but knowing what he knew about her life, what he’d read in her file, he guessed she would choose a familiar place, somewhere where she felt safe. He’d figured she’d choose the lab for obvious reasons. One being that her apartment was uninhabitable right now, the other that she deemed her office to be safe from intruders. It wasn’t.
He’d had no problem sneaking past the security guard. In his cloaked state, he was invisible to the unsuspecting man.
Aiden moved his mouth to Leila’s ear, a strand of her hair brushing his cheek in the process. “Quiet, Leila.”
He felt her body jolt at the realization that it was he who was keeping her captive once more. A muffled word he didn’t catch bounced against his palm. Her warm breath nearly torched him, sending a hot flame into his groin.
“That’s right, it’s me. It was very stupid of you to run away. Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you?” He felt himself getting angry again. “Will you remain quiet if I take my hand off your mouth now?”
She moved her head up and down in agreement.
Slowly he lifted his hand and turned her toward him in the same instance. Her lips instantly parted, her throat tightening. Clearly, she wasn’t going to comply with his wishes. There was only one thing he could do now.
With a low curse, he yanked her flush against him and slid his lips over hers, capturing her mouth in a searing kiss, one he’d been craving all night.
Shit, this wasn’t how this was supposed to play out. All he should do was to collect her insolent ass and haul her back to a safe place, watching her like a hawk. And what was he doing, idiot that he was? Kissing her!
And it was no ordinary kiss. He devoured her mouth, plundered her delicious cavern, tangled with her reluctant tongue until a sound—part sob part sigh—escaped her. Still, he didn’t stop. On the contrary, the little sound she’d made spurred him on even further, made him thread his fingers through her hair to hold her tighter to him. All the while her fists beat against his shoulders in a futile attempt to get him to stop.
Sliding his other hand to the sweet curve of her ass and palming it, he pressed her against his growing erection. He wanted to punish her for escaping him. Maybe this would teach her to listen to him. Because a charge who didn’t listen to her bodyguard was as good as dead. And that was a prospect he didn’t relish. At the thought of Leila been hurt, or worse, dead, an icy-cold hand clamped around his heart, squeezing the life out of him. He’d only once before felt like that: when Julia had died. He couldn’t allow this to happen again. He had to find a way so Leila would trust him.
What if they’d met under other circumstances? Would she mold her sinful body to his, press her soft curves into his hard muscles with abandon as if they were lovers? The thought ricocheted in his mind. Could he ever make her understand him to the point where such a thing was possible?
Aiden released her, albeit reluctantly.
Leila glared at him, gasping for air. Her lips looked thoroughly kissed. Her eyes darted past him toward the door that he blocked, thoughts of escape so clearly etched in her face as if he were reading her mind.
“How dare you? How did you get in here?” Her clipped tone underscored her anger, and the way she wiped her lips with the back of her hand was so deliberate he knew the gesture was meant to tell him that his physical attention wasn’t wanted.
“The way I always do, through the walls.”
“The security guard will have seen you on the cameras. He will have alerted the police already.”
“He didn’t see me.”
She took a slow step back and bumped against the open safe door behind her. His eyes were instantly drawn to the dark interior. He motioned his head toward it. “What happened here?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” she spat. “You opened the safe. You did this!”
He took an instinctive step in her direction, making her shrink back. “And when would I have done that, Leila? I was with you all night. You had an almost half hour head start on me. So tell me, how I could have broken into your lab when I arrived after you.”
Her forehead furrowed as she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on it. And darn it, if that wasn’t a gesture that made him want to pull her back into his embrace and assure her that everything was all right.
“Why should I believe you?”
Again her eyes darted past him. If she was still hoping for the police or the security guard to arrive, he’d have to sorely disappoint her.
“Because you’re an intelligent woman.” Maybe if he appealed to her intellect, he would get somewhere. “If you look at it logically, you’ll see that it’s impossible. I was with you the entire time until you went to take a shower in the motel.” He scoffed. “Well, I guess I fell for that old trick. Nevertheless, do you really think I would have left you alone at the motel while I believed you were in the shower?” He locked eyes with her.
For a few seconds she stared at him, then she finally shook her head.
“Then who did this, if not you?” She pointed to the floor.
Aiden followed her outstretched finger and saw what she was looking at. On the floor in front of the safe lay a human thumb, a tiny pool of blood around it. He shot her a confused look. “What the f*ck?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes now. She still pointed at the bloody human thumb, her voice trembling as she answered, “The only way to open the safe is with a thumb print, either mine . . . ” Her voice broke.
Instinctively his eyes searched her hands even though he knew what he’d find: flawless, perfect fingers.
“Whose thumb?” he urged.
She swallowed hard. “Mr. Patten’s. My boss. He’s the only other person who could have opened . . . ” A solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “Tell me you didn’t do this. Tell me I’m not in the clutches of a madman,” she begged through the sobs that now started.
He lifted her head with his thumb and forefinger. “I didn’t do this. You have to believe me.”
He fought against the urge to pull her into his embrace. There was no time for that now. He glanced past her into the safe. “The safe is empty. What do you normally keep in it?”
Leila hesitated, chewing on her lip once more. “A backup drive of my research data.”
A curse left his lips. “The Alzheimer’s drug?”
Her head shot up, her eyes widening. “How do you—?”
She sidestepped him, trying to get to her desk, clearly in order to bring distance between them.
“It doesn’t matter. Was it the Alzheimer’s drug?”
Her eyes looked to the door, hope that rescue was on its way fading in them. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“F*ck!” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. He’d been too late. “Now the demons have it. Please tell me the data alone won’t help them recreate the drug.” If it was all they needed, then he’d failed again.
“The demons?”
Was she finally starting to believe him? He hoped so.
“Why do they want my research? Why?”
He saw the horror in her eyes. “They need it to cement their power over humans. It’ll help them gain the upper hand. The drug you’ve been working on will help them influence humans and pull them to their side.”
“Oh God.” Then she stared back at the safe. “It wasn’t in there,” she murmured so softly he almost didn’t hear her. She sounded confused.
Maybe the entire night had been too much for her. After all, she was a human, and there was only so much they could take before they cracked. He should make allowances for that.
He gestured toward the open safe. “Well of course not, it’s empty, they took it. The demons took it.”
Leila shook her head. “It wasn’t in there. The disk.”
He focused his attention back on her words. “What do you mean?”
“A couple of days ago, I took it out and erased it.”
Could he trust his ears? “You what?”
Her ocean blue eyes looked up at him, wide, beautiful, still glistening with tears. “I destroyed the backup drive. I had a strange feeling . . . I just felt it wasn’t safe there. So I took it and erased the data.”
“Where is the original data?” If this was only the backup, there had to be another drive. Had they gotten to that one instead when they’d realized that the safe was empty? If it was still here somewhere, there was only one thing to do now that the demons had gotten brazen enough to attack outright.
“Show me where it is. We’ll have to destroy it.”
***
Leila’s heart stopped beating for a moment. “Destroy?”
She shook her head in disbelief. He couldn’t mean that. She’d devoted years of her life to this and couldn’t simply wipe out her work as if it had never existed.
When she’d seen genuine shock in his eyes the moment she’d told him that a backup drive with her data was kept in the safe, she’d realized that he wasn’t the one who’d broken it open. But the revelation that he wanted to destroy her data didn’t make the situation any better.
“You don’t understand. This is my research. I’m going to cure Alzheimer’s.”
And she would get her parents back. They would have a chance to recover enough of their faculties to remember that they loved her and each other.
Aiden gripped her shoulders tightly. His chocolate brown eyes bored into her. “I understand. But this is more important.”
More important than curing a terrible disease? “No!” She shook off his hands and stepped back. He couldn’t be serious. Instinctively, her hand shot up, wanting to touch her pendant. She forced it back down to her side, hoping not to have drawn attention to it. Protecting the last copy of her research data was vital now, because not only did the demons want it—she believed that much now—Aiden wanted to destroy it.
“If this drug is brought to market, it will open the minds of humans and make them more susceptible to the influence of demons. It’ll be child’s play for them to infiltrate their minds, play with them, manipulate them. Don’t you see? Your drug will cause this. We can’t allow this to happen.”
Leila shivered at the determination in his voice. He wouldn’t listen to her arguments. There was only one thing she could do: lie.
She nodded, pretending that she agreed with his reasoning. She’d given up hope that Max would come to rescue her. “The only other copy is on my encrypted laptop.” She pointed to the door. “In the lab.”
Aiden turned, and she followed him.
“Where?” he asked.
She passed him and went to her bench where only minutes earlier she’d confirmed that her laptop had been wiped clean. All she needed now were some acting skills to convince him that the last set of research data was destroyed too. Maybe then he would leave her alone, thinking there was nothing else the demons could take. And she would get her life back.
“Oh no!” she cried out, hoping she sounded convincing.
She let herself fall into the chair and stared at the monitor where the ominous ‘c:/’ still pulsed in silence.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked up at him, forcing tears to her eyes. “They tried to hack into my laptop.”
“Shit!” he cursed. “Did they get in?”
Shaking her head, she continued her charade. “No, but they activated the self-destruct feature.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking over her shoulder, hovering far too closely.
“I had a security program on my laptop. If anybody tried to access my data and there were more than two failed login attempts, the program would initiate, wiping the entire hard drive clean.”
“You mean there’s no data left on the computer?”
She shook her head. “None.” Feeling that she should show despair about the loss of her research, she turned her face away and let out a sob. It’s wasn’t too hard to produce. The thought of the bloody thumb on the floor in her office gave her reason enough to cry her eyes out. It struck her out of nowhere: the pain her boss must have suffered.
“Oh, God! Patten. I must find him. He needs a doctor. Oh, God, those bastards!”
She jumped up and almost bumped into Aiden, who instantly steadied her with a hand on her hip.
“Where’s his office?”
“On the eighth floor.”
“Let’s go,” he ordered.
As they rushed to the door and opened it, a loud alarm sounded from the hallway. Strobe lights flashed.
Aiden tossed her a questioning look.
“They’re locking down the building.” And she could guess what that meant.