Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)

Mira grimaced. One day, she was afraid they were going to actually pull out their dicks and measure them.

“Then go back to Boulder and let me deal with this,” Donaldson offered.

Markham gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t trust me?” Donaldson demanded.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Markham assured him.

“Fine. I’m going to get some dinner.” Donaldson crossed the carpeted floor of the office that was designed for maximum intimidation. Big, wooden furniture filled the space, including a desk that was bigger than Mira’s bed. Towering shelves crammed with pictures of explosions in mid-air, silos filled with missiles, and Donaldson standing in his flight suit next to a jet. There were also a dozen photos of shifters being held in the compounds around the world. A dark tribute to a man who valued war. “You can join me or stay here,” he said.

Markham released a harsh sigh. “I’m coming.”

The men had reached the door when Donaldson glanced over his shoulder to stab Mira with a warning glare.

“You.”

She conjured an expression of faux innocence. “Yes?”

“Don’t leave this computer until you’ve breached the security,” he commanded.

“Whatever,” she said in sullen tones.

Waiting until she could catch sight of them out of the window walking along the narrow pathway to the nearby mess-hall, Mira swiftly hacked into the security cameras that were placed around the room. A few taps on the keyboard and she had them on loop. Only a careful inspection would reveal that it was a five-minute feed that played over and over again.

Again she tapped on the keyboard, this time pulling up the background search she’d been running for the past two weeks.

When she’d logged on earlier, she’d noticed a tiny bell at the corner of the screen. That was her notification that she’d had a hit with her web crawler.

A sense of elation rushed through her.

Yes.

She, at last, had what she needed.

A name and an address.

Leaning forward, she blocked out everything but sorting through files as fast as possible. Bank accounts, apartment leases, employment records, birth certificates…

Lost in the world of data, she missed the soft sound of approaching footsteps. It wasn’t until a hand was placed over her mouth that she realized she was no longer alone.

“Ssh,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear as his fingers stifled her scream.

Reaching up, she grasped the intruder’s wrist, tugging his hand from her lips as she turned her head to meet his ice-blue gaze.

“Sinclair?” She blinked in confusion, casting a glance around the office to ensure they were alone. For a horrified second, she’d been worried he’d been taken captive. When it was obvious they were alone, she returned her attention to his lean, impossibly handsome face. “What are you doing here?”

A dark brow quirked. “I would think that’s obvious. I’m here to rescue you.”

As far as Mira was concerned, there was nothing obvious about it.

She’d known from the first night that Sinclair approached her at a party given by the local CDC office where she worked that he was out of her league. It wasn’t just his lean, handsome face or the dark, satiny hair that brushed his broad shoulders. It wasn’t even the rock-hard body beneath his casual jeans and t-shirt. It had been the masculine power that smoldered in his pale blue eyes, and the air of arrogant sensuality that he wore with confident ease.

Hard. Lethal. Gorgeous.

This was a male who could get any woman he wanted. And he knew it.

So why would he seek out a shy, socially awkward computer geek and spend the entire night flirting with her?

The answer was…he wanted something from her.

It’d taken a month of casual dinners, and the occasional movie before he’d, at last, confessed that he was a wolf. And another month before he’d asked her to use her position at her office to discover information that would prove that the shifters hadn’t started the virus. That they had, in fact, used their blood to develop the vaccine that had saved the world.

Still, even knowing that he was using her, Mira had been helpless against his potent charm.

She told herself that, eventually, Sinclair would see her as more than a means to an end. After all, she’d proven her loyalty and devotion, and shown a dedication to his cause that no other woman could match.

It wasn’t until she’d been captured and forced to consider her imminent death that she realized that she’d been wasting her life over the past couple of years. Was she really so desperate for male attention that she would settle for a relationship where she had nothing to offer but her job and her computer skills?

She deserved more than a man who was willing to seduce her for his own gain.

But at the same time, the concrete evidence that the SAU had been covering up their own involvement in the Verona Virus and laying the blame on the shifters had hardened her determination to bring them to justice.