Gunner unclenched his jaw. “I want Cale Lane reassigned. Get him to start guarding Slade.”
He trusted Cale. No way would Slade slip by him.
“Already done,” Mercer murmured. Then he rose. The legs of his chair slid back with a screech. “Protect her.”
With his life.
“Sydney reminds me...” Mercer began, but then his words trailed away. Sadness flickered in his eyes, and the lines on his face deepened. The man looked as though he was skirting sixty, but Gunner had no idea at all what Mercer’s personal life was like. Did he have a wife? A family?
Mercer cleared his throat. “She reminds me of a woman I knew a long time ago. I lost her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be sorrier if you lose her, trust me.” Then he headed from the door. “There are some things that even soldiers can’t recover from.”
If he lost Sydney, the baby...no, he’d never recover.
Good thing he wasn’t planning on losing them.
* * *
SYDNEY SWIPED HER key card over the access panel, and when the lights flashed green, she pushed her way inside Hal’s inner sanctum. The Hub, as he called it.
Hal wasn’t there. Good. He should have gone home an hour ago. Time for her to get working and see exactly what was happening with his system.
She eased into his chair, started typing and immediately, the screen froze on her.
Hal had installed extra protection on his machine.
Good for him. Except...she’d been there when he’d installed that protection. He hadn’t even bothered to glance over his shoulder to see if she was watching while he typed in his code.
She’d been watching.
And she never forgot a code.
Her fingers tapped quickly over the keyboard. She knew how to get around this system. Hal never gave her enough credit.
Then she was pulling up the searches he’d used in the mainframe, and yes, sure enough, the access code had linked to Gunner. Damn it.
But she kept searching. Looking for the security video feed from the night of the breach—a feed that should have been there.
Her eyes narrowed on the screen as she read the system file for the time of 0300 on the date of the breach. There were no reported errors with the monitoring system. No reported errors at all because...
Her fingers typed faster.
Because Hal had shut off the system thirty minutes before. She could see the override, right there on the screen. He was in on—
“I figured you would be the one to come and look at the security logs.” The door behind her closed with a soft click.
Sydney tensed. She’d been so intent on the monitor that she hadn’t even realized that Hal had come into the room.
But as she looked up into the monitor, she could see his reflection. He was walking toward her, and he had a weapon in his hand.
A gun.
He wouldn’t have gotten past the security check-in downstairs with that weapon. But they had a weapons room on the second floor. As if it would have been hard for Hal to help himself to some equipment. After all, he controlled the access to most of the rooms in that building.
She inhaled a steadying breath. She didn’t have a gun, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless. She was the one trained for combat. Not Hal and his nervous hands. He might think that he had the advantage, but he’d soon realize the error of his ways.
“You were supposed to die, though,” Hal said. “So it wasn’t going to matter. The shooter was going to take you out. You’d be dead, so you wouldn’t come in here and find out about me.”
“Why?” She turned and looked at him. A deliberate move on her part. For someone like Hal, someone not used to doling out death, looking into the face of his victim would be hard.
Staring into her eyes, then killing her...even harder.
Her fingers curled around the pen she’d taken from his desk.
“I didn’t want to,” Hal whispered, and sure enough, his hands were shaking. “I didn’t have a choice. He was going to hurt my family.” His eyes teared. “They’re all I have...he knew things about them. Too much. I had to do it.”
“You had to turn off the cameras?” She wanted to keep him talking. Needed to.
Hal nodded.
“And you gave him the access code?”
“Y-yes.”
The shaking of that gun was making her nervous. Her body was tense, ready to attack, and she planned to lunge at him soon, but she had to time her move just right. The last thing she wanted was a bullet hitting her or the baby.
The baby.
“Do you know I’m pregnant?” she whispered. “Please, Hal, don’t hurt the baby.” She meant that plea. The baby—the one she hadn’t even felt moving inside her yet—mattered more than anything to her.
Hal hesitated. “Baby?” The gun began to lower.
It was the moment she needed. Sydney leaped out of her chair. With one hand, she grabbed Hal’s right wrist—his right hand still clasped the gun—and she shoved that wrist out wide, making sure he wouldn’t have a shot at her. Then, with her other hand, she brought up her pen, aiming for his now exposed inner arm. She drove the pen into his arm because she knew that his reflex action at that attack would be to drop the weapon.
The gun hit the floor. Just as she’d anticipated. But it discharged on impact, and the shot echoed around her.
Instantly she could hear the scream of alarms. No way would a gunshot be missed in a place like this.
Then, as Hal was howling, she brought up her elbow and slammed it into his nose. She heard the snap and saw the spurt of blood from his nose. Hal backed away from her, crouching and...crying?
Sydney kicked the gun across the room. It skittered toward the entrance. She kept her hands loose at her sides, ready to attack again if necessary.
But Hal wasn’t putting up much of a fight. He was trying to stop the blood that was flowing from his nose and saying—
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”
“You’re sorry?” Sydney demanded. The alarm was hurting her ears. “You pulled a gun on me. You leaked classified information. You need to be a whole lot more than just sorry.”
He stood, or tried to stand, but his body kept trembling. His hand went to his side.
Over his shoulder, she caught the movement of the door as it opened.
“I want a name,” Sydney demanded through gritted teeth. “I want a full description of the guy. I want to know exactly who paid you off.”
Hal shook his head. “I—I can’t—”