Untraceable. Janie Crouch

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she stayed here at Omega as much as possible.

      It had been eighteen months since her attack. Things should be getting better, not worse. But that wasn’t the case.

      She glanced down at her phone, which had begun vibrating in her hand as she walked toward the locker room. Her stomach rolled when she saw the screen.

      A new email. Not for Juliet Branson, but for Lisa Sinclair, an undercover role Juliet had played in her last mission as an active operative. The one where she’d lost nearly everything.

      Sweetheart, I’ve been thinking about you all night. Soon we’ll be together, just the two of us. Sooner than you think.

      As usual, no signature or notification of who’d sent it. Juliet leaned against the wall for support and brought her hand up to her suddenly aching head. This email was benign compared to the graphic nature of some of the others. She closed her eyes briefly, pushing those thoughts away. She couldn’t let this overwhelm her, not today.

      But she knew she’d be thinking about the message all day. And the fact that the emails were starting to come more frequently and become more personal.

      Juliet had given the emails to Omega tech support, of course, but they hadn’t been able to provide any insight about where or from whom they were coming. Never the same IP address—it seemed to bounce around all over the world.

      And she couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone about how much the emails upset her. She knew there were people here who cared about her. Two of her three brothers worked at Omega, for goodness’ sake; she saw them almost every day. But they were the last people she wanted to talk to about this. Being the only daughter in the family, Juliet had always been surrounded by overprotective, alpha-male testosterone.

      Talking to her brothers about residual issues from her attack and rape? Um, no. Not in this lifetime.

      Nor did she want to talk to them about creepy emails. Her siblings had work to do, real cases to worry about.

      “Hey, Jules, you okay?”

      Juliet pushed herself away from the wall at the sound of Evan Karcz’s voice. He, like her brothers, always called her Jules. She mashed the button to delete the email notification and turn her phone screen black. She didn’t want to have to explain it to Evan.

      “Um, yeah, I’m fine. Just going in to clean up after my workout. You’re here early.”

      “I was about to run, but I forgot my headphones and was coming back to grab them. You sure you’re okay? You look a little pale. And you must have been sparring because you have something in your—”

      Evan moved toward her, hand upraised, and before Juliet could stop herself she took a step back, flinching. He froze, then dropped his arm to his side, shoulders drooping.

      “Evan, I’m sorry—”

      “No, it’s okay. Um, you just have some lint or something in your hair.” He backed up another step. “I’ll see you.” He turned and walked off, away from the locker room. So much for getting headphones.

      Juliet wanted to hit something, even though she’d just spent over an hour doing just that. She hadn’t meant to flinch, especially not from Evan; she’d just been in a particularly vulnerable state of mind because of that email. It didn’t take a genius to figure out her reaction had hurt him.

      She and Evan had worked together for years. She’d known him most of her life. He was her brothers’ best friend. Hell, he was one of her best friends—more, if she was honest. Or had potentially been more. It seemed so long ago that she and Evan used to flirt with each other, secure in the knowledge of someday.

      But someday never came.

      Now whenever she thought of Evan all Juliet could recall was that moment when he’d found her. Of how he’d covered her broken, mostly naked body with his own clothes, actually crying as he had radioed in for an ambulance.

      Juliet knew it was unfair to keep Evan frozen in that moment. To keep herself frozen there. But she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

      So she’d basically avoided him for the past year and a half.

      Which hadn’t been too difficult, considering her cowardly choice to leave active work and stick herself behind a desk instead. Part handler, part analyst, part strategist. A little too good to be any of them, but not fit to be back out in the field. Juliet couldn’t see a time when she would ever be ready for agent work again.

      Her job might not be thrilling, but it was safe. And safe was the most important thing to her right now. Although she wished those job changes hadn’t hurt Evan.

      Juliet made her way to the locker room, showering and changing into her work clothes of black pants and a matching black blazer over a white blouse. The jacket was specially fitted to hold her shoulder holster and firearm. Although Juliet wasn’t an agent and wasn’t required to be armed at all times, she was rarely without her Glock 9 mm.

      Normally she wouldn’t be dressed this way. Unlike the FBI, with their daily suits and loafers, Omega tended to be a more casually dressed workforce. But today Juliet had an important operational-specifications meeting. Her boss, Dennis Burgamy, would be there, which made her a little uneasy. Burgamy did not tend to dirty his hands with the day-to-day planning of undercover operations. Thus her more professional suit: armor for battle.

      Something was up; she knew it. Juliet was going to need as much armor as she could get.

       Chapter Two

      Juliet already sat in the conference room between her brothers Cameron and Sawyer, chatting with both, when Evan arrived at the meeting. He wasn’t surprised to find the two men flanking Juliet. If Cameron and Sawyer had their way, she’d be wrapped in cotton wool and hidden away somewhere.

      The Branson men were brothers to Evan in every way but blood. He’d known them most of his life—Sawyer, Cameron, and their older brother, Dylan, who no longer worked at Omega—and would do anything for any of them. But their overprotectiveness when it came to Juliet frustrated Evan.

      Juliet had strength none of the Branson family wanted to admit, including herself. Right now it lay hidden under layers of fear and regret. But the strength resided inside her. He’d seen it multiple times during their tenure as partners in the field. He wished Juliet would trust him to help her find that strength again, but he couldn’t force it to happen. Could only wait and hope.

      Evan deliberately took the seat directly across from Juliet. She nodded at him and gave him a polite smile before looking away. He decided to engage her brothers instead.

      “What’s up, Tweedledum and Tweedledummer?”

      Neither brother was up to his normal speed. Both were recovering from gunshot wounds received in action over the past few months, Cameron from an undercover operation gone wrong, and Sawyer from an attempt to fix that. They would recover fully, but were manning desks until they were cleared for field duty.

      Not that either seemed to mind desk duty right now. It gave them each more time to spend at home with the loves-of-their-lives, also recently acquired in the cases. Having met Cameron’s Sophia and Sawyer’s Megan, Evan wholeheartedly СКАЧАТЬ