Delta Force Defender. Carol Ericson

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       Chapter Three

      Cam Sutton’s warm hand tightened around her fingers for a second. “Whoa. I bet the emailer wasn’t expecting you to do that. Why did you do that?”

      How could she explain it? She’d never done anything against the rules in her life. “I don’t know exactly. There was something about those emails that didn’t sit right with me.”

      “You said before that they might’ve been written by a foreigner.” Cam tapped his temple. “You’re a smart woman.”

      “I think it was the sentence structure and the word choice. Too formal or... I don’t know what.” She squared her shoulders and slipped her hand from Cam’s. “When I first reported the emails, I tried to tell my supervisor about my suspicions, but he brushed me off.”

      “I take it nobody at the CIA knows what you did with those emails?”

      “N-no.” She pulled her bottom teeth between her lips and traced the stem of her wineglass. Farah didn’t count, did she?

      “You seem unsure. Did you tell anyone you forwarded the messages to yourself at home?”

      “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”

      “If someone’s been following you and sending you poison-pen emails, somebody knows. Otherwise, they would’ve left you alone after verifying you’d turned over the messages.”

      “I don’t see how someone could know I have the emails.”

      He hunched forward, and his energy came off him in waves and engulfed her, sweeping her up in his world. “You seemed hesitant before. Do you think your supervisor might suspect you?”

      She snorted and took another swig of wine. “No way. If he did, he would’ve just reported me to security and gotten me fired...or worse. He wouldn’t be hiring people to shove me onto the train tracks.”

      “You’ve got a point.” He rubbed his hands together. “It has to be the party who sent the emails, the people who wanted to bring down Denver.”

      Her gaze dropped to his fingers drumming on the tabletop. “You’re glad someone’s after me.”

      “Wait. What?” He smacked his chest with the palm of his hand. “That’s dumb. I don’t want to see anyone hurt over this.”

      “No, but you tracked me down because I’m the one who initiated the fall of Major Denver, and you probably expected some CIA drone that you could bully and instead you’ve discovered a chink in the story, a new twist you weren’t expecting.”

      He cocked his head, and a lock of hair curled over his temple. He shoved it out of the way like a man accustomed to a military cut and whistled. “Are you sure you’re just a translator and not an analyst?”

      “Just a translator? I know four languages in addition to English.” She ticked off her fingers. “Russian, German, French and Spanish.”

      “Okay, okay.” He held up his hands. “You also have a big chip on your shoulder.”

      “I do not.” She crossed her arms, covering her shoulders with her hands. “I’m just sick of being underestimated.”

      “Clearly.” He leveled a finger at her. “And that’s why you stole those emails.”

      “Are you sure you’re just a Delta Force grunt and not military intelligence?” She held her breath.

      He opened his mouth, snapped it shut and hit the table with his fist. Then he laughed, and what a laugh he had. A few heads turned at the loud guffaw.

      “Shush.” She kicked his foot under the table.

      “Did those spies pick the wrong CIA drone to mess with or what?” He shook his head. “Why do you think they targeted you?”

      “Honestly? I think they picked me because I have a reputation for following the rules. Everyone at work knows that.”

      “That’s kinda scary.”

      “What? Following rules? You’re in the military. You must do a lot of that.”

      “Not the rule-following, but the fact that the people who sent the emails knew that about you.” He rubbed his knuckles across the sandy-blond stubble on his chin. “Inside job? Some kind of bug?”

      “A few minutes ago you called them spies. Do you think this is some foreign entity or worse, a foreign country?”

      “I don’t know.” He tapped her wineglass. “Are you done? I want to see those emails.”

      “You mean, at my place?” Her heart fluttered. It was one thing talking to this hunky military guy in public, but bring him back to her town house?

      “You still don’t trust me?” He slumped in his seat and finished off his beer. “What can I do to remedy that?”

      “It’s not that I don’t trust you...exactly. I’m just not comfortable bringing strangers to my place.”

      He rattled off her address and winked. “I already know where you live, Martha.”

      “This is all really creepy. How long have you been following me around DC? Maybe my feeling of being tailed was coming from you.”

      “I swear, I just started following you from the Langley bus stop today.”

      “How do you even know about the Langley bus stop?”

      “I have friends in high places.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Obviously not if you’re dogging a lowly translator.”

      “I mean it.” He grabbed her hands. “I want to see those emails. I know Denver. I’d be able to detect any falsehoods in those messages. I mean it’s all false, but I might be able to see something in the emails, some clue.”

      An edge of desperation had entered his voice, and the easygoing frat boy had morphed into this earnest man with the serious blue eyes, desperate to clear his commanding officer’s name.

      Despite herself, she felt a twinge of pity and then steeled herself against the emotion. Her father had always employed the same tone when trying to wheedle compassion from her.

      She blinked as Cam tugged on a lock of her hair. “C’mon, Martha. I saved you from an oncoming train. If you don’t want me in your personal space, you can bring your computer out to someplace neutral, if you have a laptop.”

      She inhaled the fresh, outdoorsy scent coming off him and counted the freckles on his nose. Cam already was in her personal space, and she didn’t mind one bit.

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