“Dammit,” he murmured, but didn’t say anything else.
Good boy. He was careful about bugs too. She was prepared for bugging devices, though. Her little briefcase was more than what it seemed.
She put it on the bed and reopened it. The men had been careful not to touch the laptop, although they went through the other stuff in the pockets—notebooks, a few pens, some TicTacs, that sort of thing. Walker stood beside her, looking down at the laptop.
“Is it true what that Sergei said about your laptop?” he asked.
She nodded, unzipping her leather jacket. “Yes.”
“This is the only laptop I can log in and work from,” she told him as she shrugged out of her top. She was amused by how their conversation didn’t match the intensity in his eyes as they followed her movements with interest. They were now heatedly staring at the light shirt she had underneath. It was slightly damp from perspiration and stuck to her like a second skin. She had teased him all day. Her sexy beast was peering out at her right now. A tingly heat prickled down in her gut. Funny how, even in her self-induced state of discomfort, she still felt the attraction to this man. Despite the message in his gaze, she knew he was listening to her.
She didn’t mind reiterating aloud all the instructions she’d been given for their listeners. “Dr. Kantor knows about this state-of-the-art DARPA-invented security. It gauges fingerprints, scans retinas, requires coded passwords, and even checks my temperature. No one but I can access the information. Neat, huh?”
“But can’t they just cut off your hand or do something gruesome to your eyes?”
Walker asked that so casually, Nadia had to take a moment not to laugh out loud. There was something about him that was very contained, very measured, as if there were two of him. She wanted to dig deep inside and find the other Walker. Haha. Listen to her. She was the one with two of herselves walking around.
A wave of nausea hit her again. Damn, this drug was truly nasty stuff. Putting a hand to her mouth, she pointed to the open door leading to the bathroom and rushed in.
“Get my purse,” she ordered. “I need to freshen up. God, I hope they have mouthwash in there.”
She heard Walker following her. He shut the door after them. He came behind her and set the purse on the bathroom counter as she turned the water on. Meeting his eyes in the mirror, she turned the ring on her finger and he watched with interest as she pressed one small ridge on its side.
After ten seconds, the stone glowed green, indicating the room was safe from any bugging devices. Now they could talk.
She smiled at him. “And how do you do?” she asked.
“Other than having a bunch of questions in my head, I’m fine,” he replied. “Interesting ring. Frequency interference in such a small thing. What other stuff are you hiding in your pretty little baubles?”
He waited while she brushed her teeth and gargled. God, it’d been a long ride, being sick like that. Still, she’d gotten the delay she wanted, so she supposed it was worth it.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a tampon. He raised his eyebrow, still not saying anything, just quietly observing as she injected the antidote into her system. She wondered what he was thinking. As far as she knew, he still thought her to be Nadine and that he had no idea she’d taken her sister’s place.
“Is that how you got...?” He waved to indicate her condition.
She nodded, liking how he was still being careful. “But this will stop it. It’ll take a while before I look better, though. The object is to get them to think my temperature and biorhythms don’t correspond with the laptop’s requirements. Clever little thing, that computer.”
“Tell me more,” he said, wetting a towel for her as she flushed the tampon casing down the toilet.
During the phone call with Kantor, she had thrown in the required knowledge of the project to get Vadim’s interest. She had to be brief in her summary to avoid suspicion of being too long in the bathroom.
She leaned in close and whispered in Walker’s ear, “Here’s a tongue twister for you. Super Soldier Spy special exoskeleton skin. I work in coding the suit for virtual reality. VR isn’t just virtual reality either. At DARPA, they’re working on something called Immersive Virtual Reality and I told them someone really special is being trained in it right now. You know, just enough information to hook the Russians in.”
From gathered intel, this group was after all the scientists connected with any exoskeleton suit using the new skin—be they DARPA or other agencies—but her deliberate babbling away with Dr. Kantor was revealing enough to show she was working on something worth even more than the new tech for soldiers. Technically, the intent of exoskeleton research was to enable seriously wounded men and women to walk again. But there are other departments at DARPA working on building and enhancing a fighting machine.
Actually, she herself didn’t know much more. Science was her sister’s forte, not hers. However, she did know one thing mostly kept secret by the agencies at the moment. Her GEM sister was the Super Soldier Spy being trained. The chances of Vadim and his gang knowing this was quite high, seeing that they had moles embedded within the CIA for years. It was only recently discovered how much damage they’d done through the years, causing enough deaths to bring COS Command and GEM to come together to clean up.
His arms lightly circled around her. “Interesting stuff, but you forget to tell me one thing. Who the hell are you?”
“Well, according to you, your fiancé.”
The stone on her ring glowed red. They had ten seconds, max. Nadia immediately pressed the ridge again. She reached down and unzipped Walker’s pants.
* * *
“Look, I can explain that. First, we need to get out of here.” Walker looked down at her hands on his crotch. “What the hell are you doing?”
“If we’re getting married,” she said, still whispering, “the least you could do is let me check out the goods.” Aloud, she continued, “Ooooh, Honey Bun Bun, I can’t wait for our wedding night. Kiss me and make me feel better.”
