Rules In Deceit. Nichole Severn

       Chapter One

      “You’re not dead.” Rage and relief urged Elizabeth Dawson to push away from the conference room table and tackle her former partner to the floor, but she held her control.

      “It’s good to see you, too, Sprinkles.” Braxton Levitt’s rich, seductive voice skittered under her skin. The sound of his handpicked nickname for her on his lips—as if they were still friends—tightened the muscles down her spine. That gray gaze pinned her against the back of her chair. A rare occasion. His eyes were normally green, depending on what he wore. She pushed the useless fact to the back of her mind as he planted his elbows on the massive wood table, leaning forward. Thick muscle and tendons flexed beneath his thin T-shirt, and goose bumps prickled down her arms. After all this time, did he honestly think he could walk back into her life after what he’d done?

      “Don’t call me that.” No matter how many times she’d imagined this moment—of confronting him after all these months—there’d always been a small part of grief lodged in her chest. Her fingers curled into the center of her palms beneath the table. She had to stay in control. He wasn’t the man she thought he’d been. Her heartbeat pounded loud behind her ears. Something alive—full of fury—clawed its way up her throat, but she couldn’t touch him. Not in any way that counted. He’d made damn sure of that when she’d been pulled into countless interrogations after his disappearance. He cost her a career she’d spent a decade building. Now, no one but Blackhawk Security would hire her. Too much of a risk. Elizabeth mirrored his movements, clasping her hands in front of her on top of the table. “You paid my boss for my time, so get on with it. What do you want, Braxton?”

      Despite the federal charges stacked against him, Braxton leaned back in his chair as he ran one hand through his dark shoulder-length hair, completely at ease. No longer was he the clean-cut, out-of-shape intelligence analyst she’d known back at the NSA. He’d changed, now something more primal, as though he’d seen things he couldn’t possibly forget. New, bulky muscle stretched against the seams in his clothing. Physically different, yet the same man reflected underneath the confidence in his eyes, in his heart-stopping, manipulative smile. Under all those changes, he was still the man who’d walked out on her.

      “I missed you.” Stubble ran along his jawline, a little fuller than she remembered, deepening the permanent laugh lines around his mouth. She’d once missed the effects of that smile, the gut-clenching delirium he brought to the surface from no more than the upward tilt of his lips. The trust. Scary what that smile could hide.

      “Is that why you’re here?” she asked. “Because you missed me?”

      The blue ball cap pulled low over his head failed to hide the bottom of a scar cut through his left eyebrow he’d gotten during a fight as a teenager. He studied the dark, rainy view of the Chugach mountain range through the floor-to-ceiling windows as if her words hadn’t registered then recentered on her. He tapped his fingers against the gleaming conference room table as he sat back in his chair. “No.” His shoulders rose on a deep inhale. “Dalton Meyer is dead. Someone tied your old NSA supervisor to a chair and tortured him so they could hijack Oversight and find you. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

      Elizabeth’s blood iced. “That’s not possible.”

      The facial-recognition program she’d been contracted to build for the NSA had the highest level of security ever coded. She’d designed the system to run autonomously. No human interference. Not even the director of the NSA had access. Its job was to strictly surveil the American population to identify threats to national security using security cameras, traffic cameras, email scanning. Law enforcement, FBI, CIA—they all relied on those feeds. If they’d gone off-line or been hijacked as Braxton suggested…the possibilities were endless.

      The threats were endless.

      Elizabeth released the breath she’d been holding. There was only one other person in the world who had the ability to override Oversight’s programming. And he sat across the table from her. “How did you find me?”

      “The fact I’m sitting here says a simple name change isn’t working for you, Sprinkles,” he said. “If I was able to find you in less than twenty-four hours, how long do you think it’ll take someone who’s hijacked your program and is gunning for you?”

      “Stop calling me that. We’re not friends anymore.” Her jaw tightened. She followed passing movement outside the conference room through the blinds. Blackhawk Security provided home security, protection and investigative services and handled military contracts. She’d left the NSA behind, left that life behind. She’d moved on. Whatever this was, whatever Braxton wanted from her… No. Protecting her clients was her life now. Sullivan Bishop, Blackhawk Security’s founder and CEO, and the rest of the team had taken a chance on her. Trained her without questions about her past. She wasn’t about to blow it based on some wild theory the man who’d turned on her had cooked up to come back into her life. If someone had tortured her former project supervisor and was using her own program to hunt her, she had an entire team she could count on now. Former SEALs, Rangers, con men, a profiler. She didn’t need him.

      “Is that all you thought we were? Friends?” Braxton studied her, staring up at her from below thick, dark eyebrows. “I remember that night, Liz. Hard to believe I was that easy to forget.”

      “I haven’t forgotten anything.” She fought against the urge to swipe her hand across her lower abdomen. She’d waited four long months for this moment. Time to get it over with. Time to move on from him. “Since you’ve brought up that night, you should know I’ve been trying to find you for a few weeks now to tell you I’m pregnant.”

      Braxton sat forward in his chair, staring at her from across the table. “H-how?”

      Really? That was the question he wanted her to answer? “You want me to explain to you how a woman gets pregnant? Okay. You see, when a woman thinks she’s in love with her best friend she’s trusted for years—”

      “That’s not what I meant.” He exhaled hard. “We were careful. We used protection.”

      “Yes, well, obviously that didn’t work.” The pressure of his full attention tightened her insides. Liquid fire burned through her. She swallowed hard against the sensation. He wasn’t supposed to affect her like this. Her crush had ended the night he’d left her to pick up the pieces of his mess. He exuded confidence with his subtle movements. The haze clouding her head dissipated, and she forced everything inside her to go cold as she stood. Digging for her phone, she swiped her thumb across the screen and set the timer. “Now, if you came here for my help, you’re out of luck. I don’t work for the NSA anymore. So I hope you’ve got your money’s worth. This meeting is over. I’ll give you a ten-minute head start before I call the FBI.”

      “You’re being hunted, and you just told me you’re pregnant with my baby.” Braxton pushed away from the table. Three distinct lines deepened at the bridge of his nose. A day’s worth of dark stubble that matched his hair shifted over his strong jaw. “I’m not going anywhere.”

      “I bet all the