MONDAY. TRANS-ATLANTIC Flight.

Erin took her laptop from Riley and set it up on the tiny tray table in front of her. Her ears kept trying to pop without success as the massive air bus reached cruising altitude.

“Anything I can do?” he asked.

“No. Everything we salvaged was digital.”

“You want me to go through it? You could watch a movie.”

“Thanks, but I should do this. I mean, what if there’s confidential information or details about a new site? We don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“If Mark was involved...”

Erin swallowed. The possible connection to Mark had her nervous. There wasn’t anyone else who operated in Erbil with the kind of equipment or manpower that had issue with her. Before, when she’d thought this was a personal attack against her, she’d understood what was going on, even if the how didn’t make sense. With Mark factored in it was obvious he’d put her kidnappers up to the job.

But why?

She had no idea.

But she had eleven hours to figure it out.

“If you don’t need my assistance, I guess I’ll watch a movie.” Riley lowered his tray table and set the bag of rescued discs on it in easy reach for her.

“One of us should be having some fun.” She blew out a breath and plugged the first drive into her laptop.

If Mark had organized her kidnapping, it wasn’t a huge leap to assume he’d also killed her coworker, Osman Elahi, which landed this information in her lap. That made a lot more sense. If Osman had something on Mark that resulted in her death, she was an even easier target for Allied Security. If he was willing to kill for the information, then whatever she had was something worth dying for.

She worked her way through the first thumb drive, clicking through folders, opening reports. It was all mundane things for projects she’d already begun working on. Some of it she saved to file away later for whoever took this job after her. There was no reason to recreate work now that she’d found it, but there was nothing damning on the drive.

Erin switched it out for another, pausing for a moment to stare at Riley’s screen. Whatever he was watching had a lot of explosions. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than geology reports. She focused her attention on her laptop and continued clicking away.

After a certain point her fingers and mind started working independently of one another. She didn’t have to be dialed in to know that Mark didn’t give two fucks about maintenance reports, the vehicle roster or any number of the other mundane things she was looking at.

Her mind drifted to the man sitting next to her.

Riley.

She’d gone and gotten involved with someone she shouldn’t, and now she wanted him. He couldn’t promise her things, and she was grateful he didn’t try. That was actually a point in his favor, though she wasn’t going to admit that. She could tell herself that if they didn’t set expectations, she couldn’t get her hopes up and the hurt would be less if he disappointed her. That was a lie she’d tell herself to feel better, because the truth was the moment they were apart, she’d begin to miss him. The pain would begin, and she’d slowly break into a million pieces. She’d avoided heartbreak like this for years, but there would be no escaping it now. The decision she had to make was, did live the fantasy while she could? Or cut it off?

There was no denying that the smartest thing to do would be walking away from him. She needed to get her head and life sorted out before she brought anyone else into it. Yet she couldn’t convince her heart to stick with that plan. Which left her in flux. And that was never a good idea.

Flux meant binge watching movies that reminded her she had feelings. It meant eating whole pints of ice cream and finding the exact soap he used so she could go to sleep with his scent on her skin.

This was why she never allowed herself to truly date while living in Erbil.

The available men were either only there temporarily, or wanted a woman who adhered to strict religious ideals. Erin considered herself spiritual, but she would never be the kind of women they wanted. Which left her only options short term relationships.

And then there was Riley.

She’d seen him as here today, gone tomorrow. He still might be. She couldn’t trust her head or heart where he was concerned. She’d allowed herself to fall into bed with him, trust him, and let him in. That spelled danger for her. She was the kind of person who fell hard and quick. Dad liked to say it was her Cuban side coming out.

What if she let herself believe that Riley was coming back for her and he didn’t? It would break her heart, she’d cry, she’d probably gain five pounds in ice cream and pulled pork, but she’d get over it. She was starting a new chapter in life, doing what she still didn’t know, but maybe this was the right way to begin things.

Erin was coming home because she wanted to be near family. People she cared about. Didn’t it make sense that she should take a chance on love, too? Riley might not be the man of her future, but he was here now, and that was what mattered. She’d see what happened between them in the weeks to come, and if he broke her heart, at least she knew she could still feel. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

“Hey.” Riley nudged her.

“Hm?” She blinked at him and the attendant standing at the end of their row.

“You’re really in the zone, aren’t you?” He grinned and nodded at the woman. “What do you want to drink?”

“Water, please?” Yesterday had taught her a lesson. Stay hydrated at any cost.

“You want a break?” Riley asked

“No. I just started going through the email archive. I want to be done with as much of this as I can by the time we touch down.”

“Okay. Need anything, just say the word.” He fitted an ear bud back in his right ear.

Headphones. She should have thought about that.

“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra set of ear buds, would you?” Maybe some music would perk her up, get her thinking about something other than Riley.

“Bought some earlier and slid them in your bag.” He reached down and pulled out a brand new set of blue ear buds.

“They’re even my color.”

Riley smiled, clearly proud of himself. He closed his eyes and stretched his legs under the seat in front of him.

Her heart did a summersault. One thoughtful act and she wanted to throw herself at him.

Erin resisted the urge and turned her attention back to her laptop. Music. That’s what she needed to stay focused. Her selection was small, but it was better than the general nothing of the plane.

Focus.

She had work to do.

Osman’s email archive was exactly what she’d suspected it to be. Boring. Full of random, unnecessary work correspondence, a few newsletters, some personal mail, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

It was too normal.

Erin sat back in her chair and stared at the file structure.

The oil business was a tricky world. It wasn’t as simple as just buying the rights to some land, pumping the crude and shipping out for refining. The governments and military were involved. So were the locals and the people who’d lived off that land for generations. Nothing was as simple and clean as this email archive.

What was she missing?

Erin expanded the files. With thousands of messages, she couldn’t go through them all. So where did she start?

Everyone started their email account with a basic file structure in English. Inbox, Corporate Communications, General Announcements, Department Memos and Personal.

She eliminated both Corporate and General Announcements. She knew all of those emails because she’d received the same ones.

Department Memos she scrolled through slower, looking for anything she hadn’t received searching for the breadcrumbs.

Maybe she was expecting too much. The projects she’d inherited were more along the lines of improving existing facilities and managing equipment. Osman worked with maintaining projects, not establishing new ones.

Erin expanded the Personal file structure and groaned.

Though the inbox had few personal messages that was because the rest were filed and sorted. There was everything from a file about a fifth birthday to someone’s MRI.

This was going to suck.

Erin turned up her music and started clicking into the sub-files, scrolling through messages.

God, this was going to take forever.

The top couple of folders contained mostly correspondences with direct family. She skimmed the first few lines and moved on, and on, and on. It wasn’t until she reached a file called Apron Mitt that she found reason to pause. The first email had nothing to do with aprons or cooking.

Erin sat up.

Osman was not a native English speaker. She’d taken the goofy file names to be an error in translation. What if they weren’t incorrect translations at all?

“Riley?” Erin tabbed to a new message and then another.

“What?”

“I need your phone.”

“What’s going on?”

She plugged Apron Mitt into an internet search.

Nothing.

Okay, she’d thought it might be a more obvious code.

What if she was looking at it all mixed up?

She plugged in anagram behind the words.

The fourth search result down was Anagrams of IMPORTANT.

She clicked on the link and scrolled, matching up five folders of strange words that could be rearranged to say the same thing.

Important.

What was so important it had to be hidden even on a work computer?

“What’s going on?” Riley leaned on the arm rest.

She pulled on ear bud out and didn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“I think I found something.” She clicked into another file called Patton MRI.

There was only one email.

Erin opened it, but all the body contained was a link.

She clicked it.

A browser popped up. The loading bar crawled.

“What’d you find?” Riley asked.

“Anagrams. Five folders all titled with an anagram for important. I looked at an email I thought was about cooking. He was reporting someone cooking meth at one of the facilities.”

A black square filled the screen with an arrow. She clicked the play button and held her breath.

The video showed a dirt floor. She could barely make out voices in the ear bud.

“What is that?” Riley asked.

“Sh.” She thought one of the voices was familiar.

The camera lifted off the ground and pointed at two men sitting in chairs, gags in their mouths. One had a bloody, busted nose while the other hung his head forward to the point she couldn’t make out more than his profile.

Standing between both men was the man she recognized.

Thomas.

“Is that thing on?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah,” someone of screen said.

Mark Forest stepped into the frame, gun in hand. “This is proof of job completion, invoice twenty-three ninety-four.”

Riley reached over and closed the laptop, but not before she heard the first blast of gunfire.

She covered her mouth. Her whole body trembled.

“Erin? Erin, look at me, please?” Riley took her hands in his.

Parts of the events leading up to now made sense. Not entirely. Someone had sent this video to her Osman. Why? Was he blowing the whistle on people? Was his death really an accident?

“I need to see the email,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She pushed his hands away and opened the laptop. Before the video could continue, she closed the tab and went to the email. She studied the sender information. The email was generic, likely a throwaway from someone who didn’t want to be identified.

Someone had sent this to her co-worker.

He’d marked it as important.

She needed to know what became of the meth lab report.

“Erin, talk to me.” Riley turned toward her, his hand braced on the back of her chair, his other hovering over her track pad hand.

“I think...” She swallowed, fitting her hypothesis together. “I think Osman was ratting people out, and that’s what got him killed. That’s what made Mark try to kill me.”

There was no doubt that if this video got out, Mark and his company were over. They’d be lucky to be arrested if not outright killed.

“I can’t give this to NexGen.” Her next leap of logic was that her parent company knew. “NexGen had to know something. They had some idea this was going on. He would have told them, don’t you think? That invoice bit. Unless, he paid for the hit, and that video is the confirmation?”

“We don’t know anything.” Riley took her hands in his.

“I have to do something with this—”

“We will. Give this to me. Grant and Melody can take the video up the chain. We’ve got people who can have this figured out before we land, okay?”

She nodded.

This was so over her head she didn’t know what to do.

MONDAY, DALLAS INTERNATIONAL Airport, Texas.

Mark sat in the SUV parked across from the terminal. Any moment now, Erin Lopez would arrive, and a series of events would be set into motion. Ever since Mark began doing these off-the-book jobs, he’d used others to cover up the end goal. People asked fewer questions about a freak allergic reaction resulting in death than they did when someone was killed during a mugging.

With any luck, Erin’s story would be neatly wrapped up in a bow.

Following her kidnapping by the family members who held her responsible for the deaths of parents, siblings, and cousins, one, lone survivor would finish the job.

Khalil would get the revenge he’d always wanted and Mark would have one loose end tied up. There was still the matter of that email to deal with, but Mark could handle that. There were ways.

First, Erin. It always came down to her. He’d misjudged her the first time around and suffered from that mistake. Once she was out of the way, it would all fall into place.

IT WAS EARLY EVENING by the time Erin’s flight landed and they were through with customs. She shuffled forward, still no less stunned by the video she’d witnessed hours before. Riley kept a steadying hand on her lower back, guiding her through the crowded airport.

Everything came back to her. The kidnapping, the attack, Thomas, yesterday. It was because of that damn video. She hated being helpless, unable to change the course of things. The series of events that landed her here weren’t even because of her. Not really.

“Come on, this way,” Riley muttered.

Erin placed her hand against her ribs. She needed to breathe evenly. More controlled. Yet she couldn’t make herself slow down and take a damn breath. Pain stabbed through her spine and organs to bore against her sternum.

“I need a moment.” She side stepped the crowd and braced her hand on the back of a chair near the doors.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Sit.” Riley directed her into the closest chair and knelt in front of her.

“It’s just the pressure changes and sitting. I’ll be fine.” Not to mention stress and everything else.

“When was the last time you took something?”

“I don’t know.”

The hair on the back of her neck rose.

Erin glanced over her shoulder. Through the glass, out by the curb, a man was staring at her. He turned his head the instant their gazes crossed. She was left with the impression of tanned skin, dark hair and eyes.

“Are we ready to go?” She winced.

“I think so.” Riley stood and peered outside. “Yeah, looks like Grant and the others are loading. You okay to walk?”

Erin wanted out of here.

Riley took her hand and helped her to her feet. Together they stepped through the sliding glass doors out into the hot sauna of a Texas day. She fanned herself and glanced at the same man standing at the curb.

He was looking at her again, and this time he didn’t back down

There was something about his stare, the way he had it aimed directly at her that caused a shiver.

“Erin? Hey, Erin?” Riley stopped her halfway to the car. His gaze searched her eyes. “Something’s not right.”

“I’m fine. Can we just go?” She winced, the muscles in her back cramping up.

“Hey, guys?” Riley waved at Grant.

Erin put one foot in front of the other, but it was a challenge. She finally gave up and let go of Riley’s hand to bend forward, hands on her knees and struggle for breath.

“Fuck this. Erin, I’m sorry.”

Riley scooped her up in his arms. She cringed at the pain shooting through her back and around to her chest, but at least they were moving. She’d put up with the pain if they just got out of here.

He carried her all the way to the SUV and got in, cradling her on his lap.

“Where’s the nearest hospital?” Riley asked.

Erin turned her head. The same young man stood a dozen or so feet away, still staring at her. She buried her face against Riley’s shoulder and willed him away.

“It’s going to be okay,” Riley muttered.

Moments later they sped off, leaving the unknown man in their dust while Erin struggled for breath.