CHAPTER TWO
YEAH, WES AND Holden are going with me,” Dalton said into his cell phone. “We might need you to convert that four-day pass into a leave form though. This little vacation might stretch into next week.”
Kimber drove south on Highway 101, her stomach in knots as Dalton lied to the senior chief petty officer in his platoon about heading to San Francisco with his friends to do some sightseeing. He’d been going to call before flying up from San Diego, but they barely made it to the airport in time to catch their flight.
“A buddy called me out of the blue and offered to let me use his condo while he and his wife are out of town,” Dalton continued. “You’re always saying we need to get away from work when we can, and this sounded like a perfect opportunity.”
Kimber touched the brakes as the cars ahead of her slowed and began to stack up. Sunday afternoon traffic heading out of San Fran wasn’t normally this bad, and she prayed they weren’t stuck in it for long. She leaned a little to the left in her seat, trying to see what was holding everyone up. The security people at JASCO usually locked the doors around six o’clock on the weekends. If they were lucky, Dalton would have plenty of time to get a look at the building’s security before that. But that would only happen if they got to Silicon Valley in the next twenty minutes.
On the bright side, being stuck in traffic gave her an opportunity to take a breath and think, something she hadn’t done since knocking on Dalton’s door.
She’d been absolutely terrified standing there waiting for her former boyfriend to answer the door. What if he hadn’t been home? What if he’d moved? What if he’d told her to go to hell and slammed the door in her face before she’d gotten a chance to tell him about Emma?
Just thinking about how terrified their little girl must be right then made it hard to breathe. Was Emma hungry? Cold? Had those assholes hurt her? If anything happened to her little girl…
Kimber suddenly went lightheaded and she tightened her grip on the wheel, forcing herself to keep it together. She had to stop thinking like that and focus on what they had to do to get Emma back.
Like Dalton was doing.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as he said something to his boss about being careful and not getting into trouble. She wondered if his boss had to worry about Dalton and his fellow SEALs getting into trouble a lot. She couldn’t imagine that being an issue. She knew for a fact Dalton wasn’t a troublemaker. From the way Holden and Wes had immediately said they’d help, she could tell they were good guys, too.
Dalton’s friends had flown up with them, then Holden had rented a car, saying something about seeing some people so he could get the equipment they were going to need for this mission. She’d wanted to ask who the people were, but Dalton had merely nodded and told them to be careful.
Beside her, Dalton hung up and slipped his cell phone into the cargo pocket on his khaki pants, then stared straight ahead, his expression unreadable.
She kept taking quick peeks at him every now and then in the stop-and-go traffic. She felt horrible he had to lie to his boss, but Dalton hadn’t hesitated because he knew Emma’s safety depended on what they were about to do.
Kimber was still in awe at Dalton’s reaction to the situation. Two hours ago, he hadn’t known Emma existed. Now, based on nothing more than a photo and Kimber’s story, he was ready to risk prison or worse to save a little girl he’d never met. At some level, she’d always known he was that kind of man. It was probably why he’d been the first person she’d turned to for help when it was obvious she’d never be able to do any of this on her own.
If you always knew he was an incredible man, why did you walk away from him?
It was a question she’d asked herself a million times over the past five years.
Kimber resolutely steered her mind in a different direction. She couldn’t change the past. She’d made her decision and now she had to live with it.
She glanced at Dalton again still lost in thought in the passenger seat. Even in a moment like this, she was struck at how absolutely perfect he was with his short, dark blond hair, deep chocolate brown eyes, and strong jaw covered in scruff. It was difficult to believe, but in some ways, he was even more attractive than when they’d been together. He was bigger and more muscular, too, his biceps and pecs filling out his shirt in a way they hadn’t before. Then there was that sexy Southern accent of his. It had always made her melt.
“You doing okay?” he asked suddenly, glancing at her.
She nodded. “I’m better than before. At least I feel like I’m doing something and not just staring at the wall wondering how I let this happen to our daughter.”
Dalton started to say something when a ding from his phone interrupted him. He pulled it out, scanning it for a moment before tapping a few keys. “That was Chasen—my boss—letting me know he put the other guys and me on leave.”
She chewed on her lip. “Is it going to be bad if he finds out that you actually came up here to help find your daughter?”
Dalton snorted. “Oh, he’s going to find out one way or the other. But he’s not going to care about me trying to help my daughter. The thing that will piss him off is the fact that I lied to him about it and that I dragged Wes and Holden into this with me. So, yeah. I’m going to catch hell about it.”
She winced. “I’m sorry.”
Kimber stomped on the brake again as the car ahead of them came to a complete stop. Why the hell did there have to be traffic today of all days?
“Don’t be,” he said. “When I said I’d help you, I did it knowing it might come at a price. I have no problem paying that price, because nothing matters but Emma.”
She nodded, unable to do more as tears threatened to slip out. Dalton was being so amazing about all this. Why couldn’t things have been different between them?
Silence filled the car, leaving Kimber wrapped up in her own thoughts. It wasn’t a good place to be since it was full of fears, doubts, and recriminations. Things could have been so different right now if she’d only done things differently. Something as simple as deciding to push Emma on the swing instead of letting her play alone. Or maybe taken her to a movie instead of the park.
The weight of all her poor decisions began to crush her, making her heart beat out of control and her breathing shallow. She was on the verge of another panic attack. She could feel it.
“Why did you leave when you realized you were pregnant?”
Dalton’s question jerked her out of the black hole she was spiraling toward, and while she was afraid to answer, she was grateful for the lifeline he’d given her.
“You were gone on a mission when I realized I’d missed my period,” she said softly, remembering that day in exquisite detail. She should. She’d relived it frequently. “You’d been gone for weeks by that point and I had no idea when you might get back.”
“It’s not my fault I couldn’t tell you where I was going,” he said sharply.
She took her eyes off the road, glancing his way. “I know that. I never blamed you for what you could or couldn’t tell me. But when I found out I was pregnant, I was alone and had to make decisions based on the fact that I didn’t know when—or even if—you’d get back.”
Dalton opened his mouth, then closed it again as he considered that. “Okay, I can’t fault you for that, especially since that particular deployment lasted four months. I’m only sorry you had to handle something like that on your own.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure if things would have been different even if you’d been there.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were both twenty-years-old. I was starting my sophomore year at the University of San Diego and you were a brand-new SEAL still trying to learn the ropes and make a good impression. Neither one of us was ready to start a family, but from the moment I realized I was pregnant, I knew I was keeping the baby.”
Kimber still remembered sitting on the bed in her dorm, staring at the plus sign on the pregnancy test strip, and trying to visualize all the different ways her life was about to change. But the idea of not keeping the child hadn’t ever been something she’d considered.
“The last thing I wanted was for you to think I was using a baby to trap you in a marriage you didn’t want to be in,” she added, trying to put things into the right words. Because this next part had been the hardest. “I’d seen those kinds of arrangements fall apart too many times. It didn’t work for the adults involved, and it was even worse for the kids.”
Dalton didn’t say anything for a long time. When he finally did speak, his voice was calmer than she expected.
“I guess if I’d been in your situation, I probably would have done the same thing you did. Truthfully, I’m not sure how I would have handled it if I’d come back from that mission and found you four months pregnant. Most likely, I would have wanted to do the right thing—quote, unquote—and ask you to marry me. And maybe you’re right. Maybe that would have ended in disaster. But still, there’s a part of me that’s pissed you took the option away from me. You didn’t even give me a chance.”
Dalton wasn’t saying anything Kimber hadn’t agonized over five years ago. “You have every right to be pissed, but you have to believe me when I tell you that I spent weeks playing the what-if game. Ultimately, I wasn’t in a position to wait around and see what might or might not work out. I had to make a decision based on what was best for me and our unborn child. I’m sorry I cut you out like that, but at the time, I simply couldn’t see another way.”
Kimber hadn’t wanted to be so blunt, but at the end of the day, that was what it had all come down to. She’d had to find a way to care for herself and a baby when she had no idea what Dalton might have wanted.
“So, you moved back home?” he asked, the heat that had been in his voice earlier gone now, as if he’d realized the past was too far behind them to argue about.
She nodded and eased her Mini Cooper into the right-hand lane so she could take the Veterans Boulevard exit in a few miles. They’d be at JASCO soon.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I knew there was no way I could take care of a baby on my own, not if I wanted to keep going to school. So, I moved back in with my parents and three months after giving birth to Emma, I enrolled in a data science program at the University of San Francisco. My mom took care of Emma while I loaded up on classes and finished my degree. After I graduated, I moved out and got my own place, but my parents still help out a lot.”
“Do they know Emma has been kidnapped?”
“No.” Kimber slowed down to turn into the JASCO entrance with its small guard shack and drop-down gate. “They’d never go along with any plan that didn’t involve the police.”
“I wouldn’t hold that against them,” he said. “It’s what a large portion of the population would do.”
When Kimber pulled to a stop at the gate, a tall curly-haired man in the blue uniform of a security guard smiled at her pleasantly. She knew the guy well since she’d chatted with him nearly every day since she started working there, but that didn’t stop her from tensing anyway.
“Hey, Dennis,” she said, forcing herself to return his smile. “How are you doing today?”
He glanced down at his clipboard before answering. “I’m good. What are you doing here on your day off?”
“I wanted to show off the place to a friend from out of town and figured it would be better to do it on the weekend when no one’s around.”
Dennis leaned down and glanced in the car, giving Dalton a quick scan. Kimber could almost hear the wheels in the older man’s head spinning as he looked back and forth between her and Dalton. “Sure thing. Let me open the gate for you.”
“So,” Dalton said as they drove through the gate and onto the property. “You always bring your boyfriends to JASCO for a visit?”
Pulling into her assigned space near the front of the sprawling four-story office building, she put the car in park then looked at Dalton with a sigh. “I work fifty hours a week, sometimes more. When I’m not working, I spend every hour of my life with our daughter. So, to answer your question, no, I don’t bring my boyfriends around because I don’t date. I don’t have time.”
Dalton didn’t say anything as he got out of the car, but it seemed like her answer pleased him more than it should have. Shaking her head, Kimber followed him out, catching up to lead him into the building.
As they walked past the big security desk on the far side of the marble-floored lobby, Kimber pointed out the standing banners and mounted posters that advertised some of JASCO’s most recent successes. While Dalton nodded, she could tell his attention was elsewhere. As he scanned the lobby, she was sure he was memorizing the layout of the building and everything in it.
“Do they leave all the lights on at night?” he asked quietly as she led him down the long hallway toward her office.
“No. After dark, they turn off most of the lights along the corridors. Only about every fourth one is left on to conserve power. Most of the offices have motion-activated lights that turn off completely if no one’s moving around in the room.”
Kimber showed him around the whole building like she really was giving him an innocent guided tour for the benefit of the security cameras. Even though Dalton scanned each room like a machine, he was still somehow able to engage in conversation, asking questions about how long she’d worked at the company—two years—and what had attracted her to JASCO in the first place—the creative working environment, flexible hours, amazing health care, and great pay. She even got into the kind of work she did for JASCO.
Dalton nodded as she explained how she used statistics, data mining tools, and computer-based models and algorithms to identify new technology patterns and trends for the company to explore and exploit. Within minutes, his eyes started to glaze over. That was okay. She was used to it. Most people didn’t get her job, which was a combination of heavy duty math and marketing, but she loved it.
In between the friendly questions about her job, Dalton peppered her with more urgent ones concerning how many guards roamed the building at night, what was the latest time she’d ever seen employees working, if there was a cleaning crew, what happened when power went out, and if the local cops ever did drive-by patrols of the parking lot. The questions—both the innocuous social ones and the pointed security-related ones—came so fast she was barely able to keep up.
She was leading him down the long, wide hallway toward the cafeteria and the secure side of the company’s R&D facilities beyond when two men stepped out of the main conference room. Kimber’s heart sank. Seriously? Of all the people to run into today, it had to be the distinguished-looking Jasper Cole, CEO of the company, and eagle-eyed Henry Carpenter, JASCO’s head of security. What were the odds of that?
“Kimber!” Jasper did a double take. “What the heck are you doing here on a Sunday?”
She pasted on the same fake smile she’d used on Dennis earlier and braced herself, knowing she’d have to be a bit more convincing with her boss then she’d been with the security guard. Jasper had been the first person she called when she realized she’d need time off to get her daughter back. She’d laid it on thick, talking about wanting some quality time with Emma. Fortunately, Jasper had been fine with her taking a week off. He’d hired her right out of college and was probably the best boss on the planet.
“That was the plan, but my parents had other ideas. They decided to take their granddaughter to the zoo today, so I had some free time on my hands today and decided to stop by and take care of one or two e-mails before I disappear for the week.”
Henry’s gray eyes narrowed as he eyed Dalton up and down. “And who’s this?”
Being suspicious was a permanent condition for Henry. He’d been with the company since day one, and while Kimber had never had an issue with the guy, there hadn’t been much in the way of casual chatter between them, either. Henry was all work and no play.
But just because the man was staring at Dalton like her former boyfriend was about to steal something didn’t mean anything. The big, broad-shouldered man with the poorly fitting suit looked that way at everyone. He probably went through the employees’ desks at night to see if they were taking company paper clips home with them.
“This is Dalton Jennings,” she said. “He’s a friend from San Diego.”
Dalton grinned and shook hands with the men. Jasper was all smiles, as usual. Henry on the other hand, regarded Dalton warily.
“What kind of work do you do, Dalton?” Henry asked.
“Freelance problem solving,” Dalton said smoothly.
Jasper looked at Kimber. “I certainly don’t mind you bringing people around to show off the facilities, but you’re on vacation this week, so don’t even think about opening a business-related e-mail. Enjoy your time off with your family. The job will be here when you get back.”
She nodded, assuring her boss she would, happy to have any excuse to get her and Dalton out of there. Her pulse was racing and she was sure her intention to steal from the company was written all over her face. But before she could grab Dalton’s hand and head for the exit, he gestured down the hallway toward the secure side of the facility.
“Is there a restroom I could use?” he asked.
“Keep going down the main hallway, then take a right turn toward the cafeteria,” Jasper said. “If you get to a steel door with a cypher lock on it, you’ve gone too far.”
Dalton flashed her a smile. “You want me to meet you at the car?”
Kimber didn’t have a clue how she was supposed to answer that question. What if that stuff about the car was some kind of secret Navy SEAL code that she was supposed to interpret as Run for your life. Our cover has been blown!
She nodded and turned to head toward the lobby. Jasper immediately fell into step beside her. When Henry didn’t join them, she glanced over her shoulder to see him standing there watching Dalton walk down the hallway like he was worried Dalton was going to steal a roll of toilet paper. He must have decided the toilet paper wasn’t that valuable because after another moment, JASCO’s head of security finally turned to follow her and Jasper.