The figure crept across the lawn as if it was built from the shadows. A magical creature carved from the darkness that surrounded it. It darted in and out of the light and dark, appearing then vanishing so quickly it appeared to be a trick of the light. There was no one to track its progress as it crept closer to the house and swiftly climbed to the second-floor balcony and dropped over the rail. The figure was clad in black, it remained crouched for a moment after it dropped onto the balcony before it stood and jimmied the lock on the screen door open.
It tipped its head and then shook it. The man was an imbecile to sleep with the door open. It was an invitation for someone to break in, even if it was on the second floor. The locks on screen doors were useless. The door glided open silently, allowing the figure to slip inside. It paused to glance at the man sleeping blissfully across the room. The silent intruder moved through the darkness as if it and the shadows were old friends. It slipped out the door into the hallway beyond.
The shadow was unaware that the moment it glided from the room, the man rolled silently from his bed, he wasn't as oblivious to the invasion as he had seemed.
Treavor slipped from the room to follow the home invader down the darkened corridor. He knew it was only a matter of time before a thief showed up. Many of his programs were important. Whoever the thief was would be in for a shock when they turned whichever program they stole over to their employer. All the real programs were carefully locked away, the computer he left out in case of an intruder held only useless, false programs. He moved up beside the office door to peer around the doorjamb into the room.
Whoever sent this person had made certain they hired a pro, the guy was working only by the dim light of the computer screen. The desk chair had been pushed across the room so it remained out of the thief's way. The intruder was crouched behind the desk so he had no idea how big the guy was. It didn't matter because he would let the man get away with whatever he'd come to steal. There was no point in creating the false programs if he didn't let them get away with it. All of the false programs contained hidden code that would allow him to track them and find the culprits who had stolen it. The computer's screen went dark. The guy worked quickly. He was about to leave and hurry back to his room when the intruder stood and moved out from behind the desk. When he caught sight of the intruder's silhouette he had a sudden interest in finding out who she was. A wicked grin pulled his lips up and he pressed back against the wall. When she slipped from the room he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest.
"Something tells me that you don't belong here, honey."
"Shit." She slammed an elbow back into his stomach and then stomped down on his foot.
He released her with a painted shout. "Idiot," he muttered. He'd underestimated her because she was a female, stupid move. He ignored the pain in his foot as well as the fact he was supposed to let her get away and chased her down the hallway. He tackled her as she darted through the door into his room. They fell and she scrambled away from him, twisted around, and kicked out at him nearly catching him in the groin. He wrestled her to the floor and pinned her wrists above her head. He wrapped one of his legs over hers when she tried to kick him. He grinned at her.
Her eyes flicked around the bedroom. He figured she was trying to find some way to escape him. She'd been very close to getting away and she looked very disappointed that he'd caught her.
"Let me go, I only have a few minutes to get the hell out of here! If I'm late then he'll kill them! Please, you have to let me leave!"
That was an interesting tactic. She was playing the sympathy card to get him to release her. "You'll go when I say you can go."
Her glare was filled with anger. "I will go now! Propulso!"
He flew away from her with a curse. Damn repulsion spell. He should have been prepared in case she was a sorcerer but he hadn't been thinking straight. He rolled, jumped to his feet, and pursued her out onto the balcony. She was gone, vanished into the black night as if she'd never been. He slapped the railing with a curse.
"Well, that ended well," he muttered before he went back inside, threw on a t-shirt and sweat pants, and went to his office where he flipped the computer on and tapped at the keys. He smiled when a tiny blip appeared on the screen. Well, he'd know what she was up to, at least until she changed clothes. He was glad he'd thought to grab the tiny tracking device from the drawer beside his bed before he followed her to the office. He kept them stashed all around the house because he was a paranoid bastard. He bent and pulled his other laptop from the drawer, opened it, and waved his hand over it while he muttered the spells needed to unlock it. He tapped the keyboard and opened several files. He watched the blip on the other screen out of the corner of his eyes while he worked.
***
Brandissa's heart raced as she pulled to the side of the road at the predetermined rendezvous location and prayed she wasn't late. She was sure she'd broken a multitude of traffic laws on the way over here. She should have taken her motorcycle instead of the car, it would have been much faster, but she had thought a car would appear less suspicious. A nondescript black sedan sat on the side of the road waiting for her. Two men in black suits stood in front of the car waiting for her to arrive. She flung the door open, jumped free, and ran to where the men waited.
"I have the file. Where are my parents?" One of the men stepped forward and held his hand out. She shook her head. "No, not until I see my parents."
He emitted a growl, grabbed her hand, hauled her forward, and searched her pockets with his free hand. He pulled the little memory drive from her pocket and handed it to his partner before he flung her away from him.
"Hey, you can't do that, we had a deal! Where are my parents?"
"Plans have changed, the boss will contact you with further instructions."
"That wasn't the deal we made! I want my parents back now! He promised! Where are they?"
"Plans change," the man repeated. The men turned and walked around the car to climb inside. The engine started and she ran to the driver's door and pounded on the window.
"No, you can't do this! I got your damn program for you! Give me my parents back!"
The car's tires spit gravel as it pulled away from the side of the road and drove away. She sank to the ground and stared after them until the taillights vanished from sight. They had no reason to change things! She'd only been a couple of minutes late! It was that stupid man's fault! He had made her late! She rose and ran back to her car, flung her body inside, and started the engine.
"I'll wring his neck!" She had the skill to do it with or without magic. She peeled away from the side of the road, made a quick u-turn, and sped back toward his house. The drive back to his house was a blur. This time she parked in front of his house instead of two blocks away. It took her little time to cross the yard this time because she made zero effort to remain hidden, she climbed up and flung her body over the rail of the balcony.
She stopped with a frown and stared at his empty bed before she turned and went into the hallway. The light in his office was on so she stalked down to the door.
"If you have returned to complain about my treatment of you then I'd like to remind you that you did break into my home," he said without looking up from his computer screen.
She stopped. "I didn't break anything, you left your door open, you imbecile."
He looked up at her with a chuckle. "That's an interesting argument but my screen door was locked. Just because the glass door was open it doesn't mean you have the right to go slinking through my home."
"And if you go take a look at it the lock is still functional. I broke nothing and I don't slink." A shiver had run up her spine at the way he said the word slinking. It had been like an intimate caress. "I'm not here to discuss the skills that allowed me entry to your home. You made me late and now the bastard has changed the plans! I'm never going to get my parents back and it's your fault! What are you going to do about it?"
"Listen, honey, I don't know why they picked you and I don't care. You might be the best at what you do, I don't care. The most likely reason they changed plans is that your parents are already dead not because I interfered in your little operation. Get on with your life and go rob, someone else, I have work to do."
She stomped across the room and slammed her palms flat on the surface of his desk. "I do not have to take your crap, asshole. I am not some common criminal. They chose me because I am the best at what I do. I am one of the top agents in my field. I worked damn hard to get where I am."
He snorted. "I wasn't aware that thieves were referring to themselves as agents now."
"I work for the federal government, moron! I infiltrate terrorist cells, and gather information to bring them down! If you want to fling insults then fine but try and find out who you're flinging them at first!" she shouted.
He had no response to that. He'd expected some burglar, a good one, but still a common criminal. A federal agent? Nope, not what he expected. "Uh, sorry?"
She snorted. "Right, whatever. My parents aren't dead, I would know if they were."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you put a spell on them?"
"Excuse me? What are you talking about?"
He chuckled. "It's a simple question. Did you put a spell on them to track them?"
Her eyes narrowed on him. "What do you know about spells?"
"I know that I shouldn't have underestimated you and if I hadn't then you wouldn't have gotten me with that repulsion spell."
"You're a sorcerer? I thought you were a mortal, they never told me you were a sorcerer." She frowned. "I wonder if they even know."
"You took a job without asking for all the details about your target?" he asked her with a frown.
"I didn't exactly have much of a choice. Especially not after they informed me that they had my parents. Once they allowed me to speak to my dad I knew it was no joke."
"What did they tell you?" he asked as one finger tapped on the edge of his desk.
She threw her body down into one of the chairs set before his desk, slouched down, and placed her feet on the corner of the desk. "The guy who called didn't say much about anything. He told me he had my parents, let me talk to my dad briefly, then sent me an email with instructions and a blueprint of your house."
"They didn't give you much to work with. You did well considering that."
"That is why I'm the best at what I do."
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "You're still going to insist on blaming this on me, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Fine, whatever. Okay, I'll help however I can but don't come crying to me in disappointment if I'm correct and they're already dead, I warned you." He dropped his hands from his eyes with a sigh and looked at the computer screen, tapped an icon to open a program, and clicked to start it up. "They haven't tried to boot the program yet, the second they do I'll know. Once they run the program I can track it and figure out where they are."
She swung her feet down from the desk and leaned forward. "How can you do that?"
"A lot of my programs are important and I'm not an idiot, regardless of what you believe." He tapped a finger on the secondary laptop he'd pulled out after she'd left earlier. "This is my real computer, the one I do my work on. This one over here, the one that was sitting on my desk that you stole the program from is a fake. All the programs on here are nothing but tracer files. They appear real on the surface but they don't do shit, except allow me to track where the program has been taken."
A smile lit her face. "You're brilliant!"
"And that would be why I'm the best at what I do." He flashed her a smile.
Her lips turned down into a frown. "Very funny."
"There isn't much we can do until they start up the program. Why don't you head back to wherever you're staying, grab your stuff, and come back here." He smirked at her.
"As fetching as you look in that attire, I don't think it's an everyday kind of outfit." He pulled a key from the desk drawer and tossed it at her. It wasn't surprising that she snatched it out of the air without missing a beat. "This time use the front door when you return, I wouldn't want my neighbors to get the wrong idea."
She stared at the key a moment and thought seriously about using the balcony when she came back just to annoy him. "Fine, I'll be back in a little bit." She rose to leave and stopped at the door. "Thank you," she told him before she vanished.
He clicked back to the tracker program and watched the little blip move across the screen. "Well, now what?" He didn't need a thief hanging around his house. "Federal agent," he reminded himself with a sigh. How did that saying go? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. One corner of his lips pulled upward into a half-smile as he wondered how close he should keep her. The black jumpsuit she wore was formfitting and left nothing at all to the imagination. He'd gotten a damn good idea of exactly how nice her body felt when he'd tackled her earlier. She was pretty, not exotic but he saw something inviting about her deep, soft brown eyes. He itched to feel the silken strands of her chocolate brown hair as they slid through his fingers. He clenched his hand into a fist. Great, he was losing his mind. Since when did he fantasize about a woman so readily? "Well dammit," he muttered as he realized with a start that he'd never asked her name. He tried to focus on his work but he was tired and all he wanted was to go back to bed. He needed to wait for her to return and get her settled before he could do that.
***
Brandi had exited via the balcony, despite the key he'd given her. "Last time, I swear," she told herself as she dropped to the ground. She jogged back to where she'd parked and drove back to her house as quickly as she dared. She parked in the garage and entered the house, she stood silently inside the door and waited.
Nothing came at her, no warnings or anything that indicated that anyone had entered her domain while she was away.
She waved a hand in the air. "Discuticutere."
Lights came on as she pulled away the spells she'd placed on the house to protect it. The house was safe. At least whoever had taken her parents hadn't come here. She trod through the kitchen, down the hallway to her bedroom, and threw open the closet doors.
"Suitcase ... suitcase ... it's in here somewhere," she muttered as she shoved things around searching for the suitcase. "Ah-ha got you! I need to clean this closet out." She yanked the suitcase free and tossed it onto the bed. It was a small carry-on bag but it was all she had. Her parents had borrowed her bigger one when they'd gone on a trip a couple of months ago and she hadn't gone to pick it up from them yet. She sighed. Neat and tidy packing wasn't one of her strong suits, she threw items into the bag without folding any of them. She didn't know whether she could trust the guy to help her, but she had little choice. The program she'd taken was his and he knew it better than she did and he seemed to know his way around a computer. All she could do was hope he could help her find her parents. She paused, a shoe dangling from her hand and tears in her eyes.
"He has to be wrong. They're still alive. I need them to be alive." She dropped the shoe into the suitcase, found its mate, and tossed it into the bag. She flipped the suitcase shut, sat on it, and zipped it closed. She grabbed her laptop and stuffed it into the outside pocket as she strode back to the garage. She stood in the garage and stared at her car for a moment. "Nope, not making that mistake again. Speed is the name of the game."
She walked across the garage and strapped the suitcase to the back of her bike, swung her leg over the seat, and settled onto the motorcycle. More tears filled her eyes as she reached out to start the bike and memories flooded her brain. She had always been a daddy's girl through and through.
Her father loved his motorcycle, it drove her mother nuts after she was born. Her mother bought a car but her father refused. The second she was old enough to ride he put her on the back of his bike. From the moment she'd taken her first ride she fell in love with it. Her father taught her everything she knew about motorcycles. She could strip one down, rebuild it, fix it, and take care of her bike as needed. A smile pulled her lips upward, her father was a bit disappointed when she chose to buy a newer bike. The man loved his classic Indian and he considered the newer bikes nothing but fiberglass cookie-cutter bikes with no personality. He constantly teased her Uncle Ken about his bike. She would get her parents back. There was no way in hell she'd let this asshole take them from her.
With a sigh, she started the bike and smiled as she listened to the rumble of the engine before she pulled out of the garage. There was nothing like it in the world. A simple wave of her hand, and a muttered spell, put the protections back into place on her home. It was odd to suddenly realize she had never asked the man his name. The time constraint the guy who took her parents put on her, meant she didn't have the time to do the research for the job that she would have normally done for a mission. If she'd had the time she would have found out all she could about the man. The asshole who sent her on this stupid mission hadn't exactly been forthcoming with details. She'd been given blueprints for the house and the name of the program the guy wanted, along with where to meet his thugs to hand over the program, that was it.
She'd sat there in his office speaking to him and never once thought to ask him his name, then again, he'd never asked hers either. It was an odd situation for her because once she'd gotten past her anger she felt at ease with him. It wasn't something she was used to, especially with men, in her line of work there was always the feeling that she needed to compete with the men she worked with. She needed to prove she was the best, to come out on top, and show them that a woman could do the job as well as any man.
She pulled into the driveway and parked. There was no worry that someone would steal her bike because it was spelled, it would always return to wherever she was. It was a spell her father had created long before she was born. It felt a bit odd to let herself into his home, but he had given her the key. The foyer was open to the ceiling. She resisted the urge to whistle and see if it echoed. To the right was a large, open living room, and to her left was an archway that led into the kitchen. In front of her along the righthand wall was a staircase, she went upstairs and down to his office where she leaned against the doorframe.
He was currently staring at his computer screen with a frown. The man was handsome, even with that frown on his face. She could hear him muttering though she couldn't make out what he was grumbling about. He leaned closer to the screen and a few of the copper golden locks of hair fell over his forehead. The slightly too long hair was adorable on him, she felt an almost irresistible urge to walk over and brush those hanging locks off his forehead. His eyes narrowed on the screen. Damn those eyes of his, they were a deep green that she'd like to remain hidden in forever. Perfect, she was going soft in the head. There had never been a man in her life that she'd gone all romantic and poetic about. She cleared her throat to gain his attention.
His head jerked up as if she'd startled him. "Sorry, I was trying to finish this. I tend to get a little lost when I'm working. Are you tired?"
She nodded because she was still lost in those eyes of his and she didn't trust herself to speak.
"All right, I'll show you to your room." He rose and strode across the room to brush past her into the hallway.
A small shiver passed over her skin when his arm touched hers. She was losing her mind and she hadn't even known the man for more than an hour or two. She followed him down the hallway, passed his room, and stopped before the next door.
"Here we go, honey, it's all yours."
"Do not call me honey, I am not your anything."
He shrugged. "Sorry but I don't know your name."
"Right, sorry I forgot. Brandissa Caulfield."
"Pretty name, well Brandissa Caulfield, this is your room for however long you need it."
"Since we're probably going to be stuck with one another for at least a couple of days I think we can drop the formality, call me Brandi."
"All right."
She moved past him to throw her suitcase on the bed. The room was as large as his and had a bathroom. "Nice. Thank you again for helping me." She turned to face him. "I don't know your name either."
He propped a shoulder against the doorframe. "Davis."
She cocked her head to the side. "Is that a first name or a last name?"
He chuckled. "Last name."
The man was being deliberately evasive. "So am I to call you Mr. Davis then? That seems a bit formal as well as annoying. It's been a while since I was in school and referred to anyone as mister."
He burst out laughing. "You could just call me Davis."
"What exactly is funny about this situation?"
The grin remained on his face as he folded his arms over his chest. "I had this absurd vision of you in one of those school uniforms. White blouse, little plaid skirt, and all of that."
"Are you being this difficult on purpose?" she asked. He stared at her without responding. "Why won't you tell me your name? Did your parents stick you with something awful like Melvin?"
He snickered. "I was making you suffer. You required some penance for the elbow to my ribs and the foot stomp earlier."
She snorted. "You deserved it, you grabbed me! I was defending myself. How was I supposed to know you weren't some pervert?" She huffed and folded her arms beneath her breasts. "You weren't exactly fully dressed."
"If you'll recall, I was asleep when you slunk into my home. Should I sleep fully clothed? I suppose I'll have to find myself some pajamas now, no more boxers while you're staying here. Not sure I own any."
Her cheeks grew hot at his words and her eyes dropped to the floor. It was then that she noticed his foot and winced. It was swollen and an ugly bruise was already forming. Her military-issued boots had done a good deal of damage to his barefoot.
She looked up at him. "I'm sorry about your foot. Why haven't you healed it?"
One of his shoulders lifted in a shrug. "I'm not very good at healing spells. I stopped trying to accomplish something I can't seem to improve at. I might be a sorcerer but I rarely use my magic. It simply isn't my thing."
The man seemed arrogant and she didn't expect him to admit he wasn't good at something. She moved over to where he stood. "Let me fix it, it's the least I can do." She bent and held a hand over his foot. "Medicor." She waited while the spell worked then stood with a smile. "Is that better?"
"Yes, thank you. I'll see you in the morning. I'm hoping by then they'll activate the program and we can figure out where this guy is hiding. Goodnight."
"All right, night."
He turned away and stopped with a hand on the frame of the door to look back at her. "Oh, and Brandi ..." he paused.
"Yes?"
A smile lifted the corners of his lips. "It's Treavor." The door shut behind him.
It took her a minute to realize that he'd just told her his first name and she grinned.