Christmas Data Breach Read online

  “Who are you? Where are you taking me?”

  “I told you to shut up.” Venom dripped from the man’s words.

  Would Detective Kamal worry when whoever she sent to take Mya home reported she was missing? Or would the harried detective assume she’d found her own way home? The difference meant there could already be people looking for her, not that she could be sure they’d find her before... She wasn’t sure before what, but she knew she didn’t want to find out.

  Without warning, the man swerved onto the side of the road and put the car in Park. He flashed the headlights twice.

  Mya glimpsed a dark-paneled van parked a few feet ahead in the car’s headlights. No one emerged from the van, but panic threatened to overwhelm her. The only reason to flash the headlights was to let a partner know you were there.

  Leaving the headlights off, the man exited the car.

  Mya fought with the door handle on the back passenger side door until the shadow of the man rounded the front of the car and loomed at the door. She slid to the other side of the back seat as he wrenched the door open.

  “Get out.”

  She had no idea what the man had planned for her, but the danger she was in couldn’t have been clearer.

  “Out!”

  Malice creased the hard lines of the man’s face. He was big and could yank her from the car like a rag doll if he chose to. If she had any chance of getting away, she’d have to get out and fight.

  Mya slid sideways along the back seat to the door the man held open. At the edge of the seat, she turned, throwing her feet out of the door. She didn’t aim for the ground though, instead jerking them upward and toward her captor.

  His face registered surprise, but his reflexes were quick. He jumped backward and the kick to the groin glanced off him. The blow still sent him doubling over. His breath skirted her cheek as she pitched forward past him and out of the car.

  Her laptop bag banged against her hip as she raced down the embankment toward the relative safety of the trees. As she reached the tree line, a crack split the air. Bark flew off the tree closest to her, cutting a slash across her cheek. She kept running. The foliage gave her some cover, but instinct screamed that putting as much distance between herself and the man after her was her only chance of survival.

  Mya plowed deeper into the woods. Her heart pounded, more from fear than exertion, but she pressed on, willing her legs to move faster.

  She slowed to get through a thick area of brush. Thankfully, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the woods, or she’d have missed the steep drop-off on the other side of the thicket in time. She reached out, grabbing hold of a low tree branch to slow her momentum. The dirt under her boots shifted, rolled forward and toppled over the side of the drop-off. Her right knee slammed into a rock, but she held on to the branch, praying it wouldn’t give way. Teeth clenched, she breathed through the searing pain.

  Dampness from the rain showers the day before seeped through her slacks. The air was a mix of pine, the several species that lived in these trees and death. An animal had recently expired nearby.

  The pain in her knee subsided, but her pulse was roaring in her ears. Was the man still after her? She scooted behind the tree, moving to the balls of her feet in case she needed to make a run for it again, and listened.

  Crickets chirped. An owl hooted. A screech sounded somewhere in the distance, and she tried not to think about what kind of animal made the sound. She wasn’t a woodsy kind of girl, preferring to keep her outdoor time to her back garden and laps around the park near the house.

  She looked down at her leg as she listened. Mud-covered, with patches of blood seeping through her gray slacks at the knee. Her pink silk blouse was torn in several places, nothing but an expensive rag now. Thankfully, she’d thought twice about wearing the ballet flats she’d originally put on this morning, exchanging them for a sturdy pair of flat leather boots that appeared to be holding up.

  The chilly night was moving toward frigid.

  She couldn’t stay out here forever, but she had no way of knowing whether her kidnapper was waiting for her to reappear alongside the road. Hunched over and listening for human sounds, she began moving again, parallel to the road but back toward the major road.

  And then what?

  She had no way of knowing whether the man who kidnapped her was a dirty police officer or whether he’d just dressed like one to get her to get in the car with him. Either way, she couldn’t trust the police right now.

  And could she go home? She’d given her abductor her address when she thought he was a police officer. It was undoubtedly the first place he’d go looking for her.

  No phone. No one to trust.

  A familiar voice from the past flitted through her head.

  You can hate me if you need to. I deserve it. Just know if you ever need anything, I’m here for you.

  He was the last person she wanted to see, but possibly the only person she knew who could help her out of whatever mess she seemed to have gotten herself into.

  A shot of adrenaline pushed her forward through the trees.

  “Gideon, I hope your offer still stands.”

  Chapter Three

  Gideon Wright came fully awake in an instant. He heard the normal creaks and groans of the nearly seventy-year-old house his grandparents had purchased as newlyweds. His eyes swept the room. He was alone, just as he was every night. But something was off.

  The lights.

  He’d done a complete upgrade of the security system upon inheriting the house. No matter how much he’d tried to convince his grandma Pearl that hardware store locks were not sufficient security, she’d resisted upgrading her home security, insisting she didn’t want to live like she was in prison.

  He’d installed deadbolt locks on all her doors and snuck two security cameras around the perimeter of the house, but otherwise honored her wishes until after Gran had passed away.

  Now, the house boasted a top-of-the-line security system. The outdoor motion-detector lights were set to go on only if someone or something four feet or taller broached the perimeter of his property. It could be a deer, but his instincts told him otherwise.

  He rolled out of bed in one smooth motion, and retrieved his gun he kept in his bedside table, without making a sound. Not one of the oak floorboards creaked as he made his way down the stairs to the main floor of the house. The security lights in the backyard were still on, but the house alarm hadn’t tripped, so the intruder hadn’t made it inside the house. Yet.

  He peered through a rear window, careful to stay to the side, and out of the line of sight. Darkness shrouded the rear of the small yard despite the security lights. He made a mental note to add more lights back there as his eyes scanned over the yard.

  A gust of wind rustled the naked branches of the large maple tree and he watched as what he’d initially taken to be a shadow broke away from the tree and slunk forward along the edge of the fence.

  Gideon couldn’t imagine who would be dumb enough to break into the home of a security expert and former marine, but whoever it was, he’d be more than happy to educate them on the error of their ways. He disengaged the house alarm, then stalked through his small living room. He slipped through the sliding glass doors and pressed his back to the side of the house. His bare feet fell on wet grass and another gust of wind swept over his umber skin as he inched his way to the corner of the house and peeked around. A body still slunk along the fence, creeping closer and closer to the back door.

  As the intruder’s foot fell on the first step of the patio, Gideon pounced, running flat out toward the would-be burglar.

  The intruder’s head snapped up.

  Recognition washed over him faster than his brain could signal his legs to stop moving.

  He crashed into the woman he’d once known better than he’d known himself. A black computer ba
g skittered across the patio.

  Gideon twisted so that he took most of the impact when they landed in the wet grass, but he still felt the air whoosh out of Mya’s lungs. Sprawled on top of him, she groaned.

  “Mya? What are you doing here? Are you okay?” He ran his hands over her arms and back. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered how familiar her body was to him, even though it had been years since he’d touched her.

  “Help. Please.” Her thin voice sent a stab of fear through him that only sharpened when her dazed eyes met his.

  He pushed the hair from her face and nearly gasped at the sight of her. The beautiful brown eyes he still regularly dreamed about were unfocused. Cuts and scrapes marked the smooth brown skin on her face and arms. Through his thin cotton tee, he could feel her tremble, whether from the cold or shock, he couldn’t be sure.

  Her eyes fluttered closed.

  He sat up, cradling her to his chest as he got to his feet. “Hang in there, baby. I’m going to get you to a doctor.”

  Mya’s eyes sprang open. “No.” Her voice was little more than a mumble, but he could hear the tremble of fear there. “No doctors. No police. Just you, Gideon. Only you.”

  The words sent his heart thumping in his chest. He pushed the swell of emotions down. Mya was clearly in some kind of trouble. Big trouble if she’d come to him. He couldn’t let lingering feelings get in the way of helping her.

  He looked down at her scraped and mud-splattered face as he carried her into his house.

  And he would help her. And make whoever had done this to her pay. That was a promise.

  * * *

  SUNLIGHT WAS ALREADY streaming through the kitchen windows when the hinges on the door to the guest room creaked. Several moments later, the lock on the hall bathroom snapped shut. The shower came on.

  Gideon pressed the power button on his little-used coffee maker and leaned against the far end of the kitchen counter. He wanted to see Mya the moment she started down the stairs. And to be honest, gauge her reaction to seeing him after all these years.

  He’d helped her clean up and gave her some old sweats to wear after he’d gotten her inside. Although her scrapes and bruises were superficial, she was dehydrated, hungry and nearly frozen through. He’d swallowed the rage burning in his chest at the sight of her injuries and heated a bowl of chicken soup. She had only a few mouthfuls before her eyelids drooped and he’d helped her to the guest room.

  He hadn’t gone back to bed. He’d set up a few additional security measures just in case whoever Mya was afraid of came looking for her. They were more like booby traps, but he’d have plenty of advance warning of any unwanted visitors.

  Then he’d set about finding out everything he could about Mya’s life since their divorce twelve years ago. Not that he’d ever lost track of her. He knew she’d obtained her medical degree and a PhD in biomedical sciences. More than a little pride had swelled inside reading the glowing articles about the importance of the research she was doing at TriGen Labs, the private cancer research lab established by Irwin Ross. TriGen’s mission statement stated its primary focus as discovering a treatment, and ultimately a cure, for glioblastoma brain cancer.

  Gideon had never met Irwin Ross, but the undertone in several of the articles he’d read made the man sound somewhat like a brilliant eccentric. Mya had begun as an intern at TriGen in her last year of graduate school and became one of two full-time researchers after she got her doctorate. Based on an archived web page he’d found for TriGen, Irwin had retired to West Virginia last year, turning over TriGen and its research to Mya.

  Head of her own lab at thirty-five. He had always known Mya was destined for things far beyond the reach of the boy next-door. Which was one of the reasons he’d asked for the divorce. He loved her too much to let his issues hold her back.

  The water shut off overhead, and he heard the bathroom door open.

  Ten minutes later, Mya descended the stairs barefoot, his baggy sweats held up by a never-worn braided belt he’d found in the back of his closet. She was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

  She stopped at the foot of the stairs and eyed him warily, a pretty flush on her bronze-colored cheeks.

  “I put the coffee on if you want some.” He reached into the cabinet overhead and pulled down a mug.

  “Yes, thank you.” Mya crossed the short distance to the kitchen island with a pronounced limp.

  “Do you need help?” He set the cup down and reached for her.

  She waved him off. “No, it’s not that bad. I just banged my knee up a little last night,” she said, sitting on one of the two stools at the small island.

  “In the fire?”

  Mya narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve been busy.”

  His nighttime search had also turned up a newly posted article on the website of a local news blog about the devastating fire at TriGen Labs. The authorities suspected arson. That explained why Mya’s clothes and hair had smelled of smoke when he’d found her, but dozens of other questions remained. Like, who or what had scared her so badly she’d sought him out.

  He passed her the cup of coffee and held her gaze. “You showed up in my backyard, hurt, smelling of smoke and I am a private security specialist.”

  His heart stuttered at the smile she gave him. “I know. My mother is still bragging about you protecting the president.”

  Mya’s mother, Francine Rochon, was a second mother to him growing up. He called her once a week and took her to dinner whenever a job brought him to Orlando.

  “Hardly,” Gideon said, the corners of his lips tipping upward. “My team and I were so far away we never even saw the president.”

  Mya sipped her coffee, her smile widening. “Well, when my mother tells it, you saved the man’s life and you two are BFFs now.” She paused. “She’s proud of you.”

  The simple sentiment sent a warm sensation coursing through him. He loved Francine as if she were his own mother, but Mya hadn’t shown up on his doorstep to gab about her mom.

  “You haven’t answered my question. Did you get hurt in the fire last night?”

  She took another sip of her coffee and shook her head. “It was after, when I was running from the cop.”

  His chin jerked up. It was rare for anyone to catch him by surprise, but Mya had always burst through the walls he put up around his emotions. It didn’t appear that time had changed that at all.

  “Start from the beginning and leave nothing out.”

  He eased onto the stool next to her and listened as she described returning to work after a late coffee break, overhearing a man on the phone telling someone that he’d started a fire in her lab, and trying and failing to put out the fire. Tension radiated from her as she recounted what she’d gone through. As she told him about fighting off the “maybe cop” and running through the woods he beat back the urge to find the man who’d kidnapped her and hurt him badly.

  “That’s why you didn’t want me to call the police or take you to a hospital last night?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know if I can trust the police.”

  He understood her concern and, given the circumstances, shared it. “Can you describe the police officer?”

  “Dark blond, blue eyes. About my height.” She was taller than average for a woman at five feet eleven. “He wore a police uniform.”

  Which meant nothing since anyone could get one with a few clicks off the internet.

  “I know a detective I can trust.” When she didn’t look convinced, he added, “The police need to know about the kidnapping attempt.”

  Her eyebrows knitted. “Okay, if you trust this detective I’ll talk to him.”

  “Why would someone target you and your lab?”

  Her gaze drifted away, and she chewed the bottom corner of her lip. Her tells hadn’t changed over the years. She was con
sidering how much she wanted to tell him.

  “I can help you best if I know all of it.”

  Mya sighed. “I don’t know for sure. Medical research, pharmaceuticals, it’s a cutthroat business. Not enough money to fund everyone’s research and the biggest rewards go to those who develop successful treatments first.”

  “And when you say the biggest rewards...”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Millions and millions of rewards.”

  Which meant millions of reasons to eliminate the competition.

  “And knowing you, your research is both successful and a cut above your peers.”

  She raised her mug to her lips, but he didn’t miss her wide smile. When she lowered the mug, a frown replaced her smile. “I know most of the people doing research in this area. They are my colleagues. I can’t say I’m friends with all of them, but I can’t imagine any of them going to these extremes to destroy my research.”

  “What are you working on?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “A treatment for glioblastoma.” At his curious look, she clarified. “Brain cancer.”

  “And it works?”

  Mya’s eyes lit with excitement, sending a shot of electricity straight to his groin. “I’d been struggling for a while, but last week I figured out the last piece.” She reached out and covered his hand with hers on the soapstone countertop. “There’s still a long way to go. I’ve got to test it in clinical trials, have it peer reviewed—I’ll need to partner with a larger lab or pharmaceutical company but...”

  “You’ve made a breakthrough in the treatment of brain cancer. So, we aren’t just talking about millions of dollars here, but billions. Possibly more.”

  Mya frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, but no one would go as far as setting fire to my lab. We’re scientists, for goodness’ sake.” She rubbed her temples.

  She might not be willing to face it, but scientists were human. It wouldn’t be the first time greed led someone to do something criminal. Or deadly.

  Gideon reached for his phone. “Let me call the detective I know.” He also needed to bring the West Investigation team in.