Page 5 of Nothing to Fear

Thursday, July 4, 6:21 p.m. EDT

Willow sat at her desk, stunned. Gideon Stone was talking to her and not about a mission.

Sometimes she overheard people call him pretty, but she didn’t understand why. There was a brutality to everything about him. From his black ops call sign—Reaper—down to his ferocious good looks: a lean face, sharp angles, bold features, and a tumble of hair the color of sunshine glinting off ice. Even his eyes were a severe blue—the palest shade, so arresting she never dared look too long for fear of staring.

Not staring was a rule she’d learned not to break, since it made people uncomfortable.

The bridge of his once-broken nose was millimeters flatter than it should’ve been. A slight crook hinted at the violence in his life, but the flaw added character to his face.

Humanized him.

Whenever she ventured close to Gideon, caution drummed inside her. The kind smart people heeded, and she had a genius-level IQ. She was likely to say the wrong thing, while he never seemed to want to say anything to her at all.

“No drinks. No dinner. No coffee,” he said, his brows drawing together in a look of concentration.

What was wrong with him? Nothing ever rattled his iceberg composure.

She was the one with social issues.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have said no, but she didn’t drink alcohol, didn’t exceed four cups of coffee a day unless working overtime, and it was absurd to thank her for doing her job. Right?

Did he really want to have dinner with her? Why? She’d smiled at him once, after taking a class on how to make friends, and a scowl had darkened his face in return.

“What are you listening to?” He pointed to her earbuds.

She pulled the other one out, tossing them on her desk. “Nothing.” The always-on TVs and chatter from her colleagues clogged her thoughts. The high-fidelity earplugs lowered the decibels of the environment to a natural sound—clean and clear—allowing her to focus.

Gideon traded his typical grimace for a feral sort of grin. At least, she hoped it was a grin. His mouth curved up, lifting his incredible cheekbones, but the rest of his face had a strained expression disturbingly similar to the one her dad got when constipated.

“What type of code are you working on?” He gestured with his chin at her computer.

“Something new.” Eager to discuss anything that wouldn’t trip her up, she turned, pointing at one monitor. Source code was safe.

Whenever she talked too long, it was evident the motherboard of her brain was wired differently. People called her odd, peculiar. Her sisters preferred the term dweeb.

“I call it the Pandora Program. It’ll detect and flag any internal security vulnerabilities in our operations, so I can mitigate the possibility of us being compromised from the inside.”

He stepped up behind her, resting a hand on the back of her chair. The unexpected heat from his body tickled her spine. He always looked too removed to touch, glacier-cold, but the warmth radiating from him now was undeniable.

Clenching her thighs, she was tempted to brush against his arm for the barest contact but scooted to the edge of her seat instead. “I’m about forty-six working hours from testing it.”

“Wow. The program will be ready in a week?”

“Less. Three point two-eight days. I’ve been putting in extra hours.” It still wasn’t enough. They had a traitor in the unit, as everyone knew after the debacle with the dead guy. The program needed to be ready yesterday.

“You’re amazing,” Gideon said.

“It’s just a program.” Her computer alarm beeped. Six thirty already? “I have to go.”

She silenced the chime, saved her work, and logged off, removing her ID badge from the card reader. As she slipped on her heels, she spun the miniature globe designed out of binary digits that sat on her desk—the last thing she always did in her routine.

If only the world were as simple as the two-symbol coding system.

Snagging her purse, she stood and turned around.

Gideon’s expression went slack, his eyes growing wide. “What happened to your face?” He closed in, swallowing her comfort zone like a black hole.

She staggered back, bumping into her desk, and touched the cut on her cheek near her left ear. “It’s just a nick. He threw a dish and the broken pieces went flying. It was an accident.”