Page 3 of Run

Ryan turned a deep shade of red. “Tinder.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“You compromised all of us to get laid?” Joe demanded.

“I thought I’d switched it off after the last time I looked at it,” Ryan said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Elle’s brain raced. “Accidents happen. It’s not your fault.” She swallowed hard. “It’s mine.”

Callum let out an almighty growl. “What did you hack this time, and which government agency should we expect to come after us?”

“It wasn’t the government.” She shuffled nervously, her pink Dr. Martens thudding on the thick carpet. “It was a dark web chatroom. I was following up on a lead I got in my search for info on—”

“David? Right?” Callum started pacing like a mad man.

“Damn it, Elle,” Dimitri said. “David warned you about this. He told you not to search for him. You told us you’d given up on trying to find out who he works with.”

“And I had. Until I got bored and started looking again.” She threw her hands in the air. “He shouldn’t have asked me to stop anyway. It was like waving catnip in front of my face. I mean, a problem I need to hack to uncover? Involving a sexy, dangerous spy who kisses like a god? Of course I’m going to keep on searching for the man.” She hung her head. “I have issues. There should probably be an intervention and some intensive therapy in my future.”

“Kisses like a god?” Megan asked, making her husband frown at her.

“I didnotneed to hear that.” Ryan had turned a little green. “First, no guy wants to hear about another guy’s performance in anything. Second, you’re like a sister to me, which means you are never to tell me that your lips or any other part of your body have touched anyone.” He shuddered.

“Focus!” Callum roared as he came to a halt at the end of the table. “Do you have any idea who was tracking you and why they’d want your location?”

Elle shook her head, but a heaviness in the pit of her stomach made her want to curl into a ball. “I’ve seen that hacking technique before, though. A hacker or a group of hackers for hire that goes by the name of SurfNinja. I don’t know much about them other than they’re scary good and don’t care who pays them. I think they might be Russian.”

“How much time do we have until somebody turns up here?” Callum’s eyes were laser hot.

“I don’t know. They could be hacking us from anywhere. Hell, they could be next door or on the other side of the world. Worse, they could be working for anyone, and the person they’re feeding information to could be on their way already. If we’re lucky, we’ve got days before someone turns up. If we aren’t”—she wrapped her arms around herself—“ten, fifteen minutes, maybe? I have no idea.”

Her boss ran a hand down his face. “Wipe this place down, dump all devices with Elle for disposal, and get to the safe house out by the airport. Until we know what we’re dealing with, our priority is to protect our clients’ information. Got it?”

They were running before he’d finished barking orders.

2

Monday 10 a.m.

Amsterdam-Zuidoost, Netherlands

David Knight had been trained to withstand torture. When being interrogated, he knew how to turn the tables in order to obtain information from his interrogators. And he knew how to compartmentalize physical pain in order to endure. It wasn’t the first time he’d been tortured in the hope he’d betray a colleague, or worse, his country. It was, however, the first time in a very long time that he’d been asked to betray someone he cared about. Because, until a cute little hacker with a penchant for pop culture, fifties dresses, and blue hair walked into his life, David hadn’t let himself feel anything for anyone in years.

Not that he waslettinghimself feel for Elle now. It was just that, no matter how hard he fought it, the feelings wouldn’t die. And they had to. Because the last time he’d felt for someone, he’d managed to get them killed.

A body blow from a guy with mallets for fists knocked the air from his lungs and brought his attention right back to his most pressing problem—torture, interrogation, and protecting Elle Roberts’ true identity.

Damn it,everythingled back to his hacker.

No.

Nothis.

Not since his boss at MI6 had been killed and his off-the-books job watching Elle had suddenly ended. And yet…he hadn’t been able to walk away from her. He’d told himself he was just ensuring he did his job well, even though he wasn’t getting paid for it. When that hadn’t worked, he started telling himself that an honorable man would make sure she was safe before walking away. In the end, he’d had to be honest and admit to himself that he watched over her because he cared about her.

That’s when he’d started keeping his distance.

Which was exactly why he now hung from the ceiling in an abandoned Dutch bar—because Elle didn’t like the distance he’d put between them and had stepped up her search for him.