Page 41 of Red Zone Awakened

“Somebody has to pay for that.”And Keiko was seriously skilled at payback.

“Please, if there’s any justice in the world, let it be Friday,” he muttered.

She couldn’t help but smile.“Was it her idea?The fake blackmail?”

He tensed for a moment, and she could tell he was swaying between the need to tell her the truth and the urge to blame Friday.At last, he sighed.“No, it was the rest of the team.Friday wouldn’t have come up with that or gone along with it if she’d known.”

Keiko made a mental note to ask him about his weird relationship with his team leader’s wife later.Right now, she had another, more burning question.“Who’s the target for the nanobot-virus?”

He didn’t even try to keep it a secret.“Rueben Granger.”

Oh, that was perfect.“Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”

Mace snorted, and she got the impression he was smiling right along with her, but she didn’t want to lift her head from his chest to check.

There was one more thing she had to know.“Was it fake?Us?Were you just coming on to me because of the mission?”

He gently took her chin and angled her face up to look at him, and what she saw in his eyes stole her breath away.“I told you in the car, and I’ll tell you again now.What’s between us has nothing to do with anyone else.That part was real.It was all us.”

For what seemed like forever, they gazed into each other’s eyes.

“Okay then,” Keiko whispered before rubbing her face on his shirt.One last snuggle before returning to reality.“Tell me your plan for getting out of here.”

He kept his hands on her shoulders as he stared down at his shirt with an expression of shocked outrage.“Did you just wipe your nose on me?”

And, against all odds, Keiko laughed.