Page 33 of Protector Unmatched

Pearce patted Daphne’s hand. “We’re not gonna get caught. We’re good.”

She sidled closer to Pearce and dropped her voice. “That’s what I thought too. But you know what happened.”

“And that’s very unlucky, but Enya and I have systems in place that make it impossible for anybody to trace the breach back to us. Trust us. Trust me. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”

Daphne looked at him, then at Enya, who nodded. “Okay, what do we do?”

“Give me your phone and your passcode. I’ll need to go through the calls and messages you received from your brother’s phone. And then we’ll start tracing it. But we can’t do it from here. I need my equipment in the… uh, office.”

Daphne rose to retrieve her phone. “Okay, then let’s go to your office.”

“You can’t come,” Pearce said.

“What? But this is—”

“I’m sorry, but my office is in a secure building. There’s no way I can get you through security. It’ll just slow us down.” Pearce gave her a sad look. “I’ll have to go on my own. Enya needs to stay here to set up the computer on this end so that I can get the system at the control center to feed the data directly back here.”

Daphne nodded, somewhat deflated.

“When will the kidnappers contact you again to hand over the stuff you were supposed to steal tonight?”

“They said they’ll call me tomorrow to arrange a place for the exchange.”

“Good,” Pearce said. “That gives us a little time. They won’t know yet that you didn’t open the safe. But there’s a chance that the police report from tonight is picked up by the news. Depends on how prominent the owners are. Let’s hope we can find the kidnappers before they get wind of the fact that you haven’t gotten the stuff they’re after.”

“Yeah,” Enya added. “Or we’ll have a whole lot of other problems.”

Daphne didn’t even want to think that far ahead. “I wish I could do something.”

“Just promise me you’ll stay here with Enya while I go to the office to set everything up. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Then he looked at Enya. “You good with that?”

“Sure. Call me when you’re there, and we can set up the connection to the computer here,” Enya said.

Pearce grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. With a last look over his shoulder, he left.

Suddenly Daphne was alone with the beautiful blonde. For a few moments, there was silence. Daphne looked for something to say, but was at a loss. What was there to say? She was on edge because Pearce had left to do something illegal—for her. What if he got caught?

“You must be tired,” Enya said.

Daphne turned her head to Enya. “I’m all right.”

“It’s late. You can crash in Pearce’s room. He won’t mind. There isn’t much we can do right now anyway. Not until Pearce has accessed the system and can do a trace.”

“I understand.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “So where do you guys work that you have that kind of equipment at hand?”

“Defense contractor.” Enya shrugged. “Top secret. So, not a word, okay?”

“I promise.” Who was she to rat out the people who were helping her out of a terrible quagmire?

“Good. Now rest a little. I’ll wait for Pearce to call.”