Hyper Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 6) by Fiona Quinn (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

might pass between humans was so secretive, so dangerous that it couldn’t be allowed to seep into the air.

Up ahead, I watched a man with a lithe frame walking next to a woman with straight jet-black hair that fell just past her shoulders.

She wore a white pantsuit. Even with her red high heels, she barely came up to the man’s chest. They held their shoulders rigid and walked with stiff backs. I could imagine that there was something dangerous afoot, and they were both trying to hold their secrets tight until they were in some SCIF—sensitive compartmented information facility—where the mystery could be revealed.

The woman looked back over her shoulder and caught my eye. Her body gave a small convulsion like a doctor’s hammer had tapped her knee to watch her reflexes. Her eyes flicked up to the man, and she muttered something softly enough that the walls couldn’t bat the sounds and amplify them, booming out an echo for me to hear.

The man rolled his shoulders then nodded.

He seemed, through his posture, to tell her to move along. But there was something unusual about the exchange. I could swear the woman knew me and had warned the man not to turn around.

How odd was that?

As the two passed a guard, a command was issued.

The guard gave a quarter turn and faced us. He held up his hand to indicate we should stop.

Oliver lifted his badge showing his high rank.

“Wait, please,” the guard said as he raised his arms on either side of him, effectively forming a gate.

As the man reached out to press the elevator button, his head swiveled just enough my way that I recognized him.

“Black!” I called out. What in the actual heck?

“Madam,” the guard said.

“Black!” I didn’t care one iota that my voice pinged around the hall, pulling attention to me. “John Black. I need a word.” I projected my voice out. There was no way he didn’t hear me.

Everyone heard me.

Black reached for the elevator button again as if his pressing it hard enough would provide him with a quick escape.

Black was with the color code. He was one of the officers who did whatever they did all under the team’s name: John for the men and Johnna for the women and some attached color.

Grey, the man who developed my husband Angel, moving him from his job as an Army Ranger into CIA black ops, was part of that team. Grey was the one who thought it would be just fine for me to be gutted by Angel’s death.

Somehow, their team thought it was a good idea to tell Angel’s friends and family, his wife, that Angel had been blown into smithereens on some dusty road in Afghanistan. We’d be sad and move on.

Well, I didn’t move on. I found Angel, saved him, and was promised a damned divorce.

“Black!” I crouched under the guard’s arm.

The guard snatched at me as I ran toward Black.

I slapped his hand away, racing the last few steps to catch up with Black as the doors slid open, and he climbed on the elevator.

The guard yelled, “Stop. Gun.”

I reached my hand out to block the doors from closing. Hell no, Black wasn’t getting away from me.

In that same breath, Striker lifted me off my feet, pushing me up against the wall.

My bruised cheek pressed painfully into the cold surface.

Striker covered my body with his.

It was singularly the most astonishing and violent thing that Striker had ever done to me.

I stilled, dangling like a rag doll, in shock that he’d manhandled me that way.

The rumble of the elevator told me that my chance to put pressure on the color code group to release me from Angel was lost.

Striker pressed his full body against mine. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. That’s a colleague of hers, and she just wanted a word.”

Our guide was saying. “I’ll take responsibility.” From where my face was pressed into the wall, I could see Oliver hustling to the elevator bank and pressing the button. “Let me just get another elevator car.”

“I issued an order,” the security guard growled.

With his arm around my waist, Striker lowered my feet to the ground, continuing to wrap me in a blanket of Striker protection.

I seethed.

I had no idea what Black said to the guard, but it was enough that the guard pulled his weapon on me. It was enough that Striker felt the need to shield me with his own body and put himself in danger’s way.

How dare Black?

I had been on numerous cases with him. My puzzling skills had kept ops in play, saved Angel from his torture chamber. I deserved a moment and a whispered conversation.

A guard and a gun?

Are you freaking kidding me?

My whole body trembled with rage.

Striker kept a tight hold on me. Though where I would go or what he thought I would do is beyond me.

The guard didn’t seem convinced that I wasn’t a threat.

His pistol was held against his chest, barrel facing toward the ground, finger along the trigger guard, the ready position should he need to punch out, align me with his sights and take me down.

For cripes’ sake.

“Come.” Oliver was obviously distressed by the turn of events. He was scooping the air, trying to herd us forward as the new elevator car bounced into place, and the doors yawned wide. “Come.”

With Striker’s arm around my shoulders, we took the few steps forward and climbed onto the car.

“That…” he started, then stalled with an exhale, punching the button. “Yeah, that was unexpected. Mrs. Sobado, I apologize there as obviously some miscommunication.”

I glowered.

“This meeting… I feel that things have gotten off on bad footing. This is…” Oliver rested his index finger on his