Page 78 of PSYCHOlogical

Jack, wide-eyed and shaking like a startled teenager, glanced at my pistol and then at me. His hands shot into the air. “Jesus, Val. Don’t shoot me.”

I lowered the gun.

He squeezed his massive body through the narrow opening and pushed the door closed. He mussed his hair with frantic fingertips and then offered a perplexed look.

“This has got to be about that box you gave me, huh?” he asked excitedly.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” I responded. “All I know is someone’s outside.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.” He peered over my shoulder, toward the kitchen. “You didn’t take something else from them, did you?”

A tingle ran the length of my spine. Something was wrong. Jack’s arrival was all too convenient. His curiosity was out of place.

We were standing in the hallway, half the distance between the kitchen and the back door. I widened my stance and slid my finger inside the pistol’s trigger guard. As my fingertip came in contact with the knurled face of the trigger, I offered Jack a false grin.

“I’m so glad you found me,” I said. “How’d you know where to go?”

“I followed them here.”

With the pistol hanging low at my side, I tilted the barrel toward his chest and hoped he didn’t notice. “What are they driving?”

“There’s three of them,” he replied, “they’re all together, in a truck.”

There were three marines left in New Dawn’s program. They all drove trucks. Either Jack was a fabulous at guessing or he was telling the truth. I mentally relaxed.

“You’ve got a copy of whatever’s in there, right?” he asked.

I turned toward the kitchen. “In where?”

“In the box,” he said. “You know that’s what they’re after.”

I paused. Something was wrong. His interest should have been our safety. Instead, he was concerned with who might have copies of the flash drive. My heart thrashed against my ribs so violently I could feel it in my temples.

Jack was the intruder.

I tightened my finger against the trigger, glanced toward the kitchen, and planned my next few steps. As soon as I was in the open, I would hold him at gunpoint and demand some answers.

“Vincent’s got it hidden somewhere,” I replied. “I think it’s at his apartment in Garrisonville.”

I took my last step, pivoting on the ball of my right foot. Before he came into view, my body was slammed against the island so violently I was nearly knocked unconscious. The breath shot from my lungs on impact.

The heel of his palm struck my forearm with such force that pain shot the length of my arm and up my neck, momentarily paralyzing me.

I heard the pistol skate across the tile floor.

His fist struck my face. My vision blurred. Two successive punches to my mid-section made sure I didn’t recover anytime soon.

I heaved to suck a breath.

Disoriented, I blindly raised my hands in hope of defending myself. My back slammed against the granite countertop.

“I’ll break your fucking arms, bitch,” he growled. “Lower your hands.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He spun me halfway around, pressed my chest to the island, and zip-tied my wrists together. My mind raced to piece together what had happened.

Jack was either with the DNI, or he was somehow attached to New Dawn. The possibility existed, I suppose, that he was with an agency that served under the DNI’s umbrella and hoped to use the information in the flash drive as leverage against the DNI. The Central Intelligence Agency. The Defense Intelligence Agency. ATF. DEA. FBI.