Fragmented Loyalty

By Tonya Burrows

All I want is to leave my past of criminal hacking behind. Oh, and ditch the blackmailer who has been dogging my every move for the last three years.

The plan: Hack my way into being part of Class Alpha, a training program for a secretive organization that rescues hostages the government can’t or won’t go after. Save the world and make enough money to pay back my blackmailer—solves all my problems, right?

The complication: Sweet, nerdy, and unbearably sexy Eric “Harvard” Physick. Harvard is my ideal man, but he’s also my instructor. Seriously a no-go, except we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other.

My blackmailer isn’t willing to let me off the hook, though, and a series of freak accidents—deadly accidents—sends Class Alpha into a tailspin. And the more I get to know Harvard, I start to realize his past is just as troubled as mine.

Am I the cause of this chaos...or is he?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682815342

Book preview

For Elizabeth Dyer and the rest of my Bat Signal ladies. Thanks for keeping me sane this year!

Chapter One

Sami

Deep breath. Keep breathing. This is NBD. You’ve done crazier.

I repeated the words to myself, over and over, as I watched the tiny airport clear out around me. The people who had shared my flight to Wyoming picked up their bags and met loved ones or cabs or—did they even have Uber here? Kinda doubted it because I was literally in the middle of nowhere. I read somewhere that this was the only airport in the country located within a national park.

But even without Uber, everyone had a place to go. Except me.

Ha. Story of my life, wasn’t it?

Soon, I was alone. I walked along the baggage claim carousels, dragging my kid-sized Star Wars bag, its bum wheel squeaking obnoxiously in the empty space. I hoped the rest of my stuff had made it to wherever I was supposed to be going. Hell, I hoped I made it.

The airport looked exactly how I pictured Wyoming. Rustic and yet weirdly cozy for an airport. There were windows everywhere, framing what would probably be an impressive view of the Tetons during the day. A lot of wood with some stone fixtures, and even a fireplace. I sat down on one of the cowhide couches gathered around the fireplace and checked my phone.

11:35 p.m.

My flight from San Jose had been delayed due to mechanical issues, so instead of getting here at the reasonable time of before-dinner, I was stranded in the middle of the night. There was supposed to have been transportation waiting for me when I arrived, but the baggage claim was empty now. Nobody waited with Samira Blackwood scrawled on a cardboard sign.

I swiped my thumb across the screen of my phone. No calls. No texts. I don’t know why I expected…something. Mom and Dad gave up on me when I was fourteen, after I was convicted of a felony for hacking and sentenced to spend the rest of my teens in juvenile detention.

Who knew hacking the NRA and redirecting their website to a GoFundMe for school shooting victims was a crime?

I hadn’t.

All right, not true. I guess I’d known it was illegal. Technically. But I’d done it with nothing but the best intentions and never expected an FBI raid party. I just wanted to make the world a better place, but the government—and my parents—didn’t see it that way. The judge, an old-timer who probably still used a landline and had a TV with rabbit ears, was convinced I had the ability to launch nuclear bombs at the press of a button, and he’d given me the maximum sentence allowed by law: three years, plus three years’ supervised release and twenty thousand dollars in reparation.

And that judge had only been aware of a tiny sliver of my digital crimes. I can’t imagine what my sentence would have been had he known how much money I’d stolen. I didn’t even know the exact amount, but it was a lot. Like GDP-of-a-small-country a lot. Enough that I could’ve faced way more than a few years in juvie had anyone known. Idealist that I once was, I’d filtered all of it into various charities and anonymously paid off some student loans, but if I had known what my future held, I would’ve stashed some of it offshore. That money would’ve saved me a lot of uncertainty and fear.

My first night out of juvie, after my family made it clear they were done with me, I thought my life was over. I had no support system, nowhere to go, and nothing to my name but a bag of too-small clothes and a worthless Blackberry that my parents had disconnected ages ago. I was sitting on the curb in front of a 7-Eleven, scared to death—and the Blackberry chimed with a text.

Check your bank account.

Unnerved, I checked and couldn’t believe the number of zeros I saw.

Who are you? I texted back. What do you want?

A concerned friend, was the reply. Take the money.

What do you want in return? Because I may have been young at the time, but I sure as hell knew nobody freely gave out that much money without strings attached.

A favor, they’d said.

I’m not sleeping with you.

No, they’d replied, and I couldn’t help but think they were laughing at me. It was just a word on the screen, but I felt the laughter in it. I’m not interested in you that way. Someday, I’ll need your hacking skills. That’s it. A favor for a fellow hacker.

So I took the money.

It was either owe a nameless, faceless, genderless benefactor a favor or live on the streets. I was a terrified, homeless eighteen-year-old with nothing except a standing date with her probation officer. Anyone in my position would’ve taken the money. My benefactor had me in a chokehold, and they knew it.

Except now, whenever I closed my eyes, I still saw those two little words on the screen: A favor.

It had been three years since that night, and they still hadn’t called in that favor. The longer whoever it was waited, the more I worried.

Maybe they’d forgotten about me.

Hah. Right. All those zeros? No, they hadn’t forgotten. My mysterious benefactor was biding their time, but I was done waiting. I planned to pay them back and wash my hands of the whole mess, which was how I ended up in Wyoming. This new job promised to pay well.

I just wish I knew exactly what the new job was. The whole thing felt a lot like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Okay, maybe I hadn’t done crazier.

I scrolled through my phone again and opened the text message I’d sent my mom before boarding the plane. Still no reply. It didn’t even look like she’d read it.

I hadn’t spoken to my parents since my sentence was handed down on my fourteenth birthday. They paid the lawyers, paid the $20K, and cut all ties. Almost seven years now.

Still, I thought the message would’ve generated some kind of response. I was turning my life around. Or trying to. Or maybe it was too late. Maybe I’d irreparably damaged my relationship with them.

Not that we really had much of a relationship to begin with. The only thing we ever had in common was our mutual love of technology.

So here I was. Twenty-one years old, fresh off my supervised release, and completely alone in the world.

Well, not completely. I had Adrian, my one and only friend. He was also a hacker, and, like me, he’d had the book thrown at him when the hacktivist group we were both part of disintegrated. I could text him, but it was late, and I needed to figure this out on my own.

I sighed and put my phone away.

Now what?

I waited.

Twenty minutes passed before a guy came in through one of the sliding doors and glanced around. He was mid-twenties at least, with a mess of light brown hair that reflected auburn when the light hit it just right. His black T-shirt hugged a muscular chest—not steroid-bulky, but lean, sexy muscle. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted at first sight. And then I saw the writing on his shirt: I’m the Nigerian prince who keeps emailing you.

Ha. And a nerdy sense of humor to go along with all of that muscle. My kind of guy.

I snorted a laugh, and the sound carried across the baggage claim, embarrassingly loud in the empty space. He swung around, and his gaze zeroed in on me. He had light brown eyes, close in color to his hair. Whiskey eyes.

I stood as he strode over. His smile was just a little bit shy and made a dimple appear in one cheek, which did funny things to my belly.

Are you Samira? he asked.

Sami, I corrected and held out a hand. He enfolded my hand with long, elegant fingers. He could be a pianist with hands like that. Or an artist. I briefly wondered if maybe he was the latter, because his skin was also rough with callouses, like I imagined an artist’s would be.

I’m your ride, he said. They didn’t mention you were missing from the group until the last minute. I hopped right into the truck but thought I’d be too late and— I’m sorry. How long have you been waiting?

He was babbling. How cute was that?

Not long, I assured him. My plane landed just after eleven.

He made a face. Sorry again. I’m Eric, by the way. Eric Physick.

Hi, Eric, I said, hoping my voice wasn’t really as breathy with disbelief as it sounded.

Uh, you can call me Harvard. Everyone else does. His gaze dropped to my R2-D2 bag, and the hint of shyness melted away. He flashed a grin that caused the dimple to wink at me again. Is this all you have?

Uh, yeah. Just this. I hoisted my laptop bag up onto my shoulder and pulled R2’s handle out. I had some stuff shipped to the address Tucker Quentin gave me. An address I could find nothing about online. Which should freak me out. And did a little, if I was honest.

This was another moment of blind faith, but at least it was a moment I had decided on, rather than one driven by desperation like last time.

Then your stuff’s probably already there, Harvard said. Tuc is nothing if not efficient. You ready? He took R2 from me, and I winced as the broken wheel let out a nails-on-chalkboard screech.

Harvard didn’t seem bothered. He simply picked up the suitcase to carry it instead. Your droid needs some oil.

Really, I needed a whole new suitcase. I’d had R2 since middle school, but since my parents cut me off, funds were more than a little tight. I’d stupidly blown through my benefactor’s money in the first year of my supervised release and spent the past two years working as a barista for not-great pay. I had scraped the bottom of my bank account to have my custom PC and my Iron Throne desk chair shipped to Wyoming. Thankfully, the plane ticket had been covered by my new employer: Tucker Quentin, CEO and founder of Quentin Enterprises, which owned the second-biggest tech company in the world. One of the conditions of my supervised release was no computer access. I’d taken a huge risk to get his attention. By hacking his network when I wasn’t technically even supposed to be in the same room as a computer, I could’ve ended up in adult prison.

What can I say? I was desperate. I had done it with the hope that Quentin would recognize the value of my skills and hire me instead of siccing the cops on me.

Luckily, I was right. He did hire me, but instead of keeping me in Silicon Valley, where Quentin Enterprises was headquartered, he flew me to Wyoming, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I was here. All I knew was that Quentin wanted me for a training program for something called HORNET. Adrian had been thrilled when he found out this was where I was headed. He’d called it an adventure, encouraged me to embrace it.

Whatever. Anything was better than making soy lattes for hipsters. I was itching to get my fingers back on a computer keyboard.

What do you think of the new movies? Harvard asked conversationally as he carried my bag from the terminal to a truck parked at the curb.

The question dragged me from the turmoil of my thoughts. Movies?

"Star Wars, he said and tapped the side of R2 for emphasis. The new movies?"

Oh. I love them. I eyed the truck, rusted and dust-covered. He opened the passenger door for me and grabbed a sweatshirt off the seat. I caught an earthy whiff of hay and animal. Horse? Where was I going that they had horses?

In that moment, a lightning bolt of pure panic sizzled through me. I twisted the strap of my laptop case around my hand and told myself to breathe as the gulp of air I’d just taken stalled out somewhere in my throat. What was I doing? Getting into a beat-up, horse-smelling truck with a man who, no matter how adorable and nerdy, was a stranger? Going to God knew where to join a training program for a shadowy organization that I could find next to nothing about online?

Was I crazy?

Hey, breathe. Harvard lightly touched my arm, and I jolted. I must have looked as freaked out as I felt, because he held up his hands and stepped back. It’s okay. I’m one of the good guys, Sami.

I believed him. I’d developed a damn good sense of people out of necessity, and I could tell Harvard didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And, still. I’d never been more frightened in my life.

But what other choice did I have? My parents weren’t speaking to me, and all of my glimmering college prospects had gone down the toilet the day I’d been arrested. After six years in the criminal justice system, my options were less than limited. If I stayed on my own, I’d end up a black hat again. That was where the money was for someone like me. No legit security company wanted to hire a hacker with a prison sentence under her belt, and I didn’t want to work at Starbucks forever. I wanted more than that life.

Harvard reached to close the truck’s door. You know what? I’ll go park, and we can just sit down and talk until you’re comfortable.

I wanted this. A chance to make a difference that wouldn’t land me on the FBI’s bad side again. I’d orchestrated this opportunity, and now I was going to blow it because of a panic attack?

I stopped Harvard before he could close the door. No, I’m okay.

He eyed me doubtfully. You’re sure?

My nerves settled at his question. He looked genuinely distressed by my discomfort, and a serial killer wouldn’t react that way, right? Not that I really thought he was a serial killer. He was too adorably flustered by my panic.

Yes, this was where I had to be. This was what I wanted to do. If I didn’t do this, I’d end up back in prison. Adult prison. Or worse.

I climbed into the truck. I’m sure.

Chapter Two

Harvard

She wasn’t what I expected.

I had compiled the dossiers for all of our trainees and already knew a lot about Samira Blackwood. She was a hacker who went by the name Fragment. She’d appeared on the hacking scene three years ago and had done some freelance penetration testing and security work for several well-known companies in the San Francisco Bay area. Although at first glance she looked like a squeaky-clean white hat, I’d found her on several dark web message boards. Never doing anything illegal that I could see, but definitely toeing the line between legal and illegal. That hat of hers was more gray than white. Maybe even edging toward black. Had to admit, I liked that about her. I’d been known to dip my toe over that line of legality myself.

Harvard, the man I was now, wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t.

Fragment was a genius, and she proved it when she hacked Quentin Enterprises to get the big boss’s attention. She got through my firewalls. Through my layers of encryption. I was both impressed and annoyed that she’d managed it.

This girl sitting silently next to me, though? Sami? She was a mystery. A fascinating bit of code I wanted to crack.

Up until I walked into the airport, she was a name on a screen. Based on the photo I had, I’d assumed she’d come with serious baggage—and not in the form of R2-D2. The asymmetrical, blond-tipped hairstyle and lip ring screamed BAD ATTITUDE in all caps. While nothing hinky jumped out at me as I compiled her dossier—except that maybe her background was a little too tidy for my liking—I still thought for sure she’d be a problem, but she didn’t seem like a troublemaker at all.

Actually, if pressed to come up with one word to describe her, I’d go with lost.

She looked completely out of place and uncomfortable in the airport. And even more so bouncing in the passenger seat of the old ranch truck.

The truck had been a mistake. I didn’t realize how much of a mistake until I saw her near-panic reaction to it. When I discovered she’d been left behind, I jumped into the thing by habit. It was what I’d been driving for the last few months since my old car died. I was in the market for a new set of wheels but hadn’t had the time to do the relevant research. The truck was a rust bucket that smelled of hay and horse, used mainly for errands by the family ranch of HORNET’s medic. Guess I should have asked one of my teammates to borrow their vehicle.

I realized suddenly the silence between us had stretched too long and was starting to get awkward. I’d wanted to give her time to relax, but there was a thin line between space and awkwardness, and I’d crossed it. I’d gotten wrapped up inside my own head. Again. A bad habit of mine.

I glanced over at her. She huddled as close to the door as she could without tumbling out onto the highway and hugged her laptop case to her chest like it was a shield. In that way, we were a lot alike. I had wielded my computer as both a weapon and a shield for most of my life.

Lost? Oh, yeah. I’d been there and done that and knew the look. And she was more than a little scared, though she was doing her best to put on a brave face.

What kind of shit had life dealt this girl to make her so nervous?

Damn. I wish I knew how to make her feel more comfortable.

And then—Jesus, I’m a myopic idiot—it hit me. I did know exactly how to relax her. As Fragment, she was bold and sassy, smart and calculating. I just had to talk computers, which happened to be my favorite subject.

How’d you do it? I asked.

She jolted and glanced over at me with stark fear, like I’d asked her to confess to murder or something. Uh, she said faintly. Do what?

Shit. This wasn’t going well. I’d never been good at talking to girls. Jean-Luc Cavalier, HORNET’s linguist and arguably my best friend, had tried giving me lessons on how to charm the ladies. Obviously, none of his teachings had stuck, because I was fucking this up. If something wasn’t computer code, it didn’t stay in my head.

Just once, I’d like to be like the rest of the guys on the team. Masculine and badass, not the geek behind the computer.

Sorry. I was trying to make conversation. If you don’t want to talk, we can— I reached to switch on the radio. It didn’t always work in this rattling pile of rust, but maybe I’d get lucky tonight.

To my surprise, she reached out and stopped me with a touch to the back of my hand. She seemed calmer now. You’re asking how I hacked Quentin Enterprises?

Yeah. I withdrew my hand, even though I didn’t want to break the contact, and curled my fingers around the steering wheel. You know, because it was my security you got through.

It’s a good network. Solid. But even the most solid network isn’t safe if the company’s employees aren’t taking the proper precautions.

I nodded. You got in through an employee.

Yep. A phishing email in a low-level employee’s inbox. Once I was in, I worked my way through the layers of encryption until I had the whole network.

For a minute I thought it was Nomad. The black-hat hacker had been making all kinds of waves in the cyber underworld recently and had already taken several large companies hostage with ransomware attacks. Nomad was now on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. You’re good.

So are you. It took me nearly two weeks to break in.

But you still got in.

She flashed a smile. Like you said, I’m good.

You are. You didn’t do any damage. You just broke in and let us know you were there. Why take that risk?

She pushed her tongue against her lip ring, and a bolt of lust shot straight to my cock.

Wow. Okay. That was unexpected.

And wrong. She would soon essentially be my student, and that was a massive mountain of an obstacle I had no intention of scaling. I couldn’t help the instant flare of attraction, but I could damn well make sure things stayed professional between us.

You don’t have to tell me, I said when her silence stretched into awkwardness. It’s none of my business.

Okay. Thanks. After another uncomfortable beat, she asked, So what exactly is HORNET?

I took my eyes off the road long enough to glance in her direction. You seriously don’t know?

Got the gist of it. She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. Private military contractor owned by Quentin Enterprises. I couldn’t find much else about it.

Was it ballsy or stupid to take a job you knew little to nothing about? Maybe a bit of both. Also desperate, but nothing in her tidy background reeked of that kind of desperation. Had she hidden something from me? If she had, she was even better than I suspected. No secret stayed secret around me for long. That was part of the reason I had been relatively friendless until joining the team.

HORNET stands for Hostage Rescue and Negotiation Team, I explained. It’s a branch of the private military contractor HumInt, Inc., which—you’re right—is owned by Quentin Enterprises.

Her brows pinched together in the cutest way. Wait. You’re talking hostage situations?

That’s exactly it. HORNET’s function is to retrieve people the government either can’t or won’t go after.

Is it dangerous?

The question was innocent enough. Expected, even. But it threw me back in time a year and a half to a snowy January night in Eastern Europe. While trying to rescue a teammate’s woman and break up a sex-trafficking ring, the team had been ambushed and captured by an old rival. Our commander, Gabe Bristow, had been shot and was in serious need of a trauma surgeon while our medic, Jesse Warrick, desperately tried to keep him alive. I could almost feel the bite of the cold again, the weight of hopelessness as we watched Gabe bleed out.

We all got out of that scrape—barely—but I didn’t think telling her about it was the best place to start. With how freaked she’d been back at the airport, I wasn’t going to acknowledge that getting shot was a real danger with this job.

Yeah, it can be dangerous, I admitted. I couldn’t lie to her but didn’t want to scare her off, either, and quickly added, You’ll be tech support. You won’t be out in the field very often, and when you are, you’ll be far away from the action. Which was a constant annoyance for me. My teammates trusted me to digitally have their sixes, but when the bullets started flying, they tucked me away like a precious fucking china doll in danger of breaking.

Sami pushed at her lip ring again. I kept my gaze firmly on the road ahead, but Jesus help me I could still see her playing with it out of the corner of my eye. There was no AC in the old truck, and I swear the temperature kept climbing inside the cab despite the cool June night. I grabbed the crank window control and rolled that sucker down. A cold shower was out, so this was the next best thing.

As cool air swirled into the cab, Sami wrapped her arms around her middle like she was cold. I swore a mental blue streak at myself as I hurried to roll the window back up.

Sorry. I switched on the heat, then one-handedly searched around for my hoodie to offer her. If my brain kept going to my dick, I’d be sweating bullets by the time we reached the training compound.

It’s okay. Sami let go of her middle and sat up straighter. I’m not cold. I guess I’m nervous. I never considered doing anything like this before.

"Don’t think many kids grow up wanting to be a mercenary." I found the hoodie and, despite her protests, draped it over her lap like a blanket. She was in shorts and a T-shirt, dressed for a California summer night, not a Wyoming one. It got chilly here, even in the hottest grip of