Something had gone wrong and she’d called Pete, who’d happened to still be in the building. The engineer was in there with her.
“He works with her every day,” Hutch pointed out. “I don’t see why it’s a problem.”
Hutch stared down at the screen in front of him and wished like hell he didn’t have to do what he was going to do. What he wanted to do was scoop Noelle up and get her the hell out of here because every instinct in his body was telling him something was wrong.
Why had Kyle suddenly gotten himself taken off the security detail he’d been talking about all week? It was pretty coincidental that he would get bumped on the very night Hutch had to get his job done.
Was Kyle here to make sure he didn’t do his job?
Kyle moved in behind him, his voice going low. “Are you going in tonight? I thought you wanted to wait until tomorrow night when I could watch your back.”
That was what they’d discussed, which was precisely why it was so odd that Kyle was suddenly free tonight. “I’m doing some recon. I haven’t spent much time in the building. I need to get a feel for what I’m going to have to do to get in.”
“Did Ian get intel on Cara? Have you talked to Noelle about it?”
He turned to glare Kyle’s way. “Dude, someone could be listening.”
Kyle shrugged that worry off. “Nah, I check for bugs every day, and I’ve got a disruptor on me right now. It’ll blast static if anyone’s listening.”
That was interesting. A disruptor was brand-new tech. It was so new most people didn’t know about it. It wasn’t on the market to the public yet, and Hutch hadn’t been able to get his hands on one. The small device emitted a high-frequency tone that would render most listening devices useless. “That’s impressive tech. You didn’t get it from the office.”
Not that Big Tag hadn’t tried to find a way to buy a couple.
Kyle’s jaw tightened, the expression on his face going stubborn before it fell. “I got it from a friend. Okay? Look, there’s a lot about my time in the Navy I can’t talk about.”
“Because it’s classified.”
“Yeah.”
“And the friend you got the disruptor from is probably classified, too.” The friend was either some kind of intelligence agent or something far worse. The friend could be a corporate spy who looked to Kyle for help.
Kyle sighed. “The friend I got it from is dead. I don’t talk about her because…I don’t talk about her. But she’s been on my mind lately. That must be why I thought I saw her earlier. It was a woman who looked a little like her, though not really. It was more the way she moved.”
Was he talking about Julia Ennis? “A girlfriend?”
Kyle chuckled, a humorless sound. “She’s the reason I don’t believe in love. She’s the one I misread. Look, I didn’t talk to Big Tag about the disruptor because I figured he would ask me to give it to him. I need it.”
What other tech did he have? “Is that how you got through my security system last night?”
The slightest flush stained his cheeks. “How did you… Did it show up on the logs? Because I thought it wouldn’t.”
“It wouldn’t have if I hadn’t written specific protocols. It’s not a normal security system.” Not a total lie, but he wasn’t about to tell Kyle that he’d gotten caught through good old-fashioned human eyesight. That would lead to questions of why the hell Michael Malone was watching him. No, he’d found using words like protocols threw off the people who weren’t hard-core hackers.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.” Kyle sank into the chair beside him. “I need you to know that I have been in that apartment every night since we started the job. I swear I have. Last night, I just…I couldn’t sleep, and you don’t have a treadmill. Sometimes it’s the only way I get myself tired enough to fall asleep. Last night I actually managed to doze off, but I woke up at two in the morning and I couldn’t stay in bed.”
“You couldn’t stay in the house,” Hutch accused.
Kyle shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I had a shitty dream and I had to burn it off.”
That didn’t explain the phone call he’d made or why he had two phones to begin with. He wasn’t sure he could ask that question without giving up the fact that Michael had been following him. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He couldn’t force the guy to trust him.
Kyle pushed off the chair. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”
“The job? No, it probably won’t work if you can’t stay in a house with a client you’re guarding.”
“Well, I figured you would take care of her. It’s not like she was alone.”