He wasn’t holding anything back. Not ever again.
“Why? Because he was mouthy with the cops? He was, you know. Totally mouthy. I kind of thought he was doing it so the attention was on him and not me,” she said quietly. “I think he was trying to look out for me.”
It would have been better for Kyle to lay low, but he hadn’t. Still. “I’m supposed to watch Kyle and let our boss know if I think he’s working for someone. For the CIA, or maybe someone worse.”
She turned to her side, and he wished he hadn’t brought it up. He wasn’t ready to leave the bubble they’d found. But she needed to know.
“You think he’s a spy?”
“I think he’s suspicious, and I want you to be careful. You need to understand that even if I leave you alone with Kyle, someone else is watching. If anything happens, you’ll still be protected.” He kissed her forehead and with reluctance rolled out of bed to deal with the condom. Luckily the Rumpus Room came complete with a bathroom and a decadent shower where he could clean her up before he got her dirty all over again. “The good news is you won’t be going back to Genedyne any time soon. You can come up to work with me.”
He would watch over her.
He moved into the bathroom, getting rid of the condom and washing his hands.
Noelle was on her side when he returned, her head resting in her hand and a thoughtful look on her face. “I have to call my dad in the morning.”
She was so much calmer. She’d needed to know he would never let her go, that no mistake either of them made had to mean the end if they clung to each other.
“It’s going to be all right.”
Her nose wrinkled. “You’ve never had an overprotective Cajun sheriff worried about you.”
“I’ll talk to him.” He moved back into the room. “Unless you want to go home. I can take some time off.”
It might be for the best.
“Let’s see what Cara has to say in the morning.” She reached her hand out toward him. “It might be nice to go home for a bit if you come with me. I’d like you to meet my parents.”
And have an overly protective Cajun sheriff size him up? For her, he would do anything. “I’m going to have to have a long talk with your dad. I really did serve some time.”
“He’ll give you a medal for what you served time for.” She squeezed his hand. “My dad will love you because you take such good care of me. But I do have some decisions to make. The truth is even if Cara arrests Jessica tomorrow, Genedyne still owns my research, and it’s going to be hard to get it back.”
He had some thoughts about that, but he didn’t want to get her hopes up. “I’m going to let Mitch work on that. We have some work to do, too. I want to know who that woman was and why she had your keycard.”
Noelle let go of his hand and sighed as she lay back. “It was the mail room chick. I didn’t even think about her until now. The police told me someone used it, and I didn’t know there had been anyone but you.”
He sat down beside her, trying to focus on her face, but it was hard because there were her pretty nipples and they were a deep pink from the clamp and…damn it. Mail room chick. “Had you met her before?”
She shook her head. “No. We don’t get snail mail. We do everything on computers. But she had a couple of journals she said the company had ordered for our lab. She dropped them. That was when she took my keycard.”
“Did you get a good look at her?” They could get a sketch artist in and he could then use computer modeling to refine it. She thought she could avoid facial recognition software, but there were ways to work around her tech.
Noelle bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know. I can probably give you a basic description. So the mail room woman was working for the gas company. It’s crazy how many people don’t want my work out in the world.”
He’d been thinking about it all night and whether or not Kyle had anything to do with the incident. Kyle hadn’t helped the woman who’d downloaded Noelle’s research. If he had, he would have told her they were in the building and that Hutch was on the move. She would have either avoided the server room until he was out or killed him there.
“We’re going to figure this out,” he promised her. “And honestly, now that you don’t have to go back to that building, Jessica probably isn’t a physical threat. She’ll have you where she wants you, on the outside. She might even think she’s gotten away with it. She doesn’t have to kill you. She can try to let the court system silence you.”