Blowback (The Black Cipher Files Book 1) by Lisa Hughey Page B

and fiddled with the black box. “I need your help to reactivate the tracking system in this box.”
    I walked him through the process. Out of habit I checked my wrist for the time, but I didn’t have my watch anymore. I glanced at the digital clock in the dash. Two eighteen a.m.
    Lucas finished with the car and slammed the hood into place. Then he skirted the edge of the lot and dropped an envelope with the keys in the nighttime return slot. Keeping his head down and shoving his hands in his pockets, he sauntered down a side street.
    I waited patiently, keeping my gaze on the well-lit parking lot. It would be interesting to see what happened next, if anything.
    A quiet knock came from the back door. I peered through a tiny peephole.
    “Let me in. I hear a car coming,” Lucas whispered harshly.
    I wrenched open the back door, yanked him in and slammed it shut. I wanted back to the surveillance scope. Pronto.
    A black Suburban squealed to a stop at the rental car place. Two men jumped out and ran onto the lot. It was two twenty-six.
    Lucas already had the telephoto lens on the camera. He snapped quick pictures of the license plate and the man who was, at the moment, jimmying into the car we’d just returned.
    One spoke into a tiny cell phone. Another hopped back in the Suburban and drove off, turning down the side street Lucas had walked down, searching for us.
    The man in the lot pulled out a fingerprinting kit and started dusting the inside of the car.
    “That didn’t take long.”
    “Eight minutes,” I answered absently, still staring through the tube.
    Carson and I needed to have a serious talk.
    The man took a long look around. The instinctive urge to duck was strong but I held immobile. Lucas continued to snap away.
    Maybe the license plate on the Suburban would yield a clue, but I doubted it. My luck hadn’t been running that good. I already had suspicions about who was after me. I just needed to narrow it down to specifics.
    “That answers that question.”
    Lucas looked away from the car. “What’s that?”
    “They’re still after me.”
    “Us,” he said.
    We waited in tense silence while my thoughts fragmented and coalesced into patterns, ideas, searching for an answer that felt right.
    I was stuck waiting. I needed the analysis on that liquid and I’d really like to get a look at the files from Susan the scientist.
    My number one suspect was the United States government. No one else had the resources to pull off a search and surveillance of this scope.
    I just didn’t know which agency.
    Or why.
    Although I found it hard to fathom that the NSA might be conducting surveillance missions against itself, I couldn’t rule it out. It didn’t make sense. And yet, someone had access to our policies and training procedures.
    The Suburban left but neither of us moved. Lucas sacked out on the little cot underneath the bins.
    “Want to join me?” he asked lazily, his eyes closed and a small smile on his face.
    I tried not to remember the last time we’d shared a bed. But the image of him sprawled across the white hotel sheets, his tanned torso gleaming with the sheen of a bout of hot, sweaty sex, wouldn’t leave my mind.
    I swallowed the lump in my throat. “No.”
    I wondered if he used his van for rendezvous of a more personal nature. I couldn’t figure out the snap of jealousy zipping along my veins. “Quite the setup.”
    “It serves its purpose.”
    “All the comforts of home?” I crossed my arms underneath my breasts.
    Lucas squinted up at me. “Mostly.”
    He tossed a blanket to me. I spread it out on the floor and sat down on the hard corrugated metal. “Half an hour.”
    “That’s what I figured.”
    We needed to wait to leave. The two men had only been gone about fifteen minutes. Chances are they were lurking somewhere close in case we were still around.
    “I’m not tired.” He set his watch for fifteen minutes. “I’ll take first watch. You take the first nap.”
    I