Jackie hides a tragic past under her professional, tough girl exterior. Nobody gets in, so nobody can hurt her. Until she’s assigned to rescue trust fund baby geek Wilder from a shadowy group which may have connections to her own history. She shouldn’t want the client, but her body has other ideas.

Wilder can’t believe Jackie is sent to protect him. He definitely doesn’t mind that such a beautiful woman is willing to spend time with him. Not to mention she seems to like him. A lot. How can that ever be a bad thing with someone he wants? Okay, so she could kill him in bed, if others don’t get to him first.

Jackie sees how brilliant, brave, and selfless Wilder is. He’s the polar opposite of most of the men Jackie’s known. She can’t fight her attraction to him, and he’s clearly into her, but a long term love seems out of the question. Until a serum makes him so much more than just a cute geek.

Chapter 1

Jackie

This was the longest driveway she’d ever seen. Jackie rolled her eyes at the statues and artfully carved shrubs along the way. It wasn’t enough that the Rollins family had a ton of land, but they had to cultivate it, too, into some sort of grotesque display of wealth.

Working for Nick’s shifter protection agency had sent her to some strange places, but this was far stranger to her than any jungle or underworld crime scene. Meghan, her liaison with the agency, had briefed her on the case. She’d mentioned that the kidnapped thirty-year-old had been rich and geeky.

Jackie had expected a decent-sized house with a few foreign cars out front. She hadn’t expected this.

She parked in front of the mansion and slammed the car door shut behind her. In order to see the entire building, she would have to crane her neck, and she didn’t want to give the mansion that much respect. Gold lions stood on either end of a double door, and a gilded door knocker, also with the face of a lion, stared at her as she wrapped her fingers around it.

The owners were too posh for a doorbell, of course.

Jackie hadn’t grown up with much. She didn’t blame people for having money, but she would never understand why someone would spend so much money on something as frivolous as a door knocker or a statue.

She knocked, and a real-life butler dressed in a suit answered the door.

“Miss Smith.” His eyes flicked toward her worn sneakers, but his expression didn’t change. She’d expected a butler to have a British accent and a snobby, refined air, but this butler spoke with the worn vowels of Texas, and he looked almost sad. “We’re glad you could come so soon. Mr. and Mrs. Rollins are beside themselves. This way, please.”

The butler led her through a grand marble hall, made even larger by mirrors lining the walls, and she counted three living rooms before he brought her to a small, intimate room lined with tall bookshelves. Several leather armchairs sat in the center of the room in front of a fireplace.

A fireplace in South Texas. How often did they even use it? Once a year?

“Good morning,” Jackie said. “I got here as soon as I heard about your son.”

Despite her annoyance at the house, her heart twinged when she saw the guy’s parents. Neither looked like they’d slept well, and his mother’s mouth crumpled when she saw Jackie walk in as if even the reminder of her son’s disappearance was too much.

“Thank you.” Mr. Rollins cleared his throat. Small, round spectacles sat on the bridge of his nose, the type that only someone with money could pull off. “We appreciate whatever help you can provide. Please, sit. Can we offer you anything to drink? Eat?”

Jackie shook her head and sat. Time was everything in an abduction. “Tell me about your son.”

“Oh, Wilder was …” He looked to his wife, helpless.

“Finding his way,” she said. She flashed a tremulous smile at Jackie. “You know how kids are these days. He almost finished college, and then he just … struggled a bit, I suppose. Decided he needed to change his major. Then, he decided to double major in computer science and biology, which, by the way, was not easy to do. He’s always been brilliant, and now he’s been accepted into a master’s program, although he’s made some noise about switching that up, as well.”

Mrs. Rollins flapped her hands a bit, struggling to explain. “He’s always been more into computers than people, even as a child. The only time I ever saw him run around was at my brother’s house when he was young. As soon as he discovered the internet, that was it. Most nights, he stays … stayed … in his wing of the house.”

“He does some videos or something,” Mr. Rollins added. He rolled his eyes, and his wife didn’t look pleased. “Who wants to watch someone else open a box? Or play a game? I’ve never understood it all, I have to say. Would you believe he has fans?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Rollins’s voice was acid. “I would. He has a few thousand now.”

This was an old argument, and Mr. Rollins seemed well-prepared with his retort. “And how many are fake accounts you’ve created to encourage him? Honestly, Hannah. Of course, he never left the house. You did everything you could to encourage him in this madness.”

“Are you saying this is my fault?”

“No one’s at fault here except his kidnappers.” Jackie wasn’t eager to watch a grief-fueled spousal fight, and thankfully, their regard for social propriety pulled both of them back from the brink of one. “How and when did they contact you?”

Meghan had shared the information with her, but Jackie wanted to know if there was anything the parents left out.

“Gerald got a call late last night. They didn’t want money. I’d have given them anything. All of this. But they said it’s worthless to them. They expect us to somehow free some gang members from prisons all across South America.”

“Do you have a list available?”

Mrs. Rollins nodded and reached into her pocket to present a neatly written list of names and prisons. Jackie glanced at it. She recognized a few of the names, and the prisons were definitely scattered: Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, and even Peru. She tucked it away for Nick to examine.

“I know this sounds rude.” Jackie wasn’t accustomed to being overly polite, but she knew from experience that wealthier clients could be prickly about implying they were criminals. Generally, the more prickly they became, the more guilty they were. She watched them carefully as she spoke. “But I have to know whether either of you or any of your family members have been involved in any criminal activity.”

They didn’t look offended at all, only confused.

“I just don’t understand it,” Mrs. Rollins said. “He’s such a good boy. It must have been something to do with all his computers. Some cybercrime or something. It’s the only thing I can figure out. None of us have so much as a speeding ticket. I swear.”

The words seemed sincere, and his father seemed equally bewildered. Jackie pursed her lips. Maybe they were right. It wouldn’t hurt to look at the computers anyway and bring some data back for Nick’s people to examine.

“Do I have your permission to search your son’s property?”

Mrs. Rollins swiped at a rogue tear escaping her eye. “Please, look anywhere you need, and take anything you need. All we want is for Wilder to come home safe. I really,” her voice faltered, but she spoke anyway, and the sound tore at Jackie’s cold heart, “I really think they might kill him.”

Mr. Rollins embraced his wife and nodded to the butler. “Phillip, please escort her to Wilder’s wing.”

His wing?

Phillip, the butler, led her to Wilder’s portion of the house, complete with his own private pool and garden. Of course, he never left the house, she mused. He had his own video game room, complete with colored LED lights, gaming chairs, and more consoles than Jackie could begin to count.

Phillip listed the names of the rooms as they passed them. “That’s his gaming room,” he said, “and his personal room. His guest room. Pool room. Personal theater. And here is his computer room.”

Jackie looked into each space. The design was minimalist but masculine. Dark colors, strong wood. Embarrassingly, she found that she rather enjoyed the scent of his pillow as she fished around for a personal laptop. He might have a room stacked with computers, but she wanted to know what he was up to at night … who he was talking to and why.

For some reason, the thought flustered her, and she fumbled with the USB stick before she stuck it into the port. Dealing with wealth like this was really throwing her off her game. The USB flashed as Nick’s proprietary system bypassed security protocols, and she did the same with the rest of the computers throughout the wing, just to be thorough.

Jackie looked for anything else that might be incriminating, but the man was frustratingly neat. It was as if he didn’t exist in meat space at all. It was like his entire existence was all pixels and online.

“He’s private,” Phillip said, “but he’s a good man. I hope you find him soon. Is there anything else you need? The entire family is at your disposal.”

Jackie lifted the laptop. It was the only device that wasn’t brand new. A faint scratch had been etched into the left top side, and the keys were well worn. Her intuition pinged again. If he’d gotten himself into trouble, it had been with this. She wanted Nick to look over his personal laptop in more detail. “Can I take this for an examination?”

“Of course.”

Jackie didn’t think much of Wilder if she were being honest with herself. He was a thirty-year-old man still living at home with his parents with no higher ambition than to play video games and probably jerk off to porn all day. Still, she retraced her steps in each room, meticulously looking for any clue she might have missed the first time through.

She might not like the guy, but she didn’t have to like someone in order to do her job.

After she’d searched the wing of the house exhaustively, Phillip led her down the stairs and to the front door. This time, she looked around as she walked, less cowed by the sheer opulence on display, and she paused by a picture hanging in the hall.

“Is this him?”

Phillip paused. “Oh, yes. That’s from a few years ago. His mother demanded he sit for a professional session.”

Something about the rueful tilt to his mouth suggested that the formal photo shoot hadn’t been his idea, and there was a humorous light in his eye that hadn’t translated across the pixelated photo Meghan had briefly shown her earlier.

Wilder sat in one of the leather armchairs from the library downstairs with a fire crackling behind him. He had dark hair, almost black, and clever brown eyes that suggested he knew just how ridiculous all of this was. His skin was pale as though he needed to spend more time outdoors, and his arms were as scrawny as she’d expect for a man who played video games and unboxed tech toys for a living.

Still...

Something about his face or his expression tugged at her heart, insisting that this was more than a job. It compelled her to race out the door, shift into her fiercest form, and find him at all costs. Protect him at all costs.

Jackie blinked and rubbed the heel of her hand against her eyes. She really needed more sleep. She always cared about her job. This was no different. Maybe she cared a bit more because his parents seemed nice, and they looked devastated by his disappearance. Or maybe she felt protective because he looked so helpless.

Whatever the reason, she buried it deep as she thanked the Rollins’ for their time.

“My agency will contact you with all updates,” she said. Her heart still raced with that strange need to shift and fight. “I promise you that I will do everything I can to bring your son home to you.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Rollins shook her hand. “Thank you so much. Things felt hopeless earlier today, but we both trust you. If anyone can bring him home, I think you can.”

No pressure.

Jackie rocked on her feet, restless. Standing still was torture. She needed to move. “I’ll do my best.”

She forced her feet to move at a normal pace toward her dusty Honda Civic. She wasn’t an irrational woman. She wasn’t going to let some good, professional lighting in an overpriced photograph trick her into treating this client better than any others before him.

And if she ran a few red lights on the way to headquarters, that was her personal business.