Guarded by the Cowboy - Em Petrova Page 0,46
happens.”
She levered herself onto her elbow to stare at him. “What?”
“I meant it when I said that it’s too dangerous for you, Lauralee. I’m going to find a way to get you out of here, and I don’t want you taking trays to her room anymore.”
The crinkle between his brows accentuated the dark gleam in his eyes. She had to admit the protector act was sexy and brought a depth to him she hadn’t understood in their first month in each other’s presence.
But looking hot as sin when he delivered those lines didn’t mean she would obey him.
“I have to do it again, Boone. Don’t you see? I did it once, and now they’ll trust me with the chore.”
“You’re not trained to handle yourself. If the woman rushes the door to escape, what would you do?”
“Let her pass and try to find a way to let her escape unnoticed.”
He winced. “Exactly. And the minute Black realizes it was you who opened the lion’s cage, so to speak, then you’re the missing person the cook spoke of.” He shook his head. “No damn way.”
“I can do the same things you can, Boone.”
“If you were trained, sure. But you’re not, honey. You can blast apart a firewall with a click of a button, but you can’t defend yourself physically.”
She fell silent, digesting this and not liking it one bit.
Though she was physically fit, she didn’t know martial arts or carry a weapon tucked inside her maid’s uniform. She would have to leave those things up to Boone, even if it didn’t sit well with her.
Suddenly, he pinched her bottom. She let out a squeal. “What was that for?”
“Let’s go ridin’. I want to get some distance from this place so I can think better. Is it just me or do you feel a heavy cloud over the ranch?”
She nodded, rubbing her chin against his muscled pec. “I was thinking that today while I vacuumed about three hundred miles of carpeting.”
He grunted. “C’mon. Let’s saddle a couple horses and maybe take a loop around the house and peek in windows.”
When they left the house and went into the stables, they didn’t cross paths with anyone, though they spotted some ranch hands completing evening chores. They took the same path they had last time, and Lauralee’s stomach heated at the thought of their last encounter in the pines.
As soon as they were a fair distance away, in a place where they wouldn’t be overheard, Boone drew his mare up next to hers.
“How would you go about taking down the camera in Isadora’s room?” he asked.
She cocked her head, looking at more pines and the dirt track ahead of her but seeing computer pathways and unseen connections. “It’s on a different circuit than the rest of the house, and I don’t believe Black would be dumb enough to have actual recordings of his wife in captivity.”
“So live footage only.”
She nodded.
“Is there a way to break the reception? Some interruption?”
“Well, webcam hacking is real. People hack into people’s cams and take pictures without their knowledge. So yes, there’s a way. You can use jamming, for one.”
“I’ve heard of that, but refresh my memory.”
“Orchestrate a bunch of wireless signals at once to basically overpower the frequency.”
“And you know how to do this?” He shooed away a mosquito.
She smacked at one too as they entered a particularly thick swarm. “I can do it. But I need access to a system. It can’t be done from my burn phone.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting you access. And if I can’t, I’ll get Silas on the job.”
She swayed with the horse’s every step, but she was far from lulled into calm. “What will happen if we can’t get her out of here?” She asked the one question that had been weighing on her mind from the moment she first set eyes on the woman.
“If we can’t, we’ll pass the job off to someone who can. There are groups who have no problem kidnapping a person.”
Her brows shot up. “And you associate with such people?”
“Not personally, no. But we can make contact if necessary.”
They rode on in silence for several more minutes. Her allergies were flaring up and her eyes started to water.
She sniffled.
Boone threw out an arm and caught her reins. She sent him a questioning look, and he peered at her closer.
“You’re not crying, are you?”
“No. My allergies.” She dipped her head. “I was so worried this morning about how to get my dress zipped that I