Operation Owl

By Tara Quan

Five years ago, Maya Jain kissed her best friend only to have him run out of her dorm room and leave the state. When he shows up in Washington, D.C., a wanted fugitive sought after by every branch of the US government, she can’t bring herself to ignore his plight. As their physical relationship picks up where it left off, she decides it’s time to make him see her as more than the bespectacled, bookish girl he once called “Owl.”

After being accused of espionage and treason, Zack Strong needs a forensic accountant to help clear his name. Not knowing who he can trust, this white-hat hacker has no choice but to ask his former best friend and math tutor for help. Together they unravel a cyber conspiracy at the Barn, an NSA facility tasked to intercept electronic communications. But as they traverse the nation’s capital to avoid capture, Maya insists on letting their simmering sexual tension take its natural course. Even though he’s never been able to shake the memory of their one kiss, he refuses to let her give up her life for a man with no future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Decadent Publishing
• Release date: Jul 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781613337127

Tara Quan

Globetrotter, lover of languages, and romance author, Tara Quan has an addiction for crafting tales with a pinch of spice and a smidgen of kink. Inspired by her travels, Tara enjoys tossing her kick-ass heroines and alpha males into exotic contemporary locales, fantasy worlds, and post-apocalyptic futures. Armed with magical powers or conventional weapons, her characters are guaranteed a suspenseful and sensual ride, as well as their own happily ever after

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Operation Owl

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Tara Quan

ISBN: 978-1-61333-712-7

Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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Operation Owl

By

Tara Quan

A Beyond Fairytales Adaptation of Grimm’s The Owl

~Dedication~

To my friend Dr. Valentina.

Please solve the mysteries of the universe quickly.

Chapter One

Once upon a time….

Maya Jain paused at the domed entrance. A sculpture in its own right, the hammered bronze lettering took up an entire wall and marked the beginning of the Nicodemus Fairytales exhibit. Halogen light glinted off curved metal, giving the interlaced alphabet characters a magical gleam. She took a halting step forward before courage failed, the echoing hall empty but for her presence. Even with huge posters in every Metro station, the National Gallery of Art failed to draw a crowd. At the height of summer, few tourists had chosen this air-conditioned D.C. landmark over the sunbathed monuments outside. Renaissance oil paintings often ranked at the bottom of people’s lists when it came to must-see treasures in the nation’s capital.

Logic commanded she turn around. She had no idea what compelled her to stay put but hesitated to tease apart the jumbled emotions. Someone had either played a sick, twisted joke, or she was on the verge of aiding and abetting a known fugitive. She could just imagine herself inside a mirrored interrogation room at the Hoover Building. But Mr. FBI Agent, sir—Zack Strong’s my best friend from college. I’m sure he didn’t do all those awful things they wrote about in the papers. Please don’t send me to jail.

Talk about a weak defense.

Quoting the beginning line to every fairy tale, the piece of art taunted her, daring her to step inside. Her younger self would have met Zack anywhere. After all, he starred in her fondest memories of MIT. Two class years ahead of her, he’d tried and failed to teach her how to rollerblade, bought her first illegal alcoholic beverage, and once braved a Boston blizzard to buy microwavable popcorn for their Snow Day turned Farscape marathon. The least she could do now was hear him out.

But she hadn’t seen him in five years, and he’d spent the past three months as the United States’ most sought-after criminal. When the government wished to accuse someone of espionage or treason, they often opted for the more provable charge of mishandling classified documents. If she gave credence to reputable sources such as the Washington Herald, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, which most people believed ninety percent of the time, then she had to accept that the recipient of her first kiss somehow became the evil hacker of the twenty-first century.

According to the National Security Agency’s spokesman, her former classmate had circumvented the security protocols at the Barn—the NSA’s warehouse-sized bank of servers in the middle of the desert—and stolen information vital to national security. The most obvious course of action at this moment was to call 911 and turn him in, not accept a bizarre assignation at the National Gallery to hear his case.

One major problem with friendship, however, was its lack of an expiration date.

Gritting her teeth, she marched toward a small oil painting in the corner. She lifted a hand to adjust the nonexistent glasses ghosting the bridge of her nose. LASIK had freed her from the thick, round spectacles that had earned her the nickname Oolu, the Urdu word for owl. But a lifetime of near blindness caused the nervous habit to persist. After hearing her brother use the moniker, Zack had Google-translated the word and had insisted on calling her Owl for the next two years, despite repeated and emphatic requests on her end for him to knock it off. He’d even had the gall to reference the pet name in his cryptic video message that morning: I saw an ad on the Metro. It reminded me of what I used to call you. Let’s take a look at the real thing today after our study session.

And to her shame, even though they’d shared little more than Facebook birthday wishes over the past five years, decoding his meaning took her less than a minute. So here she stood, scrutinizing the baroque-style painting titled The Owl. It featured a wooden barn enveloped in red and orange flames. A throng of farmers holding torches and pitchforks stood outside, watching the structure blaze against the dark backdrop of a moonless night. Through the top window, she could barely make out the shape of a gray horned owl—its wings turned to cinders by the man-made fire. A cautionary tale about how fear and lies could turn a harmless and beautiful creature into a source of harm, this Nicodemus fable warned her against jumping to conclusions and accepting popular opinion as fact.

She heard approaching footsteps but didn’t turn, amazed she still recognized Zack’s unique gait by ear. His long lanky legs covered great distances in a short time. His heel always hit the floor first, followed by a light tap from his sole as the ball of his foot made contact. Unlike most people, the sound created by his left and right feet was almost identical. Balanced and even-keeled, he ambled with an athletic grace at odds with his chunky frame.

A wall of body heat warmed her back, making her heart race. His chin brushed the hair at the top of her head. Standing a foot taller than her, he would have had to bend down for it to happen. The feather-light caress hadn’t been an accident.

I wasn’t sure you’d come. To her surprise, the sound of his voice soothed her fraying nerves. News headlines and open warrant be damned—she knew in her gut Zack wasn’t a bad guy. Being next to him triggered a sense of safety, not fear.

Because she wanted nothing more than to turn around and hug her best friend, Maya kept her gaze locked on the painting. The iPhone you couriered over was a nice bribe.

His chuckle vibrated against her back, and she couldn’t help but notice his chest seemed harder than she remembered. Where there had once existed a cushioning layer of flesh, she found defined muscle. Curiosity tempted her to look at him, but part of her hesitated. If a body could change, so could the man. She needed to cling to the memory of him for a while longer.

I owed you five years’ worth of birthday presents.

She bit down hard on her lower lip, for the first time understanding why Snow White had accepted the poisoned red apple. Temptation muddled her thoughts, her desire to believe him innocent overruling caution. The last thing she should be feeling right now was concern for his safety. D.C. is a dangerous city for you. Come to think of it, so is the entire country. I thought you’d follow Edward Snowden’s footsteps and move to Russia.

He shivered. You know how much I hated those Boston winters. If I ran somewhere, it’d be Venezuela.

She clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. Then why are you here talking to me? There are cameras everywhere.

I did some recon before I picked this spot. All the security cams are focused on the paintings. All anyone can see right now is the back of my head. It’s pretty nondescript. His hands closed over her shoulders. The heat from his palms seeped through her silk blouse, making her want to lean back and rest her head against his broad chest. Why won’t you look at me?

Steeling herself, she pivoted on her heel and kept her gaze level. The word NERD in orange and white lettering against a black cotton backdrop filled her vision. She laughed. And just like that, her world shifted. Anxiety, concern, and fear dissipated, leaving only the part of her that remembered who they once were. You’re still ordering T-shirts from Think Geek?

I’m told orange complements my eyes, which you haven’t looked at yet. Not waiting for her response, he caught her chin and tilted her face up. Barely obscured by square, plastic-rimmed glasses, his amber gaze bore into hers with such intensity she blinked in an attempt to break the palpable link. Sporting a light tan, he looked more devastating than she remembered. As individual components, his features were unremarkable—the bridge of his nose too thick, his lips too thin, his eyebrows too bushy, his forehead too high, and his jaw too rounded. But, somehow, one look at his face could make her heart skip a beat, as it had done the day he sought her out at the end of a biostatistics lecture.

She, a freshman mathematics major, had scored highest in the first round of evaluations. He, the junior computer whiz who’d believed the class an easy path toward fulfilling his life sciences requirement, had received the lowest mark. He’d needed a tutor, and she’d been too awestruck