Goliath Read Free

more physical with each encounter. Competition took a backseat to passion, their lovemaking becoming a game of one-upmanship, more lust than love.
    Somewhere along the journey, something much deeper blossomed.

    Gunnar Wolfe had bridled the Bear’s bucking bronco, an ego-driven woman whose beauty and passion matched her strength and competitive desires. A spring wedding was announced, plans hastily accelerated after Rocky discovered she was six weeks pregnant. The happy couple even found their dream house—a four thousand five hundred-square-foot waterfront home a few miles west of Seattle.
    It was shortly after their engagement that her fiance began acting strangely, as if he was harboring some dark secret. Their free time together lessened as Rocky’s trips to the Pentagon increased, Gunnar spending many a lonely night in his lab.
    And then, two weeks before their wedding date, Gunnar committed an unforgivable act of treason that broke her heart and changed both their lives forever.
    Arriving home from an extended stay in D.C., Rocky learned a computer virus had been downloaded into the terminals housing all of her project’s top-secret schematics. Years of work and countless man-hours had been eradicated in an instant. Worse, David Paniagua, the boy-genius in charge of the project’s nanotechnology (and Gunnar’s best man) reported that $2 billion worth of biochemical nanocomputer circuitry was missing, along with a five-year harvest’s worth of bioengineered silicon-coated bacteria.
    The Department of Defense was devastated by the setback. An internal investigation, following on the heels of the acts of espionage discovered at Los Alamos, forced the Navy to shut down the entire project until the spy or spies could be identified and apprehended.
    The culprit had broken into the artificial intelligence lab sometime around midnight. Security records revealed only one person had been in the Warfare Center’s A-I division at the time—Gunnar Wolfe.
    Within days, the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) found evidence of an offshore bank account in Gunnar’s father’s name. Recent deposits from another offshore bank were traced to Hong Kong, the account totaling just over $1.2 million. Although he denied any knowledge of the money or the stolen computer parts, a lie detector test clearly indicated the former war hero was hiding something from his superiors.
    Gunnar was arrested in his lab by NIS agents two days before their wedding day. Because there was no evidence indicating Gunnar had “sold” the schematics to another government, prosecutors were forced to reduce the charges of espionage to destruction of government resources. On June 22, a month after they were to have been married, a court-martial jury of staff rank naval officers found Gunnar Wolfe guilty, the judge (an admiral) sentencing him to ten years in Leavenworth.
    Six weeks later, the Republicans lost the White House, in no small part
due to the Goliath debacle. Within months, the new president would officially cancel the project altogether.
    Rocky was devastated. Her life’s work, her career goals, her future with the one man to whom she had pledged her love—everything was gone. Worse yet, Gunnar’s selfish, inexplicable act had disgraced her forever in the eyes of her peers. Rocky Jackson, a woman who practically draped herself in the American flag, had allowed herself to fall for a man who had stabbed his own country in the back.
    The pain was all-consuming, as if her heart had been torn from her chest, her mind from her skull. She felt used. She felt dirty. Weeks later, she would lose the baby.
    It was the final straw, too much even for her own superstrength ego to handle.
    Three months after Gunnar began serving time, the Bear found his daughter lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, having overdosed on muscle relaxants and barbiturates. It was the first time in her life she had ever cried out for help. It had nearly been her last.
    Months of