A shudder ran through her. It wasn't easy, but she made herself meet his eyes. She made herself say it. "I'm scared."
He nodded. "Me, too. But I think — " He squeezed her hand. "But I think this is going to be worthwhile. I think it's going to turn out to be really good. I honestly think so." He looked into her eyes and smiled; just the sweetest, most adorable smile.
Shana found she couldn't let go of his hand, though she was shaking with a mixture of excitement and terror. Dear God, she had not managed to call him off. Quite the opposite.
Dear God.
~~~
Dash left Shana's house by the front door an hour later. They'd spent most of that hour in the backyard, holding hands and talking, but he'd most considerately helped her clean up afterward, thus making free in her kitchen.
There was something of a swagger in his step, perhaps, as he walked across the lawn from her door to his. Not only had he received Shana's tacit consent to begin a relationship, but he'd coaxed a very sweet kiss from her delectable lips.
And, of course, he had the cookbook in his jacket pocket.
Now, theft might not be the best way to start a relationship, but Dash was fairly confident Shana would never miss the thing.
He was whistling as he jumped up his front steps. Ah, but life was looking good.
~~~
There was something special about a Caribbean breeze, something freer and spicier than your ordinary, garden-variety breeze. Anja stretched on the tangled covers of her hotel room bed and enjoyed the evening breeze drifting in through the French doors of her hotel room. The scent of the island man she'd enjoyed lingered in sensual memory. The man, himself, did not linger. Anja had sent him away shortly after he'd fulfilled his purpose.
True, he'd spent Monday night with her, but she hadn't slept with him. Falling asleep with a man, giving one that much trust, bordered on lunacy in Anja's book. Now, after a day-long nap to recover from the amusing episode, she was ready to stir again.
"Speaking of men who might be worth sleeping with..." Anja murmured out loud as she gazed at the swaying palm trees. "I suppose I ought to call Gideon and put him out of his misery."
She'd had her fun, her well-deserved celebration. But now it was Tuesday, very late Tuesday, and guilt was starting to seep into her satisfaction. Anja yawned to a sitting position on the bed and brushed a hand through her tangled hair. She didn't regret her escape from San Diego. She'd needed the chance to put in a 'back door,' a way of killing the virus should anyone try to use it for evil purposes. But once she'd accomplished that on Sunday, she should have let the Agency know at once that both she and her research were okay. They were better than okay, actually.
"Now, do I fly home, and endure Gideon's wrath in person, or do I give him a cowardly call on the telephone?" Anja pushed herself off the bed, found her sarong in a heap by her feet and took her time wrapping it around herself. Then she padded across the room to the safe that held her laptop. She unlocked it with the key tied around her neck and pulled out the computer.
Though it was tempting to prolong Gideon's troubles, Anja remembered there were others who might be worried about her. Olivia and her neighbors came to mind. This time the guilt did not ease away as Anja frowned. When had she last spoken with them? Was it last Wednesday? "An immediate email might be advised," Anja muttered, and opened the laptop.
A combination of over-indulgence in rum-based fruit drinks and sex had Anja yawning again. She was just wondering if her disappearance had been impetus enough for Gideon to break down and talk to his wife when the screen lit up with the last display before she'd put the computer to sleep.
Anja halted mid-yawn and blinked fully awake in an instant. Her heart chilled in her chest. The time. The time displayed in the upper right corner of the screen was not correct. It was not the same time that had been displayed when she'd last closed her laptop.
There was no question of a mistake. Anja made careful mental note of such details. There was a two hour gap between the time she'd last closed her laptop, and the time displayed on the screen.
Somebody had looked at her computer. They'd seen her data. Worse, they'd seen the paper, the conclusive title of which said everything. And yes, Anja had built in a back door, a way to kill the virus, but that didn't mean it was completely harmless. In the wrong hands —
As if in agreement with Anja's perception of disaster, there was a knock on her hotel room door — a brisk and, to Anja's mind, demanding knock.
Her head whipped toward the door. Whoever had looked at her computer had done so yesterday. Plenty of time to arrange — why, to arrange practically anything.
She slammed the computer closed, but knew this was no kind of protection. Everything was on her laptop, absolutely everything, including all the data she'd been so careful to wipe off the hard drives of the computers at the Agency's lab.
The knock on her hotel room door came again, more aggressively, together with a vigorous attempt at the doorknob.
No. No! This could not be happening. She'd been so careful, taken full control. With her heart beating hard enough to feel it in her teeth, Anja wrenched open the drawers of the desk and searched for something sharp.
~~~
With his cell phone to one ear on Tuesday night, Gideon loosened his tie with the other. He used a foot to pull out one of Olivia's dining room chairs and sank into it. Olivia had gone upstairs to take a shower, but he kept an eye on the stairway and his voice low, just in case.
"I got preliminary results on the vial you gave me," he told Peter over the phone.
"Tell me it was holding the virus and I'll find Anja myself," Peter declared. "I'll find her and kill her with my bare hands."
"Unfortunately," Gideon said, softly emphasizing the word, "they don't think it is the virus, or at least not the final version of it. It appears to be missing a few key ingredients."
Dash broke into the conversation at this point, via the wonder of conference calling. "Maybe the code in the recipe I found supplies the missing parts."
"They're working on that," Gideon admitted, "though they don't think it's enough code to make up the difference."
"And the cookbook turned out to be nothing." Dash made this comment with evident satisfaction. He'd maintained all along Anja hadn't even known about the cookbook, much less put a code in it.
"Olivia must be in possession of the remaining clue," Peter concluded.
Gideon felt his teeth clamp together.
"It is logical," Dash concurred. "Anja was friends with all three. All three have been given a piece, but only a piece, of the puzzle."
"Not," Gideon said, "necessarily."
"Come on, Gideon, it makes sense," Peter said. "Anja didn't want to cache too much information in one place, so she spread it out."
"And she added the safeguard of needing all three clues gathered together before anyone could make sense of it," Dash continued. "Quite elegant, actually."
Gideon's teeth were grinding against each other. "Olivia doesn't have anything."
"How do you know?" Peter queried, then humphed. "Maybe you should just ask her."
"I should ask her?" Gideon crushed the phone in his hand. Guilt splashed into terror at the very idea. Olivia was still waiting for his confidence; sweetly, patiently waiting.
"...Couldn't hurt," Peter said.
"I don't think he could do that," Dash put in, very sagely, in Gideon's opinion. "For one thing, it's strictly against security protocols to divulge our existence, let alone a mission."
"Thank you," Gideon said, glad for any logical excuse.
Peter scoffed. "Aw, come on. Gideon's not going to be able to keep his real profession from his wife forever. It's already caused all kinds of problems... Hasn't it, Gid?"
Gideon's eyes widened. Peter had no idea. Far more problems would be caused by any confessions of truth. "I am perfectly capable of keeping my professional and personal life separated," he claimed.
There was a guffaw on the
line, presumably from Peter.
Gideon drew in a deep breath. "Divulging any of this to Olivia is out of the question." He remembered to lower his voice. "Even if it weren't for security protocols, I can't have her learning sensitive information, information that could put her in danger just by knowing it." Ah, yes, another logical excuse.
"Then how are you going to find the clue?" Peter wanted to know. "Both Dash and I found ours by sheer dumb luck. We can't count on dumb luck happening with Olivia."
"He could call in the search team," Dash suggested. "They could comb every inch of the place."
Yes, and that would do just wonders for Gideon's marriage. He closed his eyes. "I'll do what I can to find something here, but I'm also assuming Anja could have left more than one clue in each location. I want both of you to keep looking."
For some reason, this order caused a silence on the line.
"Oh. Sure," Dash finally said, over-bright. "Shouldn't be a problem."
Peter piped up, "I'll keep my eyes open."
"Good," Gideon said and wondered if he actually wanted to know what was going on with either of them. He had a feeling security protocols were being broken all over the place. Just so long as neither agent told his target what was really up — and word never got back to Olivia — Gideon wasn't going to inquire too closely.
Finished with the call, Gideon got up and started for the stairs. Despite the certainty with which he'd spoken to the men about the final clue, he felt torn in five different directions. On the one hand, finding Anja, or at least her research, was becoming more critical with each passing day. Perhaps it was necessary to ask Olivia if she'd received any gifts from her neighbor lately.
But how could he ask that, without explaining how he even knew who Anja was? Olivia would wonder about that one-in-the-morning phone call from six months ago, put two-and-two together, and come up with a horribly wrong answer. Gideon had never touched Anja, or even wanted to.
He could tell Olivia the whole story, though. That way she wouldn't come to the wrong conclusion. He could do what she wanted him to do and tell her what was really going on and who he really was — everything.
For a moment, one insane moment, Gideon imagined that. He felt the relief of unburdening himself, the release from guilt. Then he saw Olivia's face. He saw a storm of incredible anger at his longstanding betrayal.
Absolutely impossible. It would be disastrous to explain to Olivia who he really was. His marriage would never survive it.
Gideon heaved a very deep sigh and started up the stairs. The clue Anja left just had to be somewhere else. Not with Olivia. It would mess everything up way too much if Anja had left a clue with his wife.
Gideon made a determined switch of gears as he strode down the second floor hall. He was done with global pharmaceutical espionage. Done being the head of a secret government agency. Time to simply be a man again. Indeed, his body kicked into a low-level hum of anticipation as he wondered if his wife had finished her shower yet.
His anticipation shifted from low hum to heavy purr as he turned into the open doorway of her bedroom and saw her perched on the wide windowsill. Her colorful silky kimono robe had slipped open to expose the full length of one creamy leg.
The grim set of Gideon's mouth eased. Being simply a man was gonna be good.
She turned her attention from a large potted plant set on the windowsill. A smile curved her lips as she looked over at Gideon. "You've been working late tonight."
Gideon shrugged and stepped into the room. The inner purr was revving up to a growl. "We've been having some issues with distribution," he claimed.
"Oh?" A shadow crossed her face, a very disturbing shadow — one indicating curiosity. But then it was gone. It was completely gone, as if she hadn't wanted him to see it. She smiled. "So you're all done now?" She raised her eyebrows in a familiar, recognizable signal. It was a you-can-kiss-me-now signal.
Gideon wasn't about to ignore the message, particularly when he felt like he'd just dodged a bullet. Any questions she had, she wasn't going to ask. She was holding back — yet again. "All done," he claimed, and stalked toward her.
Her lashes half closed, feline, mysterious...desirable, as he closed one hand over her thigh.
"At least with that business," he murmured.
Olivia gave a laugh deep in her throat and put her arms around his neck. Gideon shifted to put his other arm around her, with the idea of pulling her up and into bed, when there was the sound of a heavy thud.
Instinct and training had him pulling her back. With her safely to one side, he crouched on the other, squinting out the window for snipers. Olivia, apparently oblivious to the meaning behind his actions, groaned. "Oh, the plant."
Gideon released a deeply held breath and looked down. The thud had been nothing more dire than the big houseplant falling from the windowsill and onto the Navajo rug, upended during his romantic maneuver. He laughed softly.
"Since when do you keep houseplants?" Gideon bent to pick the thing up. No permanent harm appeared to have been done. Having landed on the rug, the pot was unbroken, though a lot of the dirt had spilled out.
"I wouldn't have a houseplant now." Olivia accepted the half-filled pot from Gideon and surveyed the spiky plant now tipping drunkenly within. "Except my stubborn neighbor, Anja, insisted on giving me this one." Olivia shook her head ruefully. "She claimed I wouldn't be able to kill it and up until now, she's been right."
Gideon felt a chill go through him. Slowly, he lifted his head from the rug where he'd been scooping dirt and stared at Olivia. "Anja," he asked in a hoarse voice. "You mean your across-the-backyard neighbor? She's the one who gave you this plant?"
"Mm hm." Olivia peered into the pot and poked at what soil was left with her fingers. "Feels dry, but I watered it — what? Just a few days ago."
Gideon watched what happened next as if he'd known it was coming, known it with dread inevitability. Olivia's fingers halted in the soil. A frown made a line between her dark brows. She pulled upward and then held aloft a ziploc bag containing sleek little object of gray and black metal and plastic. "What in the world — ?"
Her expression of mild wonder turned concerned when she looked up and saw Gideon's face. "What?" she wanted to know. "What is it?"
"It's a flash drive," said Gideon. Yes, it was a miniaturized, portable hard drive for a computer...specifically, for Anja's computer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"I — But what is it doing here?" Olivia asked, sitting on the window seat in her pretty silk robe and looking more and more confused.
Gideon knew exactly what the flash drive was doing there, in the houseplant Anja had given Olivia. It was another one of her damned clues. Perhaps even the last, and most significant, one. He had to think quickly. He needed to get the flash drive away from Olivia, and he needed to do it without alerting her that anything deep was going on.
"Perhaps it fell in there," Gideon tried, "when she was potting the plant."
"I don't know much about potting plants." Olivia opened the ziploc and removed the flash drive. "But I don't think it got in there by accident."
Gideon shrugged. He was getting hot beneath his shirt as he mentally scrambled for a way out of this. "I could take it to the office, pop it in one of my machines and see what's on it if you like."
He died a thousand deaths as he waited for her to think about this plan. She did so with great care, turning the flash drive over and over in her hands. "That would be all right," she said at last, "as long as I could come with you and see for myself." She halted, and folded the flash drive completely in one fist. "I've been worried about Anja."
"You have?" Gideon hoped like hell he sounded innocently ignorant. "Why?"
"I haven't heard from her in nearly a week," Olivia told him. "She changed her phone number and hasn't told me what it is and also hasn't answered any of my recent emails."
Privately, Gideon boggled. Olivia had heard from Anja less than a week ago? Anja had been in touc
h with his wife? He didn't know if he was more enraged by this piece of information, or riddled with guilt. Anja dared involve his wife in this escapade by calling her on the phone?
On the other hand, he should have bugged Olivia's telephone. Whether she was his wife or not, he should have been ready to intercept and trace Olivia's phone calls — with Anja!
Still — all wasn't lost. He now knew Anja must have left of her own free will since she was making phone calls to her friends. But it had been almost a week since that phone call. Was Anja still free, uncompromised?
Hollister was on her trail, and there were others, people far more dangerous than the pharmaceutical man. All of them would salivate over the chance to get their hands on Anja's vector. Had anything happened to her during the past week?
His gaze went back to the flash drive. "No problem," he told Olivia. "You can come into the office with me tomorrow morning." He'd alert staff to the get the 'front' office ready. "We can see what's on your neighbor's flash drive together." Showing Olivia what was on the flash drive would be all right since she wouldn't understand what she was seeing. Then Gideon could switch the flash drive with a mate to it before handing it back to her.
This could work.
Olivia seemed to agree. "That sounds like a good plan."
"Here." Breathing a silent prayer, Gideon held out a casual hand. "Why don't you give it to me and I'll put it in my jacket pocket? That way we won't forget it in the morning."
Olivia placed the flash drive in his hand.
Trusting.
Gideon closed his fingers over it and slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket.
Triumphant.
"I wonder, though," said Olivia, crouching to scoop dirt off the rug with her hands. "Do you think I should call the police?"
"What, because you haven't heard from your neighbor?" Gideon pretended to think about that. The very brightest agents in his group had been searching diligently for Anja for nearly two weeks now. Could the local police department do better? "Couldn't hurt," he said anyway, since he had no good reason to tell her otherwise.
Indiscreet Ladies of Green Ivy Way Page 16