by Jeanne Adams
“Ah, bourgeois? I have no idea, but this chef is legendary for unusual dishes. If it sounds intriguing, it probably is.”
“Intriguing. Do I want to eat intriguing food? It’s been a rough enough day already,” Ana said, feeling every bit of that statement in her bones. Rough didn’t even begin to describe how she was feeling.
“You’ll enjoy it, trust me. It will be great. Here, have a glass of wine and get out your notes. Let’s dig into this so you’ll have something solid to occupy your mind before you wig out.”
“Wig out? Nice. Thanks.” Ana accepted a filled glass and reached into her briefcase for a writing pad and one of the files. How could he know that the work would steady her? For now, she didn’t question it. However it worked, it would help her, so she went with it.
Gates topped off his own glass and took a set of folded papers from the breast pocket of his coat. Scrawled writing filled the pages, with a variety of boxed comments and underlined sentences with question marks.
“Interesting notes,” Ana said as she opened her own folder.
“Ideas. Searches I’ve pulled recently on the art,” he dismissed the notes. “Nothing turned up on the two databases we discussed. So,” he leaned into the banquette, wine in hand. “Talk to me.”
“It started with this,” Ana began, pointing to the original search she’d done when she reviewed the case for the first time. By the time they came to the dessert course, Ana had to admit that the chef was a total genius with food. Between the food, the wine, and the stimulating company, Ana felt more alive, more in the groove than she had for over a year.
“See here?” She pointed out the terms of the latest search she’d run. “This is where things began to happen.”
Gates looked at the page where Ana was pointing. As much as her presence was distracting, it was also invigorating. Conversation with her sharpened his mind as well as his senses. He’d decided after she left the estate earlier in the day that he was going to pursue her. He hadn’t done that in years, much to Dav’s irritation. With Ana, he’d decided to make an exception. Something about her tugged at him, pulled at his intellect as well as his libido.
She said something else that caught his attention, tapping a search parameter. He frowned over her notes, over the ideas.
“Wait,” he interrupted her. “That doesn’t make sense.” He flipped open the leather notepad he kept in his pocket, began a timeline. “If your runs on the data started here,” he began drawing out the line, marking delineations of things as they occurred. “Why did you get a reaction now?”
“Hmmm, not sure,” she murmured, leaning close to him so she could see what he had written. She took his pen, made another mark. “I ran a basic three-prong query on Moroni here, just to see what popped in Google and Mackie,” she said.
He knew she wasn’t doing it deliberately, but the warmth of her body distracted him. He thought of Ana’s soft body against his, their heated exchange of kisses.
God, he hadn’t felt that hot for a woman in, well, ever. He watched her. Her brow furrowed as she scanned through the annotations in her file. She wouldn’t let him read any of it—that would give him too much power, be too intrusive, which he understood—but she was sharing, matching her skills with his. It felt good. Too good in some ways. The power of it was seductive. He’d already decided he was going to pursue her. He had to be careful though, to keep his own heart intact. The combination of intellect and sensuality, even her tears, had drawn him, inexorably, to her.
“What about this?” he rattled off a series of search options, and had the interesting experience of seeing her eyes light up, feeling her body quiver with repressed excitement over the concept. He let his eyes drift shut, imagining her next to him, under him, quivering in the same way, but for different reasons.
The intensity was almost shocking. He forced himself to pull back from it, make sure he gave it plenty of thought before he leapt in. She’d been hurt, but his own pain was still fresh, despite the years since his parents’ deaths. He never forgot that relationships, obsessions, had led to that loss. The woman responsible had vowed to finish the job, eradicate everything his father had loved, including Gates and his sister.
Passion took many dangerous turns, and turning toward Ana would never be simple.
“If we did this, it might get us something,” Ana said, bringing him abruptly back to the discussion. She pointed to a series of obscure search terms she’d scribbled on a blank sheet. They surprised him. Her mind was fast and flexible. Again, he felt the undeniable surge of deep attraction to her.
Fortunately for him, she was oblivious to his wandering thoughts, as she continued. “We might trace calls from the various galleries. I’d have to get a lot of permissions,” she mused. He could all but see the wheels turning in her mind. “If we took the search terms, though, and factored in each of the victim’s numbers, provided they’d let us use them,” she grinned wryly, and he answered it with his own smile. “We could do a multi-factor overlayment process, with multiple keywords.” She was getting enthusiastic, now. “If we did that,” she scribbled down a list of terms and rates, processes and multitasking data runs. “Then this,” she jotted two more items. “There. That would do it, don’t you think?”
Focusing on the pages, he tracked her logic.
She was brilliant. No doubt in his mind, seeing what she’d written. And damn him if that wasn’t as sexy, as attractive, as her long, lean body, dark hair, and hazel eyes. As she talked, he saw the sheer creativity with which her mind worked.
“That’s way out of the box,” he said, continuing to read. He could feel the excitement buzzing in his blood. This was the kind of thing he loved as well, and it was revving him up that she shared it.
“You think it won’t work?”
“I didn’t say that, but here,” he flipped her pad around, drew five lines, and intersected two of the data runs she’d outlined. “If we have these two searches in parallel, with cross-checks, we could eliminate, what?” He looked at her, calculating the ratios in his mind. “Another thirty percent of the hits?”
The look of sheer delight she gave him was sizzling. “If we did that, then we could do this too.” She whipped the pad back around and added another layer at the bottom, which would knock down another eight to ten percent of the million or more calls they would be having the system sort through.
The proposed number was actually manageable, which was the whole point. He had a sudden vision of the two of them, delving into problems like this, creating solutions, working through complex problems. Together.
The idea of it was sexy as hell. Not to mention scary beyond belief. He was content to stay in Dav’s shadow, doing his thing, making his way. This kind of thing, this type of partnering, could blow everything out of the water.
Startled, he shifted in the seat. The idea was so radical, so out of the realm of things he usually thought of, that he had to set it aside. Why would he see her as a business partner? They both had jobs, jobs they loved, he forcibly reminded himself. They were just beginning to know one another, so it was far too soon to think about things like that. Futures.
“Gates?” Ana was looking at him, a quizzical, questioning gaze. He must have been staring off into space for a few minutes, if her expression was any gauge.
“Sorry, thinking about how this all ties together. There are too many loose ends at this point, of course. Too many odd angles.” They wore matching frowns over the observations they’d drawn on the pad of paper between them. Her writing meshed with his, she’d crossed his t’s and added a few more of her own flourishes.
Before he could think about it further, Ana flipped the pad and began listing the warrants and permissions they’d have to wangle for the search they were proposing. Gates could do it, privately, but then it wouldn’t be admissible so he didn’t mention it.
“Hang on,” he said, reaching for the pad. She relinquished it, and he turned back to the search terms. “What about this?” He
proposed another tweak that would cut the five most peripheral victims out of the search, dropping the number of warrants down to sixteen.
They kept that up for another ten minutes, back and forth. Their plates were pushed back, and the waiter came by and whisked them away, refilling water glasses. Neither of them looked up.
“Okay, okay.” Ana was jazzed now. She’d moved even closer to him so they could both see the paper, scribble notes. “See this? We could eliminate one warrant for calls if we took this out of the equation.”
A low, feminine rumble of a voice came out of the shadows, jerking both of them out of their contemplations of the patterns they’d listed. “My food doesn’t please you and your companion tonight, Gates?”
“Of course it pleases me, Melanie,” Gates managed, shifting his brain from mathematical tracking vectors and search terms, to the real world. He turned toward the voice, smiling at Melanie. “Please, come meet my friend, Ana Burton. Your wonderful food was an antidote to a bad day, and a perfect stimulus to some deep thinking.”
“Absolutely,” Ana supported him, also facing the shadowed voice. Gates felt the tension in her arm where it rested on the table next to his. He slid a hand over her taut fingers, giving them a subtle squeeze of reassurance.
“Well then, I’m happy to have helped.” The voice moved closer, and a statuesque woman limped into the soft light at the table. She would have been beautiful, if not for the vivid scar running diagonally across her face. The cane she was using tonight was elegant and feminine, with a highly polished silver cap. She leaned on it easily, but obviously with a great deal of pressure. Her leg must really be hurting; he remembered that it frequently did hurt on rainy nights.
Gates hoped she would smile, because her smile drove the specter of the scar away and let her grace shine through. Once upon a time, they’d been lovers, then gone their separate ways when the passion cooled and Dav’s business intervened, taking him around the world once more.
“It was fabulous,” Ana complimented, never betraying for a moment that the scar or cane bothered her. “How do you get the meat…” she trailed off, waving a hand. “Never mind. It’s not like I could or would duplicate it. Suffice to say,” she grinned at the chef. “It was great.”
“I have dessert for you, if you’ve room to enjoy it,” Melanie said. “It’s something I only made a small quantity of, but I found some beautiful blueberries in the market. Do you both like blueberries?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ana enthused. “When I was a kid, there was this blueberry thing, with ouzo and pine nuts…ohmygosh.” He enjoyed the catlike look of pleasure on her face. “Ever since, I adore blueberries.”
Melanie’s face took on a sharper, more keen look. “Blueberries? Pine nuts? Really?”
“Yes, it was just…” Ana seemed at a loss for words. She made a very Italianate gesture with her hands. It intrigued him, to think she’d grown up in Italy, and Greece. He’d traveled around the world, with Dav and escaping his own demons, but not the way she had. “Simple. Marvelous. Really magnificent. Of course,” she laughed ruefully, “it might be far better in memory than reality, but at the time…”
“You grew up here? Where?”
“I’d bet that was in your Italian phase,” Gates answered the question, letting Ana off the hook from explaining her traveling childhood. “Ana’s well travelled,” he explained to the chef.
Melanie grinned, a fierce-looking thing rather than the gentle smile she usually brought out for customers. “That could be quite a winner around here if I could duplicate it. I know you have business tonight, but I’d be appreciative if you might be willing to stop by for lunch one day, on me of course, and tell me more about that dish.”
“Really?” Ana accepted the card Melanie held out. “Sure. I mean, I’m no cook so I don’t know how…” She trailed off because Melanie was shaking her head, still grinning.
“Doesn’t matter. If you can give me the gist, I can play with it until I get something good.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Wonderful. I’ll let you get back to your discussions,” she said, then pointed at the notes. “But next time, Gates, bring the lady here for fun, not business. You don’t enjoy my food as much when you’re working, and hey,” she finished with a whimsical note, “it’s alllllll about the food.”
They laughed together, and Melanie moved to another shadowed table. They heard her pleasant inquiry about the meal, but the answers were lost in the general rattle and clank of the waitstaff and the effective barrier of the plants and banquettes. Gates found it reassuring. No one could have heard their discussions either.
“Did we get anywhere?” he asked, flipping through the pages he’d written. “I think we’ve got more questions than answers here.”
“That’s always the way it is.” Ana’s voice held a note of enthusiasm and energy he’d not heard before. This was the Ana he’d sensed lurking under the surface. It was…arousing. “Look here.” She pointed to a series of questions they’d written down. “I can take this and do a Boolean search on the keywords. May turn up something useful. I can drill down on this one.” She pointed at another name, another gallery Dav had used for purchasing art. “Of all the galleries your Dav used, this one wasn’t hit. Sometimes it’s the blanks that mean more than the bumps, you know?”
It was interesting to hear his own thoughts echoed in her words. He often thought the negative spaces spoke louder than the chatter. He was already intrigued by her. Hearing her enthusiasm, he wanted her even more.
How odd to become so entranced with a woman because of her mind. Not that the body wasn’t prime, he decided, leaning back once more to study her, because it was. She wore another of the conservative suits. He’d admired it that very morning as she sat with them at their early lunch. Now, hours and a dreadful day later, she still looked good, well put together.
“What? Did I spill something on my shirt?” Ana said, distracted by his scrutiny.
“Not at all. I was just thinking. I agree with Melanie. I need to bring you back here without files. Perhaps we’ll come back on Friday night.”
“I’m never without files,” she said, putting up a small defensive wall around the idea of the date. Perversely, it made him want to jump the wall, get to the heart of her.
“Never?” he teased. “That’s interesting.” He laughed as she considered the words. Obviously it was more natural for her to quip—a quick sharp response—than to ponder before speaking. Something had changed her, he decided. The Rome incident she’d referred to. He hadn’t been able to break through the clearances about that, but he’d pulled news reports and other data. There’d been a bombing, an attempt on the parliament about the time she’d come back to the States. He’d lay odds that was part of what had put the hesitation in her step, in her decision making.
Dessert arrived with coffee, and it looked, smelled, and tasted like heaven. He’d never considered blueberries an aphrodisiac, but apparently, where Ana was concerned, he was going to be discovering all kinds of new things.
“Oh, my God, this is fabulous,” she murmured, slipping the fork out of her mouth and licking the back of it. The sweep of her tongue over the tines had him reacting, and he felt the beat of excitement in his blood. She portioned off another bite, but before she lifted the fork, he intercepted it.
“Here, let me.” Dipping the bit in the whipped cream, he conveyed it to her mouth, waited for her to open, and slid the fork in. The simple dance of it, the connection, was sensual and powerfully arousing.
“Mmmmmm,” she murmured, holding his gaze. There was a flicker of excitement in her eyes, and a feminine smile curved her lips; lips he wanted to capture, lips he wanted to take. With studied care, he brought the fork to his own mouth, licked the tines as she had done.
“Delicious,” he murmured, never breaking eye contact.
A presence at the edge of the table distracted them both.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver apologized, his nervous
ness shouting from every twist of his hands around his hatband. “Mr. Gianikopolis needs you right away. He said to tell you there’s been another incident.”
Chapter Ten
Ana was as fast to gather her things as he was. The bill was settled without incident, and the mood turned dark as the driver led them to the car.
“You can drop me at the Rialto, I’ll catch a cab there.”
“No,” Gates’s answer was unequivocal. “We’ll take you home. It’s on the way.” He nodded to the driver as they slid into the back, and within seconds they were easing into traffic.
“You should call,” Ana said. “Please, go ahead.”
“Okay.” Gates had the phone in his hand before he finished the word. Dav had been in all evening, working on a major restructuring of a small Algerian shipping company he’d acquired a year ago. He’d let it run with minor changes for the last ten months, waiting to see if it had been the owner’s personality driving the business into the ground, or the internal accounting. With a year’s worth of accounting to reflect on, Dav was now making drastic changes. Dav hadn’t, however, planned to leave the estate, which was why Gates had felt he could be absent.
“Dav?” Gates put all his questions into his boss’s name.
“I’m fine. The incident was outside the gates. Two of your guys were coming back from a quick trip for coffee. There was a bang-strip at the bottom of the driveway, and someone shot up the car. Neither of them are hurt, thanks to the bulletproofing, but it’s outrageous.” Dav was worked up, and pissed. “It wasn’t even dark,” he snarled. “It is too easy to access us here in the United States. I think it’s time to head to the house in France.”
“I don’t think so,” Gates disagreed. “We’ll talk when I get there. The team called Detective Baxter, I presume?”
“Of course,” Dav dismissed that. “They picked up shell casings and hauled the car away. The usual.”