by Rachel Lee
The clerk wished he could close his ears. “TMI,” he said.
His boss laughed. “I read you. That’s more than I wanted to know. But I think you’re off the hook at least until Monday. I’m going to go home, too, and turn off my phone. I suggest you do the same.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good job,” his boss said, just before he disconnected.
Sure, thought the clerk, staring at the cherry blossoms and the perfectly ordinary people walking around him. For the first time in a while, he wished he were one of them.
Chapter 6
Morning brought no change. The storm outside still hammered the world with its fury. The news said it was unsafe to go out on the roads for any reason and that much of the state was being shut down for what was rapidly becoming called “the Blizzard of the Century.” Trace watched just long enough to pick up the important bits.
“I don’t believe that,” Julie muttered as she scrambled eggs to go with some bacon she’d fried. “I’ve heard that line before.”
“So there’s more than one blizzard of the century?” Trace asked. He still hadn’t put on the sling and was wearing yet another flannel shirt and jeans. He preferred dark-hued shirts, and this was another shade of gray.
“Apparently. And while there’s lots of snow, it’s not even that cold. We had colder weather last year, dangerous. Clippers don’t often reach us here, but we got one last year. Nah, he’s exaggerating.”
“Maybe it makes people feel better about being stuck in place.” He couldn’t imagine why he was defending the guy. Just to make conversation? He had a feeling Julie was slightly out of sorts this morning, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe she was still dealing with the tension of this whole situation.
“Could be.”
“I feel bad about you having to take care of me like this,” he said as she served their breakfasts at the bar. The last person to do this for him had been a girlfriend years ago, and she hadn’t lasted long when she realized that one of his failings was taking off on a moment’s notice.
She cocked an eye at him. “Alternatives? You can’t exactly get out of here and go hang at the diner or a bar, waiting for your hunter to arrive.”
“Not in this weather, although it might have been preferable to dragging you into this.”
“Cut it out,” she said, picking up a crispy piece of bacon in her fingers. “This was the best alternative to leaving you hanging out there. I don’t mind. Save the guilt, at least as regards me.”
He hoped he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about her at all when this was over, but he had some serious doubts. He decided to change the subject. “So how’s an adventurous woman like you wind up being a kindergarten teacher here?”
“I grew up here. I love this place. As for teaching kindergarten, I wouldn’t do anything else, and I’ve had the opportunity. I love working with those bright, curious little minds and their off-the-wall perspectives on a lot of things. They often make me see the world differently. They certainly keep it fresh. So for me, teaching is an adventure. A different kind of exploration.”
He smiled, thinking he understood. “But the world traveler in you?”
“Small doses are best. I go take my little jaunt, have a great time, then come back here and get grounded again. It’s my home, Trace.” Then she paused, and he saw guilt dance across her face.
“Easy. I chose my life, too. A child of many cultures, son of none, I guess.” However it sounded, it was true. He wondered if the word rootless applied to him. He wondered if he’d ever be able to learn to live any other way.
“Except this culture,” she argued.
“Clearly. This country is my home, little time as I’ve spent here over the years.”
He watched her eat some more eggs, then she asked, “So do you feel rootless?”
Funny her question should echo his thoughts. What was she picking up on? He usually did not reveal much about himself. “There are all kinds of roots,” he remarked. “I’d sunk mine pretty deep into my work and my coworkers.”
“But now they’ve been cut?”
He looked down at his gloved hand and tried to close his fist. Not quite. “It feels like it,” he admitted. “But then...look how Ryker stepped up for me. And another guy he talked to about me. They haven’t managed to cut all the roots.”
She pushed food around on her plate. “What about now? Are you thinking about different kinds of roots?”
“If I survive this, I’ll need to.” Blunt truth. The best he could do by her in the midst of this mess.
She astonished him by reaching out and covering his gloved hand with hers. “Does it hurt when I touch you?”
“No more than usual.”
She gave him a little squeeze, then let go. He wished she’d kept on touching him. Friendly touch was a rare experience in his life.
She spoke again. “I don’t know how I’d feel if I lost my job. Or what I’d do. And I wouldn’t even have to consider that someone had betrayed me.”
She turned her head toward him and he could read the worry in her face. “What is this doing to you, Trace? Really? I know you’re treating it as a mission. I gather that you’re spending all your time trying to figure this out. But how do you feel about what’s been done to you?”
“My feelings? I don’t have any. I need a clear head.”
“Bull,” she said. “I don’t mind your evasions and omissions, but don’t you lie to me. Everyone has feelings, and they aren’t classified.”
“Julie...”
“I’m serious here. This has to rip you up. Maybe you can suppress all of that while you need to, but you can’t tell me you didn’t react in a million ways to this news. Maybe you ought to let it all hang out and get it out of the way.”
Her words did a better job than the coffee at clearing his head. Springing up from the stool, he began pacing, wondering what she was trying to draw out of him. “How did I feel? Mad as a hornet. Betrayed. Even the desire to kill someone. But I can’t let that get in the way of my thinking. Believe me, there’s nothing like emotion to mislead you.”
“Or lead you to the truth,” she said quietly.
He pivoted sharply. “Meaning?”
“Exactly what I said. You know someone is after you. Maybe your gut has a better answer to that than your brain. Regardless, nothing’s going to happen until this storm and this weekend are over, so let your gut do the talking for a little while. Experience the rage and get past it. If you need to rant, I’ll listen. All I know is you devoted your entire adult life to something you believed in, and now you find that people you trusted would be just as happy to see you die. If that doesn’t infuriate you, nothing could.”
“It infuriated me, all right. But what good does that do? I’ve got a burn on to catch this guy, but other than being a propellant it serves no purpose. It sure isn’t going to give me any answers.”
“Are you so positive about that?” Then with a boldness he hadn’t anticipated, she rose and came to him, stepping right up against him and sliding her arms around his waist. “You’re not alone, Trace. Right now, you’re not alone. You need to let the cork out of the bottle and let us help you. Ryker wants to. I want to. You can’t just sit here marching through your own thoughts all by yourself.”
Feelings? Feelings were crashing through him now, a mixture of rage at the position he was in and powerful desire to just wrap her in his own arms and forget it all. Which cork did she want him to pull? There were a couple of genies he wasn’t prepared to let out of his bottle. Not now. Maybe never. He couldn’t afford it.
But she leaned into him a little, and as he felt her full breasts press against his chest, the man in him responded instantly. A new ache swelled in his body, purely pleasurable. His own arms rose, wrapping around her, holding her clos
e and savoring the moment. But just for a few seconds. He was saved by the spiking pain in his hand, called back to reality just in time.
He dropped his arms and stepped back. “No, Julie.” Then he strode across the room and settled on a chair.
She stood staring at him. “No? No, what?”
“No, I’m not going to pull the cork. Running on raw emotion will get me and everyone else killed. I won’t do it. Giving in to anger is rehearsing it, feeding it. It’s the most dangerous thing I could do right now. Now I need to be smart, cunning and thoughtful. Later there might be a time for rage, but not yet.”
He closed his eyes, waiting for her to accept his decision. This was the woman who took no as a challenge, according to the sheriff. He had no doubt she’d come at him another way, although he sure as hell couldn’t figure out why. Was he just something new in her life, a package she wanted to open, or was something else going on?
He heard the clatter of dishes as she cleaned up from breakfast. She was angry. Well, he could understand that. But he wasn’t one of her kindergartners to be coaxed into sharing things he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, share.
The phone rang again, and she came around to answer it. “Hey,” she said. “Yeah. Here.” She passed the receiver to him. “Ryker.”
Oh, man, that woman was fuming. Maybe because he’d rejected her advance. Because he was sure it had been an advance, however mild.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone.
“Eastern Europe,” Ryker said succinctly.
“Well, that covers a whole lot of territory.”
“Slightly. Anyway, I have some hacking skills. Question is where I can safely use them. Not from this house, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe just hold off a bit. Let me think some more. If I can narrow it, maybe we can limit the information search. Meanwhile, I’m going to ask Julie if she’ll let me fiddle with her computer.”
“Okay. Talk to you soon.”
He handed the receiver back to Julie, who hung it up, put her hands on her lovely hips, and said, “Why do you want to fiddle with my computer?”
“To make it anonymous, in case I need to hack a secure database.”
Her anger evaporated. Her hands slipped until they hung loosely at her sides. Slowly, she sat. “You can do that?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. I can make it look as if this computer is logging on from almost anywhere in the world. It’s basically called VPN, a virtual private network. You could get software to do it yourself if you wanted, but I have access to some of the best. I’ll only use it if I need to, and it’ll give me only a narrow window.”
“Why?”
“Because if I start hacking, alarms will go off. One slipup and I might get tracked. I don’t want to expose you to that.”
He most definitely didn’t want to risk that. But his mind was already running on something else. Eastern Europe? He’d done a lot of work there in the last four years. Managed a lot of operatives who had managed a lot of assets. It wasn’t the narrowest field Ryker could have given him. He’d already been thinking about it, so basically what he’d gotten was confirmation. Eastern Europe. And whomever Ryker was talking to apparently didn’t know any more than that, or Ryker would have said so.
Almost absently, he reached for another pain pill, to lessen the hammering agony in his hand so it wouldn’t distract him. Then he went for more coffee to keep his head clear.
* * *
Julie remained on the couch, watching Trace slip away again into thought. She shouldn’t have become angry with him. She’d pushed into places she had no right to go, and he’d pushed back. She’d deserved it.
But now...the thought of making her computer so anonymous it would look like it was logging on from some other part of the world...well, she hadn’t known that was possible. Oh, she’d heard of anonymous servers, but didn’t realize she could become anonymous from right here.
But equally troubling was that he seemed to think he might have to hack into some seriously secret databases. She didn’t like that. She understood his life was on the line, but...
Settling back, she closed her eyes, folded her arms and reevaluated her position here. She had believed she was walking into this with her eyes open. Trace was in danger. By extension, so were Ryker and Marisa. It had been easy to jump in with both feet to help in any way she could.
But now a man was sitting in her living room, talking about making her computer anonymous so that he could do some hacking. She had always hated hacking, felt it was criminal, and to make matters worse, he was probably talking about entering secret government databases.
God, she wanted to shudder. Her ethics were teetering on a knife-edge here. Some things she would never do, never approve of, and yet...here she was, watching it happen.
But Trace, she reminded herself. Ryker and he had made it clear that someone in the very organization he had worked for had helped set him up. That wasn’t right, either. In fact, compared to that, a little hacking seemed minor.
“Julie?”
She opened her eyes and found Trace watching her with those brown eyes of his. Eyes that could go from warm and inviting to hard chips in an instant. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m trying to swallow the idea of hacking into a secret government database.”
He smiled faintly. “It’s only hacking because I don’t want them to know I’m doing it.” He lifted his good hand and waved it a bit. “I’m still employed by them, remember? If they hadn’t put me on leave, I’d have every right to do what I’m proposing to do. If I even need to.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” But it did, actually.
He leaned forward a little. “If this were an ordinary situation, I’d be entitled to get most of the information I might want. All that’s different is that I don’t want them to know if I have to look a little further than I should.”
“Because...”
“Because some of them are involved in this mess. People I can’t trust.”
Well, that made sense. Perfect sense. He only wanted to get at information he would be allowed to see if he were still working. Although she didn’t exactly miss the part about looking further than he should. Under these circumstances, however...
“Duh,” she said.
“Duh?”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“Why?” His brow creased. “Because you have some ethical qualms about hacking a database? You should be proud of that. I’m glad you have those. And I hope I won’t need to look at anything I couldn’t look at under ordinary circumstances. You didn’t know that, but now you do. I won’t be breaking any laws.” Not exactly. Need To Know was a big impediment, but he didn’t want to get into that with her.
“Okay. Then why the worry about making my computer anonymous?” That troubled her, too.
“Because I don’t want your location to be traced. I don’t want the trouble we’re trying to avoid showing up at your door. That’s the only reason. If they flag me, they’d be drawn right here. You’d be in trouble because you aren’t allowed access, and I’d be in trouble because they’d find me. That’s the whole of it. So we make your computer anonymous.”
She nodded slowly, settling down internally. It made perfect sense. She understood now. Which left only one thing. “I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable by hugging you.”
“Oh, Julie,” he said quietly. “Another time I’d be telling you just how much I want you.”
She caught her breath. At once, warm syrup seemed to pour through her veins, and her body responded with a deep, aching throb. “Trace?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I could be dead soon. I’d vastly prefer it if I were the only one. So I have to keep focused. Besides, you don’t even really know me.”
; “I know what I want,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “But if you’re worried that I hardly know you, why don’t you tell me more? Who is Trace Archer?”
He smiled faintly. “A guy with a messed-up hand who is on the run for his life and is sojourning with the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.”
She could have felt flattered, but that wasn’t her. She scowled. “Nice evasion, Archer.”
He surprised her with a laugh. “Told you. Evasions. A chameleon. It’s all second nature. Now why would you want to get mixed up with that?”
Good question, she thought. But she still wanted to get mixed up with him. So where did that leave her? “Tell me just one true thing that you feel it’s safe to share.”
“Okay. I guess I can do that.” He thought about it, taking his time. “I was being truthful when I said I wanted you. I have since I first saw you. I was truthful about my parents, too.”
“We’ve already covered that ground. Surely you know something else about yourself.” Probably little he wanted to think about, but she waited anyway, giving him time. She wasn’t letting him off the hook.
“In the service of my country, I used people. Yes, I tried to protect them, and they were rewarded for their help, but I was still using them.”
That was brutal, she thought. She gave him marks for honesty on that. She doubted many people who’d done what he had would have failed to find a comforting rationale.
“So you have a conscience,” she said.
“What’s left of one, anyway. It would be easy to tell myself that these people were all on my side, but I know better. Some saw personal gain by helping. Some acted because they hated their governments. Some just didn’t care. A few did have the best motives. But by any traditional sense of the word, most of them were traitors, and I helped them become treasonous. Did I save lives? I’m sure. Am I happy with being Mephistopheles? Not anymore.”