Mind Games

by Laura K. Curtis

  “I want to check out the building,” Eric said. “Before I agree to leave during the day, I need to be sure you’re safe. Roy downstairs doesn’t provide much security.”

  “We’re a research facility,” Clive said. “We don’t normally have to worry about security. Our researchers do testify at trials, and we help out with both civil and criminal cases when we’re hired to, but we’ve rarely come in for threats or harassment.”

  “What, exactly, do you do here?”

  “Well, Jane works in our hard-science division. As far as criminal work goes, that means DNA, document aging and typing, chemical analysis, that sort of thing. But of course her primary focus at the moment is drug development, which brings her into a crossover with what you’d probably call our ‘soft science’ division. We do forensic psychology, handwriting analysis, that sort of thing. Developing a new drug for schizophrenia requires a handle on both chemistry and psychology.”

  “And you fund all this through . . . ?”

  “We have a well-managed endowment. We also sell patents, as we plan to do with this one, raise money from grants, and we charge for our services, although that is on a sliding scale. Law enforcement doesn’t pay as much as a wealthy client who wants to, say, bolster a divorce case with analysis of letters from his wife to her lover.”

  “But that means you have people in and out of the building all day.”

  Clive considered. “To a certain extent, I suppose that’s true. But they don’t go to the lab. They wouldn’t have access to Jane.”

  Eric grunted. He was going to be a pain in the ass, she could already tell. Hot as hell, but a pain in the ass nonetheless. He’d been her best student in college, her favorite because he was so eager to learn, willing to do whatever it took to internalize the concepts. That stubborn determination lost a good deal of its appeal when turned on her.

  “What about travel?” Eric asked. “How do you get back and forth from home? Clive said the train and the subway? That’s far too exposed—no way to control your surroundings.”

  “Well, we could drive, but the traffic in the city is dreadful. And if you want to talk about lack of control, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the West Side Highway at rush hour. You’d be a sitting duck.”

  “One of the other HSE agents will drive. As you point out, I don’t have enough flexibility if I’m behind the wheel, though I take exception to ‘sitting duck.’ We’re pretty good at getting out of tight spots, even on crowded highways.”

  “Just like that?” Jane stared at him, then at her boss, then back to Eric. “You don’t ask Clive whether he minds paying for two guys? You don’t need to call to find out whether anyone else in your organization is available?”

  “Let me worry about finding a driver.”

  “But the cost . . .”

  “I can afford it,” said Clive, selling her out in a single sentence.

  The intercom buzzed and Clive answered it. “The police are here to speak with Dr. Evans and Mr. Sorensen,” said Ruth.

  Great. Just great. She wasn’t going to get anything done today, but her fingers itched to get back to work.

  “Don’t worry,” Eric said, “you can go first. But then I need you to go to the lab and stay there until they’re done with me. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  • • •

  THE POLICE ALLOWED Clive to sit in on her interview, though they sent Eric out so his impressions of the incident didn’t taint hers. As soon as he left, the room seemed to chill a few degrees, and she pulled his jacket tighter around her, sinking into its warmth and safety. The interrogation seemed to take hours as they went over and over the morning’s incident, asking questions for which she had no satisfactory answers. Who would want you out of the way? She had no idea except for what Clive had surmised about their work. Would anyone pay a ransom for you? No. Though Clive had spoken up at that point and said he most certainly would. Did you possibly have a stalker? No. Absolutely not. What did the men who tried to take you look like? It had happened fast. So damned fast. The one who had grabbed her had a port-wine birthmark on the left side of his face. But other than that . . . they were average. Like any guys you’d see loading a truck in New York. One wore a Yankees hat. They both wore bulky jackets. Which, now that she thought about it, was a little odd. It wasn’t all that cold. Commuters like her wore coats and jackets, but men lifting heavy items should have been hot. Why hadn’t she noticed? What did the van look like? Dark colored. Did it have writing on it? She didn’t remember. Did you see anything inside? She didn’t remember.

  And then she went up to the lab and had to answer the same questions, this time from concerned colleagues, when all she wanted to do was bury herself in work. At least Stella had a couple of samples for her to look at, so Jane could stare through a microscope and ignore the palpable air of curiosity around her.

  Rashid and Sam went down to the deli and brought back egg salad for her, but she waited until everyone else had eaten before taking her lunch—and a swath of notes to study—into the break room to eat. Although the wall separating the break room from the main lab had a window running along its full length and even a glass insert in the door—nothing in the lab being developed for privacy— the separation from her colleagues allowed her mind to settle slightly. The notes were a ploy to keep people from disturbing her, but as usual she became absorbed in her work, and she didn’t even glance up as people came and went. Science. Her savior.

  All good things come to an end, however, and eventually Eric sat himself down opposite her, stealing her attention away from her work.

  “I’ve organized us a ride back to your place. We leave at five.”

  She checked her watch. It was already almost four. “I never leave at five. Do you know what the traffic will be like? I’m usually here at least until six, six thirty.”

  “Uh-huh. And you get here, what, eight o’clock, eight thirty?”

  “Exactly. Depends on which train I catch.”

  “Well, from now on your schedule is about to become more varied. Those guys this morning knew when you would be coming to work; it was barely eight fifteen when they grabbed you.”

  Which was, oddly, the first time it had occurred to her that he had been there, too. Very early for a nine o’clock appointment.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate your help, but if you were supposed to see Clive at nine, what were you doing here so early?”

  “I got your file last night. I take my job seriously, so I checked your address and followed you from your house this morning.”

  “You . . . what?” How could she have missed him? He’d been on her train and her subway and she hadn’t seen him? How was it possible? He was so big. So unkempt. So full of life. Before the fight he would have been neater, more put together, but he still should have stood out, if for no other reason than that wickedly sexy beard, three shades darker than his golden hair. Had she become so isolated, so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice a frankly gorgeous man? She knew Clive and her coworkers considered her more machine than human, but when had she deteriorated to the point she no longer even window-shopped? Dani had been right to push her to get out more, to come have margaritas with her and two women who worked in another lab on Thursday evenings.

  “It’s easier before the weather gets warm,” Eric said, as if trying to make her feel better. “Everyone looks the same in bulky clothes. I can be inconspicuous when I want to.”

  She studied him as she would a foreign life-form put beneath her scope. He’d neatened the ponytail of wild blond hair and reclaimed the jacket she’d left in Clive’s office when the police were finished with her. Maybe, maybe she did remember him from the platform. But he’d been absorbed in a newspaper, just like everyone else, and when he got on the train he didn’t sit near her.

  “I almost lost you in Grand Central,” he continu
ed. “But since I knew where you were going, it wasn’t so bad. And I wasn’t afraid they’d make an attempt in the station, not with the enormous police and military presence they have there. It’s about the safest place in the city.”

  “So you followed me this morning, but that’s not good enough for the next two weeks?”

  “It almost wasn’t good enough this morning. I barely held off those three guys to give you time to get away. I couldn’t hang on to any of them for questioning.”

  “Three? I only saw two!”

  “Yeah. The other one was the driver. He got into the fray just when I was gaining the upper hand.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  His eyes crinkled into that heart-melting smile. “I’m fine. Taking on thugs like that is all part of the job. I’m just pissed off I couldn’t keep one of them here. If I’d been willing to shoot him, I could have, but pulling a gun in the middle of Manhattan is to be avoided whenever possible. They didn’t try to kill me, and they didn’t pose a threat to anyone else on the street.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “It’s okay. Really. But Trey will be here at five to pick us up, so you should gather what you need before then. I’ve arranged for him to leave the car with a friend of ours who lives not far from you. Trey will take the train back down, and Jake—the one who lives near you—will drive us for the next ten days.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Chapter 2

  TREY COLLECTED THEM from the building’s back entrance. New York City always posed extra challenges for personal security with local law enforcement’s unwillingness to allow drivers to wait for clients and the fact that the average city driver’s aggression level was high enough to send up constant warning flags.

  But Trey could be aggressive himself, and a single look from his pale, don’t-fuck-with-me eyes was usually enough to have others steering clear. He was waiting when Eric escorted Jane from the building, leaning against the SUV, which was parked flagrantly illegally in front of a fire hydrant.

  For his part, Eric would have been happier if he could have had his gun at the ready for the three feet of sidewalk between the building and the reinforced steel cage of the SUV, but that was another issue with security in New York: unlike the hellholes of the world where he usually operated, randomly pulling a weapon in the city was apt to create panic. So he kept Jane close to his body, sheltering her as much as possible as he hurried her to the vehicle.

  “Trey’s a former Army Ranger,” he explained to Jane once they were safely on the road and he’d made introductions. “If anything happens and I leave the vehicle, you need to do exactly as he says, okay?”

  “You don’t really believe I’m in danger in transit, do you?”

  God save him from reluctant principals. “After this morning, I believe it’s better to be safe.”

  “Okay.” Jane pulled a sheaf of papers from her shoulder bag and settled in for the ride.

  In the rearview mirror, Trey caught his eye and raised an eyebrow. Eric could read the question all too easily: Is this woman for real? If he didn’t know Jane, he’d be asking the same thing. But Jane wasn’t stupid. Far from it. So he figured she was deliberately avoiding worrying about the danger by focusing on work. He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have anything to fear, that he and Trey and the whole HSE team would make certain she came to no harm, but he couldn’t. He had a great deal of confidence in himself and his team, but they all knew that safety was an illusion. A necessary one for most people, a convenient fiction that allowed them to get through the day. Reality was far less palatable: pass the wrong man at the wrong time on the wrong street and you were dead. Simple as that.

  Plus, a scared principal was alert, more apt to obey commands. Relaxed principals, those too sure of their own safety or power, were careless.

  They arrived at Jane’s without incident, and Eric made her remain in the car with Trey while he cleared the house. It didn’t take long—the place was small, and he wasn’t exploring, just making sure no nasty surprises waited inside. Still, by the time he came out, Jane and Trey were chatting. He held the door and Trey walked her up.

  “Pleasure meeting you, Doc,” Trey said as he handed her off, as if they were at a fucking dinner party rather than part of a security detail. “You take care, now.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  Eric locked the door once Jane was inside and followed her into the living room. He hadn’t taken the time to examine the place in his initial sweep, and when he opened his mind to the house as a residence rather than a battlefield, he found it nothing like what he would have expected. Perhaps it was her analytical, scientific mind, but when he’d waited outside in his car that morning—a car that HSE had neatly retrieved when he realized Jane planned to take the train—he’d pictured clean lines with plenty of high-tech devices. Instead, inside the small, shingled house, plush, comfortable furniture was covered with an abundance of brightly colored throws.

  “Southern blood,” she said, watching him take it in. “I get cold easily. And crocheting helps me turn off my brain. So I churn out a lot of afghans.”

  “I like it,” he said. And he did. In many ways, it reminded him of his childhood home. Though his mom had bought sale blankets to lay across the backs and seats of their threadbare furniture, the cozy, patchwork effect was similar.

  She led him up a narrow set of stairs to where three doors clustered around a landing.

  “That’s my room,” she said, jerking her thumb at the left door. “I have my own bathroom. So the guest bed and bath are all yours.” She cracked the center door so he could see the bathroom, then opened the third to reveal a small bedroom. Here, too, he saw the evidence of her handiwork. A multicolored blanket—an afghan, she’d called it, though the homey item was about the last thing the word “Afghan” brought to mind after his stint in the military—covered the bed, and bright, framed posters hung on the smooth, cream-colored walls.

  He dropped his duffel at the foot of the bed. He had no intention of sleeping in it, but Jane didn’t need to know that yet. If she was at risk—and no one paid Nash’s prices without a clear and present danger—he wouldn’t be sleeping at night. His examination of AHI that afternoon proved the lab secure enough that he could catch a few hours during the day while she worked once he impressed upon Jane the importance of never leaving without him. She would fuss and insist his vigilance was unnecessary, but she was wrong.

  What was Jane’s bedroom like? He hadn’t examined it in his brief survey beyond making sure it was safe, and now he wished he’d taken longer. Did she surround herself with pillows and blankets? He’d known a couple of guys who claimed they refused to date women who had more than two cats or three pillows, and Eric had always figured they might be onto something. Women like that didn’t want a guy who was gone all the time, a guy who’d as soon shoot someone as talk about their relationship. But despite the pillows and needlework, Jane had been plenty independent in college, and that didn’t seem to have changed. She had a great job, her boss obviously valued her, and she clearly didn’t believe she needed a man for anything.

  Did that mean she didn’t have one?

  No reason she shouldn’t. He hadn’t paid attention to her looks in school. Not only was she far too young, but also, he’d been too focused on what she could do for him, how much he needed her help to maintain his GPA and thus his athletic scholarship. But she’d grown into a gorgeous woman. Petite, with perfect curves and that wavy flame-colored hair he would bet fell almost to her waist when not wrapped into a complicated knot on top of her head.

  “Do I have something in my hair? A dust bunny?” She touched the knot.

  Oops. “No, not at all. I was just thinking.”

  She looked at him a long moment, as if waiting for him to tell her what about—not like that would be happening this century—the
n turned away and led him back downstairs. “That’s about it. Down here there’s this room, the dining room that you see through there, and the kitchen, which has the smallest half bath known to man.”

  He laughed. “I guess if I am going to be the chef, I’d better see the kitchen.”

  “I was just kidding about that. Seriously, you don’t have to cook for me.”

  “No worries. I like it. Probably the same as your yarn. It keeps me busy, lets my brain unwind, relaxes me.”

  “Okay, then. If you’re certain.” She pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, and once again a profusion of colors shone out, this time from mismatched dishware behind glass-fronted cabinets.

  He must have made a face, because she shrugged. “The lab’s all white and steel. I like color.”

  “I do, too. It’s just a side of your personality I didn’t expect.” He opened the refrigerator and glanced at the contents. “If you have pasta, I can throw that together for tonight. I’ll shop tomorrow while you’re at work. Is there anything you don’t eat?”

  “Not much. Organ meat. Ground meats of any kind. Eggs have to be at a minimum cage free. If I am cooking for myself, I prefer local and organic, but I’m not fussy if someone else is willing to do it for me.”

  “Fair enough. Let me know when you get hungry, and I’ll start it up. Won’t take long.”

  “Oh.” She twisted her fingers together, and a line formed between her brows. “You’re cooking. We can eat on your schedule.”

  He grinned. “If you say so. But I warn you, I eat all the time.” She blushed, and he wondered what she was thinking. “In fact, I’ll start dinner now, if that works for you.”

  “Sure.” She showed him the spaghetti, spices, pots and pans, then walked back out to the dining room, where she began clearing papers off half the table. Some she piled onto the already leaning stacks next to her laptop, others she carried up the stairs. Did the woman do nothing but work?