by Lyn Stone
"We will need to confer, so that would be convenient," Ben said, wondering if he had lost what marbles he had left. He probably wouldn't sleep a wink with her in the next room.
She signed the form and took the key cards without offering an objection. They followed the bellman to the elevators and up to the second floor. There, they parted company and went to their respective rooms to settle in.
Ben opened the case with his laptop and hooked it to the available connection. He checked his weapon, loaded it and put it in the drawer beside his bed.
It had to be eighty degrees in the room in spite of the air-conditioning. He shed his shirt, sweater and shoes and was wearing only his cords when he heard a knock on the connecting door.
"Forget something?" he asked, opening the door slightly.
"I just talked with Mercier." She shouldered in past him.
"Come right on in," he offered a little sarcastically, and followed her to the sitting area with its pair of chairs and round table. "So, what's up?"
She scooped his shirt off the chair and tossed it onto the bed, then plopped down, pen and little notebook in hand. "Okay, you said you had contacts? Who are they?"
"Jim Fontenot. Friend of a friend. Bank security."
He looked her over, noting she had changed into lightweight drawstring pants and a yellow ribbed tank top. Her hair was caught up in an off-center ponytail and trailed down over one ear. She was barefoot. And braless.
He figured Dani had either borrowed some of her sister's summer clothing when she packed her bag or else was always prepared to visit any climate when-ever she left home.
Though she looked fresh as spring itself, her eyes indicated exhaustion. Still, she was probably too keyed up to sleep after all that had happened. "Are you hungry?"
"I'm absolutely starved, and I forgot to ask about room service. You think they deliver this late?" It was nearly midnight.
Ben picked up the phone. "Breakfast okay?"
"Perfect. Get the works if they'll do it."
"But with decaf," he remarked. "Can't have you hyperactive. God knows you're energetic enough without that."
She laughed. "You have no idea. Even in the best of times, I tend to bounce off walls. Have you spoken with anyone lately about establishing offshore accounts?"
There was no segue there. If she had hoped to catch him off guard, she had. He put the receiver down. "What do you mean?"
"Just that. Have you had any conversation that involved talk of accounts offshore?"
He thought about it and couldn't recall anything specific. Then it came to him. "Yeah, I think. It was, oh, several months ago at the gym. A guy asked me in passing how hard it was to set something like that up. The main gist of the exchange concerned my warning him that it was not a great way to try to bypass the IRS, if that was what he had in mind. He laughed a lot at that, maybe a little too much. I never gave him any real particulars about doing it, though, just general stuff."
"You remember his name? Where he was from?"
Ben shook his head. "Not anyone I knew, just some guy. New in town, he said. We were working out. He asked what I did for a living, then launched into all these questions. I thought he was just lonely, didn't think much about it."
She jotted down a few notes then looked up. "You were working out? How was he dressed?"
Ben frowned. "What?"
"Could he have been wired?"
"How the hell should I know? What's this about?"
She sighed and clicked her pen rhythmically. "Chief Talbert found a tape in the glove compartment of the robber's vehicle. It was a tape of you and another man making plans to establish offshore accounts." She paused. "For making funds available for foreign projects."
Ben was already shaking his head. "No. No way did we discuss anything of that kind. I'm telling you it was just an offhand Q and A. I thought he had watched too many movies and I told him so. This guy was thinking to get out of paying his taxes, that's all."
She sat back, abandoning her note-taking and stretching her arms above her head, obviously unaware of the picture she made doing that. The sight made him sweat bullets.
"Don't worry," she said. "The tape was doctored. Even Talbert picked up on that after he played it the second time. Background noise was different where they inserted your voice, volume was a little off where they spliced it. Answers didn't quite match up with the questions, that sort of thing." She smiled at him. "Your cop buddy was ready to go to the mat for you when he reported it. He thinks a lot of you."
Ben took several deep breaths to relax. He knew then that he'd been suppressing his natural reactions for too long. It hadn't been all that difficult at first when all his energy had gone into his recovery. Easy to believe he'd had enough excitement in his life, enough adventure to settle down. To become like his dad.
The robbery had put a definite crack in his resolve to be who he needed to be. He hadn't really changed the way he thought he had. Maybe a man couldn't alter who he was, how he thought and responded��� or maybe he just had to try harder.
He would do that, he promised himself. But not until this was over.
He did tamp down his anger at Danielle, however. She was only doing her job. He forced a wry smile. "Thank God they weren't more proficient. What if they had matched the splicing better? You'd be arresting me for collaboration."
Her succinct nod didn't make him feel any better. "Somebody wants you tied to this, Ben. They went to a lot of trouble to see to it that you are."
"Who? What good would that do?"
She sat forward and clasped her hands together over her notes, flicking the corner of the tablet with one finger. "That's the question, isn't it? Guess we'll have to dig around and find out. Mercier's sending us a copy of the tape to see if you recognize the voice, but it's a good bet it was the guy you remember from the gym setting you up."
For a few minutes neither of them spoke.
She broke the silence first. "What about that food?"
Ben ordered, then took the chair across from her to wait for it. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. There was no point obsessing about who had it in for him until he had more information. "Maybe this is a personal vendetta against me and nothing to do with terrorists. That would be a relief, wouldn't it?"
"Definitely the best-case scenario." She gave a one-shouldered shrug and grinned. "But let's not assume anything this early in the game."
His laptop issued a soft ding, alerting him that his download on the potential contact, Fontenot, was complete.
"E-mail from home?" she asked.
"Not yet. Just doing a little homework." He brushed beads of sweat off his forehead. Her presence wasn't helping. "Hot in here, isn't it?"
"Yeah." She fanned her neck with her hand, obviously a bit nervous now that she found herself in the room with a half-dressed man in the wee hours of the morning. Instead of trying to put her at ease, Ben simply waited to see what she would do next.
"Stop looking at me that way," she said with a half laugh, tucking her hair behind her ear in a self-conscious gesture.
"What way is that?" he asked.
"Like you're afraid I came in here to...well, maybe come on to you or something."
Ben pursed his lips and inclined his head as if thinking about that. Actually, he was thinking about it, or at least considering whether she had thought about it before she knocked on his door.
"I'm not all that afraid."
She laughed outright, a beautiful uninhibited sound he hadn't heard before from her. Like music. "You're teasing me, Michaels."
"No joke," he said, shaking his head. "I could take you. You really don't scare me a bit."
She sobered as she rose from the chair, slid open the balcony door, stood in the opening and looked out at the sea. "Even after admitting I shot a man?"
Trying to still make light of the mood before it became irrevocably serious, he said, "Even so. If you recall, I shot one, too."
Many mor
e than the one today, actually, but he didn't want to get into that now. Or ever, if he could avoid it. He felt himself growing serious.
Ben wanted to know her, he realized. He felt driven to for some odd reason. Her beauty played into it, sure, and her strength of purpose, but he thought it must be her passion for life that drew him to her, probably because he had spent the last year denying his own.
There was something else about her. He sensed a streak of vulnerability in Danielle that he suspected few ever witnessed. Not physical defenselessness, but emotional.
There were family issues with her, he knew that. Didn't they all have those? She refused to discuss her parents, her background in Iowa or anything to do with her past. Someone had hurt her badly enough to silence her. That agent, maybe. The one she took down. He must have meant a lot to her. Maybe to her family, too.
Ben wished they were well enough acquainted that he could insist on knowing, and not just to assuage his curiosity, either. He wanted to listen and maybe help her deal with whatever caused the bitterness he sensed beneath that tough little exterior.
Or maybe he should just mind his own business. He had to watch his strong impulse to protect. It had cost him his life already. And resurrections were probably a one-time thing.
In spite of the best intentions, Ben got up and stood behind her. He raised his hands to her shoulders and turned her around to face him. He ran his palms up and down her bare arms, knowing it was a mistake.
Not a serious mistake, he assured himself. She needed human contact, a friendly touch, comfort. The memory of holding her immediately after the shooting surfaced. "You're still shaken up by this morning, aren't you?"
"Yeah, a little," she confessed, leaning back against the door frame as she looked up at him. Her hands rested lightly on his arms, as if they were already close friends consoling one another. "Maybe since you were a soldier once you know how it is."
"Tell me how it is." He gently dug the pads of his thumbs into her muscles, rotating, easing her, which did excite him a bit, but he wanted to keep his mind on helping her.
She drew in a breath and released it slowly before she explained. "Well, when you are expecting something to go down, you get yourself psyched up for it and have all your contingency plans made and everything. You're armed, have backup, a Plan B in case Plan A goes south."
He nodded.
She shook her head slowly. "But then you're relaxed, not psyched and then���bam!���some nut sticks a gun to your head while you're busy thinking about babies and gifts. It's unnerving."
He smiled down at her. "I was having my first cup of coffee of the day. He caught me while my nerves were still asleep."
"Guess that explains why you didn't get all hysterical, huh?"
"The only reason. Lack of caffeine," he said, letting her go before he gave in to the urge to lean down and kiss her. That, even in his warped attempt to justify touching her, could not be considered mere comfort. He stepped away so she was out of his reach and sensed her disappointment. It mirrored his own, but neither of them could afford this distraction.
"Better get back to business," he said. "We'll see Fontenot first thing in the morning and find out what he can get for us."
"You just happen to know a guy who works at the very bank the money went to? That seems coincidental." Ben caught the suspicion glowing in her amber eyes just before she lowered her lashes.
"I don't know him personally. I got into the bank's Web site and accessed their personnel listing, got his name and had my contacts search his background. You'd be amazed at how many security people are former military."
"You hacked into the bank?"
Ben shrugged. "I needed names."
She raised her eyebrows, but didn't question his hacking any further. "Is he from your old outfit?"
"No, but we know some of the same people." Intelligence was a brotherhood of sorts. Ben didn't want to get into all that at the moment. He had signed that nondisclosure agreement and, even though she was intel herself, he firmly believed in need-to-know dispersal of information. "Anyway, I talked to Fontenot on the phone and set up a time for us to see him."
Her smooth brow furrowed as she looked up. "I don't think we'll have the authorization from OFAC that soon."
"The Office of Foreign Assets Control? Maybe we won't need it."
"It would slow us down if we have to wait for it," she said with a sigh.
Ben shrugged. "I'm pretty sure Fontenot will cooperate fully, but anything he can't readily access might necessitate going through other channels."
She flicked a glance at his laptop. "You said you can follow the money. By hacking?"
"How smart would it be to admit a talent like that to a government agent?"
She trained her gaze on the ceiling. "I could say something about the end justifying the means, but I won't."
"Thank you for that, at least. And to answer your question, I don't make a habit of it."
"Make a habit of it now," she demanded, leaning forward. "Let's see what you can do." Her hand landed just above her left breast. "My oath, I won't report you unless you steal something or wreck a bunch of files." She smiled. "And I'm sure you'll tell me if you do that."
"I'll let you watch. What do you want me to try?" As he spoke, he sat in front of the computer.
She tapped her bottom lip with one finger. "Who do you think is behind this? Any suspects?"
It was his turn to ruminate, or at least to pretend to. Any number of outfits could be organizing this effort, but one had leaped to mind the minute he made those transfers. "How about the largest client involved, the one that has no apparent ties to anything Middle Eastern?"
"Isn't that one more likely to be a victim?"
He shrugged. "Makes you wonder why it was included, doesn't it? If that particular outfit screamed theft immediately, it could blow the whole plan. Assuming I'm right about the plan."
"Okay, that makes sense to me. Go for it. Check out that client's computer system," she said, taking the other chair and nudging his laptop so she could see the screen, too.
He pulled up the company Web site, checked it out, then began his real search.
"You plan to get me out of hot water if I get caught snooping?" he asked as he activated the exceptional password program he used and waited for it to unlock the site. "If they have crack security, they'll know they've been invaded."
Her frown deepened. "What about the bank you hacked? Won't they know, too?"
"I covered that. Their system's set up almost exactly like mine except for the extra safeguards I added."
He couldn't help noticing as she leaned in closer, affording him a glimpse of cleavage when she peered at the screen. The warm scent of her clouded his brain. He shifted nearer so that her breath fanned his cheek.
She quickly sat back, averting her gaze. One hand slid up to her chest and flattened the neckline of her top. "Just don't damage any of their files. Breached privacy issues I can probably justify, but not data altering."
Ben closed his eyes and tried to think of anything else but her. He opened them again and zeroed in on the screen where the password box blinked, waiting for an entry. The code locator program scrambled some letters by the cursor and entered a string of letters. The bank computer readily accepted the entry. "We will be fishing with a big net. What if we happen to catch something incriminating that has nothing to do with our case?"
"I don't know. Go ahead," she said, motioning with her fingers for him to continue. "You're not a fed, so this is not technically a government search, just a nosy attempt by a private citizen trying to recover his bank's money."
Ben stretched his arms, flexed his fingers, made an adjustment to the program and smiled at getting past the first of what would probably be many obstacles in the mystery. "This could take a while."
"I'm not going anywhere," she replied, propping one foot on the edge of her seat and hooking her hands around her knee. "Go ahead and show off, cybergeek."
He didn't see the harm in flirting with her a little. Nothing serious, of course. Why not try to establish a little camaraderie?
"Ah, here we go. This is the Persand Company," he said as he reached the page delineating the victim company's executive officers.
"What?" she asked, glancing from him to the screen and back again. "What did you find?"
Ben said nothing. He felt light-headed and sick at his stomach. Wordlessly, he pointed to the name that had immediately caught his eye before he'd even scrolled down the list. It was there on the third line, bold type, underlined for a link to more info.
'"You?" she whispered. "You're the operations manager?"
"Hell, no!" he exclaimed quietly. He clicked on his name and another page appeared with his photo, the one from his bank business card, and a very short resume that looked quite convincing. "I've never had any dealings with Persand Inc., except through the bank."
He navigated back to see who else was listed under executive officers. Slowly he nodded, his lips tight with fury.
Dani wasn't looking. Her chin propped on steepled fingers, she seemed lost in thought. Then she spoke. "Well, you wouldn't have pointed it out to me unless you were telling the truth. Someone is definitely setting you up. I need to tell Mercier about this."
Ben couldn't hide his relief. She did believe him. He just wondered if everyone else would.
"Let me dig a little further."
Room service came and Dani busied herself with the food as he worked. She brought him a cup of coffee and put his plate beside the computer.
He had made it to Persand's financial data. He ran the password program again and ate as he waited. Dani remained silent, alternately watching him with his silent posture and the screen with its chaotic text crunching.
"Pay dirt."
"What did you get? What is that?"
"It's a private file that was labeled Beresbnk. Close enough to Beresford bank. Tabbed columns. Looks like a list of names, account numbers and amounts. In simple code, but the keystrokes and spaces are right. See? Same format as the robber handed me in the bank, only the letters and numbers are coded." He downloaded the file to his desktop. "Should be easy to decipher."