Rick remembered. He had wanted to forget the emptiness in his life, had done so with his companion with the kind of concentration that was meant to wipe out his own misery. He remembered he wanted to give up everything that weekend because life had become unimportant. Everything was meaningless. But like a miracle, on that very weekend, he had seen Nikki in the elevator for the first time. Something inside him had stirred.
He didn’t blink as Denise unzipped his pants slowly. She hummed her approval. “Why aren’t you taking me to bed, Rick?” she whispered.
“What do you have for me?” he asked flatly. Her grip on him tightened, and her eyes glittered warningly. He didn’t react.
“Don’t you like what you see?”
He smiled. “Take everything off and let me see you naked, Denise.” He wanted to make sure she wasn’t wired. Then he would take her to the bedroom, just in case the underwire of her bra was electronically enhanced.
Denise laughed, then stepped back. Looking down at him, she slowly took off her bra, then pushed her panties down her hips. She stepped out of her heels. Her nipples were hard from excitement. Her eyes had a fevered sexual glimmer. There was a needy expression in them as she stared at him. “See, Rick? I’m naked before you. Now take me.”
“In the bedroom,” Rick said softly. “You know my toys are in there.”
“Oh yes,” she said and moved in that direction. Rick looked at her bare back, all the way down, and frowned. She was totally clean. Why had she come here alone, unwired? Was she doing this on her own?
“Oh, I’ve been thinking about this room.” Denise sighed as she carelessly sprawled onto the bed. She looked up at Rick standing in the doorway and slowly opened her legs. “See how much I want you?”
Rick took a step forward. “How much?”
“Enough to be here when I don’t need to be,” she teased.
“So much,” Rick stated, taking another step. “I guess I should feel conceited to have you here, risking your job. Why tonight, though, Denise?”
“Rick, surely you know the answer to that. I don’t want her to have any part of you.” Denise pouted. “She’s already causing the department trouble, with her safety evaluations bullshit, and she thinks she has free rein over everything just because the admiral backs her right now. Everything hinges on her damn report, and I’m going to take her down a peg or two, that’s all. An independent review board to investigate about our safety? Our security? Bullshit. What does she know about our kind, Rick? She’s an independent. She’s just evaluating you, you know. Afterward she will report you as a security risk, and what would you say to the review board?”
Rick took another step. “I see. You’re saying that since you weren’t evaluating me last weekend, that should make me feel better. You were”—he cocked his head to one side—“just trying to get something on me, and Nikki wasn’t.” A strange code by which to live, he thought.
“Of course she wasn’t,” Denise said, pushing up with her
elbows. “I told you, she’s writing reports for Admiral Madison, the very same one who dealt with Gorman. He probably dislikes you and wants to make sure about you and Task Force Two. Perhaps get you out so he can replace you with someone he can control.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Rick pointed out. He wanted to hear more. He reached the edge of his bed and looked down at the naked woman, hiding his distaste. “I should have known Gorman needed someone from the Directorate of Intelligence to help him with his schemes. And of course he would choose a beautiful woman like you. What have you got on me, Denise?”
Her eyes glittered. “Give me what I want first.” She sat up and looked at the front of his pants. “I promise you, what I have will save your career.”
Rick reached for the top button of his pants. “And Gorman?”
“Yes.” Her eyes grew hungrier. “Everything on Gorman will be yours.”
He unbuttoned and she licked her red lips. “Remember how long you lasted, Denise?”
“Oh yes,” she moaned, leaning closer.
“I can make you last longer.” Rick watched dispassionately as she reached greedily for him. “But I can’t perform with Gorman and tomorrow on my mind. Set my mind at ease. Tell me what you’ve got.” When she paused, he taunted, “Surely your plan isn’t so easy to foil.”
Denise laughed, then ran her red fingernails down the dark material of his pants. She considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh well, it doesn’t make a difference.” She put one hand on him, crooning at the feel of him. “I only want this.” She looked up. “You’re right. I’m Gorman’s mole from the Directorate of Intel. I pass along everything collected that’s of interest to him, sending via disks for his eyes only. After his arrest I went to his place and retrieved them. Gorman, you see, covered his tracks very well. He knew I would take care of things.”
It was easy to put two and two together now. Gorman was
negotiating in jail over those disks, but without them, he needed to dangle some names. Rick Harden would be one of those names. He would be the coordinator of every treachery Gorman orchestrated. He was also sure that Denise was keeping something back, enough to stop Gorman from sacrificing her, anyway.
“I have downloaded everything onto one of your computers. EYES will get to it tomorrow, and I’ll help them with the very complicated encryption program. By the way, I’ve manipulated the information to just reveal your name. Don’t worry, the real ones have been secured somewhere safe.”
“So there are others,” Rick said slowly, as he watched her hand stroke him. She didn’t seem to sense his growing anger, or maybe she didn’t care. She was totally absorbed in her power over him.
“Only I can stop this, dear darling Rick. So satisfy me, and tomorrow none of this needs to happen. I’ll take care of it.”
“How long? Till the next time you want sex from me?”
She shrugged again. “Power is everything. Gorman used you as a front. So can I. We can continue what he started, with me in my position and you as the new deputy director. Gorman can just rot in there. Hmm, you are so…big. Make love to me now, Rick.”
She bent forward, opening her mouth to take him in. Rick circled her neck with one hand. “I think not.”
Her eyes widened in anger. “You dare refuse me?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll be nothing tomorrow. I’m the one in charge now, you see. Your career is in my hands, darling.”
Actually Rick didn’t think so. Someone had sent Denise to seduce him, and she was too intent to follow it through. The woman wouldn’t risk her cover for sex. She was either obeying orders or she was desperate. She took his hesitation as capitulation. Flashing a victorious smile, she bent forward again. Rick tightened his hold enough that for the first time apprehension entered her eyes.
His eyes were cold as he examined her beautifully made
up face. He felt nothing but contempt. “My career,” he told her, in a flat voice, “can go to hell. And so can you.”
Denise Lorens’s face registered her shock for a mere instant, as she realized that she had been had. With idle curiosity, Rick finally allowed his real emotions to show on his face. Apparently she didn’t like being humiliated. Without warning she lunged forward, pushing against his hold on her throat. Her hands clawed out as she screeched her fury.
Much later, back at her apartment, sitting at her desk, Nikki read the faxed report, pushing emotions out of the way as she analyzed the data. It was difficult. This was Rick she was reading about. She looked up and touched the wind chime dangling close by. The sound echoed gently through the room as the truth rummaged through the layers of her mind out into the open.
Truth. This was the emotional connection she felt with this man, so hardened by his past. They were both seeking the truth. Like him, she was still trying to understand about a betrayal in the past. They had both been used and discarded.
Nikki understood the pain of being abandoned. In her own way, she wanted closure with her past. So did Rick. Their lives came together here because of their need to expose the truth. His truth for hers. Could she give him that?
She had known when she accepted this contract that this bargain wouldn’t be easy. Her looks were meant to trigger him into action. She looked at the faxed sheets of paper again. So much pain ahead. Right now she wasn’t sure about wanting the truth to come out.
She was falling in love with Rick. But could she save him?
W
as there ever a bigger fool than he? Rick wondered as he strode up the building steps, watching the morning visitors make their lines. As he had a thousand different mornings, he showed his electronic ID and walked past the cameras to the private elevators. As he had a thousand different times, he punched the button and while waiting to go up to his office, he mentally mapped out the rest of the day so he could have no other thoughts but work.
He had done this day in and day out and rotted slowly away inside. He hadn’t cared enough about Gorman’s motives when he was picked as his Task Force Two operations chief. He hadn’t questioned too deeply because he had decided that he was going to be good at one thing only, and that was doing his job to perfection. After all, his career hinged on his record, and his marred one needed repairing.
So in his own foolish way, he paid penance for his sins. He was exactly how Gorman had shaped him—a pathetic bureaucrat who never went beyond the boundaries. What he once was, he now mocked. How far he had moved from those days when he had thought to save the world with one big swoop from the sword of justice. Until, of course, he had found out that the one nearest and dearest to him had betrayed everything he believed in.
Last night only served as a reminder of how his passive choices hadn’t chased away his past, but only served to emphasize it. Denise had misunderstood him, but that was be
cause he had chosen to be seen in that light. It struck him as odd that the only person who seemed to be trying to find out the truth about him was Nikki Taylor, an independent contractor. The rest were just willing to believe a traitor, Gorman.
The elevator arrived and he stepped in with the few people waiting with him. Rick nodded at them, noting their similar dark suits and ties and nondescript briefcases. Bureaucrats one and all. His brothers-at-arms.
He thought of EYES pulling all his careful compilation of bureaucratic red tape out of his files and cabinets upstairs. He imagined how many were sifting through every folder right now, looking at each case for some kind of proof. The computers were probably being confiscated as of this moment.
There was one thing about his determination to excel as a paper pusher, though. He had backups of backups. He had detailed everything with disks and photos and hidden them away. Last night he had removed the hard drive from his computer and replaced it with another. If nothing else, he was a pathetic but careful bureaucrat.
He laughed out loud, startling the other occupants in the elevator. What a night. He was probably the only man who had sent two women away in one night so he could play with his computer hard drive. He wondered how Nikki had spent her night, whether he occupied her thoughts as much as she did his.
The elevator door slid open, and he stepped out onto his floor. He looked down the hall and saw the stacks of boxes outside his wing of offices. Some of his men stood nearby watching the commotion with guarded expressions. He strode toward them, and a few avoided meeting his eyes. Cam turned and, seeing his arrival, approached him. Four others fell in step.
“Sir,” Cam said, for once without his usual easy laughter in his eyes, “they unplugged all the computers for Task Force Two.”
Rick nodded. “I hope you saved the report that you’ve been working on because I still have to submit it.”
“Oh yes, sir. Patty copies everything. It’s ready for you.”
Patty copied everything. “Isn’t it Patty’s responsibility to process all requests for information, especially back and forth for our sector?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get her for me, Cam. Tell her I want to know what was the last request that had to do with Task Force Two, and tell her I also need to know which computer was used for that request. Would that be hard to find out?”
Cam shrugged. “Should be easy. I’ll get her right now.”
“Good. In your office, Cam.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rick gave brief instructions to his other men, then walked past the cardboard boxes into his strangely messy office. Poor Greta. His secretary was standing in the middle looking confused. She had been around for so long, she was the only one who knew where everything was. She was probably lost without her neatly stacked files and folders. He would have to give her a great reference if they cut Task Force Two.
A few agents were pulling the rest of the files out of the cabinets. Harpring looked up from Greta’s desk and met his eyes.
“Morning, Agent Harden,” he said. “We’ll be here for a while.”
“Morning. I won’t be in much today, anyway.” Not that he had anything to do here. Everything had been frozen.
“Ah, yes, the review board,” Harpring said. “I’m sure they will have quite a few questions for you. I’m impressed, I must say—you documented everything very well.”
Rick smiled briefly. He knew a fishing trip when he heard one. Why not take the bait? “Thank you. I believe in a very simple system. A to Z, with backups.”
“These backups,” the other man said, casually closing one of the cabinet drawers, “how would you prove they are copies of the original?”
Rick’s hand paused on the door handle leading into his office. “Like I said, I keep it really simple. My secretary documented everything and sent the files to Gorman and each deputy director in TIARA. If I have to update or change a certain set of documents, I have to do the same for all the
other sets as well. I’m sure if you check every set I had sent out, you’ll find everything is updated on the same date.”
“In that case, any files found that don’t correlate with the other files’ information or date would mean they are hidden data, not shared with the other deputy directors.”
“It means that I didn’t put that file there,” Rick corrected. Some baiting he would take.
“It can also mean they might be the ones you and Gorman kept just for each other.”
Rick knew that was coming but he wanted to hear it from the man himself. “I’m sure Deputy Director Gorman had access to many more classified materials than I did,” he said smoothly as he opened the door, “but I would only be too happy to help with any questions about such files that you find.”
“I’m sure you would,” Harpring said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “So tell me about the Marlena Maxwell files. Why were certain copies suddenly requested by Gorman and then deleted by him? What was in those files?”
Marlena Maxwell. The very same case that got Gorman caught. Unbeknownst to Rick, the deputy director had been using Task Force Two to keep her under surveillance for his nefarious purposes. In fact, Rick had only recently discovered how he and his men had been used in numerous ways by Gorman to spy on others to get information for the traitor’s own use.
Marlena Maxwell was a sore point with Rick. His report was riddled with holes because he had chosen to protect her secret identity. Perhaps that would be his downfall now.
“I have no idea what was in those files,” Rick answered. “Gorman requested them and later deleted them. Unless he sent me the information, I wouldn’t know.”
“So you just released a suspect and closed the operations without any information at all?” The sarcasm was even sharper now.
Rick met Harpring’s eyes across the room. “I still have to give a final report on that assignment,” Rick said quietly. “I’m sure you’ll find all the necessary details in it. You see,
without setting Miss Maxwell free I wouldn’t have been able to catch Gorman. And I wouldn’t have been able to send my own man after them with a wire. Everything that transpired was recorded. And lastly, without that tape, you wouldn’t have Gorman behind bars now, wouldn’t you agree? So you see, my system really works. Excuse me, I have several things to do. Greta, you can take the rest of the morning off.”
Rick gently closed the door to the big mess outside. Well, his day had begun.
“Feed the ghosts. They will trap you.”
“But Grandmother, I don’t want to talk about the dead.”
The older woman grasped her granddaughter by the hand and pulled her to the ancestors’ altar. There, pictures of dead relatives stared down solemnly.
“They are dead”—her grandmother pointed to the pictures—“because we make peace with them. We have the Festival for the Hungry Dead to make them full and happy, keep them away.”
“Grandmother—” She tried never to interrupt when the old lady was in the mood to tell the future, but so far, all she had been told were the dangers ahead. Where was her happiness, her dreams?
“You think things no longer here are gone, just like that. You have to make peace, then they go. If not, they haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“Grandmother, how do you make peace with the dead?”
“You tell them the truth and show them they are no longer needed.”
She stared at her grandmother, trying to understand. What had the truth and the dead to do with her center and her heart?
“I don’t follow, Grandmother,” she finally said.
“Of course not. All of you is still alive. Wait till you’ve lost your center. Wait till the fire melts the frozen heart. Then you will find many ghosts to appease. And not necessarily human ghosts, my girl. You have the future now. Wait till you have some past. Lots of ghosts in the past. The bad ones can be very hungry.”
Nikki studied the picture of her grandmother, one of the few things she really treasured. If her grandmother had become a ghost, then she should haunt her granddaughter for not remembering her lessons well.
It had been easy to “forget” the prophecies when she was busy with life. Her grandmother wasn’t one who nagged or scolded often. Her goal was simple—to leave a legacy of her beliefs to someone. Nikki’s parents were already too old to listen to her, so she had chosen to educate the little granddaughter.
Well, she was older and wiser now. She was always one step behind, though. In that sense, she had failed her grandmother. What good were warnings when they were ignored till it was too late?
Beware the center. It will betray you.
Release the frozen heart. It will burn you.
Feed the hungry ghosts. They will trap you.
She cocked her head, staring unseeing into space. It all had to do with truth. She had understood it in herself, but it took being in a cell in pitch darkness for that to happen. She thought of Rick. And blushed. She wondered if she could ever think of him again without blushing. Even in the midst of serious research, his name brought back memories of his kisses. She would never forget last night, how he had…She felt her face heat up even more.
“It was done in darkness, too,” she whispered. Her association with the dark had always to do with imprisonment and isolation. Rick had given her a new link, one that released some of the pain she held inside.
She sat up, blinking.
He had given her a new memory to banish the ghosts.
Was that what her grandmother meant by feeding the ghosts?
If that was so, how would that correlate with releasing the frozen heart? How would feeding the ghosts release it? And whose heart did her grandmother mean? Hers? Or, as she now believed, Rick Harden’s? Because the more she found out about him, the more she realized how static he had made
his life. He had stopped his growth, blocked his
chuung
, ever since the death of his wife.
His center was silent, and Nikki grieved for him. Pain of that sort ate one alive, leaving one in darkness, and she wanted to reach out to him and take away that ache. She didn’t know how he felt about her, but last night he had been gentle, and when Denise had shown up, he had also been protective. Theirs was a strange bond, she thought, with their frozen hearts and the dark holes inside them.
She rubbed her heart area unconsciously. It had burned when he kissed her, the kind of white heat that wiped out all thought and memory. All she had been able to do was feel him, and only him. She chewed on her lower lip. Was she supposed to do that to him, too?
Just the thought sent multiple shivers through her. She closed her eyes. Touching him…kissing his body…doing the same thing he did to hers. Twice she had touched him intimately, and each time he had felt incredible, his heat pulsing fiercely against her palms. It must look—she gave a purely female smile—huge.
It had been a long time since she’d had sexy thoughts about men. It was exciting. It made her feel almost whole again. The fear was still there, but somehow she had lost the distaste for being touched. She wanted Rick as she had never wanted anyone—it was a constant burning need inside. Was that what Denise Lorens felt? No—more, she corrected with a touch of jealousy. That woman had had sex with Rick for a whole weekend. And look how he affected her.
For a rare instant, Nikki’s jealousy of Denise turned into anger. She didn’t need to be inside Rick’s apartment last night to know what that woman had planned. Again, that feeling of unease she had around Denise flared as a warning. She had spent months at the mercy of men who had treated her exactly the same way that Denise used Rick—as a thing, a toy.
Just like that, Nikki’s anger and jealousy washed away. Denise had never had Rick, and never would, and to waste her energy on the other times Rick had been with the woman
would sully her own growing feelings. She didn’t see him in the same light as Denise. She also knew, with certainty, that Rick would never treat her the same way he had treated Denise last night.
The pen she was holding dropped onto the table, shaking her out of her reverie. She sighed. She had gotten clearance to use one of the classified libraries. Here she was daydreaming when she should be working on this report. Rick’s future was in her hands, and all she could think about was his body. Surely she was getting a little crazy. She looked down at the page in front of her. She had written a few paragraphs, and then she had stopped when Rick’s name came up.
That was what had brought on those sexual thoughts of him. She smiled, wondering if the board would be amused by her description of his sexual prowess and what she wanted to do with him, instead of a cut-and-dried opinion of his ability to function under duress.