“You enjoy these games too much,” she chided gently.
“I get no pleasure from them,” he said, not opening his eyes.
“And there aren’t seven days in a week,” she quipped.
His eyes opened. He lazily examined her. “You’ve lost some weight.”
“D.C. diet is bad for me.”
“Does that mean you aren’t staying?”
Nikki paused in the middle of opening a drawer. It must be fate. Her life was dominated by men who took too much interest in getting her to tell them what they wanted to hear.
“I thought you’d know the answer to that,” she said as she pulled out files and papers. “It’s your thing, isn’t it, Jed, manipulating everyone? We’re just puppets in your game plan.”
“I just do my job.”
She swung around and headed toward him, ignoring the silvery gleam in those eyes watching her. She stood over him, hands at her waist. “You say that every time you want to avoid a confrontation. You just do your job. How many times have I heard that? I think I’ve even repeated that mantra to others whenever it’s convenient.”
Jed didn’t move, head comfortably resting on his hands, a small quirk forming at the corner of his mouth. “Works, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Everyone starts doing things instead
of sitting around arguing and wondering about motives and consequences.”
Nikki gazed down at him. She would never understand this man, not in a million years. He had always fascinated her with his implacable aura, as if what she was seeing wasn’t really there. “That’s your job, then?” she asked. “Getting people to do their jobs.”
“I’m number nine, my team’s commander. There are eight men before me who have to do exactly as they’re told before I can come in to finish the assignment. I can’t afford having them thinking about the next step or consequences, Nikki.”
That was how this complex man saw himself—unnervingly simple in his explanation of what he did. Never mind that number nine was the man in charge of an elite team of men who infiltrated the most dangerous sectors of society. Never mind that the job of number nine was the ultimate soul-destroying part of the carefully constructed mission. Jed McNeil, as he simply explained, did his job. He was the one who did the final act, and an assassin shouldn’t think about consequences.
She shook her head. “You’re more than that, Jed,” she said, and out of habit, leaned down and flicked the lock of dark copper hair that brushed his brow. His eyes narrowed a fraction but she ignored the danger signals. Jed never did like people touching him. She perched on the arm of the chair. “You’re always manipulating people and you have a knack for getting them to do what you wanted them to do in the first place. It must be horrible to be right all the time.” She smiled. “One day you’ll meet someone who will manipulate you right through to marriage, and I’ll be the first to cheer her on.”
Jed unclasped his hands from behind his head and reached for her hands. She didn’t pull away. His thumb traced her palms absently as his light eyes explored her face, looking for signs of her old nervousness. What he saw seemed to satisfy him. “It isn’t good to put a curse on your fairy godmother,” he told her.
Nikki laughed softly. “You’re an evil fairy godmother,”
she said, and sobered up, “but I need all your magical powers to make things right.”
“Don’t I always?” Jed asked gently, his soft caress traveling up her wrist, then her elbow, then his hand was massaging her shoulder. Testing her courage.
“You always took care of me,” she agreed. “But this thing has to do with Rick and what he’s going to do. He won’t wait, not after you’ve so cleverly manipulated him.”
“If I promise not to tell him, come sit on your fairy godmother’s lap and tell me what he’s going to do,” he invited, his voice low and teasing.
She shook her head. The man didn’t know how to behave, always trying to push past boundaries. His touch was gentle as his finger traced her collarbone.
“My assignment with GEM will be completed as soon as you’ve debriefed me,” she said. “After that, I still have Admiral Madison’s report for his committee.”
“Then you should be happy. You’ll have your file, your past and future…your man.” Jed tapped under her chin with a finger. “Why the long face?”
“He just told me what Gorman has over him.” She took a breath as he waited. He pinched her chin gently, prodding her. Finally, she continued, “Perjury. Lying under oath.”
Jed cocked his head, dropped his hand from her face as he sat up a little higher. “Something our Justice Department would frown upon. I assume he did this after you and your group went down.”
Nikki nodded. “But it’s all to protect me. He lied to cover up for me. You’ve read my report I sent of what I remembered doing. After I drugged him, I went to download the files from his link that I had transferred from Gorman’s computer. I didn’t have time to look through them, nor could I say anything when I didn’t have a clue about what was happening, so I hid those files, and left a note on the computer that I’d explain everything when I came home.”
“Only you didn’t.”
She nodded again. “Gorman somehow traced the link to Rick’s, and then to his home computer. He already knew
about the complaint I made against him, so he must have panicked.” She paused. “Jed, I think he somehow got rid of me, or thought he did, and thought he would use my stupid download as proof of betrayal that I sold out.”
She stood up, pacing the floor as she contemplated that long-ago event. She turned to see Jed’s gaze following her thoughtfully. Steepling his fingers on his chest, he noted the obvious. “Except Harden lied during the investigation, said he downloaded the link. I’ve read that case file. His testimony had a lot of refusal to answer, which accounted for the black marks in his report card.”
“Gorman threatened to go on the stand to say I downloaded the files and Rick stopped him,” Nikki said. She spread her hands out hopelessly. “Rick made a deal with him, said that he would be out of the running for the promotion anyway, and needn’t be tangled up by departmental scandal. All along, he still didn’t know I made the complaint against Gorman, and he thought he was covering up for me because I could have sold out. He refused to turn me in.”
“He refused to believe you were a traitor, Nikki,” Jed told her, softly. “There was also your message that you left, promising to tell him everything. He waited a long time, the poor bastard.”
Nikki stared at Rick. “It was all my fault,” she said, desperately trying to control the tumult of emotions roiling in her since Rick told her the truth. This was a debriefing, and emotions had no place in it. If she broke apart now, she wouldn’t be able to function, or get Rick out of this predicament for which she was responsible. “Nothing good came from that one thoughtless act I did ten years ago. If I hadn’t tried to do things by myself—”
“You made a complaint through the proper channels, remember?” Jed reminded her quietly. “Didn’t work. You were trying to find evidence to substantiate your suspicions. That is the standard procedure before making any direct accusations.”
“I stole files!” Nikki exclaimed in self-disgust.
“Correction. You committed a tactical error. You downloaded files using a network with open channels. Gorman,
who was exactly what you suspected, caught you. Obviously you were onto something very incriminating, or he wouldn’t have taken a whole team down.”
She stared at the man looking calmly back at her. Did nothing ever faze him? “Tactical error or not,” she said, “I can’t have Rick trying to cover for me yet another time. He’s going to hear out this new deal with EYES and admit to perjury in exchange for all my files. He thinks without him sacrificing himself, the ones Admiral Madison had gotten will be cleaned up. As a bureaucrat, he knows how that’s done all the time.”
“Do you think he’s given up?” Jed asked.
She worried her lower lip. “I don’t know. He was very calm about it, almost resigned. I tried to talk him out of it but he said time was running out, and he wasn’t going down by himself. So he’s going to get hold of the names, dangled it in front of EYES in exchange for my file and the truth of that operation to come out. But if that were to happen, he has to tell the truth himself, that he perjured. That’s going to end his career, Jed.”
There was a short silence, and then he asked, “What do you want, Nikki?”
She sat down heavily on the nearby ottoman. Jed’s question was an echo to Rick’s earlier. Was she such a selfish person that everyone was constantly asking her about what she desired? She had never thought herself demanding before. Mostly she had kept to herself. “I don’t think my past is worth so much. I don’t
want
it if he has to sacrifice yet again.” Her voice became fiercely determined. “I. Won’t. Let. Him.”
“You forget he’s pretty good at this bureaucratic bullshit. He might negotiate a plea that won’t be too bad.”
“Jed, no more mind games. Are you going to help me or not?” she demanded, and then sat back, shocked. She didn’t lose her temper, ever.
Jed’s smile was slow and satisfied. He finally moved, swinging his long legs off the sofa. “Stubborn people are like bulls. They don’t move till you wave a red flag at them,” he remarked.
“Are you calling me a bull now?”
“One bull is determined to throw himself on the matador’s sword. Just give up, so to speak. He must love you a lot, Nikki, to do that, since we know how he hadn’t given up on finding the truth about you for ten years. Why don’t you let him do this for you?”
“Because I love him.” She wasn’t going to let anything hurt him again.
“Have you told him this?”
“How come you always know what to ask?”
He didn’t tease or mock her this time. For an instant, she thought she saw something flare in his silver eyes, but whatever it was, it was extinguished with barely any facial expression. “I just do my job,” he replied simply.
“What do I have to do?” she asked, trusting him to help her.
He considered for a few moments. “You’ll have to do some serious digging. A complaint sent through regular channels doesn’t just disappear. It might be ignored, or buried, or hidden, but the bureau has a habit of keeping files on everything.” His lips twisted. “Even though they can’t locate it at a later date.”
“So it’d still be in records, you think?”
“In those days, email wasn’t that popular. They did forms in triplicates. They are hard to delete. The top man might have buried that complaint. He might have called on the second tier to follow orders to ignore. However, the most forgotten department is records. They are overworked and underpaid, and no one pays attention to them unless they need something found. If no one asked about the complaint, and it never was sent anywhere, and if no one brought it up again, it’s a safe bet that it’s lost forever.”
Nikki snapped to her feet. “I won’t give him up without a fight. I know one of Rick’s men is going out with someone from records.”
Jed stood up too, like a lazy panther stretching. “Patty Ostler.”
“Can she be trusted?”
“You’ll have to take a chance, won’t you?” He retrieved
the bunch of papers she had pulled out from the top of the drawers. “I can’t enter the building without causing a stir, so it’s up to you, Nikki.”
“All right. What will you do in the meantime, Jed?”
He buttoned his battered denim jacket and turned up the collar. “Go see the admiral. Update him on the situation. Check on Grace.”
“Grace?” She arched an eyebrow. Jed’s daughter was a handful. Like the father. “Is Trouble in trouble?”
“Trouble is a sophomore in college. There is ample reason to be slightly concerned.”
Nikki laughed. Grace was the most grown-up little girl she’d ever met, a tad too independent and with no fear of anything. Unlike her, she thought. “Tell her I love her,” she said. And in a special way, you, too, she added silently.
Jed looked down into her eyes. He was close enough to bend down to kiss her, if he’d wanted. Instead he said, “I’ll call from the admiral’s. You’d better hurry. You’ve got your own trouble to deal with.”
R
ick’s cell phone was off, and his secretary didn’t know where he was, either. After leaving a message, Nikki checked with Internal Investigations. A dead end, of course. They wouldn’t confirm whether he was there or not. Finally she decided she would go to Rick’s office to leave him a message as well as get hold of Patty Ostler.
She had expected it, but it was still unnerving to have so many pairs of eyes on her as she made her way past security and up to Task Force Two’s floor. People working here were trained to break codes, listen to gossip, dissect situations. She was probably Fodder of the Week.
There was nothing to do but to withstand the stares and the knowing smiles. At least no one had said anything yet. She adjusted her cardigan inside the elevator, trying to relax. The constrictive prickly feeling she always had when she was in this building was back. She bumped into Agent Candeloro when she walked out onto the floor. They hadn’t talked more than a few minutes but she liked him. With his unruly ponytail and easy demeanor, he had shown his faith in his Task Force operations chief when he showed his support in front of the review board.
“Hello, Mrs. Harden,” he greeted her.
Nikki blinked. It was the first time she had been addressed that way. She absorbed the moment wonderingly. There was no fear of loss of identity, of being seen as someone else. She…liked the feeling of belonging. “Agent Can
deloro,” she said, smiling warmly. “Have you seen Agent Harden today?”
Cam nodded and gestured at his laptop case. “He gave me some work to do, which saved me from going to beg for a desk job at another department. Are you looking for him?”
“Yes.”
“He has a meeting, you know.”
Nikki noticed that Cam was speaking in very broad terms, which told her that he was afraid of being overheard. “I was hoping to catch him before that,” she said.
He shook his head, punching the down button on the wall. “I think he went off about half an hour ago, Mrs. Harden. Do you want me to leave a message?”
“I think I’ll leave another one with his secretary, but I do need your help, though. I need to speak to Patty Ostler. She’s a friend of yours, right?”
“Yeah.” He eyed her quizzically but didn’t ask for more information.
“Can you take me to her at records?”
“Of course. I’ll wait for you here. Hold the door and all that.”
“Thanks. I’ll hurry.”
Rick’s secretary was on the phone and Nikki had hoped that was Rick. “No, it’s not Mr. Harden. He didn’t say when he will be back.”
“If he comes back, can you please let him know I’ll be with Agent Candeloro and Patty Ostler? I don’t know how long I’ll be but I’ll call again later to let him know where I am.”
“Of course. I’ll be sure to tell him as soon as he gets in.”
Nikki smiled and thanked her, then went with Cam to records. She was surprised when she met Patty Ostler. Dressed chicly in white, with her hair pulled back into a tight weave, she didn’t seem the type that would go for someone like Agent Candeloro.
“I wonder whether you can help answer some questions about locating old files and memos,” Nikki said to her, after Cam introduced them.
“Sure.” Patty moved the inbox tray on her desk back into position after Cam pushed it sideways by accident.
“I’m talking really old memos and files, at least ten years old,” warned Nikki, watching Cam lean over to open the candy jar and knock the stapler over as he did so.
“That can be difficult to find but not impossible,” Patty said, automatically righting the stapler, then moving the outbox tray before closing the candy jar. There was now a slight tension marring her smooth face. “Some are recorded, some filed away, and a lot of them are sort of lost in a huge mountain in the cavern.”
Nikki frowned. “In the cavern?” she repeated.
“That’s the vault to us,” Cam chimed in, sucking his candy noisily. “When e-data became the thing, much of the updates started ‘as of,’ with current backups as priority. The goal was to have everything backed up eventually, but that—umm—fell by the wayside in the last few administrations.”
“Lack of funding,” Patty agreed. Finally, as if she couldn’t stand it any longer, she turned to Cam, who was eyeing her with a wicked light in his eyes. “Is there something else that you want to mess with, Agent Candeloro?”
“Only you, princess, but Mrs. Harden really needs your help right now,” Cam answered with a grin.
Nikki smothered her amusement. She had thought he was just being clumsy but all those little “accidents” were just to irritate Patty Ostler. She noted the high color on the younger woman’s cheeks and thought they made an adorable couple.
Patty chose to ignore Cam’s last remark and returned her attention to Nikki. “What are you looking for, Mrs. Harden?”
“I filed a complaint against a certain department. What would be the procedures of keeping the paperwork on file?”
Patty frowned. “Shouldn’t that be with the DOJ?”
“Not if the Justice Department never received it,” Cam countered.
“Oh.”
Nikki nodded. “He’s right. The DOJ might not have seen it
since I, and not the department head, filed the paperwork, but there should be copies buried in records. At least, I hope so.”
“There should be but with the vault in such a mess…” Patty sounded doubtful of a successful find.
“But you found the old Marlena Maxwell files for Steve,” Cam pointed out. He turned to Nikki and proudly boasted, “Patty could find anything on anyone, given time. Just tell her as much info as possible, Mrs. Harden. Patty will find the copies, if there are any lying around.”
Nikki smiled as Patty flushed with pleasure. The younger woman stole a glance at Cam, who held her gaze with a very obvious message.
“That would be great,” Nikki said softly, stepping back to give these two a moment to connect. It was always so nice to see a romance growing.
Rick looked up at the clock hanging over the doorway. He had expected to be kept waiting. This was, after all, Office of the General Counsel, where time was meaningless as the legalities of government intelligence and covert actions were weighed and dissected. The clock in the room ticked loudly, serving as an irritant to those who waited. It was all part of the game. After all, he was the one begging here and not in any position to demand immediate attention.
He had anticipated this and had gone to the bathroom before coming in. Any sign of nervousness or impatience would only play into their hands. They had kept him in here for an hour now, and no one had shown up yet. Finally the door opened, and he studied the man walking in with his assistants behind him.
As he had expected, it was Hal Stadler, the same counselor in charge of the first EYES deal. Internal Investigations loved men like Stadler. He was brilliantly meticulous in his cases, building each one with a chesslike strategy until he had all the angles covered. Of the good-old-boys mentality, he disliked anyone who broke rules and worked outside the box. Rick understood that in the world of EYES, those who
did so were frowned upon. Government couldn’t run smoothly if people didn’t follow policy.
It made sense, Rick reflected with cynicism, until those in the box used their power to cover up their own illegal activities. Then the good old boys would be nothing better than the Mafia policing their own. The Office of the General Counsel trained and hired lawyers who were very good at that. Many internal abuses never made it into the public arena unless there was a huge media outcry. This had happened during the Iran-Contra affairs, and the OGC had been forced to do a lot of things in the sunshine. With Gorman’s recent arrest, the media interest in national security was at an all-time high. This time, the OGC must be trying to do damage control before things got out of hand. Rick thought of the list of names in his laptop as well as what he had procured earlier in his study. Denise’s password had taken him to several interesting places.
Stadler went straight to the matter. “Shall we begin?” he asked, heading toward a connecting door on the left. Without waiting for Rick’s reply, he ordered his assistants, “Check him for listening devices.”
The men opened their briefcases. Rick noted with somber amusement that they were using similar gadgetry that had failed on Marlena Maxwell not too long ago. He removed his jacket when one of them pointed to it and watched as the electronic wand was passed along the sleeves and lapels, looking for hidden microdevices.
“Just being careful, you understand,” Stadler said, from the other room.
“Yes, I understand,” Rick echoed cynically. This coming deal was obviously going to be one made out of the box.
“Do I have clearance to go in with you?” Nikki asked. They had driven to another building. She had checked before leaving with Cam and Patty, but Rick still hadn’t returned. Greta must be sick of writing down her messages by now.
“You do. I checked first, of course. Seems Admiral Madi
son had taken care of all the details,” Patty assured her. She turned to Cam. “You, however, can’t go into the vaults with us. You can accompany us as long as you don’t go into any of the restricted areas.”
Cam made a face. “I’m familiar with this building. Spent some time helping the Directorate of Administration clear out space. I’ll go with you as far as I’m allowed. It’s not like the place down there is going to be overrun with security, you know. Who cares about a roomful of dusty old papers and forms?”
“Hopefully, Mrs. Harden will find what she’s looking for there. Dusty old papers are my job, so are you saying nobody cares about what I do?”
Nikki smiled at Patty’s deceptively serene tone, her respect for the neat young woman going up a notch. She knew how to handle Agent Candeloro, who was apologizing profusely.
“Princess, your job is the most important in the world because nobody but you can do it,” he declared and bowed humbly. “Look at me begging you to let me accompany you down there. It’ll be dark and danky, full of dangerous spiders and other assorted insects. You’ll need me to hold your hand, guard you against the evil things, be the knight that you always read about in your romance novels—”
“Oh hush,” Patty shut him up hurriedly. “Do you have to keep teasing me about the books I read? I’m sorry about this nonsense, Mrs. Harden. Let’s go before he drives me nuts.”
“It’s okay, I read romance novels too. Not nonsense at all,” Nikki told her, as she watched Patty slide a security card through a slot in the wall. The door slid open like Aladdin’s cave.
“Really?” Patty said, as the door closed behind them. “Who do you like to read?”
“Ladies, don’t forget your big bad knight protecting you from behind,” Cam reminded them in a forlorn voice as they headed toward another set of doors.
Nikki and Patty laughed.
“Sometimes, to protect our national security, we have to break certain laws.”
“There’s a distinction between breaking laws of other countries and the ones in our own,” Rick politely pointed out the unspoken rule of all Intel and covert agencies.
Stadler’s eyes narrowed a fraction as Rick steadily regarded him. Finally, he admitted stiffly, “There were some mistakes made, but those are aberrations.”
“When a miscalculated leak put a whole team of operatives’ lives in danger, that is an aberration. When the leak was deliberate, done for personal ambition, I don’t think any defender of our Constitution will call that a mistake, Mr. Stadler.”
“We’re here to discuss an open-ended offer, not the Constitution, Agent Harden,” reminded Stadler in a steely voice.
The knot of anger in Rick’s stomach tightened even more. Stadler was right. He was here to listen to their offer and counter with his own, not to debate ethics. So far, what he had heard went against every ounce of what he believed in. If he gave in to them, would he be able to put this behind him and start life anew?
“There isn’t much to discuss,” Rick said with a shrug.
Their “open-ended offer,” as they called it, had been thoroughly massaged by lawyers. They would acknowledge the mistake made to Nikki’s team ten years ago. They would release the “lost” files, but only under the Classified Information Procedures Act, which meant that only the courts and the Judiciary Committee could read the truth. Due to possible “irreparable damage to national security,” the public would get a summary, with no mention of names and certain facts. No admission of guilt.
“This is what we could give you. What is your counteroffer, Agent Harden?”
“It’s like a maze,” Cam observed. “If it weren’t so nicely carpeted, I’d think our bosses keep a dungeon down here. Princess, how many doors do you intend to take us through?”
They had gone down several levels, each time requiring
Patty to insert a special ID card and code. Each computerized elevator then appeared to skip certain levels. Nikki had never been down here but knew that each directorate had use of different sectors. She was also aware of the interrogation areas that everyone agreed didn’t exist.
“One more level. We simply have no time to input every file from way back when. The ‘dead’ files are the least important, so they’re way in the back. The scanned ones are with the microfiche. I think they’re viewed as backups. It’s quite a mess, so it’s going to be a pain to locate a complaint triplicate. The only thing going for us is that we have a date,” Patty said as she punched in the code. “There’s also limited air-conditioning, since no one goes there much. Budget cuts and all that.”
“What else has been cut, besides air-conditioning?” Nikki asked. She could use this in her report.
“Lighting is partial and curtailed. Motion detectors have been removed. They used to have people coming down here at least once a day for a routine walkthrough but it was deemed unnecessary since hardly anyone uses the backlog vault except to dump more boxes. So it’s now once every two weeks, when a maintenance employee will come down here to look around.”
“To nap, probably,” chirped in Cam. “No cameras, no records, no real work. Great place to nap.”
“Do you ever think of anything else besides ways to goof off?” Patty stopped in front of a steel door. “Here we are. Cam, you can’t go in. Sorry. I wish you could. Will you be all right out here?”