by Tanya Stowe
He needed to be thinking about the Black Knights’ young, virulent IT hacker, not Sassa and her soft curves, sweet lips and ever-changing moods.
Did she really think she was not an accomplished woman? She was the most accomplished woman he’d ever met. That was one of the things that kept him constantly intrigued. He never quite knew what would come out of her.
Like when she said he aspired. Aspire. The word made him itch. Earlier she’d said he was overly ambitious. It seemed she’d tried to tone that accusation down and changed it to “aspire.” It didn’t have quite the same negative implications. Still... He shifted in his seat.
It wasn’t a bad word. As far as motives went, it was pretty good. Why shouldn’t he reach for more? He didn’t have much to hang on to in his life.
The light turned red and he braked to a stop.
A memory of his mother’s voice drifted through his mind. She had a lovely singing voice. When he was very young, she used to sing to him every night. He’d fall asleep with her hand in his hair and a soft lullaby easing him into his dreams.
But those were the early years, before alcohol became more important to her than her son. He’d stuffed the memory away because it popped up at awkward times and reminded him of what he’d lost.
As a young college student, he remembered sitting on the city bus on his way to visit his dying mother in the hospital. A young boy across from him had leaned his head on his mother’s shoulder. Envy had gripped Jared’s soul so tightly, he couldn’t breathe. He’d turned away and gotten off the bus at the next stop. He’d ended up walking the rest of the way to the hospital, almost a mile away.
Children and a family life had never even been a topic of discussion between him and Jessica. Mainly because he’d put those painful memories far away, into the darkest recesses of his mind...until Sassa had dragged them out again.
Yes, she confronted issues, everyone’s issues, his included. But some of those confrontations were just too painful to bring out into the open.
No matter what she said, it wasn’t wrong to aspire. He wanted...deserved more and he would keep reaching for it. He didn’t fault Sassa for her need to confront. It was her way of coping. But some things were better left buried.
Sassa was right. There could never be anything between them. There was no common ground linking their two attitudes. No meeting place for people with such different approaches...even if she had the softest lips and the sweetest smell of orange blossoms surrounded her. He couldn’t let those temptations lead him astray again.
A car honked behind him. The light had turned green. Lost in his thoughts, Jared hadn’t noticed. He accelerated quickly, determined to keep his mind on the job at hand.
The Spyder. Jared didn’t know why Kopack needed him at the hospital. What could the girl’s suicide attempt have to do with him? He pulled into the parking lot and hurried into the building and up the elevator to her room.
Kopack met him outside her closed door. “Just in time. The Spyder’s been asking for you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I have no clue. But those are the only words coming out of her mouth. We can’t get her to tell us anything else. Not even her real name and, so far, her fingerprints haven’t turned up. We don’t know who she is or where she comes from. Nothing. I’m hoping she’ll talk to you.”
Jared shrugged. “I’ll give it a shot. But don’t hold out too much hope. Chekhov’s recruits would rather die.”
“She got pretty close. She’s weak and her health is still in danger. I had to use some harsh words to convince her doctors to let you talk to her.”
Jared took a deep breath. “Let’s go find out what Miss Spyder wants with me.”
Kopack opened the door and they stepped inside. The agent stopped near the door and let Jared move closer. Stretched out on the bed, the deadly Spyder seemed tiny and almost fragile. It made it hard to remember she’d tried to bite his face.
They’d secured both her arms to the bed railing. Gauze wrapped around her wrists and hands, securing them to boards so she could barely move her fingers. Needles punctured the insides of both elbows and tubes ran from them to machines beside the bed. Her black hair fanned out on the pillow, her face almost as pale as the white pillowcase beneath her head.
Her eyes were closed but as he walked toward her, her lids popped open. Silent, she watched him approach. Her dark eyes seemed almost black and flashed with suppressed fury as she scoured his features.
When he stopped at her bedside, her lips parted but she couldn’t speak. She had to lick her lips to try again.
“Your pretty face is bruised.” Her voice was weak and raspy.
He’d been so involved with Sassa, he hadn’t noticed. He touched his cheek where Spyder had hit him and winced.
“I’m glad it hurts,” whispered the little Spyder. “I wish I’d broken your nose.”
Taken aback, Jared stared at her. He shouldn’t be surprised. The manager at the building where she was captured had attested to her willingness to hurt people—and right now...him.
Why did she harbor what seemed to be a special hate for him? Because he’d captured her?
No. Her feelings seemed to go back further than that. Were her strong emotions for him a weakness he needed to probe? If so...how far should he go? Kopack had said her health was still unstable. One misstep on his part could unbalance that precarious position.
Sassa’s safety depended on the information in this young woman’s head. Jared would go as far as he needed.
Stepping forward, he touched her fingers taped to the board. He expected her to flinch—a response he would have understood if she hated people. Instead, two of her fingers slid over his and clasped them against the board. The desperate, almost needy, gesture sent shivers of revulsion up his spine.
Jared swallowed, wondering what to do next. At a loss, he finally said, “Why would you want to break my nose? You don’t even know me.”
Her dark almost-black eyes fired up. “I’ve read everything I could find about you, and my little webs go everywhere. I know all about you, everything there is to know. You pretty boys are all the same. Beautiful bodies. Strong arms. Wonderful mouths...mouths that spout poisonous lies.”
She stroked his fingers then pressed on them painfully. Jared itched to jerk his hand away but she was getting emotional. Maybe she’d let something slip if he pushed harder.
“I don’t tell lies.”
“Yes, you do. You all do! You probably have pretty little Sassa wrapped around your finger.”
Jared must have showed his surprise because she smiled. “Yes, I know all about her, too. I’ve been watching both of you. I know your pasts, your financials. I even watch you on the campus cameras. I’m the one that gave Heiser the idea to snatch the baby.” She jerked, raising her head up off the pillow.
“I know you and you’re just like all the others.” She pressed so hard on his fingers it forced him to pull away.
“Everything you say is a lie. You think you’re all so smart...all you clever Cambridge boys with your soft touches and sweet promises. But I’m smarter. I outwit you every time. I take away your Kensington homes, your Lamborghinis and the models you love. Even the smart ones, like your Sassa. You think she’s smart enough to outwit me? I switched her precious little formula just to throw her off.”
“You changed the formula on the computer just to mess with Sassa’s head?”
She strained against the bonds on her arms. “I won’t just mess with her head. As soon as I get out of here, I’ll find a keyboard and I’ll get her.”
“The only thing you’ll get is a jail sentence.”
Her laugh was almost a crazy shriek. “You think jail will hold me? I broke your team’s pathetic security system. Mark thinks he’s so clever but I broke his program!”
So Mark was right. She knew his name. How co
uld she have such a comprehensive understanding of their IT departments? He stepped back, stunned by the depth of her knowledge.
“See... I told you I’m smarter than all of you. My spider webs are everywhere. I have servers right under your noses, linked to your own. You’ll never find me.”
Her crazy laugh pierced the room again. “I’ll break any jail’s system and be out before you know it. Just watch. I’ll—”
Her tirade broke off and she fell back upon her pillow, unconscious. She’d been so worked up and straining so hard, the machine beside her bed gave off an alarm. Another alarm on the other side began to beep. A nurse hurried into the room to her bedside.
Jared stepped closer to the bed. “Is she all right?”
“Her blood pressure is too high. You have to leave.”
Jared nodded and stepped out. Kopack followed close behind. The Spyder’s virulent madness seemed to follow Jared outside the room. He ran a hand across the back of his neck, trying to shake off her lingering presence.
“Well, that was just about the sickest love-hate scene I’ve ever witnessed.” Kopack was shaken, too.
Jared shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, it’s going to take me a while to get over it.”
Kopack grasped his shoulder and gave it a shake. “You did good, De Luca. She gave us a lot of information. We’ll be checking the Cambridge records. Obviously, she has some connection with the university and there can’t be too many Lamborghini owners who lived in Kensington, dated models and lost it all. We’ll connect the dots and she’ll be going to jail for the rest of her life.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot of information, but it will take a long time to sort it all out, time we don’t have. Sassa ran another test and succeeded. She recreated the formula and it’s on her computer. If Spyder sent the information to Chekhov, he’ll move quickly to develop it. We’re running out of time.”
Kopack tightened his grip on Jared’s shoulder. “Don’t jump the gun. We don’t know that she sent the formula on to Chekhov. It sounded to me like she was too busy playing games with you and Sassa to do her job. Our IT guys are working on her computers. They’ll let us know what she did. In the meantime, let’s celebrate our successes. We haven’t had too many. You scored big points for us in there.”
“I’m not sure I had much to do with it. All I had to do was show up.”
“Must have been that pretty face. It does things to women.”
Jared chuckled. “Yeah...right. My pretty face isn’t getting me any points with Sassa.”
Kopack paused. “Are you trying to score points with her?”
Jared kicked himself for his slip of the tongue. “No, of course not. I’m just trying to work with her prickly personality.”
The agent studied his features for a long while. Then he nodded. “Good. Keep your distance. You have a talent for fieldwork. There aren’t many people who can step in and perform as well as you have. You stay calm and think quickly. There’s always a place for those skills.”
Talent. Skills.
The words reverberated through Jared. Stunned, he watched Kopack walk away. After a few feet, the agent paused and turned back. “Come on. Let’s get your info to the computer guys at the office. They need to get their searches started.”
Jared stumbled into action and followed.
* * *
After Jared left the lab, Keri woke and wouldn’t let Sassa put her down even for a moment. Her first tooth was making her fussy...and maybe she was all too aware of her mother’s tension.
Poor baby. Her world had turned topsy-turvy. These weeks had been hard for her. First her mother had gone for a whole week on the trip to China. Then Grandma had left and a strange man had invaded her world. Although, if Sassa was honest, that was one change Keri seemed happy about. She loved Jared. And if Sassa was even more honest, so did she. The kiss proved that.
A kiss that felt so right. No man’s touch had ever made her feel safe, protected and respected at the same time. Jared had always treated her as an intelligent human being. So often men looked at her long blond hair, blue eyes, petite size and treated her like a baby doll. She hated that. Jared had never treated her like that...ever.
And he made her laugh. How long had it been since she’d laughed, really laughed? Not a little lift of the lips that acknowledged a clever word or joke. No, Jared made her laugh, sometimes even against her will. He almost dragged it out of her, forcing her to enjoy life.
She smiled, thinking of Jared, and clutched Keri close to her. She loved how he loved her child. But most of all, she loved how he made her feel that together they could do anything.
Truth be told, she simply loved Jared.
Sassa took a deep breath. It wasn’t fair. But it was the truth. She loved Jared but he would leave. He had goals and plans that Sassa and Keri didn’t fit into.
When he went, he would take a piece of her heart. But she would let him go...and she would be thankful that he had protected her and her daughter, thankful he had awakened her will to live and, most of all, the desire to love again.
She would try to remember that in the days ahead...and would try to be thankful rather than dwell on what might have been because she was certain Jared was going places. Kopack had come to depend on him. Jared had started out the investigation as someone on the fringes but had managed to make himself an integral part. All the opportunities Jared had always dreamed about would be waiting for him on the other side of this nightmare.
What would be waiting for her?
Court troubles with Erik. And how would she fight him with no money? She doubted she’d have a job here at the university. Dean Trujillo, head of the department, did not like her. The only reason she’d had a job was that Sam had fought for her and made it happen. Now that he was gone...
Still, she had proved herself. She’d discovered the formula for the pathogen. Surely some university would appreciate her skills. Maybe not here but somewhere...
She shook her head. It had been eventful day. She just needed a break. She hurried to the lab door and opened it. Agent Paulsen greeted her.
“Do you think we could go home for the night?” She hadn’t been to her house in days. Keri needed a bath and a good night’s rest in her crib. Sassa wanted a real shower in the comfort of her own home, not one of the lab’s facilities.
“I don’t see why not. Let me run it through Kopack.” Sassa turned back inside and gathered Keri’s diaper bag and their dirty clothes. When the agent signaled the okay, she was ready.
Once outside her house, she sat in the car as the agents searched and secured it. When at long last she stepped inside, home didn’t seem like home. That closed-up scent drifted over her again, the same one she’d sensed when she’d first returned from China. Had it only been three weeks ago? If felt like ages.
Agent Paulsen handed her the keys. Standing at her door, they both turned as another vehicle pulled up and parked across the street. Paulsen turned back. “It’s your ex-husband. He’s been hanging around.”
Erik? Hanging around? Her feeling of dread must have showed in her features because the agent said, “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you again.”
Sassa gave him a rueful grin. “Can you stay for the rest of my life?”
The agent smiled. “We’ll be right outside. Two agents in the back and two in front. Get some rest. You could use it.”
His kinds words brought tears to her eyes. Sensing her mother’s despair, Keri began to fuss. “It’s all right, baby. Mommy’s all right.” Stifling her tears, Sassa smiled at the agent. “Thank you.”
She lifted Keri higher and closed the door. “Come on. Let’s get you something to eat.”
She hurried to the kitchen and pulled Keri’s favorite fruit out of the freezer. With her tooth giving her trouble, Keri’s appetite had dropped. So try as she might, Sassa could only get a few b
ites of her daughter’s favorite peaches down her. Finally, she gave up. “Let’s get a bath and a bottle. You need sleep as much as Mommy.”
The bath seemed to relax Keri. She played in her pen long enough for Sassa to shower. With her hair wet, she heated a bottle for Keri and curled up on the couch. Finally, they both began to relax and drifted off.
Something jolted Sassa awake. She looked around. The lamps were still on. Light filled every dark corner. Keri slept peacefully in her arms. So what had disturbed her? Had she heard a noise or was she dreaming?
Clutching Keri to her chest, she sat up and looked around. Should she call Agent Paulsen? Before she could decide, there were scuffling sounds and murmured grunts at the front door. It sounded like someone fell against it.
Pop! The sound came from the outside, at the front corner of the house. Sassa crouched low on the couch cradling Keri beneath her body.
Was that a gunshot?
Someone shouted. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Sassa’s blood froze. Erik. Why was he out of his car?
Another gunshot. A cry... Erik’s voice again.
Sassa’s heart pounded like mad. Should she open the door? Did she dare peek out the window or should she just stay in place until Agent Paulsen gave her the all-clear signal? She couldn’t move from her position low on the couch, her gaze jumping from the front door down the length of the dark kitchen to the back door.
Suddenly, glass shattered. The back door slammed open and banged against the wall. A black pant leg stepped over the shattered glass and into her kitchen.
Mikhail Chekhov pushed past the broken shards of the doorjamb, jerked his black leather jacket back into place and marched toward her in the exact same manner as he had marched toward Sam in the airport.
For one excruciating moment, Sassa didn’t know what to do. What could she do? How could she stop him with her daughter in her arms?
She must have clutched Keri too tightly because she began to cry. Her daughter’s fright galvanized Sassa into action. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she leaped to her feet and shifted Keri to one arm. From the nearby end table, she jerked up the Tiffany-style lamp, pulled the cord clean out of the socket and threw it at Chekhov’s head with enough force to spin it in the air.
