Code of Conduct (Cipher Security Book 1)

by Smartypants Romance

  So why did he look at me with the kind of hunger I expected from a panther lurking in a tree as it studies the gazelle on the ground below?

  Heat raced across my skin, and I had the sense that he could smell it on the air, as though fear and confusion and desire combined to make me smell like prey. I thought I could see the pulse in his neck, and then he swallowed, hard.

  A knock on the door made me jump, and a flash of something primal crossed Gabriel’s face before something else that looked like relief settled in.

  I turned to answer it, glad for a reason to tear my eyes away from his gaze. I could still feel his eyes on me, and I pushed down the desire for something more that threatened the boundaries of my comfort zone.

  Shelley stood at the door with a camera slung around her neck. “You ready?” she asked with a glance down at my running gear. Her gaze faltered, arrested on my cheetah leg, and then slammed back up to my face. “You’re an amputee?” Her voice held surprise and wonder, and possibly delight.

  “I actually have two legs. One just likes to dress up as a steampunk Goth.” I honestly couldn’t help the snark, and I heard a snicker behind me. Gabriel drew Shelley’s attention too, and the appreciation in her look was almost annoying.

  “You’re coming too, I hope?”

  Gabriel flicked a glance at me. “Am I?”

  I almost snarled at him, still affected by the earlier heat between us, but turned my attention back to Shelley. “Where’s a good place for us to run?”

  “If you go down to the marina, I can set up by the pier and catch you under the lights,” she said, her eyes lingering on my cheetah leg. “Oh, and Gabriel?”

  He looked up from his water bottle in response.

  “Lose the shirt, please?”

  Definitely annoying, but Shelley smiled charmingly, then gave us quick directions and took off in her car to meet us down there.

  Gabriel stripped off his t-shirt and tossed it on the twin bed. My mouth went dry at the sight of hard muscle that looked like it had been carved from a slab of mahogany. I grabbed his water bottle because it was handy, and because I wouldn’t be able to speak without help.

  He let me exit the cottage first and then locked it behind us. I started to run slowly in the direction Shelley had indicated, and Gabriel kept an easy pace next to me. We didn’t speak until we could see the marina in front of us.

  “I’m sorry I was a jerk earlier, at dinner,” I finally said.

  “You weren’t a jerk.” He sounded wary, and then exhaled. “I know you’re probably disgusted with the choices I made in Africa, but I’d like to think you’d give me a chance to prove I’m different now.”

  I stared at him, openmouthed. “Disgusted? My God, Gabriel! I’m horrified at what you had to do to get those girls to safety, and I’m so, so sorry for the choices you had to make. But I think you’re a hero, and I’m kind of wondering why you’re even here with me right now.”

  “What are you talking about? Where else would I be?” His voice had gone deep and growly and was threaded with some emotion I couldn’t read.

  I shook my head and turned to run again. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  He kept pace with me, and I could feel his gaze burning my face. “Something happened. Something made you pull away from me. What was it, Shane?”

  “It’s stupid,” I murmured. It wasn’t stupid, but I didn’t want to say it out loud, because then it would be.

  “Tell me.” His voice had an edge of command, and I bristled. “Please.” I could feel his eyes searching my face.

  I finally exhaled in frustration. “The photograph. Of the woman’s leg.”

  “What about it?” He sounded confused, and I hated him in that moment for making me explain.

  “You like it.”

  “Yeah, so? I like the boxer too.”

  “I don’t wear heels,” I said quietly.

  “You’d be six-four if you did. Not that I’d mind. I’m a particular fan of tall women.”

  I stopped again, hands on my hips, and glared at him. “I’ll never be like the woman in that photo. I’ll never wear sexy high heels and short skirts, and all the things that make someone normal.” I was angry, but only because he made me spell out my self-consciousness. I started running toward the marina again, but Gabriel reached out and grabbed me before I could pass him.

  His mouth crashed into mine, and I fell against his bare chest. He held my upper arms, and after one shocked moment, my hands snaked around his waist as he kissed me. His heart beat a tattoo against mine, and the bare skin of our stomachs felt as though it had fused together.

  “I taste you in my dreams,” he murmured against my mouth. “I think about kissing you ten, fifty, a hundred times a day.”

  My breath caught in my throat as his mouth slid from mine to the space just below my earlobe, where he whispered, “When I saw you tonight, without your jeans, without the leg, I wanted to kiss every inch of your skin. Every…” he kissed the hollow beneath my ear, “damn…” he gently bit my earlobe, “inch.”

  It was a good thing he held my arms, because I could feel my knees buckle as I melted into his skin. I took a ragged breath, and Gabriel pulled back enough to look into my eyes. “You could never be normal. Extraordinary is not normal. Stunning is not normal. Brilliant is. Not. Normal.”

  His hands went to my face and cupped my cheeks. “I want to make love to you, Shane. But more than that, I want to talk, and run, and laugh, and wake up with you.”

  He kissed me again, hard, and then let go of my face, inhaled sharply, and looked away toward the marina. “We have a job to do, so I can wait.” He captured my gaze again. “But not for long. And not patiently.”

  We resumed our run to the marina without another word, and my own brain, usually full of denial, insecurity, and excuses, had gone utterly silent. The only thing left was electricity that zinged through me on an alternating current. Even the space between us had its own atmosphere – the kind of meteoric storm that shorted out radios and fried computers.

  I could see Shelley halfway down the pier, just under the yellow haze of a streetlight. I debated calling Gabriel out on a race in an attempt to snap the tension between us, but then realized I didn’t want to. I liked the tension, and I used it to pick up speed as we ran across the parking lot to the pier. Gabriel matched me stride for stride. By the time we blew past the spot where Shelley crouched with her camera on a tripod, the shutter firing on automatic, we were at a full sprint, and I was laughing.

  We crossed the invisible line at the end of the pier within half a step of each other and crashed into the railing with gasping laughter, hearts pounding, sweat slicking our skin. Shelley arrived a minute later running with her tripod.

  “That was amazing! I could shoot you both all night!”

  I caught Gabriel’s eye and guessed he was thinking the same thing I was, which was I really wish we could go back to the room right this minute, but we have work to do.

  I stood up and met Shelley’s admiring gaze. “Shelley, you’re an amazing artist, and we’re really honored to be your subjects. But the main reason we drove up here was to find your nephew, Mickey.”

  Shelley’s eyebrows raised, and she took a small step backward as her smile faded.

  I held up my hands in supplication. “Denise is a client of mine, and I need to warn her about her husband. We’re not here to cause trouble for them, but Denise has information that we think can help us and also keep her safe from Quimby. We need to talk to her.”

  “Do you have a card or something?” Shelley asked suspiciously.

  I nodded. “Back at the cottage. I’m a P.I., and I just did some work for Denise to prove her husband was cheating on her. She knows me.”

  Shelley considered us for a long, silent moment. I stretched so I didn’t stiffen up while she made her decision, and maybe it helped convince her that I was just a regular person. “Give me your cell phone number,” she finally said to me. “If Denise wants to talk
to you, she’ll call.”

  It wasn’t a great option – Denise already had my cell number and hadn’t bothered calling. Nor had she bothered to pay my bill, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

  “Ask Denise why her husband got a FOID card three months ago,” I said.

  That got her attention. “Her husband carries a gun?”

  I nodded. “I don’t trust him, and I’m trying to keep us all safe.”

  Gabriel knelt down to re-tie his shoe, and I knew it was an excuse to look up to Shelley so she wouldn’t be threatened by his size when he spoke. “We work for a security company in Chicago tasked with neutralizing threats, and we believe Quimby is a threat.”

  Shelley exhaled. “And if you could find them here, so could he.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Meet us at the mill in twenty minutes.” Her tone was resigned, and she left the pier without a backward glance.

  When Shelley was out of earshot, Gabriel murmured to me, “I’m impressed.”

  I looked him straight in the eyes and dared him boldly. “First one back gets the big bed.” And then I sprinted past him and up the hill.

  34

  Gabriel

  “What would you ask for if you knew the answer was yes?” – Shane, P.I.

  She probably would have won anyway, because she’d surprised me with the taunt that we wouldn’t be sharing the bed, but I let her win by enough that the shower was running when I entered the cottage.

  I’d just kicked off my shoes when I heard a thud coming from the bathroom.

  “Ow!” Shane’s curse was muffled by the running water.

  “Shane?” I called. She didn’t answer.

  Another thud. I was on my feet and at the bathroom door before I was even aware I’d moved.

  And another thud. Had she fallen? I opened the door without thinking and nearly tripped over the cheetah leg on the floor. My gaze was caught on the sight of Shane behind the glass door of the very large shower, standing on one foot with her eyes closed under the spray, holding the tiled wall with one hand, and trying to wash her hair with the other.

  “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, unaware that I was there.

  I’d dislocated a shoulder once and had to wash one-handed for three weeks. It was hard to get short hair clean with one hand – long hair like Shane’s must have been impossible. I didn’t stop to consider what she would think before I opened the glass door and, still in my shorts, stepped into the shower with her. Shane’s eyes snapped open, and she stared at me as I put both hands on her waist to support her.

  “Wash your hair,” I said quietly.

  Her eyes were wide and never left mine as I held her in place so she could use both hands to scrub the shampoo through her long hair. Even when she closed them to rinse, I didn’t allow my gaze to drop below her face. Her small breasts teased my peripheral vision, and the rest of her taunted my imagination, but I did not look down. When her hair was free of soap and slicked off her face as though she were a mermaid risen from the sea, she opened her eyes and met my gaze.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  I reached past her to turn off the water, and she held onto a wall as I handed her a towel. I tried to summon the fortitude to stay and dry her off, but my self-control was hanging on by a thread, so instead, I grabbed another towel for myself and left the room.

  She met me outside the mill five minutes later, her wet hair twisted into a low knot, her face bare of make-up. My jeans felt tight; I was still half hard with the memory of water coursing down her naked skin, over curves and ridges that I wanted to trace with fingers, lips, and tongue.

  She took a deep breath, and I felt the sear of it in my own lungs. “Shall we?” she said.

  I indicated she should precede me across the bridge and into the main gallery room of the mill. Shelley emerged from a door at the far end of the room. Her expression was solemn, though she strode toward us without hesitation.

  “Mickey and Denise will talk to you,” she said in a stern voice, “but I want your word that they’ll have no trouble from you or your firm.”

  “The firm has no quarrel with either of them,” I said quietly.

  “Nor do we,” Shane added.

  Shelley nodded and directed us to follow her.

  The room at the far end of the main gallery was carpeted and softly lit by wall sconces on dimmers. A man and a woman, both in their early thirties, sat together on an elegant settee. They held hands, and I thought it said more about their nerves than their affection for each other.

  “Hello, Denise,” Shane said formally. Her tone wasn’t cold, but it definitely wasn’t warm and friendly either, and I remembered that Denise Quimby had skipped town without paying Shane’s bill.

  “Who is he?” Denise asked, indicating me.

  Shane’s tone cooled. “Gabriel is my partner,” she answered.

  “I didn’t hire him. I don’t want to talk to him.” Denise wore surly anger as comfortably as the purple cashmere sweater she had on.

  Shane’s tone was innocuously pleasant, and she even managed a smile. “Considering that you haven’t paid me for my services, you’re not in a position to dictate terms, Mrs. Quimby.” The emphasis on her name made Denise blanche, and I was impressed at the bloodless equivalent of a smack-down that Shane had just dealt her.

  I nodded to Denise’s boyfriend, whose nervousness had just increased exponentially at the traded barbs. “Mickey, I’m Gabriel.” I stuck out my hand, and Mickey stood to take it. “Why don’t we go for a walk and leave them to it for a bit.”

  He shot a quick look at the scowl on Denise’s face. “Sounds good.” He grabbed his leather jacket and then leaned in to kiss Shelley on the cheek.

  “Back in a bit, Aunt Shelley.”

  “Oh no, I’m coming with you. You’re not leaving me with the hissing cats,” she said as she followed us from the room.

  As we walked away, I heard Shane ask Denise about the money and what she knew. Their voices dropped to a murmur when we reached the large gallery room, so rather than go back out into the cold night air, I wandered past Shelley’s photographs for the excuse to speak with Mickey. Any man who has ever had an honest conversation with another man knows they don’t generally happen face-to-face unless dominance is at play. The best ones are in the car, or on a trail, or shoulder-to-shoulder at a football match. Voices are hard enough to navigate, but pain or confusion in another man’s eyes make us too vulnerable to our own.

  “Did she tell you about the money?” I asked him. We stood before a black and white photograph of a father bending over to kiss a sleeping child who reminded me forcibly of my nephew. Love flared hard and fast in my chest, and I shoved away thoughts of Mika’s father who would never know his son.

  “She told me he lost it all,” Mickey said. He was a good-looking guy, almost my height, but lean and stringy, with dark hair worn too long in the way of musicians and artists. I could see how someone like cashmere Denise could find his slightly dangerous look appealing after the carefully cultivated gym rat appearance of Quimby.

  “How?” I’d left my question deliberately ambiguous, just to see where Mickey’s mind naturally went. I couldn’t tell if he knew about the half million with which his girlfriend had absconded.

  “Invested in a big infrastructure gamble at ADDATA for a client, then the client didn’t pay as promised. I could see the writing on the wall when paychecks started bouncing and half the researchers got laid off.”

  “Why not go after the client in court?” I asked as we stopped at a photo of a shirtless guitar player on stage at a small club. The guy looked remarkably like Mickey, who suddenly seemed anxious to move on to the next image. Shelley trailed behind us, not speaking, but not obviously eavesdropping either.

  Mickey shrugged as we stopped in front of a nude woman sitting at a dressing table putting on make-up. She had a beautifully proportioned shoulder-to-hips ratio that made her back look rather like a cello.

  “Denise thinks the client is
just a front for Karpov and that he has something on Quimby. She thinks Karpov keeps files on everyone, which is how he gets away with so much.”

  I knew Shane would be extracting this information from Denise first hand, so I didn’t bother pursuing it with Mickey.

  “Did you ever meet Karpov when you worked at ADDATA?”

  Mickey sneered. “The guy’s a real cheese-bucket poser. Always wore deck shoes and tucked-in collared shirts like he just stepped off a sailboat or something. He’s … oily; that’s the only way to describe him. Makes Quimby look like a nice guy, if you know what I mean.”

  Mickey looked like he was itching for a cigarette. His fingers rubbed against each other as if he was holding one, and his eyes started getting twitchy. I figured I probably only had his attention for another few minutes.

  “So, who’s the bad guy in all this?”

  “Karpov is for sure. And Quimby, for getting into bed with him. Not that I’m surprised. The guy gets into bed with anything with a pulse. Denise realized it was all going away when the repo notices started coming in. That’s why she left.”

  I glanced at him from the corner of my eye so he didn’t catch the pity in my look. Denise left because the money was gone. But then why run away with Mickey, who had creditors calling so often he got rid of his cell phone?

  “So, what are your plans?” I asked him as we arrived in front of the photograph of the woman buckling her shoe. I now understood Shane’s reaction, and the appeal of the photograph had diminished for me. We moved on to the boxer.

  “Denise wants to go to Canada, and I have citizenship through my mom, so maybe we’ll head up to Montreal. I heard the music scene is good up there.”

  Ah, now I understood what attracted Denise to the bad-boy musician – his passport. I pulled out a business card. “Let me know where you land. If there’s anything left of Quimby’s money when the dust clears, I’ll see to it Denise knows where to look for it.”