"There's a small conference room across the hall. We can use that. And no, I don't want a lawyer."
Marc caught her elbow. "Listen to me, Diane. You could be in over your head here."
"Are you worried about me? Or what secrets I might reveal about Sloan Engineering?"
His breath hissed out. His fingers went tight and bruising on her elbow. "I can't believe you'd say that to me after all our years together."
Diane didn't quite believe it, either. Now that the words were out, though, she couldn't bring herself to take them back. Chin high, she shook off his hold.
"This way, Mr. Donovan."
"Cleo, I'd like you to act as witness during this interview. Sloan…"
Jack shot a hard glance over his shoulder. "I want to talk to you after I finish with Ms. Walker."
10
Cleo hunched her elbows on the small conference table while Jack produced a palm-size tape recorder and went through the ritual she remembered all too well from her days in uniform.
After obtaining Walker's permission to tape the interview, he stated his name for the record. The date. The time and place. He also identified the interviewee by name and former position at Sloan Engineering, Cleo by name and current occupation. The mundane details attended to, he sliced right to the bone.
"Ms. Walker, I've been informed you have access to a hidden safe room in Mr. Sloan's office. Is that correct?"
She blinked, taken aback by the direction of the question. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that.
"Yes," she replied carefully, "that's correct."
"Can you tell me what Mr. Sloan keeps in that room?"
Her brow furrowed. "Disks containing corporate financial records. Engineering schematics. Proprietary designs. Some personal items."
"Such as?"
"Mostly papers. His prenuptial agreements. Divorce decrees. His father's death certificate, I think. Things like that."
"You think? Don't you know?"
"He stores the personal items in a separate, sealed area. I don't have access to that area."
"Who does?"
"No one except Marc."
Jack wanted it spelled out for the record. "By Marc, do you mean Mr. Marcus Sloan?"
"Yes. Mr. Sloan. My employer. Excuse me, former employer."
Frowning, she smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. It was starting to sink in, Cleo thought. The woman had just chucked her job, her security and the man she'd obviously lusted after for some years.
"You're certain no one else in your office has access to the sealed area?" Jack asked.
Tm certain. Marc-Mr. Sloan-programmed the sensor that reads the infrared signature himself."
"Could someone have altered the program?"
Cleo saw where he was going. Whoever hacked into the APP might also have the smarts to bypass Sloan's sophisticated security system. Her pulse kicked up a beat.
"I suppose so," Diane conceded. "It's not likely, though."
"What about your missing assistant? Is there any way she could have gained access?"
"Trish?" Astonishment blanked Walker's face. "Absolutely not. She's bright, but not bright enough to work around a system Marc designed."
"How about an authorized access, then? Could Sloan have programmed her heat signature into the system?"
"No, he would never…"
She stopped, and sudden doubt flooded her face.
"Sloan would never what, Ms. Walker?"
The blonde squeezed her eyes shut. When her lids lifted, the misery in their green depths was sharp and slicing and almost too painful to witness. Cleo felt the first stirrings of sympathy for the woman.
"I don't think Marc-Mr. Sloan-would give Trish access to his private papers. I can't say for certain, though. You'll have to ask him."
"I will." Jack shifted gears. "Let's talk about the Afloat Prepositioning database. Do you have access to that, Ms. Walker?"
"Certain unclassified portions of it. I often feed in or retrieve schematics, as do our engineers and construction supervisors."
"Are you aware of what's required to get into the classified portions?"
"A verifiable DNA profile. As far as I know, Marc is the only person at Sloan Engineering who's gone through the verification process."
"Do you know the source of the DNA Mr. Sloan provided for his profile?"
She looked confused. "Do you mean did it come from his hair or blood? I really don't have any idea."
Jack nodded and slipped in the blade, calmly, casually.
"Did you ever use Mr. Sloan's DNA profile to access classified portions of the APP database, Ms. Walker?"
Shock zeroed out the confusion.
"No!"
"Never?"
Her chin snapped up. "Never."
The questions went on awhile longer. By the time Donovan finished, Cleo had formed a number of distinct impressions.
One, Walker didn't know Sloan had used his father's DNA to establish his access profile. Two, she didn't have a clue who this Frank Helms character was. Three, she hadn't been aware of her subordinate's pregnancy until yesterday. Four, she harbored a sick suspicion Marc Sloan had fathered Trish's baby.
Jack terminated the interview with a promise to have the statement typed out and hand-delivered to Walker for her review and signature.
"Is there an address I can send it to?"
Gulping, she rattled off her home address and phone number.
"Thank you, Ms. Walker. I'll get back to you if I have any further questions."
Looking slightly dazed, the blonde picked up her purse and left. Cleo kept her in view through the glass inset beside the door and saw her hesitate in the corridor.
She tried to guess what the woman would do now. Go back into Sloan Engineering's corporate offices and collect her personal belongings? Maybe confront Marc about the paternity of Trish's baby? Or swallow her pride and beg for her job back?
Walker did none of the above. Squaring her shoulders under her jewel-toned Versace blouse, she marched to the elevator.
Marc Sloan didn't provide any more useful information than his assistant had.
He denied granting anyone, including Trish, access to his dead father's DNA. He also denied fathering her child. Nor could he shed a glimmer of light on Frank Helms or the phone calls to Malta.
Sloan left the small conference room tight-lipped. Cleo had the idea he was more pissed about his executive assistant's sudden defection than about becoming the subject of an official OSI investigation.
Thinking about that, she had to assess how this recent turn of events affected her investigation. Since Donovan had more or less co-opted her into his inquiry, she'd reached a definite conflict-of-inter
est situation with Sloan.
It wasn't until Donovan had tucked the recorder back into his pocket that it occurred to Cleo to wonder if that might have been his intent, consciously or otherwise. Curious as to his motives, she hitched a hip on a corner of the conference table.
"Let's review the bidding here, Jack. You've now opened an official investigation with my client as the subject. That puts me in an awkward position regarding the case I'm working for him."
"I know."
The prospect that she might be out of a fat fee didn't appear to concern him unduly. What did worry him, though, was the Malta connection.
"I need you to stay on the Jackson case, Cleo. Sloan trusts you, or he has to this point. Any information you can get out of him regarding his missing employee and her link to the man who made those calls-"
"Whoa! Hold it right there, Donovan."
The camaraderie they'd shared, the sense of being on the same team again, went up in a puff of smoke.
"I'm on retainer. I'm working for Sloan until one of us terminates the agreement. I won't reveal anything he tells me in confidence."
"I'm not asking you to violate your professional ethics."
"Really? Sure sounded like it to me."
His shoulders stiffened under the cotton shirt. "How many cases have we worked together, North?"
"Exactly two," she shot back, "if you count Santa Fe and our little foray into Honduras a few years ago."
"Did either of those cases involve deliberate violation of established procedures?"
"Deliberate? No. The rulebook got tossed out the window, though, when the bullets started flying."
He moved closer, until his thigh pressed into her bent knee. "You hear any shots popping here?"
"Not so far."
But they might start at any minute. Cleo could feel the muscle corded hard and tight in his thigh. Feel, too, the anger working its way through his system. Donovan's temper came slow, but when it did, blood usually flowed.
Hers, on the other hand, came fast and hot. It was close to boiling at the moment.
"Let me ask you this, Special Agent Donovan. Did your invitation for me to join you on the drive to Sunny Point this morning stem from a desire for my company, or were you merely using me to assist you with your case."
"Both."
Well, that answered that. Totally pissed now, she angled her chin.
"How much was me? Give me a percentage. Fifty-fifty? Seventy-thirty?"
"I'm not walking into that one." He started to turn away. Snagging his arm, Cleo yanked him back. "I want to know. Give me a number."
His hand shot out. Before she could blink, he'd wrapped a fist around her ponytail.
"You want to know how much was you, North?" A swift tug jerked her head back. "This much."
The crush of his mouth on hers was in no way, shape or form similar to his kiss in the elevator yesterday. That one had been lazy and slow and thorough.
This one was rough. And hard. And greedy. Luckily for him, Cleo recognized the hunger behind it while still trying to decide whether or not to bring up her knee and tenderize a certain portion of his anatomy.
She was still pissed enough to jerk her head away before his tongue started playing tag with her tonsils, though.
"All right. I've got the equation."
"Do you?" Jack's eyes were a hot electric blue. "I wish to hell I did."
With that disgusted mutter, he gave her pony-tail another yank and released her.
"I'll see you later, North. Call me when you decide on a restaurant."
Restaurant. Dinner. Seafood.
Cleo had forgotten about that small matter in all the excitement. She hadn't forgotten her promise to Lafayette, though.
"Hey, Donovan."
Hopping off the conference table, she tugged at the hem of her tank top. Somehow it had worked its way out of the waistband of her jeans and halfway up her ribs.
"I told Detective Devereaux one of us would get back to him after you run those calls to Malta through the system."
"I should have something by dinner."
And by then, she might have a feel for her status vis-a-vis her client. For that, she needed to talk to Sloan.
The executive wasn't in his office when she went across the hall, though. According to the still-shell-shocked assistant, Mr. Sloan had stormed out some time ago.
"He, uh, said we weren't to contact him unless the building was on fire. And then only if the fire department's ladders couldn't reach this floor."
"Oooo-kay."
Diane was swimming in misery.
With a hiccupping sob, she clunked the neck of the creme de menthe bottle against a water glass.
A nondrinker, she'd had to search through every cabinet in the kitchen to find the liqueur she'd bought years ago to make a grasshopper pie for a party at a friend's house. It tasted like old toothpaste, but she filled the glass and chugged down half the contents, anyway.
"What do you think, cat? Is Sloan a bastard, or what?"
Trish's feline declined to answer. Crouched on the seat of an upholstered chair, he flicked his tail back and forth. Diane detested cats, particularly nasty-tempered ones who hissed at her approach and clawed her drapes. She hadn't had the heart to dump Trish's pet in a kennel, though. The animal had been locked in an empty apartment for days, without food and only the toilet bowl for water.
Another hiccup hit Diane, this one so full of mint she sneezed. Blinking away the tears that came with the sneeze, she transferred her glare to the framed photo on the mantel above her fireplace insert.
Two smiling faces. One pair of giant scissors.
Marc had been between wives at the dedication of Sloan Engineering's new corporate headquarters, so he'd asked his executive assistant to help him cut the ribbon.
Diane's lip curled back in a sneer. How pathetic was that? The only photograph in her living room, the only human being accorded a place of honor in her home, was the bastard who'd broken her heart.
Over and over again.
Why in God's name had she stayed with him all these years? Why had she managed his schedule, rewritten his pedantic speeches, juggled calls from his girlfriends and wives? Why had she sat there, just sat there, and let him devour her soul inch by inch?
Green liqueur sloshing, she toasted the photo.
"Here's to you, Sloan. I hope they pin whatever it is they're investigating on you and hang you by your balls. And here's to me."
Head back, she took another slug. Then she wound up and let fly.
To her surprise and considerable delight, her aim was dead on. The framed photo crashed off the mantel and onto the terrazzo tile floor. Glass shattered. Green liqueur spewed across photo and floor. Trish's cat jumped straight up, leapt from the chair and streaked into the bedroom.
&
nbsp; "God, that felt good!"
Wrapping her fist around the bottle's neck, Diane searched for another target. She found it in the blood-red Baccarat bowl Marc had given her for her last birthday.
Her fortieth birthday.
The bottle went flying. The bowl toppled off its corner pedestal.
"Bam! Another direct hit."
Cackling gleefully, she lurched to her feet. Moments later the sleek laptop engraved with Sloan Engineering's blue-and-gold logo departed her desk and sailed through the sliding patio door to smash against the flagstones.
She was looking around for another missile when someone leaned on her doorbell. The hard, angry jabs gave her a good idea as to the identity of the lean-ee.
Blood up and battle-ready, Diane snapped the dead bolt Marc had insisted she have installed on ail her doors because single women needed security. That memory gave her the impetus to send the door slamming back against the iris wallpaper decorating her hall.
"Surprise, surprise. It's my late, unlamented employer."
He looked furious enough to bite through a steel-hull plate. "1 want an explanation, Walker."
Smiling sweetly, she flipped the back of her hand under her chin in a gesture straight from The Sopranos. "Go screw yourself, Sloan. And while you're at it, you might as well screw the rest of the office."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means I'm out of ammunition. Hang on a sec, I need to reload."
"What?"
She took a couple of steps back, got a grip on the dainty asparagus fern perched on the hall etagere and arrowed it straight at his head. His arm came up in time to block the shot, but dirt and moss showered onto his head and shoulders.
"Are you out of your mind?" he roared, shaking off the debris.
THE MIDDLE SIN Page 11
