“How old are you now, Maddie?”
“Nineteen – not that it’s any of your business. And don’t call me that. Only my friends call me Maddie,” she snapped.
The guilt slid in again and twisted hard. Izzy looked around, searching for a chair, but every surface was covered by books, schematics, and hard drives.
She saw his look, strode to the small table at the grimy window and knocked everything down onto the floor. “Have a seat. My decorator was busy this week. Ditto for the maid service,” she said flatly.
“Don’t suppose I could get a cup of coffee. It’s been a long night and it hasn’t even started yet.”
“Fresh out. There’s a Starbucks about five miles over. You probably don’t want to walk there alone. Anyone walking alone around here has a problem.”
Izzy raised an eyebrow. “How do you get by in that case?”
“We have an arrangement. I provide services on the computers when the street crowd needs it. In return, they leave me alone. In fact, they even provide protection on occasion. Works out nicely all around.”
Izzy made another mental note. “Why didn’t you move to a better place?”
She leaned against the wall, shaking her head. “Move? You really don’t know? I can’t move. That was part of the terms of my parole. I can’t leave DC. I can’t leave this apartment. I can’t take classes. All I can do is sit here and rot for three more years until the government decides it’s done with me,” she said bitterly.
Izzy hadn’t known that. If he had, he would have found the right people to get her situation changed. And he would do that now.
But it would probably come too late. She had lost her childhood in this dingy apartment, lost her idealism long before that, Izzy thought. She had never had much chance for a normal life, not with a drug addict mother and a father who had gone AWOL when she was four. He remembered the details now. Tough break for a kid.
No point wishing things were different. He was here now. He was going to make a lot of changes. But first they had to come to terms.
He sat down on the table, feeling it wobble. “Okay, scratch the coffee. How about some water?”
She gave a cold smile. “Sure. You want Evian, Perrier, or DC tap sludge?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
He gave a shrug. “Door number three in that case.”
She filled a glass and slapped it down in front of him. “What do you know about my brother’s application to aviation school?” Her hands trembled and she shoved them quickly behind her.
“I saw your file. It’s not going to be easy to find recommendations. Then there's the whole tuition thing.”
“I don’t need your help, Teague.”
“Don’t you? Look at me, Maddie. This isn’t a pressure tactic. I should have stayed in touch. I should have seen what was going on with you. I didn’t. So I owe you. Whatever you decide, that won’t change.” He found a blank piece of paper amid the chaos at his feet and held it out to her. “Write down your brother’s name and his school information. I’ll do everything I can to help him.”
She crossed her arms tightly. Yet again Izzy saw the young-old eyes stare at him tensely. For a moment he had seen a flash of hope in those eyes. Then she looked away.
"I'd trust Osama bin Laden before I’d trust you." She shrugged her thin shoulders, looking impatient and very cynical.
Odd how she looked about fourteen. Fourteen going on ninety, Izzy reminded himself quickly.
“Sure, I’ll write down the information. It doesn’t mean I’m going to help you.”
“Understood.” Izzy waited until she finished writing, then scanned the sheet, folded it carefully and stuck it in his pocket. “They won’t let you go to college?” The punishment defied his imagination. That was another thing he was going to get rectified fast.
“No. They say I can't be trusted. I have to earn the right.”
“You did break the law. There’s no getting around that. But plenty of law breakers get to take classes.”
"I'm supposed to believe you didn't know about any of this?"
"That's right. If I'd known, I would have changed things."
Maddie moved around the table and toyed with an open can of soda. “So what's so important that you need me?”
“I can’t tell you. Frankly, I don’t know much myself. But it has to be crucial if they’re sending me after you like this. There’s a jet waiting for us at Dulles in—” he glanced at his watch. “Nine minutes.”
“No shit. A private jet?” She rolled her shoulders, frowning. Her fingers moved restlessly up and down her flannel shirt. “If I do it…you'll help my brother?"
"I will."
She hesitated. "And then you'll see if I can get out of my parole early and attend college? And get out of this dump too?”
“I intend to do both of those things anyway, Maddie. Your help will make no difference. That's a promise.”
"Right. I know all about promises." She drained the soda can and then shrugged. "It’s not like I have a whole lot of choices right now.” She studied the dingy room. “Sure. Okay. Whatever. Give me three minutes to grab my stuff. If there’s a dress code involved, we’re both up shit creek,” she said. Then she vanished into the one room beyond the bathroom.
Three minutes went by. Then four.
Izzy heard rustling and the muffled bang of a closet door closing.
“Maddie, we have to go. What’s taking so long?”
There was no answer.
Frowning, he walked to the door of the room off the little hallway. She was sitting on a narrow futon with a laptop opened beside her, typing furiously.
“What are you doing? You'd better not be emailing about any of this.”
She shot him a cold, measuring glance. “About what? I don’t know where the hell I’m going or what you’re getting me into. I’m just leaving behind a little insurance. If I don’t turn up in a week, there will be people asking questions about me. I’m pretty well known in the hacker world, even though my active days are behind me. So if you’re just screwing around with me, Teague—”
He shook his head. “I’m not.” At least, he didn’t think he was. At this point, he had no idea what they were getting involved in. But she would be safe. He'd make sure of that. “Finish sending your e-mails in the car. We need to move.”
She closed the computer, then stood up and dropped her pajamas bottoms in the same movement. Izzy cleared his throat and looked away, but the image of her thin legs and red bikini underwear burned into his memory. How could one person look so young and so old at the same time?
He walked outside, shaking his head. “I’ll be downstairs at the car. Get the lead out.”
Her voice rose in an angry sing-song. “Aye-aye, sir.” She clicked her heels together and pulled on a sweater.
Izzy’s phone rang as he walked outside, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself to answer, too angry from the things he had just seen and from what Maddie had told him.
Someone was going to answer for this mess.
But first they had a mission to complete.
He was already flooded with secure e-mails when he heard a tap at the window. Maddie gave a little snappy wave, a backpack over one shoulder and a brown paper bag in the other.
“What’s with the bag?”
“Computer. Books. Pajamas.”
“A brown paper bag? You don’t have anything else to carry them in?”
Her eyes went very cold. “My trust fund payment is a little late this month, Teague. Since I don’t do a whole lot of traveling, a paper Trader Joe’s bag works out just fine for me.” She tossed the bag inside and looked around the big limousine curiously. “Nice wheels. You got any alcohol in here?”
“I doubt it. You’ll be skipping the alcohol anyway." Izzy closed the door that Maddie had purposely left open to annoy him. "This is work, remember?”
It was all pretty overwhelming.
St
aggering was a better description.
Not that she wasn’t grateful. She was going to enjoy every second of this luxury trip. Maddie’s life had been a closed box for too long, and she had prayed daily for an escape. She just hadn’t expected it to come like this.
As for the man who'd arrested her at fourteen? Izzy Teague looked just the same. Chiseled mahogany features. Cool, intense eyes. A strong, lean body. Not that she was paying any attention to that. But if he would actually do half what he promised—a quarter even....
If he helped her brother follow his aviation dreams, then maybe he could get her out of this crippling probation mess.
Empty promises, Maddie, my girl. You know all about them.
Maddie had stopped trusting adults when she was fourteen. The foster care system in a big, impersonal northeastern city had stripped away her innocence within the first week. She had fought to survive and keep her younger brother with her in their placements. Her only saviors during those years had been the smart group of friends she had met. Together they had studied programming books and stumbled across a hackers’ forum online. One thing led to another, as they usually did.
Maddie frowned at the gray sky, watching the rain begin. The memories that came next seemed to belong to someone else. She had been so stupid and gullible back then. Now those mistakes had ruined her life.
But there was no point in whining about it, because she couldn’t go back. And she had been no innocent victim in the scenario. She had known perfectly well that it was a crime to hack into a government site. But the challenge had been impossible to resist. The thrill of success had become a drug to her.
Now the man who had arrested her was asking for her help. Talk about payback. This time Maddie was going to be very smart in everything she did. She was not going to trust him, like him, or believe in him. She had learned how to play the game of appearances well in the last few years.
So she would use Izzy in any way she could to ensure that he helped her brother. And then he was going to help Maddie get her life back.
Her small hands closed to fists. He owed her that.
She frowned at the wet street as the car came to a halt. The driver rolled down the window and presented some kind of ID to a man in a uniform. Maddie didn’t know where they were, but it looked like a military base. That would figure, wouldn’t it? Izzy worked for the government, and if this project was as important as he said….
So maybe she was going to get some quality time in a secure government facility. Let them think she was bored, but she’d be paying attention to every detail. There might be something she could use later.
With the inspection complete, the car sped forward. Maddie's brain danced through possibilities of new ways to use the applications that were installed on the iPad Izzy had loaned her. With a jailbroken iPhone hidden in her backpack, she could stay in touch with her friends, in case the government types changed their mind and decided to lock her up. She wouldn't put anything past them.
The car slowed. She leaned toward the window, squinting out through the rain. “No way." She sat motionless. "This is so not happening, Teague.”
He looked up from his sleek laptop, which had a design that Maddie had never seen before. “What isn’t happening?”
“That.” Maddie rolled down the window and pointed out, oblivious to the pounding rain. The sleek private jet on the tarmac had three people working around it. It would barely hold ten people, she figured. The size made her stomach take another sharp twist. “You didn’t tell me that I’d be flying in a thimble.”
“That happens to be exciting new technology. I know people who would give their IRAs for an hour in that little beauty. Your brother's probably one of them.”
“Well you can take your IRAs and shove them. I’m not getting into that.” Her nails were on her knees, her fingers digging in hard. She’d only flown once, a short flight before she had been sentenced.
That had been on a full-size carrier, and even then she’d been rigid with terror most of the flight.
Maddie stared at the plane. "It’s not happening. File closed.”
Izzy blew out a sigh. “Scared of flying? Odd, that didn’t make your file. I’ll let you in on a secret - I used to be too. But I took a course that helped me. New age blah, blah, blah, but it worked. You can do this too.” His eyes narrowed. “If you want my help, I need your full commitment now, Maddie. I can’t build any kind of a case for helping you if you don’t bring your complete skills to the table.”
“I can’t fly,” she said between gritted teeth. “Not on a tiny plane like that.”
“We’ll get on board and then I’ll find something for you.”
“Like what? A lobotomy? Because seriously, that’s what it would take.” Maddie could already feel the nausea kicking up. “I’m not kidding about this, Teague. When you said jet, I thought you meant one of those huge things."
“Somebody really missed that in your file. It might have been nice to know,” Izzy said grimly. “But I’ll get you something. A drink. Hell, maybe muscle relaxers. We’ll get you through this, Maddie. There’s no time to get a commercial flight. Things have amped up.”
She tore her eyes away from the terrifying steel jacket of death waiting out on the runway. “Amped up how?”
“I’ll give you the files on the plane.”
Momentarily distracted, Maddie frowned at him. “This is happening too fast. You still haven’t told me what I have to do.”
“I still don’t have many details. As you can imagine, national security is involved. Actually, the security of at least three major countries is involved.” His voice hardened. “There have been two murders that we know of. Possibly a third. There will definitely be an element of danger. I want to be sure you understand that, Maddie. And if you really do want out, I’ll try to make it happen. Not saying it will be easy, but I’ll try.”
After the patchwork sort of life Maddie had lived, she knew a lot about people. She also knew how to spot a lie. Izzy wasn’t lying to her now. He would try to help her. The question was whether it would work—and whether she wanted it to work.
This project was aimed right at her ego. The thought of cracking a case that no one else had been able to handle was almost impossible to resist. Her ego had gotten her involved in that stupid government hacking all those years before. Yet in spite of that, Maddie felt a kick of excitement and maybe even something like happiness. Not that she paid much attention to emotions. They betrayed you when you needed them most. You could spend your whole life trying to understand them and get nowhere.
It was much safer to live in the moment, caught up in the flash on her computer screen and the clicks of her keyboard.
"If it’s danger you’re warning me about, forget it. It’s probably no worse than walking up the stairs to my apartment every night. We’ve had four burglaries this month in my building. Three of them involved lethal weapons.”
Izzy’s eyes tightened. “I’ll look into that too.”
Did he really mean it? After all these years he walked into her life and started making promises. Why in the world should she trust him?
A cold thought hit Maddie. Maybe he had a different objective. He was a powerful, vital man, and sometimes older men around Maddie got strange ideas and looked at her in a way that had nothing to do with computers and everything to do with hard hands and naked need. Was Teague going to pull some kind of lame trick like that?
After hard thought, she decided that was unlikely. A man with a face and body like his wouldn’t need to pressure a woman into anything. And since he’d never looked at her with any kind of physical attraction, Maddie was pretty sure this was just about work.
She shrugged. “A few bullets won’t scare me off. But I need facts. I can’t do any recognition work for you until I have somewhere to start." She eyed the jet with a look of pure panic. “Now would be a good time to distract me.”
She thought that Izzy looked relieved, though he hid it well. “Okay
, I can tell you this much.” He rubbed his neck. “What do you know about the Crusades?”
“Like history? Uh—let me see. A bunch of angry guys running around in heavy chain mail and armor, grunting and trying to kill each other with big swords. Generally talking about religion while they murdered everyone in sight.”
Izzy’s lips twitched. “I’ve heard it put more elegantly, but yeah, that’s accurate.” He tapped at his cell phone. “I just sent you two files. Start working on them. That will give you something to think about. We're going to be looking for patterns."
"In what?"
"Don't know yet."
Maddie wasn't sure she believed him. "When will you know?"
"Don't know." Izzy closed his laptop. "And we'll keep the mini-bar for a last resort,” he said dryly. He actually held out his hand to help her out of the car when they stopped.
At first Maddie couldn’t figure out what he was doing. She wasn’t used to men helping her. Not used to anyone helping her.
And she wouldn’t get used to it now. She pointedly ignored his hand, scooped up her backpack and paper bag and climbed out by herself. This close, the plane’s motors were deafening.
She dug her nails into her palms and shivered.
Something told her she was really, really going to regret this.
By the time they got to London seven hours later, Maddie was white faced and frozen in her seat. Izzy had shown her some old documents that appeared to be in old French. Maddie wasn’t so great on languages, so she wasn’t sure. Izzy told her this was just a warm up, not the real files she would be analyzing.
The glasses of wine Izzy had given her were heaving in her stomach. One part of her brain had to admit that the small jet was an amazing piece of technology, and the luxury of the leather seats was beyond compare. But mostly her mind screamed at the unholy reality of shooting through the air at six hundred miles per hour.
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