Secrets of the Dead

by Kylie Brant

  “Those men were yours. You are responsible for their failure. Cretins, both of them.”

  He replied in Serbian. “Hobart was not my pick. Neither were the two who now sit in a cell.” He stood ready to dodge. Shuang was prone to throw whatever weapon was handy when angered.

  But no missiles flew. “They will not talk. They know their families’ fates depend on their silence.” But still that gaze never wavered from his. “The plan must be changed. I will deal with Gallagher myself. You will arrange our meeting.”

  He swallowed the questions that sprang to his tongue. Shuang wasn’t known for taking risks, and dealing with Gallagher directly was a definite risk. Not for the first time he mourned having to share his discovery about the boy. Not that there had been much choice at the time.

  He knew better than to voice his doubts. “As you wish. But what will be done with him and the woman once they’ve outlived their usefulness?”

  Shuang shrugged carelessly. “That much has not changed. You will kill them.”

  _______

  By no stretch of the imagination could their apartment building ever be described as quiet. The walls were wafer thin and the constant serenade of babies wailing, televisions blaring and music pumping bombarded them all day and well into the night. Eve’s ability to sleep through a small explosion was as legendary in her family as was her appetite, and considered just as indelicate. But that talent seemed to have escaped her tonight.

  Every new sound, every set of footsteps past their door set her senses on high alert. Ears straining, she’d bolt upright on the couch and wait, barely breathing until they faded in the distance.

  It didn’t take much imagination to recognize the source of her newfound anxiety. Declan seemed certain there would be another contact soon. How did they know it would come in the daylight?

  He’d gone to bed at midnight, hours earlier. If he lay awake similarly vigilant, she could hear no signs of it. Through the open door Eve could barely make out his form beneath the covers on the mattress. It was unmoving. Maybe he was as adept as she was at sleeping through a din.

  Or maybe he had far more experience than she did at sleeping comfortably with a half-naked person of the opposite sex close by. One that was for all practical purposes a stranger.

  The thought suffused her with heat. It wouldn’t be hard to surpass her experience in that area. Most of the men she came into contact with at work were decades older than her. Which meant she had plenty of practice dodging unwanted male attention, but far less with men who actually interested her. Not that any of her work colleagues or acquaintances fell into the heartthrob category, a niche seemingly carved with Declan Gallagher in mind.

  To be fair he didn’t seem to be one of those men aware of the potent combination of black hair, smoky eyes and sardonic grin. Which made this situation bearable. If he seemed unaware of her as a woman at least he wasn’t acutely conscious of his own assets as a male. Assets that she shouldn’t be wasting valuable sleep time considering.

  Eve re-arranged the blanket and shifted on the couch. It was comfortable, as was all the furniture that had been delivered to the cramped space. She was willing to bet it was of a much higher quality than had ever graced this area before. But the furnishings were in keeping with the supposed descent in their circumstances. Good pieces that had come from their fictional too expensive house.

  She picked up her cell and checked the time. Blew out a breath. It was already two, and one thing she’d learned about Declan was that he was an early riser. Regardless of her usual ability to sleep through anything, somehow her senses went on high alert when he was in the room. That hyper-awareness was just one more thing about the man that had her inner alarms shrilling.

  Punching her pillow with a little more force than necessary, she turned over and pulled the coverlet up to her chin.

  Thinking about the man in the next room was no guarantee of summoning sleep, so she concentrated instead on mentally cataloguing the level of sound coming from the surrounding apartments. It had quieted somewhat and she knew from the past few nights it would quiet even more over the next hour once the building’s occupants had stumbled home from the bars and the prostitutes had called it a night.

  Her breathing slowed. Every random rattle of pipe or creak of the floor was familiar. So was the shuffle of footsteps in the apartment above. The baby’s cry, that was just as quickly hushed. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  One moment she was drifting off the sleep and the next she was jerking to a sitting position, heart pounding so loudly that it sounded in her ears. She scanned the interior shadows, trying to place the source of her sudden fear. Nothing moved. She could still see Declan on the bed. The footsteps overhead were absent. Even the baby’s whimpers were silenced.

  Then it came again, an almost imperceptible squeak. A shoe against the cracked tile floor outside their door. Hauling in a breath, she attempted to calm her breathing. Just another resident on his or her way home. She told herself that. And would have believed it if it weren’t for the flat white paper that slipped under the door, like an ethereal wisp of fog.

  Frozen, she stared at it, her heart doing a tattoo beat in her chest. Try as she might she could hear no other sound. Was the person still out there or had he slipped away? Her limbs abruptly thawed and she jumped from the couch, tiptoeing across the room to sidle along the wall. Feeling vaguely ridiculous she reached out a bare foot and slid the paper toward her until she could pick it up. Still she heard nothing from the hallway so Eve took the note back to the couch and picked up her cell, using the screen’s light to read the message.

  The words on it had her scurrying into the bedroom, stopping just inside the doorway. “Declan!” she hissed. She threw another glance over her shoulder. Was that a sound outside the door? The possibility had her crossing the steps to the bed and nudging the side of the mattress with her knee urgently. “Declan!”

  One moment he was lying still. The next he was a blur of motion. He sat up and pulled her down on top of him in a smooth movement, one arm around her throat, a hand clapped over her mouth. With his free hand he held a gun at her temple. For a moment shock and fear shut down her body’s responses. A silent scream welled inside her. Went unuttered. A second ticked by. Two. Then a well-trained sense of self-preservation kicked in.

  She bit down hard on the hand covering her mouth and rammed her elbow against his chest with all her might.

  “Dammit!” She was flipped to her back, pinned in place on the mattress by the full weight of his body stretched out over hers. It took a sluggish moment for him to make sense of the scene. He blinked. “Eve.”

  “Very astute, Captain Obvious,” she snapped. “Your powers of observation are truly exemplary.” Her body heaved under his. “Get off me!”

  “Right.” He shoved the gun under his pillow and rolled to the side. Since she certainly wasn’t going to scrabble over his body—his partially nude body—to get off the bed, she scooted toward the wall, putting as much distance between them as possible.

  “Sorry about that.” He jammed his free hand through his hair. “But I didn’t expect…that is…dammit. This probably isn’t a great idea. I mean…I’m sure lots of guys would find you attractive. In a pint-size high school cheerleader type of way. But with the two of us working together…not smart. Sex clouds the senses. I think we can both agree that we need to keep our wits during this thing.”

  Eve gaped at him, her mind sorting through the carelessly offensive remarks. Somehow, coming upon her uncomfortable earlier musings about him, high school cheerleader seemed the most insulting. “I know sixty-seven different ways to call you a jackass.” She slapped the now wrinkled sheet of paper against his bare chest, tempted to pin it there with her knife. “None of them do you justice.”

  “What’s this?” He smoothed it out, squinting at it in the shadows.

/>   “The reason I came in here. That, and my overpowering and yes—thanks for the clarification—unrequited state of lust.” She turned on her cell so he could read by the light provided by the screen.

  Mr. Gallagher,

  I apologize for my assistant’s over-enthusiasm this afternoon. He has been properly disciplined. I hope you will still consider listening to my business proposition. I will be available to discuss it over lunch tomorrow, 11:30 in the dining room of the Latifma Hotel on Fourth and Prospect.

  Your humble servant.

  His reaction was swift. “Shit. I mean…” He shot her a look. “This…” He shook the paper, “…is good news. At least it can be if Raiker has time to check out the location for the meet. The rest…” He went silent and a part of Eve was gratified by the pained expression on his face. “Ah…I’m going to blame that on a brain muddled by sleep fog.”

  As apologies went, his didn’t go far enough. Still stinging from his earlier remarks, her tone was caustic. “Uh-huh.” Another woman might find him sort of harmlessly adorable, with his hair all mussed and one cheek still bearing a crease from his pillow. Ten minutes ago, she might have thought the same.

  Of course that was before the man had, in the space of a second held her immobilized with a gun to her temple. Had outraged her with his awkward refusal of a sexual encounter she hadn’t even offered. The second act felt more insulting than the first.

  Eve eyed him warily. His shoulders were much too broad to be considered harmless. And his torso was roped with muscle his clothes did a good job of hiding from the world. And she…she was spending way too much time contemplating a half nude man who had, intentionally or not, just disparaged her. Jackass.

  “A little odd, isn’t it, that it isn’t signed?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll get a name soon enough.” He was silent for a moment, studying the message. “Your humble servant. That sounds Asian, doesn’t it? Chinese? Japanese?”

  “Or someone attempting to sound that way.” Linguistically speaking, there was little of value in the message. If the author was bi-lingual, he or she had a good grasp of English. Declan reached for his cell, which was setting on a small nightstand next to the bed. “What are you doing?”

  “Texting Raiker the details of the meet. Hopefully by tomorrow he can get us a scouting report of…” He consulted the message again. “…the Latifma Hotel on Fourth and Prospect.”

  Concern shoved aside her irritation with him. “I’m still a bit leery of using cell phones to communicate, even if they did come from Raiker’s labs. Nothing is untraceable.”

  “These are.” He was already bent over his phone typing a message.

  “That’s impossible. The technology doesn’t exist.” This much she was sure of.

  “He has an innovation lab that works on select contracts for…those in charge of the military. Believe me, every new bit of technology that lands in civilian hands, the military has had for at least a decade.”

  The Pentagon he meant. There was no Scottish Gaelic word for it so he was careful enough to avoid speaking the word aloud. She was fascinated in spite of herself. Moving over to sit beside him on the edge of the bed, she asked, “But how do they work?”

  Finally he raised his head to look at her. “I’m not going to bore you with talk of cryptographic algorithm options and transmission security functions. Suffice it to say, any messages that are sent or received are encrypted for secure transmission and decrypted for the receiver. Anything deleted from the phone is not recoverable, except back at the lab where the scientists can do unimaginable things to retrieve it. Can I finish this?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Be my guest.” Obviously he wasn’t a multi-tasker.

  Moments later he straightened, set the cell down and looked at the message in his hand again. “How long ago did you find this?”

  “It was passed under the door about six minutes ago. I…it took me about thirty seconds to pry myself from the couch. I brought it right in here.”

  His gaze sharpened. “You were awake when it was delivered?”

  She couldn’t resist needling him. “Yes, sleep was impossible. I was tossing and turning in a turmoil of longing for you.”

  His elbow nudge nearly knocked her from the bed. “Okay, I deserve that.”

  “You really really do.”

  Her sweet tone didn’t seem to fool him. “You’re a bit of a smartass. Who would have guessed?” He leaned forward to look out the open door of the room toward the couch. Then toward the door. “Did you hear anybody out there before it was delivered?”

  Memory of the chill that had overtaken her at the time was too easily summoned. “I thought I did. A slight sound of a footstep outside the door. Not much more than that.” But enough to strike fear in her heart when that paper was slipped inside the apartment.

  “Okay. They would have cased us thoroughly before approaching us today, so of course they’d know where we were staying. And security at this dump is a joke.” He stifled a yawn. “I think it’s best if we trade places. You take the bed and I’ll take the couch.”

  “It’s at least four inches too short for you.” Anything longer wouldn’t have fit against the wall it sat against.

  “I’ll manage.” He stood and she was grateful to see that he was wearing a pair of gym shorts. He collected his cell and, thankfully, the gun from beneath his pillow and padded from the room.

  Eve contemplated the bed. One pillow still bore a slight indentation from his head. The other looked as if it had been pounded into submission. “What should I do if I get lonely?” she called. As he’d mentioned, he really deserved a bit of razzing.

  “Use your phone. Talk to Siri. Or whatever the Android equivalent is.”

  She grinned at that. “Okay. But don’t blame me if my lecherous dreams have me sleepwalking and coming out there to ravish you.”

  His voice sounded a little grim. “We’re going to declare a statute of limitations on that episode. Any remarks about it are confined to the next hour. Tomorrow it’s off limits, got it?”

  She waited a full five minutes before singing the chorus to Simply Irresistible.

  His response wasn’t long in coming. “Shut up, Eve.”

  Grinning, she stretched out on the bed and made herself comfortable. And before she fell asleep she congratulated herself for not agreeing to that statute of limitations.

  Chapter 4

  “Why are we going to a bank?”

  An hour and a half before their lunch date with the mysterious messenger, Declan ushered Eve into the lobby of Citizen’s Home Bank of DC. “Ostensibly this is the bank that is handling the foreclosure on our fictional home. It’s also the place where Raiker is storing a computer we can use to securely communicate with him.”

  His tone was a little brusquer than he’d meant it to be, a byproduct of too little sleep and tinge of leftover discomfort from last night. A couple of mugs of coffee hadn’t been able to completely alleviate the effects of either. Nor had they cleared his brain enough to figure out why his first conscious reaction to being awakened by her last night was to assume she’d had sex on the mind.

  Jaw clenching, his step quickened. He hadn’t thought of her that way. Not once. Declan could be exceedingly single-minded on the job and sex—or the lack of it—had never even occurred. And this woman wouldn’t have starred in an X-rated dream in any case. He liked his women stacked, long-legged and independent, in that order. He was well aware that he harbored a white knight mentality stemming from an innate protective instinct that could wreak havoc if he let it. Coming to the rescue of his assorted family members was time consuming and exhausting. He didn’t welcome emotional upheaval in his personal life. Which was one of the reasons he’d so far skirted marriage the way others avoided quicksand.

  But something had planted a steamy mental image of the diminutive Eve, with
her wide blue eyes and tousled gold curls squarely in his subconscious and recognition of the fact had him feeling just a bit edgy. A little surly. He was a man who prized control. Relinquishing it, whether due to sleep or hormones, was unacceptable.

  His hand on the bank’s polished beveled door handle, he heard a small sound and realized the woman at his side was humming beneath her breath. Declan stared hard at her. The wind had raked careless fingers through the casual waves she’d tamed her curls into. Her expression was guileless. If she’d suffered any ill effects from too little sleep and leftover embarrassment, it certainly didn’t show.

  Yanking the door open, he waited for her to enter. Of course, she wasn’t the one who’d been embarrassed. Recalling the sarcastic remarks she’d aimed his way, she also wasn’t completely defenseless. Not for the first time Declan was reminded that he really knew very little about the woman who was—like it or not—his partner for at least a few more days.

  They’d no more stepped into the lobby before they were greeted by a tall, deeply tanned man sporting a mane of white hair and an exquisitely cut Brioni suit. Declan’s grandfather favored the same tailor. “Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher.” His handshake was firm. “Bank president Irving Baltes. I’ll be handling your affairs. Please.” He gestured for them to precede him. “Let’s go where we can be private.”

  Declan took off his gloves and shoved them in his coat pocket as he and Eve walked across the lobby and down a hallway where Baltes showed them into a room lined with rows of safe deposit boxes. Unlike similar rooms he’d seen in the past, the bottom row in this one was comprised of boxes the size of small safes.

  Once the door was shut behind him, the man lost his previously grave expression. His face was wreathed in a smile. “Mr. Raiker sent me excellent likenesses of you two. I must say, I’m gratified to have the chance to repay him in some small way.” He went to one of the larger security boxes in the bottom row, unlocked it and withdrew a laptop, which he handed to Declan. “I’ll show you to a place where you can be undisturbed.” The key he gave to Eve. “When you’re finished, just return it. Feel free to come as often as necessary.” They followed him to an adjoining private transaction room where he left them alone, closing the door after him as he departed.