by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
Kim raised her eyebrows. “You’ve really heard of it?”
“It’s been in the news a little bit lately, hasn’t it? A murder.”
“Oh. Yeah. Very sad stuff.”
Lex looked at her intently. “How is it different, this school?”
Kim chuckled. “In every possible way. I had to learn languages, weapons, survival training, as well as maths and sciences.”
His eyebrow arched in a way that was becoming familiar. “Is that where you learned Arabic?”
She nodded. “It’s an interesting place, established by a woman who wanted to see other women be placed in high positions through the government—and she found ways to discover the most talented women—” she gestured toward herself with one arched brow “—such as myself, and bring them to the Academy to be educated.”
“You are very talented,” he said.
“Thank you.” With a shift of one shoulder, she went on, “In that environment, I was very ordinary. The women who are recruited are extremely intelligent, athletic and always talented in some specific way. They search everywhere for these women.”
“And besides becoming cryptographers, what do they do?”
“A lot of things. Tory Patton is an Athena grad.”
“The reporter?”
“Yep. One of my friends, Diana, is with army intelligence, and our friend Selena works for the CIA. She’s married now, but I still see her.”
“Does marriage interfere with friendship?”
“Sometimes.”
He leaned his head against the couch and looked at her. The jeweled eyes were shadowed, exhausted, and Kim knew she must look the same way. “You’re pretty cool, Valenti,” he said.
“You, too, Luthor.” Impulsively, she bent over and kissed his very kissable mouth. “I think I could like you.”
His smile was slow and liquid. “Oh, honey, you’ll like me. I guarantee it.”
“Don’t be so arrogant, Tanner.”
He bent his head and touched his nose to her shoulder, a gesture that caught Kim off guard. It was tender and somehow boyish. “I’m not arrogant. We’re just a good match, that’s all.”
“How can you possibly know that in one day?”
He picked up her hand, saying, “Just for purposes of illustration, all right? Don’t get testy on me.”
His palm was hard and smooth, and she didn’t have any desire to take her hand away. “All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“Look how our hands fit together.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“What about this?” he said, and leaned in closer to her mouth. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“See, our mouths,” he said so close to her lips that she felt the shaping of the words, “are exactly right.” He pressed in, closed the space between their lips. His upper went between her upper and lower; her lower was sandwiched between his. His lips were plump but not squishy, firm but not too hard. He kissed close, then let her go, then kissed again. “See?”
“Yes,” Kim whispered.
“And if I,” he said, still kissing her in between words, “put my hand up here on your face, like this—” he cupped her jaw, his long fingers shaping themselves to her cheekbone, the tips resting near her eye “—then it adds something for both of us.”
“You should stop this,” she whispered.
“Probably,” he agreed, but didn’t. He just kept kissing her softly, just using his lips, soft and firm. Tender. Little plucking kisses, tight little nibbles of suction on her lower lip, with just a hint of teeth behind, his fingers exploring gently.
Kim relaxed under the sweetness and lifted her own hand to his face. Lean, chiseled, edges of bone strong beneath her fingertips.
“Wow,” he said, not pulling away, his eyes closed. “Wow.”
Kim felt herself drifting into his touch, falling under a spell that would leave her weak and sleeping right next to him all night long in this dangerously seductive apartment on a snowy autumn evening.
Not good.
She pulled back, all the way. Stood up, moved away. “Sorry,” she said, pushing her hair from her face. She was aware that she must look quite aroused, her face flushed, her nipples standing at attention beneath the soft T-shirt. “I don’t want to do this now. Not tonight. We’re too—”
Lex was on his feet. “Shh. It’s okay, honey. I’m sorry.” His hands were on her shoulders, soothing, easing. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “Let’s sit down and watch movies. I promise I won’t do anything else.”
“We’re tired. I don’t trust emotions going crazy under these circumstances.”
“You’re right.” He patted her arms, which was an oddly reassuring gesture, and went back to the couch. “I’ll build a pillow wall, okay?”
Kim laughed softly.
“C’mon,” he said, cocking his beautiful head. “You’re safe, Valenti. I promise. Let’s just watch TV.”
She sat down.
Chapter 12
Thursday, October 7
Kim supposed she should have been prepared for the siege of reporters, but she wasn’t. They were lying in wait when they emerged from his building the next morning, pushing microphones and cameras into their faces.
“What’s next for Q-group?”
“Pretty new girlfriend you’ve got there, Lex!”
“You have any leads on Mansour?”
“How’d you break the code, Kim?”
“Is the romance between the two of you heating up?”
“How does it feel to be a hero?”
Kim elbowed through, but the last question irked her. She glanced at Lex, and he nodded. She halted. “First of all, I haven’t done anything by myself. There’s been a team of various agents working on this problem for weeks. My partner at NSA, Scott Shepherd, was instrumental in breaking the code, and Alex Tanner—” she gestured to him “—disarmed the bomb at the airport. I’m not the hero,” she said firmly. “That’s all.”
“Ms. Valenti, I appreciate your modesty,” said a young woman, and Kim paused, simply seeing a hungry young reporter, her own counterpart, “but your courage at the television station is well documented.”
Kim shook her head. “I’ve been trained. Like a soldier or police officer, I was just doing my job.”
“Like your brother Jason?” said a male voice, booming into the fray.
“My brother was far braver than I’ll ever be,” Kim said with frost in her voice. “But this has nothing to do with him.”
“So you don’t want to get revenge on the terrorists who killed your brother?”
Lex started to move between her and the reporter, who was obviously pleased at hitting a soft spot. Kim waved Lex back and met the reporter’s gaze. “If you don’t get anything else from this clip, get this,” she said in hard tones. “An eye for an eye doesn’t work. If I want to kill terrorists for killing my brother, then I’m no better than they are. We’re trying to prevent violence, not add to it. And last night, that’s what we did.”
The reporters roared, but Kim ducked into the car without any further comment.
“Well done,” Lex said in the car.
Grimly, Kim looked at him. “Not really. I’ve just invited a thousand reporters to pursue me for quotes.”
He winked. “You can handle it.” As the car pulled neatly through the parting bodies, he added, “You might want to come up with a few pat statements. This isn’t going to go away for a while.”
“Good suggestion. Thanks.”
The car dropped Lex off at the FBI offices first. “Well,” he said, “this is my stop.”
“Looks like it,” Kim said with a faint smile.
“I’d really like to kiss you,” he said, quietly, so only she could hear, “but we don’t want to add any fuel to the fire.”
“I’m kissing you now,” she said, and met his eyes.
Vividly blue eyes, full of a mercurial glitter and heat. “I will be in touch,” he drawled
, “and I do mean in touch.”
“Go,” she said. “Here come some more reporters.”
And in fact, she ran into reporters twice more before she made it safely inside the NSA offices—at both the Chicago and the Baltimore airports, she had to wave her way through gnats of them. It was easier at Chicago, where she discovered she was a VIP who was whisked through security, directly to the gate, and settled into first class on the airplane.
“Nice,” she said to the attendant who brought her a cup of coffee and a newspaper.
“The airport is very grateful, Ms. Valenti.”
Settling into the thick, wide seat, Kim smiled to herself. There were worse things than first class. Was this just a one-shot deal? She hoped it would last a little while. Where could she go that she’d always wanted to visit and hadn’t because the flight was too awful? New Zealand! Yes.
She smiled to herself. If only she could take the time.
Her cell phone was recharged, and while she waited for the plane to board, she called Scott. “Hey,” she said when he answered his desk phone. “I rethought your offer of meeting me at the airport. Reporters have been crawling all over me.”
“I’ll be there. When do you land?”
“One o’clock this afternoon. Have you picked up any other details or information since yesterday?”
“I’ll fill you in when you arrive.”
He sounded odd. “Is everything okay, Scott?”
“Sure.” Which meant no.
“I guess we’ll talk about that when I land, too.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Whatever you say. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
She gazed out the window as they flew, watching snow-blanketed fields and forests move into view, then out. It felt as if something had changed in her life during this brief period of hours. Was it the test of her physicality? She’d been well trained, but had never been forced to fight hand-to-hand before. In spite of the battering her body had taken, she was exhilarated at the feeling of power it gave her. She’d faced men several times her size and managed to not only hold her own, but get away and vanquish one of them.
She thought of her brother Jason. Saw him, in her mind’s eye, giving her a thumbs-up. Reporters be damned, she thought. Her truly private thoughts couldn’t be touched.
And what thoughts would those be? a voice said in her mind.
Kim resolutely stared at the wintry landscape and refused to think of Lex Tanner with his beautiful eyes and beautiful body and hot, hot ways.
She wondered how long it would be before she would see him again.
Kim counted her blessings that no one without a boarding pass was allowed to enter the gate areas these days. It meant she went unaccosted until she hit the baggage claim area, and there was sturdy, blond Scott, burly enough to be a bodyguard. “Hey, gorgeous,” she said. “Thanks for picking me up.”
He scowled, touched her forehead. “You really took a beating.”
She shrugged. “I’m all right.”
“Whatever you say, sweetheart. I’ve got a car outside—do you want a ride to yours? I can help fend off the crowds.”
“Perfect.” It would also give her a chance to set the record straight.
The crowd of reporters was waiting outside the airport, and Kim wondered how they knew to be there. Was it like ants or bees or something, some subvocal method of communication? How did they know where and when to show up?
“Kim, we hear you acted without orders to go to Chicago. Tell us about that.”
“Is it true there was a breakdown of communication between agencies?”
“Kim, can you give us the inside on the breach between the NSA and the FBI on this case?”
She paused on the sidewalk. “I’ll answer a few questions,” she said, “then you gotta let me get back to work.” She pointed to a woman wearing a slim gray suit with red piping.
“Ms. Valenti, can you talk about the communication problems between agencies?”
“There was no breakdown,” she said distinctly. “My partner, Scott Shepherd—” she pulled him by the arm to stand next to her “—and I cracked the code and we decided to check out some things in Chicago, just in case. As you know, we worked smoothly with the FBI once I got there.” She looked at the group. “Next? You.”
A youthful man stepped forward. “Do either of you have any inkling of what the terrorists are planning next?”
Pleased that Scott had been included, Kim gestured for him to answer. He said simply, “They’re terrorists. That means they do the unpredictable. We have some intelligence, but we’re not at liberty to share that just now.”
His cell phone went off, as if on cue, and he put his hand on Kim’s back. “Sorry, we gotta go.”
A little tangle of roared questions followed, but they ducked out and got into Scott’s car. “Nice,” Kim said. And something about the word made her think of Lex. A sensory snapshot of his long, devilish kisses last night wound through her mind. A sudden, narcotic sensuality burned through her chest, pooled at the base of her spine. How did he do that? How had he washed into her mind like that?
Scott put the car in gear. “You, too.” He glanced at her. “Jeez, what put that look on your face? I don’t think it’s me, though I wouldn’t mind it.”
She made an effort to clear her features. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” He joined traffic. “The boss wants to see you the minute you get in. I already got yelled at for letting you go alone—not that I had any choice—but you’re going to hear about it, too.”
“Scott, are you pissed at me?”
He turned into the long-term parking area. “Where’s your car?”
She directed him to the right section. “Answer me.”
“It’s not pissed off, Valenti.” He turned, followed the row to the end, turned again. In front of her car, he paused and looked at her. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting for you to wake up and notice that there’s somebody right in front of you who’d try just about anything to get your attention, and you fly to Chicago and fall in love.”
“Who?” she said with a scowl, and at the stoniness of his handsome face, she opened her mouth. Closed it. Said, “You?”
He glanced at her. Said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Scott. I never picked up on that at all.”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “We’re gonna hold up traffic.”
She opened the passenger-side door. “Let’s go have a margarita later, huh?”
He nodded.
She slammed the door and stomped over to her car.
Men. Honestly!
Chapter 13
As Kim came into the office, a gaggle of her co-workers cheered. They stood up at their desks and clapped, whistled, whooped. Kim rolled her eyes, tried to wave them down, then—when they wouldn’t stop—she took an exaggerated bow. “Thank you.” She looked for Scott, but he wasn’t in the room.
Her superior, Grant Long, a trim, sixtyish man with silver hair, gave her a smile as she entered his office. “Scott said you wanted to see me, sir.”
“Come in, Kim. Sit down.” He folded his hands gravely, and she felt a ripple of nervousness as she settled in a gray leather office chair. “First of all,” he said, peering at her face, “how are you? You look pretty battered.”
“It looks worse than it feels,” she said. “I’m well trained. I can hold my own.”
“I know your history has lent you a certain cachet in some circles, Valenti. And you should be proud of your background at the Athena Academy. But—”
“Sir, I’d just like to explain that there wasn’t really time to—”
“Agent Valenti, you’re one of the best code breakers I’ve got, but you have got to learn to go through channels.”
“I honestly tried, sir. I called Agent Milosovich at the CIA. He w
ouldn’t take me seriously—”
Long shook his head. “No excuses, Valenti. You know better. Everything breaks down if you don’t follow the chain of command.”
“What was I supposed to—”
“Follow the chain of command,” he repeated.
“I see.” Stung, Kim glanced away for a moment, thinking of all the lives that had been saved by her actions, and the cost she’d paid personally in physical injury. It wasn’t that she felt that she was better than anyone else, just that sometimes, “proper channels” didn’t move fast enough.
Trying not to show her resentment or hurt, she raised her head. “You’re right, sir. I’m sorry. In the future, I’ll pay more attention to protocol.”
“My eye you will.” He stood, and Kim stood with him. “You’ll get in over your head one of these days. You very nearly did this time.”
Kim bowed her head. “It was a real possibility,” she said, and met his eyes. “But I believe in what I’m doing, sir.”
“I know you do.” He held out his hand. “Good work, Valenti.”
She took a breath, accepted the handshake. “Thank you, sir.”
“There is one more thing,” he said, not letting her go.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been promoted. Congratulations.”
Her eyes flew open. “Really?”
He grinned. “It was excellent work, distinguishing you from your peers brilliantly.”
Kim thought of Scott. “And my partner?”
“Er…no. Not yet. You’re being recognized for independent action. And probably because the case is so visible.”
“I see.”
“He’s an excellent agent. No worries. He’ll move up in no time.”
“But he’s still my partner, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kim nodded. “Well, thank you, sir. Very much. I’m honored.”
“You’re welcome. Now go see if you can find Mansour before he plants another bomb somewhere.”
“I’m on it.”
The first thing she did was find Scott. He was in the copy room, peering at a page of tiny code, shaking his head, and Kim knew how to find him by the way a girl in the secretarial pool was mooning toward the open door.
