Hot Target

by Marliss Melton

  "Hey!" In her surprise, Juliet nearly let go. However, remembering her loaded pistol, she dropped the ponchos to grab her purse with both hands. Tristan, with his back to her, had no idea of her plight. Juliet had to defend herself. Shifting her weight to her left foot, she went to kick the kid's ribs. In that same instant, he let go.

  At the sudden cessation of his opposing pull, Juliet lost her balance and stumbled off the curb, directly into the path of the approaching bus.

  Denial vied with the instinct to live. Purse clutched to her chest, she threw herself into a backward somersault, tucked and rolled, all the while bracing for the bone-crushing impact of a ten-ton vehicle. The oversized bus's hydraulics hissed forcefully. With a chorused shout, passengers toppled from their seats as the driver slammed on the brakes.

  Miraculously alive, Juliet lay in the middle of the street, one yard away from the cable rail that ran down its middle. The metal hummed, signaling a cable car's approach. Clambering shakily to her feet, her gaze went to the spot where she'd toppled off the curb. The bus was now idling over it. One tenth of a second slower, and she'd have been terribly injured, at best.

  The whey-faced bus driver slid his window open. "Lady, are you OK?" he yelled as she sat up.

  She stared back, furious that some petty thief had nearly gotten her killed.

  "Juliet!"

  Tristan appeared next to her, looking every bit as ashen as the driver.

  "What the hell happened?" he asked, crouching to help her up.

  Strangers hovered close, their expressions pictures of concern.

  Back on her feet, Juliet searched the crowd for the would-be thief, but he'd obviously fled. "Some kid tried to steal my purse," she said. "I went to kick him and he let go."

  To her immense gratitude, Tristan didn't state the obvious. If she were any less fit, if she didn't work out as hard as she did, the bus would have hit her.

  He looked her up and down. "Did you break anything?"

  Aside from her stinging pride, she couldn't feel a thing. "No."

  He led her back to the curb where the crowd made room for them. Traffic on the street had slowed to a crawl. People hung out of the approaching cable car to get a better look at Juliet.

  She continued searching for the miscreant teenager. Swear to God, if she saw the kid, she'd sic Tristan on him. "Anybody see where he went?" she asked the bystanders, but nobody spoke up.

  "Clear a path." A police officer elbowed his way through the crowd to get to her. "Ma'am, are you all right?"

  Juliet heaved an inward groan. Now she would have to file a report. "I'm fine," she snapped. "Some kid tried to steal my purse."

  As she explained that she'd lost her balance when the purse-snatcher let go, the officer opened an iPad. "What did this kid look like?"

  With a dozen tourists listening in, she described his hair and his facial piercings. Two onlookers spoke up, adding details she hadn't noticed, like the gauges in his earlobes and the clothes he was wearing. Juliet sent them grateful nods.

  "May I see your driver's license?" the officer inquired. "I'm obligated to make a report," he explained. "We don't tolerate purse-snatching around here. In fact, I have a fair idea who the perp might be."

  A shiver rolled through Juliet as she fished inside her purse for her wallet—belated shock. As they waited for the officer to transcribe the information from her ID, Tristan put an arm around Juliet as if aware of her sudden lightheadedness.

  "You want to sit down, honey?" he asked.

  She locked her knees to keep them from folding. "No, I'm good."

  The onlookers lost interest and began boarding the bus.

  "Ma'am," the officer said, handing her ID back, "I'm sorry this happened to you. I hope you won't judge our city by the actions of one misguided kid. I think your bus is about to leave. I hope you two enjoy your stay. Take care."

  With a tight smile, he zipped his iPad into the case strapped to his belt and walked away.

  "Excuse me. Here are your ponchos." The words drew their attention to a young girl who'd gone to the trouble of retrieving Juliet's recent purchase from the sidewalk.

  "Thank you." Tristan took them from her.

  The girl looked like she might say something more, but with a glance at the retreating officer, she turned away and climbed aboard the bus.

  Tristan turned his gaze on Juliet. "You still up for a tour?" he asked.

  Juliet balked at the notion of getting on a bus that had almost killed her. "Did you buy the tickets?"

  He pulled two tickets out of his pocket. "Yes, but I'll get our money back."

  She didn't doubt that he would. "I'd like to go back to the hotel if that's OK." She winced at how pathetic she sounded. "I'm sorry. Maybe tomorrow." She'd had enough ups and downs for today.

  Without another word, Tristan led her to the kiosk. The people in line yielded to him as he approached the counter to request a refund.

  Enveloped in shock, Juliet waited for him to complete the transaction. At last, Tristan took her hand in his, and they headed back toward their parked vehicle.

  Chapter 11

  Sliding toward the center of her sofa, Hilary focused on the laptop balanced on Stuart Rudolph's long, muscular thighs and gaped at the identifying logo on the top left corner of the screen.

  "Oh my God, did you just hack into Homeland Security?" She verified the logo on the website then sat back to regard him in awe.

  In the two hours he'd been in her apartment, they'd barely spoken a word. Stu, as she'd begun calling him, had powered up his laptop, jumped onto the internet using his hot spot, and gone straight to work fulfilling Juliet's request for more background on Hans Coenen. Hilary had figured they might as well get that chore out of the way since casual conversation had proven more than Stu could manage so far. Working side-by-side ought to break the ice, at which point Hilary could proceed with her seduction.

  Eyes fixed on his laptop, Stu shrugged his wide shoulders. "It's not that hard." His deft fingers alternated between the keys and the mousepad, moving so quickly she hadn't been able to follow his strategies.

  "They have way too many systems with trusted relationships," he added, hitting the enter key and waiting for the next screen to open. "Once you're in one, you can daisy-chain all the way to the target."

  Stu made it sound easy, but Hilary had tried many times, unsuccessfully. "But how'd you get past their firewall?"

  A twitch of his handsome lips indicated that such devices were merely knee-high hurdles to him. "I used a zero-day exploit."

  His hacking strategies couldn't have sounded any sexier. In fact, everything about Stuart Rudolph from his long, clever fingers to his dark eyes and the profound thoughts in them entranced her. He was tall, socially awkward, and reminded Hilary of Clark Kent in the way he hid his superhero physique under a purple turtle-neck sweater and corduroy pants.

  A certain sexy SEAL needed help with his wardrobe.

  She'd like to take him shopping right then. First, they would do their job since Stu was relentless in getting it done. He'd declined Hilary's offer of a glass of wine. Like a SEAL on reconnaissance, he wanted to keep alert lest he overlook something critical. Hilary sensed that, short of tearing her clothes off in front of him, there'd be no distracting him.

  If you can't beat them, join them, she'd decided, opening her own laptop.

  At first, she'd attempted to compete, trying to find something, anything, about Coenen's history before Stu did, but it quickly became apparent he would beat her every time. Not wanting to look incompetent, she'd set her laptop aside to watch him work. Under the pretense of needing to see his screen better, Hilary had shifted closer and closer until her right breast brushed his left arm.

  "You are a freaking genius," she breathed as he poked around in Homeland Security's server.

  He sent her a quick, distracted glance, which dipped momentarily to her breast resting on his arm. A hint of color appeared on his sharp cheekbones. Was it her comment makin
g him blush or the fact that he could feel her nipple grazing him?

  "If I were a genius, I would have found something incriminating by now," he replied.

  What they'd found so far made Coenen sound like an all-American hero. The man had devoted twenty years to law enforcement—coincidentally kicking off his career in Juliet's parents' home state of Virginia serving with the Arlington Police Department. In 1995, he moved to San Francisco to continue police work with the SFPD. Not a single traffic violation existed on his record at the DMV. After five short years with the San Francisco Police, he'd risen in rank to Commander of the Youth Services Unit, a program devoted to providing juvenile delinquents with alternatives to gang-life. He had earned the Silver Medal of Valor in 2010, and the Meritorious Conduct Award in 2014.

  The one and only thing unusual about Coenen was that he wasn't an all-American hero. According to the DMV, he'd become a naturalized citizen in 1995.

  That revelation prompted Stu to breach Homeland Security's website so they could find out Coenen's country of origin. Hilary watched in amazement as he skirted the defenses at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

  "Here we go," he said, hitting the enter key with a confident tap.

  Hilary's eyes widened at the warning that appeared on the screen. You are accessing a U.S. Government (USG) Information System (IS) that is provided for USG-authorized use only.

  "You did it," she marveled. "You got in. Oh, my God you totally have to teach me everything you know," she added. Her plans to seduce Stu moved to the backburner. It set her mind on fire to imagine what she could do with his skill set.

  Intent on finding Hans Coenen in a database, Stu didn't reply to her comment. He located the month and year Coenen was naturalized and clicked the hyperlink to download a spreadsheet from the website to a virtual storage area—one that no one could trace to his laptop, just in case Homeland Security noticed the breach.

  "Here he is," he said, pointing out Coenen's name on the list.

  She followed his finger across the spreadsheet to the column naming the country of origin.

  "South Africa." Hilary's tone conveyed her disappointment. "I thought Coenen was a Dutch name."

  "The Dutch colonized South Africa," Stu reminded her. "And just because his documents were South African, doesn't mean he was born there. The Stasi would have had access to all kinds of false papers."

  "True," Hilary agreed, pleased with Stu's insight. "If he gained citizenship in '95 and you have to live in the States for five years before becoming a U.S. citizen, he would have had to arrive here around 1990, right after German reunification."

  "Which proves he can't be Dieter Goebel because he was still in prison then."

  "Not to mention Goebel is twenty years older."

  "Oh, hey, looks like Coenen had a sister," Stu exclaimed.

  "What?"

  He pointed to the new information. "Says here that the brother and sister arrived in the country at the same time, and they received naturalization papers on the same day."

  Hilary gasped. "What if they're Anya Ausfeld's friends, the ones she mentioned in her letter?" Hilary had produced a copy for Stu to read at the outset of their research.

  Stu made a thoughtful sound in his throat. "Hans was older by seven years. I don't remember the letter mentioning that."

  "It doesn't, but he would have to have been older in order to influence Anya and his sister so profoundly. While they were young and impressionable, he was already a man of the world."

  Stu lifted his gaze abruptly. "How old are you?"

  The personal question made her heart beat faster. "Twenty-nine." Hilary shrugged self-consciously. "I'm older than you, aren't I?"

  "Two years," he confirmed. He looked back at his laptop, and his fingers danced on his keys, letting her know he'd forgotten her already.

  "What are you looking at now?" she asked.

  "Standard procedure," Stu replied. "I'd like to know if Coenen ever leaves the country."

  "You're going to hack a dozen airline networks?"

  "Nope, just need to look at TSA's."

  With her respect soaring, Hilary watched Stu pit himself against TSA's security. When the Transportation Security Administration's logo appeared, she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp.

  A smile hovered over Stuart's lips, but he didn't look at her.

  "What did you do?" she demanded a second time. She'd never tried hacking into TSA, as that first required getting into Homeland Security's server.

  Stu shook his dark head. "Can't tell you."

  Hilary grabbed his arm, astonished to discover his biceps were as dense as steel. Stu was built like a demigod. "I swear, I won't tell anyone," she promised.

  Shaking his head again, Stu accessed a database of passengers taking international flights in the past year. Having copied Hans Coenen's driver's license number from the DMV website, he pasted it into a graphical user interface and proceeded with his search.

  "Please. You have to teach me what you know," Hilary begged. "I'll do anything you ask me to—anything." Her tone gave the final word a sexual connotation.

  Stu's fingers froze over the keys of his laptop. His eyes swiveled toward her rapidly heating face. With dismay, she knew she'd gone too far. Stuart Rudolph wasn't used to forward women. He wasn't used to women, period.

  Instead of the lust that Hilary expected, his eyes darkened with compassion. "You don't have to do that, you know," he replied.

  Her cheeks flamed even hotter. "I was joking!" she insisted, doing her best to look affronted.

  "You're worth more than that," Stu insisted.

  Stu's quiet assertion touched something in Hilary that she hadn't felt in a long, long time. A distant memory surfaced of running to meet her father as he emerged from the arrivals terminal at the airport. My girl! He'd swept her twelve-year-old self into his big, burly embrace where she had felt so safe.

  Grief pressed against the back of Hilary's eyes. God, she missed her father, even after all these years.

  Relieved that Stu had gone back to his laptop, Hilary swallowed hard and pushed the memory away. Most men were happy to accept what she offered. Did Stu not find her attractive? Oh, God, was he gay? Had she read him all wrong?

  "Well, well," he muttered, unaware of her sudden insecurities.

  "What?" She jerked her gaze to the screen and recognized a flight itinerary.

  "Looks like Hans went to Chile just last week."

  "Chile?" Something knocked at the back of Hilary's mind, but she was too caught up in the mystery of Stuart Rudolph to chase down the fleeting thought. "What's in Chile?" she wondered out loud.

  "A lot of former communists," Stu replied, proving thoroughly knowledgeable about recent history. "Several key figures of the German Democratic Republic, including its leader Erich Honecker, fled there after reunification."

  "Seriously?" Hilary's thoughts percolated. "Everything we've found suggests that Hans might be the older brother mentioned in Anya's letter."

  "But it doesn't prove it." Fingers poised over his keyboard, Stu's thoughts turned inward.

  Hilary kept quiet for as long as she was able. "What are you thinking?" she finally whispered.

  Stu closed his laptop with a snap. "I've got a friend who might be able to help us." He sent her an inscrutable smile. "Mind if I use your restroom?"

  In other words, he wanted to place a private phone call.

  "Oh, sure. It's that door," Hilary divulged, "across from my bedroom." Where she had thought they would be by now.

  Stu patted her knee and stood up. "When I'm done we can watch that movie," he promised, taking his laptop with him as he walked away.

  Staring at the spot on her leg where his hand had been, Hilary listened to Stu lock himself in her bathroom to place his super-secret call. She heaved a sigh of confusion while reordering the events in her head that she'd assumed would happen that afternoon. Something told Hilary she and Stu would not be having wild monkey sex anyt
ime soon.

  Hilary reminded herself there was still the movie to get through. She could point out the scenes that exemplified Jim and Spock's bromance and maybe get Stu to talk about his buddies on the Team. After the movie, she would whip them up a delicious pasta dinner and get him to drink a little wine. Maybe he would tell her how he'd hacked into Homeland Security. And maybe following that, he'd be willing to indulge in a little romance of their own.

  Pinning her hopes on that eventuality, Hilary texted Juliet their latest findings.

  * * *

  "You know, Rise of the Planet of the Apes takes place in San Francisco."

  Tristan's comment as he inserted the card key into the lock on their hotel room door was meant to draw Juliet out of her funk, she knew. Unfortunately, she was still too shaken by the afternoon's events to show any interest. Walking straight into the room, she sat on the king-sized bed without comment.

  "So watching the movie will be just like taking the tour," Tristan continued, pulling off his sweatshirt and lobbing it toward his suitcase. The sleeveless tee he'd worn beneath it emphasized the breadth of his shoulders.

  Juliet managed a crooked smile for him. Tristan's attempt to humor her only increased her guilt over ruining their plans to explore the city. "Sure it will," she replied.

  "I saw it advertised on Pay-Per-View." Snatching up the remote control, he turned on the TV, set it to the proper channel, then lowered the volume on the background music. "But first you get a massage," Tristan added, putting down the remote, "since you have to be hurting after pulling that stuntwoman move."

  The very thought was an invitation to relive that afternoon's close call.

  Juliet glanced toward the window. A fine drizzle misted the glass pane. "Why me?" she asked, as the incident unfolded in her mind's eye.

  Tristan came to stand in front of her. "What do you mean?"

  She shook her head. "Why would some punk try to snatch my purse and not that of a little old lady, or a mother whose hands are full with her kid?"