by Nancy Warren
“I doubt I’ll—” She’d been about to say she doubted she’d be here that long. Cynthia would have to watch herself if she didn’t want to blow her cover the very first day. “I doubt I’ll bother changing it for a while. I’ll be too busy getting up to speed on all your systems.”
She glanced around. The walls were beige and, apart from a big road-racing poster, a wall calendar from a real-estate agent and a poor quality print of swimming mallards, there was no decor. But the desk was spacious, the chair had lumbar support and the computer equipment was up-to-date. It would do.
Agnes stood in the doorway, her drabness matching the office. “I’ll leave you to get settled, then. If you want to know anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thanks.” Cynthia sent her a vivid smile. “I’m sure you’ll be sorry you offered.” She wondered what else Agnes could tell her that would help her investigation. The woman had been there thirty years; she must know all kinds of secrets. “Since we’ll be working together, perhaps we could have lunch one day soon.”
Her suggestion was greeted with a shy but grateful smile. Instantly, Cyn felt like a miserable sneak, although she hadn’t suggested lunch just to pick Agnes’s brains; the truth was she’d felt an immediate kinship with the older woman.
The minute Agnes left the room, Cynthia booted up the computer and searched it as thoroughly as she knew how. Jake had told her that the former accountant had skipped town before the FBI could contact him. They had no idea whether he knew anything about Oceanic that could be useful, or even if he might be involved in drug smuggling or money laundering. She’d heard the frustration in Jake’s voice, and knew it irked him that the former Oceanic accountant had left the country before the FBI had had a chance to interview him.
If there was any money laundering going on here, Cynthia bet there’d be a way for a smart accountant to figure it out. Maybe her predecessor had left her some clues.
But her search yielded nothing. All traces of Harrison had been expunged. She had been assigned an e-mail address, but her predecessor’s was gone, as were any messages he might have left behind.
She couldn’t locate a single personal file, though she easily found the software programs, the company books and the files for the pension plan, which it was her responsibility to administer. She’d crack the books at the first opportunity, but common sense told her they wouldn’t be right there in front of her nose if they weren’t clean.
While pretending to stock the empty desk with items from the supply cupboard, she surreptitiously ran her fingers into every crevice. At the back of the second drawer in the bank of three, her searching fingers hit an obstacle and her heart began to hammer. She tugged and wiggled the object, snapping a freshly manicured nail in the process, only to find her hidden treasure was nothing but a paperclip that had wedged itself into a corner.
She stared at the twisted metal clip while she sucked her sore finger, wondering how much of the spy business was this frustrating.
THE GATE CREAKED as Cynthia entered Mrs. Jorgensen’s front garden—which didn’t belong to Mrs. Jorgensen any longer, of course, but to FBI Agent Jake Wheeler. An early fall nip was in the air, taking its toll on the profusion of late summer flowers already sagging with neglect. Cynthia hoped Jake was a better agent than gardener; Mrs. Jorgensen would cry if she could see the state of the roses.
As she walked up the path she’d trod so many times to visit the older woman, Cynthia felt a flicker of apprehension. It wouldn’t be Mrs. Jorgensen greeting her when she knocked on the sturdy oak door, it would be Jake Wheeler.
She wanted to give him a report on her impressions of Oceanic after one day on the job. She could fill him in on the personalities she’d met, the unfortunate lack of evidence in Harrison’s computer and desk, and her suspicions about the “chopstick” shipment from Colombia. Colombia had one major export she knew about, apart from coffee and bananas, and it wasn’t chopsticks. She wished she had some concrete evidence to support her theory that those crates contained cocaine, but not even Jake Wheeler could expect her to crack the case in one day.
Now that she was here, in his front garden, she hesitated. Her steps slowed and she paused to snap a few dead heads off the chrysanthemums while she debated continuing up to the door or bolting for home.
On the one hand, she ought to report her progress from her first day on the job.
On the other hand, he carried a gun for a living and scared the pants off her.
While she tried to make up her mind, she busied herself picking off shriveled orange and purple flowers until she had a neat little pile ready for the compost.
She never did make up her mind whether to go to his door or not.
While she was lost in her mental arguments, a strong arm came round her shoulders and hustled her to the house. That clinched it. She made up her mind on the spot. She didn’t want to stay here; she wanted to go home. But even as she tried to pull away, Jake frog-marched her to his front door and shoved her inside.
She was standing in his front hall before she’d had a chance to do more than squeak. And he was staring grimly out from behind the living-room drapes.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice bounced from the other room.
She gulped. “I just stopped to…” Her gaze dropped to the dead petals crushed in her hand. What was she going to say? She’d dropped by to do some gardening?
Get a grip! You are Cyn! Cyn wouldn’t apologize for visiting a single man uninvited. Cyn would probably have him half-naked and begging by now.
She straightened her shoulders and gazed at the hard line of his back. Tension radiated off him. There were certain men Cyn could probably have half-naked and begging in no time. This was not one of those men. This was not one of those times.
He swung round and his face was tightly controlled, but anger sizzled through his pores. “What are you doing?” This time his tone was soft, but far more scary than if he’d yelled the words.
5
THE HECK WITH GETTING HIM naked; she just wanted to get out of here in one piece. “I was reporting in. But I obviously picked a bad time.” Her gaze faltered under the hard assault of those eyes. She bunched the petals more tightly in her fist. “I’ll get going now.”
“You don’t come here,” he said in that same soft, fierce tone.
Her pulse hammered under that merciless gaze.
“You never come here. They could be watching you.”
“But—”
“No buts. That’s an order. I can’t believe you were stupid enough to come waltzing up my front path.”
“You can’t order me—”
“Yes I can. Or I’ll yank you out of Oceanic so fast your hair will change color. Again.”
He was scaring her, but also she was getting the feeling that maybe he didn’t think her job was going to be such a waste of time, after all. “I’m a volunteer. You can’t fire me.”
“I can arrest you.”
Her jaw gaped. “You’d arrest me?”
“If you don’t cooperate, you could jeopardize an operation we’ve been working on for months. If I have to go in and haul your ass out of there, you’re damn right I’ll arrest you.”
“But—”
His finger shot up and pointed at her heart, reminding her uncomfortably of that horrible gun. “Don’t push it, Cyn.”
She felt a little light-headed and sank to the bottom stair. “I was only going to tell you about my first day.” Her voice sounded like a little kid’s, which infuriated her.
His face softened slightly, along with his voice. “I know you’re new to this stuff, but it’s not a game. You’re working at Oceanic as an accountant. That’s it. If it were me, or another agent, it would be a cover. But the beauty of this whole thing is that you really are an accountant working at Oceanic.” He glanced down at her. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
She nodded miserably.
“If I need informa
tion, I’ll find a way to contact you.” He let out a breath and it seemed like he made a conscious effort to cool down. “Want a beer?”
“I thought you were throwing me out.” She didn’t move from the bottom of the stairs, where she could keep the front door in plain view in case she needed to bolt for safety. She couldn’t process that he’d gone from Mr. Fury to Mr. Hospitality in under two minutes.
He shrugged. “Now you’re in, you’ll have to stay until after dark. And in future, don’t come sashaying up my front path any time you feel like it. I’ll give you a number for emergencies. Otherwise, don’t phone me or visit my house.”
“Don’t you want me to report in?”
He regarded her calmly. “I’ll find a way to stay in touch. Don’t come near me unless it’s an emergency. Got it?”
She nodded. “I think I will have a beer.” She followed him to the kitchen, noting the changes he’d already made in the house. He’d kept a lot of the furniture, but still the house looked different. Mostly it was less cluttered. Mrs. Jorgensen hadn’t ever forgotten her Danish and Dutch heritage, and had married the two enthusiastically, filling her house with teak furniture and covering every surface with starched linens and Delft pottery.
Jake walked to the fridge, and Cynthia took a seat at the small rectangular teak table that looked so different without the hand-embroidered blue-and-white cloth on it and the little Dutch boy and girl salt and pepper shakers in the middle. His salt and pepper was a tubular contraption that could have been designed by NASA.
“You cook,” she noted in surprise, eyeing the pans hanging from a wall, copper bottoms blackened from use, the well-stocked fridge she’d glimpsed when he got the beer, and the hefty selection of cookbooks on the shelf.
Passing her a bottle of beer and a glass, he raised his eyebrows and half grinned. “Men cook. Got another news flash for you. The earth’s round.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“If a man today looks twice at a woman rebuilding a car engine, or reroofing her own house, he’s a chauvinist. But women still like to think a man in the kitchen is like…”
“A fish without a bicycle?” she offered sweetly.
He poked a finger in her direction. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, that feminist superiority complex you women pull. There’s a few things you gals still need us men for…” his gaze intensified on hers and the pause grew heavy “…and I’m not talking about cooking.”
How did he do that? One minute he scared the pants off her, the next he was sending glances her way that made her knees weak. Well, she wasn’t falling for it. Or him. “I admit we’d need a few gallons of cryogenically frozen sperm and some turkey basters. After that, you men’d be history.”
She almost gasped as she realized she’d said the words aloud. Usually she kept those kind of comments to herself, but ever since her makeover her whole personality seemed to have changed to match the faux fur and funky hair. Maybe some of the hair dye had seeped into her brain and scrambled her neurons. She thought about that for a second and decided she really didn’t care. She liked the fact that her flip comment had wiped the sparkle out of Wheeler’s eye.
She liked it until she realized he’d replaced it with a purposeful gleam as he crossed the kitchen in two strides. “I won’t demean my sex with the obvious advantages we offer over a turkey baster. I’ll just remind you that there’s one thing science will never replace.”
“The male ego?”
“The kiss.”
She dropped her gaze, flustered at the way those two words had her blood heating as memories of their brief kisses crowded her mind.
He tipped back the bottle and drank, then said, “You want to give my talents a try?”
“Pardon?” Her gaze snapped back to his. Had he read her mind?
A disturbing tilt to his lips made her think he could see right inside her thoughts. “My cooking. How about I make us some dinner, since you’re stuck here for a few hours.”
“Dinner!” Right, the talent he referred to was cooking. “Yes, thank you. I’d love to stay.”
He put water on to boil, started pulling vegetables out of the crisper and took a small brown-paper-wrapped package out of the meat keeper. “You’re lucky, I spent a couple of hours at Pike Place Market this morning. You like scallops?”
“Mmm-hmm. When I cook them they always go rubbery.”
“You’re cooking them too long.”
She blinked bemused eyes and rose. “What can I do to help?”
“Chop the cilantro.”
“Fresh herbs,” she said weakly.
“Like I said, you’re lucky I went marketing today.” He donned a striped denim apron that made him look like a very sexy head chef in some trendy bistro.
“Where did you learn to cook?”
“My mom went back to work full-time when we started school. She taught us all how to cook, and we had to take turns cooking for the family. Best thing she could have done.”
They continued to chat while Cynthia cut, chopped or peeled what he put in front of her, according to his instructions. “What did your mother do?”
“She’s a lawyer. Well, she’s semiretired now.”
“And your father?”
“He’s a lawyer, too. In private practice. Mom worked for the D.A.’s office. Conversation around our dinner table could get…pretty interesting.”
“I can imagine.” Cynthia smiled, picturing noisy, argumentative meals in the Wheeler household. She bet they were a lot more stimulating than those in her house, where the no-controversy rule stifled dinner-table conversation. “How about your siblings? You said ‘we.’”
“There are four of us. Molly’s an environmental lawyer, Clay’s a trial lawyer and Pete’s undecided. He’s still in law school.”
Cynthia’s knife stilled in the middle of slicing a lemon. “Your entire family are lawyers?”
He grinned at her across a sizzling skillet. “All but me. I’m the black sheep.”
“Did you ever want to be a lawyer?”
He tossed onion and garlic into the skillet and began to stir. The aroma made her mouth water. “For the first two years of law school I thought so, but it wasn’t my thing. I hate all that sitting around arguing. I like action.”
That sounded like an understatement. “Were your parents disappointed?”
“They got over it.”
JAKE SMILED TO HIMSELF as he opened a bottle of Washington Sauvignon Blanc he’d bought today on impulse. Cyn was seated at the table gazing at the steaming plate in front of her while he opened the wine. Had his family ever got over his defection! There wasn’t one who hadn’t picked his brains shamelessly on some point of investigative procedure. Of course, he drew just as shamelessly on the combined legal expertise of his family, especially when he was skating close to the edge of the law.
The cork emerged with a quiet sigh. It wasn’t an oversight that he hadn’t asked his siblings or his parents for an opinion on his latest stunt. They’d all yell at once if they found out he was on his own. He doubted he could make them understand. But then, no one in his family had ever caused a friend’s death.
“This is fantastic,” Cyn told him, licking her lips.
He gazed across the table at her. What was he thinking? He wasn’t completely on his own. He had an untrained volunteer, a kinky wannabe sexpot, as a sidekick. That would help his family sleep at night.
“Tell me about your first day,” he said to Cyn. Although the dumb-assed way she’d wandered down his front path in daylight still rankled, he was interested in what she had to say. He’d had every intention of getting her first impressions, but he’d planned on visiting her after dark.
Her eyes lit up at his question. “Guess what came in a new shipment last night?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
“Chopsticks!”
He faked amazement. “No!”
“It gets better.”
“I hope so.”
“Guess where they were from?”
“China?”
She leaned forward and whispered, “Colombia.”
He kept his face impassive, but he was interested, all right. If it was coffee or fish meal he’d have been more intrigued—it was common practice among smugglers to hide coke inside strong-smelling commodities to put the dogs off. Chopsticks would be a new one on him. “Interesting.”
“So, what do you think is in those crates?”
“I’m guessing chopsticks.”
“Don’t you think it might be drugs?”
“Everything coming into port gets checked. Dogs, random customs checks…you don’t just pack a bunch of drugs in a box and ship it to the U.S. Especially if you’re shipping from Colombia.”
“Darn. I hadn’t thought of that.”
He topped up her wineglass.
They ate at the kitchen table, but even so the atmosphere was intimate. Jake cursed himself for opening wine. This was looking far too much like a date, rather than a debriefing. He’d wanted her relaxed and open, he just didn’t want anybody getting the wrong idea here.
“Tell me about your co-workers.”
She listed names and physical descriptions until he was convinced she must have a photographic memory. More names and snatches of boring office conversation bombarded him until he lost track and just let her talk while he once more tried to figure out a way to get her to back off from the amateur spy shtick.
She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t know, except that, for some inexplicable reason, Oceanic was importing chopsticks from Colombia. “I thought they made chopsticks around here, from scrap wood chips or something,” he said, as soon as there was a pause.
“Neville says it’s part of a new trade program to try and reduce the country’s dependence on drug income. South America’s climate grows trees much faster than ours. Did you know that cocaine is Colombia’s biggest export? Almost twice as big as coffee? That’s the largest legitimate export.”
