by Alison Kent
Her expression issued as much of a challenge as did her words. To be effectively involved, she would have to know the truth. Until this moment, however, Kelly John hadn't considered that knowing might also make her a formidable ally.
Hank was the last one to stand. "You're right. You've honored every word of your confidentiality agreement. If you hadn't, well—"
"If I hadn't," she interrupted, "I would have expected you to show me the door at the first breach."
Hank unlocked his gaze from Emma's, which was fiercely bold, turning to Kelly John. "This one's your woman, son. But only if you're comfortable bringing her in."
"If it were just my ass on the line, it would be one thing. But I've got to consider the others."
At that, Emma stepped in. "By others I'm assuming you mean Christian Bane, Tripp Shaughnessey, Julian Samms, Eli McKenzie, Mick Savin, and Harry van Zandt?"
Kelly John said nothing, acknowledged nothing, gave away no goddamn thing. His gut was on fire, his caution at this point not worth a plug nickel. Not if she knew what she seemed to.
How the hell could she know what she seemed to? How the fucking hell had she done it, rattled off the SG-5 names like she was running her finger down a roster?
He held her gaze fast until Hank cleared his throat. The sound broke the tension that had sweat rolling the length of Kelly John's backbone.
Emma glanced down and away, smoothed the hem of her T-shirt with the first show of nervousness he'd seen. Good. He wanted her nervous. Nervous meant she understood the significance of what she'd just done.
"I have never put those names together for anyone." Her voice was soft but firm, her words clear. "The connection is my own because of the work I do for Hank. Yes, I've had others on the office staff ask what I might know about any of you."When she looked back up at him then, he thought for a moment he wouldn't be able to breathe. Her eyes were that bright, her expression that intense. The set of her mouth that determined and grim.
For a sharp half second, he swore he was facing a member of the Smithson Group. One who understood the blood and the bond and the trust. Above all, the trust.
"But I do not talk out of turn," she went on to say. "Ever. Not even when faced with threats. If you don't believe me, pull up my record."
"Record?" he asked, his heart pounding with the fierceness of what he was feeling.
She nodded. "Before coming to work for Smithson, I was an investigative reporter. One of the cases I covered was a very high profile crime, and I spent three years researching and writing a book about it."
She took a deep breath before blurting out the rest. "The Justice Department later convened a grand jury, and filed charges when I refused to divulge a source. I was held in civil contempt as a recalcitrant witness.
"And I spent eight months behind bars."
She hated playing the jail time card; she really did. But she hated even more having doubts cast on her loyalty and integrity. And she had to admit surprise that Hank would be a party after all this time.
Still, she'd been curious enough about this request to pull out all stops, pleading her case.
And now here they were. Hank at her side, Kelly John behind, the three of them walking down the hallway of the twenty-fourth floor toward the DATA 2 TECH offices where Smithson Engineering's records were archived, databases generated, and Web sites served.
She knew there was no front office staff; when records were required to be pulled, an online order form was submitted, processed, and subsequently filled, whether for the legal or accounting departments, or for one of the engineers.
Which was why she couldn't imagine what business Hank Smithson or Kelly John Beach could possible have up here doing technical grunt work.
She fell in between the two men as they entered the reception area through the etched glass door, waiting with Kelly John while Hank punched the entry code into the panel granting interior access.
Through the small windows on either side, she was able to see the racks of servers. Not much of a view and certainly no hint of why they were here.
It was when the door opened and the three of them walked through that things got weird.
The boxlike room in which she found herself standing was suddenly lit by blinding overhead lights. The walls were bare, constructed of what appeared to be a soundproofing material no doubt intended as a security measure.
Why, she couldn't fathom, unless the server farm warehoused some sort of classified information beyond blueprints, schematics, and confidential records.
With her overactive imagination obviously in high gear, she squinted and watched Hank press his thumb to a scanning pad on the interior door.
Clicks and whirs and a vacuum release sounded as the door slid open, and oh my . . .
Her heart jumped wildly at the base of her throat. It was as if she'd walked onto a spy movie soundstage. Or the set of a television cop drama.
The server racks were nothing but a front; once inside, the room was a working office of sorts. Or not so much an office as what looked like a command center, a headquarters even. One secreted away from the public.
One currently occupied by three of the very men she'd named earlier for the two she was with.
She'd been right. Hank's project engineers had nothing to do with Smithson Engineering. They were anything but, what with their headsets and monitor banks and equipment she would need explained by James Bond's Q. Even then, she wasn't sure she would ever understand.
What she did understand were the guns holstered on the desktops.
She turned her gaze on Hank.
He snagged his unlit cigar stub from his mouth with two fingers and rocked back on his boot heels. "Welcome to the Smithson Group ops center."
Oliver Shore, Spectra IT's resident "professor," leaned back in the chair behind his desk in his Curacao office, elbows braced on the padded arms, index fingers tapping his chin.
He stared at his visitor, who had arrived only moments before, having been whisked out of La Guardia on a private jet once the break-in had been discovered.
A break-in that left Oliver most disturbed.
"You were told to secure your office." The words fell like ice cubes. "To restrict access to the data detailing our arrangement."
Charles Marian wiped a hand over his brow to clear the perspiration. The response was not lost on Oliver, who kept his office at a chilly sixty-eight degrees.
The younger man, his ruddy complexion unnaturally pale, cleared his throat. "I don't know what happened. The cleaning crew came through. Security did their nightly check. The office shouldn't have been accessible."
"But it was. We have the infiltration on tape." Unfortunately, the infiltrator had not yet been identified.
That said, due to an encounter in a New York City sandwich shop a few weeks ago, Oliver had an idea as to the identity of the man—or at least the organization—with whom he was dealing, but would not take his suspicions to Spectra's higher ups until such had been confirmed.
Thanks to a recent acquisition allowing Spectra to crack the encryption, his team was currently running the tape through facial recognition software provided unawares by the CIA. The confirmation should not be long in coming.
"Look," Charles said, still sweating, clammy, "I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say?"
Oliver got to his feet, planted his palms on his desktop's cool surface, and leaned forward, wishing any man but this one was his inside connection to Marian Diamonds. "I want you to say that you will instruct your uncle to reroute next week's shipment."
"He can't do that," Charles protested.
"He will do that. Unless he wants to find federal agents dragging him from his bed after they've seized the cargo. Or are you unaware of the penalties for smuggling conflict diamonds?"
"No. I'm aware." Charles hung his head.
"And since your uncle is not a party to your agreement with our people in Africa, the penalty you face is even greate
r, am I not correct?"
Charles nodded, now pitched so far over his knees Oliver expected him to tumble unconscious to the floor. It was a shame how some men found themselves unable to handle deception.
A knock on the door brought Charles's head up and Oliver to his full height. He pushed his glasses into place and called out. "Yes?"
The door opened and Ezra Moore entered the room, his smile beacon bright against his black coffee complexion.
He wore his usual uniform of black T-shirt and pocketed cargo pants. A black bandana scooped his dreadlocks back from his face, exposing the strange diamond stud in the lobe of one ear.
When he spoke, his lilting island patois gave his announcement the rhythm of a song. "Oliver, it seems we won't be having a match."
"None at all?"
Ezra shook his head. "Nothing. The man does not seem to exist."
Oh, he existed all right. And Oliver was quite sure he knew where to find him. He smiled at the man standing just inside the doorway. "How do you feel about a quick trip to Manhattan?"
"Oliver, mow." Ezra shook his head. "You know how I feel about visiting the States."
"That I do, Ezra," Oliver said with a laugh. "That I do."
Emma Webster was the first outsider ever to visit Smithson Engineering's twenty-fourth floor. As far as the company's employees were concerned, Smithson leased the space to DATA 2 TECH.
The arrangement had worked well for quite a few years, and as far as Hank was concerned would continue to do so.
The tech firm was a legitimate subsidiary of the larger Smithson conglomerate, the corporate papers properly filed with state and federal agencies as required each year.
Hank wouldn't be risking the exposure now if not for Kelly's life being on the line.
Once Tripp had been made during the standoff at Brighton's a couple of months back, Hank had assigned Kelly the Marian Diamonds scenario.
Now, with the boy's cover compromised, it looked like Hank just might have to reel in this big fish himself.
He ushered Emma further into the room. "I believe you know Julian Samms and Tripp Shaughnessey." Both men nodded warily. Hank raised a brow and turned to the third operative. "This is Mick Savin. Mick, Emma Webster. My executive assistant."
Emma held out her right hand. Mick offered his left, his right arm still encased in a fiberglass cast while the bones in his forearm healed.
Emma gave him a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry. I didn't think—"
"No worries," he assured her, his curious gaze taking in Hank, as well.
Hank rested a palm on Mick's shoulder, nodded towards Julian, whose own arm was still strapped up in a sling. "Mick and Julian ran into a bit of gun trouble in Florida recently. They'll be fine."
Mick laughed. "Easy for you to say, mate. You're not the one who took the bloody bullet."
Hank gestured toward his bum hip. "Son, I'll put my shrapnel up against your bullet any day of the week."
At that, Mick laughed and headed deeper into the ops center.
Emma's gaze moved from one man to another until she'd taken in all five in the room, her attention lingering the longest on Kelly, a fact that did not escape Hank's notice.
He turned his back on his boys and spoke only to her. "These men work for me in a confidential capacity, as you suspected. If what they do is ever found out. . ."
He paused, gathered the truth of the matter close. "If what I have them doing is ever found out, every one of us'll be growing old behind bars. I wouldn't have brought you here if I'd thought doing so would compromise our work."
She crossed her arms over her chest, raised a brow. "Work, I'm assuming, you can't tell me about?"
He met the challenge of her gaze, once again reminded of the reasons he'd hired her, of the choice he'd made to do so knowing that she wouldn't take his shit lying down and would dish him back the same.
"That's right," he said. "But even without being privy to the details, you can know this. That work's going to grind to a halt in a big hurry for one of my men without your help."
Her chin came up as, eyes sparkling, she nodded. "What exactly do you need me to do?"
"That's my girl, er, woman," Hank said, amending his statement at the death of the twinkle and the lift of Emma's brow. "Welcome to the SG-5 team."
Three
She couldn't believe it. She was going to be a spy. Or a spy apprentice, at least.
Not a bad assignment for a woman who'd been bitten by the sleuthing bug before being locked up and having the key to her career as an investigative reporter thrown away.
Emma Webster aka Mata Hari.
Silly maybe, but she liked the idea of going undercover and all that it implied. Especially considering with whom she would be engaging in all that hot spy action.
Unfortunately, there wouldn't be any action of any kind going on if she didn't get her act in gear. Kelly John would be here in twenty minutes. The plan was to have drinks, see an off-Broadway show, then go out for a late dinner.
Tripp Shaughnessey had apparently pulled strings and massaged contacts to set up this sting. Big Brother would be watching her and Kelly John perform at each stop.
Being on a need-to-know basis and all, she'd been told nothing more. Except that she held all the cards when it came to the intimate nature of each performance.
The thought made her sweat.
Never in her life had she faced such a long evening ahead—and all that went with it—with less than an hour to pull herself together. And it was the pulling herself together that was giving her hell.
Bathing and dressing with lightning speed, sweeping her hair back into an elegant ponytail, applying full makeup for the second time today . . . those tasks were nothing when compared with her assignment to pose as a woman in love with Kelly John Beach.
Especially when she was dying to get her hands on him.
Smoothing her hair before securing it with a sleek black barrette, she couldn't help but ponder how true it was that good things came to those with the patience to wait.
She'd been waiting to snag Kelly John's attention since the first time he'd walked into Hank's office after she'd been hired.
And, no. She wasn't so pathetic that she'd been pining for five years without acting on the desire. But his personnel records were sealed. She knew nothing about his marital status and hadn't the means or opportunity to ask.
He rarely put in an appearance in the Smithson Engineering offices, and her position as Hank's executive assistant dictated propriety and avoiding the office rumor mill.
Her interaction with Kelly John, in fact, was more a case of running across his name in the course of managing Hank's affairs and mooning over him privately.
No. Mooning wasn't quite right. Mooning implied she'd been sitting on her butt waiting to be noticed when in reality she rarely spent a weekend at home.
Even week nights were taken up with the hundred-and-one-plus trivia tournaments and gallery showings and round-robin dinners with friends.
She did not moon. She lusted. Straight up. Plain and simple. Easy to understand when taken solely as a reaction.
His eyes were a stunning blue and fringed with incredibly dark lashes, lashes appearing even darker than his thick black hair and brows. His jaw was strong and well defined, as were his chin and his cheekbones.
But it was his mouth that got to her. He was rarely smiling when she saw him; he always seemed so focused, as if anything else would be less than his best, unacceptable, inferior, flawed.
It was that single imagined trait, that perceived confidence, that tied up the entire package with an irresistible bow. She so admired confident men.
Kelly John Beach did more for her underused female libido than any man she'd known. And that made no sense since she didn't know him at all.
Her reaction was one hundred percent physical—a shallow reality of which she was not particularly proud, though it did produce a twinge of sympathy for the male of the species so
often accused of the same.
There was just something about a big man, one who wasn't bulked up or muscle-bound but was perfectly proportioned from head to toe in size extra large.
Kelly John stood at least six foot two, meaning tonight she got to wear her highest heels without fear of looking over when walking beside him and seeing the top of his head.
A small consideration, but she enjoyed being with a man who made her feel feminine and small. Not that she was an Amazon, but she was definitely taller than the national average.
She turned this way, turned that, checking her reflection in her bedroom's cheval mirror. Her hair worked, her heels worked. Her little black dress worked, too.
Now to not fall apart while waiting for Kelly John to get here. Or to stumble all over herself once he arrived.
As if waiting for her to acknowledge the very real possibility of such, a knock on the door sounded. Her heart jumped from the center of her chest to the base of her throat before she could turn.
Still facing the mirror, she watched the rise of color from her neckline to her chin where it settled into her cheeks.
The flush was definitely that of a woman anticipating her lover. Since that was exactly the role she was playing, she took the reaction as a very good sign.
It was the purely sexual tautness low in her belly that she wasn't quite so sure of.
The only way this scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel plan would work was if he got his hands on her now.
He'd decided that on the cab ride over, knowing he'd have to make it fast. They had little time to spare and needed to be on their way.
But if he got his hands on her now, she'd know what to expect later, and her reaction wouldn't be one of a condemned woman facing a firing squad.
Kelly John knocked a second time, waiting for Emma to make up her mind, to decide whether his ass was worth saving.
Because for all her spouting off in Hank's office about her loyalty to her boss, she had no idea what she was getting herself into.
That by the end of tonight, her life might very well be strung up next to his on the line.
