God.” She pulled off the wig. Her real hair pulled loose from its bun in the process, spilling over her shoulders in a rich chestnut cascade. He’d never found brown hair all that exciting before, but Lucy’s was thick and luscious.
By the time he’d made it around to the driver’s side, Lucy was out of her housecoat, which she’d thrown on over her white tailored blouse. Then she cursed. “I forgot my jeans.”
“No, I put them in—” Then he stopped. He’d been so fascinated watching Lucy shimmy out of them, revealing a glimpse of her sensible white panties, that he had forgotten to bring the jeans along. “We’ll get you some clothes, don’t worry.”
He had no business thinking about Lucy’s panties, sensible or otherwise. He had a helluva problem here.
Finding the listening devices was disturbing enough. He’d been sure Lucy was exaggerating, that no one was following her or sneaking into her home. But she hadn’t installed those listening devices herself.
In fact, once he’d examined the bug in her telephone, the list of suspects who could have planted it had shrunk to a handful. That bug was the latest technology, purchased from Russia. So new, in fact, that only his agency had access to it. Besides the Russians, of course. And he didn’t think the Russians were involved in this.
Someone in his own organization had betrayed him, which meant his life and Lucy’s weren’t worth a used teabag unless he found out which agent was the Benedict Arnold—and neutralized him or her, fast.
Two
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Bryan took a circuitous route out of the city, darting on and off the freeway to be absolutely certain they weren’t being followed. Then he headed north on Interstate 95 as a plan slowly formed.
“Are you okay?” he asked Lucy. She was awfully quiet. He’d expected her to be peppering him with questions about where they were going and what would happen next, questions to which he didn’t have all the answers.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry I put you in danger.”
“I knew what I was getting into when I signed on for this gig. You told me there would be some risk.”
She didn’t know the half of it. He’d never expected the risk to come from his own people. “You did great. I wish we could have finished the job, though.”
“I did.”
“Pardon me?”
“After I talked to you, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to Alliance Trust. So I threw caution out the window. Before, I was careful to cover my tracks when I downloaded information. I figured that didn’t matter anymore. So I just downloaded everything in sight. Practically the whole computer system. I can’t believe how much that little memory stick holds.”
“You downloaded everything?” he asked, hardly able to believe it.
“Everything I’ll need. It will take some time to go through it all. Whoever was embezzling from the retirement funds was very sneaky. But I’ve got calendars, phone lists, log-on and log-off times, passwords, who attended what meeting when. Using a process of elimination, I can figure out who made the illicit withdrawals—I know I can.”
“You won’t have to. The agency has some of the best minds in the country—” He stopped. Until he knew who had betrayed him, he didn’t dare turn this information over to anyone. One keystroke, and all of the evidence Lucy had risked her life for could be erased.
“I could do it,” Lucy said. “I’m very good at puzzles. Maybe your organization has experts and high-tech equipment, but I know the people involved. I know how everything worked at that bank. No one is more qualified than me to analyze this data.”
She might just be right. “What will you need?”
“A computer powerful enough to handle the amount of data involved. A quiet place to work. That’s it.”
The plan he’d been working on earlier became a bit firmer in his mind. It was kind of crazy. But he didn’t know any other way to keep Lucy safe. He had access to any number of safe houses, but safe from whom? Everyone who was part of this mission knew those houses, too—Tarantula, Stungun, Orchid and his immediate supervisor, Siberia. His list of suspects. Four people whom, until an hour ago, he would have trusted with his life.
“I think I can accommodate you,” he said.
“Okay, then.” She settled back into her seat, looking satisfied. “Where are we going?”
Finally. He’d wondered when she would get around to asking that. “New York.”
“Your home turf.”
Bryan felt a prickle of apprehension. How did she know that?
“Your accent,” she said before he had a chance to ask. “I went to school with a guy from New York. Long Island. You sound just like him.”
Observant little thing, wasn’t she? During his training, he’d learned to erase every trace of accent from his voice. His safety, and that of his wealthy family, depended on keeping every detail of his personal life separate from his life at the agency. It was like that for all the agents he worked with. They all used their code names, and they never revealed any personal information for any reason.
How had he let his guard down long enough that Lucy had figured out where he was from? Maybe he was slipping. Because of the intense pressure, a lot of agents didn’t last long in the field.
“You work for the CIA?” she asked.
He used to. They’d recruited him in college, when he’d been studying business management with every intention of joining the family business, Elliott Publication Holdings. They said it was because of his straight As and his uncommon athleticism. He’d worked a lot of undercover.
Then a nameless, faceless person had recruited him to a newly formed investigative arm of Homeland Security, an agency so secret it didn’t have a name. The agency had no central office, and it wasn’t mentioned in the national budget. Basically it didn’t exist.
Lying usually came easily to him. But for some reason he didn’t want to lie straight-out to Lucy. He settled for a partial truth. “I work for Homeland Security.”
“I didn’t know Homeland Security had its own spies.”
“Things are still evolving there.”
“How does one become a spy?”
“Why, are you interested in joining up?”
“Maybe. Anything’s better than what I was doing.”
He’d only been kidding, but she was serious. “So why did you work at a bank if you didn’t like it?”
She shrugged. “It was expected of me. And the money was pretty good. I’d been thinking about doing something else, though.”
“Like what?”
“I
