don’t know. He’s too smart to fall for this, isn’t he?”
“Not if he’s sure the woman’s a traitor.”
Another slow smile curled her lips. “You’re right. His Achilles’ heel is definitely his patriotism. If he thinks CIIC’s involved, he might believe us. Besides, we don’t have much choice but to try this.” She sighed, switching the subject. “Do you know why I love you?”
“Because I’m brilliant and deviant?”
She nodded. “Yes. And because Edison Lone, as much as I’ve sometimes enjoyed his company, is becoming a thorn in my side. I knew you could get rid of him.”
“Lover,” he murmured, “a rose such as yourself should never have a thorn.”
1
THAT’S WHAT I LOVE about words, Edison Lone thought ruefully. Unlike women, they came with handbooks of rules and regulations. Dictionaries and grammar books told you how to deal with them. They were dependable. Reliable. Predictable. And because he hated to see words spliced and diced, as he so often did while cracking codes for the government, he was extremely careful when choosing his own. He uttered a long, succinct string of expletives.
His boss, Eleanor Luders, looked vaguely alarmed. “Excuse me?”
“C’mon,” he chided, appalled that anyone would require him to research a low-level assistant such as Selena Silverwood right now. “You don’t really need a professional code cracker for this job, do you?” His deliberate blue-eyed gaze panned the conference table, landing on Eleanor, a tall woman with white-blond, shoulder-length hair, wearing a practical gray suit; then on her boss, Newton Finch, a fifty-year-old ex-New Yorker who was wearing rumpled gray pinstripes; then finally on his boss, Carson Cumberland, who looked like a replica James Bond, the Pierce Brosnan version, also gray-clad. Combined, they seemed about as cheery as the rainy April sky over D.C., and judging from the grim smiles, silver didn’t line the clouds, either.
“Care to sit?” Eleanor asked, ignoring his question.
“Love to.” Instead of dropping his tall, broad-shouldered body into one of the plush chairs around the conference table, Edison continued, “Like I said, I found some suspicious personal ads in one of the free tabloids. The ads are for sexual bondage, but references to getting tied up—with whom, where and when—have convinced me that somebody’s using the ads to negotiate the sale of confidential information, maybe from IBI.”
Newton looked concerned. “Have any proof?”
“If I did, I’d have taken further action.”
Eleanor’s glance reminded him not to antagonize superiors. Glance of censure duly noted, thought Edison. Duly ignored. “I do have a hunch, though,” he added, deciding there was nothing he hated more than wasting American tax dollars haggling with the brass. “So, right now, investigating an assistant would be an inefficient use of my time. Look…” Softening his voice, he tried to sound diplomatic. “Forget Selena Silverwood. My time’s better spent analyzing the classifieds.”
The suddenly flirtatious spark in Eleanor’s liquid blue eyes made Edison regret sleeping with her seven years ago. Chalk it up to a Christmas office party when he’d been young, green and still getting his feet wet at IBI. He’d been wearing the proverbial lampshade on his head, and Eleanor, who’d been an administrator in another division, had looked like a million bucks. Edison never imagined he’d wind up transferred to her division years later, and now he counted himself lucky that she’d recently gotten married.
“You’ve always proved yourself unusually intuitive,” she purred, her marriage doing nothing to curb the seductive tone she used with Edison. “Early on, I learned to trust your instincts. They’re so…animal. Even the president was impressed by how you arrested that Venezuelan last week.”
“I’ve got a feeling a big deal’s about to go down,” Edison said, turning a deaf ear to her flattery. “Can’t you put Tom on this Selena Silverwood thing? Or Steve? Or Gary Hughes? Didn’t Hughes crack the codes that exposed all the new military installations in Syria?”
“Gary’s good,” admitted Eleanor. “But you’re better. And the president was impressed by the laptop case.”
More like the lapdog case. While retrieving data from laptop computers stolen from overseas dignitaries, Edison had caught a Venezuelan official smuggling out information about American spies. When the man and his wife were nabbed, Edison wound up with the wife’s dog.
“Did anyone adopt that puppy dog?” asked Eleanor.
“Puppy. Dog. I think that’s redundant,” remarked Edison.
Eleanor chose to ignore the grammar lesson. “Didn’t you put an ad in the paper?”
“It appeared beside one of the suspicious classifieds I need to research,” Edison lied, raking a hand through thick, tousled raven hair as he redirected the conversation. “And no. Nobody in their right mind would adopt that dog.”
Eleanor softened. “How is Marshmallow?”
“Still alive. And I’m calling him M.”
“Cute,” returned Eleanor. “Like in the James Bond movies.”
A sterling tag dangling from a scarlet collar had identified the dog, which looked like a four-pound marshmallow that had survived a whirlwind trip through a high-speed blender. At the Venezuelan dignitary’s house, before coming home with Edison, the dog had licked Edison’s face and cuddled. Since then he’d urinated on carpets, humped the leg of a Friday night date, gnawed Edison’s favorite moccasins and exhibited dietary habits that excluded everything but filet mignon, cooked rare.
“Edison,” Eleanor continued now, “we value your time and realize you require no supervision. You are your own boss here. However, CIIC alerted us to—”
“CIIC wants me to investigate Selena Silverwood?”
“As I said,” Eleanor assured him, “we’d never waste your time.”
“While at work, Ms. Silverwood’s been writing in a personal diary that CIIC believes could be in code,” added Newton. “She might be using the book to smuggle out information, which is why they need your input.”
Carson tightened the knot of his tie, looking concerned. “What if this potential theft is related to those classified ads about bondage you mentioned?”
Against his better judgment, Edison got interested, rolled out a chair and seated himself. He glanced around the conference table. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Edison noticed Eleanor tried not to look openly victorious as she reached toward a built-in console under the table and dimmed the overhead light. As a wall panel slid back to expose a screen, she lifted a remote control device and began clicking through a series of black-and-white slides, mostly still shots taken from video cameras hidden inside IBI.
“Selena Silverwood,” she said. “Thirty years old. Class B security clearance. Employed eight months at IBI, and previously by civilian companies.”
“You’re kidding,” Edison muttered, squinting at the screen. Any
