Chastity Flame (4 page)

Chastity still woke at dawn as if to
an alarm clock and found Damien slumped, mouth open, beside her,
his arm wrapped protectively around her waist. He looked cute even
then, like a child with a firm hold on his best soft toy. She took
a moment to gaze at his face. It was a good face, untroubled by the
weight of the world, still bearing the relaxed look of a night of
good frolic.

But duty called. Chastity got up to
find the bath and was surprised to find only a large glass and
marble shower cubicle. He either came from money or he was a damn
good professor. Chastity smiled at herself in the mirror. He
certainly had good communication skills.

She had barely got her head under the
spigot when the shower door clicked open and Damien stepped in
behind her. "I've heard it's advised to always share showers. Very
green," he said as he reached up to cup her breasts.

"Very green," Chastity
murmured.

"Bend over," Damien urged and she bent
over and put her hands on the cool marble, gasping as much at the
cold stone as at the sudden thrust inside her. Oh God, it felt
good! She reached down to massage her clit as Damien grabbed her
hips and pounded against her backside, coming very
quickly.

Before she had a moment to complain,
he reached up and detached the shower head, bringing it down to
replace her hand. Chastity leaned back against him and felt the
warm water agitate her flesh until a wave of pounding orgasms
rippled from her thighs and she found herself breathless again. It
was fortunate that Damien kept such a good hold on her with his
other arm. She was tempted to just melt down the drain.

"Good morning," he whispered in her
ear before kissing it.

"Morning." Chastity grinned. "If
you've got eggs and bacon frying in the kitchen, I think I might
have to kidnap you."

Of course, she didn't have time for
breakfast. Damien pressed his card on her—once he found one stuffed
inside his battered messenger bag, apologizing for the sorry state
of coffee-stained rectangle—and asked her to call him. "Soon, very
soon."

She had to fight her way out the door,
pulling away from a kiss that threatened to start things all over
again. "How can you leave me like this?" Damien quizzed her, his
robe tenting out emphatically. Chastity laughed, but knew she was
already late.

"You don't want me to get fired, do
you? I can't show up in the clothes I wore yesterday." She could
feel his eyes upon her as she clattered down the steps to the road.
I am not going to swivel my hips because he's watching, she told
herself as she stepped out into the morning world, but Chastity had
a big smile on her face that lasted all the way home. The walk was
just long enough to get her concentrating again instead of
replaying scenarios through her head, but as she passed through the
square she gave Gandhi a jaunty greeting.

Out of habit, she checked the traffic
up and down the block in either direction for anything suspicious,
walking or driving, but stepped up to the doorway to punch in her
access code with a light heart. Chastity pushed the door open to
the sterile interior that she always thought of as clean. But the
windows needed to be opened; a little fresh air would do the place
some good. Walking through to the kitchen, she heard the computer
tweet upstairs but ignored it, reaching over the sink to slide the
window open onto the small garden. Her gnome, Tipsy, stared
vacantly at a starling wrestling with some small object after
jumping at the sound of the window opening.

I should do something with the garden,
Chastity thought for the hundredth time. She could hear the
computer tweet again, sighed and headed upstairs. She plopped into
the office chair and slipped the headset on. "Hello,
Monitor."

"A bit late this morning?" It wasn't
really a question. The image on the screen was not amused. "Has the
dysfunction been corrected?"

"Of course."

"You might have let us know," Monitor
continued, her hair as always a bit askew as if she could not be
bothered to ever look in a mirror. Chastity always thought she
looked like a reference librarian whom she had asked to find a
picture book. It was a combination of the hair on end, a slightly
miffed look, and monumental disbelief that she'd be asked such a
thing. Chastity might have put her age at about 50, but ten years
ago she would have guessed the same. Perhaps she was aging
backwards.

"Have I ever failed?" Chastity said,
trying not to think of the card sitting in her pocket even as her
fingers crept around its edges.

"There will come a time that you do,"
Monitor answered evenly. Chastity knew it was true, but she chose
not to think about that. Life was made up of things you had to
notice and things you could avoid. It made things simpler. "What
did you find out?"

"He was a moron," Chastity said with a
sigh. "He was ready to sell out his company and had no idea what it
was he had sold, just allowed access to a hacker who did know what
he was looking for and found it. They can patch that, right?
Problem over now."

"Hardly," Monitor snorted. "We need to
know to whom he sold that information."

"He didn't know the guy, who clearly
did know exactly what he was doing."

"You might have gotten a description
from him."

"It wasn't even likely the guy
himself. He sent in a clone." But she cursed her haste
anyway.

"But we might have found something,
anything that might have helped. Be thorough. You know better than
this." Monitor looked entirely too much like her mother when she
was cross. It irritated Chastity considerably. "We have to know if
it was just a lucky strike or whether the person in question knew
they were handling data for us. Security depends upon
it."

"Understood."

"Dig deeper next time," Monitor
continued. "If we have a breach, we need to root it out as soon as
possible."

"What's next for me?"

"You'll know in a few hours," came the
curt reply. "Out."

Chastity took it in her stride. Just
another day in the office, wasn't it? She pulled the headset off,
laid it on the desk and sighed. Well, time to cruise the net and
update her status. It seemed like a bad idea somehow, even though
she used a fake persona. Still, who would know? A fantasy life
about a normal woman who worked a nine-to-five job: who would
suspect it was a cover?

Just then the doorbell rang. Chastity
looked at the time in the upper right hand corner of the screen and
grinned. It must be the post. She clattered down the steps to open
the door.

"Good morning, Miss World. Looks like
you have some mail." The smiling postman handed her a bunch of
advertising circulars and a local newsletter, as usual. She never
got personal mail. There was never anything that couldn't have gone
through the letter slot. But that would have been no
fun.

"Hello, Mr. Postman. Busy
day?"

"Always," he said, pretending that his
bag was weighing him down. "A postman's job is not a happy
one."

"I thought that was a
policeman's."

"What did Gilbert and Sullivan know
anyway? Have you any letters for me? Postcards from exotic locales
with saucy cartoons? Manifestoes for the papers?"

"Nothing, sorry. I never do anything
interesting or have anyone to write to."

"Oh, not true, not true! Just give me
the word, I'll kiss the kiddies goodbye, tell my wife to stuff it
and we'll travel the world together, sipping champagne, eating
caviar and sending postcards to everyone we know."

"Maybe next week," Chastity laughed,
closing the door as he went whistling away. Chastity had just
dropped the mail into the recycling bin when the doorbell rang
again. When she opened it, she found it was not her postman but a
gum-chewing delivery boy. Emphasis on boy: he had a nasty rash of
pimples across his forehead and a big stain on his brown uniform.
She didn't dare think what it might be. Signing for the package as
the kid leered at her chest, Chastity couldn’t wait to get the door
between them.

Although the return address read,
"Prews, Magoo, Targetts and Benmen", she knew it was from Monitor.
All the levels of subterfuge were tiresome at times. She tore it
open. A mobile phone? Great. She had been able to avoid them so far
because of the security risk. Why now?

As if on cue, the computer
pinged again. Upstairs once more, Chastity found a message
waiting:
Carry this phone with you on the
next mission for tracking purposes. If it rings, it's us. Do not
use it unless strictly necessary, but you may dial 999 to reach
us
.

Chastity sighed. It was like
being a tagged animal. She didn't usually have reason to complain
about the job, but just lately things were beginning to irk. Maybe
it was the fine spring weather. May hadn't been so gorgeous in
years. It was early, but the square outside smelled alive with the
annual rebirth. From childhood a phrase
resurfaced
, thanne longen folk to goon on
pilgrimage
: that's exactly what it felt
like. With luck the next assignment would involve
travel.

Ah, but what about the dishy Damien
then?

She didn't have time to consider that
thorny question because the mobile phone rang just then, giving off
some spastic techno beat that was probably meant to be a
recognizable hit, but failed to ring any bells for Chastity. Surely
she could change it to some kind of Mozart tune. "Yes?"

"Do you like the Kylie?" It was Kevin,
of course.

"You labeled the package, too, I'll
bet," Chastity said, without responding to his question. "Why
you?"

"Because one day you will realize how
much you love me and want to settle in a little cottage in Dorset
with me and our fifteen children."

"Yes, undoubtedly. But I meant why you
and not Monitor?"

"You're not her only puppy," Kevin
said, clicking away at a keyboard in the background. "She's got all
kinds of kennels to mind."

He did come up with the oddest
metaphors. "Is there a point to this call, beyond
torture?"

"Oh, you wound me, you do. One day, I
tell you—"

"Tell me now. Are you just testing the
line?"

"No, no," he hastened to say. "You're
to go to Brussels. Take the Eurostar and check into Be Manos. It's
near Midi. Train 9138 leaves at 14.34 and arrives at 17.44. You
have a ticket waiting for you at St. Pancras."

"I see. Anything else?"

"I suspect you’re after our hacker,
but no one tells me anything," Kevin said, his disappointment
evident.

"Could be anything," Chastity said,
heading up the stairs to get her roller bag as she spoke. "Any idea
how long I'll be there?"

"No one tells me anything," he whined
again.

"Thanks, Kevin. Goodbye."

"Hey, maybe when you get
back—"

Chastity pressed the red button, which
ended the connection. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as slamming
down a receiver, she decided. Now, what to pack for Brussels?
Something rather Audrey Hepburn, she was sure.

Chapter Three

"Is this seat taken?"

Chastity looked up from her
lounge seat to see a tall man with greying hair gesturing toward
the orange chair beside her. She shook her head and returned to her
novel, but part of her attention was captured by his handsome
profile. For some reason she hadn't been able to get into
North and South
as quickly
as she had Gaskell's other novels, so at last she closed the book
with a sigh and stretched. Still another hour to go, according to
her new mobile.

"Would you care for a coffee?" the
gentleman beside her offered.

"That would be lovely," Chastity
answered with genuine pleasure. Her gallant returned with coffee
and all the accoutrements, and she gratefully added a helping of
cream to the rich black brew.

"Simon Chalk," he said by way of
introduction, offering her a smartly manicured and surprisingly
large hand to shake.

"Masie Diamond," Chastity offered,
picking one of her stock names at random and reminding herself to
keep to it. It was not, however, the name on her
passport.

"Do you make this trip often? Or is
that far too dull of a question?"

"How about 'what did you want to be
when you grew up?'" Chastity asked with a smile. It was always one
of her favourites.

As expected, he laughed and blinked a
little at her. "I wanted to be a milkman," he said, his grin
betraying a good bit of embarrassment at his sudden revelation.
Chastity was sure he had expected to be the one leading the
conversation.

"A milkman?" she prompted.

"I'm not sure what it was," Simon
continued, "I think I just liked our milkman. He was always kind
and cheerful. I liked the crisp white uniform, too. What a strange
thing to dig up from memory. And you?"

"I wanted to be a circus performer,"
Chastity said, no longer sure if it was a lie or the truth. "I
wanted to ride bareback on a horse and do pirouettes and stand on
one leg."