Embraced by Fire (12 page)

She waited. Muffled sounds came from where Johnny was working. Safe—at least for now. She needed to get out before he found her. Crawling out from under the desk, she headed toward the corridor, glancing behind her as she went, dreading Johnny choosing that moment to leave. She ducked around the corner and slammed into a wall.

What was that doing there, she thought dazedly?

Strong hands caught her upper arms and stopped her falling. Not wall, hard male chest. Her eyes tracked over shirt buttons and up to his face.

Ryu
. What was he doing here?

Before she could even think about opening her mouth, he clamped a hand over her lips and pressed her against the wall. Instinctively her fingers grabbed handfuls of his shirt as she reached for something to steady herself. Her eyes widened as his muscular body pressed against hers.

“Not a sound.” His breath whispered against her ear, almost soundless.

She nodded and he released her mouth. He locked his eyes on hers for a moment, as if making sure she understood, then he angled his head so he could see into the cubical farm.

Kait closed her eyes. He hadn’t moved so his body still pressed hers against the wall. She could feel the strength of his chest and the hard length of his thighs against hers. Strange things were afoot but…silver linings and all that. She planned to enjoy being this close to him while she could. Her lips twitched. She’d better because it would probably never happen again.

Lord, his smell was intoxicating. That spicy-smoky scent had taunted her ever since he first walked into Fantasia Alive a week ago. The thought made her eyes open with a jolt. Was it really only a week ago? Johnny was right. She’d never fallen for a man so fast.

Ryu’s arms tightened around her and she realised he was pulling her gently toward the stairwell. She engaged her feet to help, but instead of going to the stairs he tugged her into the women’s bathroom. He released her and she looked around in surprise. What were they doing in here?

Ryu kept the door open a fraction and looked out through the barely-finger-width gap. Kait strained her ears, finally hearing what he must have heard while she indulged in sensory and sexual overload.

Footsteps.

Johnny was on the move again. They waited in silence as the footsteps got closer.

****

Ryu watched the DJ vanish into the elevator, then he moved away from the bathroom door and looked over at Kait. She was hugging her body as if sheer effort would stop her falling apart. Her face was pale in the harsh florescent light and her eyes huge with fear. Right now she was looking at him as if trying to decide whether he was next on the danger list or her unexpected saviour.

He ran his fingers through his hair. What was he going to do with her? It was quite clear from the way she behaved a moment ago she wasn’t part of this, but she’d stumbled most unfortunately into the middle of it.

When he spotted Johnny leaving in the middle of the dance, instinct prompted Ryu to follow. The last thing he expected to find was Kait doing the same thing.

“Is he gone?” Her words came out stronger than he expected.

She’s not going to let this throw her
, he thought, impressed. He folded his arms and leant against the doorframe. “Yes, he’s gone. Did he see you?”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her arms. “I don’t think so…”

“When he realises neither of us are downstairs he’s going to suspect.”

“Suspect us of what? What’s going on?” A note of panic crept into her voice.

“Suspect that one of us saw him up here. Which is a bad thing for both of us.” He pushed away from the door. “Come on, I want to get a closer look at what he was doing.”

He heard her following him to where Johnny had been kneeling.

“He was working where that desk is now,” she said when he stopped.

“Yeah, I saw him, too.”

She glanced at him. “I didn’t see you.”

“You weren’t meant to.”

He pushed the desk out of the way and crouched down next to the wall. Pulling a screwdriver out of his pocket, he worked at removing the cover on the Ethernet port.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding out exactly what Johnny was doing.” He pulled the cover off and looked in the cavity behind it. “Damn.” He tugged a few wires loose and pulled a small black box out of the wall.

“What is that thing? What’s going on?”

Ryu mentally debated. It wasn’t safe for her to know. On the other hand, she already knew too much. He ached to trust her.

“We’ve been tracking a black market information racket,” he found himself answering. “Someone connected to Fantasia Alive has been setting up wireless access points within companies you work for. We weren’t sure exactly how they were doing it, but this little device clears up that mystery.”

He showed her the box. “This gadget allows them to piggyback on someone else’s computer into the network, making them undetectable. After raiding the network, stripping it of anything useful they can find, they send a super-encrypted wireless transmission to their listening post. Then they sell the stolen data to the highest bidder.

“Usually they use meet-and-greet and planning meetings to get a layout of the office, purloin access cards, that sort of thing. Tonight was a gift. The performance was actually in the office building.”

If only he’d been able to convince Neil to provide him more back-up. Instead, he was virtually on his own tonight. Oh, his back-up team was good. Usually he’d say one of them was as good as two or three members of any other team. But no matter how good they were, they couldn’t be in more than one place at a time. One van outside wasn’t sufficient surveillance. There were too many exit points for them to watch everywhere at once.

He’d alerted them as soon as he started after Johnny. Now he hoped they caught the bastard as he left. Unfortunately he had a sneaking suspicion Johnny would get out free and clear.

“Who are you?” Kait looked at him, a bewildered expression smudging her features.

“You know who I am.” He stood up, hoping to put off seeing her reaction when she realised he’d been lying to her.

She glared at him. If looks alone could cause ignition he’d be patting out the flames on his shirt. He was almost tempted to sniff for smoke but caught himself in time.

“Who are you, Ryu MacKay?” Her voice took on painfully precise quality. “And what are you doing here?”

He sighed. “I work for a government agency which stops people like Johnny doing bad things.”

“Government agency, bad things, that all sounds pretty vague.” The first sparks of anger were burning away her confusion. “And please don’t talk to me like a child.”

“Sorry, I didn’t intend it that way.” He shrugged apologetically. “I’m not permitted to tell you more.”

“That’s why you didn’t expect to work for us long, isn’t it? You were only going to be around long enough to expose Johnny. Then whoosh you’d be gone.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m not going to be around long, but things are happening even faster than I expected. We didn’t know Johnny was our man until tonight.”

Her mouth tightened. “Were we all suspects? Was I a suspect?”

“What do you want me to say?” He turned away and pushed the desk back into place.

“I want the truth.”

“The truth.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Yes, everyone was a suspect. But I never thought you were involved, Kait.”

“Thanks. I think.” The words came out grudgingly.

“Come on, we’d better head downstairs. See if Johnny is still here and make excuses for our absence.”

“Are you going to arrest him if he’s there?” she asked, as they walked back to the stairs.

“No, we’ll keep an eye on him, see if he leads us to his associates.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was taking this a lot better than he expected. Or maybe it wasn’t real to her yet?

He stopped and made sure he had eye contact. “If he is downstairs, I need you to pretend none of this happened. It’s absolutely critical he suspects nothing. People’s lives depend on this, Kait. Can you do that? Can you act like you never set foot in this world of secrets?”

She nodded jerkily. “I…yes, I think so. But I’ll need answers. Johnny is my friend, I don’t want to deceive him. And I hardly know you.”

He ran a finger down the soft curve of her cheek. “You don’t know who to trust. I understand that. For now, keep out of his way.”

“How do I know you’re one of the good guys?”

Her words were a stab to the heart. “You’ll have to take my word for it.” After all, he wasn’t meant to be telling her any of this, there was no way he could go so far as to give her proof.

She looked deeply disturbed as they continued down the stairs. When they reached the main room Johnny was nowhere in sight and David, the MC, was manning the music.

“Blast, looks like he’s cleared out.” Ryu turned and caught her arm.

Looking down into her tense face, he resisted the urge to kiss her. It might make him feel better but it wouldn’t help her. She would probably slap him.

“I’m going to talk to David, then I need to make contact with my team. Be careful.” He waited until she nodded before letting her go and walking into the crowd. Things had become a lot more complicated.

Chapter 13

Kait took a deep breath and forced herself to compartmentalize, yet again, what had happened a couple of hours ago and focus on her job. No matter how hard she tried the events from upstairs kept seeping into her mind. Johnny…Ryu…her confusion…

Blinking hard, she pushed the images as far back as she could. There would be time later to deal with Ryu being some kind of covert operative, and Johnny being a criminal.

She shook her head. It was all too crazy. Johnny? Her friend Johnny using the company as cover to perpetrate crimes. She couldn’t believe it. Then Ryu also using Fantasia Alive as cover, albeit for totally different reasons.

Drat, there she went again, thinking about it. She slammed the door on her thoughts. She felt like a woman pulled between angels and demons—but didn’t know which was which.

Damn Johnny, and damn Ryu, too.

“Found you.” Rachael’s voice so close behind her made her jump.

She pressed a hand against her chest. “Jeeze, Rach, give me a fright why don’t you.”

“Is that a guilty conscience I see?” Rachael eyes scraped over Kait.

“What are you talking about? I just didn’t expect you to creep up on me like that.”

“For the record I didn’t creep, you were so busy eating Mac with your eyes you didn’t see me.”

“I was not.” Was she?

“I noticed you were both gone for awhile.” Rachael wiggled her eyebrows. “That was quick work. Is he any good?”

“He asked me to give him a run down on his performance tonight so we stepped out where it was quieter.” She and Ryu had agreed earlier on their excuse.

“You usually leave that till the debrief,” Rachael said speculatively.

“This was his first indoor show and he wanted to talk about it while it was fresh in his mind.” Kait tried to keep her voice calm and professional. She didn’t want to add food to Rachael’s already fertile imagination.

“Rats, I was hoping for a bit of juicy gossip.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

Rachael glanced over her shoulder and moved closer so no one would overhear them. “Did you at least put the moves on him?”

“Rachael!”

“What? I tell you about my love life.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Kait raked her eyes over the thinning crowd. “The party is winding down. It’s time to clear things away.”

“Fine, I can take a hint, but don’t think this is over.”

Kait watched as Rachael walked away in high dudgeon. She sighed, wishing Rachael wasn’t quite such a high maintenance friend. She didn’t want to talk about Ryu because she really had no idea where she stood with him.

Tonight’s revelations changed things. Suddenly, he wasn’t a proper employee, and her reservations about getting involved with someone she managed were no longer valid. Of course, that threw up a whole slew of other issues. Such as why would any sane woman get mixed up with him knowing he was some kind of secret agent? And, cripes, that meant he wasn’t who she thought he was. He wasn’t a struggling performer, he was someone else entirely. So who the hell was Ryu MacKay?

****

Ryu climbed into the van waiting for him at the back of the building. The blacked-out windows hid those inside from view, but he wasn’t surprised to see most of the team, even those not rostered on tonight.

“We lost him.” Derek’s words were as stark as the emotion behind them.

Ryu slumped into a seat and ran his fingers through his hair. He’s been afraid this would happen.

“I broke everyone into smaller groups so we could cover as much ground as possible, but there’s only so much we can do with a building this big.” Adrian might sound calm, but the lines around his mouth were deeper than usual.

Spock closed his laptop with a harsh click. “We set up a few remote cameras so we saw him leave, but we lost sight of him after that.”

Ryu sat up straight.” You saw him leave?”

Spock nodded. “Yeah, out a fire escape on level two. But Neil only got releases for three cameras so there was no way we could monitor the exits and track where he went afterwards.”

“Do we at least know a direction?” Ryu’s gaze jumped from one person to the next.

“Delilah was covering the exits on that side of the building, so we know he went down Flair street. Unfortunately, his car was parked right outside and she wasn’t close enough to catch him. She lost Johnny at the intersection.”

“Shit.” Ryu slumped back again. “Where is she now?”

“On her way here.”

“I can’t believe we only have one van and three cameras,” Derek growled. “Usually we have more equipment than we could possibly use. Any situation, you name it, and we’re ready to roll.”

“It’s a matter of filling in the paper work ahead of time. I have to spend hours in careful planning and contingency preparation. The equipment you’re used to doesn’t happen by magic.” Adrian’s voice was calm as he explained the bureaucratic basics.