Express Male (8 page)

She couldn’t imagine why he’d find her date of birth so worthy of consideration, but he said nothing more and stayed quiet so long, Marnie began to feel a little uncomfortable.

Then she realized it wasn’t his silence making her uncomfortable—it was the intent way he was studying her face. He seemed to be most interested in her eyes, however, pinning his gaze there for a long time. Long enough to make heat swamp her entire system. Again.

“I need to borrow this for a little while,” he stated—not asked—as he held up her birth certificate. “I’ll get it back to you this afternoon. This evening at the latest.” He looked down at the papers on the table again and plucked her social security card from the assortment. “I’ll need this, too.”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. Not that she got the feeling that she had much choice. “But why do you need them?”

“I can’t say for sure just yet,” he told her. “But I think, Ms. Lundy, that you and I both are going to be surprised by what I learn.”

Oh, Marnie didn’t like the sound of that
at all.
“I have to work tonight at Lauderdale’s,” she told him. “And I have students to teach this afternoon.”

“Tomorrow then,” he said. “We should talk then. Are you free in the morning?”

She nodded. “But I have to work at the store in the evening.”

He took a step backward, into her living room. But he continued to look at her face, as if he wasn’t able to look at anything else. “I apologize again for the inconvenience of last night.”

“Inconvenience,” she repeated blandly. “It was a lot more than that. You scared the hell out of me.”

He made a face that indicated he was genuinely sorry, and continued to watch her eyes. “I apologize for that, too.”

A shudder of heat wound through her at the relentlessness of his gaze. The way he was looking at her then…Hungry. That was the only way she could think to describe him. Like a man who’d been starved and neglected for years and had just stumbled upon a banquet.

He kept walking until he was at her front door, his attention divided between her birth certificate, her social security card and her. Marnie seemed to finally win out over the paper documents, however—and my, but wasn’t
that
a huge compliment, being more important than paper?—because he stuffed the former into his inside jacket pocket and studied her face again. Or, rather, she couldn’t help thinking, her eyes. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was seeing something—or someone—else.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “Around nine okay?”

“Fine.”

“We can talk more then.”

Marnie wanted to ask about what, since he seemed to already know, but decided maybe she wasn’t all that fired up to hear. There was still a chance, however small, that this was nothing but a bad dream. By tomorrow morning, she might wake up to discover Agent Noah Tennant didn’t exist anywhere outside her feverish imagination, so whatever he had to tell her didn’t, either.

And maybe, she thought further, she’d also wake up tomorrow to discover that an asteroid the size of Lithuania had crashed into Ohio, making this whole episode—not to mention Cleveland—moot.

Without a further word, Agent Tennant opened the front door and passed through it, closing it with a soft click behind him. Marnie moved to the big bay window to watch him make his way toward the plain black sedan he’d called to have someone bring to the house earlier. But he didn’t immediately start the car when he slipped behind the wheel, and instead pressed some buttons on his cell phone and put it to his ear. As he spoke to whoever answered at the other end, he studied both her birth certificate and social security card again, clearly reading off the information on each.

At one point, he glanced up to see Marnie looking at him out the window, and he stopped talking, as if he were afraid she might be able to discern what he was saying. Then, obviously realizing that was impossible, he began to speak again to whomever he had called. But he continued to watch Marnie watching him, and for several long moments, neither of them looked away. Finally, though, after ending the connection, he lifted a hand in farewell. Then he started the car and maneuvered it out of the driveway, and made his way down the street.

Not once did he look back.

E
LLIE
C
HANDLER SAT
cross-legged on her living room floor with an oversize mug of coffee in one hand and a sealed OPUS file in the other. She’d shed her suit and heels in favor of baggy brown cargo pants, a waffle-weave Henley the color of red wine and slouchy socks; her dark auburn hair had been shifted from the sophisticated French twist she wore to work to the loose ponytail she favored for home. Like a good agent—even though she wasn’t one yet—she’d followed Noah’s instructions and gotten a few hours of sleep before looking at the file, so now the noonday sun tumbled raucously through the window. Her belly was full of Krispy Kreme jelly-filleds, the coffeepot was full and she was about to embark on her first field assignment for OPUS.

Oh, yeah. Life was
so
good.

The sleek white envelope, Staples style #4673, if she knew her office paraphernalia—and it went without saying that she did—had nary a smudge nor crease to be seen, a testament to how seriously her boss took the job. Even more seriously than Ellie did, which was pretty hard to believe, since she took the job more seriously than anything. Noah never left the office before she did, and she generally never left her desk before six. She’d stay later, but she was always finished with her work by then, and if she got started on the next day’s too soon, she’d run out of things to do by lunchtime. Maybe someday, if she was very lucky, she’d be as overworked as her boss. Because she had her sights set on going straight to the top.

Someday, some way, Ellie Chandler intended to be She Whose Name Nobody Dared Say.

Hey, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. The alternative to working late was going out to hang with friends, then home to unwind. Enjoy a glass of wine. Read a book. Watch a movie. Take a long, luxurious bubble bath. Who needed that kind of crap in their life?

4A wasn’t just the number on the front door of her apartment. It was her personality type, too. She hated sitting around waiting for things to happen, craved a life of adventure and excitement. She wanted to meet the world head-on, on her own terms. Hell, she wanted to change the world to suit her own terms. She hated nonperformers, didn’t suffer fools, couldn’t tolerate idleness. To Ellie, a day without work was a day wasted. She was smart, ambitious, driven. She was the perfect candidate for OPUS field agent.

She was only days away from undertaking her first assignment to prove that. Oh, she’d still be under supervision while completing it, and would have to submit regular reports to Noah. And it wouldn’t be anything major for a first-timer, she knew. But it
would
be exciting. Finally, she’d have a job—no, a calling—with purpose. Finally, she’d have something in her life that was important. Finally, she’d have something that would
be
her life.

Unable to tolerate the suspense any longer, she set her mug on the coffee table and turned her attention to the dossier. The back flap was closed by an official OPUS seal, under which she ran her thumb to carefully separate it from the paper. With a soft whoosh of sound, it pulled away, and she withdrew the contents of the envelope, placing the stack of papers on the floor in front of her as if they were a holy epistle. A brief note from Noah lay on top. It said:

Well, duh. Of course she’d make them proud. She’d been born for this job. It was coded into her DNA.

She set aside the letter and took a deep breath, then began to read hungrily over the first few pages. But by the second paragraph, dread had coated her stomach like rancid fish oil. By page three, she felt as though she was going to throw up. And not just because she realized she’d be remaining in Cleveland for the duration of her assignment when she’d been hoping to go overseas—or, at the very least, Pennsylvania. But because the target of the investigation was also the object of her desire.

Daniel Beck. The boy next door.

Literally. Ever since Daniel had moved into 4C a year ago, Ellie had been lusting after him. Unfortunately, he’d never offered any indication he was interested in her the same way. Though not because he was gay, since she’d seen him in the company of enough women—and she’d heard enough feminine moaning erupting from his bedroom, which abutted her own—to make her realize it wasn’t her gender that put him off. It was her specifically.

No surprise, really, since the women she always saw with him were, to a tart, tarts. Heavy on makeup, light on clothing. A surplus of breasts, a deficit of brains. Most likely to put out. Least likely to move in. Daniel Beck was a good guy who liked bad girls. And men who walked on the wild side always took their time going around the block.

So Ellie had tried to be philosophical and remain just friends with him. They shared the occasional evening together when neither had a date, which was most often Ellie’s condition, not Daniel’s. Or they went to the action flicks together that his usual dates didn’t enjoy. Or when Daniel couldn’t find an extra hand for poker with the boys, he knew Ellie was always up for it. Just like he knew he was always welcome in her home, the same way she knew she was always welcome in his.

Well, except for when that feminine moaning was erupting from his bedroom. But he’d make the same allowance for her, she was sure. Problem was, there hadn’t been any masculine moaning coming from her apartment for a while. Certainly not since Daniel moved in next door. Except for that time the super let himself in to investigate the source of a leak when he thought she wasn’t home, and Ellie coldcocked him before realizing who he was.

So whenever she was with Daniel, she just tried not to notice how his thick black hair made her want to run her fingers through it and how his chocolate-brown eyes made her want to melt in his mouth
and
his hands. She’d tried not to pay attention to the way his T-shirts hugged his finely sculpted biceps and strained against his broad chest with such loving familiarity. She’d made every effort not to daydream about how his big hands might feel skimming over her naked body. And she’d done her best not to ogle his chiseled rump whenever she happened to be walking down the stairs behind him. For the most part, she’d been successful.

Well, except for how she kept noticing his hair, eyes, mouth, hands, biceps, chest, abdomen and rump. And except for how she’d not really been able to keep her feelings for him friendly at all. Other than that, though, everything was fine.

Until she moved aside another page in the dossier to find a color eight-by-ten glossy of Daniel staring back at her.

It was a photo she recognized, too, taken from his employee ID for ChemiTech, the company where he worked as a research chemist. Which was another thing Ellie liked about him. He was a total brainiac, something that also made her marvel at the women he pursued. How such an intelligent man could be so stupid to overlook what was right under his nose in favor of throwaway sex was beyond her. Especially when Ellie was perfectly willing to give him all the throwaway sex he could want.

Damn. Here we go again.
She waited for the kaleidoscopic mental images of his hair, eyes, mouth, hands, biceps, chest, abdomen and rump to pass, then looked down at his photo again.

Daniel Beck was the only guy in the world who was handsome enough that his work ID could pass for a sample from a modeling portfolio. Those dark eyes gazed back at her with a spark of mischief she knew was an integral part of his personality. His unruly, overly long hair curled carelessly over his ears, and his full mouth was curved into just a hint of a smile. He looked playful and charming and sweet. Something twisted painfully in her chest as she looked at him. Hell, he
was
playful and charming and sweet.

He couldn’t possibly be selling government secrets to terrorists.

But when she turned another page, she was hit by a wall of incriminating evidence. ChemiTech held a lot of government contracts, many of them pretty hush-hush. Now, leaks of top-secret information were streaming from the department where Daniel worked, and they’d begun almost immediately after his employment at the company began. The information that had been sold overseas had all come either from projects Daniel was working on, or ones to which he could easily gain access. There had been two suspicious deposits made to his bank account in the past nine months, one for twenty thousand dollars, and one for fifteen thousand dollars. The money had then been immediately withdrawn, and there was no trace of where it went.

Of course, there were others, too, in that department, working on those projects, who had access to the additional files—though no one else’s financial records reflected sudden substantial income. OPUS had narrowed their search to five potential suspects. Daniel was third on that list. The primary suspect was the very man who had brought Daniel to work at ChemiTech, his mentor and former professor, Dr. Sebastian Baird, who had begun working for the company less than a year before Daniel.

Ellie’s stomach roiled with nausea as she read the rest of the file. OPUS had collected a lot of background information on each of the suspects, and there were a number of discrepancies in what OPUS had uncovered about Daniel and what he’d told her about himself. He’d said he grew up in Santa Barbara, California, when in fact he hadn’t moved there until he went to college. He’d actually been born and raised in Apache Junction, Arizona. He’d told Ellie he was a starter for his high-school basketball team and had been elected homecoming king for the girls’ basketball team, mostly because he’d dated the girls’ team in its entirety. He’d also told her he’d lettered in track in college. But according to OPUS’s findings, he’d only been a standout in the Chemistry and Latin clubs in high school, and had been ostracized by the more popular students. In college, his biggest claim to fame was patenting a new synthetic fiber.

In fact, according to OPUS’s files, Daniel Beck carried all the characteristics of the very sort of person who would commit the very type of crime of which he was suspected. He’d been an involuntary outsider at school, smarter than just about everyone else and had had few friends, none of them close. Likewise damning was the fact that he’d been in counseling for a while as a teenager, to treat his unmanageable anger.

The picture OPUS painted of him was in no way similar to the guy Ellie had come to know and…like very much. Daniel Beck was probably the least angry person of her acquaintance. He had lots of friends, and even more girlfriends. There was no freaking way she could see him being the kind of person who would sell out his country, sell out himself.

But then, she didn’t think there was any freaking way he could be a liar, either.

She sighed heavily as she turned another page in the dossier. No wonder Noah had told her she’d have questions after she went over everything. The problem now was that she didn’t think Noah would be able to answer them. No, only Daniel Beck could do that. And Ellie couldn’t think of a single way to ask them that wouldn’t make him suspicious of her right from the start.

At least her cover would be convincing. Naturally Ellie hadn’t told Daniel about her training to become an OPUS agent, since no one was allowed to know where she worked or what she did for a living. To explain her unavailability on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for her spy training, she’d told everyone she’d returned to college to earn her MBA because she wanted to climb the corporate ladder. But she hadn’t even been able to tell anyone she worked as a secretary for OPUS, since the general public wasn’t supposed to know the organization existed. As far as anyone outside OPUS was concerned, Ellie was an accountant for an agency that did government auditing, which was the cover for Ohio’s OPUS office in reality. She’d be reporting to ChemiTech in that persona to perform a standard auditing of the records for every government contract ChemiTech had been awarded, something that should look to Daniel like a happy coincidence and nothing else.

Hiding what she did for a living and covering up her spy training were only small lies, she assured herself. And they didn’t affect her friendship with Daniel. Besides, she’d never expressly said she was going for her master of business administration. She’d been thinking of MBA in terms of Most Buff Agent. And she for sure could be that. She worked out every morning.

She thumbed through the rest of the dossier and tried to sort through her myriad feelings. This was a plum assignment, not at all the sort of thing that generally went to a trainee, which was probably another reason Noah had told her she’d have questions. Ellie had been assigned to it expressly because of her connection to Daniel—her cover would just be that much more convincing. If she wrapped this up quickly and efficiently—which, of course, she would—she’d shoot right to the top of the list for future plum assignments.

But would she be abusing Daniel’s friendship and betraying his trust if she investigated him for wrongdoing without his knowledge? Then again, if she wanted to rise to the higher echelons of OPUS—and yeah, baby, she did—she couldn’t let little things like abuse of a friendship or betrayal of trust stop her.

Wow. Her first big rite of passage as an agent. And she wasn’t even an agent yet.

Bottom line, she thought, OPUS wanted her to complete an assignment. Period. And Ellie, like the premier OPUS agent she intended to be, would complete it to its fullest extent. She just hoped that doing so wouldn’t wreck the lives of two people who had become very important to her—herself and Daniel Beck.