Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2) (15 page)

Next up after him was Irina. He could let her make the first few attempts on her own, but what would be the fun in that?

He positioned himself behind her and cupped her hand—the one clenching the ball in a death grip—with his much larger palm. He loved the soft scent of her, a combination of vanilla and a subtle undertone with a little more bite. It summed her up nicely. The sharp inhale of her breath as his fingers danced across her ribs had his own breathing suddenly unsteady.

“Hey! No consorting with the enemy,” one of the women on his team protested, although her complaint was good natured. A chorus of agreements from the bench, also all in good fun, backed her up.

He could feel Irina start to tense. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, on the lane.

“Ignore them, babe,” he said. “I know my priorities.”

“Are you sure about that?” she murmured.

Her quiet, faintly accusing question and the loads of meaning behind it drew him up short. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Not when it came to her.

He stepped away from her, his hands in the air. “Ladies, you’re absolutely right. There will be no more consorting.”

Irina turned out to be the worst bowler ever, sending the first two balls down the gutter and the other women into fits of hysterics.

“I can’t take it,” Meghan said to Kale, shaking her head. “If you won’t consort with her, I’m going to have to.” She walked over to Irina and took the ball from her hands. “Honey, try putting more hip into it and a little less hop. The ball’s not supposed to bounce off the lane like that.”

The other women were quick to offer their advice too. As soon as Irina began to relax, so did Kale. She even looked like she might be enjoying herself.

For his part, he spent the rest of the evening ferreting out information. He got nothing useful from Meghan. No, he didn’t have any competition for Dr. Glasov’s affections that she was aware of. No, she didn’t know what Dr. Glasov was working on, and neither did anyone else—it was top secret. Yes, she made all the travel arrangements for senior management, including Dr. Glasov. No, she had no idea what Dr. Glasov’s favorite flower might be, but lilies were usually safe. Roses were too cliché.

The men hovering at the bar weren’t a whole lot more help. The company had hired good people who were disinclined to talk about their work with strangers, particularly when the questions involved Irina—or rather, the illustrious Dr. Glasov.

By the end of the night he no longer believed she was being targeted by someone inside the company—or at least the possibility was bumped several slots lower. While he’d hardly met everyone, he’d gotten a reasonable sampling of employees from several departments and at multiple levels of authority within them. She simply wasn’t part of any loop. She worked on her own and kept to herself. There were no coworkers to know or be jealous of her successes—exactly as she’d tried to tell him, right from the first.

He had to be on the wrong path.

Frustration ate at him all the way home. He’d given her the keys so she could drive since neither of them had had more than the one beer. It kept her occupied and gave him a chance to think about what to do next. If he didn’t get some sort of lead soon he was going to have to step up his fact-finding approach. Unfortunately, he had no idea what more he could do other than continue to observe. Dan had tied his hands as far as the use of any government resources he might otherwise have drawn on. He and Irina were in this alone.

He’d already made a really big mistake over that surveillance camera. She also didn’t know that CSIS wasn’t openly investigating whoever was cyberstalking her. If she ever found out about either of those things she’d never forgive him. He’d dug himself a hole and any second he could be buried in it.

He began picking apart her earlier comment about his priorities, trying to figure out if she’d meant what he thought—that she was as frustrated as he was and about the same thing. Meghan had said Irina would get bored with someone who couldn’t stimulate her mentally as well as physically, or words to that effect. Was that why Irina had been so agreeable to keeping things casual between them? Why she’d gone all Dr. Glasov the morning after? He was good in bed, but otherwise no challenge for her?

He’d love to show her he was more than just a pretty face. Unfortunately, in this instance, he wasn’t so sure that he was.

Chapter Nine

She’d had a good time. Much better than she’d hoped for. Irina wasn’t sure, however, that Kale had learned anything useful.

She set up her laptop on the kitchen table so she could respond to a few time-sensitive, industry-related emails she hadn’t been able to address earlier at the bowling alley because she didn’t have access from her phone to the necessary data. She never stored important information in any cloud.

Her laptop was taking too long to load. She stared at it, a sinking sensation that was becoming all-too familiar twisting her stomach.

“I’ve got a problem,” she said.

“What is it?”

Kale had been on the other side of the kitchen, staring into the shadowy backyard through the patio doors. He came to where she was sitting and placed a hand on her shoulder, bringing his cheek close to hers as he bent forward so he, too, could look at the screen.

He couldn’t seem to help himself. The man was a toucher.

She forgot everything else. All evening he’d been friendly and charming, the perfect Norse god to take on a date. The women they’d bowled with had been completely bowled over by him, and why wouldn’t they be?

She wasn’t immune to him either. Not by a long shot. But she couldn’t for the life of her figure out the signals he sent.

She tried to focus on the screen and not the incredible sensation of his thumb absently massaging her tense rhomboid muscle. Oddly enough, his touch settled her stomach and nerves. “The botnet is back, which likely means at least one of my contacts was already infected before I could shut it down and it’s spreading through all our personal networks.”

“Great. Now we’re getting somewhere.” She could practically hear him rubbing his hands in his head. The pressure on her rhomboid increased in direct proportion to his enthusiasm.

“In what way?” For her, this wasn’t a reason to celebrate.

He kept his eyes on the screen and his hand on her shoulder. “If whoever’s behind the botnet is the same person—or people—responsible for your pop-ups at work, then they’re looking for specific information. If the botnet is spreading through your contacts it’s because you have something in common with at least one of them. I wonder if anyone on your contacts list is having the same pop-up problems you are?”

Her chest muscles tightened. He was shifting the focus of his investigation from her current workplace to her external contacts and that wasn’t good. “You don’t think the weapons systems design project I’m working on is the real target, do you.”

“I’m not dismissing the possibility of it just yet, but I do think you know enough geeky science people around the world that I should have been looking at your broader connections long before now.” He tapped a link on the screen. One of the emails popped open. He breathed in and out a few times. His tone conveyed awe. “You
know
this guy?”

“We shared the same advisor in grad school.” He was a nuclear physicist currently consulting for NASA, but they’d taken a master’s program together when she was seventeen. He’d been twenty-nine and infinitely patient when it came to her shyness over public presentations, helping her to get past it.

Kale canted his head to the side and looked at her as if she were a new species that he couldn’t quite comprehend. She’d seen that particular expression on people’s faces before and didn’t like seeing it on his. It never failed to make her feel like a freak. He was probably relieved his boss had told him that sleeping with her wasn’t professional. She couldn’t even talk dirty in bed like a normal person.

Her fingers automatically went to the keyboard. “I’ll send out a group email to let everyone know they’ve been infected.”

He caught her wrist. “Not just yet. Can you print off a copy of your contacts list for me? I want to fax it to my boss in Ottawa to see if he knows of anything going on in the world that might involve one or more of these people.” He shook his head as if unable to contain his disbelief. “This reads like a roster of mad scientists working toward world domination.”

Irina was immediately defensive. “None of the scientists I know are mad. They aren’t interested in world domination. They’re dedicated to research.”

Blue eyes sparkled with sudden humor. Dark blond eyebrows shifted upward. “Oh my God, Irina. Do you realize I talked Dr. Glasov—a world renowned computer scientist who has friends in high places at NASA—into doing a striptease for me?”

Heat unfurled at her hairline and prickled her scalp. If she were to draw a picture of him at that moment, she’d place a light bulb over his head. Her defensiveness escalated. She wasn’t a robot. She had more going for her than any artificial intelligence. She had emotions. Not to mention physical needs that had gone unmet all week.

“Do you think I’m so caught up in research that I can’t make up my own mind about what I want or don’t want to do and with whom? That I’m not normally interested in sex, but have to be coerced into it?”

His expression turned cautious, the look of a man approaching a minefield with no hope for retreat. He hooked a chair leg with his foot and twirled it around so he could sit facing her. One arm rested on the table. “Let’s get back on track. What I need to figure out is why, out of this list, you were targeted. Or
if
you were the target. Or if you were the
only
target.” He tapped the corner of her keyboard. “Can you tell me a little about each of these people?”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. Kale might come across as funny and kind on the surface, but he was CSIS. He looked for trouble, pinching it off before it became an international concern. Giving these names to him would be the same as offering him an open invitation to invade their private lives. It could potentially damage their careers. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone let alone colleagues and friends. CSIS was serious business.

So, however, was the botnet. She didn’t see that she had any choice.

She gave him a brief rundown of each individual. The list was a long one.

“I’ll send it to you electronically,” she said when she was done.

The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “I’d rather have it in print.”

She secured a stray strand of hair that had come free and was tickling her neck, working it back under the elastic with her fingers. “My laptop’s already been hacked,” she pointed out. “The information is out there in the world. If anyone plans to do something with it, it’s too late to worry about it.”

“I’d rather fax it to Ottawa, just to be safe.”

He thought a fax was more secure? “Safe from what?”

“I mean it will be more user-friendly. Dan’s old school. Not everyone’s as comfortable with technology as you are, you know. Besides.” Kale’s eyes lit up again, deepening the blue. “I’d rather not get emails from you right now, what with the whole invasive botnet and RBN thing you’ve got going on. No offense.”

Her suspicion intensified. Although the point was a valid one, he was being deliberately evasive. “What’s going on that I don’t know about?”

“Nothing.” He patted her shoulder. He might as well have patted her head. “Quit analyzing the crap out of everything.” He stood and straightened, lifting his arms to put his palms on the ceiling in a full-body stretch that showed off a distracting coastline of darkish blond hair and an ocean of rock-solid abs. “I’m going to watch television until bedtime.”

The kitchen expanded without his presence to fill it, becoming a giant, empty cavern with corners that echoed. She tapped the mouse pad with her fingertip. She could try removing the botnet again, but what was the point? It would only come back.

If she really wanted to put an end to whatever was happening she should do as Kale had asked the first time and hack into the RBN. That, however, could be inviting even more trouble. She wanted nothing to do with organized crime.

She closed the laptop. The quiet murmur of the television from the other room was the only sound other than the gentle hum of the fridge. It was too close to midnight to cook, yet she was too wired to sleep. What frustrated her most—what she found the most frightening—was that she’d done nothing to deserve any of this. She’d done nothing wrong.

Her thoughts returned to Kale, an equally big problem.
I talked Dr. Glasov—a world renowned computer scientist who has friends in high places at NASA—into doing a striptease for me
.

Those words still stung. It was true that she’d had to be encouraged. She’d never have done something like that on her own or with anyone else. She’d never have gone to the beach, or wall-climbing, or bowling tonight either. She wouldn’t have joined an intimidating group of women who’d turned out to be a lot of fun, and friendly too. They hadn’t cared how many papers she’d published or international panels she’d sat on. They’d gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure she felt part of the group in spite of her lack of common ground.

As for Kale…

He might be able to turn the testosterone on and off, but her hormones didn’t work the same way. Everyone at her workplace already assumed they were sleeping together. It was his own fault that his boss knew it for a fact. She didn’t see how it would matter to anyone if they continued to do so. The barn door was wide open. The horse had already escaped.