Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2) (21 page)

In spite of how angry she was and how violated she felt, the image Kale presented as he mimicked Christine made her laugh. Once she sobered and the first shock had passed she was able to think with her usual clarity again.

“Of what possible value could my private email be to her?”

“Not to her. Whoever she sold it to,” Kale corrected her. He tapped the edge of her laptop’s keyboard. “Now we need to find out who that is and where your mutual trails converge.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Get back to work, babe. The clock is ticking.”

A few hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, she finally found the connection. Kale was asleep on the sofa in the next room, so she went to wake him to give him the news.

She flipped a table lamp on and reached out to place her hand on his shoulder, then drew it back. Once they verified her information, and confirmed the identity of the person harassing her, there’d be no need for Kale to stay any longer—not even for the two weeks he’d assured her he’d been given.

Two weeks would change nothing other than make it harder for her heart to let him go. Wistfulness tugged at it even now as she watched him sleep, a white throw pillow tucked beneath his blond head and one long leg hanging off the cushions so that his bare foot rested flat on the floor. Why couldn’t he have been a linguistics professor? Or the rumpled, affable, unemployed, kite-surfing gym teacher he’d pretended to be?

She’d be fine either way.

But a spy…

While her fears for her physical safety had largely dissipated now that the threat was no longer faceless, the reality was, Irina hadn’t liked the stress and uncertainty of the past few weeks. She hated being caught up in espionage, online or otherwise. Those things were part of Kale’s world, not hers, and he lived for them. He’d made no secret of where his loyalties resided either. He’d want to pass what she’d found with the VPN on to his boss, and sooner rather than later.

She shook his shoulder. He was awake in an instant, sitting upright and blinking the sleep from his eyes.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” she said to him. “Christine’s personal email traffic and the information the botnet stole off my computer all ended up in Ottawa. In the Ministry of Defence office no less.”

Kale’s face registered shock as the significance sank in.

“Holy shit.”

* * *

And wasn’t that a complete understatement?

Irina showed him what she’d found, explaining it to him as simply as she could with him doing his best to keep up. He might speak five languages, but he’d flunked out of geek.

“Any chance you’re mistaken?” he asked, although without any real hope.

She gave him that pokered-up, disbelieving, Dr. Glasov stare and shook her head. “You’re looking at the same results I am.”

Maybe so. But he didn’t understand them even half so well. Man, she was smart.

“Since I’m using a VPN supplied by CSIS to hack into a Canadian government site, I didn’t dare go any farther,” she was continuing, unaware she’d left him miles behind. “That can’t be legal.”

Hell, no. It was not.

“I’ve got to make a phone call,” he said.

Seconds later he had a sleepy, very cross Dan on the line.

“What couldn’t wait two hours until morning?” his team leader growled. “If the doctor is pregnant that’s your sorry-ass problem and I don’t want to hear about it. Not now and not ever.”

Kale hoped Irina hadn’t heard any of that. He half turned away from her, switching the phone to his other ear. “You’re still a dick, Dan. And if I’d waited two hours to tell you what Irina found out you’d have me shot.”

Dan listened without interrupting as Kale filled him in.

“I take it all back,” he said once Kale was done. “I’d rather hear how you two are naming your first born after me.” There was another long stretch of silence that Kale waited out. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Dr. Glasov is going to file a harassment complaint against the admin assistant for the porn tape. We’ll get the assistant fired and out of a position where she has access to government information.” He cut off Kale’s protest. “Dr. Glasov is going to have to suck up any embarrassment she’ll suffer. Let’s not tip anyone in Ottawa off that the admin assistant’s RBN activity has been traced. There are bigger, more important fish to go after, here.”

“Understood.” Kale hoped Irina would too, because she’d done CSIS a favor and this was her thanks.

“And Martin?”

“Yes?”

“You probably think I’m being a complete shit right now, but you should know that one of the names on the email list you gave me is a nuclear physicist who turned up dead in London yesterday morning. It’s being reported by the press as a heart attack, but our intelligence claims it was an assassination. Happened right outside his hotel room door. Someone was waiting for him. He was working on the drone project too.”

Irina was watching Kale so he worked hard to keep his reaction off his face, but he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.

“Do you think there’ll be any more incidents like this?” he asked carefully.

“Meaning is Dr. Glasov’s life in danger? We don’t think so, no. While she’s designing the weapons systems placement on the drone project, this guy was building the actual weapon. The CIA’s had an interest in him for a while too, so it’s unlikely he was an innocent bystander. The director believes the physicist’s name was cross-referenced against Dr. Glasov’s email list simply to confirm he was the hit they needed to make. It might or might not have something to do with that drone—either way, we don’t want anyone, including the CIA, tipped off that Canada is now investigating. Whoever Dr. Glasov’s company is building this drone for it won’t be the actual end customer and we want to know who that end customer is. This is why we have to keep that admin assistant from figuring out she’s been caught distributing a lot more than pornography. You have until Friday to finish up things with Dr. Glasov and get that admin assistant out of her office,” Dan added. “And be sure to pass on our thanks to her for cracking the RBN for us. But don’t tell her the truth about the nuclear physicist’s death.”

“What happened to the two weeks you gave me?”

“I’m taking them back. I really need you in London right now. I wish you’d been there six days ago. Why should the CIA have all the fun?”

Kale disconnected the call. The truth about Irina’s colleague’s death wasn’t information he’d ever share. He didn’t want her to find out that someone she knew had been assassinated, and probably thanks in part to information stolen from her. She’d take ownership of it.

He also wished he had more than five days to confirm she wasn’t in any danger. It was easy enough for Dan to shrug off. He’d never met her. He wasn’t involved.

“Dan says to say thanks.”

“Tell him I’m overwhelmed by his gratitude.” Irina’s hands balled into fists at her sides, morphing into a familiar, irate little pixie with three pencil stubs sticking out of her untidy knot of hair, too cute for words. If she had any questions about that two week comment he’d made she wasn’t letting on. Instead, as usual, she focused on what was important. “What happens after Christine is arrested?”

Kale cursed Dan some more for leaving him to be the bearer of bad news, then bucked up his courage. Irina was the most reasonable and logical woman he knew. She always seemed able to work through her emotions and grasp the big picture.

“About that,” he began, ill at ease and fighting hard to hide it. Lying to her didn’t come as easily anymore. “She’s not going to be arrested.” He explained the problems it would create if she were. Irina kept nodding, seeming to be in complete agreement with Dan’s line of thinking. Encouraged by her understanding thus far Kale dropped the bomb. “We do, however, need to get her away from any further access to government information. You need to file a harassment complaint against her so we can get her fired.”

It took Irina all of three seconds to figure out the problem with that. “And admit to the entire senior management team that it’s me in that video?” Her voice trembled with anger, the outrage behind it making him wince. She had a right to feel she’d been betrayed. “No. They’ll want to review it to confirm they have just cause to dismiss her. They’ll know I circumvented their security measures to try and hide the video too. This will ruin my career—or at the very least my credibility.”

“Whether you go to senior management or CSIS does, they’re going to find out about the video sooner or later. And yes, they’ll want to watch it.” Kale didn’t dare delve any further into their possible reasons behind that curiosity either. She was angry enough without feeling completely exploited. “The only difference is that if CSIS has to officially report what you found about the Ministry of Defence connection it will compromise an already ongoing investigation into national security.”

“I’m caring less and less about national security by the second. When does
my
security come into play?” she demanded.

And then she was blinking back tears.

He rubbed the back of his neck. This whole day had derailed on him. He’d wanted to take her out. Let her get to know him as more than the government agent currently invading her space. Instead she’d been dragged into doing work that walked a tad south of the finer lines of the law. She’d been lied to, then thrown under the bus. To top it all off he wasn’t good with crying women. He hated the feeling of helplessness it always gave him.

But it was almost five in the morning and she’d had her second big shock in less than twenty-four hours. A reaction like this was long overdue, so he did the only thing he could think of, which was to wrap her in his arms and hope like hell it made her feel safe and secure.

His hope was short-lived. She turned into a tight ball of tension.

“I wonder if this is being caught on video too,” she said, her tone dripping sarcasm.

The living room curtains were open. He hadn’t wanted to keep them drawn all the time, possibly tipping anyone off that the camera had been discovered. Now it no longer mattered.

Her reaction, however, provided him with another insight into her complex character. The thought of being caught in a moment of weakness wasn’t any more acceptable to her than being videotaped in a sex act.

Or maybe she was simply too exhausted to get her priorities straight.

He switched off the lamp, plunging the room into that thin gloom of morning before the sun rose and the street lights winked out. “I can remove the camera right now if you’d like,” he offered.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to bed.”

She twisted out of his arms, putting her words into action, but he wasn’t about to let her leave in this uncharacteristically dark mood. She sounded not just tired but defeated and he couldn’t allow that. Not when he was responsible for it. He caught her elbow. “Couples rules, remember? Never go to bed angry.”

“I shouldn’t have to keep pointing this out. We aren’t a couple. Couples rules don’t apply. Besides, I’m not angry with you.”

She was a terrible liar. Right now she was so pissed she couldn’t even look at him. She was also wrong if she thought they weren’t a couple. It might not be a permanent arrangement, but he’d never had this kind of relationship—whatever this was—with any woman before. He wasn’t going to suddenly stop caring about her. Therefore, in his books, this counted and those rules applied. “I don’t like to see you upset.”

“Then you should have thought of that before you asked me to do CSIS’s dirty work for them.”

His blood pressure took a sharp upward spike. He couldn’t allow that jagged-edged barb to go unchallenged. He believed in the work he did. It wasn’t always pretty, it was rarely straightforward, and often there was no happy ending. He knew it and had to live with it. She didn’t get to ignore the fallout from the type of work she did either.

“You’re a smart woman, Irina. You didn’t do it because I asked you to. You did it because it needed to be done.”

Her chin tilted upward, eyes wide, indecipherable pools in the semi-dark room. “Is that what you think?”

Well, yes. But the sudden stillness to her expression made him a whole lot less certain of it.

She shook her elbow free of his grip. “And I thought you were a smart man. It looks like we were both wrong tonight.”

She’d done it for him.

Blindsided, his blood pressure leveled off and his gut took a plunge. Until this very second he’d had no reason to consider that he might mean much to her beyond her personal safety and a warm body for sex. Even though he knew she liked him—hell, he liked her too—it didn’t take a genius to figure out they were both more wrapped up in their careers than they were in each other.

But if she’d hacked into the RBN because he’d asked it of her, it cast their friendly relationship in a whole different light, and if she wanted to take things to the next level, then he was on board. He was heading to London in a few days. She’d be in Paris in a few weeks. They both traveled a lot. A long distance, casual relationship—friends with benefits, so to speak—might well suit them both.

An exclusive one though. She didn’t get to talk dirty science with anyone else.

He followed her into the hall and stuck out a hand before she could close her bedroom door. “You don’t get to walk away in the middle of a disagreement,” he said. “I have a few things I’d like to say too.”