How Spy I Am (38 page)

He held me with his
eyes a few moments longer. “Very well.”

Later, as we stepped
into the bright work area hidden below the basement of the small
converted house, Kane shot me a look. “Why did you really want to
be down here? It’s not really because of the time delay, is
it?”

“That time delay
completely freaks me out. You know that.”

“You were telling
a
truth, not necessarily
the
truth.”

“And the beds are more
comfortable here. I’d rather sleep in a bunkroom than a jail
cell.”

“Another truth.”

I couldn’t tell him it
was because Kasper had access to the secured area at Sirius and I
didn’t trust him not to murder us in our beds. I sighed and dragged
my suitcase off to the small bathroom, determinedly ignoring the
fact that I was underground.

I could get out
whenever I wanted. I knew where all the exits were. Not trapped.
Stay calm.

I was brushing my
teeth when the next logistical problem occurred to me. I spat
toothpaste and stuck my head out the door.

“John?”

“Yes?” His voice
drifted from the work area.

“Do you still have
spare T-shirts here?”

He came around the
corner, frowning. “Yes.”

“May I borrow one? I
don’t have…” I trailed off. He already knew I didn’t own night
clothes. I could wear one of my own T-shirts, but they were short
and my underwear wasn’t exactly modest. With surveillance cameras
everywhere, some coverage seemed warranted.

“Oh.” He hesitated.
“Of course.” A minute or two later, I answered his tap on the door
to accept the neatly folded black T-shirt.

I was draped in his
big shirts and padding barefoot toward the work area when Kane
strode around the corner and nearly ran into me.

I stumbled back, and
his hand shot out to steady me. His touch started a warm ripple
under my skin, and his gaze flicked down my bare legs before
meeting my eyes again. We regarded each other silently for a
moment.

“Just like old times,”
he said at last. His velvety baritone tickled my ears, and the
warmth spread.

“Yeah.” I cleared the
huskiness from my throat. “Um… which cameras are active?”

“All except the ones
in the bunkroom.”

“Okay…”

I closed my eyes
briefly, resisting the magnetic pull of his muscular body. A vivid
memory of our bodies molded together made me suck in a shaky
breath.

“Good night.” I turned
and headed for the bunkroom.

Sleep eluded me for a
long time while I wrestled with desperate and improbable ideas
about how to fix Betty’s memories. At last, I settled on a plan
that might work. If I could get Sam to help me…

I woke disoriented. I
had closed the door earlier, but it stood open now and the light
from the corridor fell across the bunk where I lay. The bed on the
other side of the small room was empty, the covers of the lower
bunk rumpled.

After a moment I
identified a weight across my waist as Kane’s arm, and I peered at
him, bewildered.

He sat on the floor
beside my bed, his upper body slumped on the mattress beside me,
his head pillowed on one arm while his other arm lay loosely over
me. He was shirtless, his massive shoulders rising and falling in
the slow rhythm of sleep. Deep bruises shadowed his right side,
cuts and scratches carved dark against the discoloured flesh.

Awake, he seemed so
indestructible. Watching him in unguarded slumber, I suddenly
realized how much pain he must have been hiding. My hand reached to
caress his hair before I could stop it and he woke instantly,
tensing at my touch.

“It’s okay,” I
whispered. “What are you doing on the floor?”

He straightened
slowly, and I could imagine how his abused muscles were protesting.
“You kept having nightmares. It was easier to just stay here.”

“I’m sorry.” I traced
his cheek with my fingertips. “Go back to bed. Get some sleep. I’ll
sit up for a while.”

“You need the sleep
more than I do.”

I swung my legs out
and pulled him onto the bed, his skin cold under my hands. “You’re
freezing. And you have to be hurting after being all cramped up
like that. Lie down.”

I vacated the narrow
bed and pushed him down on the still-warm mattress despite his
protests. “Sleep. That’s an order.” I tucked the blankets around
him.

He smiled up at me,
his eyelids already drooping with endearing drowsiness. “Yes,
ma’am.”

My eyes flew open,
catching Kane on his way by in the corridor outside.

“Wait!”

He paused, and I took
in the fact that he was already shaved and wearing fresh clothes,
his hair gleaming wet. “Shit, what time is it?” I was scrambling
out of bed before he answered.

“Seven-thirty.”

“Oh. Good. I was
afraid I’d overslept. I want to get into the network as soon as
possible.”

He nodded. “I was just
going to grab you some breakfast. I’ll be back by the time you
finish your shower.”

“Hang on,” I snapped
as he turned away. “Wait for me. I don’t want you unprotected.”

He turned back to face
me, amusement tugging at his lips. “I’ve managed to survive a few
ops all by myself. I’m pretty sure I can make it to the Melted
Spoon for a bagel.”

“And that’s exactly
the attitude that will get you killed. Some stupid little errand,
and you let down your guard…”

He sighed, sobering.
“I didn’t mean to imply I was taking it lightly. I meant I’ve been
doing this for a long time, and I’m still alive because I don’t
make stupid mistakes like getting careless over a trivial errand.
Believe me, I’ll be watching my back.”

I blew out a sigh of
my own, reminding myself how ridiculous it was to think a top agent
like Kane would need a dumb civilian like me to protect him. He’d
probably be safer without me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean
to criticize. I know how good you are.” I bit my tongue, feeling a
warm flush rising in my cheeks. “That didn’t come out quite
right.”

His lips curved up,
irresistible laugh lines crinkling. “I’ll take the compliment
anyway. Back soon.”

I resisted the impulse
to copy Lurene and fan myself as he turned and disappeared down the
hallway.

Later, perched on the
edge of the sofa in my office at Sirius Dynamics, I surreptitiously
eyed Kasper’s morose expression and wondered whose side he was on.
Spider and Jack murmured in the corner, their heads together over
Spider’s laptop.

Stemp paused in the
corridor to lean into the doorway. “Have you heard from Dr.
Kraus?”

“No.” I bit down on my
guilty urge to over-explain. “Why?”

“I expected him this
morning. He hasn’t arrived, he didn’t check in for his flight last
night, and he’s not answering his phone.”

I didn’t try to hide
my worry. “I hope he’s okay. If I hear from him, I’ll let you
know.”

Stemp gave me a nod
and continued down the hall, leaving Jack and Spider looking as
concerned as I felt. When Kane arrived moments later bearing the
network key, I blurted, “Sam has disappeared.”

His brows snapped
together. “Do you think this is related to the strangeness in the
network you found yesterday?”

“I don’t know.” I
pressed my lips shut to prevent any further comments from leaking
out.

Dammit, I needed Sam
to help me with Betty. She’d still been catatonic when I’d dropped
in to see her on the way to the office, but I didn’t know how long
she’d stay that way. If Sam was that scared of the evil knight, why
the hell didn’t he just come back to Sirius and lock himself safely
in the secured area?

Unless the secured
area wasn’t safe for him for some reason…

Another sidelong
glance at Kasper revealed nothing. If Robert was the murderous
Knight and Kasper was feeding him information, he was hiding his
guilt well.

“What are we doing
today?” Spider’s question interrupted my uneasy rumination. “Stemp
said you’d brief us.”

“Oh.” I gathered my
thoughts for a moment, trying to decide what I could safely tell
everybody. I blew out a long breath. “There’s not really going to
be much for you to do except monitor me, so it’ll be pretty boring.
I’m going to poke around in the network. I think… I think I’ll try
to get into the secured network in Macon. I really needed more time
there. There was something strange about it, and I couldn’t quite
put my finger on it.”

“Maybe it was just
because you were using one of their fobs,” Spider suggested. “That
might change things.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Settled inside the
virtual file room, Kane gave my hand a squeeze, and I stretched
into the data stream.

Sending my invisible
feelers far and wide, I searched for research papers containing Sam
Kraus, Terry Sherman, and Bert Cartwright, hoping to find something
they’d written that might contain the names of the other Knights as
contributors.

Sam had been a
prolific writer. And he’d had lots of different research
partners.

I tried to remember
the list of names, but to no avail. I couldn’t retain all the
information I’d discovered, Sam’s babblings, Kasper’s oblique
references, and all the names as well.

Floating in the eddies
of data, I was stewing in frustration when I had an idea that was
so simple and obvious, I would have laughed out loud if I’d had a
mouth.

Jeez, play to your
strengths.

Easing through the
firewall of a nearby server, I created a file and happily went to
work recording every single thing I knew or suspected about Robert
and the Knights. Nobody would ever know the file was there, and
even if the owners of the server did discover it, I’d encrypted it
so they couldn’t read it. Thank God for my sneaky network key.

I was finishing up
when I realized the sensation that had been nagging at the corner
of my attention was actually my distant connection to Kane. I
curled my consciousness around my new file, checking it for
security one last time, and then followed Kane’s tugging back to
the Sirius network.

When I
re-materialized, Kane relaxed visibly. “I thought I’d lost you. I
could barely feel your hand anymore.”

“Sorry, I was really
absorbed. Did you want something?”

“No, but you usually
take a break every couple of hours, and it’s been nearly three
hours since you went in.”

“Oh. Lunch time, then.
Thanks.”

Back in the real
world, I gobbled a sandwich at the Melted Spoon and was hurrying
back along the sidewalk toward Sirius Dynamics when Kasper fell
into step beside me.

“Any contact?” he
muttered.

I refrained from
inhaling and casually moved upwind. “No. You?”

“No.” He gave me dark
look and strode on ahead.

When everyone
reassembled in my office after lunch, I surveyed the ring of
expectant faces.

“I’m going to see if I
can get into Macon’s network this afternoon,” I told them. “Jack,
if you can watch the monitors, that would be great. I don’t expect
any ghosts, but you never know.”

She nodded, her gaze
already riveted on her case while her slender fingers tweaked the
controls.

“Um, Aydan…” Spider’s
tentative voice stopped me as I was about to step into the virtual
network.

“What is it,
Spider?”

“The Macon facility is
secured, right?”

“Yeah. Sam said it was
a counterpart to Sirius.”

“Have you ever
breached that kind of security before?”

“I don’t know.” I
frowned at him, feeling the first quiver of misgiving. “Do you
think it’ll be a problem?”

“I don’t know. Their
security might be better than anything you’ve tried before. Fuzzy
Bunny’s security is good, but it’s probably nowhere near as good as
Macon.”

“What do you think
might happen?”

“I don’t know,” he
said slowly. “You just might not be able to get in.”

“But if I did, do you
think I’d be visible?”

“I… doubt it…” Spider
shot a questioning glance at Kasper. “What do you think?”

“You’re the hacker.
I’m just a developer.”

“But…” Spider frowned.
“You developed all the security and authentication protocols for
the Sirius network. I need your professional opinion.”

Kasper sniffed. “Ms.
Kelly breezed through my security as if it wasn’t even there.”

“No, she didn’t,”
Spider argued, looking perplexed at Smith’s recalcitrance. “She
just accessed it internally. Her network key spoofs a valid user.
She didn’t hack through your external firewalls.”

“Then I haven’t a
clue,” Kasper said.

We all frowned at him,
and he twitched his shoulders irritably. “I have no way of
knowing,” he snapped. “I’d only be guessing.”

“Then guess.” Kane’s
intonation included an unspoken, ‘Or else.’

“Fine.” Smith crossed
his arms and glared. “My wild
guess
is that you’ll be
stopped by a security server inside the DMZ.”

“Um…” I eyed Spider,
hoping for a translation.

“That’s what I was
afraid of,” he said solemnly.

“Will that harm
Aydan?” Kane demanded.

“No, I doubt it,”
Spider replied. “She’ll just get turned away because that type of
server only responds to very limited types of data requests.”

“But if I get in, will
I be visible?”

“I don’t think you’ll
get in,” Smith said.

“But if I
do
…”

“In the unlikely event
that you do, you probably won’t be visible,” he replied
grudgingly.

“Fine. Then let’s just
try it. There’s no downside, right?” I appealed to Spider.

“I… guess not…”

With that dubious
reassurance, I blew out an impatient breath and stepped into
virtual reality.

Seated once more in
the virtual file room, Kane gave my hand a squeeze. “Good
luck.”