Naked Sushi (5 page)

I kept struggling, anything to get him off me. I knew he was going to kill me as soon as she left.

“Tell my partner standing guard outside to come in,” he said. “I’m going to need a hand here.”

“Yeah, sure.” Cindy gave me a look of pity. “Don’t worry, Pepper. I’ll get you out.
Promise
.” Then she ran out, slamming the door and leaving me alone with this guy.

Come back
,
Cindy.
He’s going to kill me.

It was too late. She was gone.

But I wouldn’t give up without a fight.

I learned how to take care of bullies growing up. Kids calling me names, knocking my glasses off, trying to take me down. I fought back, used my brains to get through school and secure a good job.

No phony secret agent man was going to take it away from me.

I couldn’t describe the survival-like spasms jolting through me, energizing me. No sooner had he turned his back to me than I brought my cuffed hands down and slammed them on the back of his neck, stunning him.

He slumped to the floor, moaning, his badge and ID card landing on the carpet.

I grabbed them and stared at the gold badge for a long moment. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The government creds looked oh so real.

A sick feeling hit me.

Jesus.

I’d just clocked a G-man.

Chapter Four

I spent the next two hours sitting half-nude in a gray room with no AC and no windows, taking a polygraph test. Back and forth went the convo like a volleyball on steroids. Two guys and a woman in plainclothes grilling me.

No one cracked a smile.

Them
asking and then
me
answering questions about my ex-boss, his office manager, the other programmers, even the cleaning staff.

I was surprised they didn’t ask me what birth control I used.

“Did Mr. Briggs make overseas trips?” they wanted to know. “Ask you to make bank deposits for him? Pay you in cash?”

“I write code,” I said, trying to keep my cool. It wasn’t easy. Sweat dripped down between my breasts. I didn’t dare wipe it away. They’d probably book me for lewd conduct. “I spend my workday up to my eyeballs in funny symbols. Believe me, not
one
of them is a dollar sign.”

“What about the other programmers?” they asked. “Did any of them boast about making extra cash? Give you the idea they may be in on the operation?”

“No.”

“Any strangers hanging around who looked suspicious?”

I rolled my eyes and then shot a glance over to Agent Steve Raines, trying to keep a straight face. I could rat him out, make him squirm, but I had a better idea.

“There was this delivery guy who came on to me in the copy room....” I added the “delivery” bit to make it sound good. It wasn’t a big lie, so I hoped the machine wouldn’t notice.

“Yes?”

I adjusted my glasses and said in a bored voice, “But he didn’t make much of an impression on me.”

He coughed.

Gotcha.

“Any unusual emails? Computer files compromised? Strange deliveries to the office?” someone asked me.

My inner geek bell went off. Now things were getting too close to home. If they found out I hacked into my ex-boss’s computer, I’d be headed off to the gray bar hotel pronto.

I had to throw them off course.

“Yeah,” I said in a husky, dramatic voice that would make Cindy proud. “We had some weird stuff going on last week.”

A hush fell over the room.

“Tell us, Miss O’Malley.” They leaned in, waiting to hear what I had to say.

I grinned big. “Some jerk at the deli sent over a goat-cheese-and-broccoli pizza instead of our usual double cheese, double pepperoni. The guys were pissed.”

Faces crunched, teeth clenched. My attempt at humor didn’t go over well. The lie detector machine screeched to a halt. The operator shook his head and the feds whispered among themselves, giving me dirty looks.

I waited for them to decide my fate.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. My heart pounded in my chest like a bad ringtone.

Finally—

“You attacked a federal agent, Miss O’Malley,” said the interrogator with a stiff shirt collar and a stiffer dick, by the bulge in his pants. He kept eyeballing my sweaty cleavage spilling out of my kimono. “That’s a crime and a punishable offense.”

“
He
pounced on
me
,” I said, pointing to the man who fucked me in the copy room. I refused to admit to anything. I knew my rights.

“What Miss O’Malley means,” interrupted Agent Steve Raines, clearing his throat, “is that she believed I was a threat to her. She had no idea of my identity.”

I blinked, disbelieving. He was lying. He’d clearly identified himself. Then I caught my G-man hottie giving them a look that said to go easy on me. My eyes widened. What was up?

“She broke the law, Steven,” another agent chimed in. Female. Pretty in a classy way. Perfect hair. High heels. Higher IQ. I’d get no reprieve from her. “No excuses.”

“Haven’t you ever walked on the wild side, Jordan?”

“No.”

“You should try it sometime.” Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the room. My teeth chattered. I’d never been so freaking scared in my life. I imagined the agents chasing after us, but I heard nothing but my ragged breaths in my ears.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“My boss. Special Agent in Charge, Jordan Parks.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

Steve laughed. “Pay no attention to her. Jordan keeps her rep squeaky clean and wrapped up tight, like she’s wearing pantyhose.”

I nodded. Even an FBI agent had problems with a diva boss. Who knew?

I wasn’t off the hook, he said, but he wanted to speak to me alone. Without the suits coming down on me like vultures feeding on a dead horse. He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders and then led me down the hall to another room. Empty, except for the two-way mirror. I prayed no one was on the other side.

“Sorry I had to cuff you, Pepper, but I couldn’t let you blow my cover with Briggs.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that night in the copy room you were with the FBI?” I had to ask. No one could see or hear us in here. Despite my stiff neck and aching shoulders from being the fresh catch of the day, I wanted to find out more about Steve Raines.

“I couldn’t. I wasn’t there on official business,” he said, shutting the door, “but on a hunch based on information I picked up from a federal wiretap.”

He explained how he lured the security guy away with a phony emergency, making it easy for him to sneak inside the building. I didn’t want to dent his ego by telling him that wasn’t hard to do. The guard welcomed any excuse to take a smoke break.

“I had to make you believe I was a thief to cover my tracks,” he said.

“Then why did you tell them I didn’t know who you were when I slammed you on the back of the head?” I asked.

“Orange isn’t your color,” he said, looking me over with a you-are-so-hot smile. “Besides, I like you.”

“I don’t believe you,” I shot back.

“Why not?”

“Lying is part of your job.” I pushed his jacket off my shoulders. A heated flash of anger raced through me. I wasn’t going to fall for his sexy, smoldering look, trying to make me believe he was into me. I wasn’t fooled. We were on his turf now. “You’re good at it, too.”

“So I’ve been told.” He looked away from me, staring at the two-way mirror as if he could see his own past. Funny, he didn’t look smug, which surprised me.

“By who?” I asked, more curious than I had a right to be.

“A terrorist.”

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

“No, the bastard was threatening to shoot his hostage. A teenage kid he held by the throat.” The federal agent wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if the memory left a bitter taste on his tongue.

I looked at him. I saw something disturbing in his eyes when he turned back toward me. I met his stare. “What happened?”

“I shot him.”

Jesus.

“What if you’d missed?” I asked, a sick feeling creeping over me like wet, slimy worms crawling down my cleavage.

“I had to take that chance.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Like I took a chance on you, Pepper.”

“I don’t get it.”

“In my business, you get a sixth sense about people,” Steve said, making me crazy when he began rubbing the back of my neck. “The way you came on to me all sexy and flirty, eager to prove to me you were more than a hot programmer made me wonder if you really
were
the wild and crazy girl you pretended to be.”

“So what did you find out?” I said, loving his hands on me.

Oh
,
please
,
yes
,
keep going
. It felt so good.

“You have a raw hunger in you that cries out to be nourished,” he said, his lips brushing my skin, his mouth possessing me. “But you’re afraid to let yourself go, so you come on strong.”

“You’re no pushover yourself, Steve,” I told him, daring to call him by his first name. If he was going to get personal, so was I.

He relaxed his expression and then his face turned serious again. He held me close to him, his strong arms tight around me, as if he had something to say and wouldn’t let me leave until he said it. “It comes with the job, Pepper. What the public doesn’t see is the anguish you face every time you can’t get a conviction or a hostage situation goes wrong. It eats you up inside, but you go on.”

“What keeps you going?” I asked. I never expected to hear this stuff from him.

“A promise I made to my brother before he died.”

“Yeah?” I pulled away, intrigued. I never had any family except for Cindy. She was like a sister to me. I’d die if anything happened to her. Why was he telling me this? I couldn’t believe I was getting all touchy-feeling with a guy who could have had me fitted for an orange jumpsuit. Only then did I see a pain in his eyes I’d never seen before, a determined resolution in the set of his jaw.

“I joined the Bureau after I got out of the army,” he said.

“You were in Iraq?”

He shook his head. “I served with my unit in Afghanistan after I lost my older brother.”

“You want to talk about it?” I picked up his jacket, slipped it over my shoulders and listened.

“Tom was a two-bit hoodlum. He never had a chance after our old man took off. He started cutting school, using drugs.” Steve paused and then scraped peeling gray paint off the table with his finger. I could see the furniture was repainted over and over with the same iconic shade of gray. As if to dull the pain suffered here. “He taught me everything he knew, but in the end he admitted he was wrong and didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps.”

“What happened?”

“He tried to go straight,” Steve said, clenching his fists, “but he was murdered in a gang attack in our old neighborhood.”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Homegrown terrorism is a real threat we can’t ignore, Pepper.”

“So you joined the FBI.”

He acknowledged my comment with a nod. “I hit the streets every day to take down the bad guys so people can go on with their lives, never knowing how close they came to losing that freedom.” He looked at me and I saw the fierceness raging in his eyes, like a primitive animal ready to pounce. I shivered. “I do it for my brother, and for everyone like him who paid the ultimate price.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I wanted to know. This was serious business. Way beyond a little taxpayer like me getting fired. What was his game?

“Because I believe you feel like I do.” He leaned down, so close to my lips, I swore he was going to kiss me. He didn’t. Instead, he shocked the hell out of me when he said, “We need people like you willing to put themselves on the line.”

My mouth dropped open. “You did a background check on me, didn’t you?”

He gave me that half smile of his that made me melt. “I had to make sure you were clean.”

“Then you know I applied to the FBI when I got out of college,” I said, smoothing a strand of loose hair away from my face in a nervous gesture. “I didn’t make it.”

I didn’t clue him in that I lost my nerve and didn’t finish taking the tests after my background came into question. I was afraid they’d find out things about me I decided I no longer wanted to know. It was safer that way. It allowed me to live in a dream world with no responsibility to my past.

I looked again into his face and saw the puzzled expression etched on his features, as if he were waiting for me to explain further. I didn’t. To my relief, he returned to the present situation.

“Now do you understand why I had to get out of the copy room without you knowing who I was?” he said, emphasizing his words. “I was looking for the intel that would explain how Briggs transferred funds to hide his dirty little secret.”

“What secret?”

“High-class call girls.” Steve said. “In Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan.”

I let out a low whistle. “So that’s why he’s so determined to get into the Japanese market.” I paused, thinking, “His office manager said the documents you copied were Mr. Briggs’s tax returns. She was lying.”

He nodded. “I found company bank transactions from years ago, but they weren’t much help. Not surprising. Briggs is a new player in the game. No doubt the woman is privy to his dirty dealings, making me suspect Briggs keeps what I’m looking for hidden in encrypted computer files.”

“Can’t you get a search warrant and seize his financial records?” I asked.

He shook his head, frowning. “It’s not that easy.”

“Really?” I couldn’t imagine the FBI having to ask for permission to do anything.

“Not since a federal judge handed down a decision against keeping NSLs secret—”

“What’s that?” I asked, curious to find an acronym I didn’t know in this world of OMG, LOL and RAT. Remote Access Tools. A bored programmer’s fave pastime. Watching unsuspecting computer users doing weird things on their webcam, often sexual in nature. Not me. I preferred my fantasies in the flesh.

Like now.

I reveled in all this spy talk. Wishing we were two agents talking shop.

“NSLs are national security letters,” Steve said, “where the Bureau collects private information on a target, like financial and phone records.” He explained the Bureau found its hands tied with the recent crackdown on issuing such letters. “This operation will be put on ice for years if we can’t gather the evidence we need to build a case against him.”

I wiggled my fanny, knowing I had a secret.

“Not if I can help you get it.”

* * *

A dark, moonless night hid us as we sneaked around the back of the old Victorian house, better known as my former place of employment. I got a cheap thrill up my backside when I showed Steve how to slip through the secret door and his groin nudged my butt cheeks. Even through my sturdy jeans I could feel his rock-hard erection.

Dream on.

Hey, a girl has to take what she can get. All through college, I spent my nights reading a handbook on string-searching algorithms instead of sporting a G-string. I never regretted it until now. I knew nothing about hotness, how to figure into that sexual equation of boy-beds-girl and thereby discover my self-worth. I always thought working hard and using your brain were all you needed to succeed in the corporate world.

Look where it got me.

No doubt I was now on the FBI’s watch list, though Steve assured me no charges would be filed against me if I cooperated with the investigation.
That
part was cool. What sent my sex-o-meter into a nosedive was that after our heart-to-heart, my new BF was all business. No head rubbing, no shoulder touching.