Private Politics (The Easy Part) (14 page)

“Okay, lead the way, Jason Bourne.” He’d always wanted to try out a little espionage.

Chapter Thirteen

Alyse cupped her hands around her face to reduce the glare on the door. What she spied across the marble lobby of the building made her very happy.

“Oh, good. Ted’s on duty tonight.”

“You know the security guards?” Liam asked over her shoulder. The note of surprise in his voice annoyed her.

“They’re some of the most important people in the building. Of course I know them.” She swung the door open and tugged Liam into the lobby, calling, “Hi, Ted!”

The aforementioned Ted looked up from the
Washington Examiner
spread across the desk. He was the only person in the building—possibly the only one on earth—who still read the paper in dead-tree form.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Hiya, Alyse!”

Alyse’s heels tapped out a staccato rhyme on the floor, each beat punctuated by a squeak from Liam’s shoes—shoes that would be perfectly at home on the tennis court.

“How is your wife?” She handed Ted her badge and promoted Liam to get out ID with a roll of her wrist while she signed him in.

“Jasmine’s good. She’s...good,” he repeated. “Her mother’s been in town for eight days.”

“So you’re not so good?”

“I’m working a lot of nights, let me just say that. Who’s this?” Ted arched a brow at her. In a brotherly sort of way he often asked about her love life.

“This is—you have his driver’s license. This is Liam Nussbaum.”

That moment when she’d seen him in the bar at Lauriol Plaza, she had known they were together. All through the slog of the day she’d thought about him, wondered how she’d feel when she saw him again and questioned whether the night before had been in her head. Then he’d been there and all she wanted was to kiss him. So she had. She wasn’t really into self-denial.

Tonight with Millie and Parker had gone well. They’d accepted that she and Liam were whatever they were. They’d teased them and then they’d moved on.

The rest of the night hadn’t felt measurably different from the nights the four of them had spent together over the past six months. Except for the handful of occasions when Liam had touched her knee and looked with intent. The kind of intent that caused her briefly to wonder whether her panties had incinerated.

She wasn’t going to explain any of this to Ted.

“I forgot a folder, which I need to do something for Geri tonight,” she said with a smile. “Liam and I were in the neighborhood and he offered to run over here with me.”

“Oh, okay.” Ted gave her a “yeah right” look, but it was related to her coyness about Liam and not the story.

“Anyone else around?”

“Not at YWR.”

That was a relief.

Once they’d finished with the sign-in and disappeared from Ted’s watchful eye into the elevator, Liam said, “These are, incidentally, some very swanky digs.”

“A law firm has most of the building, but they downsized due to the recession. We sublet part of a floor. It’s a tax write-off for them and a good deal for us.”

One of his fingers traced a pattern across her lower back. She leaned against his hand so he etched deeper into her skin. Over and over again he drew the infinity symbol on her back. Probably subconscious.

“I’ll give you a back rub when we get home,” he offered.

Home? Not “my place”? Lightly she said, “Please do.” But she couldn’t resist tacking on, “Are you trying to ensure I’ll never leave?”

“Something like that.”

The elevator opened with a
ding
, saving her the trouble of answering. She unlocked the front door to YWR and they entered the dark offices together. Deciding to play it safe, she locked the door from the inside and didn’t turn on any lights.

Liam took it in as best he could in the dark. There really wasn’t much to see; they liked to focus their resources in the field, and evidently on lobbying the Senate on behalf of South African business tycoons.

He asked, “Where are we starting?”

While she’d talked a big game earlier at the restaurant, Alyse wasn’t entirely sure. She didn’t feel confident enough to ransack Geri’s office. Something about that felt decidedly wrong.

But she had access to the storage room. She’d stumbled across evidence of the whole silly thing there in the first place. So there couldn’t be anything wrong—not
wrong
wrong anyway—with taking a look around. In the middle of the night. While there was no one else here. Yup, nothing unethical about this at all.

Linking her fingers with Liam’s, she led him down the hall. She flicked on the lights. “Here. We start here.”

She located the binders they needed. In typical fashion, he threw himself onto the floor with abandon, immediately getting down to work like a kid with a new puzzle. She stretched out next to him and appreciated his occasional glances at her legs—because they weren’t on a self-appointed spy mission or anything.

Forty minutes later, they’d taken as many photographs as their phones could handle. While they didn’t have an index with them, new letters seemed to have replaced all of the originals that had aroused her suspicion in the first place. These forgeries all bore her signature and most directed the donations to a complicated mélange of accounts.

“These accounts don’t exist—didn’t exist, at least. They were invented to confuse anyone,” she explained to Liam. “I just doubt Fred’s going to fall for it.”

She hadn’t appreciated him at first, but Fred was going to save her ass. He probably hadn’t been what Geri was expecting either.

Liam scrubbed his hands over his face. “Why can’t we go to Fred now?”

For three days, she had wondered the same thing. It was somewhat annoying to have to argue with him while conducting a debate in her own head on the same subject. Alyse said, “What are we going to show him? How do we prove the letters we have are real? Couldn’t we have just doctored these?” She gestured at the binder open in her lap.

“As soon as someone pushes, it will all fall over. These corporations aren’t real. Once Fred searches...”

Yes, well, it sounded all well and good when one put it like that. With more force than she anticipated, Alyse said, “I lose my job!” More softly she added, “And my credibility.”

That really was the problem. This had happened on her watch and proved she was incompetent. She could make it right by exposing it, but in exchange, she would have to give up DC and this life, which she really would prefer not to do.

Liam slid his hands into her hair and held her face steady. “That’s why it has to be you. The only way this works is if you’re the whistleblower.”

Whistleblower had a nice ring to it, but she doubted it would work out like that. Still, she knew there wasn’t another possibility. They’d talked earlier about Poindexter writing something, but if they jumped the gun and went to the media—though hell, he was the media as much as liked to deny he was a real journalist—before they knew what they were dealing with, she’d be ruined for sure. No, the only solution was Fred. She wanted there to be another way.

Liam hadn’t stopped holding her. He watched her patiently. “Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Not particularly.”

“Okay.” He accepted it with unbelievable grace. “Later, then. Do you think we’re done here?”

She nodded. “Unless you want to sack Geri’s office.”

“Let’s not.”

They put everything away. Luckily, it was easy to hide their digging in the general mess of the place. With the audit, enough people had been in and out that the dust had been mostly cleared away, but it was still a riot of paper and office supplies. No one would be wiser that she and Liam had snooped in the doctored receipt letters.

They started down the dark hall toward the door. Just as she was about to call the evening a bust—they hadn’t learned anything they didn’t know, though they now had better art for their theories—a light turned on outside YWR. Alyse grabbed Liam’s hand, pulled him through the door into the conference room and slammed the door.

Her heart hammered in her throat and her entire body hummed with the irregular rhythm of it. This was not good. Really, really not good.

They crouched down beneath the sill of the window that opened on the main office so if someone did come in, she wouldn’t see them.

Liam hissed in her ear, “This doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“Shh. Let me hear who it is! If it’s Laverne—”

Alyse swallowed the rest of what she was going to say as the unmistakable jingling of keys clattered in a lock. The front door to the office opened and light flooded into the conference room from the window over their heads and under the door. Two sets of footsteps began to echo through the main office.

She and Liam pulled themselves into tight balls and leaned against the wall, trying to minimize the likelihood of being seen. Trying, but probably failing. She hoped if they did get caught, Bertie wouldn’t be adverse to a late night phone call. At the very least, Millie and Parker would bail them out.

“See, he was wrong. She isn’t here.” That was Geri. “She must have left and he was too distracted to notice.”

Ted was probably “he.” And Alyse had a very strong suspicion that she was, well, she. Not good. If Geri knew she’d been in the office she’d also seen Liam’s name on the ledger.

“That’s why we have to get rid of the stuff. If they know about Rynsburger...” and Geri was with Ryan Scott. Oh good. Things hadn’t been messy enough. Plus, he’d made the connection to Liam and become concerned about the questions from the interview this afternoon. On the plus side, she and Liam were right about Rynsburger being connected to whatever was going on.

Alyse shifted her knees under her, but the new position was worse than the first. What she wanted was to do some yoga breathing but she was afraid that it would come out loud and ragged as a leaf-blower.

After several more quips, the voices faded. Geri and Ryan had gone into one of the back offices. Soon the loud whirring of a paper shredder obscured their conversation entirely.

She and Liam should have looked in Geri’s office as there was evidently something of value there. Though if they had gone into Geri’s office, they’d probably be having a really lovely conversation right now, perhaps with whomever had left that note on her bed.

Shit was most definitely more serious than she had realized.

For several long minutes, she and Liam crouched in the conference room. Their unnatural poses didn’t get more comfortable the longer they held them. Her body was tense and quavery. She felt as if she had the flu on top of having run a marathon, but somehow her energy didn’t flag. Fear was a powerful motivator.

After a while, she wasn’t able to guess with any accuracy how long they’d been hiding. It could have been hours, though she doubted it. More likely, however, it had been long enough that Millie might call to check in.

Should have put her phone on vibrate! The next time she engaged in a little espionage, she’d have to remember that useful tidbit. At the moment, she wasn’t sure how much longer it would be until they could leave. There was no telling how long it would take Geri and Ryan to finish destroying all that evidence.

Liam’s hands wrapped around her waist, startling her. He pulled her into the crook of his body and whispered in her ear, “Should we get out of here?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and they crawled to the door. Alyse opened it a crack and peered out. Without the door in the way, she could hear Geri and Ryan talking over the din of the shredder. They didn’t seem to be in danger of moving, so Alyse signaled to Liam. She slipped out of her shoes and then they crawled out into the hallway. Once they’d made it around the corner, they got to their feet and sprinted for the stairs.

As silently as possible, they ran down four flights. Alyse’s bare feet squawked on the concrete. Their gasps magnified. The rustling of their clothes sounded like the snapping of a parachute. Surely someone would hear them.

But of course no one did and soon they’d reached the exit to the lobby.

She turned and inspected Liam for the first time. He looked calm for a guy who’d just participated in the distant cousin of breaking-and-entering. Remarkably calm, really, for a guy who’d just spent...well, at least several minutes hiding out in a conference room from two potentially crazy and probably felonious individuals.

“How are we going to leave without getting Ted’s attention?” he asked quietly.

“Like this.” She kissed him hard. For a minute, she was there on her own, pouring her fear and anxiety into him all alone, but then he responded. His fingers tangled in her hair and he pulled her against him. As good as their previous kisses had been, this was on an entirely new level. Terror had potential as an aphrodisiac.

He cradled her head, pushed her against the wall and did unnerving things with his hands and mouth. It was a study in contrasts. Cold and warm. Hard and soft. Panic and joy.

After minutes far more pleasant than those in the conference room, she wrestled her hands to his chest and put some space between them. “Okay, good. Now you look like you’ve spent Seven Minutes in Heaven.”

He was flushed, lips swollen and eyes distracted. He shook his head as if trying to focus. “I’m sorry—I missed the plan.”

Alyse rolled her eyes, put her shoes back on and slid her arm through his. “Pretend to be wildly infatuated with me while we walk out of here.”

“It won’t be pretending.”

He pushed the door open and they slipped out into the lobby, making bedroom eyes at each other and tripping toward the door to the outside. For the first time in years, Alyse didn’t say goodnight to Ted or even glance in the direction of the desk.

The cold rush of early spring against her cheeks was a relief for one. It felt like freedom and relief. She turned around and looked back through the lobby. Yup, Ted was absorbed in his paper.

“He’s going to give me crap about that tomorrow,” she assured Liam, “but for now, he doesn’t suspect a thing.”

With a deep sigh, Liam said, “Can we please go home now?”

“Yes, the Watergate portion of the evening has ended.”