Wired (20 page)

Leo touched his fingers to my cheek and gently pulled my gaze back to his. “If only you could get past your prejudices, I think you'd find I'm quite good.”

Oh, please
. “That right there . . . was that some feeble attempt at seduction?” I asked. “The idea being that I'll swoon at your feet and do anything you say?”

“I've not had any complaints about my methodology,” Leonardo said with a smile.

The nerve
. “You know what? Knock yourself out. Whatever you want to do. You want something from me, go ahead and seduce me. Seems like as good a plan as any.” I know what I would have replied if I were Leo:
It worked for Mason
. But Leonardo did not do what I would have done; he didn't take the bait.

I attended to the important task of delicately removing an endive hors d'oeurves from a silver tray. Chewing on the morsel, I studied Leonardo's face, trying to come to terms with the idea that maybe he wasn't as cruel as my instinct wanted me to believe. The possibility that maybe he was in the right was completely unnerving. “You
are
a bad man,” I insisted as soon as I'd swallowed. “You broke into my apartment, stole all of my equipment, backup machines, and storage discs.”

“Yes, about that. I neglected to ask—I requested everything be returned exactly as found. Was it?”

“Every plug, plugged in, every disc duly filed,” I admitted. “Of course, there is the issue of having my privacy violated and, for all I know, my personal information copied. And then there's the issue of larceny being a crime—not to mention it's just a shitty thing to do.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience. Please be assured that I had no interest in your personal files. And nothing was copied.”

“It was a violation. And I must also add that it's small potatoes next to that bit where you tried to run me over.”

Leo moved gracefully through the party, exchanging greetings and small talk with complete strangers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I followed on his heels like a lap dog. “I mean, seriously, Leo. You tried to kill me.”

He stopped short just behind an ice sculpture shaped like a horn of plenty and flipped the top on his smartie. “I'm terribly sorry, Roxanne, but I must pull away for one moment.” With a smile, he reached out and pushed a lock of stray hair behind my ear, then turned his attention to the device. He punched in a couple of things with his stylus, then quickly tucked the device away. “Forgive the interruption. We were talking . . . ah, yes. No, I did not try to kill you. I was not even driving. That accident was the result of a miscommunication between my people that I truly regret.”

“Accident? That was no
accident
. I was there. I know. You tried to kill me.”

“No,” he repeated calmly, slipping an earbud into one ear. “Though Mason undoubtedly
told you
I tried to kill you.”

I was about to rebut when I remembered. I had never seen who was driving. Not really. Mason told me it was Leonardo, and I'd hauled ass without even seeing who was at the wheel.

“Roxanne,” Leo said, again directing the seductive force of his green eyes at me. “I'm afraid that it's going to take you some time to work through all of Mason's lies. To have various . . . truths become evident and others to fade is very difficult, I know. Just try to concentrate on what you have seen with your own eyes, versus what someone else told you was there.”

I almost jumped in and defended Mason. Before I could say anything at all, Leonardo murmured, “I'm sorry for your loss, Roxanne.”

I froze. “I . . . what?”

“He made you care for him. And I'm sorry for it, for your sake.”

My cheeks burned as I remembered the first version of this party. I wondered if Leonardo knew how far Mason and I had taken things. If he did, was it Mason who'd told him in another time, cockily describing me as one of his conquests?

I certainly wasn't about to ask. I didn't want to talk about Mason, because I knew Leo couldn't help but say bad things about him, and I also knew Mason deserved that, but I wasn't sure I could bear it.

Leo continued escorting me through the crowd until we'd walked straight through the entire party and out to a hall on the other side. I realized he was heading
for the same bank of elevators as last time, and I knew we must be going up to the offices again. But experience had proved to me that nothing ever stayed quite the same, and I wondered what I would find up there. Maybe the agency in a new location yet again. Maybe something completely different. Either way, I wondered if Mason's toys were still up there like props on somebody else's desk.

Leonardo pushed an elevator button, and I leaned against the wall, trying to take the weight off my aching feet.

“I understand loss, you know,” Leonardo said softly. Something flickered in his eyes. It was the most real emotion I'd yet seen from him. “There are things that run much deeper in this world than your friend Mason Merrick's obsession with what is ‘right.' ”

“I think Mason understands loss as well as you or I,” I said. “He told me you disappeared the woman he loved.”

Leo looked at me with unfeigned surprise. The elevator door slid open, and he ushered me in. “He actually told you that?”

“Is it true?” I asked.

He paused. “No. And it's a rather poor fabrication. Especially compared to what you and I have lost.”

I stared at him, trying to determine if he was manipulating me the way a faux psychic tricks answers from unwitting marks. The elevator shuddered. I grabbed the railing, noticing how the movement seemed to unsettle Leonardo more than I would have expected. He glanced at his smartie, but simply continued
his thought. “What Mason describes as his greatest sorrow is a paltry thing compared to what you and I have lost. His was not an irreplaceable, undying love, was it?”

“I . . . I don't know.” I faltered. It couldn't have been an irreplaceable, undying love if Mason truly had feelings for
me
.

“No,” Leo answered himself. “And all that remains is the idea of his loss as a catalyst. Nothing more. But you and I . . .”

I blanched. How was he planning to connect us?

“Well, your father is as gone to you as mine is to me. For all intents and purposes, he died, Roxanne. You and I have a sorrow without end. One that cuts as deeply and as painfully now as in any reality. It drives us.”

He knew about my family—or lack thereof. He knew I was tender there. He knew it and he wasn't above using it on me.

“What do you really know about what drives or cuts me?” I asked.

“I know you live a life that is . . . perhaps not what you'd like it to be.”

I slammed my hand against the emergency button. The elevator lurched to a halt and I turned on him. “Stop it. You're manipulating me. It's nasty and transparent.”

Something of his cool façade slipped; he looked as though he truly felt my words and I couldn't help but soften a little. “I apologize if what I've said hurt you,” he said quietly. “Just remember that Mason is a wire crosser because it is his job. I am a wire crosser in the name of family, loyalty, and honor.”

I didn't answer. I was too stunned by the parallels Leonardo had drawn between himself and me. On the face of it, it seemed ridiculous; but below the surface, inside, where it counted, maybe the two of us had more in common than I'd ever imagined. I watched numbly as he pressed the emergency release button, and we resumed our upward climb.

The elevator shuddered again. We both grabbed the rail and I saw how white Leonardo's knuckles were. He was under a great deal of stress, even if he didn't let it show on his face. In fact, he looked irritated more than anything. The sort of irritated that I'd seen every time he thought about Mason . . . or about Mason trying to thwart him. I glanced up at the numbers. “Hey, we've passed my floor,” I said, realizing. “My office is on four.”

As I moved to correct the mistake, his hand whipped out and grabbed my wrist short of the panel. “We're not going to your office.”

I pulled my hand away. “Then, where are we going?”

He didn't answer. Just kept his eyes on the orange fluorescent numbers above the door as we traveled.

I didn't understand at first. Then, a memory came back. There were thirty floors in this building. And the top ten required special security clearance, which—

Oh.
Oh
.

The elevator stopped at twenty with a jolt. Leonardo looked at me. “If you please, Roxanne. Time is of the essence.
Timing
is of the essence. So, if you please . . .” He gestured to a small black square with a flip-top at the bottom of the button panel.

He needed me. He one-hundred percent needed me; I had security clearance and he did not. I could use that, and I jumped on the moment. “I'm not going to do anything else for you. I'm not going to follow you, and I'm not going to listen to you unless you give me something,” I said. “Just tell me why you want the code.”

In his eyes was a flicker of annoyance; then, as I held my ground, something else. Something closer to respect. “What if I told you that your code already belongs to me, and I'm simply trying to find a way to get it back?”

My heart pounded. Mason had said Leo wanted to profit off me, off my code. This fit that explanation. I was getting closer; I wanted to get closer still.

“Give me more.”

Silence.

I opened my mouth to launch into a tirade; he raised his hand to silence me. “We don't have time now. After. Then, when I do, you'll know you can always trust me to do what I say.”

There was no good reason to turn my back on this arrangement; he could easily tell me nothing and I'd still do what he asked in the hope I'd get some more clues on my own. What else could I do? I wasn't sacrificing much.

“That's a deal,” I said, holding out my hand. He took it in his, turned it over and kissed the top. I added, “Family, loyalty, honor, Leo. Don't do me wrong.”

“Of course not,” he said.

Of
course
not
.

I only hesitated for a second before I flipped the black cover up and punched in a security code, realizing too late how odd it was that the number was at the top of my brain. I didn't even have to think about it, the way somebody who worked in an office building every day wouldn't have to think about it. A tiny red light went on and I pressed my thumb against the security panel.

The elevator opened; I stared into the dark hall for a moment, and then took a step forward, expecting Leonardo to follow me. He punched the stop button again and stayed on the threshold framed by the elevator doors.

“Aren't you coming?” I asked.

He pointed to the unmarked double-wide security doors just a short way down the hall. “I'm afraid not. I'll be working . . . elsewhere.”

I felt the blood drain from my skin. “What will I be doing?”

He studied my face. “Think of it as a . . . mission.”

“A mission?”

He shrugged. “Not unlike a spy mission. You'll like it.”

I looked him right in the eyes, my own narrowed.

“You did more than look in my office. You looked through my whole house.”
And my life
.

“But left nothing out of place.”

I rolled my eyes. Still, the fact of the matter was that I wanted to break out of the life it seemed I'd led. Which was obviously what Leonardo Kaysar had counted on. “Well, let's hear it.”

Leonardo gave me the basic rundown of what
needed to happen. It seemed too simple, which should have given me pause. “So . . . I go into a secured area, check out a specific storage device—a flash drive—with an alpha-numeric designation you want me to memorize, and then we go somewhere upstairs to a data bank and load it?”

“That's correct.”

“Why is moving it from one spot to another in the same building a big deal?”

“Because I am concerned that we will move to a wire where one of the two does not exist. And perhaps to one where the code itself does not exist. As you yourself are aware, you only work in this office . . . sometimes.”

I studied Leonardo's face and saw no evidence of a lie. And indeed, what he'd just explained was too outrageous for a lie anyway. And too confusing. “Now you're going to explain about the somewhere upstairs part,” I guessed.

“Yes.” He fiddled around in his breast pocket and pulled out a small notepad, foregoing his handheld in favor of low-tech.

As I'd said, I still didn't really understand. “So, we just basically get the thing and walk it upstairs?”

“More or less.”

Why did I think that meant
less
.

Well, I could huff all I wanted, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. Besides, he already knew I'd do this. An embarrassing thrill edged my voice when I asked, “So, after I get this thing, it'll be like Mission Impossible—where there's one guy in a van with the computer equipment monitoring everything, and one guy breaking into the offices to steal something.”

“Exactly.”

“Don't you think that people with air ducts and in charge of top secret projects all over the country saw the same damn movie and are prepared for exactly this kind of break-in?”

“I'm not concerned.”

It took a moment, but I resolved myself. I leaned back against the wall outside the elevator and said, “Cool. Fine. Where do I get this thing, and where's my van?” I knew I had the most ridiculous grin on my face. I was suddenly fantasizing about Leonardo doing a James Bond impression in a custom-tailored tuxedo, and me totally wired into some equipment making sure he didn't get lasered or arrested or pulverized. Except . . .

“Except for one or two details,” Leonardo said. “You're not ever the ‘guy in a van.' Or perhaps I should say ‘limousine.' ”