Agent Undercover

“He wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.

Her green eyes widened in skepticism. “Really? I was right behind you.”

“He wouldn’t have hit you.” The guy had been aiming only for Ash.

“Why not?” she asked.

“You’re too valuable.”

She laughed like he’d heard her laugh during the speed dating event, like he had told her a not-so-funny joke like those other guys must have. “Yeah, right...”

Was her self-deprecation real or feigned? He believed it was real, because he was beginning to believe her. He had conceived his opinion of her from her file—from the things she’d done in her past. He of all people should have known better than to think a person’s past defined the kind of person he or she would become.

“The information you have is valuable,” he clarified. “They want to know what you know.”

“But you think I’m offering that information for sale,” she said. “So why wouldn’t they just pay me for it?”

“Some people would rather get the information for free,” he said.

She glanced toward the man lying on the floor and shook her head. “That’s not free.”

No. Like the man in the parking lot, this guy had undoubtedly been hired to abduct Claire, but whatever they’d been paid hadn’t been enough. The mission had cost them both their lives.

Ash rubbed his chest where the bullet had struck the vest right over his heart. If not for the vest...

During his years with the Bureau, Ash had had some dangerous assignments, but now he wondered if this mission would be the one that cost him his life.

* * *

HE HAD KILLED a man, but the police hadn’t questioned him. Of course Special Agent Ash Stryker hadn’t stuck around to talk to them, either. He’d whisked Claire out of the hotel as if nothing had happened.

But the gunshots still rang in her ears, and she trembled in the aftermath of the close call. Maybe he was right. Maybe the man hadn’t been shooting at her. But she’d thought Ash had been hit, which had been entirely too close for her.

She had actually touched him, just to check his chest to see if a bullet had struck his heart. But he’d been wearing a vest. She’d felt the hardness beneath the softness of his sweater. Maybe she should have checked beneath the vest, too. At the thought of pulling up his sweater and peeling off that vest, her pulse quickened. Would his chest have dark hair that would be soft to her touch? Or would his muscles be all sleek and smooth beneath her palms? Her breath caught at both images.

“Is something missing?” Agent Stryker asked.

Her face heated with embarrassment that he had caught her daydreaming about him when she was supposed to be checking her ransacked office to see what could have been missing. Why would someone break into her office?

The power was on her computer but her files were untouched. Nobody would have been able to bypass her security passwords, though. And once they’d sounded the alarm and shot the guard, they wouldn’t have had time to even try to figure it out.

What were they so desperate to steal from her?

She reached for the snow globe paperweight that sat next to her monitor. She shook it and watched the flakes float onto the pond, a tiny figurine of a father skated around with the tiny figurine of his daughter perched high upon his shoulders. Her breath shuddered out in relief. “It’s okay.”

“You were worried about a paperweight?” he asked, his blue eyes narrowed with skepticism.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she asked as she held it out toward him.

He shrugged. “It’s a snow globe.”

“It’s special,” she said with a soft sigh as sweet, old memories rushed over her. “My father gave it to me.”

“Is he dead?”

She gasped at the horror of such a loss. “No!”

He reached for the paperweight, engulfing the delicate glass globe in his big hands. “I don’t see what’s so special about it,” he said as he studied it more closely, “unless you hid a flash drive inside it.”

Afraid that he might smash it onto the floor to look for something hidden inside, she grabbed for it, her fingers sliding over his as he gripped the globe. “Don’t break it! My father had that specially made for me.” To commemorate a perfect day. Of course it had been just the two of them...

Maybe she shouldn’t have gotten so upset when her mother left them since she had never really spent that much time with them anyway. And Claire probably wouldn’t have if her father hadn’t gotten so upset. He had been in so much pain that she’d had to lash out. She sighed again, but this time with regret.

“He’s not dead,” Ash reminded her.

“Does he have to be?” she asked. “Why can’t something he gave me be important to me while he’s alive?”

Ash just shrugged again.

Her heart sank as she had a grim realization. “Your father’s dead.”

He jerked his head in a quick nod, as if he was embarrassed to admit it.

“I’m sorry.”

Now he shrugged off her sympathy. “It happened a long time ago.”

She doubted that would have lessened his pain very much. If something happened to her father, she would miss him forever. “That must have been tough on you and your mom.”

“My mom died with him,” he said.

Her hands still covered his, over the snow globe, so she squeezed, offering sympathy and comfort. “That must have been horrible for you. To lose them both...”

For a while she had felt like she had, too.

Ash focused on her now, as if he’d picked up on the tone of her voice. “You lost your mom.”

“Yes,” she said but then hastened to add, “but not like you did, though. She’s alive. She’s just gone. When I was sixteen, she left my dad and went to live in England with a man she’d met online.”

His eyes widened, and then he nodded with sudden realization. “That was when you hacked into that bank.”

“It was the bank that he used and the only money I took was from his account,” she said. For some reason she wanted him to know that greed hadn’t motivated her. But was it any better that spite had?

He chuckled. “And if I remember right from what I read in your file, you donated that money to a charity called Family First.”

She couldn’t chuckle. Even after all these years, she was still kind of bitter. Probably too bitter. “I wanted to hurt him.”

“Instead you’re the one you hurt,” he said. “Because he pressed charges.”

And yet her mother had stayed with the man. Clearly Bonita Molenski had made her choice when she’d left them, but still it had hurt Claire that her mother had cared so little about her that she would have let her go to juvenile detention. But then the FBI had offered Claire another option.

“You’ve definitely read my file,” she mused. Either he’d read it a few times, or he had a photographic memory. She glanced around her ransacked office. “It hasn’t been all bad, though. I actually enjoy what I do.”

“You do?” he asked doubtfully, as if he couldn’t understand why.

She laughed at his skepticism. “Yes, I do. I’ve not only been given permission to hack, I’ve been encouraged to do it. It’s fun.”

Or it had been until she had realized that her job was pretty much all she had. Of course she’d spent time with her dad when she hadn’t been working. But he was finally over her mother and had moved on, so it was time she did the same. That was why she’d joined the dating service—one she’d trusted to make sure that none of the participants were already married like her mother had been. That hadn’t been the case at the speed dating event, though. But maybe, like Ash, some of the others hadn’t been there to date, either.

He sighed and released the snow globe to her hands. “You’re not selling a flash drive with inside information on how to get around security firewalls.”

So that was what he’d thought she was selling. “I would never sell that kind of information,” she assured him.

After her arrest all those years ago, she had learned to control her impulsiveness and consider the consequences of her actions before she acted. Ironically, learning that had actually made her a better hacker.

Knuckles rapped against the glass wall of her office. “Hey, Boss, what happened here tonight?”

She turned her attention to her young assistant, who leaned now in her open doorway. His bleached white-blond hair was all mussed up as if he’d been sleeping and his eyes were red-rimmed as if he’d been out partying before he’d fallen asleep. Maybe Martin Crouch wasn’t as young as she thought—he just dressed and acted young. Peter Nowak must have called him in to help her look through her ransacked office.

“The building was broken into and Harold was injured,” she said. As soon as they had arrived at the company, she’d learned the name of the injured guard. Ash had checked in with the hospital again and had assured her that Harold was out of surgery and in stable condition. Fortunately, he would fully recover.

“Is—is he going to be okay?” Martin asked.

He must have been as shocked and horrified as she was. Despite checking security for banks and the government, the company had always been safe and secure—probably because most people didn’t realize exactly what kind of computer consulting they did.

“Yes, he is,” Ash answered for her.

Martin turned his attention to Ash and asked, “Are you a police officer?”

Claire opened her mouth, but before she could reply, Ash answered for her again. “I’m Claire’s boyfriend.”

She sucked in a breath of shock at his outrageous claim. Nobody would actually believe that they were dating—not a former lawbreaker and an FBI agent. But maybe Ash didn’t intend to tell anyone that he was an agent. Her boss knew but national security relied on his ability to keep secrets.

Martin’s bleached blond brows arched in surprise. As her assistant, he knew how many hours they worked and how little time she had for a relationship. “Really?”

“We met through a dating service,” Ash replied with a pointed stare at her—probably so that she would back his story.

“Really?” Martin asked again, and he turned toward Claire now.

Technically Ash hadn’t lied, but she wondered why he hadn’t told more of the truth. Like what he really did for a living. Could he suspect Martin of being involved in offering that information for sale? He suspected her, though, and had revealed that he was an FBI agent. But maybe he’d only done that because she’d nearly been abducted.

Aware of the danger, she followed his lead and replied, “Yes, really. Ash and I met at a speed dating event.” Like Ash, she left out the part that it had been just that evening.

“How come you didn’t mention anything to me about meeting someone?” Martin asked, sounding hurt, which surprised her.

He was her assistant but not her confidant. She didn’t share everything with him. She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “I wanted to see how it worked out before I said anything.”

She was damn sure a relationship would never work out between her and the FBI agent. He thought she was a criminal, and she thought he was too uptight and judgmental.

“So you’re okay?” Martin asked. At first she wasn’t sure what he was talking about—her and Ash—or the break-in. But then he added, “Nothing was taken?”

She tightly clasped the snow globe and shook her head. “Nothing.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Do you want me to help you clean up?”

“No, but thanks for asking, Martin.” She was surprised that he had, though, because she rarely let him touch anything in her space even though he was her assistant.

She hated that someone else had been in her office, touching her things, moving and throwing them around the small area. She didn’t need everything to be neat; she just needed it to be where she’d left it so she would know where to find it again. At least they hadn’t broken the globe or, as far as she could tell, anything else.

“It’s so late,” she told Martin, “that you should just go home.” Like she just wanted to go home...

Martin glanced to Ash again. Either he was concerned about leaving her alone with this strange man or he was seeking permission from Ash to leave.

He was her assistant, though. He was supposed to defer to her. Usually he did—when he wasn’t preoccupied with whatever games he was playing when he should be working instead.

Ash assured him, “I’ll take care of her.”

Was he offering that assurance as an FBI agent? Or as the boyfriend he was pretending to be?

Easily accepting Ash’s claim, Martin nodded and headed for the door. He was probably eager to go back to bed. Or maybe to the party...

Ash waited until her assistant was out of earshot before he asked her, “There really is nothing missing? Not even a flash drive?”

She glanced at the contents of her open desk drawer before closing it again. It had been a long night. She should have been tired, too. “Maybe a flash drive...”

He tensed, his spine straightening so that he stood even taller, making him even more imposing since the muscles in his arms stretched the sleeves of his sweater. His jaw was rigid with tension. He was an FBI agent on full alert.

She laughed at his overreaction and couldn’t resist teasing him. “It’s okay. I have those photos on my hard drive at home. I don’t think the thieves are going to find them nearly as special as I do, though.”

He didn’t laugh; he didn’t even smile. His handsome face still tense, he asked, “Personal photos?”

A pang of panic struck her heart as a terrifying thought occurred to her. “You don’t think they’ll use those photos to go after my family?”

After all, those men had been so determined to abduct her that they had given up their own lives. In order to get to her, they might use someone close to her to influence her. Could what she did for a living actually put her father and his bride at risk?

Chapter Five

Ash didn’t offer Claire false reassurance because it was possible that someone might use her family as leverage to get her to reveal her secrets. And if he continued being honest with her, she might begin to trust him enough to tell him everything she knew. Because even though he now believed she hadn’t offered that security information for sale, she probably knew who might have.

Could her assistant have had something to do with it? He hadn’t looked bright or mature enough to come up with such a plan, though. But then Claire had only been sixteen when she’d hacked into that bank system.

“Tell me about your assistant,” he said even though he already had checked out everyone who worked for Nowak Computer Consulting. That was how Claire Molenski had become his main suspect.

She glanced up from straightening her desk and laughed. “You can’t seriously suspect Martin of anything?”

“He’s your assistant,” he said. “So he must work closely with you, checking security on the same high target sites that you do.”

She gestured around her small office. There was only one desk and only one chair. “I work alone.”

Nowak Computer Consulting was the only company who’d had access to all the sites that had been offered up for sale at the online auction. So Ash had thoroughly studied it. As well as talking to Peter Nowak, he had scrutinized the building floor plans and scoured security footage. He knew the layout probably better than Claire did. Just a few steps from her office was the bull pen of cubicles where the assistants worked.

“But he’s your assistant, so doesn’t he assist you with the projects you’re working on?” he asked. Company protocol claimed otherwise, but Ash knew people whose assistants did more of the work than they did.

“No,” she corrected him. “As my assistant, Martin brings me coffee and lunch and dinner, if I’m working late.” She sighed. “Which I usually am.”

Maybe Ash had made too many assumptions about Claire Molenski—although he hadn’t been wrong about how much time she spent at the consulting company. He’d thought it was because she legally had to, but maybe it was also because she wanted to. “He doesn’t help you with any of your projects?”

“He helps with whatever tasks I give him to handle,” she said. “But he doesn’t have the clearance to work most of the projects I work.”

Because she had the highest clearance at the company. Peter Nowak had reluctantly admitted that to Ash when he’d interviewed the man. The former CIA agent trusted his star hacker, but Ash trusted no one. That was why Claire Molenski was his number-one suspect.

* * *

SHE WAS HIS number one-suspect—of whatever he suspected her. The suspicion was back in his piercing blue eyes as he stared at her. She hadn’t helped herself by defending Martin. But there was no way her assistant could be guilty of anything that had people getting shot at and killed.

“Who does have the clearance level you have or an even higher level?” he asked.

“My boss.” Peter Nowak had been a CIA agent before he’d started his computer consultation business, though. That was why some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the world as well as the US and several other governments had entrusted him to ensure their internet security. He was good at what he did, and he was beyond suspicion.

So she wasn’t surprised when Agent Ash Stryker didn’t even blink those surprisingly long, black lashes of his. He had no suspicions about Peter Nowak. His suspicions were all about her.

“None of the other hackers have your level of clearance?” he asked.

Maybe he was willing to consider another suspect. But she didn’t have anyone to offer him.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I suspect that you know.”

“You,” he said, confirming her fears. “You have the highest clearance besides Peter Nowak.”

She sighed as weariness overwhelmed her. It had been a long day before someone had tried abducting her from the parking lot of the speed dating hotel. “I thought so.” That was why she worked so many hours—nobody else could work on the projects she worked. “Since Leslie retired...”

“Leslie?”

“Leslie Morrison retired last year. I was his assistant when I first started working here,” she explained. “Leslie taught me everything I know, a lot more than I learned in college.” Her professors had been behind the new technology, while Mr. Nowak’s company had been beyond it—far beyond it.

“So Leslie is a better hacker than you are?”

She shivered at his coldly suspicious tone. She hadn’t offered up Leslie to defray guilt from herself. She wasn’t guilty, and neither was Leslie. She slammed her desk drawer shut. “Leslie isn’t a hacker anymore.”

“I’m sure he still knows how to hack, though,” Agent Stryker persisted.

She shook her head. “Hacking isn’t like riding a bike. Technology changes so quickly that you have to constantly be hacking to be any good. If you’re away from it too long, you’re going to be so far behind the security systems and software that you won’t be able to hack into anything anymore.”

And she’d done it again—deflected guilt off someone else and back onto herself. He was looking at her that way again, as if he was imagining himself slapping cuffs on her, while just a short while ago she’d been imagining herself undressing him.

It really was unfair that he was so good-looking. The FBI agents who had arrested her the first time had been old, or at least they had seemed old to her sixteen-year-old self. Their hair had been gray and receding while their waistlines had been expanding.

Why couldn’t Ash Stryker look like that?

Why did his black hair have to be so thick and soft looking? So soft looking that she was tempted to run her fingers through it...

She had been right to join the dating service. It had been entirely too long since she’d been with a man. That had to be the reason why she was so physically attracted to Ash. It had to be the only reason.

“Are you done here?” he asked.

She glanced around the small office. She had organized it again—as much as it was ever organized. It didn’t look neat, but at least things were back where she had left them. She shuddered at the thought of someone touching all her stuff. Had they touched her globe, too? If not the intruders, the crime lab who’d investigated and collected evidence might have. They’d left fingerprint dust all over, too, which she’d had to clean up. She hated cleaning.

She reached for the globe again, tempted to take it home with her. But she wasn’t sure she was going home. And with security increased at the company, nobody would ever be able to break in again. The globe would be safe. But was she?

“What if I tell you that I am done?” she asked. “Will you take me back to the hotel to get my car?”

“No,” he said, and his deep voice held that no-nonsense, matter-of-fact tone that so infuriated her.

His reply confirmed her suspicion that he was actually going to bring her in for questioning. He might even arrest her. She didn’t understand exactly what crime he suspected her of, but she had offered him no other suspects.

She drew in a deep breath and stood, ready for him to slap the cuffs on her, ready to relive all her nightmares from nine years ago...

* * *

IT WAS LATE.

Too late to question her any further. So Ash wasn’t taking her back to the Bureau. For one, he was beginning to believe she really didn’t know any more than she’d already told him. And secondly, she was exhausted.

Her slight body slumped down in the passenger’s seat of his Bureau-issued black SUV. She was nearly asleep, but she fought back a yawn and told him, “You didn’t have to drive me home.”

He heard the surprise in her voice; she hadn’t expected him to bring her home. She had suspected him to arrest her. Earlier that evening, he would have thought that was because she had a guilty conscience. But now that he was beginning to get to know her better...

He wasn’t sure what to think of Claire Molenski anymore. She was smart, but he’d already known that. She was sexy; that he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known how his body would react to hers. While she shivered slightly despite the heat blowing out of the vents, his skin was hot, his body tense.

That could have been just because of the adrenaline. He had nearly lost her a couple of times. He had to be vigilant because it wasn’t a question of if there would be another attempt to grab her. It was a question of when.

And that made him wonder about her guilt.

Maybe her only crime was being too smart. But then who had offered her knowledge for sale? He had been so certain she was the threat that he hadn’t really considered other suspects. Only Nowak Computer Consulting, or “No Hack” as it was known in inner circles, had the means to infiltrate those sites.

“You could have just brought me back to my car at the hotel,” she said.

He could have. Or he could have handed her off to another agent to drive home. He didn’t do security detail. His specialty had always been putting himself at risk, going undercover rather than protecting other people.

“No, I couldn’t,” he said. While he worked with good agents, damn good agents, he hadn’t wanted to trust anyone else with her safety. “There have already been two attempts to abduct you.” He suspected there would be more—many more—since so many radical groups and subversive governments wanted the information she possessed.

“Me,” she murmured.

“Yes, you.” They hadn’t been after him...except to kill him and get him out of their way.

“They were after me,” she said, as if she were strangely trying to reassure herself of that fact. Then he understood her reasoning when she added, “So Dad and Pam will be safe...”

“Pam?”

“She’s my dad’s new wife,” Claire explained. “And a very sweet lady. Like my dad, she was a single parent for years, so she never had enough money to travel. Because of that they’re taking a long honeymoon to visit all the places they’ve always wanted to see. They won’t be home for months.”

She jerked her head in a sharp nod. “So that’s good. They’ll be safe...”