Pawn

With her computer up and running she decided to check her e-mail before she got to work on the drug company’s Web site. She pulled up her e-mail program and typed in her password.

Her mailbox showed about two dozen new e-mails. Several she knew were work related, a couple were from cyberfriends, some spam that had managed to get past her filters, but there was one sender she didn’t recognize.

The return address read, [e-mail].

Lynn frowned, trying to decide if she should open it or not. She had filters and blocks on the system that shouldn’t allow in any viruses or bugs, but she also knew she couldn’t be too careful.

Deciding to take a chance, she opened the message.

Athena sister Lynette,

You have come to our attention. Your special, genetic skills are needed in our battle. As friends of Rainy we need your help. The Oracle Network awaits you. We will be in touch.

Lynn stared at the note, her mind whirling. Delphi…Oracle…sounded like something from Greek mythology. It would be easy to dismiss the note as nothing but some sort of crazy ad campaign or spam except that it mentioned Athena, her special, genetic skills and the mother Lynn had never known.

There were only a handful of people who knew that she had been created by a human experiment, that the experiment had been a success in that she had been born with superhuman speed and hearing and other strengths.

Even Nick hadn’t known the entire truth about the circumstances of her birth and her full capabilities, although he had suspected she was physically gifted.

So, who had written the note and what was Oracle? She hit Reply. What is Oracle, she typed in, then hit Send. It took only a moment for her to get a message that the e-mail address of [e-mail] was not a working address.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered. She spent the next half an hour trying to trace the e-mail address but came up with nothing. Definitely intriguing, but also rather suspicious.

Was it possible the note was from the FBI? She narrowed her eyes and stared at the message. It was pretty coincidental that she’d been detained by them earlier then came home to find this cryptic e-mail.

She closed the message, but was unable to still the new edge of agitation that rose up inside her. She didn’t like things she didn’t understand, things that didn’t make sense.

And she got the definite feeling that somehow the peaceful, quiet life she’d built here was about to explode.

Raymore, Florida

The ring of the telephone pulled Nick Barnes from the sofa, where he’d been cat napping for the past thirty minutes. He gazed at his watch and frowned. Who in the hell would be calling at midnight?

He grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is Haley there?”

Nick’s gut twisted at the sound of the deep male voice. “Sorry, you’ve got a wrong number.”

“I was just looking for Haley.”

“Nobody here by that name.” He hung up the phone, his heart pounding with apprehension. Something was wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten that phone call.

He got up from the sofa and grabbed his car keys from the kitchen table, then walked down the hallway and paused in the master bedroom doorway. Good, the phone hadn’t awakened her.

As he walked back down the hall toward the front door, he wondered what in the hell had happened. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

They had agreed, when he’d gone deep undercover three months ago, that there would be no contact unless it was a dire emergency. The fact that the code had been used meant something terrible had occurred and that couldn’t be good news for him.

He left a note on the table that said he’d gone to get a pack of smokes, just in case she woke up and wondered where he was.

As he left the house, as always, his gaze shot up and down the street, looking for anything suspicious, anything or anyone that didn’t belong.

Although Raymore, Florida, was only an hour’s drive from Miami, it was light-years away in culture and flavor. Struggling economically the small town was populated by people on their way down rather than on their way up.

It was also the place where an FBI undercover operation had been ongoing for the past year to break up a huge methamphetamine ring.

Nick started the engine of his ten-year-old sedan, then pushed against a panel in the door that opened to reveal a secret compartment. Inside the secret compartment was a cell phone.

As he headed away from the small bungalow he’d called home for the past three months, he punched in the number that would connect him with his contact.

“Are you safe?” a deep, male voice asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me.” Nick didn’t know the name of his contact, had only spoken to him by phone once before, on the day he’d gone undercover. He knew the man only by his contact name of Haley, a name that would have nothing to do with his real one.

There were only three people who knew where Nick was and what he was doing in Raymore. Buzz Cantrell, an agent who coordinated much of the undercover work within the agency; Frank Jessup, Nick’s boss; and Haley, a faceless voice over the phone.

“I’m alone in my car, on my way to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. What’s up?” Nick’s stomach remained knotted as he waited to hear what could only be bad news. As he listened to what Haley had to say, the knot twisted tighter. By the time Haley had finished telling him why he’d called, Nick had arrived at the convenience store.

Nick disconnected the call and sat for a minute, trying to digest what he’d just heard. He didn’t want to do it, but knew the men in charge would find a way of forcing his hand no matter how much he protested.

He got out of the car and went into the store. As he paid for a pack of cigarettes, he continued to think about what he’d just been told. They were asking him to play a dangerous game. They couldn’t pull him off the case he was working—too much time and effort had gone into setting him up in his current position.

But, they needed him to do another job for them, one that could not be done by any other agent. It was a dangerous request, with dangerous consequences should it be discovered.

He already knew that one false move on the case he was working would see him dead. The meth operation was headed by a handful of ruthless, amoral men who would think nothing of putting a bullet through his head should they entertain even a moment of suspicion. Now he’d been ordered to risk compromising his position.

He got back into the car and restarted the engine at the same time he shook a cigarette from the pack. He hadn’t been a smoker before he’d started this job, and he intended to quit as soon as this assignment was finished, but you couldn’t go out to buy cigarettes and not smoke them.

As he headed back toward the bungalow, he thought again of what he’d just been asked to do. The only positive thing he had to focus on was that if this got him killed, at least he’d have an opportunity to see Lynn again before he died.

Chapter 2

Lynn was having a bad morning. Part of the problem was that she was trying to function on too-little sleep. Despite the fact that she’d tried to forget the unexpected appearance of the FBI in her life once again, she hadn’t been successful.

She’d tossed and turned all night, cursing them even as she wondered exactly what they’d wanted from her. She’d finally fallen asleep as dawn was creeping into the bedroom, then had awakened just before ten and had forced herself out of bed despite a headful of grogginess. After two cups of coffee she’d felt better prepared to face the day.

She’d punched on her computer with the intention of working only to discover that the piece of technological machinery had gone wonky.

It booted up just fine, but before she could touch another button it began indiscriminately opening and closing programs one after another. Her dancing dolphin screen saver, WordPerfect, Free Cell, Excel—every program large and small she had ever loaded into the computer flashed on and off the screen in mind-boggling succession.

She stared at the screen, stunned, wondering what in the hell was going on. She punched keys, trying to gain control of the possessed computer, but it responded to nothing she keyed in.

What was happening? When she’d opened that crazy Delphi e-mail the night before, had it somehow infected her computer with a new kind of virus?

She was still seated in front of the computer screen when a knock fell on her door. She got up to answer, unsurprised to see her next-door-neighbor Leo Tankersly. He often drifted in and out of her apartment as if he belonged.

“Hey, Lynnie.” He walked through the doorway and headed for her kitchen, where she knew he’d help himself to her freshly brewed coffee.

Leo had made it clear from the moment she’d met him seven months ago that he wouldn’t mind if their neighborly relationship moved on to something more intimate.

She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched him pour himself a cup of coffee. There had been times in the past seven months that she’d been tempted to let herself fall into a relationship with Leo, times when loneliness had made his attractiveness look appealing.

And he was attractive. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and a headful of long, blond hair that made him appear lionlike. He had the clear blue eyes of an Arizona summer sky and an easy nature that made him comfortable to be around.

He owned his own construction business, but was the least driven man she’d ever known. He worked when he felt like it, or when his cupboards were empty. For him, work was merely a means to an end, not a way of life.

What had kept her from falling into a physical relationship with him so far was the fact that, as handsome as he was, as sexy as he looked in his jeans and T-shirt, there were no sparks for her, none of the visceral pull that she’d felt only once before in her life for a man.

“You aren’t speaking this morning?” he asked once he had his cup of coffee in his hand. He raised a furry blond eyebrow.

“I’m having a bad morning,” she said, unable to stop the frown she felt tug across her forehead.

“How can it be a bad morning? The sun is shining, the coffee is hot and all is well with the world.” He grinned, exposing slightly crooked front teeth.

Lynn’s frown deepened. Leo was one of those people who never had a bad day. Laid-back to the point of being comatose, he never expected anything and therefore was never disappointed. He was at peace with the universe in a way Lynn often envied.

“Something’s wrong with my computer.”

“Something’s wrong with all computers,” he replied. “Too much, too fast isn’t good for anyone. Technology isn’t always a good thing.”

“I’m serious, Leo,” she said with a touch of impatience. She led him through the living room and to the tiny spare bedroom she used as an office.

Leo took one look at her computer screen’s activity and whistled beneath his breath. “Wow, what kind of evil virus did you manage to pick up?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even key anything in to see if I can find the problem.” Once again Lynn stared at her screen.

It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was at that moment a thought struck her. Was it possible her “friends” at the FBI had decided to wreak a little havoc in her life?

It would be relatively easy for one of their computer techs to transmit a virus via the Internet directly to her machine. Even though she had the latest in security features on her computer, she knew no security was fail-safe and the FBI would have viruses that had never been seen before in their little cache of surprises.

She couldn’t imagine what they would hope to gain by doing something like this, other than reminding her of how powerful they were.

“Have you tried shutting it off and rebooting?” Leo asked. “Maybe that will reset it or something.” Lynn shrugged, leaned over and punched the button to shut off the power.

“And while we’re waiting for it to cool down or reset or whatever those things do, maybe we should just take a quick tumble in the bed.” He grinned at her. “You look tense. There’s nothing like a full-body massage to relax you. I’ll use my body to massage yours.”

She laughed in spite of her frustration. “Leo, do you ever think of anything else besides sex?”

“Food,” he replied. “Speaking of which, do you have any of those cinnamon muffin things you had last week? They were awesome.”

“No. I haven’t been back to the bakery since you polished off the last dozen.”

“Then if you aren’t going to offer me muffins, you should offer me sex.” A wicked grin curved his lips.

Again Lynn laughed. “You might as well give it up. It’s never going to happen.”

He held up one of his large hands as if to stop her protests. “Never say never. Who knows what fate has in store, and never might be something very different tomorrow.”

He took a sip of his coffee and eyed her over the rim of the cup. “Are you sure you’re all right? You really do look tense.”

Lynn leaned against the wall and sighed. “I didn’t sleep well and then I got up to this computer problem.” She couldn’t tell him about the FBI. Leo knew nothing about her history and she liked it that way. A clean start, that’s what she’d wanted when she’d decided to move to Phoenix.

“Unfortunately, I can’t help you with the computer and as far as not getting enough sleep, my advice would be take a nap.” He drained his coffee cup and they left the office and returned to the kitchen where he rinsed his cup in the sink and put it in the drainer to dry.

“Guess I’ll head back over to my place. I just wanted to check in and see what’s shaking.”

“Absolutely nothing. If I can get my computer working again I’ve got tons of work to do.”

“All work and no play make Lynn a boring girl.” His blue eyes twinkled.

She flashed him a quick smile. “All play and no work make Lynn homeless and hungry. Now, get out of here so I can figure out what’s wrong with my computer.” She walked with him to her front door.

“Wanna share a pizza tonight?”

She considered it for a moment. She and Leo often ate together on Saturday nights. “I had pizza last night.”

“What about Chinese?”

“I don’t think so, not tonight. I’m really swamped. I’ll probably just nibble on something while I work.” Although she did have a lot to do, that wasn’t the reason for telling him no.

She didn’t feel much like socializing, especially since what she did feel was the presence of an insidious threat hanging over her head.

“If you change your mind, let me know,” Leo said. “I’m going to be in and out all day, but just leave a message on my machine or call my cell.”

“Okay, but don’t count on it.”

She closed the door behind him as he left, then returned to her office and booted up her computer. To her surprise everything came up normal. She had just begun running a diagnostic to see if she could figure out what had caused the earlier anomaly when a knock once again fell on her door.

Probably Leo again. She rarely had any other visitors.

“Leo, I told you I’m not going to bed with you,” she said as she pulled open the door.

She stared at the tall, handsome dark-haired man at her door in stunned shock. “Nick.” His name fell from her lips in a breathless whisper.

“Hi, Lynn.”

The familiar deep voice washed over her. “Nick,” she repeated and with utter abandon threw herself into his arms. Oh God, he smelled the same, a rich blend of minty soap and earthy cologne and his body against hers felt wonderfully magical.

It had been so long, so terribly long since she’d seen him and it wasn’t until this moment that she realized just how much she had missed him.

His arms wound around her for one sweet moment, then he disentangled himself and took a step backward. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, of course. Please, come in. My God, I can’t believe you’re here.” Her head reeled with his presence. Nick. It had been a year since she’d last seen him and the sight of him filled places inside her that had been hollow for so long.

She led him into the living room, wishing she’d dusted, regretting the fact that she hadn’t put on any makeup that morning. She couldn’t believe he was here in Phoenix, here in her living room.

As he sat on her beige sofa, she drank in the vision of him. There were subtle changes in him from the last time she’d seen him. His dark hair was longer and his face was thinner, giving his appearance a dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before.

But, some things remained the same. His white dress shirt tugged across broad shoulders and his dark slacks fit nicely across his slim hips and muscular legs. His eyes were just as dark and gorgeous as she remembered, but at the moment they held no real emotion.

She sat on a chair opposite the sofa and continued to stare at him as if he were some apparition. She’d dreamed of him often in the past year and what she wanted more than anything at this moment was to be in his arms.

Did he feel it, too? The sparks that had ignited between them a year ago now simmered once again in the pit of her stomach, on the verge of a full-blown inferno.

“How have you been? What are you doing here? Are you working here in the Phoenix area? You look wonderful.” Giddy happiness swelled inside her and for a moment she felt like the young, innocent woman she had once been.

“I’ve been all right.” His deep voice resonated inside her. His gaze swept the length of her. “And you look great.”

She ran a hand through her hair, once again wishing she’d put on makeup, taken a little more time with her appearance that morning. “Thanks,” she replied.

“I understand you’ve been doing well, using your computer skills to make a living.”

“I’m doing okay. Creative Communications is the name of my business and it’s been growing by leaps and bounds in the last couple of months.” Some of the giddiness she’d experienced only moments before dissipated somewhat as she sensed a distance in him.

“I’m glad you’re doing well, Lynn.”

The last of her giddiness fell away as he didn’t quite meet her gaze. Just because she had held thoughts of him close to her heart since their separation didn’t mean he’d done the same with memories of her.

He’d been her first lover and she’d always heard that women remembered their first. She certainly hadn’t been his first, so maybe their relationship had never meant as much to him as it had her.

“Nice place,” he said as he looked around the room.

“Thanks. The rent is reasonable and I like the general area.” She leaned forward. “So, you didn’t tell me. Are you working in the area?”

He looked at her then, and in his dark eyes she saw something that caused a faint cold wind to blow through her. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“What do you mean?” The beat of her heart, which had gone wild at the first sight of him now slowed to a dull thud of wariness.

For a long moment he didn’t answer as he once again broke eye contact with her. Whatever he had to say, it was obvious he was reluctant. He finally looked at her and any happiness she might have managed to hang on to fell away as she saw the unemotional, businesslike look in his eyes.

“They sent me here, Lynn,” he said. “They sent me here from Miami to try to convince you to work for them.”

“Then I guess that makes you a bastard,” she exclaimed.

The very first sight of her had been like a punch in the gut. She was as beautiful—no, more beautiful—than she had been a year before.

There was a new maturity in her unusual gold-green eyes, a confidence in her carriage that spoke of an inner strength that had been undeveloped when he’d known her before.

She’d been an innocent, very young twenty-two a year ago. Now she looked like a woman who had taken control of her life and was comfortable with the direction she intended to go.

He’d seen the happiness that had lit her eyes when she’d first opened the door and looked at him and had fought against a responding burst of joy in himself. She had been a thing of magic for him for all-too brief a time and in the first second of seeing her he’d once again felt that stir.

He couldn’t get caught up in the memories, in her. Things had changed and there were now powerful people playing significant roles in both their lives. Of course, she wasn’t aware of that yet, but within minutes she would understand that it was useless to fight the inevitable, that she could either go along with the program or be destroyed.

“I guess that does make me a bastard,” he agreed. “A bastard who is following orders.”

What little happiness remained in her eyes instantly doused at his words. Her gaze narrowed and her expression went from warm to arctic cool. “So, you’re here as a tool for the Feds to use against me.”

She stood and walked over to the living room window, her slender back presented to him like a wall. Her tight jeans hugged the length of her slender legs and cupped the curve of her shapely butt. The blue top she wore had spaghetti straps, making him realize there was no bra beneath. He definitely couldn’t allow his thoughts to go there.

“Go away, Nick. I already gave them my answer.” The flatness of her voice cut through him like a knife.

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, but he was in a box, and whether she knew it or not, she was in one, too. It was a box where somebody else had drawn the boundaries and there was no escape.

“It’s not that simple, Lynn,” he replied.

She whirled around to face him, her eyes more green than gold and radiating with an anger, a strength he’d not have thought possible in her. “What’s not simple? I told them no, and I’m telling you no. I’m not working for them and that’s that.”

“That’s not true,” he countered. He wondered what life had taught her in the past year. When they’d first become involved she’d been unusually naive, without the kind of experiences that taught character and strength and purpose. That had started to change when she’d learned of his true purpose in working for her godfather. Now he saw disillusionment shining from her unusual eyes.

He tamped down his regret. He was here to do a job and he couldn’t allow emotion or memories to cloud the issue.

He stood. “They aren’t going to let you go, Lynn. They need you, and what they need you for is in the interest of national security.”

“I don’t care why they need me. They can’t make me go back to work for them.” She swiped a strand of her shiny, reddish-brown hair behind an ear, a gesture he remembered that indicated stress.

“That’s where you’re wrong. They can make you. These people who contacted you, they aren’t your ordinary Feds. They’re hybrids, working for a splinter agency but under the guise of FBI. Trust me, these aren’t people to screw around with.”

He took a step toward her, unsurprised when she took a step back, wary suspicion playing in her eyes. He hated them for making him do this, for using him to get to her.

“How did your computer work this morning?” he asked. “Have any problems?” She stared at him, a pulse beating rapidly in the hollow of her throat. “This morning they gave you just a little taste of what they’re capable of. Maybe nothing else will happen today, but maybe tomorrow or the day after, your Web sites will begin to experience difficulties. Mistakes will appear on sites you’ve already built, errors that make you look careless, that make you look incompetent. And, that’s not all they’ll do to you.”

Her gaze narrowed and the pulse in her throat beat faster. “You might as well tell me all of it,” she finally said.

“They’ll destroy what you’ve built with your business, screw around with your finances to ruin your credit. And if none of that works, they have enough charges pending against you that they can put you in prison and throw away the key.”