Читать книгу Agent Undercover - Lisa Childs - Страница 11

Chapter Four

Ash cursed as the force of the bullet propelled him back. He nearly knocked over Claire, who stood behind him like he had directed her. Maybe he should have told her to run. But the man with the gun stood between them and the stairwell and the elevators.

She had no place to run.

Even if he passed her the key card to the hotel room, she wouldn’t be safe inside the room—at least not for long. A man this big could easily knock down her door. The only way to keep her safe was to eliminate the threat to her safety.

So Ash fired again. But this was a kill shot. The big man crumpled to the carpet like the guy in the parking lot had crumpled to the asphalt.

“It’s okay,” Ash told her as he turned back to Claire. “It’s over.” For now. But how long before someone else tried to abduct her? And why?

Why not just pay what she asked for the information? Unless she was telling the truth...

She moved as if to look around him, but he used his body to block her view. She didn’t need to see what he had done to protect them. But instead of moving around him, she moved toward him—her hands reaching out toward his chest.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice cracking with concern.

He nodded. But he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was all right because he was beginning to believe her and doubt himself. She had been so concerned about the security guard and now about him. Maybe she wasn’t the mercenary person he thought she was.

“But you were shot!” she exclaimed, her palms patting his chest as if she were searching for the wound.

He caught her hands and pressed them more tightly against his vest. “I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “You must be hurt.”

“The protective vest took the bullet,” he assured her. He had only felt the impact of the too-close shot. And he would probably have a bruise on his chest from the force with which the bullet had struck the vest. He pulled her hands away from his chest, and she tugged them free of his grasp.

“Thank God you’re wearing a vest.” Her breath shuddered out with sincere-sounding relief. “But of course you would be wearing a vest.”

“Of course.” But there had been times that he hadn’t been able to when he’d been undercover. He couldn’t have risked someone noticing the vest, no matter how thin and indiscernible the Bureau vests were. He also hadn’t been able to wear a wire then, either. He had been totally on his own. But that hadn’t been anything new to Ash.

“Maybe I should be wearing one, too,” she mused, and she must have finally caught sight of the man he’d shot because she shuddered in revulsion.

“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?