Rachel Lee - Serious Risks

Except how clear could it be when he kept imagining pink skin and white satin, and remembering just how right a certain young woman had felt in his arms? How perfectly she’d fitted against him and how passionately she’d responded to his kiss?

And what damn difference did it make? He was an agent on a case and had to remain professional. Whatever had gotten into him tonight had better not get into him again. That was the beginning, middle and end of it right there.

She was too young for him, Jessica thought as she lay in the middle of her four-poster bed and stared up at the patterns made by the moonlight on her ceiling. Of course he would think so. How could he not? She and men had spent her entire life avoiding one another, so how could she possibly know the right things to say and do to make it clear that she didn’t feel young? It had probably been that very inexperience that had caused him to draw back from her tonight. She didn’t know how to kiss, how to please, how to entice. Discovering that, he’d naturally lost interest.

But, of course, it was all for the best. He still wore his wedding ring. Whether she felt young or not, Jessica definitely didn’t feel up to dealing with the ghost of Arlen’s wife. She had a very healthy respect for the power of ghosts. Hadn’t she watched her mother languish and drink herself to an early grave over the death of Jessica’s father? And, oh, what a slow death that had been, finally leaving the mother dependent on the daughter who was still only a child.

Arlen seemed to be holding up a lot better than her mother had, Jessica thought, but she knew too well what it meant to be invisible to grieving eyes.

Turning over onto her side, she looked out the window at the moon through the lacy tracery of tree branches. He had been in this room tonight. What had he thought of it? Did he think it childish? Probably. She knew as well as anyone just how childish it was. It was the room she had dreamed of having someday, a dream she could trace all the way back to the age of seven. That was the year after her father’s death. That was when she’d finally realized there was no way to go back home.

And so she’d begun to dream of a home in the future. A lot of that dream had matured to more realistic proportions that could be embodied in this house she now owned. Tonight, however, it was strikingly obvious to her that she’d forgotten to include the most important part of any home: family.

Sighing heavily, her throat suddenly and inexplicably tight, she wrapped her arms around a pillow and hugged it. She’d been lonely for so long she’d ceased to be aware of it. Until tonight.

Damn Arlen Coulter for making her conscious of it.

Dressed in her favorite dove-gray suit and black silk blouse, Jessica arrived at work forty-five minutes early the next morning. The extra time was essential if she was to try to lift fingerprints from the document. It wasn’t so much that the process was complicated, because it wasn’t, but she wanted ample time so she could move slowly and avoid errors.

Security, mindful of DIS inspectors, checked her identification thoroughly before waving her through. When she arrived in her own section she walked down the hall, assuring herself that all the other offices were empty. Only then did she return to her own office, close the door and start to open her safe.

“Talk about acting suspicious,” she muttered to herself as she spun the dial first left, then right, then left and then right again. She felt the dial resist as she reached the last number and knew she’d worked the combination correctly. Pressing down the lever, she grabbed the drawer handle and pulled it open.

The document was still on the bottom of the drawer, apparently untouched since she’d found it there yesterday. When she’d emptied enough of the other documents to give herself unobstructed access to the red folder, she used the plastic gloves Arlen had given her to lift it out.

“It’s not that your fingerprints will get you into trouble,” he’d told her last night. “You just don’t want your prints to destroy a good print by overlaying it.”

Only, there were no good prints. She knew that with certainty twenty minutes later, having dusted the entire folder and the document with dark powder. The powder adhered to nothing except some vague, blurry streaks. The spy had wiped the prints, just as Arlen had suspected.

Disappointed, she cleaned up the mess with exaggerated care and then went down the hall to wash her hands. Frank Winkowski was just entering the section when she came back down the hall from the restroom. He looked surprised to see her, then smiled.

“You’re early, too,” he said. “Brainstorm?” He was a pleasant-looking man with a round face and a tendency to softness around his waist.

Jessica shook her head. “Not really. I just woke up early this morning, and there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging around the house. Besides, after all that uproar with security the other day, I need to do some catching up.”

Frank nodded. “We’ll all have to do some catching up, I think. From what I hear, this security inspection is turning into a real bear. Stan Watson—do you know him?”

“He’s the guy heading up the Big Whistle project, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Frank shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other, as if it were heavy. “He said a team of two inspectors are shutting themselves up in a private office with each of his team members for an hour at a stretch.”

“Oh, boy.” Jessica managed to sound surprised. “What’s going on? What’re they asking?”

Frank shrugged. “Dunno. The guys they questioned yesterday afternoon say they can’t talk about it. Maybe there’s been a leak from the project.”

Jessica shook her head. “I can’t imagine that. What does Stan think about it?”

“I think he’s just plain furious. He also said that they’re inspecting everyone’s desk.”

“I heard they can do that, but I never saw them inspect one.”

“Me, either.” Frank shook his head. “I guess if you’ve got any embarrassing love letters in your desk from that guy you were with yesterday, you’d better dump ’em.”

She saw the twinkle in his eye and decided not to let the comment bother her. “Thanks, Frank. If I ever get him to write an embarrassing love letter, you’ll be the last to know.”

“Thought so!” Laughing, he moved down the hall to his own office.

Back at her desk, Jessica installed her hard drive, booted up and resumed her work. She thought she was doing pretty well, too, until an hour later when Arlen called.

“Lunch at twelve?” he asked without preamble.

She sank back in her chair and pulled off her glasses, realizing suddenly that she had a tension headache. Rubbing impatiently at her forehead, she sighed. Arlen heard it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Not a damn thing,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “What could possibly be wrong?” Other than espionage and an FBI agent who’d awakened her to things she was better off not knowing about. An FBI agent who called her, cool as you please, his tone the politely casual tone people used with strangers. His silence suggested to her that he was evaluating her response. Suddenly disturbed that he might draw conclusions, she said, “Sorry, Arlen. I’ve got a king-size headache.”

“Have you taken aspirin?” It was the politely concerned question of an acquaintance.

Damn it, Jessica thought. Damn it. Back to business as usual. Well, girl, are you going to let him get away with it? The question drew her up short, creating as it did a whole new passel of questions she wasn’t going to be able to answer without a lot of soul-searching.