Fascination. Samantha Hunter
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knows you’re the best.”
She threw her arms around him in a tight hug. Looking past his shoulder, she stiffened suddenly, her eyes widening as she saw a familiar figure coming into view.
Locke stood at the edge of the park, watching her. She hadn’t seen him since before her arrest. She thought she might be seeing things and blinked, but he was still there. A cold feeling spread up from the base of her spine. Slipping out of Ray’s hug, she studied Locke, her heart in her throat. What was he doing here? Why now?
IAN LIFTED A STEAMING cup of coffee to his lips as he reviewed Sarah Jessup’s résumé and his interview notes from the previous day. He believed he might be looking at the first new member of his team.
True, her formal qualifications were a little light, but she could talk the talk and she was more than a little interested. There were lots of people out there with the right education, the right experience, but she had passion. There was a sharpness, an electricity about her that he liked. She knew computers inside and out and she was a born cop whether she knew it or not. He’d wondered why she never pursued a career in law enforcement and had to suppress a grin when she’d told him she’d thought about it but didn’t like the uniforms. She’d been relieved to know the HotWires weren’t required to wear them.
The lady had talent, but she also had secrets. He had seen the slightest flicker in her eyes when he’d mentioned doing a background check. When he’d asked her if there was anything she needed to tell him about, she’d closed up like a clam. He would have to see what that was about before hiring her, but he trusted his gut that she was one of the people he was looking for.
There was also no denying that she was, as Marty had made a fool out of himself noticing, pretty damned hot—a fact that left Ian cold. He couldn’t drum up an even mildly sexual thought about Sarah Jessup, whose ample curves and chocolate-brown hair should have at least inspired one. This was doubly annoying because his mind kept wandering back to Sage’s silky copper curls.
Ian couldn’t seem to get Sage out of his head. He didn’t like being distracted, and that fact urged him to either get the hell away from her or to take her up on what she was offering, to get her out of his system. He was dangerously close to the latter. What would she do if he did? How would she react? Was it all an act on her part or did she really desire him?
He slammed on the mental brakes. No sense going there. He’d gotten out of his office thinking a change of venue would freshen his mind and help him concentrate, but thoughts of Sage followed him wherever he went. It was well and good that it was almost over. Four more days.
He’d taken his laptop and set up at a table in a local waterfront coffee shop for the afternoon. It was a perk that he could avoid the office when he wanted to. He watched groups of tourists file out of the tour boats. A large cruise ship was moored in the background. Even from a distance the ship appeared enormous. His parents took several cruises each year, but he’d never been on one, preferring to spend his weeks off fishing with his brothers at their camp in Maine.
His mom and dad had both been career Navy until they’d retired the year before last. His dad had been a commander who had worked on submarines since he was seventeen; he’d spent the last twenty years as captain of his own boat. Ian’s mom had been a nurse who’d eventually found her way onto the big ships, as well. And now they took their vacations on boats. Ian didn’t understand it, but to each their own.
He sighed, realizing he wouldn’t be taking another vacation for a while. He should contact his brothers—Jim, who was older, and Gabe, who was younger—and see if they could at least grab a weekend sometime soon before all of his time got sucked up by getting the new team up and running. Squinting out the window, his gaze gravitated toward someone too familiar.
Sage.
She was standing with the hot-dog-stand guy she visited every week. At this time of day, though, he would have expected her to be at work. He made a mental note to check out why she wasn’t.
The old guy, Ray, had been convicted on charges of bank robbery back in the sixties, but from what Ian could tell when he’d read over the case, it had been a bad bust. Ray had been hung out to dry more or less because he was convenient—caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. There wouldn’t have been much interest in finding justice for a poor black man back then. Sage seemed very fond of him.
Ian couldn’t make out the look on her face, but he saw her hug Ray and then slowly move past him to stand on the edge of the walk, her attention focused across the street. She was staring at a man, not far from where Ian himself sat in the window. The guy looked roughly her age but slick and—Ian’s gut signaled him—dangerous.
He was tall. Skinny but built—the kind of guy who always walked away because others underestimated him in a fight. His long hair was tied back and an earring shone in the sunlight. Ian couldn’t make out exact facial features, but his hackles rose in response to the way the guy’s focus was obviously pinned on Sage. They were making direct eye contact—silent communication streaming across the distance between them. They definitely knew each other.
Ian’s internal radar sharpened. Something was up and it wasn’t good. Though he’d never seen the guy before, he knew the look—he was a walking hacker cliché. Dressed in black, wearing a leather jacket on a hot summer day, he stood out like a sore thumb to anyone who knew the type. Apparently, like many criminal hackers, he had an ego bigger than his brain. Though they’d claim otherwise, they usually wanted to be noticed.
Ian waited to see what would happen, his body tense and poised in the chair. The man stepped back, taking an envelope from his jacket and sliding it into the large pot of flowers by the curb, nodding in Sage’s direction before walking away.
A drop, Ian realized. And not even a very subtle one. This guy didn’t really care if anyone saw him. Or maybe he was just arrogant enough to think no one was looking.
What was she involved in? Ian’s blood first ran cold and then started to simmer—was she an idiot, getting involved with these people when she was so close to finishing out her time? Or had she been involved with them all along, playing Ian for a fool? Sage was clever, no doubt. Maybe more so than he’d assumed. Maybe for all his supervision, she’d found a back door. Maybe her constant flirting was not so much an attempt at control as a method of distraction. Was the guy part of her old group? She’d never given up any of their identities, though Ian knew she hadn’t worked alone. Someone new? Were they lovers?
His jaw tightened as ugly thoughts raced through his mind. He held himself in check, resisted the urge to run out and confront her, to find out what was in the package. He intended to find out soon enough.
SAGE’S FINGERS WERE NUMB as she looked through the tangle of blood-red azaleas, her heart beating furiously, to see what Locke had left there. She glanced around carefully, trying not to be too obvious. She was taking a chance, but it wasn’t an option to call for help or alert anyone—if Ian knew she’d even seen Locke, he’d throw her in jail without a second thought.
She didn’t want to pick up the envelope, but neither did she want to leave it there. Biting her lip, she knew it was meant for her. If someone else found it, it could be just as damning; she had to know what was in there. She could just take it and destroy it so that nothing in it could hurt her or anyone else.
Locke had barely changed in five years, but seeing him made her realize how much she had. In an instant she knew she didn’t want him back in her life and she feared for her freedom. He was tall and gaunt-looking in a very romantic, poetic way that had once appealed to her but now left her cold.
They’d met the summer before her junior year in college; he’d been an arts major, and she’d been in computer science. He’d been her first lover, and they’d had some good times. He was passionate and his adventurous spirit in bed had encouraged her own to blossom. Locke had been adventurous in other ways, too.
Though he’d studied art history, he was a hacker of brilliant proportions. He eschewed formal education and had taught himself everything he knew. And he knew a lot. He’d studied art as a form