Facing Fear (6 page)

He stared at the beautiful hair he still held in his hands. Hell, they had even supplied him with the rope. He released her and turned toward the open sliding door that led out to the balcony. He could feel her eyes following him as he headed for the exit.

He gazed into the dark evening. “Rule number one,” he began. “When you interview me, you’ll always have your hair loose. You’ll not wear it in a braid.”

“I…” He turned to face her when she paused. She clutched a thick strand of her hair against her bosom. “It’s very difficult to walk about outside with my hair untied.”

Rick gave her the barest of smiles. “We won’t be outside. I’ll meet you here. Or you’ll come to me at my apartment. A personal interview should have personal space, don’t you agree? As a matter of balance?”

How badly did she want to do her job? Her fear or her assignment?

“All right,” she whispered.

He nodded briskly. “Come to my office tomorrow and I’ll take you to the recruitment center.” He turned to go, then counted to a beat of three before pivoting around. “I should have rule number two by then.”

“R
elease the frozen heart. It will burn you.” “Grandmother, what do you mean by that?”

“Your life will be ruled by three centers, my child, and so three important prophecies to remember.”

“But you said the first center will betray me. And how is a frozen heart a center?”

“Prophecies don’t tell you what to do. They just show you your lessons. See, the first is a lesson in judgment. The center, the sacred place, isn’t where you think it is. As for the heart, that is the center of all living things, isn’t it? Those who are good-hearted, who are loyal and dedicated to a cause, who are on the side of God, we call
chuung-sum—
the heart that is centered. In the movies, the good guys are all
chuung,
no?”

“So why would my
chuung
betray me? And why would my heart burn me?”

“Because life isn’t like the movies, little Jade Tree. We all see something we want and go after it, but the center is an illusive place. It has many meanings. Our motherland is
chuung-quo,
the Middle Kingdom, but is it truly in the middle?”

“So Grandmother, the center is where I believe it is?”

“My child, you are old beyond your years.”

Nikki missed her grandmother. Their conversations ran the gamut from old wives’ tales, to historical epics from ancient China, to prophecies using the ancient Chinese calendar-almanac, the
Tuung-sing
, literally, the Book of
Knowledge. Her grandmother had her memorize many of the old poems from this book by the age of five. Even now Nikki could still recite most of them. They were what kept her sane in those dark days when they had put her in isolation. She had found out that one valued the oddest things when the soul was lonely.

She recalled how her grandmother’s stories became a kind of strength builder. She spent those hours in the dark remembering the
Tuung-sing
, that wondrous book that told the past and the future, that gave the lunar dates to farm and to make babies. It taught all the Chinese traditional beliefs of palmistry, physiology, and astronomy. It held the secrets to the universe because her grandmother told her everything she knew came from that ancient text, with its updated almanac every year.

Tomorrow she would go down to Chinatown and buy herself this year’s text. She wanted to leaf through its pages and see whether it still held any secrets for her.

“Yun Tzi Tcho, Sing Poon Si.”
Nikki whispered in Cantonese those first two lines of the poem all Chinese-educated kids knew by heart. A new life is innocent, like an empty page, ready for the hard lessons ahead.

Easing the car into an empty parking spot, she turned off the engine, then leaned forward to check her face in the rearview mirror. She had put on a little more makeup today. Again, she hadn’t wanted to dwell on the reason. The building loomed behind her reflection, already busy with visitors. She remembered how suffocated she had felt when she was in there. What was wrong with the building?

She opened the car door and stepped out, stopping for a moment to smooth away the wrinkles in her skirt. Notepad. Purse. ID. She was ready.

The building looked back at her, as if it were waiting for something. She shook the thoughts away and started to walk toward it, studying the front side with all its reflective windows. There was a lesson waiting for her in there. She felt it intuitively, the way she always did about certain things.

Her grandmother had talked of illusions. Nikki smiled with gentle acceptance. Her whole life now was an illusion. Her hardest lesson was to accept that and live it, and in the process she had learned to use it as a talent for her agency. Which, in turn, had guided her back here, to the beginning, where she was once an innocent, like an empty page.

She climbed the steps, making her way with the throng of visitors toward the entrance. Her thoughts turned to Rick Harden. A master illusionist. One who had cloaked himself so well, she didn’t even think he knew where his center was. He held the key to her quest for the truth, but in order to find it she must break him apart, piece-by-piece.

However, last night he had been the one pulling her apart. She understood how she seemed to him, with her long hair and similar bearing to his old love; she had even been ready for it. But she had been totally unprepared for her response to his touch. Her stomach fluttered from the memory of the heat in his eyes and the sure touch of his hands holding her, caressing her hair. There was a moment when she had believed that she felt tenderness from him, but that instant fragmented quickly enough as his desire turned into anger. She had wanted to call him back when he let her go and walked away.

Illusions, she told herself. All illusions. She reached the security desk and gave the guard her ID to call up to Mr. Harden’s office to verify her appointment.

“Miss Taylor, Mr. Harden said someone will be down in a few minutes to take you up,” the woman told her.

He had kept his part of the bargain
. “Thank you.”

Nikki walked under the electronic security beam and sat down where the guard indicated. She looked at the other line, where she had been in a few days earlier, that led to the public-access offices. Those floors had the weakest illusions because there were so many hidden doorways out of the public eye, so many cameras zooming in on the visitors, so many people giving out the false impression that there were no secrets in this place of secrets.

Now she was about to go up another level. She sat, wait
ing. He had kept his word. She thought about his condition, his rule number one. Again, that strange sensation inside her, a slow curling heat. His rules were going to cost her. A lot.

“But Grandmother, why release a frozen heart that will burn me? That sounds like a painful lesson.”

“Don’t be so literal, silly girl. A lesson is always hard, but not necessarily painful.”

Nikki glanced up. A woman smiled down at her.

“Miss Taylor? Won’t you follow me? Mr. Harden is expecting you.”

She returned her smile and stood up to follow the woman. She hoped her grandmother was right.

Rick put down the file he had been reading and looked up at Agent Candeloro, who was waiting for his response to his draft report. Cam was his detail coordinator in Task Force Two, in charge of making sure every element was in its place in each operation. He had never had any problems with Cam’s work, but then Task Force Two had never been given really big fish to fry. Their department director, Gorman, had seen to that.

But fate had a strange way of playing games. Their last assignment, an operation to monitor an assassin, had snowballed into Gorman’s current legal problems. It had also left Task Force Two without a department director, and perhaps facing elimination. Cam’s key role in putting Gorman away was very important to Rick and Task Force Two. He had taken care of all the little things, from tracking down the assassin to getting the electronic surveillance set up, from day one.

How could such a good detail man be so bad at writing reports? It was a mystery Rick would rather not discuss right now. For one thing, Internal Investigations wouldn’t give him the time to retrain bad habits, just to get his men to look less like Gorman’s clowns, and more like an intel-gathering team.

Cam apologized before Rick said anything. “Sorry, sir. I told you I’m terrible at it.”

“You have your own notes, your recollection of the events that led to that night on the boat, as well as the wiretap tapes.
How could you possibly mangle that kind of information into”—Rick tapped on the report with his finger—“this?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Cam answered.

“Tell me, do you want to continue in Task Force Two?”

Cam glanced up sharply. “Is that a threat, sir?” His voice was mild, but there was a combative light in his brown eyes.

Harden studied Cam for a moment. “I’m not in any position to carry out a threat,” he finally answered, “but let’s just say that you have a choice to your future, Agent Candeloro. You can return to Encryptions or Data, or apply for a new job somewhere else, but at the rate we’re going, it definitely looks like neither of us will be continuing in Task Force Two.”

Cam’s eyes turned thoughtful. “You, too, sir?”

“Yes, me, too. Not that I’m using that piece of gossip to persuade you to write a better report,” Rick said wryly. “Obviously, that’s not going to turn you into a poet laureate.”

Rick waited with vague amusement as his detail man choked back the shock of hearing his O.C. make a joke. Of course, these days he could afford the gallows humor, since there was a noose around his neck. Nobody knew this yet, least of all his men. He wasn’t even sure why he told this tidbit to Cam, who would be sure to pass it along to the others. Perhaps it was time to see some panic around here.

“I like my job, sir, and I do it well. I can plan any operation to the last detail, no problem. When a yellow Boxter was needed overnight, I took care of it easily. When we need to track down locations, that’s my forte. But somehow when I sit and write, the wires get crossed up.”

“I can’t help you with this, Agent Candeloro,” Rick said as he handed the draft report back to Cam. “As O.C., with EYES sniffing around every day, I would be suspected of tampering. I want you to pick somebody who is relevant with data and records and have him go through your files with you. I trust you know someone who could piece data together?”

Cam’s frown lasted all of one second. “Yes, sir. Patty Ostler from Records is very familiar with this case and has helped me coordinate part of the assignment. With your permission, sir, I’ll get her as my personal help.”

Great. Not only was Rick after a supposed romance writer, he was coordinating his own man’s romance life for him. All to save his job, no less.

Nikki mentally reviewed her notes. Rick Harden was operation chief of TIARA’s Task Force Two. Directly under the deputy director, he was the main strategist of any operations implemented under his care. Therefore, if the deputy director was crooked, it followed that the O.C. should be thoroughly investigated as well, especially if the former was using intel gathered by the latter to pass along to enemies.

Nikki understood why Internal Investigations would zero in on this man and hoped to close the case quickly. After all, Gorman was yet another embarrassing scandal for the Department of Justice, hit by so many lately. This time, however, it couldn’t just sweep everything quietly under the rug because TIARA happened to be partners with navy SEAL commander Admiral Madison’s special operations teams. TIARA gathered the intel Admiral Madison’s men used for covert action. When leaking information put his men’s lives in jeopardy, someone as tough as Admiral Madison wasn’t going to just let that go.

She had never met the admiral but was impressed with his tenacity to get to the truth. When she was briefed about the Gorman case, she was told that the traitor would never have been caught without the admiral’s wily infiltration of Task Force Two.

Admiral Madison had the reputation of doing things his way. Nikki liked his style. By sending in Steve McMillan, a SEAL operative from one of his teams, the admiral was able to study firsthand where his leaks were coming from. The operation had taken over a year, but Admiral Madison wasn’t called Mad Dog without a reason. No one, Nikki was told, liked to get The Dog mad. She had smiled at her handler when he said that, imagining a man being called Mad Dog Madison. Oh, to have him on her side when she had been a prisoner. He wouldn’t have left her in that hellhole, wouldn’t
have conveniently forgotten her because she was no longer an asset.

She had agreed to this contract based on what this man did for those under him. She had never met him, but just knowing that he would go to bat for any man under his care was enough for her. Besides, he, too, had been briefed on her background, and she felt that they knew each other very well already.

The admiral’s plan had netted Gorman, but it wasn’t enough. In the world of red tape and politics, deals were made to cause the least amount of pain for the people in power. Gorman was a veteran, someone who knew how to play the game, and he was holding out as long as he could while his lawyers worked out a deal.

Nikki looked at the name plaque outside Rick’s door. Gorman was important. Rick Harden wasn’t. Just as she hadn’t been a long time ago, hung out to dry while someone else got away scot-free.

The door opened. A younger man walked out, a smug smile on his face when he glanced up to see her studying him.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he greeted cheerfully. He turned to the secretary and added, “Later, Greta.”

“Well, what changed that sour look into such joy?” the secretary asked.

“Unexpected luck, my dear, that will bring the love of my life closer to me than ever,” the man said, and his face broke into a big smile again as he walked out of the office.

Greta shook her head. “That Cam is the only one who comes out of that office smiling.”

Nikki was about to ask why when the intercom buzzed and Rick’s voice came through crisply, “Send Miss Taylor in, Greta.”

“Yes, sir.” Greta turned to Nikki. “That was just a little joke, dear. I’m always talking to myself. Go on in, he won’t bite.”

Nikki nodded. She opened the door and stepped inside. Across the expanse of the inner office, the man sitting behind
a massive dark oak desk stared intently at her. There was a gleam in his green eyes as he waited for her to come closer. Rick Harden was going to eat her alive.

Rick had the same dream last night again. It had started like all his old nightmares, but twice now, Nikki Taylor had appeared at the end. This time she wore that damn towel.

It had been Nikki’s curves that pressed against his length as he pushed the hair away from her face. He wasn’t surprised by her presence this time, and the dream had given him the freedom to explore a little longer, as she lay beneath him quietly.