Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (25 page)

Taking a shallow breath and letting it out again, she reminded herself that Mr. Kline had not requested this meeting—she had.And it was the right thing to do .

"Mr. Kline can see you now." Allison didn't smile, nor did she sound particularly friendly.

In fact, she reminded Veronica very much of herself when she'd worked for CIS. Did the supremely efficient administrative assistant have her own reasons for imitating an automaton, as Veronica had? If so, she wondered if there was a Marcus on Allison's horizon ready to smash through the other woman's unemotional facade.

Veronica stood up, smoothing" down her gray slacks and adjusting the short matching jacket she wore over a white silk shell. She didn't normally wear suits to the office, preferring simple skirts and blouses, the wren look.

However, today, she'd needed a bolster to her confidence, so she'd dressed up a little. Considering the stylish apparel of his administrative assistant, who always managed to look like an automaton who just happened to dress in Paris business fashions, she doubted Mr. Kline would be impressed.

Allison opened the office door and ushered her inside. "Miss Richards to see you, sir."

Mr. Kline looked up, an expression of amiable interest in his eyes. "Thankyou, Allison."

The other woman clearly took that as a sign to depart because she did so, closing the office door behind her.

"Thankyou for your patience in waiting for me, Veronica. Now, what can I do for you?" he asked, while waiving her to a black leather sofa near the huge window overlooking the Seattle skyline.

It looked a lot more comfortable than the furniture in the waiting area and added the rich smell of leather to Mr. Kline's office. Sitting down, she forced herself to stop clutching her purse as if someone would grab it and steal the implicating e-mail. She set the small black carryall beside her.

Not knowing where to start, she waited in silence for him to take a seat in one of the matching chairs at either end of the sofa.

Instead, he walked over to a cubbyhole in the wall behind his desk. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

'Yes, thankyou." She didn't really want any, but agreeing put off the moment of truth just that much longer.

A moment that would have been much less stressful if she didn't have her own past to contend with.

He poured two mugs decorated with Kline Tech's logo and handed her one. "Cream or sugar?"

She shook her head, taking in the surprisingly tempting aroma of the dark liquid. "Black is fine."

He sat down and waited, as if he had all the time in the world, as if he wasn't the president of a multi-million-dollar business that needed his constant attention.

She took a sip of her coffee, letting the smooth hickory flavor wash over her taste buds as she con-sidered what to say, and then set the mug down on the glass table in front of her. Its pedestal had been designed in the form of a hunting panther. Her startled eyes took in the animal's grace and obvious menace before she turned her gaze back to the owner of her company.

Somehow that table seemed to symbolize her predicament. She felt as if in doing the right thing, she was putting herself in the path of a hungry and possibly deadly oredator. "I've discovered something I feel you need to be aware of."

"Yes?" He didn't lean forward or go tense, and yet she got the distinct impression that he'd just gone from casual to subtly alert.

She unclasped her purse and withdrew the folded e-mail from inside. After unfolding it and taking unnecessary care to smooth it, she handed the paper to him. "I think someone in the marketing department may be selling corporate secrets."

He raised his brows in question but took the proffered e-mail and read it without saying a word.

"You'll notice both the sender and the recipient are blocked." She didn't know if he had, or not, but wanted to point it out to him.

He didn't reply and the longer the silence stretched, the more foolish she felt. She was making a mountain out of a molehill. The e-mail probably meant nothing, but she'd read something into it because of her past and the comments both Sandy and Marcus had made last week.

Where had she gotten the idea that the obscurely worded message had sinister undertones?

She felt her face heat with embarrassment and tried to think of something to extricate herself from the situation. How could she backpedal without sounding like a complete idiot, while also convincing Mr. Kline that she wasn't prone to dangerous bouts of melodrama?

She took too big a sip of coffee, her mind whirling, and had to breathe in through her open mouth to cool her burning tongue.

Mr. Kline looked up from the e-mail. "Are you okay?"

Hot with embarrassment, she mumbled, "Yes."

He went back to the e-mail and she felt as if she were reading it with him, so well did she know the message.

She'd read it so many times, she knew it by heart. As the exact words played once again through her brain, she rejected her earlier misgivings. She couldn't help thinking she was right. She had to convince Mr. Kline that the threat was real. She had to.

She didn't ask herself why she felt so strongly about it. She didn't need to. It felt as if Providence had put this information in her way so that she could, in some way, make up for her betrayal of CIS by alerting Mr. Kline to the reality of a similar situation at his company.

She pulled in a deep breath and tried speaking again. "I thought that combined with the number of information leaks we've had over the past few months, that message was too suspect to ignore."

He laid the paper down on the glass table, right over the panther's head. "Yes."

She couldn't hide her relief that he apparently believed her. "I'm so glad you see it the same way."

His eyes, which had been warm and benevolent when she arrived in his office, had narrowed and darkened to resemble the predatory gaze of the panther under the glass. "How did you come by this e-mail?"

She swallowed, her mouth having gone suddenly dry. "I-I'm the admin for the new product team."

He tipped his mug of coffee to his lips, all the while his disturbingly intense gaze rested on her. "And?"

"And…" She inhaled and sent up a quick prayer for guidance.

She felt as if her mind had stopped working and along with it, her mouth. Did he already suspect her, even without knowledge of her past? Or had Marcus told him? She rejected that idea as ridiculous. He would not betray her that way.

"And as the admin for the team, I have access to all their e-mail. When I download mine, theirs comes in as well. I delete most of it, but sometimes I need to act on things in the messages. You know, a schedule change or if I have access to information I know a team member will need because of what's being said." She realized she was rambling and cut the flow of words.

His gray hair shone metallic in the spring sunlight coming in through the huge window behind her as he bent his head and studied the e-mail further. "So, you have no way of knowing who this e-mail was intended for?"

"No, sir. I don't."

"I see that it was written last week. I have to assume it's already been picked up and deleted from the server." His head had lifted and that intent gaze once again pinned her.

"Yes, it was gone when I checked my e-mail this morning."

"I also assume you kept a copy of this on your machine. We may be able to trail to the source yet." Satisfaction radiated in his voice.

So tense her neck ached from the strain, she confessed, "Actually, no. I, um… I deleted it."

He stared at her, total disbelief written on his face. "You did what?"

She didn't want to say it again, but she had no choice. "I deleted it."

He took a visible rein on his temper. "Do you mean you deleted it to your delete file or off of your machine completely?"

"Off my machine completely." She looked down at her coffee, not wanting to see his reaction to her words.

Silence met her statement. She waited for him to ask her why she'd done such a stupid thing, but he didn't.

Instead, he stood. "I think it's time we called Marcus in on this."

Her head lifted of its own volition. "Marcus?"

Did he mean her Marcus? His investment information consultant from CIS?

Mr. Kline didn't halt on his path to his desk. "Yes. He'll be very interested in this development."

Why would Marcus be interested in the possibility of a corporate spy working in the marketing department? She felt as if she were missing an important piece in the puzzle.

She'd come to Mr. Kline to tell him her concerns. He'd listened. He'd believed her and now he was calling Marcus. Why not internal security? Why not Allison?

She listened with fractured attention while he spoke tersely to Marcus, telling him about her discovery. From his side of the conversation, she gathered that Marcus was on his way up to Mr. Kline's office. That fact stymied her. She just could not make the connection here.

Why Marcus?

After ringing off with Marcus, Mr. Kline punched another number on his phone pad. He said Allison's the conversation.

Her mind was too occupied by the one fact that made no sense. Mr. Kline had called Marcus… before anyone else. Allison came into the office, carrying a notepad. She proceeded to pull two chairs that matched the ones in the waiting room into place across from the sofa and glass table. She then sat down in one of them, saying nothing to Veronica.

A minute later, the head of internal security, Ben Warren, came into the office. He said something in an undertone to Mr. Kline, who was still on the phone, and then came across the room to sit next to Allison. He smiled at Veronica and she forced herself to respond in kind, though a sense of unreality was beginning to take hold.

Seconds later, Marcus arrived. Mr. Kline hung up his phone and conferred in whispers with Marcus, glancing Veronica's way several times before both men came to join the group by the window.

She felt like an animal on display at a zoo, the way they kept looking at her. Did they expect her to stand up and do tricks? What was going on now? As more questions popped up in her mind, like numbers on an old-fashioned cash register, she tried to ignore the unease skittering along her spine and her feeling that Marcus had told Mr. Kline about her past wasn't such a silly fear after all.

Ignoring the empty chair across from the one Mr. Kline returned to, Marcus sat down on the couch next to her. Veronica gave him a sideways glance, but kept her body facing forward. She could not help wondering if he was here because hehad told Mr. Kline about her past. Would he sit in accusation and condemnation of her now, asserting that she had something to do with the e-mail she'd shared with the company president?

The idea seemed too far-fetched to be believed, but then she realized she was not feeling or thinking in a particularly rational manner at the moment. Feeling guilty for doubting the man with whom she had so recently shared her body and part of her soul, she pushed the doubts away and focused on breathing in a normal, relaxed manner.

It wouldn't look good if she started hyperventilating for no apparent reason right there on Mr. Kline's designer leather sofa.

Marcus leaned across her and picked up the e-mail. She got a whiff of his aftershave and the clean, male scent she always associated with him. She wanted to reach out and touch him, take his hand and draw on his strength as her sense of unreality grew in proportion to the strangeness of the situation.

"Is this the message you found when you downloaded the team's e-mail last week?" he asked, turning his head so that his attention fixed firmly on her.

'Yes." She looked at him, trying to read some-thing from his closed expression, but not succeeding.

She wished he'd smile at her, subtly brush her leg with his own, anything to reassure her that her fears were ungrounded.

"When did you receive this message?"

'Thursday." Why washe asking the questions? Why not Ben,the head of internal security ?

He looked down at the paper and then back up at her. "The recipient and sender are blank. Do you have any way of telling who either might be?"

"No. I've already been over this with Mr. Kline."

Marcus shrugged. "Kline said you deleted the actual electronic message off of your system. Is that right?"