Icy Control (12 page)

Rob placed his towel around her shoulders, adding another layer against her skin. She cast him a grateful look.

“I’ll go search out something that will hopefully not look too ridiculous on you,” he said a little gruffly.

“I’m not going back to my loft?” she called out after him when he left the bathroom. She saw Rob walk into his bedroom. She quickly dried her feet and legs, ran the towel over her body and wrapped herself up again. When she entered his bedroom he’d pulled out a long-sleeved cotton shirt that looked a bit mangled and likely shrunk in a bad wash. Touched, she liked the thought of wearing his shirt. It would still be enormous on her, but she couldn’t wait to smell his scent all over her.

She didn’t like his chances of ever getting the item of clothing back again. Ever.

“Nope,” he answered her earlier question. “We’re going back to the office. I doubt there’s any risk to you,” he said. He tossed a pair of shorts that would be almost three-quarter-length pants on her. “But after the last few days, I refuse to risk it. Consider me in full-blown paranoia mode. I want to update El and go see this Erik Chambers. I’m determined to get to the bottom of this. It will also be good to check up with Masters, the analyst Ben mentioned he’d give that code to. I want to see if he’s managed to break anything yet. Any extra information we get will be useful.”

“So I get to sit and wait?” Sally asked. While most other women, making the same statement, would be bitter or complaining, she was more thoughtful. This really wasn’t her career or something she had any real understanding about. Part of her wanted to insist she see it through, but another understood her personal limitation. As exhausted as they all were, she refused to become a liability.

She’d never forgive herself if she turned into one of those stubborn, illogical creatures. It was likely she’d cause Bobby to be distracted and he didn’t need that right now. Should he be hurt, or their case compromised because he was busy looking out for her instead of paying attention to the situation…she wasn’t sure she could live with that.

“There should be a half-used sketch book here from some of your previous visits that you can use to keep your mind busy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Rob said. “Besides, there are always Agents coming in and out at odd hours at the office. While I agree it won’t be like a busy tube station, there will be people around to speak to and be near. You won’t be alone.”

Sally smiled at him, touched but also amused. Rob was looking at her, clearly trying to judge how badly shaken she was.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she insisted. “I’m not going to be stubborn, possibly put your life at risk just to see this through. Though I expect every. Single. Detail. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

He seemed satisfied with that.

“You shouldn’t be too bored,” he repeated. “Most importantly, if I can find you some acceptable pencils, I know you can amuse yourself for hours sketching people with or without their knowledge. I’ve seen you do it at restaurants, coffee shops and even on the tube over the years. Now I think of it, I bet if you suggested the sketches could be presents for their families a few of the guys would enjoy it.”

“That sounds like fun,” she agreed with a warm smile, pleased and touched he thought so much about her comfort and enjoyment. “While I’m at it, I can dig up all the secret gossip on you. Old tales and sordid innuendo. I’m sure I can find a way to pass a bit of time, don’t worry.”

“If I wasn’t such a strong man, Sal, I’d be worried.”

He kissed her, but she could tell he was teasing her. Nothing worried her Bobby, he was the strongest, most wonderful man in the universe.

“El and I shouldn’t be too long,” he added. “I promise we’ll be brief as we can manage.”

“Find me that sketch book and make certain you point out where those lockers and camp beds you’ve told me about before are, so I can nap if I get too worn out, and I’ll wait until you’re ready,” she said.

“I love you,” he murmured.

The strength in his tone proved to her how deeply he meant those words.

“I know,” she replied back impishly.

He blinked at her in surprise for a moment, and she drew the seconds of silence out. She laughed, then kissed him hard. She hugged him tightly.

“I love you more than anything in the whole world,” she whispered in his ear, like it was some desperate secret. “Even more than paints. Or that perfect ray of morning sunlight. More than anything.”

He chuckled, and she was pleased to see the edge of worry and tension had seeped out of him. She knew he had to work, knew it would all come crashing back on him soon, but for now, he was light and carefree, and she loved having a hand to help with that.

“Notebooks and pencils,” he murmured.

They kissed again, then he seemed to tear himself away. Sally watched, cherishing every moment as he hunted through his desk, looking for the small items that would distract her until he returned from his mission.

* * * *

“El,” Rob called out. He led Sally into the office.

His partner looked up, her red hair pulled back into a pony tail. She’s been bent over, saying something to James and raised her hand when she saw him, indicating Rob to come closer.

“Sal—” Rob began, but Sally cut him off.

“No, Bobby, it might be the painting. Maybe they’ve found something new. I’m a part of this, I deserve to know. ”

Forced to concede that point, Rob sighed. They both made their way to where El and James hovered over her desk. A large sheet of paper had blurred black and white smudges everywhere. Rob frowned, not recognizing it as…well, anything. He glanced at El, waiting for an explanation.

“It’s the view of the night sky, albeit blown up. Ben gave the digital images to Julia and while I think her curiosity was aroused, she’s also in the devil of a mood.”

“Do we risk going to see her?” Rob didn’t feel foolish asking.

Julia was far and away one of their best analysts—anything and everything to do with topographical searches were her forte. But she was not a woman to be rushed, bullied or coerced. Her temper was legendary around the Agency and only her undisputed skill kept everyone accepting the more demanding side of her personality.

“Promise her chocolates, a large box of the good stuff,” El suggested. “Because, yes, I think we should at least talk to her before we go interview Chambers. We need every scrap of information we can get.”

Rob held only a little trepidation as they walked down a maze of corridors through the labyrinth of offices until they came to a plain, unmarked wooden door. Rob knew Julia preferred to keep this miniscule office because, to the unknowing agent, the room could easily be mistaken for a cleaner’s closet.

Julia had told him a number of times it kept the riff raff away.

Privately, he thought she simply liked the privacy, but it amounted to the same thing, anyway.

Rob cast a final glance to El.

She shook her head in the negative.

“You knock, mate. You’re the one with the sweet smile and promise of chocolates,” she insisted.

Rob sighed then knocked. Determined to convey the importance of the situation, he opened the door before Julia could refuse them admittance.

“Your choice of dark almond slivered truffles, or the heart-shaped romance bulk box of chocolate, Jules,” he said as he stuck his head in the doorway.

Julia lifted her face to stare at him. When she tilted her head to the side, he knew she’d be able to see he had other people with him. She blinked behind her glasses.

“For four of you in this tiny office they keep me in?” she replied crankily, “we can start with the truffles and negotiate for whatever else you’re here to hassle me over. I’m assuming you and El are on the Cezanne case?”

Considering there were no expletives and she hadn’t threatened to throw him from the room, Rob took it as tantamount to a welcome. They all crammed into the tiny office. He peered at her screen and saw she’d divided it into four quadrants. He recognized some of it, but not all and figured Julia would enjoy explaining it to them.

“Tell me a story.” He tilted his chin to indicate her work.

“This is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack,” she complained, though she sounded more challenged than bitter or resentful. “I’ve ended up writing a code to calculate all the angles. I’ve guessed the average height of person—I’m working on five nine since we don’t even know whether its male or female. I’m starting at what I hope will be a logical place, between the man and woman embracing in the picture. That seems to be the focal point for the painting.”

“Those sound like fair assumptions,” El said.

Julia cast her a glance and nodded her appreciation.

“That was the easy part. I’m not a code freak, but it wasn’t too taxing to write it up and apply it here. Plus it will save me time having to run another analysis to get the computer to manually keep tabs of each of the constellations and degrees and…you probably don’t really care about all that, I can already see your eyes glazing. Okay, so with that taken care of, now I need to run simultaneous searches from a bunch of different data bases worldwide. This is where it gets tricky, because most of them run on varying systems. Some are considered sensitive documents, which means security to bypass and try to manipulate. Add onto that our favorite issue of running multiple scans on a global scale through a series of permutations because we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. I’m running blind here in too many ways. I don’t know how the data we have fits into anything. And of course we want answers quickly…”

Julia looked around at them. Rob could follow in theory, but he knew he was out of his depth and didn’t understand the full ramifications of what she was trying to express. He glanced at El, who seemed determined to not show she was mystified, though even he could see the flicker in her eye to show she wasn’t following. Sally appeared genuinely interested but baffled and James was impossible to read—which Rob took to mean he wasn’t on top of it either.

Seeming to grasp this, Julia sighed. Rob could all but see her rearrange the data she longed to share and simplify it.

“We need to keep the parameters wide so we don’t miss anything,” she said.

They all agreed.

“And we’re not just working with one or two variables, but lots of them. We don’t know the starting point from the painting to the sky. So we’re very unsure of many of the angles. Without that, it’s stabbing in the dark—almost literally—to try and relate that into a specific place in reality.”

“Okay, that I can follow,” Rob agreed. “So how are you going to do it?”

Julia threw him a sour look.

“I’m holding firm to a few assumptions. Firstly we only have data that goes back a certain amount of time. I can’t work with something I don’t have, so I’m going to get the best fit for the decades of information we do have. If this painting precedes that, then we’re screwed. Second, I’m assuming it’s a visual representation and not something tricky, like through a telescope or field glasses. Other than that, I’m hoping to just get lucky.”

“So it’s just a matter of time for the computer to chew through all the possible places?” El asked, her voice ringing with hopefulness.

Julia’s computer chimed and she continued to speak as she clicked her mouse over a bunch of her windows.

“I’m hoping I can narrow it to a single system fairly soon. I’m taking up a lot of the computer’s capabilities by doing dozens of searches on different areas. Think of it like…my computer is trying to speak Japanese to Japan, Korean to Korea, Swahili, Arabic, Russian, German and so on. And it’s not just the language itself—it’s the operating systems, the sensitivity, politics and all sorts of layers you don’t even want to know about.”

“Rob and I are about to go and interview Erik Chambers, the man who organized the touch up, presumably after this information was added,” El said. “Is there anything else you can give us, something we should be on the lookout for?”

Julia mumbled for a moment, her focus riveted on the screen. Rob watched as she flicked through a seemingly endless group of tabs one after the other. He waited. She was clearly caught up in something.

“Son of a bitch,” Julia turned to grin in triumph at first El then at him. “I’ll deny this later if it’s proven wrong, but my best guess at this moment is we’re looking at a Tibet, China, Mongolia type of range. I’m going to leave Russia in there just in case, they’re all quite incestuous—when it comes to technology, secrets and politics, I mean. The lines are very blurred and there’s tons of crossovers and I don’t want to narrow our range too early on. But I’ll bet you a second box of those delicious truffles we’ll end up proving it’s somewhere around there.”

Rob squeezed her shoulder in thanks. “You’re a gem and worth every penny for those chocolates. Text me if you find anything else we can work on and I’ll throw in a bottle of Champagne.”

Hopeful for the first time since they’d been called in on this case, Rob left Julia’s office finally feeling like they were getting a handle on things.

Chapter Six

“Do you think James will be okay back at HQ?” Rob asked.

El was driving and seemed determined to skirt as close to the posted speed limits as possible. His question was not idle, but based in the curiosity of whether she was speeding because she wanted to get home and sleep—something he couldn’t blame her for—or because she didn’t trust James to behave himself alone back at their office.

“I’m half tempted to joke and say he’ll have corrupted half the night shift by the time we return, but I’m afraid it’ll be a little too close to the truth.”

Even though she spoke like it was a dark confession, Rob wasn’t fooled. He could see the happy glow in his partner’s eyes. He liked seeing her happy, he’d been disappointed for her when circumstances had come between them these last few months.

“If he teaches Sally how to pick a lock, I’ll have to kill him,” he teased. “Now if we talk about some of the younger agents who have been hired recently, I wouldn’t mind at all if James taught them a few of his skills. Those young guys could do with a few good scares. I can just imagine Waldron, or Preston, or a number of the other team leaders chewing them out for skirting too close to the line or getting caught with a bit of breaking and entering. Will do them good to have their egos deflated a little.”