Reach For the Spy (38 page)

He frowned. “Very
funny. You know what I meant.”

“Does it have to be all
or nothing with you?”

Kane nodded
regretfully. “You saw how jealous I got. And we didn’t even have a
relationship, just a few drug-induced minutes together.”

He dropped his gaze.
“I’m actually quite embarrassed about that,” he mumbled. “I’m
usually better in bed. A little slower, for one thing. More
considerate. And I don’t roll over and fall asleep right away. Or
vanish in the woods.”

I laughed. “You were
drugged. I think you can be forgiven. Besides, if you’d been any
better, I wouldn’t have survived the orgasm. I wouldn’t want it
that way every time, but, holy shit, you were incredible.”

He met my eyes with a
grin. “I’m glad you thought so. Because you blew my mind. I’ve
never lost control like that before.”

“Are you sure we
couldn’t just try it again? Now that the drugs are out of your
system? In the interests of research,” I added virtuously.

His eyes darkened
before he shook his head. “No, that would be a bad idea. Unless you
want to have this conversation all over again.”

“So, back to the way we
were, then?”

He nodded slowly.

“Damn. Let me know if
you ever change your mind about the friends with benefits
option.”

“You’ll be the first to
know.” His lips quirked up in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Next time I’m drugged to the eyeballs, I’ll drop by.”

“You do that.”

I manoeuvred the car
out onto the road again and steered back toward the highway. While
I drove, I briefed Kane on our plans and gave him the information
on Katya.

He frowned. “No
connection to Fuzzy Bunny?”

“Not that Spider has
been able to find so far. So we’ll have to draw Stemp out using our
sting.”

“What exactly do you
plan to do?”

I sighed. “I don’t know
yet. My first step is to see if I get a response to my message. If
I do, I’ll have to figure out a way to bring him into the open and
make him do or say something that proves he’s working for Fuzzy
Bunny. And somehow record it.” I rubbed the frown lines out of my
forehead.

“Aydan, what you’re
proposing is incredibly dangerous. Your plan has to be airtight.
Don’t forget, this person is smart enough to have remained in a
top-level security position unnoticed. And if it is Stemp, he has
the full skill set of an experienced field agent, too.”

I snorted. “Thanks for
the encouragement. At least I have you for my secret weapon.
Everybody thinks you’re dead. Except Stemp. I can probably use that
to my advantage somehow. I just have to figure out how. Which
reminds me, how can I contact you?”

“Don’t try. I’ll plan
to be in visual range whenever possible. If you need to talk to me,
move your ‘Support Our Troops’ magnet to the right side of your
trunk. I’ll make contact with you somehow.”

“Okay. If you’re going
to hide in my trunk again, at least say something before you come
through. You scared the hell out of me.”

Kane laughed. “I
will.”

About a mile from the
highway, he said, “Stop. Let me out here.”

“Are you sure you’ll be
okay? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine.” The laugh
lines crinkled around his eyes. “I managed to stay alive all by
myself before I had you to take care of me.”

“Sorry,” I said
sheepishly. “I know. I’m just...”

“Being a friend,” he
finished. “Thanks.”

He leaned over and
kissed me lightly before sliding out of the car, and I watched him
lope across the field and disappear into a ravine.

I steered the car
thoughtfully home. That confrontation had turned out better than it
might have, but it had left me feeling wary and off-balance.

I had assumed a man
like Kane would avoid personal entanglements and always put duty
first. It was flattering but unsettling to discover I’d been wrong.
And even though it hadn’t been strictly my fault, I felt terrible
that he’d been hurt. I really did lo... like him a lot.

I pulled into my garage
and thumped my forehead against the steering wheel a couple of
times.

As I hurried into the
house, the flashing light on the answering machine caught my eye. I
punched the button, and Tom’s concerned voice floated out of the
speaker. The timestamp was from the previous day.

“Hi, Aydan, I just
wanted to let you know to be careful. My truck got stolen out of my
yard, so make sure your garage is locked. And at dawn, I heard some
kind of animal making noise down by the creek. There might be a
cougar passing through.”

I snickered. First time
I’d ever been called a cougar. But at least he hadn’t identified
the true nature of the noises. Good thing he hadn’t decided to walk
down and investigate.

I gave him a call to
thank him for his concern and commiserate over his truck. He
assured me that it had been returned undamaged, and warned me again
about the cougar. I managed to sound appropriately serious.

By the time I’d
showered and dressed and eaten and recorded my distorted voice
message, I was late. As I trotted back to the garage, I glimpsed a
flash from my windbreak. Could have been a leaf catching the sun.
Or could have been a reflection off a scope or a pair of
binoculars. Apparently I was still under surveillance. Had the
cameras been reinstalled? Shit, no way to find out without
searching.

I called Spider to let
him know I was running behind, and made my way as rapidly as
possible to Sirius Dynamics. When I arrived slightly breathless at
my office, Spider and Smith were both waiting, and I mentally
cursed Smith’s malodorous presence.

Spider held out the
network key wordlessly and I plopped onto the couch and stepped
into the virtual void without speaking. My snoopy little program
was empty. No further attempts at communication with Fuzzy Bunny. I
decided that was a good sign. Our mole was waiting for a response.
Time to give him one.

I spoke to Spider and
Smith through the network interface. “I’m going to go in and
double-check my program connections. I’ll be invisible for a
while.”

“What should I do if
you don’t come back?” Spider asked fearfully. “I don’t know if I
can help you the way Kane...” his voice choked off.

“Don’t worry, Spider,”
I comforted him. “I’ll get back here one way or another. I
shouldn’t be gone long.” As I faded into invisibility, I fervently
hoped it was the truth. I hadn’t realized before exactly how much I
had counted on Kane to rescue me when things got hairy. Thank God
he was still alive. For now.

I followed my
shimmering thread of connection down the data tunnels to Fuzzy
Bunny’s firewall. Hovering outside it, I shaped a burst of data
into the number of the disposable cell phone and floated it down
the virtual pathways to its destination.

Here you go, mole. For
a good time, call this number.

I snapped my
consciousness back to the familiar walls of Sirius’s virtual file
room. My heart didn’t seem to want to slow down, and I hovered
invisibly while I tried to overcome my slightly queasy excitement.
The first step had been taken. Now we had to play the waiting game.
When I could fake calm again, I faded back into visibility and
started decrypting the next file in the stack.

When the signalling
blip stabbed me behind the eyes, I jerked out of my absorption. I
blinked dumbly for a few seconds before I registered my
surroundings again.

“What’s up, Spider?” I
inquired.

“Lunch time. Come on
out.”

“Oh!” I glanced at the
time and realized that in fact it was closer to one o’clock. I
suppressed a smile. Spider probably wanted to take a later lunch so
he could hack into Stemp’s regular one o’clock session. I stepped
carefully through the portal and back into reality.

I sucked air through my
teeth and hugged my head. Jeez, the only thing that could improve
this rotten experience was the addition of Smith’s stench.

Truly I was
blessed.

Not.

At the Melted Spoon,
Spider immediately set up his laptop and began to type. I drifted
to the counter to order food for both of us. When I returned to the
table, I put his sandwich beside him and he abstractedly munched at
it, his eyes riveted to the screen.

“There!” He swivelled
the laptop around so we could both see the screen. “Look at this.
Every time, he uses a different routing system to contact her.”

He traced the line of
complicated text above the session. “See how he’s bouncing the
message around to hide his trail? He spoofs an IP here, here, and
here. And this explains why he always goes to the internet cafe
instead of using his home computer. The IP addresses rotate more
frequently, and he uses a different terminal each time. You weren’t
kidding when you said he was twisty. ”

“And he apparently
knows his way around computers, too.” I rubbed at the frown lines
in my forehead. “I don’t like this. With his background, he’s going
to be really hard to nail.”

We both watched while
the online conversation progressed. I shifted impatiently in the
hard chair. “They’re not saying anything. It’s all just ‘How was
your day’ stuff.” I blinked. “Oops. And pillow talk. Whoa. Too much
information.”

I glanced over at
Spider’s scarlet face. “Is this their usual conversation? Could
they be using a code?”

He averted his eyes
from the steamy exchange on the screen. “If they are, I haven’t
been able to figure it out. I’ve been running some decryption
algorithms on it, but I’m not getting anything.” His eyes narrowed
in sudden thought. “Maybe you could decrypt it. If you were inside
the network.”

I sat up with sudden
hope before slouching back into my chair. “But I couldn’t, because
the Sirius network is all monitored.”

“That’s true, but
you’re invisible.” Spider grinned at my expression as I thumped my
fist against my forehead.

“Shit, you’re right.
Lucky one of us has a functional brain. So all I have to do is
sneak into the tunnels while he’s online. It never even occurred to
me to try because I don’t have a clue about hacking into computers
from the outside.”

He swivelled the laptop
back in front of himself again. “That’s it, they’re done.” He
blushed again. “I mean... the session is ending.”

I hid a smile. “I guess
we’d better get back, too. Maybe I’ll manufacture a reason to work
late tonight. Say, around nine o’clock.”

“Sounds like a
plan.”

We were halfway back to
Sirius when my butt vibrated.

I snatched the
disposable phone out of my pocket. “Bingo! We got a bite. I bet
Stemp’s still on his lunch break. First he talks to Katya, then he
calls us.” I showed Spider my teeth. “I can hardly wait to nail
that bastard. It’s his turn to suffer. And he will. Oh, he
will.”

Spider’s eyes were wide
as he took a step back. “Um, Aydan, you’re scaring me again.”

“Sorry.” I attempted to
convert my expression to something a little closer to neutral.

“Now what?” he asked
cautiously.

“Now we reeeeeeel him
in.” I grinned.

“How?”

“In my phone message, I
told him to watch Craigslist for an online ad for a pink and blue
Fuzzy Bunny brand teddy bear.” I wiped the phone off thoroughly
with the tail of my sweatshirt and dropped it into a garbage bin as
we walked by.

“What are you doing?”
Spider demanded. “What if he calls again?”

“He’ll get the same
message, unless the phone dies in the mean time. And if he manages
to trace the phone, he’ll find it in the dump.”

I kept walking, and he
caught up to me after a few paces.

“I told him the ad
would contain a link to a web page with instructions,” I continued.
“It’ll look like a ‘Page not found’ notification from Fuzzy Bunny’s
server, but I’ll hide the instructions in HTML comments so they
won’t be visible to browsers. I told him to view the source code to
read them. As soon as I know he’s viewed the page, I’ll take it
down.”

“Speaking of twisty...”
Spider squinted at me warily. “I thought you said you were a
bookkeeper.”

“Jesus, Spider, not
you, too!” I yanked a handful of my hair.

“What?”

“Never mind,” I told
him as we walked up the front steps of Sirius Dynamics. “Let’s talk
after work.”

“Okay...”

The hesitation in his
voice made me demand, “What?”

“Um. Actually, I’m
having dinner with Linda.” His cheeks were pink, and he didn’t meet
my eyes.

I laughed. “Okay,
Romeo. Can you make it to your office at eight for a planning
session? Or is this going to be an all-night thing?”

His flush deepened.
“No! I mean... Yes, I can be there by eight. Linda’s on the night
shift, and she starts at eight.”

“Okay, I’ll tell Smith
we’ll be here at nine.”

Spider eyed me as we
signed for our fobs again. “Do you have to?”

“Might as well. We’ve
got nothing to hide, right?”

Comprehension filled
his eyes. “Oh. Right, of course.”

At eight o’clock, I
pulled up outside the shared office. There was no sign of Spider,
so I leaned against my car. While I waited, I casually moved my
trunk magnet over to the opposite side. I was pretty sure I was
going to need Kane’s help with the next steps.

At ten after eight,
Spider’s car swung around the corner and pulled up with a jerk
behind mine. He scrambled out of the driver’s seat, his lanky limbs
awkwardly uncoordinated in his haste.

“Sorry I’m late,” he
panted.

Clearly the date had
gone well. His normally tidy short hair was mussed, and he was
smiling in spite of his apologetic air. With an effort, I
restrained myself from making a smartass comment and followed him
up the walk and into the office.