I really don’t know who she is—or was. And I may never know, Kip told herself. Even as she searched for something to say Tam turned to the table.
“I would love to read the full reports you gathered.”
Kip cleared her tight throat. “I have them all, I think. There 154
might be one or two things I’ll wish I had that are sitting at home with the boxes you gave me, but I’m not sure. Why don’t I heat up some soup and we’ll sort ourselves out.”
When in doubt, Kip thought, let work bury the personal stuff until it goes away. It had always worked before. That she suspected it would not work this time was no reason not to give it a try anyway.
Kip stirred in the downy warmth of the loft bed. She stretched and then sniffed. The aroma of something delectable was wafting up from the kitchen.
Her eyes were gritty from reading through pages and pages of computer code, highlighting strings of data for Tam. It didn’t help that the fire made the air inside the cabin dry. She buried her head under the pillow. She’d made it one night without tearing that flannel shirt off Tam, so she could do it again.
The fantasy that had kept her awake last night came back in 3D splendor. She was straddling Tam’s lap, naked, wet, aching, and slipping that shirt off Tam’s shoulders as they kissed. Their skin was hot from the fire as her fingertips pushed the fabric down, then Tam captured her wrists, held both behind her back with one hand while the other...
There was no way her trembling legs were going to carry her safely down the ladder from the loft.
She was finally coaxed out of her warm bed by the persistent smell of bacon and eggs and an urgent need for the bathroom.
Biological imperative trumped fantasy-inspired wobbles.
She wrapped herself in her grandfather’s old robe and shoved her feet into thick boot socks. She didn’t fall off the ladder, no thanks to her weak arms. Only one part of her body seemed to have anything like a sufficient blood supply. She’d always scoffed at people who’d claimed an uncontrollable urge was why they’d ended up in a bed they shouldn’t have.
She gazed at herself in the bathroom mirror, thoroughly 155
disgusted with her vivid imagination. “You look like you’re going to die from lust,” she muttered. “You’re not a politician. Show some backbone.”
Resolved to find Kip Barrett, one-time candidate for the Secret Service, she padded her way to the kitchen to find Tamara sliding fried eggs onto plates next to crisp bacon and toast.
“I was going to bring you breakfast in bed,” she said, looking disappointed.
Kip slid into a chair at the table. She wanted to ask, On what planet did you think that was a good idea? Maybe Tam wasn’t feeling it the same way. She looked the picture of calm. Instead she asked,
“How were you going to get a plate up the ladder?”
Tamara set Kip’s plate in front of her. “Oh. Then it’s a good thing you came down here.”
“We’ve really got to stop eating like this,” Kip said.
“Speak for yourself. I’m ravenous.” Tamara finished a slice of bacon in two bites, then spread olallieberry jam on her toast.
“Mountain air. Is it still snowing?” Kip glanced out the window, but the shutters were angled so she couldn’t tell.
“The forecast says light snow all day, but little accumulation.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Yes. But I also copied out more code, if you’re up to more sifting. Not a lot more, because I finally found what I was looking for.”Kip realized she was wolfing down her food. Apparently anxiety and an overactive sex drive made a person hungry. “That’s good news. I want to poke around and see what I can learn about Wren Cantu. This has all been too clever for the choice of her to be random. The report I already have on her isn’t all that interesting, though, so I’m going dig some more. And then I’ll start sorting through the key card users looking for payoffs in their bank records. That is, if you’ll give me that login again.”
Now she knew where Buck got his data.
“Sure. We’ll keep going at this from all directions.”
The ground felt more solid under Kip after she’d eaten. Tam 156
seemed so normal, so focused that her own wayward yearnings were easier to set aside. She decided a shower and comfortable clothes were a must, and they would manage a productive day of work. Finally, answers.
The moment the bathroom door closed behind Kip, Tam shuddered and put her head in her hands. Good Lord, what kind of cruel demon of sexual temptation could make an old cotton men’s robe—too big and totally shapeless—so unearthly sexy?
The world could keep their supermodels and stilettos. Kip was absolutely delectable in socks and hair mussed from sleep.
Watching her eat a piece of bacon with finger-licking relish had been torture.
The reason she hadn’t slept much wasn’t because she was working—she hadn’t slept because every time she closed her eyes, Kip was there. Last night she would have given nearly anything just to sleep next to her, warm and close. This morning sleep was nowhere in her thoughts. Nothing gentle or cuddly either. She wanted to do sweat-dripping-down-the-back, still illegal in most states sorts of things with Kip, until neither of them could walk.
Then start over.
It was just sexual chemistry, that’s all. She’d never felt anything like it before. None of her minor entanglements could even compare. She had thought she knew what desire was and she had been wrong.
She forced herself to tidy the kitchen and return to the keyboard of the little computer. So far, its range and satellite connection were all that she needed, and she’d taken precautions to mask her IP address as she pinged from one backdoor login to another. She had to hand it to the real hacker—it hadn’t been easy getting into a couple of the bank mainframes. She wasn’t sure it was wise, but after copying out the code she needed, she left an intrusion marker. If she was lucky, that would trigger an automatic copy of the code as it existed and an independent 157
copy would be available for the Feds, one that the hacker didn’t know had been made. It would also shut down the other hacker’s current access point.
When Kip emerged, pink-skinned and hair pulled back in her usual ponytail, Tam told her, “Copying code as soon as possible was the right priority. I just checked the last bank, and the transaction record is gone. So I went back to the first bank I checked last night, and the record is gone from there now.
Someone is wrapping things up. Maybe they’ve played all their cards and are going to head out with the money now.”
“You said you thought you knew who it was.” Kip resumed her seat at the table as Tam tried not to look as if she was inhaling the clean, fresh scent of her.
“North American trained, but has some of the tools popular with the Russian programmers, which I think could mean he’s a preferred contractor with the kinds of people Vernon Markoff knows and might want to help him avoid trial. It’s the same fingerprints on every site.”
“The kinds of stuff I’m highlighting on these printouts?”
“That’s it. I’m going to look for those fingerprints in SFI’s code for the key card access records and the security tests that control who can get where in our offices using their key cards.”
They worked in the same companionable silence they had last night, with Kip using a ruler to scan down pages of code, marking particular strings with pink, green and yellow highlights.
Getting into SFI’s software protocols was easy since Tam had left herself a backdoor. A few relatively simple searches later she found the fingerprint code.