Serious Risks

Arlen smiled and tightened his arm around her just a little. “And I won’t do it again, Jessica.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to protest, but her mind was swinging into action again, and she caught the words before she could speak them. She didn’t know this man, and if she were to think about it she would probably be shocked that she had fallen into his arms so easily after an acquaintance of a mere day. After all, she’d never before fallen into anyone’s arms.

Jessica tilted her head back and looked up at him. He was close enough at the moment that she could see him clearly without her glasses. “How old are you, Arlen?”

“Forty-two.”

His smile, she thought, looked a little sad somehow. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” She didn’t mention the wedding ring he still wore, which she suspected was the biggest part of the problem.

He didn’t ask what she meant. He knew. “I have a daughter who’s nearly your age, Jessie. She’s twenty-three and expecting her first child. My first grandchild. And I have a son who’s twenty-one.”

“You started young.” It wasn’t a question.

“I was eighteen when Lucy and I married. Right out of high school and right over everyone’s objections.”

“Were you right, or were they?”

He closed his eyes, and his smile broadened just a shade. “We were,” he said. And he brought his other arm around Jessica, giving her a little hug. “I had a good marriage, Jessie. A very good marriage. Once in a lifetime is all anyone has a right to expect.”

Eventually, because their embrace was still too intimate both for their respective roles and for his conscience, Arlen stirred. Releasing Jessica, he handed her back her spectacles.

“I’ll go get that fingerprint kit,” he said, rising from the sofa.

She slipped her glasses onto her nose and looked up at him. “Okay,” she managed to say brightly. “I think I’ll make some more coffee. Do you want any?”

He looked down with a smile that didn’t reach his gray eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks. I need to get some sleep tonight.”

So did she, thought Jessica, but she seriously doubted she was going to get it, coffee or no coffee.

It was a night for memories, Arlen thought. It was late, and his apartment seemed emptier than usual, though not as empty as the house he’d shared with Lucy had seemed after her death. The only keepsakes he hadn’t put into storage were an eight-by-ten photo of Lucy and a slew of photographs of the children. Everything else had been put away, because a man his age had no choice but to move on.

But sometimes he remembered, and tonight, with a glass of bourbon to keep him company, he held Lucy’s photo and looked back.

He hadn’t been kidding. It had been a good marriage. Not a perfect marriage, but a good one. A comfortable one. A hell of a lot better by far than most marriages he knew about. Part of him had died with Lucy, had expired with her last breath as he held her in his arms that one final time. Afterward, he had figured he would go on as father, friend and government agent, but never again as lover or spouse. That part was gone.

Evidently, he found himself thinking as he looked down at Lucy’s smiling face, he’d been a little naive in his expectations. The feelings hadn’t died but had merely gone into hibernation. That created a whole mess of interesting problems he wasn’t sure he cared to deal with at this stage in his life.

First of all, he was about to become a grandfather. He had certain images of that role that didn’t jibe with the memory he had of himself and Jessica on her couch this evening. It also meant he was too damn old to be rolling around with a girl her age. His children were grown, and she was the right age to be having children. Damn, Jessica was only a few years older than his daughter! That realization kept drawing him up short and hard, like a yanked rein.

Setting Lucy’s picture aside, he carried his drink into the kitchen and dumped it down the sink. He’d never been much for alcohol, and at a time like this he wanted his head to be perfectly clear.

Except how clear could it be when he kept imagining pink skin and white satin, and remembering just how right a certain young woman had felt in his arms? How perfectly she’d fitted against him and how passionately she’d responded to his kiss?

And what damn difference did it make? He was an agent on a case and had to remain professional. Whatever had gotten into him tonight had better not get into him again. That was the beginning, middle and end of it right there.

She was too young for him, Jessica thought as she lay in the middle of her four-poster bed and stared up at the patterns made by the moonlight on her ceiling. Of course he would think so. How could he not? She and men had spent her entire life avoiding one another, so how could she possibly know the right things to say and do to make it clear that she didn’t feel young? It had probably been that very inexperience that had caused him to draw back from her tonight. She didn’t know how to kiss, how to please, how to entice. Discovering that, he’d naturally lost interest.

But, of course, it was all for the best. He still wore his wedding ring. Whether she felt young or not, Jessica definitely didn’t feel up to dealing with the ghost of Arlen’s wife. She had a very healthy respect for the power of ghosts. Hadn’t she watched her mother languish and drink herself to an early grave over the death of Jessica’s father? And, oh, what a slow death that had been, finally leaving the mother dependent on the daughter who was still only a child.

Arlen seemed to be holding up a lot better than her mother had, Jessica thought, but she knew too well what it meant to be invisible to grieving eyes.

Turning over onto her side, she looked out the window at the moon through the lacy tracery of tree branches. He had been in this room tonight. What had he thought of it? Did he think it childish? Probably. She knew as well as anyone just how childish it was. It was the room she had dreamed of having someday, a dream she could trace all the way back to the age of seven. That was the year after her father’s death. That was when she’d finally realized there was no way to go back home.

And so she’d begun to dream of a home in the future. A lot of that dream had matured to more realistic proportions that could be embodied in this house she now owned. Tonight, however, it was strikingly obvious to her that she’d forgotten to include the most important part of any home: family.

Sighing heavily, her throat suddenly and inexplicably tight, she wrapped her arms around a pillow and hugged it. She’d been lonely for so long she’d ceased to be aware of it. Until tonight.

Damn Arlen Coulter for making her conscious of it.

Chapter 4

Dressed in her favorite dove-gray suit and black silk blouse, Jessica arrived at work forty-five minutes early the next morning. The extra time was essential if she was to try to lift fingerprints from the document. It wasn’t so much that the process was complicated, because it wasn’t, but she wanted ample time so she could move slowly and avoid errors.

Security, mindful of DIS inspectors, checked her identification thoroughly before waving her through. When she arrived in her own section she walked down the hall, assuring herself that all the other offices were empty. Only then did she return to her own office, close the door and start to open her safe.

“Talk about acting suspicious,” she muttered to herself as she spun the dial first left, then right, then left and then right again. She felt the dial resist as she reached the last number and knew she’d worked the combination correctly. Pressing down the lever, she grabbed the drawer handle and pulled it open.

The document was still on the bottom of the drawer, apparently untouched since she’d found it there yesterday. When she’d emptied enough of the other documents to give herself unobstructed access to the red folder, she used the plastic gloves Arlen had given her to lift it out.

“It’s not that your fingerprints will get you into trouble,” he’d told her last night. “You just don’t want your prints to destroy a good print by overlaying it.”

Only, there were no good prints. She knew that with certainty twenty minutes later, having dusted the entire folder and the document with dark powder. The powder adhered to nothing except some vague, blurry streaks. The spy had wiped the prints, just as Arlen had suspected.

Disappointed, she cleaned up the mess with exaggerated care and then went down the hall to wash her hands. Frank Winkowski was just entering the section when she came back down the hall from the restroom. He looked surprised to see her, then smiled.

“You’re early, too,” he said. “Brainstorm?” He was a pleasant-looking man with a round face and a tendency to softness around his waist.

Jessica shook her head. “Not really. I just woke up early this morning, and there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging around the house. Besides, after all that uproar with security the other day, I need to do some catching up.”

Frank nodded. “We’ll all have to do some catching up, I think. From what I hear, this security inspection is turning into a real bear. Stan Watson—do you know him?”

“He’s the guy heading up the Big Whistle project, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Frank shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other, as if it were heavy. “He said a team of two inspectors are shutting themselves up in a private office with each of his team members for an hour at a stretch.”

“Oh, boy.” Jessica managed to sound surprised. “What’s going on? What’re they asking?”

Frank shrugged. “Dunno. The guys they questioned yesterday afternoon say they can’t talk about it. Maybe there’s been a leak from the project.”

Jessica shook her head. “I can’t imagine that. What does Stan think about it?”

“I think he’s just plain furious. He also said that they’re inspecting everyone’s desk.”

“I heard they can do that, but I never saw them inspect one.”

“Me, either.” Frank shook his head. “I guess if you’ve got any embarrassing love letters in your desk from that guy you were with yesterday, you’d better dump ’em.”

She saw the twinkle in his eye and decided not to let the comment bother her. “Thanks, Frank. If I ever get him to write an embarrassing love letter, you’ll be the last to know.”

“Thought so!” Laughing, he moved down the hall to his own office.

Back at her desk, Jessica installed her hard drive, booted up and resumed her work. She thought she was doing pretty well, too, until an hour later when Arlen called.

“Lunch at twelve?” he asked without preamble.

She sank back in her chair and pulled off her glasses, realizing suddenly that she had a tension headache. Rubbing impatiently at her forehead, she sighed. Arlen heard it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Not a damn thing,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “What could possibly be wrong?” Other than espionage and an FBI agent who’d awakened her to things she was better off not knowing about. An FBI agent who called her, cool as you please, his tone the politely casual tone people used with strangers. His silence suggested to her that he was evaluating her response. Suddenly disturbed that he might draw conclusions, she said, “Sorry, Arlen. I’ve got a king-size headache.”

“Have you taken aspirin?” It was the politely concerned question of an acquaintance.

Damn it, Jessica thought. Damn it. Back to business as usual. Well, girl, are you going to let him get away with it? The question drew her up short, creating as it did a whole new passel of questions she wasn’t going to be able to answer without a lot of soul-searching.

“Jess?” His tone had lost a little of its distance.

“I’m here. Sorry. Noon is fine for lunch. I’ll be waiting out front.” If she didn’t get swallowed up in the internal earthquake she felt herself verging on. “I don’t have anything for you, though.” As soon as she said it, she wanted to kick herself. He might cancel lunch.

But he didn’t. “I figured you wouldn’t. I’ve got a few things to talk to you about, anyway. Noon, then.”

She took the aspirin, but it didn’t answer the questions nor did it help her concentrate on her work. She found herself pacing her office, a not very large space that allowed her to take only three steps in one direction before forcing her to turn. Here it was, only the middle of the morning, and it looked as if she was done working for the day. Well, she could call security and tell them she’d found the document. If she wasn’t going to work, anyway, there was no point in postponing it any longer.

But first she was going to think about that surprising question she’d asked herself. Was she going to let Arlen get away with this? On the other hand, how could she prevent him? She was no femme fatale to crook a finger and bring a man to his knees. In fact, the mere notion made her want to laugh.

Arlen had a lot of good reasons for wanting to keep matters between them on an impersonal footing, she thought. He was acting in a professional capacity when he was with her, and she supposed it wouldn’t look very good to his superiors if they heard he was fooling around on the job. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the biggest problem of all: the wedding band on his left hand.

On the other hand, there she was. She’d never felt anything approaching the feelings he’d stirred in her with a few kisses. All the rational arguments she could muster, either for herself or for him, meant absolutely nothing against the soul-deep yearning he’d unleashed.

So what was she going to do about it? Could she do anything about it? She had no feminine wiles that she was aware of, and even if she could have manufactured one, she would have been terrified of using it. Ten years later she could still hear the laughter of the premed student who had used her to do his homework. The scar was deep, and still very tender. Her lack of confidence in such matters had become an integral part of her nature.

Arlen had wanted her last night, but that could have arisen from any number of circumstances that had nothing to do with her, and she was painfully aware of it. She might not have a great deal of direct experience with human sexuality, but she prided herself on being well-read. A woman was wisest not to assume a man’s response was a reaction to her in particular. Arlen might have been reacting more to protracted celibacy than to her.

It would have been almost possible to feel pleased with the objective way she was reviewing the situation, but the bottom line wasn’t objective. She wanted—very much—to find herself in Arlen’s arms again. In fact, someplace deep inside, she wanted to weep with the longing she felt to be there again.

Standing in the middle of her office, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself and closed her eyes, remembering what it had felt like for those few short minutes to be enveloped in a man’s strong arms.

No, she thought, she wasn’t going to let him get away with this. But what could she possibly do to beguile him?

There was no answer to that question. Feeling a sudden need to do something, anything, productive, she picked up the phone and dialed Security to tell them she had found the missing document. Dave Barron, the Facility Security Officer, was not in, however, and his assistant, Vicki Grier, was busy with the DIS inspectors. Having no idea who else she could discuss the matter with, Jessica decided to wait again. What was the rush, after all? This was almost like closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out.

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