Facing Fear (4 page)

Nikki had sat before men with colder eyes and harsher intentions than mere intimidation. His deliberate disdain was a tiny drop of water in hot oil. Saying that it wasn’t personal was a lie, anyway. He was taking it very personally, since it was an affront to send in an outsider to make an independent report apart from Internal Investigations.

“You don’t have to like me or what I have to say in my reports, Mr. Stadler,” she said quietly. “
That
isn’t in my contract.”

The man threw his hands up in the air, the first hint of frustration. “Miss Taylor, maybe you ought to tell me what is in this contract to which you keep referring. I’m a busy man. There are other more important things happening around the world. We have bomb threats to our embassies by terrorists. We have unrest in the Middle East to deal with. We have
planes shot down from the sky. A small laptop sold by a department director is the very least of our worries.” He gestured at the folder again. “That tells us nothing. ‘You walked around the building and surveyed building safeguards.’ What the hell is that?”

“I have only been there for one day,” Nikki replied mildly. “Mr. Gorman had been selling information for years. I’m sure the laptop meant very little in the overall picture but it is part of the chain of events underlying the problem of information leakage. The admiral didn’t believe that Mr. Gorman worked alone, not without help from higher officers.”

Fresh anger glinted in the man’s eyes. Nikki knew he had expected defensiveness from her, even arrogance, when he attacked her work. Her answer had only made what was left unsaid very clear—that the admiral didn’t trust Internal Investigations, thus, Mr. Stadler’s staff, not to muddy up any findings. It was standard knowledge that one just didn’t blow the whistle about internal problems. She glanced at the whitened knuckles of Mr. Stadler’s clasped hands.

“We know how to deal with our traitors,” he said. “The media has blown this thing up so big that everyone from the president down to the admiral is worried there are a thousand rats in our fold. I don’t believe it.” Nikki kept silent. That only angered him more, and his voice rose a notch. “We’re handling our own investigation our way. We have better knowledge of Gorman’s men in Task Force Two. We know their activities, and we can find out a lot more than you. You, on the other hand, will only interfere with our work, as you nearly did the other night.”

“How so?”

He leaned back, a little smile on his lips. “I did a little research on you, Miss Taylor.”

“That’s to be expected.”

“Yes, but the most interesting thing is, we can’t find a thing about you. Why is that? No background, nothing.” His eyes narrowed. “Which leads me to wonder, what is it you have done that even our side doesn’t want anyone to find out? Would you care to fill me in?”

It was Nikki’s turn to smile. “I didn’t know I was under investigation,” she said. “Why don’t you ask the admiral? Or the attorney general?”

Stadler’s smile disappeared. “I also know why they picked you. You look quite a bit like Richard Harden’s ex-wife.”

“His name is Ricardo Harden,” Nikki corrected, “and his wife is dead.”

“Now that is a man with an interesting file, isn’t he? And you just happened to look like the dead wife. Is that whom you’re after, Miss Taylor? He is, after all, our most likely suspect, being Gorman’s handpicked number one. We don’t need you to collect evidence against him.”

“It’s not in my contract to build a case around Mr. Harden.” Far from it. When Stadler started to speak again, she lifted her hand slightly. It was the first time she had moved since this interview began, so she knew it would catch his attention. “I know, it’s that contract thing again, and I’m quite sure you’ve been told what my specific job is. I’m to give an independent report on Task Force Two and a specific recommendation on whether Mr. Harden has the capabilities to take over the reins.”

“He doesn’t. If you’ve read his file, you’d know that.”

“Obviously the board that is in charge of recommending directorships didn’t think this is enough. Since Mr. Gorman had manipulated all the information for so long, an independent review was recommended. Now, as to whether Mr. Harden is qualified or not, I’m sure he is. Whether he is part of Gorman’s network, that I don’t know.”

“And you’ve been ‘contracted’ to find out because they know he’d notice you,” Stadler said, his lips twisting cynically as he made the quotation marks with his fingers. “As if we couldn’t send in our own pillow companion.”

Ah, she understood now about his reference to the other night. Sending in a pillow companion was the oldest form of intelligence-gathering. “That woman with him outside the elevator. You sent her to him.”

“Agent Denise Lorens.”

Apparently it was a signal. The door opened and the
woman from the other night walked into the conference room. Nikki studied her. She looked very low-key compared to how she was dressed at the opera, but the dark conservative outfit didn’t hide her sensual voluptuousness.

Nikki could still recall the look in Denise Lorens’s sleepy blue eyes when she had sauntered into the elevator, barely glancing at the occupants before turning her back on them. She had blown a kiss at Rick as the door closed, then leaned sideways against the elevator wall.

Rick Harden liked dating women, Nikki had known that. The woman in the elevator had told another story. They liked dating Rick Harden. Nikki had seen a very different Denise in that lift. Softer. And extremely sated.

“Denise, please tell Miss Taylor about Richard Harden’s likes and dislikes.”

Nikki shook her head. “No.”

Stadler lifted his brows. “Why not? It’ll save you time, knowing how to get him close to you. Or, if you like, you can have Agent Lorens report back to you each time so you can have the information she has extracted. You can call it your supplemental independent report. Go ahead, Agent Lorens.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Harden’s profile is nonstandard. He doesn’t do the romantic very well, changing his moods often, from quiet to silence altogether. So far he hasn’t talked about his work but this was just our first weekend together.” She turned to Nikki. “He likes submissive women and he enjoys sex. A lot. He can be made to talk. Give me a few more weekends and I’ll know for sure whether he has anything in his personal computer. And I’m quite sure he’s tied to Gorman. I can build a good case to nail him. It’s really not a good idea if you interrupt my time with him now.”

Nikki wanted to say no but she didn’t have a good reason to give. What I.I. did was their business, not hers. “I can give you those weekends you want,” she said, “but he won’t call you again, Agent Lorens.”

Denise Lorens blinked. She gave her superior a quick glance then turned her attention back to Nikki. “I’m good at what I do. I left him supremely satisfied.”

Rick Harden wasn’t looking for satisfaction. He was looking for balance. But that kind of answer would just prolong this conversation, and Nikki suddenly wanted to get out of there. She felt dirty, somehow. “I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but you won’t be hearing from him. You see, I’m quite sure he already knows all he has to know about you, Agent Lorens. If you had checked with file request logs, you would know that your file had been requested by him a while back.”

“Not the full file,” Denise Lorens told her smugly.

“I’m afraid so. You forget, Agent Harden was sometimes assigned as a pillow companion a long time ago, and unfortunately he still has security clearance codes. I’ve already checked—he regularly updates everything that goes on around here.”

“That’s impossible,” Stadler said, disbelief on his face. “It’s been years. He no longer works here.”

“You really should contract me for an independent study on security holes in your department,” Nikki couldn’t resist telling him.

She turned to the female agent standing there. Denise Lorens was trying very hard not to show her disappointment and anger. It was obvious she wanted to see Rick Harden again, and it was also very obvious that she now understood he had used her. Vanity was hard to swallow down. She had thought he had liked her a lot more than a mere one night stand. After all, he had kept her for a whole weekend.

“He still might call you,” Nikki told her, “but you now know that he knows. You’re likely to betray this fact and trigger his suspicion.”

She crossed her fingers under the table. She would pay for the little deception with meditation later, she promised. She had just manipulated Agent Lorens out of the picture.

“You may go now, Agent Lorens.”

“Yes, sir.” The woman quietly left.

Nikki looked at Mr. Stadler levelly. She had made a point. She would not be told how to do her job. “Mr. Stadler, you collect data to support your conclusions. Right now you want
a scapegoat for this mess. You have Gorman in custody, but no missing laptop, and you need to point a finger at one or two more people to wrap up your case because, as you put it, you have more important things to do.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands, just as he had done earlier. “My independent report won’t be about finding a scapegoat, Mr. Stadler. It will be a complete analysis of security measures needed to be taken, and whether Agent Harden will do his job, in spite of what his files say.”

She paused to let the words sink in, then added, “You see, I don’t have to like what you say or do, either.”

They were going to hang him out to dry. Rick had gone through this routine before. Internal Investigations. Suspension. Then evidence of inappropriateness. It all depended on how much the media was pushing for answers. The more noise, the more people would come down. Not that the answers would be the truth. It was never the whole truth. The Justice Department had its own take on the meaning of that word.

Rick didn’t care what they were planning to do. He had sunk years into rebuilding himself and wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. Let them find another sacrificial lamb.

Internal Investigations could move around as it pleased, so he was going to have very little room to maneuver. They wouldn’t like an uncooperative party and wouldn’t hesitate to cause all kinds of problems.

There was only one department I.I. couldn’t touch, and that was the General Accounting Office, which checked and balanced the Justice Department. Too bad he didn’t have any connections with the GAO to find out what was happening to Gorman, so he would have an idea what I.I. was trying to pin on him. He needed outside help. But he was all alone.

Right now they were just starting to tighten the noose around his neck. The presence of an EYES officer was only the beginning. Even his attitude and questions were heading Rick toward a foregone conclusion.

“You were Gorman’s O.C. We need all the files in your office turned over to us.”

The man, in his early forties, spoke in imperative terms, as if every sentence he said was a formal order. Rick knew it came with years of being the Justice Department’s velvet glove. “You have my full cooperation, Mr. Harpring,” Rick told him. “It would be faster if you’d tell what you’re looking for.”

Not much hope of that happening. Internal Investigations would never make it that easy. Part of the whole package was to create dissension among the staff and an inability to communicate. Then, when it came to one-on-one interviews later, distrust and chaos would already have weakened departmental loyalty. That was when the scapegoat would be let out for the public to see. And, Rick mocked in silent recrimination, his head would be offered to the masses.

Harpring opened his briefcase and handed him a sheaf of papers. “Here’s all you need to know about the investigation. We’ll begin from top to bottom starting tomorrow, so be prepared to answer any questions about the cases Gorman ordered Task Force Two to undertake.”

“Of course.” Rick took the papers without glancing down at them.

Harpring studied him for a moment before continuing in his monotone, “You realize that you might have to answer questions that could incriminate you. I suggest that you retain legal counsel before an interview. Every paper not signed will be put under a microscope.”

“Every paper connected to me has been signed and copied.”

The man gave him a questioning gaze. “Agent Harden, I’ve been doing this for two decades. I have never found a government department under investigation with all its paperwork intact. And, with your record, you do know that the first thing our people will do is go after your paper trail. You were, after all, Gorman’s number one man.”

Rick opened his desk drawer and put the papers on top of the increasing pile of folders. Harpring watched him close it. “Everything that has to do with my job will be here,” Harden told him quietly. “All signed and with multiple copies.”

The older man drummed his fingers on the desk. “How many copies?” he asked.

Rick smiled. “Enough,” was all he said.

Half an hour later, after Harpring had left, his intercom buzzed. “Send him in,” Rick said tersely to his secretary.

The door opened and Rick turned away from the window. “You said at the cafeteria you were out jogging and bumped into Miss Taylor this morning, Agent Jones. Tell me about the meeting.”

It was time to turn the tables on Nikki Taylor.

U
nclean.

Nikki stood under the shower with her eyes closed for a long time, letting the hard spray beat against her face. With her long hair, she preferred taking a bath. It was one of her favorite times of the day, when she took the time to concentrate on herself. For her, bathing wasn’t just a daily chore of soap and water. It was a luxury, a way to set her mind free.

Sometimes, when she sat very quietly in the scented bath, listening to the soft popping of bursting bubbles, with the lapping water caressing her like a lover, she could hear herself sing with the universe. There was nothing like that moment of contentment when she achieved that state; she could escape even her memories then.

Today, however, she didn’t feel she could bear sitting still. She didn’t have the patience to wait for the colorful vibrations that bloomed like kaleidoscopic flowers behind her closed lids.

That interview had been more than a fencing of words. She didn’t like men like Hal Stadler. He was the sort of person she tried to stay away from, and she had retired from the business because there was no way to keep from seeing too many of his sort. Stadler and his kind generated negative feelings that she would rather not have. Once upon a time, she had plenty of that, churning out hate and anguish until life seemed hopeless.

Hate was a strong word. She understood hatred like the back of her hand.

Unclean. There were many ways to make a woman feel dirty and helpless inside. One didn’t break a human being down with physical pain. That would be too easy. And a woman’s self-identity could be dismantled piece by piece, if she didn’t learn to disassociate from what was happening to her.

With an ease that came from years of training, Nikki deliberately blanked her mind of the invading memories. She turned the water off, her eyes still closed. The unbidden image of Rick Harden appeared out of nowhere. Funny how she knew what he looked like when she had never been within two feet of the man.

His eyes were a piercing green, with an uncompromising spirit that reminded her of the rocky mountains of Tibet. His face had the same strength of will that bordered on ruthlessness, and the proud tilt of his head challenged as well as distanced anyone who came too near. She could almost taste his lips, as if she had touched them before. They belonged to a man who rarely smiled, with a cynical curl that edged the corners. It was a jaded mouth, meant to punish as well as give pleasure.

Rick Harden with all his unfathomable complexities burst like a sudden revelation into a simple truth. He was a man standing still, waiting. For what?

She shivered at her own thoughts. Pushing open the shower door, she grabbed the towel hanging from the hook and wrapped it around her. Her stomach was roiling with panic at the unexpected insight that had jumped into her consciousness. She walked quickly to the sink to look into the mirror, her breathing uneven, because she was hearing her grandmother’s warning from years ago and her mind was now making connections she had been too blind to see before.

Beware of the center. It will betray you.

Release the frozen heart. It will burn you.

Nikki stared into her reflected dark eyes, wide with shock. For years she had thought she was the frozen one, unable to move forward. That she couldn’t ever get over her fear of men to love like a normal person. But meeting Rick Harden
had changed something in her because she had responded to his gaze, and yes, his eyes seared her like fire each time.

She picked up the hair dryer and turned it on, deep in thought as she ran a comb through her hair.
Release the frozen heart
. The man might look like he was trying to climb up the career ladder, away from his past, but he was frozen. His heart was frozen.

Her hair was too long to dry completely and she gave it a quick towel-off. She usually braided it before going to bed. She opened the bathroom door, clicking off the lights. Her hand was still on the inside wall of her bathroom when another hand grasped that arm from the outside, jamming it and making her gasp. She hadn’t seen or heard anything. She pushed off with her free hand, going for the solar plexus. Not quick enough.

It was over in a few seconds, and she found herself trapped against the side doorframe, her hands behind her back. Her towel had loosened, hanging on precariously. The stranger tugged at her hair, forcing her head up.

He was dressed all in black and the backlight from her bedroom put his face in the shadows. He looked like the devil she had conjured up in her mind. And he was much too close. Closer than she had allowed any man in years.

“I heard you were researching an agent who runs a lot. I’m here for the interview.”

Rick knew he shouldn’t be there. It was rare for him to follow impulse, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. There was something going on here, more than the suspicious nature of Nikki Taylor’s sudden appearance in his life. What, he hadn’t figured out yet, but he was determined to get to the bottom of it. For some reason, she challenged him, just by the sheer fact that she hadn’t come to him. He wanted to see her face-to-face, test her strength. He wanted to understand why she invaded his dreams.

She was smaller than he had thought. On her bare feet, the top of her head cleared his shoulders by only a couple of inches. Yet everything about her overwhelmed his senses. He
had grabbed her to see how she would react. Someone trained wouldn’t have been so easy to trap. This close, her damp hair smelled of flowers and vanilla. Her body exuded an elusive scent—a mixture of woman and something else, and it filled his lungs and invaded every pore in him as his body became aware of her state of undress.

Good. He wanted her vulnerable, just as he felt vulnerable in his dreams, incapable of escape. She couldn’t run with a towel on. He tangled his hand in her hair, forcing her face up toward the bedroom light. Her eyes were large, doelike, and her mouth was parted, and it suddenly dawned on him that what he smelled was the combination of heat and fear. The woman’s eyes were terrified. He gazed into them, and briefly felt shame and revulsion at putting that look there.

He should let her go. The woman was no danger to him.

Without planning to, he pushed his body against her soft one. That scent surrounded him, the thick, sweet smell of clean woman and fear. But she hadn’t made another sound after the initial gasp. Her tongue flicked out, nervously wetting her upper lip. His gaze lowered and studied the pearly glow of her tempting flesh above her towel, heaving nervously and slipping slowly out of its protection. No, he wasn’t going to let her go yet.

Nikki watched as Rick’s nostrils flared. Something dark and unfathomable entered his green eyes, and without warning he trapped her body with his own, arching her up against him by putting pressure to her locked arms behind her.

Her heart roared in her head as panic bubbled up. She had reacted out of instinct to defend herself with the first move, but the moment he had touched her, the moment her brain had started to assimilate the fact that a man was holding her, all thought had fled. In its place was just the knowledge that she was powerless. Her speeding heart made her faint, and she tried to slow down her breathing. This was Rick Harden. It wasn’t…them.

Before she could think of something to say, he did the unthinkable. The lower half of his tall, hard body pinned her against the corner of the wall and doorframe, and the hand
imprisoning hers behind her back was like manacles, yanking her to her toes.

She was helpless in this position. She couldn’t fight back without exposing her nakedness. There were things she had been trained to do but it had been so long, and she had never allowed anyone close enough to harm her before. She resisted by digging down on her heels and gasped again when he inserted his leg between hers and lifted her off the floor, bracing his knee against the doorframe.

She felt every tense and contracting muscle in his thigh. The heat from his body blanketed her. For a strange moment, she caught herself imagining him running in his shorts, those muscles moving and flexing with each step. Be careful what one wished for. She had wanted to see him run, had gone looking for him today; instead
he
had come looking for her.

His hot skin against hers. She didn’t know why she was imagining that. She should loathe what he was doing to her but her naked body wasn’t pulling away from his clothed one. What she was feeling wasn’t revulsion. She didn’t like what Rick Harden was doing to her. Her mind rebelled at the thought of giving in.

Her eyes met his. Pleading. Desperate. But of course he would never understand. He was a man. And she was in his power.

“Let me go,” she finally managed a whisper. She had to escape before her body betrayed her further.

“Not yet,” Rick told her very softly, his lips inches from hers.

“Let me down, then.”

His green eyes mocked hers. There was anger in them, and that other dark element she couldn’t put a finger on that was frightening her. In answer, he adjusted his position and slid her along his thigh toward him. She felt her towel parting further, and the friction of his black pants against her nakedness pressed home the point that she was in no position to bargain.

“All in good time. After you’ve answered a few questions.” Rick frowned as her dark hair fell forward and cov
ered his hand, a soft caress that distracted him from his goal of intimidating the woman. He wanted to run his fingers through it as it dried. He fought the urge to lift and bury his face in it. He scowled. Diversion.

“Who sent you?” When she shook her head, he persisted. “Who? You’ve been asking questions about me.”

Her gaze lifted. “Really? And you haven’t been doing the same about me?”

This time her voice was steady, and although her eyes were still making him feel like a bastard, there was a challenging tilt to her chin now. For some reason, he couldn’t stop looking at her mouth and thinking of strawberry daiquiri, and how her lips had pursed around that straw.

Nikki forced herself to meet his eyes. There was no place to run, and she knew, in her heart, that Rick Harden wasn’t here to cause her the kind of harm she feared. He wouldn’t know—would he?

“You have no background, besides the fake one you’ve conjured up for the last ten years. It was you in my elevator that night, wasn’t it?” He tugged at her hair again. “Wasn’t it?”

She didn’t see any reason to deny it. “Yes.”

“And you were with a group of touring writers the other day. And lunch. You knew I would be there. Didn’t you?” He spoke softly, his breath warming her in hot puffs.

“Yes.”

“You went jogging, looking for me. And all that talk about your novel, it was about me. Why did you tell Agent Jones those things if you hadn’t meant to bait me?”

His eyes demanded answers that she wasn’t ready to give. She hadn’t really thought about Agent Jones as a connection to Rick until he had shown up on the trail that morning. She had answered his questions because it had been painfully obvious that the young operative was trying hard to get some sort of information on her, and she had felt sorry for him.

“I…didn’t mean to bait you,” she told Rick, trying not to breathe too hard, or her towel would surely fall open. “He did me a favor, and I was returning it.”

Rick frowned. “What favor?”

He was a runner, with legs strengthened from years of endurance. He would not get tired of this position for a while, and she was beginning to be aware of too many things about him, things that she had no right to notice. The heat of his body. The curling brown hair above the collar of his black shirt. The easy strength of his body as he bore her entire weight. The way his fingers were half caressing and half pulling her hair, as if he couldn’t decide what to do with her.

“What favor?” he repeated, his arctic voice a direct contrast to his body heat.

She closed her eyes. She decided to give him the truth because that seemed to be the only thing he couldn’t see, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate it. “I interrupted your routine and was attempting to balance your not being in your usual…place. However, Agent Jones ran your miles for me instead. I owed him that, so I answered his questions.” Which brought Rick into her space. All debts were paid in full.

The silence was drawn out to a screaming pitch. “Look at me,” he finally ordered, his voice dangerously quiet. She did so, openly defiant now, but her heart still thudding too loudly. His green eyes studied her intently, then he asked, “What do you do besides write?”

Nikki jerked at his sudden change of subject. She had expected mocking recriminations, sarcastic disbelief. Rick Harden had succeeded in surprising her again. She licked her lips, drawing his attention to them. “I observe what is out of balance and suggest corrections.”

“Is that another way of telling me that Internal Investigations wants to get dirt on me?” Rick sneered.

Oh no. She would not be linked to that kind of underhanded work. Her chin tilted higher. “I’m
not
Denise Lorens.”

This time she succeeded in surprising him into releasing his viselike hold of her wrists. Unable to keep her balance, perched as she was, she grabbed at the nearest thing. That happened to be Rick Harden. At that moment her towel loos
ened completely and she went for the ends too, falling forward, sideways, rocking and stumbling, her long hair tangling with everything. Panic filled her. And desperate anger. Why couldn’t she do what she had been trained to do?

Rick was struck with the familiarity of it all—yet, she was just too…soft. Her hair, her body, her smile. Even her struggles. There wasn’t any hard edge to her. He knew, without a doubt, that she had been sent to mess with his mind, but whoever was behind this didn’t know his wife very well.

He gathered the falling woman into his arms, her hands trapped against his chest. She had been willing to land on the floor rather than expose herself. That alone told him more than she had in the last five minutes. The woman was no Denise Lorens. Or any of the types I.I. would engage to send.