Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2) (2 page)

As it turned out, the detective had, indeed, asked Mr. Martin to stop by. The description he gave her matched the man at the door, right down to the black eye, courier uniform, and running shoes, but Irina continued to hesitate even after she disconnected the call. The pop-ups had been unnerving and she was cautious by nature.

She wished she were taller and more assertive. A self-defense course wouldn’t have been remiss either. She took a deep breath. She was a woman living alone who’d had a bad day. She’d let Mr. Martin in, but she’d stand at the counter so she’d have the knife close at hand. She’d never be able to use it on anyone, but he didn’t need to know that.

She slid back the chain and unlocked the screen door. She didn’t open it but retreated to the counter, leaving him to let himself in.

The Norse god stepped over the threshold, his sheer size swallowing what she’d considered a spacious kitchen. If he lifted his hand above his head he could plant his palm on the ceiling. Fine gold hairs sprinkled tanned calves and forearms. Bulging biceps and broad pectoral muscles strained the seams of the gray cotton, short-sleeved shirt. Faint blond scruff, caught in the light from the bay window, stubbled his jaw.

The guy was beautiful. She had a difficult time believing he was an intelligence officer. Weren’t they supposed to blend in?

The only place he’d go unnoticed was Asgard.

His blue eyes, sparkling with geniality despite the bruise and the swelling, took in the knife on the counter, but if he had an opinion about it, he kept it to himself. Instead, with a discreet deference for her nervousness, he moved to the table in front of the window, putting some distance between them.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked, pulling out one of the round-backed pine chairs.

She’d prefer it if he did. He had to be close to a foot and a half taller than her underwhelming five feet, two inches. Factor in her boring brown hair and he made her feel like a Hobbit. “Help yourself. Do you mind if I ask how you got the black eye?”

He touched his cheekbone and made a wry face. “Funny story. True story. Turns out not everyone likes couriers. Who’d have guessed we could be so offensive?”

The bruise looked painful. And fresh. She couldn’t begin to imagine who would have the arrogant confidence to punch a man his size in the face. Nor did she wish to.

Her sympathy was hard to suppress, however, especially since she was the reason he was sitting here, rather than at home, where he’d no doubt prefer to be at the end of a rough day. “Would you like ice for the swelling?”

“I would
love
some.”

The refrigerator stood to Irina’s left, closer to her than to him, but if she moved, it meant being out of reach of the knife. He might be gorgeous, but she wasn’t stupid.

He saw her split second of indecision and gave her an out. “I can get it myself.” He pried himself from the chair. As he opened the freezer door, she took note that his glutes weren’t bad either. He got additional points for his polite consideration. He pulled out a small bag of frozen peas and held them up, shooting her an inquiring glance over his shoulder. “Can I use these instead?”

Irina found her tongue. “Go ahead.”

He reclaimed his chair, propping an elbow on the table and pressing the bag to his face with a sigh of pure bliss. “Thanks. That feels a lot better.” He fixed her with his good eye. “Detective Buchanan tells me you work for a defense contractor, doing something with computers.”

His tone was unreadable. Still, she could imagine what he must be thinking. What he saw. She hadn’t been expecting this visit, not after her meeting with the detective, so she wasn’t at all prepared. She’d ditched her office attire for denim shorts and a clingy pink tank top that made her look young. Her lipstick was long gone. At least she’d left her hair up, secured in a semi-professional, loose knot on top of her head, even though it was likely a mess. It was where she kept pencils for scribbling down notes and equations.

“Yes and no.” She wasn’t giving up too much information just yet. “I work through the defense contractor, not for them. They won a contract to build a specialized unmanned aerial patrol vehicle. A drone. They hired me to work with them to enhance it.”

“What do you mean by ‘enhance’?”

“This is the part where I have to ask how high your security clearance is,” she said.

He removed the bag of peas and stared at her, slack-jawed. “Specialized patrol drone… My God. You’re designing weapons. For a
Canadian
contract?”

Irina understood his reaction. Canada prided itself on being a nation of peacekeepers, not peacemakers. Officially, its military patrol aircraft weren’t armed. Instead, they were designed with the capabilities for armament. It was a technicality, but a significant one. While Canadian contractors weren’t under any obligation to work only with Canada, there were laws restricting what countries they could supply weapons systems to. Stringent ones.

“So you see why I need to know what your security level is,” she pressed him.

“It’s high enough for the basics. For now, you can keep the details and any names to yourself.”

His honesty impressed her. He didn’t try to pretend that his clearance was better than hers. And he was willing to hear her out. Relief left her shaking. She had to lean against the counter behind her for support. For the first time all day, she felt safe.

He rubbed a finger along his upper lip as he continued piecing the details together, thinking out loud. “So your company is building the drones but the customer is arming them.”

“I don’t know who’s arming them. I handle the weapons systems designs—their placement—nothing more. The contractor builds the drones, which are then delivered to the customer. My designs are a separate delivery. For all I know, the customer could be a distributor. A middleman for someone else.”

He sprawled in the chair, the sheer size of him making it creak, and settled the bag of peas against his face again. “You can correct me if you like, but I’m going to make a few assumptions based on what you are—and aren’t—telling me. One of them is that these are nuclear weapons we’re talking about, and the final customer could well be a foreign country Canada doesn’t do business with because they haven’t signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.” He paused. When she said nothing to contradict him, he continued. “Explain to me why you believe you have security issues?”

“This morning, I started getting pop-ups on my computer at work. They were photos of me.” She cleared her throat. “Private photos.”

He dragged a slow glance from her bare feet to the top of her head. She felt herself blush. So she wasn’t porn-star material.
Thanks for noticing
.

“Not that kind of private. Just…private.” She waved her hand to encompass the kitchen. “Taken of me here. In my home. Through the windows.”

His expression cleared. “That explains why you’ve drawn all the curtains.”

“The photos aren’t the real issue.” Though they were bad enough to unsettle her. Nobody liked having their personal space invaded. “The problem is with the pop-ups themselves.”

“Pop-ups… Aren’t they the annoying little ad things that get in the way when you’re trying to read articles on the Internet?”

“Yes. They’re also a type of spyware that gathers information on the site’s users. Some of it’s for marketing purposes, like how many click-throughs a user makes on a site. Some pop-ups are more invasive than others.”

“I was told you have a PhD in computer science. Can’t you clear them off your computer yourself?”

“I did already, but the computer’s not mine, it belongs to the company. I work within specific parameters and resolving intranet security issues isn’t part of my job. I’m supposed to go to tech support for issues like that. In turn, they’re to investigate and report any security breaches to the company. But if I go to tech support, I run the risk of making the problem public and therefore more difficult to resolve. The contractor has a secure intranet system. How did these pop-ups get there? Who else knows about them? And why are they aimed specifically at me? Is anyone else getting them, too?” She hated all the unanswered and inexplicable questions. She liked for things to make sense and this made none at all.

He frowned as he parsed her dilemma. “So if pop-ups are a form of spyware, these could be gathering information on your designs from your computer.”

“In theory, yes. But in this particular case, no. Not the designs themselves. All classified work is done on an isolated computer in a locked room. Everything’s password-protected. Not even tech support can get into it. There’s no intranet or Internet on that computer. That one’s secure. External hard drives used for backups are stored in a separate locked storage room that can only be accessed by two people. Everything has to be signed in and out.”

“Then if the designs are protected, I’m afraid I really don’t see how this is a matter for CSIS.”

Her chest tightened. She shouldn’t have to connect the dots for him. “Not to toot my own horn, Mr. Martin, but I’m something of a world authority on weapons systems placement design and my brain’s not locked in any classified storage area. Since someone is targeting me specifically, I’d think that would be a serious concern.”

Thor gave her a slow, heated smile that brought a blush to her toes. “You’re also an attractive woman. Maybe you have an admirer.” The smile slid from his lips. “A creepy one, granted. Call Detective Buchanan back and tell him about the photos. He can do more for you than I can in terms of personal protection.”

Her fingers bit at the edge of the smooth, granite counter. If she were a man he’d never make such a ridiculous assumption. The people she worked with all had high-level security clearances. While that didn’t preclude them from stalking, it did mean they weren’t stupid enough to jeopardize those clearances for a little titillation. And the average stalker, even with better-than-average computer skills, wouldn’t be able to break into an intranet system of this caliber.

She was back to square one. And she no longer felt safe.

Chapter Two

Dr. Glasov was cute when she was mad—all pokered-up lips and imperious green eyes.

The pink cheeks and that light dusting of freckles on her perky little nose made it impossible for Kale to picture her as a weapons systems design expert. The denim short-shorts and super-revealing tank top didn’t help, either. She looked more like an indignant pixie.

Dang, she was pretty.

But there was no doubt she was also scared, and his size and the black eye were currently working against him. She wasn’t giving him enough information to work with. Someone at CSIS might have more intel on the situation she’d described.

To him, however, it sounded more like a case for CSEC—Communications Security Establishment Canada. They dealt with cybersecurity. His personal knowledge of computers wouldn’t get him a passing grade in a first year programming course. His area of expertise was languages. He was fluent in six and spoke seven Arabic dialects. The best he could do for her was to make a call to his team leader and pass on what little information he had.

At the same time, he couldn’t walk out the door and leave her like this. As far as protection went, that knife on the cutting block beside her was a joke. She’d never be able to use it. It didn’t take a PhD in anything to see she’d probably pass out if she tried. How she’d gotten into designing nuclear weapons systems placement, of all things, was a complete mystery.

He tried to soften the blow. “Irina… Can I call you Irina? Because saying ‘Dr. Glasov’ makes me feel like you’re about to examine my prostate or something.” She smiled a little as she said yes, just a faint twitch of her lips, and he continued on a more serious note. “I agree that these pop-ups are disturbing, and I do think you should be concerned for your safety. But CSIS gathers information for national security. We aren’t law enforcement. You really need to call Detective Buchanan back.”

A hint of fear flickered in those pretty green eyes. Guilt punched him in the gut. He’d made matters worse, not better, by confirming what she already knew—she should be afraid and he couldn’t help her.

“I’ll do that,” she said.

She wasn’t going to though. Underneath the fear was a layer of stubbornness. He could see it in the lift of her chin and the tightening of her jaw, and the way her whole body went rigid at his recommendation.

Fair enough. It was her decision to make. Besides, he’d had a hard day too. His head ached and his face hurt. It was time to leave. He pushed out of the chair and took a few steps across the kitchen, the bag of frozen peas in his hand.

Her eyes flew wide at the sudden movement. She backed a step closer to the cutting block behind her.

He stopped. He might have been wrong about her ability to use that knife.

But he didn’t think so.

He brandished the bag of peas. “I’ll put these away before they thaw out. Then I’ll be on my way.”

She slumped against the counter. Embarrassment flooded her face. Pressing her palm against her chest, she took a few rapid breaths. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little jumpy today.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

He got it. He really did. She was a woman living alone and he looked like he’d just come from some sort of crazy-assed couriers’ rumble. But it bugged him that she thought he might hurt her. He’d been raised to treat women right.