Laced Impulse (2 page)

Despite that, she’d been wrong to assume he wasn’t inside of his office. Her eyes drifted pass him, catching sight of another person. She was stunned, seeing the agent he’d been in conference with. All at once, she feared that her heart would stop because
this
man had that strong of an affect on her.

Mot. That’s what they called him. They had never talked in the true sense of the word, except for passing hello’s or the exchange of courteous nods. Her silence wasn’t for a lack of trying but his persona intimidated her. Despite that, she always looked forward to the days when their paths would cross.

Mot. His eyes were a pale emerald green, more beautiful than the precious gem itself. A shade so dazzling, she rarely dared direct eye contact for fear of being overcome with headiness. In stark contrast, his thick head of hair was dark; a shade slightly lighter than midnight black. His face was shockingly handsome. Etched with sharp angles, accentuating masculine features. A significant compliment to his overall appearance was the cleft that tipped his chin. He wore it strikingly well. His evenly proportioned face was a puzzler. Angelic, serene yet sexually enticing. A dangerous combination. In any case, to look at him; his body was as tempting as his face. He had wide linebacker shoulders that fit his tall tapered muscular build and his clothing failed to disguise his brute strength. Perfection. No other word described him, and at best, even this word failed to do him true justice. Truthfully, she couldn't resist staring but usually she did it unnoticed.

However..on this day, things took an unexpected turn. When she looked in his direction, he arched an eyebrow in question. Obviously waiting for her to say something. She summoned a calm facade, well rehearsed for situations such as this. She straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin; she was hard pressed not to smack her lips, poke out her breast or perform an ancient mating ritual. The man looked just that good and he was deserving of nothing less. But instead, she regrouped, pulling herself back together. She was fostering a respectable outward appearance. A perfect set of words teetered on the tip of her tongue. This time, she was ready, and if he responded as she hoped he would; she had a comeback line to keep the conversation going.

"Mot..." Director Vance said. "Come this way. I think Grey is ready for your debriefing."

Mot nodded, allowing Vance to lead the way. He looked at her curiously, wondering why she'd shrunk back into her shell. He said her name. "Bianca." She understood the duel meaning. He was saying hello and goodbye in the simplest way possible but she couldn't drum up a reply. She mutely smile. Then before she knew it, Mot was gone. Vance was taking him away. Inwardly, she heaved a sigh of relief. Even though her pleasant imaginings had been shattered, some part of her was grateful. As much as she wanted to meet Mot, a larger part of her feared the man. She could never envision him considering a woman like her. When she looked in the mirror she never saw herself in the same way others did. When her female friends described her they used words like,
nice
,
sweet
or
pretty
. While on the other hand, her male friends would sum it up using one word.
Hot
. She cringed hearing this and she'd always shrug off their compliments; blaming their praise on blind loyalty or some other nonsense. Regardless of her unwillingness to accept the truth; her slender curves did tempt most men, causing them to stop, then lingeringly admire her. On more than one occasion she'd even felt Mot's subtle gazes. Oddly she always felt his eyes more than any other man’s gazes at The Agency. His clandestine, lowered lids were meant to be hidden, but somehow she always felt his stares. Even now, she felt him looking at her. She dared a peek. When she raised her head, her gut feeling had been dead on. She thought his lip curled in a smile meant for her. But when Vance and the agent he’d called Grey joined in, both men loudly laughing. She felt a crushing blow. When she looked again, the hallway was empty. What was it about that man that made her behave so foolishly? Next time. When she saw him again, she would speak. She would talk about the weather if she had too. Mot... His name rattled in her brain.

"Mot..." she tested the name on her tongue, liking the sound of it. Bianca’s face creased with a curious expression for more than one reason. First; she knew that Mot wasn’t his name. Some of the agents were given code names and she wondered what the acronym, Mot stood for. Then there was the man himself. Mot came and went, in regular intervals. Like clockwork; every six weeks he would reappear; staying for no more than a few days. Then after a brief meeting with the Director; off again he would go. Returning in six weeks time. Bianca toyed with the reason for his timely absence but she never seriously attempted to solve the puzzle. Knowing those kind of answers wasn’t a part of her job and it definitely wasn’t something that she should be concerned about. The agents came and went; that was the nature of their job. She accepted this, and never was she ever to question anything concerning their activities.

Minutes had passed and still she couldn’t keep her mind on work. She heard a door opening down the hall, then the sound of voices. Bianca’s head rose in expectation. Mot walked out first, followed by Vance and then Grey. She tried not to look. She told her brain not to care. But she
did
want to see him and she cared far more than she could comprehend. She lifted her lids, sneaking a final eyeful of the mysterious man. Bianca couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. The man she’d come to know as, Mot.

***************

Chapter 2

More than six weeks had passed, and today, Director Vance was on a war path. He was chewing out everyone within a five foot radius. She wasn't sure if her amateur sleuthing was to be blamed or not; but at the time the temptation had been too great to pass up.

Three weeks ago, Vance had asked if she wouldn't mind staying late, and logging a little overtime. Bianca didn't need the money, because for the first time in her life, she was in the six figure earning bracket. So, money had not been her incentive. She'd noticed her boss fidgeting the few times he'd left his office. She'd also noticed that his calls were going straight to him, instead of being prescreened first by here. She'd been at The Agency for several months with Vance as her mentor and this was the first she'd seen him behaving this way.

When everyone had left the office for that day, Bianca sat at her desk reading through coded documents. This had always been her least favorite thing to do, and for that reason she put forth her greatest effort. Agents had to be able to communicate during their missions but when messages were sent, the context was scrabbled, hiding the true meaning. She'd been working on one particular coded message for an hour. Her eyes were going cross and her back was as stiff as a board. She'd stood for a moment to stretch, and it was then that she noticed, Vance had cracked his door and she hadn't noticed him when he did this. She'd walked over, listening for his usual sounds. She wasn't trying to spy on him, Bianca just wanted to offer him a cup of coffee. She was tired and she couldn't begin to imagine his degree of exhaustion. When she walked into his office, she'd expected to find him hard at work but instead, she found him fast asleep on his sofa. When she arrived early that morning, finding his door closed, then learning he'd not gone home from the previous day. It was then that she realized, he'd been working all day on meager fumes. She'd had every intention of retracing her steps, leaving him too his privacy. But she didn't, and now she regretted her actions. From where she stood, Bianca heard chiming noises coming from his computer, indicating that a message had just been received. The noise had been loud enough and it should have stirred him awake but when it didn't, Bianca thought it best to see who the sender was. The communiques she'd been tasked to decipher; she'd rightly deduced that the sender was in Europe. She also knew that Vance was looking to receive something highly classified and specific; this explained their all night searching for a needle in the haystack mission. Whatever this was that he needed; Bianca sensed its importance. This is also how she'd later explain what she'd done in his office.

Skirting around his desk, she opened his mailbox. The senders name was a series of letters and numbers. She didn't take time to remember the sequence that was linked unimpressively together. Her interest was the message and what it entailed. The three lines lit up the screen with its hidden meaning.
"At the sea. Sand is extremely hot. May remain longer than planned."

After reading coded messages for the past four hours, this was easy to decode. The agent was somewhere near a large body of water. The situation was dangerous, which might require him staying longer than anticipated. The sign off wasn't a name. Instead there was a picture of a scruffy cat.

Bianca had stood at the desk for only a second longer. When she lifted her head, her eyes were stunned to see Vance seated and staring directly at her.

Since then, she'd been walking on eggshells; trying to avoid the man whose job it was to train her. Avoiding him was impossible and her further snooping only made things worse. During the next few weeks, Vance continued tasking her with the job of decoding his messages. Each note or letter pricked her attention; demanding that she know more. She tried to suppress her curious nature, and on some days she questioned if perhaps Vance was purposely setting her up. Like a dog sniffing after a bone; and she would take the bate. Then this morning, he'd been in a meeting in the conference room. He phoned her at her desk, instructing her to bring his pad that he'd left on his desk. A simple request and easy enough to accomplish. But when she walked into his office, right next to his pad, she saw it. Right out in the open. He'd scribbled out the name, Mot. She'd been so preoccupied with her snooping and diligently attempting to cover it up. Somehow, time had slipped away from her and things had gone unnoticed. Unless she'd been away from her desk, thereby missing him altogether; Mot was overdo and his absence coincided with Vance's soured mood. She tried not to place meaning on this because in this arena, any number of explanations could shed light down a hollow hole.

His voice bellowed through the phone. His directive clear, leaving no room for interpretation.

“
Bianca. I need case file 9-AQV-17. Send it to me right away.”

“
Yes Director Vance. I’ll take care of that sir.”

She lay her phone down, placing it back on its receiver. The agencies filing system was part archaic and part brilliance. The central computer housed all the communiques, dossiers, reports, and every document filed by every agent. For all of that streamlining; the system had one flaw that The Agency defined as its safeguard.

Not all files could be accessed from the personal computers assigned at each workstation. Sensitive files had to be accessed from computers housed in the archives department, in the bowels of the building. Bianca hated this section. Whenever her responsibilities took her there; she always felt like she was visiting an inmate in prison. Short of the cavity search; the screening was as tight as maximum security pat downs. After enduring a series of questions; the archives department assuaged the personnel by calling them visitors and handing out passes. The idiocy of the charade always left Bianca feeling like a participant, playing a game of Clue. She was a Yale graduate, for goodness sake. She’d earned degrees in criminal justice, abnormal behavioral psychology and world politics. Accomplishments she was rightly proud of. But to these people, whose rooms were devoid of windows and large landscape pictures covered their walls in place of city views. Too them, Bianca’s degrees meant nothing. There were policies to uphold. Practices that couldn’t be ignored. This was the way they got things done. In the bowels of the building; overinflated egos were not tolerated.

Bianca’s fingers flew across the keys; pulling up a sign on screen, that would ultimately unlock the secured file. She entered her password, then a unique key code; lastly, a temporary access code, provided to her by the archives attendant. She carefully typed in the series of numbers and letters recited to her by Vance; not wanting to make a mistake. The screen lit green; indicating acceptance. After that, the computers firewall fell, creating a link to one of its central computers. The person stationed at this desk created an encrypted version; then the information was transferred to a portable storage device. Each file that left the archives department, was purposely infected with a timed virus. The reader had a set number of minutes to comprehend the files meaning, before the virus corrupted the data. Most people avoided the ticking time-bomb by opting to remain in the archives department, reading the files directly from the computer. She supposed, whatever lie in these documents, Vance was prepared to hurriedly glean what he needed to know.

She palmed the file in her hand, glad to be free of the place. It wasn’t that the rooms were dank or moldy. Bianca just preferred windows, and lots of natural sunlight. In the basement, florescent tubes radiated its phosphorous luminance. She stepped inside, then felt the climb of the elevator. The lift stopped twice, taking on new passengers. When the doors finally reached the uppermost floor of the building; she released a sigh because this floor was the hub of The Agency.

Later that evening, Bianca stuffed her purse; filling it with her personal belongings. She was nearly done when the Director strolled out of his office. Vance rarely showed much in the way of emotions. Most times, he looked like he was playing a hand in a high stakes poker game. However, this evening he wore his emotions on the surface. Vance stare blankly down the hall. Most of the support staff had gone home hours ago. The only few lingering souls were analyst, a few linguist and code breakers. Bianca cleared her voice before saying...