A Matter of Trust (21 page)

Sloan was silent. She needed to clear her head, make some sense of what was happening. She needed to tell her.
Jesus, tell her what? That I’m scared to death?

“Just give me a few more hours to get on top of this, and then we’ll take a walk...talk,” she finally said.
Something, anything...as long as you don’t touch me again right now.

“Deal.” Michael nodded wearily, still reeling from the staggering realization of how much she wanted her. She had never dreamed it possible. She longed to say,
as long as you don’t go away
, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t have the right. She would simply have to trust Sloan to come back to her.

“I’m going to find Jason and see how he’s doing with the data retrieval. I might be a while.” Sloan hesitated; she didn’t want to leave.

“I understand,” Michael said, fairly reasonably, though she was loath to let Sloan out of her sight. She watched her walk away with a sense of loss, then sat behind her desk and stared at the unfinished work.
How am I supposed to concentrate now?

To her surprise, Sloan returned just a few moments later, an odd expression on her face. Michael looked up from her desk and asked, “Did you find him?”

“No, not exactly,” Sloan said, still trying to dispel the image of Sarah and Jason entwined on a sofa in the conference room, completely unaware of her presence. She was well beyond the point in her life when any form of sexual expression could disturb her, but there had been no doubt that Sarah’s hand was on Jason’s fly, and that at any moment her hand would be inside his pants. While Sloan applauded their spontaneity, she had no desire to witness this degree of intimacy between her friends. She had hastily retreated. “He was, ah...involved.”

Michael gaped at her in astonishment, taking her meaning from her tone. “My God, what is it tonight? Something in the office air?”

“Apparently,” Sloan said ruefully. “Carpe diem,” she said to herself. She glanced at the computer.
Yeah, right
.

*

Close to 10:00 p.m., Sloan announced, “I think that might do it for now.” She leaned back in her chair, stretching her cramped shoulders and back. “With any luck, you should be able to start work again tomorrow morning. There are still a few things Jason will probably need to finish, and then I can work on tracing where this came from.”

“At this point,” Michael said from across the room, “I don’t care if the whole goddamned system goes up in smoke. You need to take a break. Now.”

Sloan nodded her agreement. She was tired, but exhilarated as well with the thrill of having beat the damn bug.

“I’m taking you to dinner,” Michael said, sensing an opening. She had respected Sloan’s wishes to let her work, but she hadn’t forgotten what had happened earlier. Her body still throbbed. “You’ve earned it.”

“I need to take a shower and change clothes,” Sloan amended. “Do you mind stopping at my place first?”

“Anywhere,” Michael said. “As long as it’s away from here.”

They drove the short distance across town in Sloan’s car, the silence companionable as both of them relaxed and let the stress of the last few days recede. When Sloan turned onto one of the streets in the heart of Old City and slowed in front of a familiar building, Michael exclaimed, “You live here?”

“Yep,” Sloan answered as she keyed the remote to open the ground-floor garage doors in the warehouse where her office was located. “Top floor.”

The narrow side street retained much of its historic charm as evidenced by the original cobblestone streets, horse hitches, and hand-laid brick sidewalks. At the rear of the garage, the original freight elevator gave access to the upper floors. When the two women exited on the top floor and Sloan slid open the double doors leading to her living space, Michael gasped in delighted pleasure.

“This is great!”

“Thanks.”

The huge space had a high ceiling and was completely open, different functional areas simply delineated by the strategic placement of furniture and scattered area rugs. Across the room, floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a sweeping panoramic view of the waterfront and their sister city across the river.

Michael walked to the windows and looked out, enjoying the flickering lights of sailboats and cabin cruisers that glittered on the glassy surface of the water. “I’ve seen it so many times, but never like this.”

“Uh...I need to get cleaned up,” Sloan said, still standing just inside the door. It was so strange, and yet so right, to have Michael there. “There’s beer, wine, and sparkling water in the kitchen. Just help yourself.”

“Sloan,” Michael called impulsively as Sloan started to turn away. “How about if we just order pizza and stay here? The view is so beautiful, and I’m not sure I want to face the crowds.”

Michael looked so relaxed and so lovely that Sloan felt her throat tighten. Just that quickly, she was awash with desire again. Swallowing, she backed up a few steps. “Sure. There are menus in the kitchen by the phone. Anything you like is fine with me.”

Then Sloan practically fled around the partition that separated her bedroom and bathroom from the common space in the rest of the loft. Michael stared after her, wondering what had prompted that quick flash of fear in those expressive eyes. Whatever the cause, she was determined not to leave until she discovered the answer.

*

Her hair wet from the shower, Sloan emerged barefoot from her bedroom in a clean shirt and jeans. Michael was just opening the pizza, which she had placed on the coffee table in the living room. She looked up with a smile.

“You’re just in time.”

“God, that smells great.” Sloan flopped down gratefully on one end of a large leather sectional facing the windows. “I didn’t realize before how hungry I am.”

Michael handed her a plate and sat down beside her. She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Sloan. “Bon appetit.”

Sloan took the glass, saluted Michael, and grinned. “Amen.”

They attacked the food with enthusiasm, and neither spoke more than a few words until the box was nearly empty.

“That was terrific,” Sloan said as she leaned back contentedly.

“I know I promised you dinner, but I didn’t have pizza in mind,” Michael said with a laugh. “On the other hand”—she indicated her borrowed clothing—“I’m hardly dressed for anything elegant tonight.”

“I think you look incredible,” Sloan said appreciatively. Though Sarah’s jeans and blouse were slightly big on Michael’s taller, more slender form, she still looked casually lovely. “Besides, it’s the company that counts, and you more than make up for anything we might be missing at Les Deux Cheminees.”

Michael blushed and looked away. After a moment, she asked softly, “Are you this charming with every woman?”

“Oh, Michael—
no
.” Sloan stared at her in astonishment, hating for her to think that. “Don’t you know how very beautiful you are? And so incredibly sexy—Jesus, you practically make my heart stop.”

“Then what is it?” Michael looked at her steadily. “Is there something here I’m missing? Something I’m supposed to do or say?”

“It’s not
you
,” Sloan said vehemently.

Michael’s disbelief and lingering hurt shadowed her blue eyes, but she said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Sloan said bitterly. “It’s never been because of you, and if I’ve made you think that for one minute...”

She got up abruptly and went to the windows, her back to the room and the woman on the sofa. Though she gazed out, she was not seeing the waterfront or the lights flickering like stars fallen to earth; she was remembering the sounds and sights of the nation’s capital. It seemed like only yesterday, the pain was still so fresh. Finally she turned, leaned against the window casement, and began to speak.

“When my tour in Thailand was over, I came back to Washington and was assigned to the Justice Department. I had a lot more experience than most of the other people working in computer crimes at that time. They moved me up fairly quickly even though I was young, and pretty soon I was heading a new unit that was similar to an internal affairs division in a police department.

“I was testing our own internal security measures, looking for leaks. I answered directly to a member of the Justice Department—a special prosecutor assigned to deal with computer crimes. That included prosecuting members of government agencies as well. It was publicly very low profile, because obviously evidence of security leaks within the government does not produce confidence in the administration. By the same token, any government employee found to be responsible for, or even remotely connected to, breaches in security was dealt with swiftly. Since it was a fairly new area of investigation and prosecution, overreaction was common when it came to dealing with individuals suspected of a crime. The prosecutors often brought charges first and got the details later.”

Sloan returned to the sitting area and poured herself more wine. With effort, she controlled her agitation enough to sit down on a portion of the sectional adjoining Michael’s. For a moment, she stared into the wine, aimlessly turning the glass between her long fingers. God, she hadn’t thought about it, not consciously, in so long. But it was still so raw that her mind reeled from the memories.

“And then I fell in love with the special prosecutor,” she continued, her voice harsh with anger. “She was twelve years older than me and a career government attorney. I think she had already set her sights on the attorney general’s office. She was very paranoid about anyone discovering our relationship, although I’m not convinced it would have made a difference. Nevertheless, I was young enough to believe her when she said we had to keep our relationship secret. And I was naïve enough to accept her disavowal of me whenever it suited her.” Sloan sighed. “And of course, I believed her when she said she loved me, too.”

She drained her glass and set it carefully on the glass-topped coffee table next to the pizza box. She searched Michael’s face for a reaction. What she found there was the compassion and comfort she had longed for but had abandoned any hope of finding. It gave her the strength to finish the story.

“I wasn’t completely inexperienced. I’d had affairs, but nothing really serious, and I was still foolish enough to believe in the power of love. I would have done anything she wanted. She actually pretended in public to have a long-standing relationship with a male attorney, and she attended official functions with him now and then. She said she never slept with him, but I guess I’ll never know. At the time, I trusted her implicitly.”

She smiled bitterly, casting Michael an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry. This sounds like every other relationship-gone-bad story I’ve ever heard. I didn’t mean to subject you to this.”

“No, don’t stop,” Michael said quickly and firmly. “I want to know. Please.”

“I’ve never said all of this out loud.” Sloan took a deep breath and steeled herself for the rest. “We’d been together almost two years, and for the last six months of that I was spearheading an investigation of a division of the National Security Agency attached to the Joint Chiefs. There was a lot of highly sensitive information lying around, so to speak, as well as a ‘locked room’ with classified military armament codes, all stored on a number of hard drives. My people didn’t actually have access to those areas, but we were trying to determine precisely who did.

“To make a long story short, an independent internal audit came up two hard drives short, and when the information leaked to the press, someone needed to take the fall. My lover knew that I had no direct or even indirect responsibility for that particular area, but my name was the most identifiable. She cut a deal with someone, probably a senator on one of the powerful subcommittees who promised to advance her career in exchange for avoiding public embarrassment of the NSA, and she offered them me as part of the bargain.” Sloan shrugged. “End of story. I trusted her; she wanted a career perk more.”

Michael studied her face thoughtfully. She could hear the pain and betrayal in Sloan’s voice, and her heart ached for her. But there was something else she saw in her eyes, something that went far beyond the pain of an imperfect love. There was something bitter and hard in their depths.

“Tell me the rest,” Michael said gently.

Sloan jerked in surprise, staring at her. After a moment’s deliberation, she continued. “They came to my office at Justice in the middle of the day and took me away in handcuffs. News of the impending arrest had been leaked to the press. A mob of reporters was waiting when the police brought me out of the building. Cameras, news teams, people surrounding me...shining lights in my face...strangers shouting at me. I had no idea what was happening.” She grimaced briefly at the memory. “She let them do that to me, when an internal review board should have handled it before charges were even delineated. It was Friday afternoon, and I couldn’t get an arraignment until Monday morning. I spent the weekend in the D.C. lockup. I was the next best thing to having a cop in jail.” Her voice broke on the memory. “It was a very unpleasant weekend.”

Michael struggled not to let her horror show. She swallowed painfully, nearly choking on her anguish. “Did they...hurt you?”

“No,” Sloan said quickly. “Not that way. Oh, they pushed me around a little bit, but nothing serious. It was more the humiliation of being strip-searched—treated like an animal. They take your clothes; they take your name; they take your entire identity. When you’re physically helpless and isolated—defenseless, you lose sight of who you are pretty quickly. The justice system is not kind to the accused.”