Fascination (10 page)

“I think I have it.”

Both men came forward to see what was on the screen. Ian looked tired, she noticed. Not that he would admit it.

“Have what?”

“Locke’s location. Or at least the spot he seems to be leading me to.”

“Where?”

“There’s a college bar near Virginia Beach, the Blue Shark. You wouldn’t know it, it’s just a local dive. We used to go there all the time because you could stay all night, drink on the cheap and no one really paid attention to what you were doing.”

“And you think that’s it? Can you be sure?”

“As sure as these clues have led me to believe. So now I guess all I have to do is meet him, right?”

EJ spoke up. “It doesn’t seem like a great idea for you to go in there alone. He could be dangerous.”

Sage arched an eyebrow. “Well, I’m the one he’s contacting—and I can tell you he wouldn’t like me
showing up with another guy. Besides, if he knows about my sentence, where I am, then he knows about Ian. It’s not exactly a secret that you’ve run my life for the last five years. So how else exactly do you plan to get close to him? You have to rely on me.”

“Is there any way to tell from those clues what he wants?”

Sage’s face flamed and she broke eye contact. She had a pretty good idea what Locke wanted with her and how he would expect her to show her loyalty. She didn’t have to say another word, and Ian stiffened.

“He’ll want you to sleep with him.”

Sage nodded.

“Are you willing to do that?”

Tension crackled in the air, and Sage met Ian’s eyes, her voice steady though she felt as if there was an earthquake going on inside of her. “No. But there has to be a way around it. We can stall him somehow. Though resuming our…old relationship—or at least leading him to believe we will—might be the only way to get him to take me to where the main computer is.”

Ian was silent, staring out the window. A storm was rolling in, and a huge bolt of lightning sizzled through the sky. The loud clap of thunder that followed didn’t even make him blink.

“Ian?”

He turned his head back to look at Sage, his eyes intense. Sage could tell he was forming a plan.

“I think you’re onto something with leading him on. This guy has an ego the size of Godzilla, right?”

Sage snorted indelicately. “Bigger.”

“That’s his weakness. And you—and the fact that he wants you in his bed. But what if you were to offer him something even better?”

Sage blinked, unsure what he meant. “Like what?”

“Two of you—two beautiful women, ready to meet his every desire.”

Sage’s forehead furrowed. She couldn’t see exactly where Ian was heading with this, but it was sounding kind of kinky. He turned to EJ, excited.

“I know a woman—Sarah Jessup—a knockout and a crack programmer. She’s helped us out a lot, and I’ve been thinking about adding her on as a HotWires investigator. She could go in with Sage, pretending to be a new friend, and that would protect Sage from having to go back with Locke right away. The two women could offer to meet him at his house. You and I could follow.”

EJ perched his chin on his tanned, groomed fingers, nodding thoughtfully. “Could work. What man is going to refuse an offer like that?”

Sage chimed in. “Locke is paranoid to a degree you can’t even imagine. He won’t trust anyone new, no matter how much of a knockout. He won’t even trust me.”

Ian smirked. “I think you are underestimating the male libido and the fantasy of having two women at the same time, sweetheart. Besides, he’ll probably assume he has it all under control. His type always does.”

Rain started pelting the windows, and EJ stood, speaking to Ian.

“This sounds like a workable plan, but you’d have to get your girl—uh, Sarah, was it?—up here by tomorrow. Possible?”

“Yeah. She’ll do it. I’ll call her, but I’m sure she’ll do it.”

Nodding, EJ cast a glance at the clock on the wall. “It’s going to be a late one tonight then. Why don’t you call her and make arrangements and you two can stay here tonight, and Sarah can meet us in the morning. There are bound to be some red-eye flights available from the city to here. I can pick her up.”

Ian nodded. “I’ll call her now, set it up.” He met Sage’s eyes, and she marveled at how his tired look had changed, sparked by the excitement of the hunt. Sage realized that Locke and Ian were in some ways different sides of the same coin: both driven to control whatever situation they were in and both predators at heart. And both had been able to breach her defenses. The thought made her shiver as he continued.

“You’re willing to go along with this? You’re going to have to convince him that you and Sarah are friends—friendly enough to want to get into bed with him. But EJ and I won’t be far away and we’ll be monitoring the whole thing. We won’t let anything go wrong. All we have to do is bring him down and get to that computer in time.”

Sage looked up and met his eyes calmly. “I’m ready. I can do it.”

Ian nodded. “Let’s get to work, then.”

H
OURS LATER THE WOMAN
named Sarah was on her way to Norfolk, and Ian had left EJ’s to return to the office to get some surveillance equipment. Sage was a little surprised he’d left her there on her own. She supposed EJ was acting as watchdog. Sitting curled up in a comfy chair by the window, watching the storm ebb, Sage was so wired she was unable to even think about sleep. She didn’t hear EJ come into the room behind her.

“How about a drink? I make a mean martini.”

She looked up and smiled. “I’ve never had a martini.”

“You’re in for a treat then.”

While EJ worked some magic at the marble-topped bar that was tucked into the corner of the room, Sage sighed and bent down to look through a stack of books—no, not books, photo albums—that were piled on a shelf near her chair. Picking one volume up, she looked at EJ as he approached her with their drinks.

“Is it okay if I look at these?”

“Sure, that volume has no embarrassing naked baby pictures, so feel free,” he said, placing her martini on the table and then sitting across from her in an old leather wing chair.

Sage chuckled and took a sip of her drink, rolling her eyes back at the spicy taste of the drink. “Oh, this is marvelous. Do all martinis taste like this?”

EJ smiled proudly. “No, just mine. There are a lot of different martinis nowadays, but this one is a classic—except for the secret ingredient I throw in.”

“Really? What is it?” She took another sip and felt more relaxed by the moment.

“Well, that’s a secret.”

She grinned. She felt so at ease around EJ, it was nice. “Hmm. Where’s your fiancée tonight?”

“She’s staying at her mother’s until tomorrow. Some wedding preparations seem to take more energy than my feeble male mind can imagine, and they expect to be awake long into the night.”

Sage grinned. “Sounds like it will be quite the event. My sister’s wedding was like that.” Sage leaned forward as if sharing a funny joke with EJ, who chuckled when she said, “She had swans. A dozen of them. Can you believe it? For the pond in the background of their pictures. Of course, no one could get near the pond because of the, uh, swan poo.”

EJ chuckled, but Sage thought he seemed slightly uncomfortable all of a sudden, as if she had brought up something he would rather not discuss. Odd, she thought, for a man about to be married not to want to talk about weddings, but she turned her attention back to the albums.

Paging through the carefully preserved photos, she asked questions, commented on clothes and the striking people who filled the volume, listening with rapt interest to EJ’s explanation of each picture she pointed out.

Their drinks were empty, and he pulled his chair a little closer, pointing to a man in a black-and-white
photograph standing beside a huge boat on the shores of the Elizabeth.

“That’s my granddad. Standing by the first boat his factory ever made in 1901, that tug. It’s still going, though they just use it for river tours now. He progressed onto much bigger ships, and fast.”

“He’s so handsome. You resemble him—but I’m glad you don’t have the mustache.” They laughed and she inquired further. “So you work for your family’s business? Have you always?”

He sighed. “Feels like it sometimes. But no, I didn’t work here always. I studied law in college, like Dad and Granddad, but I started out working for the government as an investigator with the Department of Justice.”

“Why’d you quit?”

Sage watched his features tense, and he looked down at the pictures while he spoke. “Well, it’s complicated. You know the old South—family and tradition mean everything. My family wasn’t happy with me not returning here and going right back to work for the business, but they were patient about it. Then my dad died unexpectedly. Heart attack.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

“Yeah. I miss him. He was a great guy—driven but a real family man. He wanted lots of grandchildren, and I hate that he didn’t live that long. My sister and I are late bloomers, I guess.” He smiled to himself and sighed before continuing. “As the oldest and only boy, I was expected to come right home and fill the gap.”

“And you did.”

“Yes.”

“What do you do?”

“A mix of things, whatever’s needed—chair the board, dabble in the legal work. I have implemented an entirely new computer system company-wide. That’s been my greatest accomplishment so far.”

“Ah. I see.”

“What?”

“Hey, birds of a feather—you are as hooked in as I am.”

He grinned and nodded. “I guess so. I’d like to do more, but I’m spread rather thin right now. In spite of the situation, I’ve enjoyed the coding work the last few days.”

“Hmm. No other member of your family would be interested in taking your place?”

EJ laughed softly. “Yeah, my sister Grace has been chomping at the bit and resenting me like hell for the last three years. She wanted this position when they called me home, but no one would hear of it.”

“Why not?”

“Aw, c’mon—you know that a proper Southern lady is not expected to run a shipping company. Even though she could probably do a better job of it than I’ll ever do. She just finished her MBA at Princeton and has always had her fingers in the biz, even though it seems my mother is only interested in seeing her getting an engagement ring on one of them.”

“Couldn’t you just hand the position over to her? You are the boss, right?”

Sage turned the page, smiling as she realized she had made a suggestion that seemed to startle EJ. He shook his head, laughing.

“Well, you know, I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. I suppose you’re right, Sage. We’d have to get board approval, but I suppose it’s possible.”

“Hey—” She furrowed her brow, looking intently down at a photograph, suddenly distracted. “That’s Ian.” Her voice changed, her eyes glued to the photo. A wedding picture. Her wide eyes met EJ’s, questioning. “He’s married?”

“Was. A while ago. He’s been divorced for some time now. I forgot that was in there. We’ve known each other a long time.”

Sage just studied the photo of Ian standing beside a very attractive young blonde. They looked happy. He was young, maybe early twenties, she guessed. He didn’t look as hard as he did now, though he was just as handsome. “What happened?”

“I don’t think that’s really my place to say. If Ian wants you to know, he should be the one to tell you.”

Sage looked back at the picture, her voice soft. “We have a, um, an…”

“An arrangement. I know.”

“He told you?”

EJ stood, looking as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was the first time she’d ever seen him seem awk
ward in any way. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “It was kind of obvious.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way he looks at you—and you at him. The air is electric whenever you two get anywhere near each other.”

Sage smirked. “I think you are picking up on how much we tick each other off.”

EJ smiled patiently, absently spinning a globe that stood in the corner. “Maybe. Chemistry does weird things to people.”

“We don’t have chemistry, we just have—”

“An arrangement.”

“Yeah.”

EJ nodded and looked at her intently. “Well, either way, you can trust him, you know. He’s a good man. He’ll do his job, he won’t let you get hurt. But he’s still a man—and he can get hurt, too.”

Sage was quiet, letting EJ’s caution settle in her mind, when he smiled and sighed.

“Well, I think I’m going to retire for the night. You remember where your room is?”

“Yes. It’s lovely. Thank you.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Big day tomorrow.”

Sage nodded and looked back at the picture of a happier, younger version of Ian staring up at her. Something clicked inside of her, and she closed the book suddenly, putting it back in the pile and shutting
off the light. The less she thought about what made Ian happy, the better off she would be. Walking through the dark, she knew it was going to be a long night.

I
AN OPENED THE FLOOR-TO
-ceiling windows in his darkened room and stood staring out into the shadowed greenery of the backyard, thinking through what was about to happen tomorrow from every angle. With any luck at all, they’d have Locke in custody by tomorrow night and all this would be over.

He’d gone to the office to snag a wire for Sage and some other monitoring equipment and now awaited Sarah’s arrival in a few hours. EJ would go get her so he and Sage could get some rest. To say Sarah had been willing to help was an understatement—she’d been so excited Ian could hear it in her voice, barely restrained under her usual unshakable cool.

He should be exhausted. Sparing a glance at the bed, he took a deep breath and figured he’d better force himself to get some sleep—though he felt alert now, being tired tomorrow could lead to huge mistakes, and there was no room for error.

The day after next was Sage’s release—when Locke implied he would be setting the virus loose. Ian ran a hand through his hair, wondering how things had got
ten so crazy so quickly—and wondering what he’d do if this all crashed down around them.

What if Sage was conning them all? What if she really was in cahoots with her ex-lover? His gut twisted at the thought. Just because she appeared to be helping them didn’t mean she wasn’t simply playing the game well—though the sickened look on her face when he’d mentioned sleeping with Locke had seemed authentic. But that all could be acting.

He was relieved to have Sarah going along with her for several reasons, his lingering suspicions of Sage being part of it. He just hoped he wouldn’t be putting Sarah in danger if Sage turned out to be double-crossing them. He supposed he would have to talk with her about that. Or maybe not—it wouldn’t do for Sarah to feel less than confident with Sage. No, he would have to keep his doubts to himself, and he and EJ would just have to pay very close attention when the time came.

Ian braced his hands on the wall, letting his head sag forward in exhaustion. None of his decisions felt right, but they felt like the only ones he could make at this point. He’d set the ball rolling in this direction and now he had to see it through. Stepping back toward the wall, he pulled his shirt off and stretched his arms up, trying to get rid of some of the tension straining his body, but it wasn’t any use. He wouldn’t be able to relax until this was over.

Yanking down the sheets on the bed, he was startled by a knock at the door. Assuming it was EJ, he didn’t bother putting his shirt back on and pulled the door
open, surprised to find Sage before him in a white robe. Her eyes were smudged with exhaustion, her curls tossed as if she had just rolled out of bed, which was more than likely. The thought caused a warm shimmer to spread throughout his bloodstream. What did she want?

“I thought I heard you moving in here and I, uh, couldn’t sleep. I thought we could talk.” She answered his unspoken question, and he stood in the doorway, still perplexed by her appearance and fighting the way his body was responding to her being here, now.

“Talk? About what?”

She leveled her gaze with his. “Tomorrow, today—maybe about you.”

He felt a sense of apprehension steal over him. “Me?”

She seemed to fumble a bit, sticking her hands inside the pockets of the robe, which caused it to sag a bit at the top, exposing her skin in the dim light of the hallway, and he caught his breath.

“Yeah, um, EJ and I were looking through some pictures earlier and I saw one of you. A wedding picture.”

Ian had no idea what to say to that, hoping he appeared more unconcerned than he felt. “So?”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“No. Why would you?”

Her eyes burned into his, and she didn’t bother keeping her voice down as she responded.

“Oh, well, excuse me. I forget that you’ve had the right to pry into every—”

“Get in here, jeez, and try keeping it down a little.” He pulled her into the room, shutting the door behind. When he turned, he could see she wasn’t about to let the matter drop.

“So you get to know every little thing about me, but I’m not expected to know anything about you?”

“You don’t need to know anything about me.”

His voice was harsh, he knew, and he didn’t really mean it to be, but he was caught unawares and he had no idea how to handle this. What did she want from him anyway? And why was she so interested in his past relationships?

“Oh, so in spite of your little lapse into niceness this afternoon, I guess we’re back to basics. I’m good enough to bang—”

“Sage…” His voice interrupted her on a warning note, but it didn’t stop her.

“But not good enough to talk to? Not deserving enough to know anything about you?”

Her breath was heaving heavily now, and for the second time in a day he saw what he’d never seen in five years—Sage Matthews looking as if she was on the verge of tears. Man, if she was playing with him, she was very good. Walking past her back to the window, where the breeze gently blew the gauzy white curtain into the room, he stood silently for a moment, then turned to face her.

“Fine, okay. I was married. It was a long time ago. Who cares?”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Almost six years.”

“So you were only twenty-seven when you divorced? That’s young. When—”

“We got married when we were both twenty-three, fresh out of grad school, right when I started working for the feds. I was recruited at a college job fair, and I thought, hey, let’s just do it. Why not? But it didn’t work out, and that’s pretty much it.”

She was staring so intently at him that it was unnerving and he broke away from her gaze. He hadn’t talked about this for a very long time, and some of it he had never talked about at all.

“Why?”

The ten-million-dollar question, and the one he really tried to avoid. He told Sage what he told everyone else.

“I was too much into my work, gone a lot, and she didn’t want to live that way.”

Sage’s forehead furrowed. “But you both look so happy in that picture. And it lasted five years, right? She had to know what your job was by then—why would she suddenly object?”

“I guess it just was more than she’d bargained for.”

“Did you fool around? Did she?”

Offended, Ian glared at her. “Christ, no. It just…wasn’t working. Listen, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Seems like her not liking your job is a pretty flimsy excuse for throwing away a marriage.”

Ian swallowed, crossing over to sit on the edge of the
bed. “It’s not that easy. I was away a lot, in dangerous situations sometimes. I lived the job and should never have thought I could share my life with a woman, as well. She was great. It was me. I screwed up.”

“How?”

If her voice hadn’t been so gentle, if she hadn’t crossed the room to sit by him, resting her hand on his arm, and if he weren’t so tired and feeling as if his life suddenly seemed to be closing in on him, maybe he wouldn’t have told her. But as it was, the words tumbled up.

“She—her name was Jen—was pregnant. She told me just shortly before I was assigned a case dealing with a serial rapist who was finding his victims on the Net and attacking them when they arranged a meeting. He’d attacked six women across the country by the time the case landed on my desk.”

“I remember that. And I remember he was caught. That was you?”

“Me and my team. We found the next woman he had targeted just as she was making arrangements to meet him. We got involved, tracked the meeting, waited for him to make his move and nabbed him. Went smooth as silk.”

Sage’s voice was slightly confused. “But that’s good, right? What does it have to do with your divorce?”

Ian sighed, stood and walked to the window, hating how the memories triggered emotions that he’d shut away for years.

“Jen called me the day it all went down. She wasn’t
feeling well. She’d gone to the doctors, and they were putting her in the hospital for some tests. She was about three months along. I didn’t think it was anything critical, so I talked to her on the phone and told her what was happening, that I couldn’t get home—remember, the arrest was made in Florida.”

Sage just nodded mutely, so he went on.

“Well, it turns out that it was something critical—she’d developed an infection that caused a spontaneous miscarriage that night and might have killed her if she hadn’t been in the hospital at the time.”

“Oh, God, Ian. That’s horrible!”

“I didn’t know until the next day, and then it took me another day to get home—I had to be there to get this guy processed.”

“And she was alone.”

“She had her parents—she wasn’t alone in that respect—but she didn’t have me. Amazingly she didn’t blame me. She wasn’t angry. She knew what we’d done was important, saving that woman. But she was heartbroken and depressed afterward, and I guess what really clinched it was that I…I wasn’t. I never realized how much the job was taking from me, how little I was giving back to her, to my marriage. I’d been gone so much, was so removed from my life except for work, that I barely was able to grieve when my own baby was lost.”

He sighed raggedly. “I couldn’t share that pain with her. I felt bad, regretful, but I didn’t feel like she did. I
guess that was the part she really couldn’t forgive me for. And who could blame her?”

Sage was shocked and a little unsure what to say. She hadn’t expected this—hadn’t expected him to tell her anything, let alone this obviously deeply painful confession.

“I’m sorry, Ian. I’m sorry for all of that. But you were so young still. We all screw up when we’re young, and trying to figure things out.”

“Thanks, but I made my choices and I live with them. I could have quit, could have chosen to focus on my wife and marriage, but I chose the job, even then. I let her down. She was right to leave.” He shook his head, continuing.

“My parents were both career military, they were both gone for long stretches of time, but somehow they made it work. They knew how to balance their sense of duty to their jobs with the duty to each other and their kids. Even when we stayed with other families if they were both gone, we always felt secure. I took that for granted, and really didn’t understand how they made it work. I picked up their sense of duty but not the ability to balance it.”

“I guess that explains why you are so into following the rules,” Sage teased, trying to lighten the moment. A cooler breeze wafted through the windows, causing her to shiver slightly under the thin robe.

“Rules serve a purpose.”

“True, and sometimes they need to be bent for better purposes.”

“Or broken?”

“Sometimes, yes. People make rules, and since people aren’t perfect, neither are rules.”

Ian turned, facing her, studying her closely. “That’s an interesting perspective but not enough to make it okay to break them when you feel like it. You were raised with rules, just as I was. Maybe not the military, but I know from what I’ve seen of EJ’s family and from what I know of yours that there are some pretty stiff expectations there—and yet you’ve flouted them all.”

“I didn’t want anyone telling me how to live my life. I love my family, but they had my whole life planned out for me before I even got a chance to think about what I wanted.”

“And what did you want?”

Sage realized he had pretty deftly pivoted the conversation back to being about her, but that was okay. She thought about his question for a few moments.

“I wanted to make my own decisions, mistakes and all. I didn’t want to be protected, treated like a little, fragile flower.”

“Well, you managed that well enough.”

She smiled, as there was soft humor in his response. “Yeah. I managed to get out from under their expectations, but the choices I made were not all that hot either—I went from them being in control of my life to you controlling it.”

It was more than she’d ever intended on sharing with him—too honest, too open—but shrouded in the dark
ness and lateness of the hour, it was a time for telling secrets.

He had opened himself to her, made himself vulnerable—if Ian could ever be thought of as vulnerable. But instead of taking that knowledge and feeling any sense of power, she only felt a need to connect, to share something back.

“Why is control so important to you, Sage? Not that we all don’t like some measure of control over our lives, deceptive as it may be, but you seem particularly obsessed with grabbing the reins.”

“I guess I just looked at the examples I had in front of me. The women in my family are talented, amazing women. My mom was an artist—or she might have been. I remember tripping across her drawings in her closet once when I was picking through her clothes, playing dress-up.”

“And she was good?”

“Oh, they were very good. With training, she might have really done some terrific work. But that wasn’t what ladies of her time did—she was engaged by the time she was twenty and pregnant with my sister the year after.”

“And she was sad about that?”

Sage thought and then shook her head. “No, she never seemed to be. She liked being a parent, being my dad’s wife and serving on museum committees instead of creating art to hang in them.”

“So what’s so bad?”

“Just that she gave up dreams so easily. And my sis
ter, same deal—she went along like a good little camper, went to college to get a husband instead of an education, quit as soon as she found one, married and has three babies. In spite of the fact that she was at the head of her class in engineering, she just quit to live a
proper
life.” Sage wrapped her arms around herself, sighing.

“And you weren’t going to let that happen. You weren’t going to give up your dreams?”

She was still for a moment, then turned wide eyes to meet his. “That’s right, I wasn’t. But I guess fate had a good laugh on me, because I ended up losing them anyway, didn’t I?”

She looked down, not sure what to do when he was silent. But she felt his hand in her hair, tilting her head back up where he could see her.

“Maybe not lost—just delayed.”

“Yeah, right. Like anyone will trust me near a computer now.”