Hide & Seek

Hide & Seek

Samantha Hunter

For Milene, Jane and Vivian.

“The bird a nest, the spider a web,

[wo]man friendship.”

—William Blake

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

1

JENNIE SNOW GRIMACED over the top of her laptop screen, trying to focus on the work in front of her but failing miserably. Nathan Reilly was to blame. He stood outside the windows of the climate-controlled HotWires offices, deep in conversation with a detective. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

Though it was uncomfortably cool in the office—the computer crime labs were kept at low temps to protect the machinery that populated the room—she became uncomfortably warm every time she glanced in Nathan’s direction. He was hard to ignore.

Nathan wasn’t overly tall or burly like so many of the men she’d grown up with—he had a nice, solid build and was just the right height to meet her eyes when they shared a level glance. If she were held against him, all of their important parts would mesh perfectly. And meshing with Nathan was becoming more of a possibility, though she’d been struggling hard to deny it.

He’d been seducing her for the past three months with his sexy glances and clever conversation. Not to mention the flowers he kept sending her. They were never the same type of flower. Nathan always managed to surprise her. However, the accompanying card always asked the same question: “When?”

She’d put him off for as many good reasons as she could think of. First off, he was five years younger than she was: twenty-eight to her thirty-three. Plus, he was relatively new to the job, having only been with HotWires for under a year, and he was busy building his career.

Lastly, Jennie never formed close romantic ties with any of the men she’d known, and there’d been a few over the years. She wasn’t a nun. Still, she couldn’t allow herself to become involved in anything more serious than a casual relationship. For a multitude of reasons. Though Nathan was getting more and more difficult to resist.

She pulled absently at the soft cashmere neckline of her sweater and heard a distinctly female chuckle come from the desk to the left of hers. The chuckle was sarcastic as hell, and Jennie knew she’d been caught in the act of lusting openly.

Sarah Jessup-Sullivan, one of the original members chosen to join the prestigious computer crime unit, followed Jennie’s gaze with a mischievous, knowing look, and laughed again.

“You’ve got it soooo bad for that man. He’s hot stuff. Admit it.”

“I’ll admit no such thing. You just go for Irish guys.”

Sarah sat back, crossing arms over her stomach, which was back to being washboard flat even though she’d just given birth not quite two months before.

“Only one, thank you very much. Actually, before Logan, I was much more attracted to the macho Latin type, Italians, Hispanics. I’d never dated an Irish guy, though there are plenty of them in the city. Logan was my first.”

“And the last. The only.”

“Yeah.”

Jennie smiled at the soft look that warmed Sarah’s face as she spoke of her husband and baby. Sarah wasn’t an overly sentimental woman by nature, but marriage, and then motherhood, had smoothed her rough edges without making her any less formidable. Sarah was one of the toughest cops Jennie had ever met, yet she somehow managed to preserve her hard-ass image in the department even when she showed up wheeling a stroller and carrying a diaper bag.

They were the only two female members of the unit. The HotWires—a nickname reflecting the group’s high-tech specialties—had been around for almost seven years. It had been started by Ian Chandler, who was still the head honcho of the group. He’d hired them all. Not only was the unit expanding locally, there was also growing demand for similar units across the country. Ian had his hands full, but stayed in the thick of it even as his job involved more and more administrative duties.

And while Jennie enjoyed close friendships with her male colleagues, it was nice to have a female friend around, even if Sarah was frequently gone on assignment. Jennie didn’t work out in the field very much; she’d had the training, but her expertise in mapping crime was more useful in the background of the action. If Sarah was Batgirl, Jennie was more like Alfred.

Having Sarah back was great. Jennie knew that while Sarah loved her baby, Caleb, she was thrilled to be back in the saddle again, too.

“It’s great that Logan has the time to spend with Caleb so you could come back to work so soon.”

“I know—his shop is doing well, and he loves being Mr. Mom.”

“He’s so devoted to you both, you’re lucky. Don’t you miss being home, though, just a little?”

Sarah appeared thoughtful for a moment, and shook her head resolutely. “I went crazy for the two months I was home. I love them both to bits, but I felt like I would crawl out of my skin if I couldn’t get out of the house. Logan is much more of a homebody.”

“It works then. And he’s not upset about the risks you have to take in this job?”

“Sure, it still comes up now and then. But he knows I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.”

“Quite the man you found.”

“You said it. I love him, and I love that he can understand how much I love my work, too. Not all women are so fortunate.”

Jennie nodded, not entirely sure she completely understood, but pleased for Sarah anyway. Jennie loved her work, too, but that was because it was all she had. Marriage and family were out of the question for her. If she had what Sarah had, she might quit and contentedly stay home, baking cookies and taking walks in the park…enjoying her children and making a home for her family.

She sighed, and pushed that fantasy aside. Right now, she should be concentrating on bringing Sarah up to speed on current cases.

Sarah, whose sharp observation skills missed little, caught her ogling Nathan again.

“That poor guy has been after you nonstop for months. When are you going to give him a break?”

Jennie grinned, knowing her answer was going to set Sarah back a few feet.

“Friday night.”

Yup, she thought with satisfaction, as Sarah leaned in, her hand grasping Jennie’s forearm.

“Are you kidding me? You two are finally going out on a date?”

“It’s just dinner.”

Jennie couldn’t help smiling, though she remained conflicted about going out with Nathan. On one hand, she had a very good list of reasons why this shouldn’t happen. However there were two very influential items that undermined all those good reasons: one, she liked him; two, she was lonely.

Jennie was used to attracting a certain amount of male attention. Sometimes she even enjoyed it. She had the normal urges that healthy women had, and she liked to work them off with a good-looking guy from time to time. And Nathan certainly fit that bill. But maybe she’d made a big mistake accepting his invitation to dinner.

She might be fooling herself that she could keep this under control. She enjoyed having a nice no-strings-attached relationship with a man occasionally. But she’d just celebrated her thirty-third birthday—alone. The years were slipping by, and what did she have to show for them except her work? Her work was challenging, and it helped her deal with her past and feel as if she was making a difference in the world. All the same it didn’t keep her warm at night, that’s for sure.

She considered another good reason to cancel the date—the problems a romantic entanglement could create in the office. She’d already had an affair with one of her colleagues, though that had been over for years. E. J. Beaumont was now a happily married man. Jennie was good friends with his wife, Charlotte, and was godmother to their second child, Annie. A relationship with Nathan would be hard to keep under wraps in such a small unit, and Jennie didn’t want to start being known as the office goodtime girl. In a police station, where women were so outnumbered, it was important to keep your professional image intact.

Nonetheless, Nathan was just too good to resist; and in truth, his pursuit of her, the flowers—and the seductive glances those amazing gray-green eyes cast in her direction when she was least expecting them—had finally crumbled the fortress she’d built around herself. There were several ways to access a system, Sarah always said. You could take a subtle and stealthy approach; you could wage an all-out attack, or you could convince the system or the people who ran it to give you what you wanted.

The last option, social engineering was Nathan’s specialty.

With dual degrees in psychology and criminal science, he could have had his choice of any number of good jobs within regular law enforcement. He’d done his doctoral thesis on how computer hackers exploited the human element of technology, using human habit, weakness and error to get what they wanted. Hackers took advantage of one human trait in particular: the tendency to trust others. People were inherently trusting; they wrote down their computer passwords because they never really thought anyone would look through their desk or their e-mails. They left the systems open thinking no one would take advantage. They gave the waiter their credit card at lunch thinking the young man or woman would never steal the number when they were out of sight.

Nathan had provided a simple example at a recent seminar. A hacker comes to a reception desk, knowing the name of several people in your office, their office numbers and even things like the fact that someone just had a baby. He or she says they’ve come to deliver a baby gift, and asks to come by, just to drop off the present. Chances are, you agree. People want to help; they want to trust.

And that simple fact put hackers one step closer to getting what they needed. Once they were in, they could take it to the next step and find their way into company computers, networks. It happened every day.

Jennie wondered if this was what Nathan was doing to her—wearing down her resistance, charming her with his flirting, getting by her barriers because he’d somehow convinced her to let him in. He’d never pressured too much, but he’d never really stayed out of sight for long, either. Of course, she thought of him when she woke up and saw the latest flower arrangement on the dresser. He engaged her in conversation that had no romantic slant whatsoever, but his eyes sent a whole different message. He pursued her and yet waited for her to decide to come to him.

The difference was, she knew it, and she knew herself well enough to be sure she wouldn’t give him anything more than she wanted to. She was a mature, experienced woman, after all. Right? But that’s what scared her, a little. She’d been alone for a long time, and that loneliness made her vulnerable. Was she only seeing what she wanted to see, or worse, what he wanted her to see?

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs of her thoughts. Hacker talk. Most things in this office came down to hacking, even love. They had to be careful, or they’d be paranoid about everything, and she already had too much of that in her life. She glanced at the poster over Sarah’s desk: F.U.D. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. It was a hacker mantra, but it also was a real part of Jennie’s life. Maybe she’d let too much FUD in over the years.

“So where are you going?”

“Huh?” She’d been caught zoning out again, and felt the color creep up into her cheeks.

“Dinner. Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. I told him to keep it casual.”

“My first date with Logan wasn’t a date, either. It was casual, too.”

Jennie rolled her eyes and laughed. “Stop distracting me, please? Let’s get back to work.”

Sarah’s brow creased in consternation. “Yeah, right. I don’t think I’m the distraction. But, yeah, okay, back to work, if you can take your eyes off of your Irish loverboy.”

Although Jennie enjoyed the banter, she felt the familiar tug of sadness that never quite went away. She wished, especially in moments when she felt close to someone, as she did with Sarah, that she could tell them the truth about herself.

Sarah had no way of knowing that Jennie’s entire life was a lie—her name wasn’t even Jennie Snow. Didn’t anyone ever notice how strange it was that an obviously full-blooded Italian women had such a WASPy name? But few people ever questioned it.

For those who had noticed over the years, she’d repeated the story she’d been given by the Witness Relocation Program—she’d been adopted. She was an only child, both parents dead. That much usually stopped people from inquiring further out of respect for privacy.

Jennie didn’t think about it much, but there’d been a time in her life when all she wanted was to meet a nice guy, have a solid job and have a bunch of beautiful babies. Though she’d gone to college and wanted to have a career, she’d always imagined she would eventually have a full family life.

Until she’d discovered the travesty that was her own family—at sixteen she’d wandered into the small, fenced backyard of their city home to check on some abandoned kittens she’d brought home, only to find several of her male relatives beating some poor man half to death because he’d owed them money, and he wouldn’t—couldn’t—pay. So they’d seen to it that he’d paid in broken bones and bruises—a message he could take with him for the next time he borrowed more than he was good for.

Her rosy view of life, the idyllic vision of her supposedly close Catholic family, had been shattered. She had never revealed what she’d witnessed, but she’d started noticing all the little things she never had before that night. Her dad, her uncles, her cousins…all belonged to the mob. Everything she’d grown up believing in was a sham.

She’d spent several painful years trying to live with her secret, allowing her parents to assume she remained clueless about the family’s ties to the mob, even as she’d watched her two brothers be slowly subsumed into “the life.” All she’d wanted to do was get out, get away and forget it all, starting her own life over somewhere else. And she had.

During finals of her junior year in college, she’d gotten word that both her father and her youngest brother, Gino—a gentle, sweet soul who hadn’t really belonged in that life—had been killed in a gangland slaying orchestrated by her Uncle Bruno, her father’s own brother. Jennie had vowed to do what she could. She’d gone to the FBI, and she’d offered them every bit of information she could in hopes Bruno would be punished for his crimes. In the end, all he’d ended up serving was seven years, and then he’d been paroled for “good” behavior. What a joke.

Jennie had entered the Relocation Program, where she’d changed her appearance, her life and her name. While they’d wanted to shuffle her off to the Midwest, she’d insisted on staying on the Eastern Seaboard, working for the government as a computer cartographer—a Graphic Information Systems specialist—who mapped organized crime activity. She believed wholeheartedly that her uncle would never look for her right under his nose. For some reason, all the guys thought everyone in Witness Protection headed to the heartland.

Here, she could also keep better tabs on them. She could devote her life to helping the authorities stop their activities for good. And that’s what her life was about—and at least she had a life, though it wasn’t perfect. But whose was? She saw people every day who had worse lives than she did, so she wasn’t about to complain.

Her thoughts wandered back to Nathan. How could she ever marry, or have children, knowing that it would all be a lie? How could she ever endanger their lives with her secrets?

Temporary affairs and light engagements—a man in her bed, but not in her life—was all she could look forward to. It had to be enough.

Sarah had no idea, and Jennie knew it made it difficult for her female friends to understand why she cut herself off from love and family. She let them think what they wanted. EJ and Ian were the only other people who knew, or who would ever know. They kept her secret safe. Sometimes it was a relief having someone who knew the truth, someone who could understand, even though she never discussed it.

She’d been living this kind of life for over a decade. Lately, she’d been yearning for more in a relationship. Between sex-only flings and marriage, there were all kinds of degrees of intimacy. She hoped she might find something in the middle with Nathan.

NATHAN STRODE OVER to his desk, sliding the laptop bag from his shoulder and onto the chair, then perused his appointment book and the stack of new files on his desk screaming for his attention. He’d let Jennie presume he hadn’t noticed her watching—but every covert brush of her gaze had touched him through the windows that separated them. Still, he couldn’t look her in the eye—not yet.

He turned his attention to a seminar he was giving later that week on protecting personal security information—it was astounding how many corporate breaches came down to someone being careless with a password. It was difficult, because part of his work was teaching people to be suspicious, to be conscious of how people might be manipulating them. For the HotWires, he functioned as a kind of “profiler” for techno-crimes.

On top of that, he had no fewer than two critical meetings today. The morning had completely gotten out of control, the new assignment that had just landed on his shoulders throwing him for a loop. After the unexpected meeting that had waylaid him on his way into the building, he hadn’t even known if he could show up at the office and act normally. But Internal Affairs insisted that he needed to keep a regular schedule, not arouse any suspicion. Nathan had to put the skills he studied in others—in criminals—into practice, and lie to everyone around him. It didn’t come naturally.

He was still processing what they’d told him, and he didn’t want Jennie to figure out that anything was wrong. She’d catch on, though, if he didn’t go say something. He never just walked by her, as he did this morning. He was acting out of character already, and he had to get a grip.

He went over to her, hoping he looked casual—normal—but the way his skin prickled and his body hardened just seeing how the soft waves of her dark brown hair rested on her slim shoulders told him he was in trouble. He valued his sense of cool—hard-won in a family filled with quick Irish tempers, but he felt anything but cool right now. One of his grandmother’s favorite sayings came to mind: If you dig a grave for others, you may fall in it yourself.

“Thanks a bunch, Nanna,” Nathan muttered under his breath.

He saw Sarah get up, grabbing a sheaf of papers from her desk before she walked over to him, glancing back at Jennie to see if she was looking. As she came closer, she swatted him hard with the rolled-up papers.

“What the heck are you doing, Junior Mint?”

Sarah was bestowing her best glare upon him, but he stood his ground, used to dealing with his four temperamental sisters. Sarah was a total ballbuster on a good day; when she was after you, look out. Usually Nathan was able to give as good as he got, and he knew that had earned him a measure of respect in Sarah’s eyes.

“Motherhood is obviously softening your temperament, Sarah.”

“Why did you just blow her off like that?”

“I didn’t blow anyone off, Lady Amazon,” he used the nickname which Sarah sometimes found charming, and sometimes she didn’t—this was one of the times she apparently didn’t. He sighed, planting his hands on his hips. “Besides, what do you know about me and Jen?”

The look she pinned him with clearly said idiot.

He grinned, pleased that apparently Jennie had been talking about him—it was the only way Sarah could know that he’d finally convinced Jennie to go out with him. He certainly hadn’t made an issue of his feelings within the workplace—at least, he prayed he hadn’t.

“I know enough.”

“Listen, I had a tough morning and I’m just getting myself together. It’s nothing to do with Jen. Give a guy a break, will ya?”

Sarah’s sharp blue eyes narrowed as if she was dissecting his every thought to see if he was being truthful. And of course, he wasn’t. But he wasn’t the only one in the office living a lie, either, was he? Everything had become such a frickin’ mess so quickly, but he had to get a handle on things, and fast. He didn’t manage to do that quickly enough, because Sarah seemed to pick up on his stress, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay?”

He shrugged, piling on another lie. “Just some things at home. It’s okay, but it took some of my time this morning.”

“Family’s important, Nathan—if something’s wrong, you can ask Ian for a few days off. He’s great about that. Besides, there’s nothing major going on around here at the moment.”

If she only knew.

Hell, if Sarah knew what he was up to, she’d remove all of his limbs slowly and painfully, and then she’d reassemble them in different places. But he had to get her to back off. He shook his head, pretending to check over a memo left on his desk.

“I don’t need time off, I’m just a little frazzled about being late. But everything’s fine.” He took a step closer to Sarah, making quick eye contact, and whispered, “To tell you the truth, though, I’m a little nervous.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows, and she stepped forward, looking him squarely in the face.

“About what?”

Her voice had lowered to a whisper to match his, a common and reflexive phenomenon that happened between people to increase the building of rapport. When you wanted to draw someone closer, you lowered your voice. When you wanted them to give you their full attention, or to be more comfortable with you, matching their tone was the most effective way to accomplish it. Voice and tone were incredibly powerful tools when you knew how to use them, as so many hackers did when they were chatting someone up to get information they needed.

He shrugged, sliding a furtive look in Jennie’s direction. “Friday night. We have a date. I don’t want to give her a shot at canceling.”

Actually he was the one thinking of canceling; he’d thought about it all the way upstairs to the office. He’d rehearsed in his mind what he would say, and how he would say it. But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to break his date with Jennie.

Sarah shot him a skeptical look, and Nathan knew he’d been made. “Don’t try your little con-artist tricks with me, Reilly.” She poked him in the chest, hard, for emphasis.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and…ow.”

“Just stop playing games and go say good-morning. The woman hasn’t taken her eyes off you since you got here. It’s making me nuts how you two are dancing around this—just get it over with already, will ya?”

Sarah turned and strode off, and he wondered exactly what she and Jennie had said to each other. As he approached Jennie, her scent washed over him. He was so damned attracted to her.

He’d been on cloud nine about that fact until this morning. What he had learned today should have put him off completely, dampened his desire for her—something—but it hadn’t. He wanted her. Bad.

She had presence and a womanly sensuality that the twenty-something women he’d dated up to this point lacked. He hadn’t so much as asked another woman out since he’d set his sights on Jennie, so his long-denied libido was arguing aggressively with his common sense.