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Juli awoke to the sound of a phone trilling in the distance. She listened, her eyes closed. Not her ringtone. Muffled voices sounded nearby, and someone laughed, then the brief wail of a small child hung in the air.
It must be time to get up. She cracked her eyes open and found the room dim, a thin strip of sunlight creeping through the curtains.
Not her room.
Jack’s bed.
She rolled over, hoping to catch him sleeping, but she was alone. She ran her hand over the sheet. It was cold. He’d been up a while.
Disappointment was a hollow feeling in her chest. Despite possibly the best sex she’d ever had, he didn’t want to stay with her for another round? He seemed to enjoy it too.
Or maybe he was an early riser and didn’t want to disturb her. She preferred that theory.
At least she didn’t have far to go on her walk of shame. She picked up the white shirt, abandoned on the floor last night, and shrugged into it. No panties, but the shirt was long enough to cover everything.
Her hair was a tangled mess, and she gave up trying to tidy it with nothing but her fingers. She’d hold her head high and dart down the corridor to her own room.
The bedroom door opened, and Juli spun around, clutching her shirt front together.
It was Jack. His beaming smile was gorgeous. The tray he carried, with two steaming mugs of coffee, was perfect.
She almost said, I thought you left, but she hauled the words back before they could escape. “Hi,” she said, instead.
“Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
Jack paused a couple of steps away. “There’s a price, I’m afraid.” He wasn’t serious, judging by the twinkle in his eyes and the curve of his lips.
“And that is?”
“A kiss.”
“I can manage that.” She let the shirt fall open as she closed the distance to his side. She plucked the tray from his hands, placed it on the nearby drawers, and then wrapped her arms around his neck. “How long do we have before you need to be someplace else?”
“An hour. More or less.”
There was a lot they could do in an hour.
*
Ninety exhausting but utterly satisfying minutes later, Juli had her second coffee of the day while catching up on work details with Jordan. The conference opened the next morning, and the TM-Tech people were due to visit the location this afternoon and check that everything was ready.
That was something she appreciated about Jordan—he was a hands-on type of boss. He didn’t sit in his twentieth-floor office all day. He made a point to touch base with his staff whenever possible. You were as likely to see him in the design rooms and labs, as you were in the marketing department. It also ensured he understood every facet of the business, to some degree.
Juli managed to keep her mind focused on work, until Jack made an appearance, dressed in a dark grey business suit. His crisp white shirt and blue, blue tie, looked sensational. Gods. She’d only seen him so far in jeans and a T-shirt, or naked. Put the man in a suit, and his hotness multiplied a thousand-fold.
“Juli?” said her boss.
“Yes.” She dragged her gaze away from Jack. “I missed that. I’m sorry.”
Jordan gave a little frown. “I asked if you’d be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
“Absolutely.” She nodded to underline the sentiment. Christ. Were her cheeks going pink? She never blushed. Never made an idiot of herself, either. She was here to work, and she had to remember it.
Jack drove to the venue, with Jordan in the passenger seat, and Juli passed the time gazing out of the window and reliving the night spent in Jack’s bed. When her phone chirruped with a text, she assumed it’d be something to do with the conference. She wasn’t expecting to hear from Philip.
Hi. Hope the trip is going well. Good luck with your meetings next week. Mum’s invited us to go and stay for a long weekend. Their 40th anniversary, I think. I’ve said yes for us. Hope this is okay? Anyway, keep the last weekend in Feb free. PS, I’ve already been round to water your plants. Miss you, X
She stared at the screen for a long time, unsure how to reply. How about:
Hi Philip. I’ve been shagging a man I just met, but please carry on watering my plants.
Thinking about Philip left a sour taste in her mouth. She tried to break up with him more than once, but every time he snuck under her defences and persuaded her they were still good together.
He was fun and kind, and adored her parents, and he was the all-around-dependable kind of guy you went to if you needed something. Watering her plants was a case in point. But she’d known for months that it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t imagine growing old with him.
Juli had been firmer this time and told him they were done before she left for New Zealand, but he’d brushed off her concerns and said they’d talk about it when she returned from her trip.
Messing around with Jack might be fun, but it wasn’t fair. What the hell happened to her principles? She knew the answer—they flew out of the window the minute she kissed Jack.
She put her phone away without replying.
*
Jack kept himself busy at the conference venue. While Jordan’s group reviewed the layout and setup of the booths, and the running order for the speakers, he made himself familiar with the security arrangements. He noted every entry and exit, where cameras were positioned, and dozens of minor details. There was a chance that Yanni would try to attend the conference, and if he did, Jack wanted to be ready for him.
While they were out, Jordan’s consultant, Aiden Bradley, arrived at the house in Plimmerton. He’d stay with them and was taking the last free bedroom.
Jack liked and respected Aiden, having worked with him before. His precise Queen’s English suggested an expensive education, and he looked and sounded more like a city trader than a spook, but appearances could be deceptive. He was strong and competent in action, and Jack trusted the man’s judgement.
Aiden would give a briefing that evening, and hopefully they’d accelerate the process of finding what the fuck Yanni was doing.
Juli smiled when she saw Jack, but they didn’t speak all afternoon until they left the venue. He told her he’d most likely be working that evening, and she nodded, cool as anything, and said she had work to do as well.
It was hard to believe this was the same woman who’d waited for him in his bed. Who’d moaned his name while he fucked her, and then curled up against him as sweet as a kitten.
Did she believe him? Or did she think he was avoiding her?
Fucked, if he knew. The idea of not sleeping with her again didn’t sit well with him. The sex was beyond hot, but the way they connected was more than just fucking.
He wanted to slap himself upside the head. He couldn’t get involved. His judgement would be shot to shit.
Back at the house, he grabbed something to eat from the dinner buffet and sat with Tanner to talk over details for the conference. They were joined shortly by Aiden and Jordan.
“Good evening,” said Aiden. He was crisp and alert, and it was hard to credit he’d flown halfway around the world with only a few hours’ rest. He handed out thin dossiers of printed information, and then projected his laptop screen onto the wall. A montage of images of Yanni showed. “The folders detail the known facts about Yanni and the reason why he’s such a hot topic for all the major counter-terrorist agencies at the moment. I’ll summarise his history for you to read later. Of Japanese extraction, he was raised in Georgia and spent years learning his trade in Afghanistan, East Timor, Palestine, Bosnia... You name a hot spot and he’s been there.”
“He’s a terrorist?” asked Jordan.
Aiden turned to face him. “No. He’s what we refer to as a person of interest. He’s rumoured to have links to multiple factions, but a better description would be a broker. We’re confident he’s involved in supplying arms and technology, but we have no proof. We’ve never been able to get near enough.”
“Just curious,” said Tanner, “but when you say we, who d’you work for? MI5? MI6?”
“The organisation I work for provides consultancy services for certain government agencies. Names aren’t important, right?”
Tanner huffed a laugh. “Apologies. Please continue.”
“You’ve probably heard of the notorious Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, infamous for the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in the nineties. They also reportedly mined for uranium on Banjawarn, one of the most remote sheep stations in Western Australia, prior to trying to create a nuclear weapon. Next door to Banjawarn is the Carlotta Downs Station, and reliable sources placed Yanni there last year.”
“Also mining for uranium?” asked Jordan.
“We don’t think so. He hired a number of locals to help him dig holes and insert electrodes into the soil. He claimed to be an environmental scientist, checking for contamination.” Aiden paused and took a drink of water.
“Anyway. There was an unusual event at the end of his stay, centred directly on Carlotta Downs. Witnesses talked of a bright, low-altitude, flat-trajectory fireball, a huge flash of blue-white light, a red flare rising skywards to a great height, and a three point nine magnitude earthquake. A large hemisphere described as orange-red colour with a silver lining—and twice as large as the setting sun—then rose from ground level. It was visible for half an hour, before turning off as if a light switch had been thrown. By the time the local police arrived, Yanni was long gone, along with all his electrodes and samples.”
Jack gazed at the fuzzy image projected on the wall. What the fuck was Yanni doing there? “Nuclear detonation?” he asked.
Aiden shook his head. “No discernible radioactive dust particles. We have a theory, though. We’ve been told Yanni is obsessed with Nikola Tesla’s Electromagnetic-weapons technology. For argument’s sake, we’ll make several assumptions.” He counted them on his fingers. “One—Yanni was attempting to develop some form of E/M weapon, using the Carlotta station for testing. Two—technology advancements in the past ten years have ensured this type of weapon is now feasible and practical. And by the way, this is no longer the stuff of comic books. The U.S., along with the other superpowers, have been investing heavily in this technology. And three—your TM-Tech research has turned up something that he wants. How badly, we don’t yet know.”
“Let’s recap,” suggested Jack. “We’re talking laser-beam weapons technology?”
“Not as such. This is bigger. It’s thought that E/M weapons could generate massive earthquakes, fireballs, and so on, as opposed to a direct-beam weapon.”
This drew a sceptical look from Jordan. “I’m happy to assume we’ve got something he wants, since he was clearly looking for Juli. But this connection is a big assumption to make.”
“I’m not arguing. But there are too many proven links between Yanni and other Tesla-based experiments, to discount it.” Aiden paused. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Jordan sighed. “Something we need to consider is how Yanni came to learn about the work we’re doing. Juli’s here to represent her work on Project Byzantium. That’s on our black list, one of our most secret projects. We haven’t published any papers or leaked anything to the press. So how come he’s interested in us, and Juli in particular?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Jack’s mind was buzzing with possibilities, none of them good.
They talked back and forth for hours and dissected every piece of information they had, but it all added up to a giant question mark. Or a target, painted on Juli’s forehead. One thing was for sure—Jack wasn’t going to let that happen.