“Sometimes it’s not your accomplishments that define you, it’s your scars.”
Reza Masoud
I couldn’t stop staring.
I crouched at the top of the stairs and looked below deck to where she still lay, utterly asleep and perfectly bare-assed on my bed.
She was a stomach sleeper; one leg was bent to the side in a pose that made her look like a sprinter about to take off. She hadn’t moved when I’d slid out of bed and started up the engine, and didn’t even twitch when I’d docked the boat in its slip and tied off. We’d been gone from the city for three hours, and somehow everything had changed. Who was this woman, and how had she gotten past the guards at the door?
I had been operating on pure instinct where she was concerned since the moment I laid eyes on her, and that disconcerted me. Instinct was fallible, dangerous, and untrustworthy in my experience, and yet it had led me to this remarkable woman. I couldn’t have planned for her even if I’d been able to conceive of her existence. She was the complete opposite of me in every way, and somehow she fit as though every one of her odd angles and strange curves connected perfectly to my straight lines and sharp edges.
I let my gaze wander one last time up her athletic legs, over her perfect ass with its tan lines that spoke of skin no one else got to see, to the small of her back and up her spine to the tightly-muscled shoulders of a woman with strength. She was so utterly mysterious to me, and yet she seemed to say exactly what she thought without care for the consequence. I was fascinated by her, and just three hours earlier I’d had no interest or time to be fascinated by anyone.
Impulsively, I took out my phone and shot a picture, just to preserve the beauty of the moment, then promptly felt like a creep. I didn’t erase the photo, but I did move it to the ‘hidden’ file on my phone where no one else could stumble upon it by accident.
And then I thought about hidden images … and hidden cameras. This incredible woman who had derailed my day so completely had been the co-star in surveillance camera footage during the commission of a crime. Never mind that the footage exonerated her of the crime – the fact that she had, just twelve hours before, been in Sterling Gray’s bed was … troublesome, and not something I particularly wanted to examine at the moment. To be perfectly fair though, it wasn’t the fact of her having had sex with someone else twelve hours before that unsettled me. She could have climbed out of someone else’s bed directly into mine and I wouldn’t have been less mesmerized by our encounter. But there had been a crime committed, and she was indirectly involved in the circumstances around it, and I would have to do my job despite whatever this was that I was feeling.
I wasn’t quiet when I dug out paper and a pen and left a note on the table, but when she didn’t stir, I let her sleep. There were things we still needed to discuss, but they weren’t appropriate topics to bring up to the naked woman in one’s bed. My email had suddenly populated on our return to cell coverage indicating I had to make an appearance in the office, but I hoped she would accept my invitation to dinner.
I left the marina humming the tune to an old Abba song covered by Blancmange in the 80s, because “The Day Before You Came” suddenly felt like the soundtrack to my life – a life that had become very strange indeed.
When I got into my truck I thought I caught a hint of her wildflower scent, and the image of her eyes, lit by something primitive and alive when she came, drove from my head the unsettling thoughts of this case and what she meant to it … and to me. Fortunately, traffic was light through downtown, and I made it to the Cipher building without difficulty. Stan was behind the desk in the lobby, and he held up three slips of paper.
“Sterling Gray was pretty insistent that you get his messages, and he knows enough to call the lobby desk instead of just relying on email.”
“It’s quite efficient of him to pack so much arrogance, entitlement, and privilege into one person,” I said with a frown as I took the slips from my colleague. “I’m sorry you had to be the recipient of his ire.” I liked Stan. He had a ready grin and an easy way about him that big men confident in their power often had. “Is Dan or Quinn in?” I asked, ready to adjust my plan of action according to which owner of Cipher Security I spoke to.
“Quinn went home early,” he said, and at my raised eyebrow, added, “Janie called to ask him where his electrical wiring toolkit and volt-meter were.”
I laughed as I pictured the flare of panic in the eyes of a man whose cool was legendary about everything that wasn’t his wife.
“Dan’s upstairs?”
“Check the boardroom on the third floor. He’s been working with Shane and Gabriel to tie up the last of the ADDATA case fallout, and they like the Nespresso machine in there.”
“You want me to bring you one?” I asked as I headed for the elevators.
“Nah. I have more than a cup a day and I get the jitters,” Stan said.
I turned and stared at the security agent who topped me by more than five inches. “I could hook up to a caffeine IV and have nary a tremor, and you can’t take more than one cup?”
Stan shrugged. “Can’t drink either. My mom always says the ones who shouldn’t can’t, and we ignore it at our peril.”
“Your mother sounds like a wise woman,” I said, delighted beyond words at the idea that Stan quoted his mother.
I rode the elevator up to the third floor and contemplated my approach to the Sterling Gray situation with Dan O’Malley. Dan was a field operative who had partnered with Quinn Sullivan, the big banking corporate man, to start the private security firm. Cipher was moving away from close protection except for special clients, and I’d been brought on specifically for those hand-picked personal clients. The home security systems I designed were part of the layers of protection Cipher offered them, and the fact that one of my systems had been breached did not sit well with me.
I knocked once for courtesy before opening the glass door to the conference room. Shane had been working with us for less than a year, but she already felt like an integral part of the team. She and Gabriel lived together and usually worked from their apartment, so it was a pleasant surprise to see them both in the office.
“Hey Darius, how’s the boat?” Shane asked, with a welcoming smile. She was a striking woman; tall, athletic, and graceful in the way long-distance runners can be. I couldn’t help comparing her to the woman currently fast asleep on the boat in question. One was tall, the other, average height. One a brunette with long straight hair, the other a blonde with a wild, curly mane. One was lean and lithe, the other had the kind of curvy, fit build that suggested capability, strength, and endurance. Yet despite every difference, they had the same eyes. Not the color or shape, but the life in them. They fairly crackled with energy and intelligence, and it was their most striking feature.
“Still floating,” I said with a smile that I hoped didn’t reveal the thought I had about the naked woman on it.
Shane grinned, “Better than the alternative.” But Gabriel studied me with a raised eyebrow for a moment, and I had the disconcerting impression that he could see the secret behind my smile.
So I met his eyes with a brief nod, then looked at Dan. “Do you have a minute to talk about Sterling Gray?”
My boss looked up from the file he’d been studying and met my gaze. Dan O’Malley had the appearance most people would identify as ‘street.’ The top of a tattoo was visible above his collar, and I assumed there were several more underneath the well-tailored suit. He was the type of man who made women feel either attraction or fear at first glance, and his Boston accent gave him an added edge. I’d met his wife though, and she was the most feminine, buttoned-up beautiful waif I’d ever seen. I could almost imagine that she fastened every button not because she was necessarily so modest, but rather to masque something slightly wild and magical.
I suddenly had the thought that if Colette were here, she might have said something about fairies or woodland sprites, and I barely resisted the accompanying rueful smile.
“You look like you know something you’re not saying, or you’re planning to beat the bishop in the closet after this. What’s up, man?” Dan gave me a nod that would have seemed curt except for the smirk that went with it.
“Beat the—” Shane started, but then she scoffed. “Really, Dan? That’s all you’ve got? How about jackin’ the beanstalk, or yanking the doodle dandy.”
All three of us gawked at her like boys encountering naked breasts for the first time.
“Is it wrong that I want to learn what else you know such vivid slang for?” Gabriel asked in an awed voice.
“What do you call it when a woman…” Dan waved his hand at her to fill in the blank, and Shane smirked at him for not saying it out loud.
“Executes a manual override?” she finished.
“Come on! From Cryptonomicon? You must be joking!” Gabriel laughed. He was talking about a sci-fi book I’d never read, and it added another point to my respect for him.
“About menage à moi, I don’t joke,” she said, as if that ended it. And it did.
Dan laughed and shook his head. “You win this round, Shane P.I. Well done.”
Shane had the grace not to look smug as she settled back in her seat and took a sip of her coffee. Dan returned his attention to me.
“So, the rich bastard spending Daddy’s fortune for him. How’d the party go last night?” His tone was back to all business.
“The party was fine – unremarkable in its pretension. The problem is that a painting was stolen from the panic room sometime last night.”
As I expected, the mood in the room shifted, and all three sets of eyes turned to me.
“A system failure?” Gabriel asked.
I shook my head. “A very clever work-around. The thief used mini spotlights to blind the cameras, and then became virtually invisible in the shadows. Access to the panic room was the same used by the homeowner, and the painting was cut from the frame, rendering the alarm moot. So technically, there was no failure on our part, considering we gave the client exactly what he asked for, but he’s threatening to turn the press against us unless we can recover the painting.”
Dan’s expression went from thoughtful to severe. “What do the cops say?”
“He won’t bring them in,” I said. “I told him he couldn’t file a claim without a police report, and he said the painting isn’t insured.”
“Bag of dicks,” Dan snarled, and I wondered if it was a curse or a title. “Means it’s already dirty, so he’ll be a mud-slinging pig in shit. I assume you’ve already been there?”
“This morning. There’s video of a party guest discovering the panic room door.”
“Bring him in,” Dan said with a scowl.
“It’s a her, and I’m seeing her tonight,” I said, hoping for several reasons that it was true.
“I can change my plans if you want to take a woman with you,” Shane said.
“I’ll call you if I need back-up, but I should be good. I actually talked to her at the party last night.” And had amazing sex with her on the lake today, I didn’t say.
“Right, well, we should run the video from last night past the kid. Maybe he can spot something the low res system missed. You got it on you?” Dan asked, gesturing to me to follow him out of the conference room.
“Don’t keep Jorge late,” Shane called before the door closed. “He’s taking Oscar for a run when he gets home.” Oscar was her giant dog, and the ‘kid’ was her neighbor, Jorge Gonzales, an eighteen-year-old MIT student who had interned in our tech department over the summer and ended up creating a whole new video surveillance system for us. Dan and Quinn hired him every time he was home on break.
“Yeah, I have a copy. Gray has already called three times in his unsubtle attempt to light a fire,” I said as Dan opened the door to the stairs.
The basement of the building was noticeably cooler and housed the bank of computers that operated as Cipher Security’s nerve center. I didn’t have the details on our cybersecurity, but I knew it was better than the Pentagon’s.
Jorge was sitting at a table that held three monitors, all of which appeared to show one contiguous image. Next to him was a glass wall that glowed with a faint green light, and the room beyond appeared to hold the Cipher mainframe. The kid was of the tall, skinny, loping variety, but I didn’t doubt that the lope could turn into a prowl as the situation warranted. He wore glasses, which were new since the last time I saw him, and “Schrödinger’s Cat was a Quantum Cheshire” spelled out the grin without a cat on the front of his T-shirt.
He looked up with a smile and stood to shake our hands. “Hey guys. Welcome to Swordfish.”
I winced. “You did not name this computer after the movie.”
He grinned. “Yep. So technologically implausible you had no choice but to sit back and enjoy the ride. And Halle Berry.”
I shook my head with a laugh. “You’re too young to have dug that thing out of the discount bins.”
Jorge’s expression turned serious, as if I was missing a very significant point. “Halle. Berry.” His gaze bored into mine until I held up a hand in surrender.
Jorge’s grin burst out of him like a smile emoji. “What can I do for you guys?”
I handed him the thumb drives from my pocket. “A painting was stolen last night from a system I designed. I’ve scrubbed through the footage on the original system, but I’m hoping you can pick up any details I might have missed. This one is from the time of the actual theft,” I said, pointing to one of the drives.
He popped it into his machine and ran through a couple of screens until he’d loaded the file. “Do you have a timecode?”
“Start at one a.m.” Dan and I flanked Jorge to watch his monitor, which was a much higher resolution screen than the one I’d worked on that morning. “Focus on the second floor hallway first.”
Jorge pulled up the multi-cam screen to monitor nine views at once, six of which were on the second floor hall. We watched as Sterling and Colette walked through, and I was unpleasantly aware that my fists tightened at the laughter in her expression when she looked at him. Less than two minutes after they’d passed, the first screen went white.
Dan flinched. “What was that?”
Jorge leaned in to study the next screen right before it, too, went white. “There,” he pointed to the third hall camera, “watch the floor near the wall.” We could just make out a bit of movement as a mini spotlight slid into place right before the third screen went white. “Clever.”
“You need heat sensors,” Dan said, turning to me.
“My original proposal was for thermal. The client said no.”
“You got that in writing?” Dan’s accent was pure Boston street.
“Emails. They’re archived.”
He grunted something that sounded like approval, while Jorge ignored us and concentrated on the multi-view panel. “What was stolen?” he asked.
“A painting. From the panic room.” Nothing moved on any of the six remaining screens.
“No camera?” Dan asked.
“Client wanted one eyeball-free zone in his house,” I said with disapproval.
“Not the master bedroom?” Jorge sounded incredulous.
“Flip to camera twenty-four,” I said, the disgust in my tone evident even to me.
He hit a couple of keys, and the screen changed to a single, full-screen view of the master bedroom where Sterling Gray and Colette Collins were in the process of stripping off each other’s clothes.
“Well okay then, guess it wasn’t the girl who threw the spotlights,” Dan said as he peered closer. “This who you’re going to talk to tonight?”
“She’s the one.” I looked away from the screen. The image of Gray kissing her made me want to punch him.
“Nice ass,” Dan said thoughtfully, as though describing a garden statue.
I looked reflexively and was indeed faced with the very nice rear view of a very naked Colette. She was the aggressor in this particular part of their dance as she walked Gray backwards to the bed and pushed him onto it. Her back was to the camera, and she was all blonde curls and one long, uninterrupted expanse of tanned skin.
Wait … no. It was wrong.
“Freeze that frame,” I said, my heart suddenly racing.
Jorge did and Dan smirked. “Never figured you for a voyeur, Masoud.”
I stared hard at the screen. “Can you magnify the image?”
“Sure,” Jorge said. “What do you want me to focus on?”
“He’s clearly an ass man,” laughed Dan.
“Really?” Jorge hit some more keys, and the image of a beautiful, heart-shaped ass filled the screen. “Halle Berry. I’m just sayin’.”
“Kid, breast men are just less-evolved ass men. You’ve got time,” Dan assured him.
I interrupted their banter. “Are there tan lines on her skin?”
Dan leaned in and studied the skin I already knew was perfectly even-toned. “Nope. Your girl does a tanning bed. You can see the marks here,” he pointed to slightly red patches on her shoulder blades, “and here,” he said pointing to her hips.
“So there’s no way that this skin is going to develop tan lines overnight,” I said with an instant sense of relief, and a growing feeling of dread.
Dan studied me. “What are you saying, man?”
“Screenshot that and send it to me?” I asked Jorge.
The kid was still smirking. “Sure.”
I turned to Dan and met his gaze squarely. “I need to check something out, but I’m on this.”
Dan hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding. “Do you want a partner?”
I shook my head. “I may need some research support from the office.”
“I’m down,” said Jorge.
“I appreciate it,” I said. I looked over at his computer screen to see the frozen image of Colette’s perfectly tanned backside, and I suddenly needed to get out of the building. I needed to walk, to breathe, possibly throw something, and definitely, inevitably, have a serious talk with one bare-bootied, bikini-lined blonde girl about the fact that at one point the night before, she’d had no tan lines.