All Due Respect (12 page)

He should tell her about Jeff’s bruise, but now wasn’t the right time. Before Jeff’s call, she had been really upset. Then the call had upset her more. Telling her about the bruise now would only push her over the edge. She’d definitely cry. He could take Julia being angry, but seeing her in tears ripped him to shreds.

Logically, he shouldn’t feel he had failed her. She was a married woman. But her husband had failed her, and Seth felt the guilt. Nothing about emotions depended on logic. He loved her. She’d been hurt. He’d failed to protect her. It was that simple. That simple, and that complex.

Midway back to the kitchen, she stopped and glared at him. “You’re checking on Jeff for me.”

Damn if that didn’t sound like an accusation. “And for him,” Seth admitted, bristling. “We’re buddies.”

Julia gave him a breathtaking smile and then did the

strangest thing. She slammed against him, hugged him hard… and burst into tears.

Tears. The one thing he had wanted to avoid. What the hell had he done wrong? He circled her back with his arms, felt her trembling. Could be anger, or hopelessness, or something else altogether. He didn’t have a clue. But he had the good sense to know sooner or later he’d have to apologize to end the war and get back into her good graces. He might as well do it now, and get the peace process started. He would do just about anything to get her to stop crying. Stress would get her arm and head riled up. “Julia, I’m sorry, okay?” He stroked her left arm, shoulder to elbow, soothing the muscles. Already they were tense. “I just wanted to look after the boy. I didn’t know it would upset you.”

“God, Seth.” She reared back and looked up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’ve never been dense. Why start now?”

How could a man answer that and win? He couldn’t. No way. And he must be damned dense. Had to be, or three years ago, he would have seen that she had been stressed out and fled to Destin under duress. How had he missed that? Seth held his tongue and just looked at her.

“Do I look upset to you?”

Tears streamed down her face. Her eyes were red rimmed, the tip of her nose cherry-red. If he had a brain in his head, he’d lie. But even in the name of peace between them, that he couldn’t do. “Yeah. Actually, you do.”

“Well, I’m not.” She buried her chin at his chest, looped her arms around his ribs, and squeezed. “I’m happy.”

Sometimes women didn’t make a damn bit of sense, and that was fine by him. What the hell? If she was happy, he was happy. Why push his luck when he finally had her in his arms where he had wanted her for five years?

Even if there’s trouble, she’s still married.

Yeah, but it’s just a friendly hug.

IT wasn’t just a friendly hug.

Well, it was, and it wasn’t. Things hadn’t gone further, but Seth had wanted them to then, and he’d wanted them to ever since. Hell, he was human and he loved the woman. And he couldn’t get the smell of her out of his head. Fresh, breezy, elusive—like the wind up at the cabin after a summer rain.

It had been a long two days.

He had watched Julia and had done his damnedest to put the feel of her out of his mind. It wasn’t working. Still, he kept trying. Aside from her being married, she had doubted him on the sensor-codes theft. Fair or not, trained her himself to doubt everyone or not, he still resented it. Her skepticism and lack of faith rankled. Deep. The only saving grace was he doubted her, too.

Between the hug and the skepticism, he’d had a rough couple of long days. True, he enjoyed his work more. When Julia had left his New Orleans lab, his enthusiasm for the work had left with her. He had just been going through the motions, which was why he had welcomed the transfer to Grayton; he had hoped to regain the magic. But he hadn’t. Then Julia returned to work with him and, boom, the magic was back. Yet now he couldn’t seem to get his mind in gear. He was out of sync, a step off.

Conversely, she seemed unaffected. He had to remind himself that the night she’d told him about the attack really had happened, because since then there had been no evidence of the vulnerability he’d seen in her that night.

Julia had worked efficiently and had gotten to know her team. She’d avoided Marcus but, considering his surly attitude ranked about as welcome as ice in a blizzard, Seth understood that. Just as she understood Marcus was worth the aggravation of his attitude because he was, hands down, the best explosives guy in the world. What Seth couldn’t understand, personal physical reactions aside, was how a woman standing in quicksand with multiple hammers arced over her head could act so … normal.

She was being stalked from prison and, according to

Jeff, by Camden and his mystery “mean” man. Her marriage was in serious trouble. She was still suffering the physical and mental remnants of being brutally assaulted in Destin. She had a serious security breach on a project for which she bore ultimate responsibility. And she had reasonable doubts about her team members—one of them was definitely guilty of treason—and preventing further corruption without first identifying the guilty one was virtually impossible, though Matthew surely had incorporated every precaution. Yet the woman seemed totally at ease. No perceptible preoccupation. No apparent challenges with concentration or focus, and no evidence of feeling intense pressure.

Until Seth personally had witnessed it, he would have considered it impossible. Even witnessing it, he had reservations about believing it. She honestly had fallen apart in his arms. Normality now simply didn’t make sense.

Her emotional reactions had to be manifesting somewhere. That they weren’t manifesting outwardly worried him. So much so, Seth phoned Agent 12.

When he came on the line, Seth paused doodling on his blotter and stared at an apple on the corner of his desk. “Any progress, Matthew?” Enough time had elapsed for him to review the Security tapes. Maybe they had gotten lucky and had recorded Dempsey Morse or Marcus using Seth’s badge to duplicate the sensor codes, or maybe Matthew had unearthed a motive from Colonel Mason’s list of names Seth had passed along.

“So far, we’re coming up empty.”

Seth frowned into the receiver, shoved a stack of files aside on his desk. “Have we checked everything?”

“Yeah, we have.” Matthew sounded ticked off at having to admit that. “Nada.”

Damn it. Seth grabbed the apple and bit into it. Whoever had done this had to be sharp to circumvent the system. Someone very good with computers. Swallowing the crunchy bite, Seth let his gaze slide through the glass window into the lab and settle on Cracker. Seated at his desk,

he was busy at the keyboard. He was a genius, capable of circumventing the system, but he was innocent. No opportunity. Only Morse, Marcus, and Julia had had opportunity.

Julia, who had protected him, cried in his arms, and now seemed oblivious to any pressure or stress.

Seth turned to the real reason for his call. “I have a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“If a convicted felon is making phone threats from jail to his victim, what can authorities do to him?”

“Civilian or military?”

“Civilian.”

“What state are we talking about?”

“Florida.”

“Florida has anti stalking laws,” Matthew said. “Is this someone we know, or just a hypothetical situation?”

“It’s someone we know,” Seth said, wondering if he knew Julia as well as he thought he did.

“The truth is, the laws are in place but it’s hell to get convictions. Stalkers are clever. They word things so that the victim knows they’re being threatened but when anyone else—like a judge or jury—hears his exact words, they don’t sound threatening. It’s a challenge.”

“So if you reported a guy doing this five times a-week for a while, odds are you still couldn’t convict him.”

“Not if he was clever.” Matthew’s voice reeked of frustration. “Hell, Seth. Most stalkers know the law better than their prosecutors. More often than not, they walk.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“So what does the victim do?” Losing his appetite, Seth tossed the apple into the trash.

“On the record. Continue to file the complaints, get an unlisted number—”

“That’s been done. Fourteen times in two years.”

“This isn’t good news. Stalkers are obsessive, but usually if they’re ignored, they’ll find someone else to stalk.”

“That’s a hell of a cure.”

“Yeah, but it’s what they do, and what we’ve got. We can’t pick and choose dysfunctional behavioral patterns.”

So this wasn’t a typical stalker, behaving in a typical manner. Karl? Someone Karl busted in Destin? “You said on the record. What about off the record?”

Matthew hesitated. “You on a secure line?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell her to buy a gun. A .38, not a .22. And teach her to use it. A guy this persistent isn’t going to back off.”

“The guy’s in prison.”

“For now.”

The feeling drained from Seth’s hand, his arm, his head, and his chest went tight. Matthew knew Julia was the victim. And he didn’t sound surprised. But then he wouldn’t be. He had the former Black World employee status reports from Intel. Reports reclassified Eyes Only, prohibiting him from sharing them with Seth. “Will he be out soon?”

“I have no confirmation on that.”

No confirmation, but not no reports or expectations. Subtle, but important, difference. “Does she know?”

“Not at this time. We can’t pass along anything unconfirmed.”

In that simple remark, Seth detected a strong warning to keep his mouth shut on this. “Keep an eye on her for me, okay?”

“Professional or personal?” Matthew asked.

An honesty test. One of the tricks of being an excellent investigator was not to ask questions you couldn’t already answer. Matthew was invoking that philosophy now. Seth grimaced and met the challenge. “Both.”

“Does she know it?”

“No. No choice.” She was married and in trouble. Vulnerable. “Matthew, did Karl attack her in Destin?”

“I can’t answer that. Direct violation of the Privacy Act.”

“Can you tell me it wasn’t Karl?”

No answer.

It’d been worth a shot. “Thanks.”

Matthew cleared his throat. “Seth?”

“Mmm?”

“About her stalker. If the time comes and she shoots the son of a bitch, tell her to shoot to kill. If she just injures him, she’ll end up supporting him for the rest of his life, and probably doing time. Lawyers harp on his medical expenses—he looks pathetic and weak now—and his diminished employment potential, if any potential exists, and juries buy into it and hold her responsible. That’s the way it often turns out.”

Julia? Kill a man? Seth couldn’t see it. Not even if the man had been the one who had injured and tormented her. “I’ll tell her.” Not that it would do any good. “Appreciate the information.”

“No problem.”

Seth hooked the receiver and worried his inner cheek with his teeth. Exactly how was he supposed to convince a scientist and schoolteacher to arm herself without explaining the danger she could be facing? Worse, to be prepared to commit murder? Because even if she fired in self defense, Julia would see it as murder.

She’d never pull the trigger.

He glanced through the window into the inner lab. Sandlis was out with the flu. Cracker and Julia stood huddled at Cracker’s desk, talking animatedly. Marcus watched from his workstation, interested but not participating in the conversation. Seth cursed under his breath. When Marcus paid attention to anything other than his work, something was definitely up.

Dempsey Morse joined the huddle.

The hair on Seth’s neck stood on end. Morse had graduated from the old-school style of management: distance from everyone, particularly underlings. Morse got involved only by formal request. Otherwise, he remained a shadow on the project, keeping his thoughts to himself and his person isolated. If he had entered the fold, this had to be serious.

Seth left his office and joined the group. “What’s going on?”

Cracker stared at the computer screen. “Someone tried to hack into the vault’s computer system.”

It was a closed system. Had to be someone in the lab who lacked full access. That ruled out Dempsey Morse. “Were they successful?” Seth darted a warning tug on his ear at Julia.

“Checking.” Cracker tapped away at the keys.

Seth’s nerves sizzled. “Can you tell what they were after?”

Another screen appeared on Cracker’s monitor. He scanned it, and groaned. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Julia prompted Cracker to expound.

Morse wedged a shoulder between Julia and Cracker. “Are the key systems safe, or not?”

Cracker didn’t answer. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his temples, above his upper lip. “It was a specific sweep.”

He entered more data. Waited. Then pulled back his shoulders and went still, locking his gaze with Seth’s. “They tried to access all project intel.”

All project intelligence? “Everything?” Seth urged, tensing head to heel.

“The good news is, the double firewall I built into the security system held.” Cracker eased off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “The bad news is, it wasn’t an amateur attempt.”

“But they got nothing?” Seth asked for confirmation.

“No.” Cracker looked from Seth to Julia. “Nothing.”

Morse smiled. “Well, we can relax, then.”

“Yeah.” Cracker had something else to say, but he didn’t want to announce it publicly. “Back to business.”

Seth returned to his office. Julia and Dempsey Morse already had full access. They had no need to risk a failed attempt to get it. By the process of elimination, that made Marcus their man.

Any moment now, Cracker would be coming through the office door to brief Seth on what he had discovered and hadn’t wanted to reveal publicly.

Ten minutes elapsed. Cracker finally left his terminal,

and Seth steeled himself to hear whatever Cracker had to say.

He walked into Julia’s office instead.

And closed the door.

Twenty minutes later, Julia buzzed Seth. “Clear your schedule for an hour or so. Agent 12 wants to chat.”

“His office or ours?”

“His.”

“Are we traveling together?” If whatever Cracker had told Julia raised concerns with her about Seth, they wouldn’t ride over to the OSI offices together.