Erica Lucke Dean - To Katie with Love (17 page)

SPY GAMES

I
was late for work. Very late.
Again
. Cooper decided my middle of the night ordeal, followed by another exquisite sex session, earned me extra time in bed and turned off my alarm. He let me sleep until almost nine and didn’t understand why I would be irritated with him. Ridiculous, over-protective man. Then he informed me I’d have to drive myself to work because he had an afternoon appointment across town and wouldn’t make it back in time to pick me up.

When I finally got to the bank at ten fifteen, Vicky was waiting for me in the lobby. “Nice going, Katie. Leave it to you to almost get arrested.” She looked infinitely pleased with herself.

My mouth fell open, and I stood there staring at her.

She laughed. “Stop looking at me like I’m psychic. Cooper called to say you would be late, and he told Phil what happened.”

“I did
not
almost get arrested. I just set off an alarm.” I didn’t mention how close I had come to getting shot or how I had been dressed or any of the other sordid details, for that matter. And I could only hope Cooper had edited out all the truly embarrassing bits.

“Hmm,” she muttered with a raised eyebrow. “I would’ve loved to have seen that.”

“It wasn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds.” It was
way
worse. I had nightmares off and on for the rest of the night, but in my dreams, Cooper was holding the gun, and it was pressed against my temple.

“Well, it sounds like you had an interesting evening just the same.” She walked away without a single mention of what she had done last night. I almost smiled at the thought that my evening had been more exciting to her than hers, but based on mine, I didn’t think I should be proud.

Silvia came out of her office at that very moment. With a smirk, she shook her head at me. “Do I even want to know what happened?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re still alive, so I guess everything worked out in the end.”

I suspected Cooper hadn’t edited enough.

Silvia went back to working on some project, so when Phil strode over and parked himself directly between me and the door to my office, I knew they were taking turns. I wasn’t sure if
they
knew it, but that was how it seemed.

“What I want to know is… exactly
what
were you doing that required the SWAT team to be called in?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

I tried to think of something witty to say. I had apparently used up my allotment because absolutely nothing came to mind. “I was eating marshmallows.”

“Stolen marshmallows?”

“Apparently.”

He didn’t press for more details, so I didn’t volunteer any. He just shrugged as if vaguely disappointed and wandered off to do whatever it was Phil did.

Right on schedule, as if she had been cued from behind the proverbial curtain, June walked around the corner. She didn’t say anything; she just smiled in June’s sweet way.

I figured maybe she was waiting for me to say something. “Hi, June.”

She wasn’t. She just walked over and took my hand in both of hers in a very motherly gesture. June was really the mother I’d always wanted, the one person who didn’t give me grief for my every decision. She gave my hand a squeeze, pressing an orange card into my palm, and left.

“Oh, very funny! Ha, ha!” I made sure they all heard because I knew they were all in on it. It was one brand new
Get Out of Jail Free
card.

As if my morning couldn’t get worse, my weekly conference call with the head office turned into a thirty-minute tirade on how badly my job performance had slipped. I’d gone from a top performer to below mid-level. I was actually more surprised I’d managed to stay above the bottom. I certainly hadn’t been doing much work lately.

I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window. Searching Cooper’s house in the middle of the night had been the wrong approach. But since he’d given me a key and codes for the alarm, I could search during the day.

That morning, Cooper had insisted I should be able to get into his house any time I needed to, and I definitely needed to. I had tried to remind him I had a house of my own, but he insisted that since I could fill my imaginary cat’s imaginary bowl and Henry, Earl of Catnip, would be fine for several days, I really didn’t have a reason to go to my house each night. He seemed completely unaware of the unwritten rules of love and dating that said we were rushing things.

I knew we were moving a little—okay,
a lot—
fast. But Cooper had made a few fairly good points using phrases like “seizing golden opportunities,” “life’s too short,” and other popular clichés. He stated very eloquently how we had already wasted an entire year because we were too afraid to take a chance. Before I knew it, I was tucking his house key into my pocket and saving his alarm code in my cell.

Key or no key, I couldn’t search Cooper’s house while I was stuck at the bank, so I decided to actually get some work done. I flipped past the paperwork I didn’t want to bother with quite yet and stopped at the printout from Cooper’s wire transfer. With all my plotting to search his house, I’d almost forgotten I had access to every transaction on Cooper’s accounts. Yep, Nancy Drew had nothing to fear from me.

I pulled up his profile and began a systematic search for all deposits made in the past year. Some were extremely large, like the two hundred thousand he received last week. Others were more reasonable, but still, by no stretch could they be considered small.

I switched to look at the transactions going out of his account. I frowned when I saw
Le Guarde Systems
got a hefty check each month. If Cooper didn’t turn out to be a hired assassin, I was definitely going to convince him to change security companies. As much time as I spent balancing his checkbook, I probably should have remembered them before I entertained thoughts of covert ops in the night.

He also employed a gardener and a housekeeper, who both got regular checks, and he paid an occasional caterer. I stopped to stare at the check he had written on the day of our first date. That was a very expensive dinner.

Holy shit
! He gave fifty thousand dollars to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

I felt a sharp twinge of guilt. First, I was rifling through his personal things at his house, and now I was crossing the line of
need to know
with regard to his bank accounts. And all along, he was donating money to sick children. But since I’d already crossed that line, I wasn’t about to stop.

Pushing back my guilt, I kept searching. I had seen most of the entries time and time again without a second thought, but with my new suspicions, they carried more weight. More power. I found a check written to someone named Vivian Allen. I went further back and discovered she was receiving monthly payments. I had no idea who the woman was, but she was paid very well.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I did a quick search in our account database for the mysterious Ms. Allen. No results. I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to massage away the new headache. My next mission would be to find out who Vivian was and why he was paying her. My Google search netted pages upon pages of results to dig through, but nothing that immediately jumped out at me. I was acutely aware I wasn’t going to find anything about her while I was at the office, so I tried to push her to the back of my mind and focused on my job. 

My phone rang—Cooper. So much for focusing on my job.

I used my sexy voice to answer. “Hi, you.”

“Still mad at me for letting you oversleep?”

“I was never
really
mad at you.”

“Well, you might be when I tell you this. My meeting just got pushed up to an hour from now.”

“So no lunch?”

“I’m afraid not. But the good news is I’ll be back in time for dinner. I have something special planned.”

A wide smile broke out across my face. It was as if the sky had opened up and presented me with the perfect opportunity. “I’m sure I can find something to do for lunch.” And if I planned things right, I’d have just enough time to search. “I’ll see you after work.”

After telling Phil I needed an extra-long lunch—swearing it would be the last time ever, or for the year, whichever came first—and texting Cooper to be sure he’d left for his meeting, I made my way to his house. I pulled into his long, twisting drive, and jumped out of my car in a hurry to get inside.

“Crap!” I screamed as the car started to roll forward. I jumped back in to stamp my foot on the brake and pushed the button to engage park.

By the time I reached the side entrance, I was sweating bullets. I turned the key in the lock and quickly slipped through the door to punch in the code for the alarm.

Not wasting any time, I skipped over the keeping room and went straight to the kitchen to retrieve the key to the file cabinet. I opened every door on the lower floor but found nothing. The rooms looked as if no one had set foot in them except to clean. I was beginning to get discouraged when an idea came to me.

I hurried to the staircase and took the steps two at a time. I had never even considered the rooms on the upper floor. Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed the four other doors along the hall. I had tunnel vision when it came to that hallway.

I tried each door, opening them to well-appointed but impersonal guest rooms that could have been in expensive hotels. The last door, the one closest to Cooper’s room, was locked. I jiggled the handle; it wouldn’t budge. That had to be the room I was looking for, and I was determined to get in there. I asked myself what Stephanie Plum would do. With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I realized she would have been smart enough to search upstairs last night. My ordeal with the armed men had been for nothing. I shook my head, marveling at my own idiocy.

The door didn’t have one of those standard bedroom locks that could be twisted open with a screwdriver. After checking the top of the door frame for the key—like I’d seen done in spy movies—I ransacked the drawers in Cooper’s bedroom.
Nothing
. And time was running out.

Another brainstorming session sent me scurrying into the adjacent bedroom where I threw open the window, toying with the idea of climbing out and using a rope to reach the other room—another tactic I’d seen in the movies. One look down brought me back to my senses.

I shut the window and flopped onto the bed to stare at the ceiling. I lay there for several minutes, certain my foray into sleuthing was an utter failure. Then I noticed there were two doors on the wall shared by the locked room. I jumped up and sprinted to the first door—an empty closet. The second led to a bathroom, which had a door on the opposite end.
Jackpot!

I crossed the tile floor and stepped into the room beyond. An office! A simple pine desk I was sure was an antique stood in one corner. Behind the desk was a comfortable-looking chair. Hundreds of books in built-in bookcases lined the walls. I spotted a low filing cabinet along the back wall behind the desk, but my elation over that discovery was muted by another one: a laptop.

The computer sat open on his desk, and I raced over to it, catching my toe on the leg of the desk on my way and falling conveniently into the swivel chair. I slid my fingers across the keys.

I stared, open-mouthed, at the flashing cursor waiting for the password.
Crap! Crap! Crap!
I had absolutely no idea what his password could be.

I tried his name and his date of birth. Then I tried London and a combination of his date of birth and name. I tried his favorite color and even my name, but nothing worked. I had no idea how long I was sitting there trying to crack his password when a tremor made me jump. I choked back a scream when I realized my cell phone was vibrating in my pocket.

I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. I knew who it was without looking.

“Miss me yet?” Cooper asked.

“I missed you before I even left this morning,” I said.

“I’m just making sure you’ve eaten lunch. I can’t have your legs going all weak on me later.”

I swiveled the chair around until I was looking out the window. “My legs are always weak when I’m around you.” I giggled, spinning back to the desk. A bright yellow sticky note on the corner of Cooper’s desk caught my eye, and I pulled it off to read it. The note was written in his neat handwriting.
To Katie with Love.

Cooper said something, and I sat up straight. “What did you say?”

“I said I made it halfway to the other side of town when my meeting was cancelled.” He chuckled. “I guess I could’ve gone to lunch with you after all.”

“Where are you now?” I tried not to sound anxious.

“I’m about to pull into the driveway.”

I should have seen that coming! If only I read thrillers instead of romance novels.
The chair tipped over as I jumped up to run. I scrambled to right it. Then I stuck the yellow note to the side of the desk again and frantically put everything in his office back to the way it was.

“Katie, are you still there?”

Oh, I’m here all right.
“Yes,” I squeaked, carefully closing the bathroom door behind me.

“Why is your car in the driveway?”

I bolted down the hall to Cooper’s room in a panic. “I… umm… I needed to change. I ruined my blouse.” I looked down at my pristine blouse and cringed.

“Oh, not my favorite one, I hope.”

I wrapped my fingers around the hem and pulled. It wouldn’t rip. “No, not that one,” I panted, running into the bathroom to find something sharp.
Why is it you can never find a pair of scissors when you need them?

“Well, that’s a relief.”

I heard a car door slam. I spotted a bottle of hair gel and quickly squeezed a glob onto my fingers. “Yeah, but I really liked this shirt.” I rubbed the gel onto the front of my blouse until a greasy stain formed, then glanced at my reflection in the mirror. Yes, the large spot would be sufficient.

“I’ll get you a new one,” he said.