Intimate Knowledge (10 page)

Saul wrinkled his nose, seemingly not pleased with his friend’s response to his suggestion.

“Sure you owe me. Who got you those footy tickets when you were moaning about your father-in-law? Or the time I covered your arse and took the heat when you were streaming that video about the Russian twins? I’m serious here, man, don’t yank my chain.”

Jennifer lifted an eyebrow, a part of her deeply curious about the Russian twins’ video. A deep, dark, secret spy agency, presumably waging war against the enemy to keep their country safe from harm, and one of the tech geeks was streaming porn?

Saul grinned at her, seeming to find her look amusing.

“Knew I could count on you. Look, we’re three or so hours away. How about we swing by and pick up some curry, then you can help us out. Trust me, it should be a breeze. You’ll have plenty of time to do your errands before your missus gets back from her shopping trip. Promise.”

Saul stood, placed the key card in the pocket of his jeans then held out his hand to help Jennifer rise.

“Fantastic,” Saul finished. “We’ll see you then. Thanks, George.”

Saul clicked his phone closed, then slid it into his shirt pocket. Jenn twined her fingers with Saul’s. Holding the wooden box in her other hand, together they headed back to her campsite and his car.

“I thought you said he was a friend. It sounded to me like you had to twist George’s arm,” she said.

“Nah, he’ll enjoy holding this over my head. I’ll buy him a few beers next week. George loves it when field agents owe him. He lives for it.”

“Do you really think the data will be encrypted?” she asked, recalling Saul’s earlier comment on the phone that he didn’t want to set anything off. “Wouldn’t that indicate that the information was important? Or secret?”

“It’s hard to say,” Saul mulled. “So far we haven’t really seen any indication that something’s going on, let alone it’s criminal. If it wasn’t for those arseholes I’d be half tempted to say we’re both blowing this out of proportion.”

Jennifer remained silent as they made their way back to the car. She knew Saul believed her implicitly, that he knew something was going on, but they just couldn’t work out what. A part of her hoped the memory stick and key card would answer some questions, or point them in the right direction.

She worried they’d run out of avenues to chase if they hit another dead end. Jennifer wasn’t keen to act as bait, though if that was the only way to draw these men out into the open so they could discover what was happening, she might get desperate enough to do so. She refused to hide and cower, to alter her life because she’d seen a man burying this simple box.

“Hey,” Saul said gently. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close to his body. “You’re looking very serious there, babe. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping we get some answers. Nothing fits together and I’m starting to feel foolish.”

“Don’t,” he insisted. “We’re missing a large part of the bigger picture, that’s why this isn’t making sense. These seemingly small things are important enough—are so meaningful—that people out there we know nothing about are willing to hurt innocent strangers to acquire it. That points to something big. It will make sense once we get more details, I promise.”

They drew up to the car. Saul gave her a squeeze, hugging her tightly. Jennifer wound her free arm around him, rising up on her toes to meet his lips with her own. They kissed and her world tilted once again.

Heat seared through her body, need crawled from her belly up her chest, her skin flushing hotly. She didn’t register dropping the box onto the soft grass, only the desire to be as near as possible to Saul consumed her. Holding their bodies together, he pressed them closer, and moved his mouth hungrily over hers.

Lifting her hips, she enjoyed the thick hardness of his cock straining against his jeans. She moaned decadently, wishing they were both naked right now and she could guide him into her wet pussy.

Saul cupped her face, drawing away from her with reluctance.

“There is nothing I want more right now than to undress you slowly, worship every inch of your soft, delicious skin and make slow, exquisite love with you, babe.” His tone conveyed the imminent ’but’. “Believe me, if we were in any other isolated forest, where we’d have a good chance of seclusion and privacy I wouldn’t be talking, my tongue would be occupied in the far more pleasant task of tasting your sweet juices and making you scream my name. But considering how busy this place has been in the last week, and the fact I only have the one gun to protect us should we be attacked, I don’t want to linger longer than necessary.”

She groaned and pressed her face into his chest. Saul’s clean scent felt like home to her. As she listened to the rapid pounding of his heart she could tell he was affected—that and the rock-hard shaft tenting his jeans, straining against his zipper, didn’t need a diagram or explanation.

Lifting her head, she dropped a quick, practically chaste kiss to the edge of his chin, nipping him lightly with her teeth.

“You owe me,” she purred, teasing him.

He flashed that wicked grin of his. “Absolutely.”

Saul opened the passenger-side door for her. Thanking him, she climbed into the car, pleasantly occupied with fantasies of just how she could collect that marker later.

Chapter Six

“Do you have remote access to our databases?” Saul asked George over his shoulder.

Jennifer watched as George ran a hand through his scruffy brown hair. His dark-brown gaze was fixed upon the screen of his laptop as he scrolled through indecipherable—to her at least—code.

A moment passed. George didn’t acknowledge Saul’s words.

Jennifer grinned, amused. The man had looked sceptical when Saul had initially handed over the key card. George had turned it over in his hands and had peered at the barcode, reciting the numbers to himself in a soft tone. He’d then attached what appeared to be a swipe-card reader of some form by USB to his laptop. His fingers practically flew over the keyboard as weird squiggles and code flashed by, and promptly got lost in his own world from what Jennifer could ascertain.

“George!” Saul said loudly.

The man glanced up from his screen, blinking as if awakening from a dream.

“Sorry, mate, what was that?”

“Remote access to our database, how do I connect?”

“Oh, right.” George leaned over, half standing out of his chair to type a few commands on the keyboard.

Jennifer and Saul both averted their gazes as George entered a long sequence into the password prompt and a new window popped open.

“Easy,” George muttered, his attention returning fully to his own screen.

“Thanks,” Saul replied, casting a laughing look to her.

Jennifer found herself liking George, his absolute attention to the task he did. Despite what she felt were his initial reservations, he now seemed completely engrossed in the card and whatever secrets it whispered to him. She wanted to ask what he was uncovering but figured interrupting him was stupid, and besides, he’d tell them sooner or later.

Meanwhile, she and Saul had found a few enormous JPEG and PDF files on the memory stick. When opened, they seemed to be scans of building blueprints. Even when they zoomed in close to the smaller notes, neither of them could find any distinct labels on the images.

“There’s no descriptions,” Jennifer said, pointing out the obvious. “So how are you going to search your work’s databases to find out where these images refer to?”

Saul cast a pleased look at her.

“The dimensions are here,” he replied. “We don’t know where they are, but for the sake of ease I’ll assume it’s somewhere in central London—we can always expand the parameters if we come up blank. But if I search for buildings with rooms hosting these exact dimensions and specifications, hopefully we’ll come across something. It will take time, but there can’t be too many buildings with rooms exactly to these specifications.”

Jennifer nodded. The plan seemed logical. Saul opened a bunch of tabbed windows and flipped between screens to enter in the details to various database search engines.

“What if these schematics are out of date? Or if they’re blueprints for modifications that haven’t been put onto any official database yet?”

“Now who’s being paranoid?” Saul teased her. “Let’s take one problem at a time. If this plan bombs we can think up something else, or rely on George to come up with something better.”

Saul moved his fingers quickly over the keyboard as he entered search after search in consecutive windows. The clack of his keys made a strange symphony to Jennifer’s ears, merging with the synonymous sound of George’s typing. Once again she enjoyed this different side to her best friend. Having known him so long these small, never-before-seen aspects to his persona were like little gems.

She loved how her understanding and knowledge of this large, dark, powerful man grew more and more intimate the further they bared their souls to one another. Scooting her chair closer so she could watch the screen, Jennifer had to resist the urge to rest her head on Saul’s shoulder.

“This might take a while,” he warned her in a soft tone.

She smiled.

“I’m not going anywhere, it doesn’t matter to me how long it takes.”

Jennifer turned her face to press her lips into Saul’s palm when he cupped her jaw. George was momentarily forgotten in the privacy of the special moment.

Saul moved his hand around to stroke the nape of her neck, caressing his fingers through her hair. The touch was not sexual, but her internal reaction, the heat that seared her, the desire that pounded in her blood belied the casual innocence of his fingers stroking her skin.

Need unfurled inside her stomach, her lust growing. Her clit throbbed. Wanting him to know the effect he had upon her senses, she nipped a teasing, biting kiss onto the soft pad of flesh at the base of his palm. He hissed, a sharp, hastily suppressed exclamation. Jennifer lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. Black eyes blazed hungrily at her. She grinned cheekily at him, pleased her message had been received.

Saul drew her face closer, bent his head and whispered naughtily in her ear, “If you’re not careful, babe, you might bite off more than you can chew. I’m already hard as steel for you, the picture of your gorgeous blonde hair wrapped around my wrist as I fuck you hard from behind, plunging my cock balls-deep into your soaked pussy has been driving me mental since you ravished me out in the forest. I’ve been hard for so long I’m not in the mood for soft or gentle anymore, I want to take you hard, pound into you until you scream for me.”

His words wove a spell around her, lust igniting through her body. Her nipples ached for his lips, her clit tingled with anticipation, and arousal had her pussy wet and willing for every dark, wicked promise he could dish out.

She raised her arm to wrap it around his neck, and was half out of her seat to straddle him and make him fulfil every word he’d uttered when she recalled George not more than a few feet away from them. Stifling the groan, Jennifer instead gazed hotly at her lover.

Trying to get her sluggish brain to put together a coherent sentence even half as arousing as his words. The desktop pinged before she could utter a syllable. Saul didn’t immediately move, holding her gaze and promising her all kinds of enticing adventures. Finally, lazily, he sat forward on his seat, a few keystrokes bringing up the hit from one of the architectural databases.

National Gallery—London.

Pictures, diagrams and information links were listed beneath the hit, offering a wealth of data connected with the find.

“The Gallery?” Saul said.

“Yeah,” George said without looking up from his screen, his fingers still seeming to fly over the keys as code scrolled down. “Looks like your targets were thinking about a small heist. I still haven’t narrowed down which exhibition they were interested in, but this security pass is fairly high level, they could have accessed most of the Gallery with it. More importantly, it’s currently active—they could use it today, assuming, of course, it wasn’t here with us.”

“You knew it was the National Gallery?” Jennifer clarified, surprised.

“Oh, not until I started unlocking it,” George assured her. “I’m just blown away by the details on this thing—their security firewalls suck. These guys are practically in the dark ages. A four year old with rudimentary hacking skills could crack this baby in a second. Really, it’s almost a waste of my talent. Interesting though. They’ve got a list of all the pieces on show. It’s been forever since I visited.”

Jennifer couldn’t believe how blasé George’s attitude was. She glanced from him to Saul, back and forth again. George acted as if he saw this sort of thing every day and twice on Thursday…which in a sense she supposed he did. Still…

“Someone is going to break into the National Gallery.” Jennifer cleared her throat, tried to get the slight croak out of her tone. “The London Gallery, and rob them. Uh, isn’t this where we call the police? Or…panic? Do something?”

“We probably should bring this to Preston.” George finally looked up from his screen to the two of them. “I don’t think we can stop a heist ourselves, not considering the magnitude of effort that would have to go into such an enterprise.”

Saul frowned, deep in thought. After a moment he spoke, “We still have no real details, though. It’s all conjecture at this point. Sure, the security pass is still active, but we have it—not them. We have blueprints, diagrams and surveillance photos of ingress and egress points, but again, will it happen today? Next week? Did it occur three months ago and the Gallery merely covered it up? What, exactly, would we take to Preston? Supposition? Conjecture? He can’t do anything about any of that.”

“I agree with you,” George said with a nod. “But this could blow up badly in your face if we sit on it. If we ignore this and something does happen…well, it won’t matter we have nothing but smoke and mirrors. If management finds out we had forewarning, that we knew something was in the wind and we did nothing, our arses will fry.”