His Personal Mission Read online

  “You sure you want to be a witness to this?”

  He’d come up beside her as she was hitting the button to lock her car.

  “If it gets the job done, let them come after me.”

  It wasn’t until they were walking into the complex that he spoke again. Sasha was noticing the lush landscaping, lots of flowering plants and the ubiquitous palm trees, but arranged as if the buildings had been carefully placed among them and not the other way around. It was a nice touch, and she liked it.

  “So you’re an any-means-to-the-end person?”

  She heard no censure, only curiosity in his voice, so she answered him without heat. “I know some people feel nothing justifies that. I think they’re wrong. There’s too little innocence left in this world, and it should be protected. Not the people who want to destroy it.”

  He stopped beside a stairway, and turned to face her. “You’re as passionate about this as you ever were,” he said.

  “The day I’m not, it will be time to quit.”

  “Then you’ll never quit.”

  Startled, Sasha stood stock-still for a moment as he started up the stairs. Because he was right. She would never quit. Because nothing could change how she felt about this. It was too deeply ingrained in her.

  It wasn’t the assessment that startled her; she’d known that about herself for a long time. It was that Ryan knew it. Had she underestimated him before?

  She started after him, up the stairs. Caught herself admiring the way he moved. And watching the backside she’d had brought to her attention earlier. Definitely prime.

  Some things, she thought wryly, hadn’t changed at all.

  Chapter 10

  When she stepped inside the condo, Sasha nearly stopped in her tracks, stunned. It wasn’t the spaciousness of the great room design. It wasn’t the granite counters and stainless steel in the kitchen she could see off to the right. It wasn’t even the lovely view out the floor-to-ceiling window on the ocean side of the room, although it was indeed stunning.

  The place was immaculate. Well, to her eyes, anyway. Having grown up with her mother’s possessive clutter, her criteria might be a bit skewed. And now that she looked closer, she saw a couple of books here, a stack of magazines—how many computer magazines were there, anyway?—there, and a sweatshirt tossed over the back of the couch. There was a sizable but not huge flat-screen TV fitted into a niche that seemed designed for it, so that it didn’t seem to dominate the entire room.

  And while he had taken refuge in the male safe zone of earth tones, dark tan leather sofa and two matching chairs, a solid coffee table with storage and a geometric patterned rug on the wood floor, there were some surprises there, too. A bright yellow knitted throw was a slash of color thrown over the back of one end of the sofa.

  My favorite color, she thought. And I am so not even going there. My ego’s not that huge.

  She continued looking around. There was, even more surprisingly, a strikingly shaped, tall glass vase in the same yellow shade on one of the bookshelves built in on each side of the gas-log fireplace. The final touch hung over the mantel—a painting, a beach scene at sunset, with colors so vivid in the sky that the ocean seemed almost an afterthought. Here again were streaks of the same bright yellow. And those three splashes of color pulled the whole place out of bachelor pad and into…she wasn’t sure what.

  A woman’s touch? she wondered. Had some girlfriend helped him with this, and was she still in the picture? Was it really coincidence, this choice of color?

  She wasn’t going to ask, she told herself firmly.

  Ryan turned from where he’d tossed his keys on a table just inside the door. There was a racklike piece on the table as well, with an odd assortment of cables sticking out of different slots, and it took her a moment to realize it was a charging station for a cell phone and other electronics. Clever, she thought. And pure Ryan. No girlfriend behind that one, she guessed.

  “My compliments to your decorator.”

  The words were out before she could stop them. And telling herself she hadn’t actually asked didn’t help much.

  “What?”

  “It’s a great space,” she said, figuring that was neutral enough.

  “I like it.” He walked over to the granite-surfaced bar on the room side of the kitchen island. “I was kind of iffy about actually buying a place, but Mac convinced me it was one of the best things to do. And you don’t tell Mac McClaren no when he tells you what to do with your money.”

  “I would think not,” Sasha said. “And if you could afford this, he’s obviously advised you well.”

  She looked around again. She knew Redstone paid well, but she made a decent amount at the foundation—in a way also thanks to Redstone—and she was in no way close to being able to do something like this. She’d been in her own apartment for nearly five years now, and while she lived comfortably, it wasn’t her own space, not like this.

  “He’d probably help you, too, if you wanted. You’re part of Redstone, in a way.”

  Startled, she turned back to him. How had he known what she was thinking? How had he known she was feeling as if she’d somehow fallen behind? She’d always lectured him about being a grown-up and thinking about more than just living in the moment—rather pompously, she had to ruefully admit now—and yet it was now he who’d managed this.

  “He’d have to have something to work with first,” Sasha said.

  Ryan studied her for a moment. “Still helping your folks?”

  “No, not anymore,” she said. “I only did in the beginning because I talked them into that house. After all, my dad didn’t want to spend the money even if the old one was falling down. Business is better now, so they’re doing fine. But we had to move my grandmother into a new place, so I’m helping with that.”

  And while yes, that was where a sizable amount of her income went, it didn’t account for all of it. There was money left, but she hadn’t done much with it, and she was feeling at the moment that she’d fallen down on planning for her own future.

  “You’ve done well, Ryan,” she said. “I should apologize for all the times I accused you of never thinking beyond today.”

  He leaned back against the bar, looking at her steadily. “Don’t. Maybe that’s why I finally did it.”

  Her brows rose as he startled her again.

  “You were right about a lot of things, Sasha. Not all, but a lot.”

  “I was…arrogant and supercilious,” she said.

  Ryan laughed. “And you’ve still got a killer vocabulary.”

  He was so obviously teasing she couldn’t help but smile, but she also noticed he didn’t deny her self-accusation. But then, how could he, when it was true? Even if she had been right about a lot of things, she’d been a bit too smugly superior in her criticisms. She’d always thought he had been the one who needed to change. But now, in the space of a single day, she’d come to see that she’d had some learning to do herself.

  He moved then, nodding toward the hallway that ran off one end of the great room. “Computer room is back here.”

  She followed him, pausing only to let her fingers trail over the knitted throw; it was as soft to the touch as it looked.

  “I like it,” she said when he glanced back at her.

  “Trish gave it to me. I liked the way it looked. She said I should get a couple more things, so I did.”

  “It looks great.”

  “Your color,” he said, and headed down the hall.

  Sasha went after him, pondering the answer she’d gotten to part of her unasked question; he knew perfectly well it was her favorite color. But it was a stretch to think anything as stupid as he’d chosen it for that reason.

  Sure, he’s been pining away all this time, putting bits of your favorite color in his home to remind him of you. That’s it, sure.

  She smiled at her own self-deprecation, thinking she’d beaten that bit of egocentric thought into submission.

  As they went down
the hallway she saw a closed door to her left. Master bedroom, she guessed, given that it likely had a similar view of the ocean in the distance that the main space had. She stifled the tiny nudge of curiosity that wanted to rise to the surface, about what kind of bedroom he would have.

  Another place you’re so not going, she chided herself, almost fiercely.

  On the right was a bathroom, which he pointed out in case she needed it as they went past the doorway. A glance showed the same workmanship as the rest of the condo, although the counter here looked like some kind of textured stone tiles rather than the smooth polished granite of the kitchen counters.

  In what was obviously intended as a second bedroom, Sasha found what she’d expected to find in the rest of the place—the lair of a terminal computer geek. A workstation against one wall, with two side-by-side wide-screen monitors, three printers, and a couple of things she didn’t immediately recognize, dominated the room. There were shelves around the rest of the room that held books, software and hardware boxes, CD jewel cases and sound-system speakers.

  On the wall in one of the few bare spaces was a poster that startled her. It was a vintage scene of the World War II era, a recruitment poster of sorts, with an army-green bomber emblazoned with the symbol of America, flying over what was apparently supposed to be Big Ben in London. Across the bottom, in letters three inches high, were the words, “They’ve done their part, now it’s our turn!”

  Curious, she turned to look at Ryan.

  “It’s a game I play. World War II based. I know how you feel about them, but—”

  He stopped when she shook her head. “Is it based on the real history?”

  “Yeah.” Then, with a crooked grin, “I’m about to liberate France.”

  “All right, then. And if it makes you think for a moment about why they fought, all the better.”

  He looked at her for a silent moment before saying, almost sadly, “You still don’t do anything just for fun?”

  “You don’t have fun playing that game?” she countered.

  “That’s not the point.” The look in his eyes was almost weary, and Sasha found it strangely unsettling.

  For the first time since she’d told him that there was no future for them, Ryan thought she might have been right. That even the good times they’d had together had seemed transient even in the midst of them; he’d always sensed she was on some level thinking about her work, eager to get back to it. But when her work was what it was, complaining about it seemed not just whiny, but selfish. But he’d wanted to complain. Had wanted her all to himself, at least sometimes.

  Which only made his confusion deeper. He hadn’t even wanted “a future,” not in the way women meant it, so why had that bothered him so much?

  At least, he hadn’t wanted it then.

  Now?

  He didn’t know. And he didn’t have time to think about it now. His future would be pretty grim anyway if they didn’t find Trish.

  He sat down at the keyboard. Ian Gamble’s wife, the extra-hot Samantha, had once told him he was like a concert pianist, producing near miraculous things. It was only his instrument that was different. He’d preened over that for weeks, wishing there was another woman like her out there—gorgeous, sexy, smart and appreciative of his skills.

  Of course, that she was also one of the toughest, most capable of Redstone’s vaunted security team added an extra kick to her repertoire, even if she had been temporarily sidelined by pregnancy.

  “How do you start?” For the first time since he’d known her Sasha sounded self-conscious. As if she were talking only to break a silence that she was uncomfortable with. One of the things he’d liked about her was that she didn’t have the need to fill every silent moment with chatter; this was different enough that he noticed.

  “First I look for anybody else who’s gotten into that particular site. See if they’ve bragged about it, and how they did it.”

  “They do that?”

  “Hackers are a proud bunch,” he said, starting his search with forums that might document a hack, and blogs that might crow about one.

  “Were you?”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “Yeah. I was.”

  “If you got into Redstone, you must have been good.”

  He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I still am.”

  He heard her reaction, a quick intake of breath, rather than saw it, since he was focused on the results of his initial search on the screen. And suddenly he felt the need to explain, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “I swore to Josh that I would never hack another system unless Redstone asked me. I’ve kept that promise.”

  “And has Redstone asked?”

  “A time or two.” Once John Draven, the legendary head of security, had called him in. “I actually hacked a hacker trying to get into the Aviation Division system, a guy who was after Josh’s design for the Hawk V.”

  “Industrial spying?”

  “Yeah. It was kind of exciting,” he admitted.

  “I hope you found him.”

  “I did. He hadn’t gotten anything beyond the artist’s conception yet.”

  “Good. If people like that would put half the energy into doing something legitimate, they’d be successful and wouldn’t have to try and steal someone else’s work.”

  Ryan smiled wryly. “I’ve heard that song before.”

  And he had; it had been the standard refrain from the moment he’d been found out, from everyone, parents, cops, counselors, all of them. But only Josh had given him the chance and the technology to do just that.

  “Have they ever asked you to…cross the line?”

  His head whipped around. “Of course not!” He nearly snapped it, at the very idea. “This is Redstone, and if you knew anything about Josh, you’d know he doesn’t play the game that way. Not that he isn’t ruthless when he has to be, but he has his own rules and he lives and works by them. As do all of us, or we don’t stay Redstone for long.”

  “I just wondered what kind of things you’ve been called on to do for them.”

  He hesitated, then accepted the explanation. “It varies. Mostly I work in R&D, but once I even did a job for knows all, sees all, never sleeps St. John.”

  “What did he want you to do?”

  “To backtrack a virus.” He didn’t say that the virus nearly caused havoc before it had been stopped by the defenses he himself had installed on the Redstone systems; it sounded a bit like bragging. “And then turn it back on its creator.”

  She lifted a brow. “That sounds like quick justice.”

  “That’s what it felt like, too,” he agreed.

  Mutating that worm and sending it off to destroy the destroyer had given him a sense of satisfaction he’d never felt before. Sort of like how cops must feel, he had thought, when they put away the really bad guys for life.

  Or maybe like Sasha felt, when she found a child safe and sound.

  Interesting, he thought now as he dug deeper through his results, going from link to link, setting items of interest aside on the second monitor for later reference. He hadn’t remembered until now that he’d made that connection. It must be just that she was here, beside him, that had the old memories and feelings stirring.

  He’d found a thread that looked promising, a series of posts and blog entries at an underground site he’d once frequented, that gave him a clue to a vulnerability. He zeroed in on one poster, who had claimed success. He felt the old exhilaration building; this had been his life once, this kind of surreptitious hunting down of weaknesses, all of it tinged with a kind of scorn for those less versed than he in this electronic world.

  And now he stood against them, for the man who’d given him the chance to make good. And it gave him the same kind of thrill. Better, in fact, because he, like the rest of Redstone, would walk over hot coals, broken glass or anything else for Josh. As his reaction to Sasha’s relatively innocent question had proven.

  Out of the corner of
his eye he saw her make a note on a page and reach for her cell to make a call. He glanced at her, wondering if she really believed that he cared about nothing but computers. He could even admit to himself now that he could see why she’d thought that, two years ago. Maybe he had been a bit out of balance. But his life was so much bigger now, so much wider, thanks to Redstone. Why, Josh had even sent him on a world tour, to take his security programs and ideas to Redstone facilities all over the globe. Unlike Trish, content to stay at home, he’d jumped at the chance.

  Especially since the chance had come just after Sasha had dumped him. And he had had a great time. Had spent six weeks traveling in style on the Hawk III, being welcomed as a representative of Redstone, with all that entailed.

  And while he’d worked hard, he’d also played hard, telling himself he didn’t care a bit about the intense, too-serious woman he’d left behind. He’d even believed it, for the duration of the trip. It was only when he’d returned home that he’d had to admit it had only been a diversion. And that he—

  A line in a post by that same hacker who had claimed success caught his eye. It started something stirring in his mind, an approach, a possible way in.

  “There you are,” he murmured, leaning forward, all other thoughts and conversation forgotten.

  He was closing in.

  Chapter 11

  Sasha watched Ryan, sensing he was oblivious to her at the moment. She understood that kind of intensity, she had it herself when she was on a case. And she realized she’d never seen him at work before. Had never seen him turn the concentration that had seemed to her overkill when he was playing some game, to what she thought of as a useful task. She’d accused him of always wanting to play, of never taking anything seriously, but she’d done it having never really seen him work. If she’d seen this, would she have felt differently?

  If she’d seen this, would she have dismissed him so quickly?

  If she’d seen this, would she have left at all?

  You’ve done well, Ryan. I should apologize for all the times I accused you of never thinking beyond today.