fireplace? “-and, uh…anything else you might need, shampoo and whatnot, are in the chest of drawers nearest the window.”
“Thank you,” Lucia murmured, carefully avoiding eye contact. She thought again, He sounds like a well-trained butler.
All at once she felt vulnerable. And even more incomprehensible, as she discovered when she was standing naked under the pounding deluge of deliciously hot shower spray, she felt a pressing need to cry.
It was a delayed reaction to having shot and almost killed someone and having herself been threatened with death, she tried to tell herself. Because that would at least be understandable. She might even reasonably allow herself to give in to it.
And she might have done so, except she knew that wasn’t what was making her feel like this. She knew, because she’d felt exactly like this once before, almost ten years ago, when her life had taken an irrevocable turn. And she’d known even then that there would be no going back. That nothing would ever be the same again…
He was the first thing she saw when she walked into the student center, a tall, slender, dark- haired man wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit. She noticed him even in the huge arena crowded with eager job-seeking students and the elaborate displays of prospective employers hoping to recruit the best of the best, noticed him because of his natural elegance, and because he didn’t seem to belong to any particular company, and because, even in that noisy and brightly lit place, something about him struck her as mysterious, enigmatic. Like a man accustomed to living in the shadows.
Maybe the CIA, she thought, intrigued. They would be recruiting here, as would the FBI. Or, maybe, one of the even more secretive agencies, the ones that aren’t supposed to exist.
“Who do you suppose that is?” she asked her companion, Ricky Choy, who, being five-feet-two, gay and completely obsessed at the time with artificial intelligence, was one of the few people she felt comfortable enough with to call friend.
Ricky had bobbed up onto his tiptoes and was craning his neck in a futile effort to see over the milling crowd. Bobbing back down again, he shrugged and said, “Why don’t you go ask him?” He was giving his backpack nervous hitches, clearly eager to be off. “I’m gonna go check out Dreamforce. Rumor is, they’ve got a new A.I. project that’s going to knock the competition out of the water. Man, if I could get-”
“Go,” she said, waving him off. Then she added with a sly look and a grin, “Gonna stop by and see what B.G. has to offer?”
Ricky gave an “As if!” eyeroll. Like most techies, he had a love/hate relationship with the giant Microsoft. A moment later he had disappeared into the crowd.
She took a deep breath, shifted her own backpack onto one shoulder and was about to move off in the other direction when something…an odd compulsion…made her turn and look once more at the man in the dark suit. And for some reason-an odd coincidence?-found him looking straight back at her. For a moment, before they moved on, his eyes locked with hers, and in that moment she felt a shiver run down her spine.
Why not?
She threaded her way through the shifting crowd toward the dark-haired man. Shadow man, she thought.
His gaze followed her progress until she stood directly in front of him. His eyes were anything but shadowed. Instead, they were a light but curiously intense shade of blue, the color of polished steel.
“Are you recruiting?” she daringly asked him, in the half defensive, half belligerent way she was accustomed to addressing attractive strangers.
“Maybe,” he replied. His gaze made her intensely self-conscious, though not in the usual way. “What’s your field?”
“Computer science.”
He nodded, and his gaze didn’t waver. “Are you job-hunting?”
“Maybe.” She looked at him sideways. “I haven’t decided. I might go to grad school instead. So… what company are you with?”
Instead of answering, he produced a business card. She took it, glanced at it, then looked up at him, still wary, but feeling the deep-down buzz of interest. “The Lazlo Group. I’ve never heard of it.”
He smiled, very slightly. “I should be quite surprised if you had.” He had a pronounced British accent, which only added to the air of mystery that seemed to hang about him like a signature scent.
“And you would be-” frowning up at him, she tapped the card with a fingertip “-Corbett Lazlo?”
His head made an elegant dip. “I am.”
“There’s no phone number or e-mail address on this card. Where would I send my resume? I mean, if I do decide to apply for a job with you?”
His eyes were veiled now, the little smile more self-confident than arrogant. “I already know what I need to know about you…Lucia Cordez. As for your job qualifications, if you succeed in finding me, that’s all the resume you need.”
He inclined his head briefly and turned away, leaving her momentarily speechless. She recovered enough wit to call after him, “Yes, but…wait. How do you know I even want-”-to work for you!
But he had already vanished into the crowd.
“Interesting approach,” Ricky remarked from somewhere near her elbow. “As gorgeous as he is, I bet he’s a bitch to work for.”
“What makes you think I’d want to?” she snapped back, taking her anger out on him because she was infuriated by the chorus of voices inside her head singing, “Oh, but I do, I do!”
Two days later, she stared at a terse e-mail message on her computer screen:
Well done, Lucia. You found me in less than 48 hours. Are you ready to take the next step?
Hands poised above the keyboard, poised to tell Corbett Lazlo what he could do with his job, she felt strange shivers inside, a peculiar lurch in her midsection, the rapid beating of her pulse, fully aware that a single word would send her life hurtling off in a new and exciting-perhaps frightening-direction.
Her hands trembled a little as she typed the only word necessary:
Yes.
It hadn’t been that simple, of course. That had been only the beginning of Corbett Lazlo’s courtship of her-there really was no better word for it. And once he’d won her commitment to work for him, he’d begun to transform her from shy duckling to confident swan. From awkward college student to sophisticated world traveler, equally comfortable conversing with kings or camel drivers. From computer geek to resident techno-genius for the most elite private-security agency in the world.
She’d become a sophisticate, a technowiz, true…one with the skills, training and nerve to kill.
Lucia turned off the hot water with an impatient jerk and stood for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing evenly through her nostrils, angry with herself. And ashamed.
She’d chosen the Lazlo Group as much as it-or he-had chosen her. And tonight she’d saved Corbett’s life.
She couldn’t even let herself think about what her life would be like without him. She owed Corbett Lazlo everything. He’d taught her to believe in herself, to value herself as a whole woman, rather than hate what she’d always seen as an awkward bunch of mismatched parts. He’d taught her how to protect herself in a dangerous world, and shown her parts of that world she’d never known existed. It wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in love with him almost from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him.
Quit fussing, she scolded herself. So she had to go to a safe house? Half the agents in the Group were hiding out in safe houses at the moment. The entire agency was in crisis, fighting for its very life. Time for her to step up, put her skills to work and do everything in her power to help save it.
But now the thought nagged at her: If only I’d been able to track the source of those e-mails! If I’d been able to find out who was sending them, all this might not have happened.
