Lazlo’s Last Stand

“I can’t raise Adam.” She turned and made her way back to the bank of monitors. “It’s possible the server’s down, but the weird thing is, I can’t seem to raise anybody.”

“What do you mean, you can’t raise anybody?” He was frowning, now, too. What she was saying to him didn’t make sense. The Lazlo Group’s communications system was a complex network involving literally hundreds of servers and thousands of connections worldwide. And nobody knew the system better than Lucia. After all, she was the one who’d set it up. “Explain.”

“Corbett, I can’t explain it. I’ve tried every way I can think of to establish a connection. Every single time I get the same message: ‘Client Not Available.’ I don’t understand it. I keep thinking it must be something simple, so simple I’m overlooking it.” Her eyes were bright with frustration.

She reminded him of a child with a toy that wouldn’t work the way it was supposed to. And if the implications hadn’t been so unthinkable, he might have found it amusing to see his beloved computer wizard in such an unheard-of state. Almost.

“Let’s wait a bit, then have another go at it,” he said. “It probably is something simple. Who knows, maybe it’s a malfunction here, on our end.”

“I don’t-”

He kissed her lightly, enough to stop her denial, not quite enough to distract either of them too much. “I could do with a cup of coffee. How about you? Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “Coffee sounds good, though.” But she stole a look back at the monitors as she followed him into the kitchen, and the expression on her face left Corbett with a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Neither of them spoke while he was making the coffee, setting out cups, spoons, cream and sugar, but he could almost hear Lucia’s mind ticking away as she sat staring at nothing. Every now and then he saw her give her head a little shake of vexation. He knew she was working on the problem like a dog with a particularly challenging bit of bone.

When he had filled their cups and returned the coffeepot to the stove, he pulled out a chair and sat down, deliberately choosing a spot across the table from her, far enough away so he wouldn’t be able to touch her. Wrapping his hands around the steaming mug instead, he said gently, “Lu…love. Can you come back to me now?”

She gave a small start and her face took on a guilty look that made him smile. “Oh-yes, of course. I’m sorry, I was…”

“I know. But the problem’s not going anywhere, unless it manages to figure out how to fix itself while we’re on coffee break, in which case it’s no longer a problem. Meanwhile, I need to ask you some questions. First, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume our system is down. How could such a thing happen? Are we talking about hackers? Sabotage? What are we dealing with here?”

Lucia lifted her cup, set it back down and cleared her throat. “If by sabotage you mean physical damage to the equipment, I don’t see how that would be possible-the system is spread out all over the world. I designed it to withstand almost anything short of the annihilation of the planet,” she said, her cheeks showing heat. “There must be a thousand backup-”

“I know, my darling, I know. I guess by sabotage I mean more along the lines of viruses or hackers.” His jaw clenched until he could feel his teeth grinding. “In other words, if the Lazlo Group system has been compromised, could Cassandra have done it?”

She looked at him with anguish in her eyes. He could see her throat working, knew how badly she didn’t want to say the words. But he had to hear it from her. He had to. He didn’t prod her or repeat the question. He simply waited. And after a long, tension-filled moment, she shook her head and said quietly, “No. Not without help. Security has been tight since Dani and Mitch caught Chloe selling us out. I saw it myself.”

“From someone on the inside.” He sat back, letting out a long hissing breath. It was confirmation of what he’d already known. His eyes burned as he stared at Lucia. “How many people have the knowledge?”

“Corbett-”

“How many?”

“Adam,” she said dully. “Me, of course. Your brother, Edward…”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes…wished he could rub out the thoughts behind them. “Anybody else?” Please, tell me there’s somebody else.

“I-I don’t know, I don’t think so. Unless Adam or Edward told someone.” She broke off to throw him a stricken look. “I meant-”

“Someone else in the agency-I know. Where are the access codes kept? Could anyone have got to them? From the outside?”

“No! Absolutely not. They’re kept in the vault at headquarters. The security for that room is multiple biometrics, as you know. The only ones programmed for entry are you, me-”

“Adam and Edward. Yes…I know.” He sat back in his chair, shifting his shoulders in a determined effort to ease the strain. “Then we will just have to hope for a simple explanation, won’t we?”

Simple?

The bleak and unpleasant truth was that nothing in his life had been simple for a very long time. Thanks to the efforts over the past six months of some of his best agents, all too often at grave risk to their own lives, he’d become aware that there had to be a mole operating within the Lazlo Group. That had been hard enough to deal with when the list of possible suspects included every person in the agency, each and every one of whom he’d handpicked and trusted with his own life. But to have the field narrowed down to these three…

My brother, my best friend and the woman I love. Am I to believe one of them capable of betraying me to my worst enemy? My God.

He stared into his coffee cup, his heart tapping deep in his belly in a way he knew all too well. Dread…fear…the feeling went by any number of names, and he’d become familiar with it at other times when his life and future had hung in the balance. When the outcome had depended on people and events beyond his control. During one of the worst of those times, it had been Adam Sinclair who’d come through for him, at the cost of his own career. And there were all those times during his wild and misspent youth when he was certain the only thing standing between Corbett Lazlo and reform school had been his big brother, Edward-the good son. Which left…

Lucia.

He stole a look at her as he lifted his cup to his lips and sipped what had begun to taste as awful as battery acid to him. She was staring fixedly at her cup, her cheeks washed with pink-looking, quite frankly, guilty as hell. Which, in itself, meant nothing, of course; most innocent people did feel guilty when they knew they were being suspected of wrongdoing. A woman with her intelligence would quite likely know precisely what he was thinking. And he knew all too well what it was like to be the one all the evidence seemed to point to.

No. Not Lucia.

He could not-would not-believe this woman, this same woman he’d held in his arms such a short time ago, made love to until she’d sobbed and trembled in complete and total surrender, could betray him. He could not have been such a bloody awful fool. Could he?

Of course, there had been all those years when she’d been madly in love with him and he’d ignored her, dismissed her, flaunted other women in front of her. He cringed to think of all the times he’d stopped by her office on his way to or from a date, determined to prove something, he supposed-to her, to himself, who knows?-but an exercise in monumental stupidity however he sliced it.

And he did have a history of involving himself with women with a thirst for revenge…

Lucia?

Could she have been so angry at him at some point during those years as to let herself be persuaded-

No.

But that could be why she’s feeling guilty about it now, and afraid to-

No, dammit. Not Lucia.

And what a complete jackass he was to let her sit there in guilty silence, thinking he was entertaining all sorts of doubts about her…

I’ve got to say something to him, Lucia thought. She’d held it in too long as it was. I know he’s thinking about it. She could feel it pulsing like a living thing, as if another