Infiltrator

Miles had been pursuing his master's in math while she'd been taking courses in accounting with CPA as her goal. They'd hit it off right away.

In three weeks they were engaged and they married over the semester break.

Jordan had been sixteen when she'd married Miles. He'd been a peach from the time he was introduced to her, more like a brother than a brother-in-law.

The day she'd moved in Jordan had insisted, near purple with embarrassment, on turning the finished den in the basement into his new bedroom. It had taken him two weeks after that to be able to actually look at Tarissa when he talked to her.

But Jordan was a manager. He'd managed things then, he managed things now.

She'd first realized it when she discovered that by 'sacrificing' his bedroom, he'd acquired unheard-of privacy for a sixteen year old. A private entrance to his basement domain, with the upstairs door locked.

'He's fine,' Miles had told her. 'Just leave him alone, he won't do anything foolish.'

Tarissa had thought that wildly optimistic advice given Jordan's age. But he had never given them reason to worry.

After Miles's death, Jordan had taken a leave of absence from the FBI and moved in with them. Though it had never been mentioned, this had its practical

aspect; it allowed the Bureau to pursue its unavoidable investigation of the brothers without embarrassing anybody.

And shattered as she was, Tarissa had really needed him. He'd done everything, taken care of all the arrangements, shopped, cooked, kept them all going.

Once he was cleared and even before that, Tarissa suspected, he'd devoted countless hours to the hunt for the Connors, and as far as she knew, he continued to do so.

Danny thought the world of him. And Jordan was always there for the kids.

Tarissa knew that he and Danny sometimes talked for an hour at a time on the phone, and on Jordan's nickel.

It made her feel guilty that she resented his just showing up like this.

Jordan looked around. 'Where's Blythe?' he asked.

'Away at school!' Tarissa said. 'She got that scholarship, remember?'

'Oh yeah,' he managed to say before Danny began to drag him away.

Watching her son and her brother-in-law moving toward the kitchen, laughing and high-fiving, she thought it was a miracle that Danny had never told his uncle the truth.

'Danny,' she called out, 'set another place.'

'Mo-om! Don't call me that!' he said with a frown. 'I'm not a little kid anymore.'

'Sorry,' she said to her son. 'Oh, yes,' Tarissa answered Jordan's raised eyebrow. 'It's Dan or Daniel now.'

'Then maybe you should call me Jordan,' he said to Dan.

Daniel looked at his uncle for a moment, then nodded slowly. Tarissa's lips tightened; his father had done just the same thing when he was thinking something through. Jordan nodded, too. She stifled a sigh; the men in her family were all so much alike.

Dan said good night reluctantly and dragged himself upstairs as though there were weights on his feet.

Jordan grinned at Tarissa as she handed him a glass of wine, patting his stomach comfortably.

'Now, that was what I call steak! Not surprised Dan isn't fading away… but he's grown so much! I hardly recognized him.'

'Since he's like a miniature Miles I find that hard to believe.' Tarissa settled herself on the couch. 'So what brings you to town?'

'He is like his dad, isn't he?'

She nodded, holding his eyes and waiting patiently.

He waved his hand at her look as if to wipe it away.

'You know I can't talk about business with you, Tarissa.'

'Well, okay, can you at least tell me where you're working?'

He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

'Escondido.'

Tarissa's eyes widened.

'That's over a hundred miles from here!' She cocked her head. 'From what you said, though, I gather you're working somewhere else, too. Somewhere that puts us in the middle. So, where else?'

'San Marcos,' he mumbled around a sip of wine.

'San Marcos.' Her eyes danced. 'Isn't that right next door to Escondido?'

He cocked an eye at her. 'So sue me. I haven't seen you guys for almost a year. I think it's worth getting up early for, all right?'

She reached over and patted his hand.

'Thank you,' she said. 'It's good to see you again, and Danny's on cloud nine.'

She took a sip of wine.

He looked at her for a moment.

'What?' Tarissa said at last.

'I found out that Cyberdyne has started up again.'

'Well, I knew that,' she said. 'They started up again about a month after the plant was destroyed. I can't see why they wouldn't.'

'I meant that they started Miles's project,' Jordan said, looking grim.

Tarissa felt her muscles knot up. They'd destroyed everything; there was no way that Cyberdyne could start up Miles's project again. Especially after six years.

She shifted in her chair, bringing her legs up and folding them to the side.

'Why shouldn't they, Jordan? Cyberdyne is a business. They probably started again as soon as the insurance company gave them a check.' Giving him a searching look, she asked, 'Did you expect them to just close their books and forget about it?'

'They started up again in a secret installation on an army base,' her brother-in-law said.

He was insistent, as though he was making a point that she just wasn't getting.

Unfortunately she was getting the message all too clearly. More clearly than Jordan. She wished she knew how to contact the Connors; this was something they'd want to know. If they were even alive.

A surge of anger surprised her. Miles died to stop that damned thing! They have no right.'

'Can't be too secret if you know about it,' she said aloud.

He made an impatient, dismissive gesture.

'I'm an investigator; finding things out is what I do, Tarissa. But the important thing is they might be using Miles's work. Which means that they might owe you and the kids some kind of royalty or something.'

Shaking her head, she told him, 'No. Of that I'm sure. Miles was developing something that they had already started. It wasn't his original work, so they could hardly owe him anything for it.'

'Didn't he ever talk about it?' Jordan leaned toward her, his eyes growing intense.

'Just that it was fascinating and he loved what he was doing and that it wasn't like anything he'd ever worked on before. You know all this, Jordan. I've told you this before.' She turned away.

'But didn't he ever mention details?'

'As much as you do,' she said, giving him a significant look. 'You boys always knew how to play your cards close to your chests. For all I knew, you were running a bordello out of that basement apartment of yours.'

'I was not running a bordello,' Jordan said with a little half smile.

'Well, there were squeals of girlish laughter that might have given argument to that,' Tarissa said with a grin.

'Or a numbers racket,' he added. He held his hand up, stopping her laughing response.

'Please don't change the subject.' Jordan said, his eyes deadly serious.

He put his wine aside and leaned his forearms on his thighs, totally focused.