“I think I finally might have something. But it can wait.”
“No.” He shook his head. “It can’t. A woman’s reputation, not to mention herlife,is on the line.”
Double grr.
After taking a seat in a chair, she scooted it in front of one of the monitors. She punched in a couple of keystrokes on the Bluetooth keyboard and a ten-digit number flashed on the screen.
“There.” She pointed. “That’s the number that sent the text to Grace. Hotdamn, I’m good!”
“Yes, yes.” Sam leaned over her shoulder to get a better look. “You’re very smart and resourceful and crafty.”
She pursed her lips. “Funny. Your words say one thing, but your tone says another.”
Instead of answering her, he stood to his full height and crossed his arms. “I thought you were gonna start with the director of the FBI?He’sthe one who either has to be the double agent or who has to be sharing his information with the person who is.”
Before the cat/coffee incident, he’d filled her in on all the details regarding Agent Beacham’s investigation into the troll farm, her partner’s death, her flight from the Russian assassin, and her suspected frame-up by someone in a position of power who was acting as a double agent.
“I am.” She pointed to the screen on her right, which continued to flash lines of code. “I’m running a program that covertly tests for weak spots in the FBI’s internal database. But stealth takes time. And while I was waiting, I used Grace’s phone number to hack into her cellular log. After a bit of cyber magic, I was able to pinpoint where the blocked number originated.” She gestured toward the screen. “Voila!”
He leaned over her shoulder again to look at the number. “Where’s area code 896?”
God, he smells good, she thought longingly. She wanted to bury her nose in his warm, tan neck and pull his scent into her lungs. Take a part of him inside herself.
“Hannah?” He turned his head to look at her and she realized she’d been holding her breath when it wheezed out of her.
The temptation to close the short distance between them and catch his lips in a kiss was intense. In fact, she’d never been more tempted by anything in her life.
Except for maybe that 3D printer I saw at last year’s tech conference.
Unfortunately, at ten G’s, it’d been out of her price range.
No, no. On second thought, I want Sam more.
He wassoclose. All it’d take was three, maybe four inches, and she’d have him lip-locked. Maybe she could fake a rolling chair malfunction that just,oopsie, happened to have her mouth landing on his and—
“Hannah.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face and she blinked. “Where’d you go?”
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “What was the question?”
A concerned frowned drew his eyebrows together. “The area code?”
“Oh, right.” She keyed in a quick Google inquiry, then sat back and covertly slipped a watermelon Jolly Rancher into his hip pocket.
It was a trick she’d been doing since she was a kid and first learned he loved them.
Once the webpage she was after opened, she nodded. “Yeah. I’m not surprised. This”—she pointed at the monitor—“says 896 is an unassigned area code.”
“Meaning what? The number you found isn’t right?”
“No. It’s right. It was simply fabricated out of thin air by someone with a little know-how. Probably so they could use it just that once and then discard it.”
When Sam straightened, taking his tempting lips with him, she didn’t know whether to sigh with relief or cry out in disappointment.
“So, what? We’re screwed?” He ran a hand over his beard and she enjoyed a brief fantasy of what it might feel like to have that beard brushing against her neck, over her nipples, between her thighs.
“Not necessarily.” She had to force herself not to shift uncomfortably because her brief daydream had made parts of her southern hemisphere heat up. “Whoever made up the number probably sent the text via their PC as opposed to their cell phone. It’s possible if we try to…” She trailed off as her fingers flew over the keyboard.
For a good five minutes, she worked her magic until… “There.” She pointed at the glowing curser as it blinked on the screen. “If they’re monitoring anyone trying to communicate with that number, and if they’ll deign to answer, we should see a response come in here.”
