“Yes. Thereisa ghost in the machine. Look.” She pointed to the screen where a second set of emails now showed alongside the first set. “Someone cloned Agent Beacham’s email account and Director Morgan’s email account. They’re playing the middleman between the two.”
“I don’t understand.” He shook his head, looking a little dazed.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
“Whenever Agent Beacham sends an email to Morgan, it ends up in the mystery person’s inbox first. And the same when Morgan sends an email to Agent Beacham. Whoever this person is, they’re fudging the communications. Tampering with Agent Beacham’s messages before they get to the director and vice versa.”
“Right.” Sam shook his head like he was trying to gather his thoughts after her sneak attack. Then he gestured toward the mouse. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
For long minutes he scrolled through the email exchanges. She alternated between reading them with him and trying not to jump into his lap and kiss him again.
Only this time it wouldn’t be a peck. It’d be a long, slow, deep,wetkiss that left no room for misinterpretation. The kind of kiss that said,I want you.The kind of kiss that said,I’m a grown-ass woman.Seeme!
“Director Morgan has no idea Grace and her partner uncovered the truth about the people working for the troll farm,” Sam muttered. “He still thinks the employees there are oblivious to being hired by the Kremlin. And the stuff related to the account cutting their paychecks and the rejected subpoenas? The middleman never passed that bit of information on to him.”
“Which means the mole isn’t the directororwhomever he’s been sharing his information with,” she surmised. “The mole is whoever cloned these accounts.”
When Sam turned to her, she felt herself being sucked into the blue whirlpools of his irises. “Can you find out who it is?”
“I can try.” She nodded. “It might take me a while.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
She arched a flirty eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”
She expected him to brush her off as he’d being doing all along. Instead, his expression hardened. “Please stop, Hannah.”
“Stop what?” Nervousness made her voice catch. She didn’t like that look in his eye. And shedefinitelydidn’t like the muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Youknowwhat. The flirting. It was cute when you were thirteen. But it makes me uncomfortable now that you’re twenty-eight.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Okay.” He shrugged as if the difference was inconsequential.
Swallowing convulsively, she ventured, “I know you said it’s like incest, but we’renotrelated. So how could it possibly make you uncomfortable?”
His answer was immediate. “I don’t like having to reject you.”
Now it was her turn to say, “Okay.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah.”
“No.” She lifted a hand and shook her head, regretting that damned kiss. Obviously it hadn’t had the impact she’d wanted. Quite the opposite, it’d been a bridge too far. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.I’msorry for making you feel uncomfortable.”
His expression cleared. Softened. And when he chucked her on the chin and said, “No worries. We’re still friends, right?” it took everything she had not to dissolve into a puddle of tears.
In her twenty-nine years, she’d had to give up plenty of childhood dreams. Her dream of inventing reusable rockets for one. SpaceX had beaten her to that. Her dream of being the first woman to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office for another. The current Madam President had snagged that honor. And finally, her dream of winningJeopardywith Alex Trebek.Fuck cancer.But the disappointment she felt knowing she’d never reach any of those objectives didn’t hold a candle to the disappointment she felt having to admit her dream of making Sam fall head over heels for her was just that.
A dream.
Apipedream.
If he heard how hoarse her voice was when she said, “Still friends,” he didn’t mention it.
Instead, he simply smiled. “Good. I’m glad we got that settled.”
