Emily didn’t know what to make of it. Keyton Marshall sat in front of a market café, sipping a frothy cappuccino as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was wedged between two men at a small table, both speaking earnestly to him, seeming to pitch something. All three of them reeked of upper class, perfectly bred business men. They all had near-identical clean cut looks, well-tailored three piece suits, polished-to-a-sheen shoes and even matching briefcases.
It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to see each of them coming out of similar molds. The best schools, happily married with two point three children and the beloved family pet.
Was there some sort of secret handbook she’d missed out on?
Keyton listened politely to the two gents and didn’t appear at all bored. With his dark brown hair, brown eyes and thin-rimmed glasses, he seemed like almost any other businessman. Had she not known the power he wielded from his close connection to the Prime Minister she’d have thought him another banker, accountant or generic—albeit well-to-do—working stiff.
The pair appeared almost to tag team him, one picking up the thread the moment the other closed his mouth. With identical hand gesticulations and matching eager looks on their faces, Emily bet it was a major deal they were trying to pitch.
She’d almost come to the conclusion that Keyton wasn’t involved in selling secrets. But some inner instinct held her back from making a firm call on it. This was the fourth day of her following him and she couldn’t put her finger on what gnawed at the back of her mind. Marshall worked long hours in his office according to the tiny tracker she’d managed to hide under the lapel of his jacket.
Despite the late hour of his arrival home, every night this week she’d followed him. She’d witnessed the nightly ritual of him being greeted at the door with a steamy, loving kiss from his pretty wife and being climbed all over by dressing-gown clad children. Research had taught her that the son and daughter were six and two respectively, and that his wife of nine years seemed to genuinely love him and relished being a professional housewife.
Emily hadn’t been able to find any extra discretionary funds. Nor was there a hint of a mistress—male or female—whom Keyton kept in style. Indications of hidden tax benefits such as a beach house or real estate under a different family member’s name also turned up negative. While financial auditing wasn’t her forte, she’d become good at uncovering the simpler and more common methods of hiding untaxed assets.
Marshall didn’t fit any of the molds she was used to.
Many things held Emily back from calling James and accepting the job, but the most important was she believed in her own, personal, code of ethics. She had never yet killed an innocent person. Adhering to this code had become particularly important to her in the last few months as she questioned her actions.
One of the few things that had kept her going was the knowledge that she only killed those who deserved it. This was what helped her remain strong while she struggled with her doubt. Never once had she questioned the rightness of what she did.
She didn’t kill innocent people.
Ever.
The weight of doing such a thing would eat at her soul, destroy her slowly but surely. That sin would never be washed from her hands and would devastate her spirit more than anything else she could conceive of.
But Emily couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on here. Why would James send her after this man if he wasn’t selling secrets? James knew she tailed her subjects, surveyed them thoroughly and vetted every aspect of their lives. She never jumped in, accepting the money and killing without regard for her own beliefs. Emily couldn’t understand why James would send her after someone whom he wasn’t sure of.
James knew her well enough to know that if she found no evidence against the target, she’d never go through with the contract.
So why put Keyton Marshall in her sights in the first place?
Excerpt from Knight Takes Queen
“Oh. Well aren’t you a sneaky little bastard?” Jane Harvey muttered to her computer screen as her fingers flew over the keyboard. Clacking filled the air of her tiny office. Leaning closer to her monitor, Jane moved her eyes as code scrolled past rapidly.
“Oh yeah, didn’t expect that, did you, you jerk?”
As one of the technology experts for the Agency, Jane enjoyed regularly pitching her talent against all sorts of twisted new systems. This one, however, took her by surprise at just how ingenious it was. Even as she watched, she saw the hacker mutate the code she’d inserted.
“Hmm, that’s new,” she murmured.
“Talking to your screen again, Jane?”
Jane turned for a moment and saw Peter leaning casually against her doorframe. Even as her cheeks flushed warmly, she forced her attention back to her computer. Though how she was to ignore how tall and well built he was she didn’t know. Peter was far too handsome—Jane had been crushing on the blond, blue-eyed man for months now. In pinstriped suit pants with a matching charcoal vest and blue shirt, Peter should have looked old-fashioned or stodgy but somehow he managed to look sexy.
“Sometimes it’s the only one who understands half of what I say,” Jane replied lightly as she continued to try and thwart her opponent’s attempts at slipping a Trojan into the Agency’s secure network. “I know I haven’t made the next move on our chess game. I’m sorry. I thought you were on leave. Isn’t Maria due to pop any day now?”
“No worries, I just wanted to duck in and see you. It doesn’t always have to be about our little game. But yes, I’m hoping they reassign a new partner to me before she gives birth. I’m a lot harder to fob off if I’m present rather than hassling on email or something,” Peter said.
Their online chess game—a thoroughly against the rules one to boot—had started out as a bit of a lark. Peter had been bored and roaming around. He’d noticed her playing a game by herself. That had been the first proper, non-mission related conversation they’d had. One thing had led to another and when she’d narrowly beaten him he’d immediately challenged her to a rematch.
That had been a few months ago and their friendship had blossomed with a healthy dose of competitiveness, too.
Peter came into her office and his large presence filled it immediately. He took the only other chair and sat next to her. Jane forced herself not to fidget. Even with her eyes firmly locked on the screen, she couldn’t help but be electrically aware of how close he was. She smelled the light, masculine scent of his aftershave and reminded herself she was in the middle of something. There wasn’t time to turn, stare, and drool over Peter Abrams right now.
“Heaven forbid you grow bored, Peter,” Jane teased him. “No wonder you never made it as a tech. It’s often days of humdrum banality then something like this pops up. I swear this time management has gone a bit far. I know we need to be tested, to be proactive in upgrading our systems. But really…”
“What have you found?” Peter leaned in closer and Jane caught her breath. He glanced at her and once more she found her face heating.
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “I’d only be guessing, but my money is on that new technician, Roger, flexing his muscles. I’m well used to everyone else’s bag of tricks and this isn’t something I’ve come across before. The coding is amazing and convoluted. Well finessed. The target is trying to insert a Trojan into our system and I’m fighting him off, corrupting his code in real time.”
“How do you know it’s Roger?” Peter asked as he peered at the screen with her.
Jane smiled. “Well, it has to be someone from in the unit. They were already inside our firewalls and safety systems when they tripped a flag and came to my attention. Every couple of months management tests us like this, sets us against each other to playact duking it out. It keeps us sharp and can be used as a tool to make sure we understand how to follow the Agency’s procedures and fail-safes even when under pressure. It’s an exercise for us, like your physical tests or training courses.”
“But how can you be sure it’s not just a very good hacker?” Peter pressed. “Don’t these exercises usually come with prior notice?”
“Well,” Jane paused, distracted. “Well yeah, usually. We’re never told the date or anything. But a general notice that sometime in the coming month…but, but this can’t be a real attack. They started inside the system.”
She heard herself repeating the last comment like a talisman. Jane stopped typing and looked directly at Peter for the first time that afternoon. Her insides froze as panic threatened. Peter’s cool blue gaze didn’t waver from her and for the first time since she’d met him Jane didn’t have the urge to run her hands through his thick, blond hair.
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