Hot Intent. Cindy Dees

face fell. “Just a vanilla research job, huh?”

      “An aggressively defended name,” he corrected. “Nearly killed my home system earlier.”

      She perked up. “Well, then. That’s better. Let’s have this name.”

      “Cold Intent.”

      “What the hell is that?” Blondie demanded.

      “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he retorted.

      “Race ya,” she challenged.

      “The bet?”

      “Loser buys me a tattoo.”

      He grinned. “What if I win?”

      “You ain’t gonna win, old man.”

      “If I do, I want a copy of the algorithm you used to hack the IRS last year.”

      She sucked in a sharp breath, but she eventually shrugged. “You’re gonna lose, so what the hell. Deal.”

      He threaded past a half dozen people staring at computer screens and sat down at a terminal in the back where no one could look over his shoulder. He started to type. Come to papa, Cold Intent.

CHAPTER THREE

      KATIE WOKE UP SLOWLY. The sun was shining in around the edges of the heavy curtains too brightly. She lurched up out of bed and raced down the hall to Dawn’s bedroom. The baby was still asleep. Wow. Nearly 7:00 a.m.

      She tiptoed down the hall to Alex’s office. What on earth had he been working on so hard yesterday? She poked her head in the door to ask—

      Huh. He wasn’t there. She backed out and headed for the kitchen. His car keys were gone from the hook on the wall. That was weird. Where would he go this early? Particularly without telling her?

      Alarmed, she headed back to his office. His computer was running some sort of diagnostic that she probably couldn’t interrupt. She spied a legal pad on his desk. What looked like rows of random numbers covered it. Although knowing Alex and his huge background in math, the numbers weren’t random at all. The rows of digits were interrupted by a single pair of words tucked off to one side of the pad. Cold Intent. What was that?

      She heard the front door unlocking and moved out of his office before he could catch her snooping. She greeted Alex. “You look exhausted. Have you been working all night?”

      He made an affirmative sound.

      “Coffee or sleep?” she asked sympathetically.

      “Sleep.”

      “By all means.” She’d heard that doctors’ spouses had to get used to some weird working hours. Not that Alex had hinted in any way about marriage, of course. The poor guy was barely getting used to the idea of having a girlfriend, let alone a daughter. Of course , the obvious question—exactly how long was she planning to wait for him to get used to having a family—lingered in the back of her mind, a grenade without a pin in it. But for now, she kept her fingers wrapped around the handle and the bomb deactivated.

      She heard Alex’s shower running while she dressed Dawn and fed her breakfast. The baby was starting to feed herself, which entailed much hilarity with flying food and lots of cleaning up. After breakfast, Dawn settled down to play with a pile of stuffed animals in need of chewing and tossing while Katie flipped on the television to check out the news. Ever since she’d hooked up with a spy, she paid much closer attention to world events than before.

      Not that she was exactly sure what Alex was anymore. Supposedly, now that his training was finished, he would go back to work as a humanitarian aid doctor.

      The morning news focused mostly on a hurricane entering the Caribbean. It was forecasted to grow into a major storm. Current storm tracks had it pointed at Cuba. Too bad. The impoverished nation needed a natural disaster like it needed a hole in the head. The news moved on to a shooting in a shopping mall somewhere on the west coast, and Dawn squalled. Katie picked her up quickly and shushed her lest she wake Alex. Sensing a bout of baby squeals and babble coming on, she bundled Dawn up and took her out onto the terrace for some fresh air.

      Dawn bounced up and down excitedly in her walker, and Katie pulled out her cell phone to check her texts and email. Nothing much was happening with her friends or family. Bored, she pulled up a search engine and typed in the phrase she’d seen on Alex’s desk.

      Her phone took a long time doing the search, and when the results finally flashed up on the small screen, they were worthless. Every hit had both of the words in it, but not together. It was a bust. She would have to wait until Alex woke up to ask him what it meant. She shrugged and strolled along behind Dawn, enjoying the early-springtime sun. Winter in Washington, D.C., was a gray, wet affair, and she was ready for some decent weather.

      After nearly an hour outside, Dawn caught one of the wheels of her walker on a pavement joint, and without warning the whole thing started to tip over. Katie dived for the baby and walker just as the waist-high ceramic planter beside her exploded. Black dirt flew everywhere. What the heck? The baby started and let out a howl while Katie brushed dirt off both of them.

      “Get inside,” Alex barked from the sliding glass door to his bedroom.

      Katie looked up, shocked to see the blunt shape of a pistol in his fist. Keeping her head down, she raced through the door behind him. Dawn started to cry in earnest, no doubt sensing Katie’s panic. Alex slipped outside, closing the door behind him, while Katie tried to calm the baby. But Dawn was having no part of it.

      Had the sharp warm-up overnight caused the cold ceramic to crack? Alex was going to be annoyed if that was what woke him up. He was so jumpy since he got back. Was he going to whip out a gun at every loud noise?

      The outside door slid open, and she tensed. Okay, so she was jumpy, too. Hard not to be after all the crap last year. A bunch of people had made a good-faith effort to kill the three of them and nearly succeeded. And for the first time, they were all back together.

      “Shooter’s gone,” Alex bit out.

      “It was just a big pot cracking—”

      He dropped something small and irregular on the bedspread. It looked like a pebble. She picked it up to examine it.

      “Medium caliber slug,” he said tersely.

      “You’re saying someone shot at you out there?”

      “No. Someone shot at you. I dug that out of the dirt from the big planter that broke right beside you.”

      She lurched. “Are we under attack? Do I need to get Dawn to the safe room?”

      He shook his head briefly in the negative. “Shooter’s fled the area. We’re clear.” His syllables were clipped but stripped of any actual emotion.

      Wasn’t he the slightest bit freaked out that someone had just shot at her? “Who was it?”

      He shrugged. “I got no visual. I’ve called Langley, though, to have them pull satellite telemetry.”

      “Now what?” she asked nervously. “What do we do?”

      “Do? Nothing. It’s over. You’re safe. I’ll investigate who shot at you. When I know the source of the threat, I’ll eliminate it.”

      God, not even a bump of emotion entered his voice as he casually talked about killing someone. A chill rattled across her skin. Who was this man? What had they turned him into? She stared at him in dismay. “But I thought we were done with all of that. The people who came after us before are all dead or in custody. It’s finished. They told me it was all over. And no one’s tried to kill me and Dawn since you left. Why now? If someone wants to kill me, why wait until the person who can best protect me comes home?”

      He exhaled hard. “I kicked a hornet’s nest yesterday. This is my fault.”

      She