Serious Risks. Rachel Lee

spread his hands, as if to say, “See?” “Could I take you up on that coffee now, Jessica?”

      “Yes, of course.” She went to the kitchen to get it, impressed with how quickly Arlen Coulter had picked up on something she’d entirely missed, something even the security officer, Dave Barron, had entirely missed, in spite of all the questioning she’d endured today.

      She was also uncomfortably impressed with a few other things, like how good Arlen Coulter looked. Few men her own age and younger looked half as good as Arlen did, and he must be somewhere over forty. He also made her uncomfortably aware of him. And of herself. She was most definitely not accustomed to such feelings, and she supposed she should be grateful that he was a married man and therefore could be no more than a passing and temporary ripple in her tranquility. She would get used to how good he looked, and that would be that.

      An expression of determination on her face, she marched back into the living room with a tray bearing two cups of coffee, the sugar bowl and creamer. Setting the tray on the cherry coffee table between them, she asked, “Cream or sugar?”

      “Black, thank you.” Arlen looked at the dainty china cups and saucers with their delicate pattern of roses and wondered when was the last time he had seen anyone serve coffee in anything but a mug. Aunt Celeste, he remembered. His wife’s great-aunt had always served coffee in bone china teacups. It wasn’t until Andrew was born that Celeste had astonished Arlen one day by handing him a large mug with his name painted on its side. “You’ve accommodated to our family customs a great deal, my boy,” she’d said in her stentorian voice, “and I thought it was high time we accommodated to one of yours.” Until she died at the age of ninety, Celeste had made sure that Arlen’s coffee was always served in a mug whenever he visited any of his wife’s relatives. Damn, he still missed the warm, wonderful, tough old lady.

      “These are lovely cups,” he said now to Jessica, compelled by his memory of the elderly woman. Celeste had taught him whatever drawing-room manners he could claim, and Lord knew there were few enough.

      Jessica smiled with pleasure. “Thank you. I found them in an antique shop a few months ago. The entire set, in fact, without a chip or a missing piece.” They’d cost dearly, but they were an essential part of the home she was trying to create.

      “They remind me of some dishes my wife’s aunt used to have,” Arlen remarked. “I’ve been terrified of breaking the darn things ever since the first time I ate dinner at Aunt Celeste’s.” He gave Jessica a rueful smile. “She was a wonderful old lady, but her blasted dishes have haunted my entire adult life. They must be a hundred years old, and every time they get passed on to a new generation, they just take on more sentimental value. Aunt Celeste got them as a wedding gift from her husband. Then, when she passed on, they went to my wife, and now my daughter has them.”

      His daughter had them? Jessica felt she had missed something somewhere. “Your daughter has them?” she repeated questioningly.

      Arlen looked up from the cup, his gray eyes unfocused. “I’m afraid my wife is gone.”

      “Gone?”

      Jessica’s eyes strayed to his ring, and Arlen followed the direction of her gaze.

      “I haven’t been able to bring myself to take it off,” he admitted. “She died over three years ago.”

      Jessica hardly knew how to respond to that. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly.

      Arlen shook his head, giving her another rueful smile. “My fault for wearing the ring.” Lifting one of the delicate cups, he took a sip of coffee. “The coffee is delicious, Jessica.”

      “Thank you.” A widower who still wore his wedding ring after three years was as safe as a married man, she figured. Maybe safer. And probably a whole lot safer when he was an FBI agent.

      “Okay.” Arlen picked up his pad again and made a quick note. “Let’s get back to this morning, Jessica. What exactly did you do when you arrived at MTI? Start in the parking lot.”

      So she took him step-by-step through a day that had grown more frustrating with each passing minute. From the parking lot she had entered the building through the main entrance. Most mornings security waved her through on sight because the day shift recognized her well after six years. This morning, however, she’d arrived before the shift change and had had to stop to display her identification. It had been a small, routine matter, and she had taken the opportunity to clip her badge on her collar, where it would have to stay the rest of the day anyhow.

      The empty elevator had carried her up to the second-floor corridor, and a brief walk had brought her to the locked door of the controlled area that held her office, along with a dozen others. There she had keyed in her code on the alphanumeric keypad beside the door, and the door had unlocked for her.

      Once in her office, she had opened her safe to remove the items she needed for work: first the hard disk, which she installed in the drive case attached to the side of her computer. Then she had pulled out the second drawer of the safe, and it was as she was removing the suspense envelope that she noted the conspicuous absence of the red folder that contained a Secret NATO document.

      Her first thought, of course, was that she was mistaken, that somehow the hanging file folder had come off the tracks and slipped down between the other folders to the bottom of the drawer. Item by item she had examined the contents of the drawer, checking every red folder twice, finally examining each and every one of the blue folders and their Confidential documents, as well.

      “And that’s when you called security?” Arlen asked.

      “No.” Jessica flushed faintly. “I decided I must have been mistaken about where the folder was last night. So I looked through the bottom drawers, too. Document by document. That’s when I called security.”

      Arlen’s pen made faint noises as it moved quickly across a fresh page in his notebook. “You said you were sure the document was there last night.”

      “I was. I am. It’s just that when I couldn’t find it this morning, the last thought that occurred to me was that somebody had gotten into my safe overnight. It was easier to believe I was mistaken.”

      He looked up, and his expression was reassuring. “I know. But I have to ask.”

      And he kept on asking. At some point or other, Jessica started to feel immune to the implications of some of the questions and found herself more aware of Arlen. The longer she was with him, the more she became cognizant of his magnetism.

      “Jessica?”

      Her gaze focused on Arlen, and a painful blush crept into her face.

      “You’re tired,” he said kindly. “Just a few more questions, if you think you can stand it.”

      Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire, and she had to remind herself that Arlen Coulter couldn’t read her mind. “Sure,” she managed to say. “I’m not all that tired.”

      “Did you change the combination on your safe today?”

      Jessica shook her head. “I don’t know how to do it. Security always does that, and since they don’t believe that somebody got into my safe last night, I don’t think they’re going to change it.”

      Arlen slapped his notebook closed and hooked his pen onto the cover. “I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen tomorrow. I may be wrong, but if I’m right, I want you prepared to carry it off.”

      Jessica leaned forward a little, fixing her gaze attentively on his face. There was a faint, jagged scar under his lower lip, running diagonally from the corner of his mouth to the center of his chin. That must be what gave his smile that interesting lopsidedness.

      “I think,” Arlen said slowly, watching her from intent gray eyes, “the missing document will turn up sometime tomorrow.”

      Jessica’s eyes widened behind her glasses, and her lips parted on a breath. “Why?”

      Did she,