All He Wants For Christmas.... Kelly Hunter

mind. Ruby Maguire was thinking things through. ‘What kind of hacker are you? Or perhaps the more appropriate question would be, to what end do you hack?’

      ‘You cross-examining me, Ruby?’

      ‘You planning on answering the question, Damon?’

      Impasse.

      ‘Because, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounded to me as if you hack to acquire information. Like your brother’s whereabouts, for example.’

      ‘That one’s more of an unofficial side project detour … thing. Tiny. Really.’

      ‘Right,’ she drawled cuttingly. ‘So the rest of your work relates to the official collection of restricted information. How very reassuring.’

      ‘Shades of grey, Ruby,’ he murmured and Ruby shot him a filthy glare.

      ‘So you’re a spy. An information thief, all jacked in, new millennium style.’ And when he said nothing, ‘God, Damon. Have you any idea how many ethical buttons this pushes for me? There are other ways of getting information. Legal ways.’

      ‘Like, for example, you asking the FBI to share whatever information they have on your father? How’s that working out for you,

      Ruby?’

      ‘Shut up.’

      ‘Second oldest profession, or so they say. It’s not as if I’m breaking new ground here. Just newer ways of doing it. I work towards maintaining peaceful power balances between nations. How is that wrong?’

      Ruby’s steps had quickened, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Damon walked too, silence clearly the best option for now. How the hell had he got into this mess?

      Headbands were the devil’s work, he decided grimly. The next time he saw one he’d know to run.

      ‘I knew you had secrets,’ she said and fumbled through her satchel for her car keys. ‘I chose to spend time with you anyway. But this … I’ve got to hand it to you, Damon. Even for me this is a whole new level of secrets and lies. I knew I should have stayed away from you,’ she muttered. ‘Why the hell didn’t I?’

      He had no answer for her there. ‘You can’t tell anyone, Ruby.’

      ‘Yes, I gathered that,’ she said, and raised a shaking hand to her head. ‘Who else knows?’

      ‘My immediate family. My handler. Now you. Six people in ten years.’ It wasn’t a bad effort. He didn’t think it too bad a record.

      ‘God.’ She looked worried and so she should be. ‘I won’t tell anyone, Damon. You have my word.’

      ‘And in an ideal world, your word would be enough,’ he said quietly, but this wasn’t an ideal world. He needed to secure her silence and her loyalty. Bind her to him now, with whatever he had in hand.

      ‘What if I said I could help you find your father?’

       ‘What?’

      ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but …’ “

      She didn’t, or couldn’t, finish her sentence. Typical lawyer. Always a But.

      ‘I’m offering to contract out to you,’ he continued. ‘In return for your silence. You get news of your father. I acquire a hold on you I currently don’t have. Everyone wins.’

      ‘That’s blackmail.’

      ‘It’s necessary,’ he cut back hard. ‘And at the end of the day you get to walk away, I get the peace of mind I need to let you walk away and the people I work for get to remain none the wiser as to what you know. That’s worth something, Ruby. More than you know.’

      ‘Well, aren’t you chivalrous,’ she murmured, and favoured him with a tight-lipped smile.

      ‘I try.’

      This discussion wasn’t exactly going according to plan, decided Damon grimly. But then, nothing involving Ruby ever did.

      ‘I’m trying to protect you,’ he said curtly, and maybe Ruby heard the frustration in him for she eyed him uncertainly before looking to the car-park walls for answers, only there were none to be had there. He’d already looked.

      ‘Or I could let my superiors know I’ve broken cover with you and let them deal with the fallout. They won’t harm you, they’ll recruit you. Like it or not, you won’t have a choice. That’s the value they place on the work I do for them, Ruby. The cost of maintaining my cover. And the reason I never wanted you to know any of this in the first place.’

      ‘I knew you were trouble,’ she said again. ‘I knew.’

      Again, Damon said nothing. It wasn’t as if she were telling him anything new.

      ‘How would you do it?’ she said after a time. ‘My father could be anywhere. How would you set about finding him? Where would you even start?’

      ‘I’d access files various authorities have on him and get you to read them. See if what they have to say fits with what you remember. See if it throws up any ideas. And then we’ll continue from there.’

      ‘Couldn’t you just … send me a report?’

      ‘Sorry, Ruby. You don’t get to stay clean while I get dirty for you. I want you with me.’

      ‘And equally culpable.’ Damon shrugged. The short answer being yes.

      She looked ready to weep but she tilted her chin and squared her shoulders. ‘When do you need my answer on this?’

      ‘Now.’

      ‘And when would we do it?’

      He gentled his tone and hoped for her sake she could handle this. ‘Just as soon as we get you back to your apartment and get into different clothes.’

      ‘What kind of clothes?’ Ruby was willing to be distracted by the little things. It was a start.

      ‘The kind that don’t stand out.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

      IF RUBY could press a rewind button she would.

      This day would disappear for starters.

      Russell’s society luncheon would go.

      She wouldn’t go so far as to wipe Damon from memory completely but there were definitely things she would have done differently when it came to dealing with him.

      Such as not push him for personal information he so clearly hadn’t wanted to give.

      And not allow herself to become so enamoured of the physical side of their relationship that she lost all sense of self-preservation.

      Fooling around with Damon in his bedroom, with a party in full swing not six yards away. What kind of idiot behaviour was that?

      She’d thought she could play with Damon without consequence. Use him, as it were.

      She really had thought she could be intimate with him and come away unscathed. Wrong.

      ‘First a father who may or may not be guilty of the biggest heist in banking history, and now a computer hacker for a lover,’ she murmured, and a small cat peeked out from beneath her bed and regarded her solemnly. ‘I’m really not having a good run. And what the hell kind of clothes does a person wear when committing a hacking offence?’

      Damon had clothes in his backpack, or so he said. He’d retired to Ruby’s bathroom to get changed.

      Ruby tossed her jacket on the bed and began to rifle through her wardrobe. Jeans, they’d do. A black T-shirt she usually wore when cleaning things. Flat shoes … apart from