All He Wants For Christmas.... Kelly Hunter

the screen.

      The file took an agonisingly slow ten seconds to download, and then Damon was back at the keyboard, fingers flying.

      ‘You’re getting out of the FBI pages now, right?’ she said.

      ‘Right.’

      And straight into the British intelligence system, and Ruby’s stomach lurched and her pulse rate soared all over again. ‘Hell of a ride,’ she said but he was gone again, skimming through supposedly secure cyberspace with an ease that made her gasp.

      Another download link, but no agony of hesitation this time for Ruby. They were done and gone, with a swiftness she found hard to comprehend. All the way out this time. Two files stored on a USB the size of a thumbnail. Laptop off and opened up with a tiny screwdriver. One of the motherboard components replaced.

      Fifteen minutes from start to finish, and they were walking back down those shabby hotel stairs and handing the door card over to Reception.

      ‘Any decent cheap yum cha restaurants around here?’ he asked the man, and got directions and nodded, while Ruby sweated and smiled and tried to resist the urge to flee.

      ‘Please tell me we’re not going back there,’ she said when they were two shopfronts away and Ruby was walking faster than she’d ever walked before, every nerve ending buzzing and every neon sign a thousand times brighter than it had been fifteen minutes ago. She ran her hands up and down her arms, mildly surprised she didn’t give off sparks.

      ‘We’re not, right?’

      ‘Right.’

      Damon’s pace had quickened too. Ruby was practically skipping. ‘So … where are we going?’

       ‘Yum cha?’

      ‘Are you serious?’ He couldn’t possibly be serious. He was.

      ‘Not yum cha,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sit still. I’m feeling …’ ‘Wired.’ ‘Exactly.’

      ‘It’ll pass.’

      ‘Yes, but when?’

      ‘Soon,’ he said with a kick to his mouth that warned her she was amusing him.

      ‘Look!’ She pointed to a shopfront across the road. ‘Chinese massage. They’re very relaxing. We could have one of those.’

      ‘It’s a brothel, Ruby.’

      ‘Oh.’ Ruby took a closer look. ‘Brothel. Good pick-up. Maybe I just need to go back to the apartment and go for a swim. Soothing. Tactile. Potential to expend energy.

      Plenty of energy happening here at the moment, Damon. Possibly a little too much.’ ‘Breathe, Ruby.’

      ‘I am. It’s not helping. I really need to get rid of some of this energy now. You are so hot when you’re hacking, by the way. Who knew?’

      ‘The things I do for you,’ he murmured, and swung her into an alleyway and pinned her against the wall, his mouth mere millimetres from her own. ‘Settle down, Ruby.’

      ‘Or what?’ she whispered, just before she snaked her hand around his neck and drew him down for a hot, open exploration of his mouth. Plenty of energy happening between them at the moment. Enough tactile stimulation to make her forget her own name.

      Damon groaned and the kiss turned incendiary. Energy released only now the concern was that they’d both go up in flames.

      ‘You’ll get us arrested,’ he murmured, with a nip for her mouth as he wrapped his hand around her wrist, dragged it away from his neck and set them walking again. ‘Time to get you home, Ruby. Now.’

      ‘Authority has always really worked for me,’ she said breathlessly and meant every word. ‘Seriously, who doesn’t love a man who knows how to take charge? An expert in his chosen field. How did you get into this field, by the way? I’m assuming it wasn’t part of any school study curriculum.’

      ‘It was something of a calling.’

      ‘Ah. Junior hacker, were you?’

      ‘Not now, Ruby.’

      ‘I’m thinking school database, assessment marks in need of rearranging …’

      ‘I was doing them a service. Pointing out the holes in the system.’

      ‘Of course you were. How old were you at the time? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

      ‘Twelve.’

      ‘What a brat.’ Two more steps and Ruby stopped dead. ‘Damon, I think I’ve found a solution to the energy crisis. See that clothes shop on the other side of the road? It’s open.’

      ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘But isn’t it a little Hello Kitty for you?’

      ‘You mean it’s a shop for teens? I can do teen wear.’ Ruby nodded vigorously. ‘I’m a felon. I can do anything.’

      ‘Technically, you’re only an accessory.’

      ‘Wrong. The skills were yours but I think you’ll find I’m a first-degree principal, which is what you intended all along. You had to draw me in. Make me part of it so that I wouldn’t talk about it. Which I won’t. Ever. When do I get the files?’

      ‘You don’t. You get to read through them when you’re ready, take from them what you can and then I destroy them.’

      ‘I’m ready,’ she said, and the glance he cut her told her more plainly than words his thoughts on her readiness for anything.

      ‘No, really. I am. I am fully aware that these are not the sort of files you want to have hanging around. I should look at them soon.’

      ‘When you’re ready,’ he said, quietly inflexible. ‘You’re not ready.’

      ‘It’s this heady life of crime. It’s frying my brain.’

      ‘It’ll pass.’

      ‘The pertinent question still being when?’ ‘Soon.’

      ‘You have no idea how alive I feel at the moment,’ she said. ‘Do you feel alive too?’

      ‘Yes.’ With more than a hint of amusement about him.

      ‘Does it ever get old for you? The ha—your work?’

      ‘No,’ he said and finally his smile came wide and unguarded. ‘No, this never gets old.’

      They made it back to Ruby’s apartment eventually. Damon insisting they only take a short train hop and then a taxi the rest of the way home. Perhaps he wanted to make sure no one was following them and a tail was easier to spot in a taxi, but Ruby didn’t ask and Damon didn’t say. She asked him if he wanted a drink once they reached the kitchen—manners, Ruby—and when he said yes she asked what would he like and he said Scotch if she had it.

      ‘Good choice,’ she murmured and poured one for herself too, before setting a bowl of peanuts on the counter, and eyeing the backpack he’d placed on the stool next to him with a mixture of apprehension and longing.

      ‘I may not be ready, Damon, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to settle until I know what those files say about my father,’ she told him, and he nodded and unzipped the pack and pulled out the computer and set it up to go before turning the computer around to face Ruby.

      ‘Have at it.’

      ‘Okay, Ruby,’ she said more to herself than anyone else. ‘You can do this.’ And opened the first file.

      Fifteen minutes later she was none the wiser as to where her father was or what had happened to him.

      ‘The bank’s investigation team got called off by the FBI. The Feds referred it to the British, and as far as British Intelligence is concerned they’re not pursuing