Above Temptation Read online

  “So why is the bank processing the extra instructions?”

  “I think because computers do what they’re told.”

  Tamara took a deep breath. “Someone’s hacking into our instructions before they hit the bank? I did the protection system myself and… Let’s say it’s nearly impossible. Those systems are tight.”

  “Tighter than a bank’s own security protocol?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, there’s only two explanations,” Kip said slowly. “If it wasn’t done on SFI’s mainframe, then it was done on the banks’ systems.”

  Tamara was shaking her head. “That seems equally impossible.”

  “Yes,” Kip said, nodding. “I know. But I checked a few of the SFI mainframe files. It wasn’t that hard to open them for reading only.”

  “You didn’t find the originals,” Tamara said confidently. “Those were copies and meant to be accessible.”

  “Well, if those are valid copies, our ledger files appear intact and unedited. I’m not an expert, though.”

  “I’d be able to tell,” Tamara said. “Damn—my day is incredibly busy tomorrow and I won’t get the chance.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Kip said sharply.

  “You want to call in someone else to do it? I wrote the safeguards myself… Oh. I get it.” Her face was like stone. “Later someone might say I used the opportunity to erase my work.”

  Kip could not stop her lips from trembling. She felt like she was riding a seesaw blindfolded, up and down with no ability to predict or control the motion. She believed Tamara and her heart—stupid thing—sang. Then she thought Tamara was guilty and she ached with betrayal. Up and down, up and down, with the ground never under her feet.

  Tamara was looking at her questioningly. “Do you think that’s what I meant to do?”

  Kip lowered her gaze to the bleak landscape of papers. “We’re looking for someone who can do the impossible on a computer. I don’t think it would look good at all for you to go—”

  “Kip.”

  She had to look at her. She could not trust her. “We’re looking for someone who can break into a bank computer, find the legitimate transaction entered properly and append an additional line of instructions. Without setting off alarms and without messing up the processing totals.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No,” she said softly. “I didn’t.”

  In the soft lantern light, Tamara’s eyes were oceans deep, unreadable. Kip knew it wasn’t the same with her. She could not find The Stare, could not even blink and look away.

  “You’re a good investigator,” Tamara said finally, and she finally broke their intense gaze, leaving Kip feeling as if she had nevertheless disappointed her. “Since I know I’m innocent, however, you’ll have to excuse me if I proceed on that basis.”

  Kip didn’t respond to that comment. Instead she said, “There’s a further complication.”

  Tamara pursed her lips and looked at her through lowered lashes. “How does this get more complicated?”

  “So far, I’ve listed thirty-five destination accounts. This is a talented thief, so those accounts are likely already closed, making the traces complex.”

  She sighed again. “I can’t believe this is happening at SFI.”

  “Even the best of people can be tempted.”

  Tamara shook her head. “No, the best people aren’t tempted, and they can’t be bought. If I didn’t believe that, I’d close up shop tomorrow.”

  Kip said quietly, “I believe that too. But we have both worked cases where people thought above suspicion gave in to the lure of money. Sometimes for a loved one’s sake. Sometimes for all the best reasons to do a wrong thing.” She wanted to ask Tamara if she had a reason like that, but couldn’t make herself do it.

  “For love and country,” Tamara said, her face turned again toward the shadow. “McVeigh truly thought he was saving America when he blew up all those people in Oklahoma City.”

  There’s something she’s not telling me, Kip thought. A secret—like so many she’s keeping, apparently. “Patriotism can be played out in the strangest ways, yes.”

  “Your grandfather was a patriot.” She seemed almost relieved to shift the topic.

  “He was,” she agreed. “Loyal to the office of the President, therefore to the Constitution. Like something out of a Jimmy Stewart movie.”

  “Did you know that even a sophisticated data search doesn’t turn up your service file?” Tamara asked the question casually, but the hand on the table was tensed.

  Kip bit back a gasp of anger. “You had no right—”

  “I hate mysteries,” she said.

  “Why I left the Service has nothing to do with working for you.” Kip stood up, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  Tamara looked up at her. “I thought you personally had some sort of indiscretion and I got cold feet. So I checked you out on my own this afternoon. I have to know how far I can trust you.”

  Kip’s heart was pounding. “I think that stinks.”

  “How many innocent people do you investigate before you find the guilty one?” She was standing now, slowly moving to her side of the table.

  “Dozens. And it stinks, too. I don’t like probing into people’s lives when they’ve done nothing wrong. Ted Langhorn and Diane Morales have done nothing to deserve my prying through their financials. Besides, I’m not a suspect being investigated. You were just curious.” Her voice faded away as she considered that she was, once again, not using the wisest tone with her client.

  How ironic, she thought. I don’t know if I can trust her, and yet it stings to know there was a moment when she didn’t trust me. Maybe, her devil’s advocate argued, she checked up on you to see if you could be bought.

  “I’m trusting you with everything that matters to me,” Tam said quietly. “I’m sorry I blurted it out like that. I did feel guilty afterward.”

  Kip swallowed noisily. “We’re even because I don’t know how to tell you all the little things I know about you that you probably wish I didn’t.”

  Tam’s expression clouded slightly with wariness. “Such as…?”

  There was nothing for it. “Nobody knows where your adoptive parents were born. The data on your passport application can’t be verified. There’s no record of when you immigrated to the U.S. And so on.”

  Tamara’s breath caught—it was almost a gasp. “How…?” She pressed her lips together, staring at Kip intensely.

  She felt ensnared by Tamara’s eyes, but her fight-or-fly instincts weren’t engaged. She was terrified, but not because she felt in physical danger. “I hired some very good help who suggested that Tamara Sterling was a cover.”

  “And if it was, it’s blown.”

  Kip nodded. She ought to be on alert. Tamara could snap her neck and toss her overboard with no one the wiser until at least morning, perhaps longer. Nobody knew she was even here. But her body refused to feel threatened. What could it possibly know that she didn’t?

  “What do you think?”

  That I don’t know and it’s killing me, Kip wanted to say. Instead, she spoke another truth. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “It concerns what some might think an odd matter, but I will say it’s very, very private.”

  “Who were your adoptive parents, then? Their last name wasn’t Sterling.”

  “No. But then as you’ve guessed,” Tam said coolly, “they didn’t exist.”

  She drew in a sharp breath with a needle of anxiety jabbing under her ribs. “I truly don’t understand.”

  Tamara shrugged. “I’m surprised to learn that my passport didn’t pass close scrutiny. It used to. I’ve been Tamara Sterling for twenty-five years. Who I was before that really doesn’t have anything to do with any of this.”

  Kip blurted out, “I can’t clear you as a suspect.”

  Tamara’s answer was a quiet, “I know.”

  “I want to.” She
admitted it before she could stop herself. “I do believe some people are above temptation.”

  Tamara nodded. “I know you do. You’re like me. You know yourself. You know if you’re above temptation other people can be as well.”

  Kip had to lower her gaze. There was a flare of something in those gray eyes that was too dangerous and she could no longer ignore the warning alarms in her head. Her arms were trembling with the effort it took to keep them at her sides. A good investigator always stood in the middle of the evidence. Leaning too soon one way or the other was a sure way to lose her balance. It was too soon and too risky to lean.

  “Kip?” Tamara took a deep breath. She had been calm only moments before, but now tension was written all over her body—shoulders bunched, nervous flexing of her fingers. “Do you really think I’m guilty?”

  The abrupt question startled Kip out of her reverie. Her heart told her to say no, she didn’t think she was guilty. All the earlier camaraderie they’d shared during dinner was gone. You fool, Kip railed at herself, you fool. She felt her Secret Service mask descend on her face. “I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  Tamara finally said, “You’re tough, Kip Barrett.”

  “I have to be.”

  She shifted again out of the light. “All day, every day?”

  Kip found herself missing the feeling of Tamara’s gaze on her. The feeling that Tamara wasn’t telling her something relevant was pronounced. She got to her feet and gathered up her papers. “I don’t know what to do next. I need to directly gather the keycard user data, which I can’t do without your help. And you can’t help. I think no matter what I do, I’m going to tip off the thief.”

  Tamara was silent. There were too many shadows, and not just because of the low light. For the first time, Kip felt a shiver of physical fear whisper over the back of her neck.

  She needlessly added, “Lots of puzzle pieces but not enough to see any kind of picture. There are things I just don’t know.” She let the unspoken question dangle in the air.

  Finally, turning away from the railing, Tamara said, “I might be able to add some pieces to the puzzle. I’m not sure they fit at all. And I have no proof for any of it but my own word unless we bring in some of the other directors.”

  She nodded, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “For the last three weeks we’ve had an unusual number of potential clients cancel pitch meetings, including one that looked like a sure thing. Big rush, secret meeting—canceled without explanation. It’s happening in all of the offices. The office directors are looking into it. This morning we lost the standing contract from the New York office of a major client. I expect to find the same for the office here any day.”

  Kip considered the information. “A rumor do you think?”

  “Yes, Diane and I thought so.”

  She disgested the casual intimacy of “Diane and I” and refused to let it unsettle her. “It’s almost as if…” She paused, not wanting to sound stupid.

  “As if what?”

  “Well…” She swallowed and summed up her thoughts. “Embezzlement is theft. But we both know that theft is sometimes motivated not by greed but the desire to steal from a particular person or company. If this was about money alone, someone with that kind of talent could go after an oil company, grab seven hundred million, not the penny ante quantities in SFI’s accounts. If it’s not about money, then it’s directed at SFI for other reasons. An attack.”

  Tamara cocked her head. “These rumors certainly feel like an attack. But why?”

  Kip shrugged. “Thinking horses, not zebras, it’s aimed at you or SFI, which are sometimes one and the same. Lots of people would love to see our credibility jeopardized. We must have close to a hundred pending cases on dockets all over the country. A little high-end cybercrime combined with malicious gossip…”

  Tam was nodding. “And presto! SFI isn’t the company it once was. We become the same pariah as an accounting firm caught faking its audits, then trying to testify to the veracity of our findings.”

  “Exactly.”

  “An attack.” Tamara nodded slowly. “They’d have to have an accomplice inside to doctor the statements.”

  “And that could be nearly anybody. I think the security attached to keycards was tampered with.”

  “Child’s play for this kind of hacker.”

  The relief in Tamara’s voice was plain. Not a trusted, close associate. If a disabling attack by a hired gun was the why and who, Kip told herself, that meant who Tamara Sterling is, or was, really didn’t matter.

  It did, though. It deeply mattered to her.

  “The bank hacking—that’s not cheap or easy,” Kip pointed out.

  “I can only think of a handful who could do it.”

  “Including you?”

  Tam stilled and drew back until her face was shadowed again. “Including me.”

  For a moment there was only the sound of water lapping against the dock.

  Finally, Tam asked, “Do you really still think it could be me?”

  With all her heart Kip wanted to say no. But what did her heart understand? Nothing, that’s what. She had to do her job. Would Tamara Sterling respect anything else?

  Her hesitation was her answer.

  Her tone crisp and cold, Tamara asked, “Is that your full report?”

  Kip returned the papers to her briefcase, feeling two inches tall. “That’s all.”

  Tamara said nothing as Kip closed her case and turned to the gangplank. As she stepped over the lip to leave the deck, Kip skidded a little, nearly losing her grip on her briefcase.

  Tamara steadied her with a firm grasp on her wrist.

  “I’m fine,” Kip muttered.

  Tamara’s words seemed wrenched from her throat. “I’m not.”

  Kip gazed up at her, her breath coming in short gasps. There was no light in the gray eyes, only a dark hunger that both frightened and inflamed her. She could not want her and yet she knew she did. She looked down at where Tamara’s hand circled her wrist. It was a conscious decision to turn her palm over so she was no longer captive, and their contact was now obviously by her choice as well.

  Her briefcase clattered to the deck as Tam pulled her close with a throaty groan. The strength of her grasp was surprisingly strong—Kip had the feeling Tam would have no trouble lifting her off her feet. The thought was forgotten as Tam’s rough gasp of surprise and desire was matched by her own.

  She arched against her, heedless of the alarms that went off in her head. Her brain wasn’t in control anymore. Her arms wrapped around Tam’s shoulders of their own accord, and her mouth opened to the demanding pressure. The sweatshirt did not mask the pounding of Tam’s heart and Kip felt hers match the ever-quickening beat.

  Kip groaned when they broke that long, incredible kiss, then she kissed her again, hard and quick. Tam’s hands were caressing her back and ribs as if she wanted to commit the feel of her body to memory.

  This was wrong—her boss, it was wrong, a suspect, it was so wrong. All her hard-fought adherence to a code of ethics did not allow for this passion to exist, but it did. She buried her face in Tam’s neck as cool hands slipped under her sweater. She didn’t know how she could compromise herself this way and hope to have any honor left. She wanted Tam no matter what she might have done, yet having her was as painful as not having her. The Tamara Sterling that Kip wanted so badly to believe existed couldn’t respect Kip for this moment even if Tamara Sterling the woman was enjoying it.

  Tam whispered, “Don’t cry,” before Kip realized she was whimpering. “I’m sorry. This was my fault.”

  “It’s not just you,” she whispered. “But this isn’t going to happen.” She knew if they didn’t stop now she would be asking for more than kisses. The cold air chilled her tears on her lashes as she stooped to recover her briefcase.

  “No, it isn’t.” Tam said nothing more.

  She managed to stride down the pier, her head up as if tears weren’t again
spilling over her cheeks. She even managed a mocking salute when she reached her car, not sure she had been seen. She could not make out Tam’s body in the darkness but her own body told her Tam was still there, still watching her.

  Chapter Eight

  Tam watched Kip’s taillights disappear at the top of the marina ramp. She stayed in the frigid air for several more minutes, trying to make it the equivalent of the cold shower she badly needed. What had she been thinking? Had she wanted comfort from Kip so badly that she’d been willing to compromise her to get it? Kip had cried—she could still feel her tears on her neck.

  Dinner had been both a pleasure and a torment. She could see that Kip doubted her and it had at first stung, then burned. She’d wanted to erase the doubts, but—damn, she’d been a fool.

  Her fingers clenched on the rail. She should not have expected Kip to dismiss her as a suspect on her say-so. She should not have expected Kip to be less than she was. So why was she shaken by Kip’s lack of trust? Intellectually, she understood why Kip was suspicious of her—it was her job. Her excellence at her job was why Tam had picked her and respected her. Then she had taken all of that and forgotten it in order to hold Kip close and feel her warmth.

  As her thoughts turned over and over she forced herself back to the things she could do something about. Someone had expertly helped themselves to almost seven million of SFI’s dollars and if Kip Barrett thought it a possibility that she had done it, others would too. Well, she knew it wasn’t her. She needed to look at their upcoming dockets and find the most likely people on trial with the scruples to try to bring down SFI to save themselves jail time for their crimes. The answer was there, and thanks to Kip—lovely, tenacious, honor-bound Kip—she at least had an idea where to start looking.

  Whoever had tampered with the security settings to allow more people into the secure accounting area had probably left tracks on pathways that Tam knew very well. Plus, a simple printout of personnel not assigned to accounting that had accessed the accounting area with their keycards could spot the inside accomplice. She could pull that data without anyone knowing. Inadmissible, true, but she didn’t need admissible data to form her own theory of the crime.