Above Temptation Read online

  Nadia Langhorn slipped into the circle of Tam’s arms, leaving Tam little choice but to look down at her. She was aware that the brilliant blue eyes that were the most arresting feature in a delicate, heart-shaped face owed some of their luminous quality to tinted contact lenses, but that was Nadia. She gilded her lily beautifully.

  “Who’s who?”

  “Ted saw you on Sunday. Don’t be coy.” She looked up at her with a toss of her lustrous black hair. “I was going to ask last night, but not in front of the library people, of course. He said it looked as if you’d been with some snow bunny for the weekend. Did you take her up to your office to impress her? What else did you do up there?”

  Tam hid her relief that Ted hadn’t recognized Kip. “It would be exceedingly ungallant of me to discuss it.”

  “You and your pigheaded chivalry,” Nadia said. “I hate you for it, you know.” Her tone was casual, but she leaned into Tam’s side and an affectionate stroke of Tam’s face became sudden pressure on her bruised cheekbone. Tam jerked her head away from the jab of pain.

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask you about that, either, last night. Did she do that to you? Are you into that sort of fun now? Dungeons are all the rage. You should come out as a bondage devotee, Sex always trends on Twitter.”

  She extricated herself from the entangling arm with a frown of annoyance. “There are clients here, so please stop the snuggling act. No wonder those rumors about us never stop. The bruise was an accident.” That was true enough. She had had no idea that if she grabbed Kip Barrett she’d get punched. Next time she’d get permission first. Next time? What was she thinking about?

  Nadia brushed nonexistent lint from the shoulders of Tam’s jacket. “Come back, come back, wherever you are,” she said.

  “Sorry, I was thinking about how much I don’t want to be a trending topic on Twitter.”

  Nadia pouted. Sometimes Tam didn’t like Nadia at all. But their bond that made liking or not liking each other irrelevant.

  “Get me something to eat while I powder my nose, would you?”

  Tam bowed meekly and headed for the buffet table. She was aware that Nadia’s perfume clung to her, and she found it more cloying than usual. Kip Barrett didn’t wear perfume. She smelled like…Kip.

  She drew her breath in sharply. These thoughts had to stop.

  Diane appeared at her side, and she swatted the shoulder where Nadia’s face had rested. “She got makeup on your jacket.”

  “It’ll come out,” she said.

  Diane wrinkled her nose. “Thank goodness. I know she’s not under your skin. She just acts like she is and that annoys me.”

  Diane was giving her a speculative look, her gaze focused mostly on the well-hidden bruise. Before Diane could do any more speculating about it, Tam quickly said “Let’s focus on the clients.”

  Nadia arrived to claim the drink. She and Diane made polite small talk that didn’t really hide the fact that they didn’t like each other and quickly moved away in opposite directions. Thank goodness, Tam thought. She was tired of both of them giving her too much scrutiny.

  She sipped her drink and took a deep breath. Time to clear her mind of Kip Barrett. She even went so far as to picture putting thoughts of her in a safety deposit box and throwing away the key. Not that it helped.

  * * *

  Having a large double-shot mocha may not have been the wisest decision, given that Kip was already jumpy as heck, but tipping in just the right amount of sweetener and nonfat milk, stirring, tasting, adding a dusting of cinnamon followed by more stirring and tasting all served to calm her nerves. It was likely to be the closest she came to cooking anything all day.

  She told herself it wasn’t so much that her stomach clenched every time she considered that Tamara Sterling might be playing cat and mouse with her, but rather that she couldn’t put together any kind of decent report for her very important client. Hours of work and she still didn’t have a sound ETO formulated, plus she had no plan on what to do next other than involve more people.

  But she didn’t have to feel so desperate, did she?

  But wasn’t desperation a path to inspiration? Desperate measures and all that?

  Well, if she was desperate there was one phone number to call, that is, if it still worked. She never knew with Buck.

  He answered on the seventh ring. “I’m busy, Barrett.”

  “I have a cash bonus.” She gritted her teeth.

  “And you’ll send me a 1099, like I want to pay taxes.”

  “I can fix it so you don’t get a 1099. Interested or not?”

  “You can stop by. I want the cash upfront.”

  “Half upfront. If you do what I want quickly, you’ll have it all tonight.”

  He whined, then whined for a change, then moved up to more whining until Kip’s head was aching. She didn’t say anything because she knew it that would just slow down his inevitable capitulation. “Oh fine, whatever, have it your way. But don’t be one minute after seven.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Fine.”

  She headed for the nearest cash machine.

  * * *

  “Six hundred? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Buck kept her standing in his dimly lit doorway. Only a few inches taller than she was, he a walking stereotype of paranoid twitches and geek slovenliness, except instead of his mother’s leaky basement, he lived apparently by himself in a duplex with a white picket fence and well-tended hedges. His bright red hair was cut short, but he’d let his beard fill out since the last time she’d seen him.

  “Actually, it’ll be five-ninty-nine. That way I don’t have to send you a 1099. I told you I could fix it so you didn’t get one. If you cheat on your taxes, that’s up to you, but I’m not playing.”

  “I’m not doing anything for a lousy six hundred bucks.” His Green Day T-shirt testified to the recent consumption of pizza.

  “I’ll have you paid the usual SFI rate for the job. The six hundred is from me, not SFI, so you do it now.”

  He glared at her. “By Friday.”

  “Now.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Now.” She sighed. “I can do this all night, but you’ll get rid of me faster if you stop complaining.”

  “I have a life—forget it. Fine. Whatever.” He opened the door just wide enough for her to enter. “Don’t move from that spot.”

  She rolled her eyes as he leaned out to peer up and down the deserted street. He wanted to be a character in a movie, like Snake Plissken or Neo, but the baby boy cheeks and freckles undercut the persona, even with the beard trying to cover them up.

  He locked the front door five different ways. “What do you want?”

  She handed him the names of the SFI board. “I have standard workups already. I want to know if these people are interconnected financially, if their names show up on the same charities, two or more used credit cards in the same hotel on the same week, that sort of stuff, and the sorts of details that are standard redactions for former federal law enforcement types. And you can’t breathe a word of it. If you do I will find you. I know where you live.” She smiled and attempted to twinkle as if she were joking, which she wasn’t and Buck knew it.

  “Sterling herself? What’s she involved in?”

  “As far as I know absolutely nothing, but I want to be unshakably certain. You’re just part of the research.”

  “And I’m going to get standard rates?”

  “Yes, and here’s three hundred. I’ll bring you the rest later tonight.”

  He pouted, then said, “Ten o’clock. And I’m going to bed at five after.”

  She refrained from commenting on his night life plans. It wasn’t as if hers were any better. Great, her social life was that of an escapee from Revenge of the Nerds. It made it worse that Buck was probably perfectly happy with his social life. She was the one who knew she’d be happier with a little more than she had and was doing absolutely nothing about it. And how could she? She wasn
’t heading for an exciting, romantic tête-à-tête with a gorgeous half-dressed woman. Her agenda was a drive-through taco and then back to her cubicle.

  That’s what you get for living in the real world, she told herself, as she mopped hot sauce off her lap.

  Stomach not entirely happy, she plowed through as many exhibit assignments as humanly possible. With Buck bolstering her reach with his research, her brain was finally able to efficiently tackle the tedium. She had less than four hundred files to go now.

  At nine thirty she went down to her car in the garage. It was late, so after the elevator doors closed she paused to listen. No sounds of running engines, no suddenly ceased footsteps. There were basic survival skills she wouldn’t ever forget, and thank you Grandpa and Uncle Sam for the training.

  She pushed away the bitter edge of that thought. She was grateful for everything she’d learned during her Secret Service training. It made her wary without sapping her of confidence. She decided to prove to herself she’d lost none of her stuff by driving to Buck’s via a roundabout route and keeping an eye on the headlights in her rearview mirror. She was not being followed, just like every night she’d ever kept track.

  Meena had hated it when Kip played The Secret Service Game. She said it made her feel as if Kip was never one hundred percent focused on her. Maybe Meena had a point—vigilance for no good reason was distracting. Maybe it had been easier to be distracted than deal with the fact that she and Meena weren’t really suited to each other, and their experimental cohabitation had been a mistake. Either way, she was now safely arrived on Buck’s street and could park her car and head for his house just like any other neighbor.

  She knocked, and when he cracked the door open to peer out, said, “The silent dog lies panting in the oceanic sun.”

  “You are so full of shit, Barrett. Here.” He cracked open the door to thrust a large manila envelope at her. “Boring people. With boring lives and boring money.”

  She rifled through the contents and was satisfied that he had done what she’d asked. One stapled collection was flagged with a yellow sticky. “What’s the note for?”

  “Only oddball thing in the bunch. There’s a lot of bio info on Sterling that’s just not there. I don’t mean it’s there and I can’t get it. I mean it’s not there to get.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, I’m not accusing anybody of anything, so I still want to get paid.”

  “What does it mean?” She gave Buck her finest steely-eyed look.

  “The only time I’ve ever run across those kinds of holes was when the profile was a cover.”

  “A cover? You mean like a false identity?” Kip’s stomach did a queasy roll.

  “Hey, you did go to college. I want my other three hundred bucks.”

  “Here’s two-ninety-nine. Remember the tax reporting issue? I’m not screwing with the IRS.” She held out the roll of bills.

  He said a very bad word and cast aspersions on her parentage before jabbing her with, “I scrubbed your records down with a brillo pad and you’ve been such a naughty girl, all those parking tickets in college. Really stuck it to the man there, didn’t you? Oh that’s right, you actually paid those tickets and never put a foot wrong since. Really living a meaningful life, aren’t you, Ms. Anarchist?”

  She let him finish his snitty little rant, then said, “I love you too, Buck.”

  She was stopped at the corner to make a right turn before she realized how angry Buck’s comments had made her. Since when was playing by the rules a meaningless life? Why were people who exercised their gun rights by shooting up a school some kind of hero, and people who tried to protect those lives and prevent that violence the ones in league with the forces of doomsday? Buck had some screwed up priorities. Would he like her if he knew she’d had a few drinks before legal age? Tried pot and shoplifted CDs?

  Okay, she hadn’t.

  That wasn’t the point, she told herself.

  She was trying to make a difference, and thieves who stole from everyday folks, the moms and dads who thought they were putting their money in a safe place, should pay. She didn’t think a minimum security prison for a few years was nearly enough, either. She thought they should have to paint the houses and mow the lawns for the people they’d ripped off and actually work off the debt. Someone like Joseph Wyndham III should be scrubbing toilets in public parks for ten years, and actually do something that improved the quality of other people’s lives.

  Which was why she was an investigator and not a judge, she supposed.

  She was nearly home when it came back to her with a clang of alarm that Buck was suggesting that “Tamara Sterling,” her boss’s boss’s boss, wasn’t a real person.

  Sitting at her kitchen table, in the chair Tamara had occupied only two nights earlier, she looked at the report he’d flagged. Tamara’s passport application provided data but that information had no matching verification in the government files where it ought to have been. Buck was right about that—blocked from his access was one thing. But data actually missing was another. One piece of missing data could perhaps be an oversight. But names of German birth parents missing? There were American adoptive parents listed, but their birth places and the office that had issued their Social Security cards was missing. Immigration departure point in Germany and arrival point in the U.S. was blank. No residences prior to the age of twelve recorded for Sterling, and looking in her adoptive parents’ records didn’t turn up that information either.

  There could be a simple explanation. There probably was. Given her work and how often defense attorneys would have loved to have cast doubt on Tamara Sterling’s credibility, it seemed improbable Buck was the first person to find these anomalies. Perhaps they were a recent glitch of some kind.

  It made no sense. She got more information on Google about Tamara Sterling, CEO of Sterling Fraud Investigations, than Buck had found about Tamara Sterling, native of Berlin, Germany, who had become an American citizen at twelve. It wasn’t odd that a child’s residence couldn’t be easily traced, but those American adoptive parents had no residences or credit histories before the adoption. The adoptive parents had no deceased flags with Social Security, so they ought to exist somewhere.

  She flipped through the rest of the paperwork on Sterling. Buck had not been able to discern what federal departments Tamara had worked for, though one of the few dates left indicated she’d had a government-paid physical exam while she was in college. But which agency authorized it—blank.

  It was all simply bizarre. Instead of making her life simpler, this lack of information took her back to square one. Was Tamara Sterling the embezzler she was looking for? How could she prove she wasn’t if she didn’t know who Tamara Sterling actually was?

  Chapter Seven

  Tam was early to the office in spite of a night too late with a little too much wine, talking shop with Diane and uselessly spinning her wheels about the cancellations from clients that were plaguing all of their offices.

  She knew the moment she opened the door to Mercedes’ sanctum that something was wrong. Mercedes had an odd look on her face as she spoke into her phone.

  “There is no comment at this time. I will give Ms. Sterling your message. I’m not going to speculate on when that might be.” She listened as she gestured at Tam to linger. “I’m sorry, I’m not going to speculate on any of your questions. I must return to my work now. Yes, I wrote down the number.”

  “What the heck was that about?” Tam watched as Mercedes mimed wiping her hands of something smelly.

  “That was a reporter with that sleazy gossip show SLY. They want confirmation that you flew all the way to New York to have breakfast with Wren Cantu.”

  “Who?”

  “I looked up the name while we talked.” Mercedes glanced at her monitor. “Some lesbian supermodel, all the hot topic in New York, I gather.”

  Tam blinked. “Huh?” She looked at the door, Mercedes’ desk, the carpet. She appeared to b
e in the universe where she belonged. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. But they knew you’d been on flights there and back and they knew which ones. Well, they knew the return flight you’d been booked on, but not the one you actually took.”

  “I spent five hours in the Admiral Club at JFK waiting to jump flights, using the wireless.”

  “I know.” Mercedes gestured at the phone. “Do you want me to call them back? This snotty guy said they tape in less than thirty minutes for tonight’s program. Haven’t you seen it—bunch of people with no life except chasing celebrities sit around and make snide comments they think are clever. The kind of people who see a celebrity woman eating a hot dog and joke about oral sex. And they call it journalism.”

  “I don’t have a clue how my name has been linked into this. This isn’t how I planned to start my day.”

  “And Hank Jefferson called twice.”

  Tam headed for her office. “I’ll take care of this reporter, then call him back. Would you let him know?”

  She took a moment to compose her thoughts, then dialed the number Mercedes had written down. She introduced herself to the man who answered the phone, then asked, “Can you provide me with some assurance that you represent this program?”

  He rattled off credentials and with a few quick Web searches she decided to believe he was who he said he was. Even if he wasn’t, she wasn’t going to tell him anything useful.

  “So my source tells me that you flew to New York last Friday on a red-eye, had breakfast with Wren Cantu, then flew home later that day.”

  “Not to insult Ms. Cantu, but until my assistant gave me your message I’d not heard of her and to my knowledge I’ve never met her.”

  “So you deny that you flew to New York last Friday—”

  “I deny knowing Ms. Cantu. Since that’s what you’re inquiring about, I’ve answered your question.”

  “So you didn’t have breakfast with her?”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It does. It’s called a logical chain of events.”