Page 10 of Hot Intent

“Once or twice.” His first week in prison at the ripe old age of twenty-four, he’d all but killed three Russian mob strongmen in the same fight to make a point to the rest of the inmates that he was not to be messed with.

For the remaining four years of his DUI incarceration—and more to the point, avoiding recruitment into the FSB by his father—not another soul had laid a finger on him. His father had been a proponent of shock-and-awe since long before it was an official strategy of war. Yes, indeed. Roman had taught his son well how to instill fear in those around him.

Except for Katie. None of his tactics had ever worked on her. For some inexplicable reason, she insisted on loving him in spite of all his worst behaviors. God, he hoped that never changed.

It went without saying that his investigation of Doctors Unlimited would be entirely off-book. Which meant he needed to head home to begin his work. He collected Dawn and left, already planning his approach.

When he opened the condo’s front door, loud, off-key singing emanated from the kitchen. He smiled indulgently. Katie had a lot of wonderful qualities, but perfect pitch was not one of them. “We’re home!” he called out.

Katie rushed into the living room, her shirt dusted in flour. She planted a light kiss on Dawn’s cheek and a rather more carnal one on him. “You’re just in time to taste test the firstedible batch of cookies. C’mon. I need your opinion. More chips or not?”

“Ahh. So that’s the slightly singed smell coming from my kitchen.”

“Be nice. Your oven runs hot and I had to figure out how to set the oven on the first pan of cookies.”

Suppressing a burst of what he would label amusement if he allowed himself to feel such things, he trailed after her as she hurried back to the kitchen, all energy and laughter and bouncing ponytail. He took the proffered cookie, which turned out to be as warm and sweet and gooey as its creator.

“I see what all the fuss is about. That’s tasty,” he admitted.

“Have you never had a warm chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven before?” she demanded.

“Never. My father and I didn’t cook.”

“You poor, deprived man!”

She stood on tiptoe to plant a chocolate-flavored kiss on his mouth. She smelled of vanilla and joy. What must it have been like to grow up in her family? A blade of jealousy sliced into his heart for an instant. “I have some work to do. If you could take the baby…”

“Of course.” She scooped Dawn out of his arms. “What kind of work?”

“The kind I can’t talk about.”

Her bright blue eyes clouded over, but to her credit, she didn’t pry. He’d explained to her that he was accustomed to secrecy and she couldn’t expect him to share every aspect of his life with her all the time. But, he felt bad as he retreated to his office.

What the hell had she done to him? Since when did he want to spill every detail of his existence with anyone?

Mentally shaking his head, he broke into D.U.’s personnel files with a few casual key strokes. Actually, it wasn’t that easy.He’d worked for months in jail developing and perfecting the decryption algorithm he used today.

He printed a hard copy of the entire employee roster of Doctors Unlimited, and went to work. Financials were the easiest place to spot a turned spy. Mounting debt, illicit spending on a personal vice, an illness in the family—all the symptoms of a spy vulnerable to bribery or coercion—showed up most readily on bank statements. So, that was where he concentrated his search. He figured André would have done a thorough job vetting his people’s distant past and extended families, so he skipped looking at personal histories for now.

But after an entire afternoon of work and a whole plate of Katie’s irresistible cookies, nobody was leaping out at him as a candidate to be his father’s mole.

Frowning, he went for a stroll around the terrace garden that had been his father’s pride and joy when he’d owned this place. He had to admit, Roman had a good eye for texture and color. The contrast of the stark cacti with softer, greener plant material was striking.

Contrast.

Maybe he’d been looking for the wrong thing. He’d been looking for a big change in someone’s spending habits. Instead, maybe he ought to be looking for a long-term pattern of expenditures that, in comparison to other D.U. employees, contrasted with other people’s in the organization.

He went back to his computer to run a position-by-position spending comparison on D.U.’s staff. But that, too, turned up nothing.

Katie brought him a salad at some point and he ate it absently. Food had been optional often in the past year and was not something that held his attention these days.

It grew dark outside, and he continued to poke and prod at the D.U. staff. But no matter how he examined them, nobodystood out as a mole. Which meant one of two things. Either, there was no mole and his father was bluffing, or the mole was very, very good. He strongly suspected the latter was the case.

He leaned back frowning. If he were infiltrating Doctors Unlimited, how would he go about it? The aid organization placed physicians and nurses around the world in dangerous hot spots where regular aid organizations refused to send their people. The staff of D.U. was dedicated, passionate, and a little crazy. Money wouldn’t be high on their personal priority lists. Ideals would be, though.

He ran a quick search of political affiliations. And that was when he got a hit. Dmitri Churzov. D.U.’s I.T. guy—responsible not only for its in-house computers, but also the all-important interface with the CIA’s computers—had been flagged by the FBI for attending several Communist Party rallies in college. Alex winced. God, it was so cliché. The kid even had a Russian name.

He frowned. In point of fact, the guy was a little too cliché. His father was emphatically not the type to recruit so obvious a target. Were he Roman, Dmitri would be the one guy he wouldnotrecruit to work for the FSB.

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