Spectre of Intention Read online

  I took a deep breath; my eyes came to rest on Cam seated at one of the tables arrayed on a cobblestone patio at the edge of the wooded garden.

  “Sir, your guest has arrived.”

  Cam set down his wine glass, unfolded his long frame from the chair. He, too, had changed: a light-weight white button-down shirt and a pair of khakis. So different from the perfect suit and tie of this afternoon.

  “Thanks, Justin. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Justin moved away. I heard the door close behind me. Like last time, that fascinated pull from Cam was sharp—and this time not one-sided. I stepped forward, close enough to smell the clean, earthy scent of his cologne. I wanted to lift my hand, touch one of the pearlescent buttons of his shirt, but that was so personal. I saw his hand twitch, stretch. Ashley whimpered quietly in the back of my mind. I smiled.

  I looked up into those vivid blue eyes. “You are nothing like I expected.”

  A wry amusement twisted his mouth, lent extra shine to his eyes.

  “Is that so? Over the course of a whole year you didn’t look me up even once?”

  I shook my head. “That would have been cheating. I was enjoying your mind too much to want to spoil it.”

  His hand did move then, up to toy with the chunk of metal decorating the shoulder strap of my dress. “And is your impression of me now utterly ruined?”

  Yes, I wanted to say, that carefree, platonic fun is now utterly ruined. But I just laughed as the brush of his fingers sent a tingle down my arm that pooled distractingly in my fingertips. “You are so vivid, so…alive. Like something that could just go bounding off through those trees and vanish. Much too mysterious for the world of business suits.”

  Cam looked startled for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “I thought all the good men of mystery wore business suits.”

  I turned toward my seat at the table. “Depends on what kind of mystery you’re after, I suppose.”

  I reached for the back of my chair, but he beat me to it. My back brushed against his chest as he pulled the chair out. I had to catch myself from leaning into him, into all that hard warmth. I hurried to sit down.

  He took his seat across from me. “Well, I did cheat. About four months into it, but I have to say you don’t look anything at all like your old pictures.”

  Old pictures. So, we begin.

  The pull didn’t lessen, but unease shimmered through my stomach as that tangle rose up in him. I leaned forward, moved my pawn. “Old pictures. And which old pictures did you get hold of?”

  Cam leaned forward as well, his laughing eyes turning crystal for a second. What I would have given to see the incarnation of his intention right then. But there was no pressure in the head, no momentary short of the senses. Just the two of us in the stillness of the moment, trying to see past the practiced polish of the façade.

  And failing.

  Cam picked up his menu, put it between us. I did the same. I could almost feel him fishing for a legitimate answer to that question, the pause went on so long.

  “Just pictures from a conference. You were making a sales presentation, I believe. You had dark-framed glasses on and your hair pinned back and looked as intimidating as the Spanish Inquisition, but here you were on the phone with me making dumb jokes and laughing at mine with this voice that was as sexy as hell. So,” he paused looking up over his menu at me, “cheating didn’t do me a damn bit of good.”

  “Have you ever been a woman in her early twenties at a security conference?”

  “I can’t say as I have.”

  “But I think you can guess how very necessary that costume was to my career at the time.”

  “Even now? We’re a bit far from the days of the women’s rights movement.”

  I took a sip from my water, heard the door to the restaurant open punctually behind me, and quickly scanned the menu as I answered. “More the youth than the gender, but the gender was still a factor. Jessie calls it my Catholic school teacher costume. Spanish Inquisition. I’ll have to tell him that.”

  “Have you had a chance to decide?” Justin asked.

  Cam looked to me; I nodded at him to go ahead.

  “I’ll have the cedar-planked salmon with roasted vegetables.”

  I closed the menu and handed it to Justin.

  “I’ll take the chicken pot pie.” I could already feel all that warm protein sliding into a stomach that had finally settled enough to consider such mundane matters.

  “Anything to drink?”

  “I’ll stick with water, but I owe the gentleman a beer.”

  “Which he will be all too happy to accept. An IPA, please. And an order of the flatbread with caramelized pecans, blue cheese, and minced dates.” He handed Justin his empty wine glass.

  “I’ll be right back with that, sir. Ma’am.”

  Justin disappeared back inside.

  “So, you still have to pull out the costume these days?”

  I shook my head as I took another draw from my water glass.

  “Not so much. Countermeasures has developed enough of a reputation these days that people take us pretty seriously without me packing my imaginary riding crop.”

  Cam leaned back in his chair, raised his glass to me. “Now that I noticed. And now that we’re signed, you’ve got to tell me: How do you people get those numbers? I mean literally no one else came even close to you guys.”

  “We focus on finding the people. I mean, we set up all kinds of screening mechanisms for hardware that might be piggy backing on unsuspecting people or cargo, but it’s really Paula’s software. It’s really more about bad guy detection than weapons detection.”

  Cam waved my spiel away with his water glass. “Everybody says that. That’s what everybody’s software does. For the top three bids, the specs were pretty much identical. I want to hear about what’s not in the specs. How in the hell can you get it down to a two percent error rate when it comes to reading the human mind?”

  I knew the next line in my sales pitch, knew that wasn’t what he was looking for. Camden Glaswell was smarter than my average mark. I shrugged.

  “Everybody has tie-ins to the same basic databases: international criminal facial recognition, micro-expressions, and suspicious behaviors. It’s more math than magic. Our math is just better.”

  A lie. I knew exactly what gave us the edge. And it was a lot more like magic than math. It was me. Ashley stirred at the suspicious look on Cam’s face, but this was Kaitlin’s territory.

  “Look, you are talking to the wrong member of the team if you want the technical explanation. But here’s what I see.” I leaned forward, set my elbows on the table, laid my fingertips in my other palm. Made sure he had nowhere to focus but on me. “I see obsession. Paula spends day and night combing the micro-expressions and suspicious behaviors databases, refining them against interview and surveillance footage. She makes me sit in front of the cameras and the monitors for days on end showing me all kinds of video clips. She’s got all these code names for every facial muscle, for every combination of facial muscles and she makes all these notes. Then I have to mark when the software made an accurate emotional match. After that she rides her team of programmers for months to make all these obscure changes to the software. I can’t tell you what those are. I’m really kept in the dark about that side of the business.” I settled back into my chair.

  “Why?”

  Oh, lovely. I kept my eyes forward, my face smooth. My too-clever mark had me cornered. And I needed to be careful not use too many tricks of the trade. He’d been a cop once. He would recognize them.

  The restaurant door. An admiring, slightly jealous caress at my back.

  Saved by the waiter.

  Justin presented our appetizer and Cam’s beer, informed us that he would return momentarily with our main course. The young man was so careful to give us each of us equally courteous attention. Even my brilliant smile of gratitude only threw him fo
r a second, but his relief fluttered over me as he reached that restaurant door.

  Cam and I each took a piece of flatbread, tore off strips and began using them to scoop up the pecans, dates, and cheese. Rich and sweet, salty, and crunchy all at once. I sighed.

  “Good?” Cam asked with a grin.

  I nodded. “Starving.”

  We ate for a moment in silence. Reminding myself this was the appetizer, I reluctantly pushed the plate toward Cam. He took a few more pieces, then a draw of his beer. I watched him return the glass to the table, trace the condensation across the glass.

  “Why are you kept in the dark, Kaitlin?”

  Damn.

  “Just protecting corporate secrets. Gerard and Jessie met in the Army. It’s always been…”

  I watched his hand move from his glass to where my fingertips traced the tines of my forks. There it was again, that look in his eyes, so gentle, so earnest. There it was again, that swirl of sensation blasting out from his mind, so hot, so cold.

  “It’s always been what, Kaitlin?”

  He wanted secrets. What would I get for this one? Give me a clue, Camden Glaswell: How much do you know?

  “It hasn’t. I was going to say it’s always been need-to-know with them. But it hasn’t. Jessie used to encourage me to dog Paula’s footsteps, to understand everything about that software. Now he won’t let me touch it.”

  I watched, waited. Tried to ignore the squeeze of hurt in my chest even as I replayed this evening’s little hand slap at the bar.

  Cam squeezed my hand, kept his eyes to my fingers.

  “I don’t trust secrets, Kaitlin. Will, he has this story about how the Pilgrims convinced themselves to flee England. He said that they believed God sent signs of his displeasure with the status quo. Relentless and, to them, unmistakable signs. He sent a plague, a huge tidal wave, a drought, and even a spectacular comet. They knew God was telling them it was time to purify his worship. God was telling them it was time to go. Will jokes that the Pioneer Port project has had signs, too. In the form of money. Dozens of federal governments, a whole spectrum of corporations, churches, individuals. This elevator has never wanted for investors. But those investors, those nations and churches, they rely on me. One secret could destroy everything.”

  Ashley began clawing at the door now, but Kaitlin just shook her head.

  “Maybe. But ask those corporations, ask those nations this: Could they function, could they prosper without secrets of their own? It’s business, Cam. That’s how you make money: by having the better secret.”

  Our dinner arrived. Cam released my hand, sat back to watch me. He wasn’t buying it. What I wanted to see was what he would do with that dissatisfaction.

  I lifted my fork, cracked the crust of my pot pie. Steam lifted into the air between us. Cam tapped his fork on his plate in an abrupt rhythm, then sat up to eat. The man attacked his food like it was his first meal of the day. Unfortunately for me, pot pie required a bit more patience. And my second wind was winding down. I picked at the pie as best I could, waiting, knowing Cam would come back around. Silence was an invaluable tool. I just hoped I didn’t fall asleep before it worked.

  Maybe I actually did fall asleep for a second because the next thing I knew Cam’s plate lay empty in front of me. He jumped to his feet.

  “I’m going to ask Justin about dessert.”

  I didn’t have the chance to protest. Alone, I stabbed at a carrot, gave up, and set down my fork. The weight of my eyelids prompted me to push out of my chair. Wrapping my hands around my elbows, I wandered to the edge of the woods. Straight up, between the leaves of the young trees, I saw the rich blackness of night dotted with muted stars. Somewhere up there was the space station that acted as a counterweight for the elevator ribbon attached to this boat. A spaceship and a seaship connected by a thin string of nanotubes. In my exhaustion I could imagine the space station pulling us up, up out of the water, a city-sized pendulum swinging at the end of a strand of spider silk, floating away into the stars.

  “What are you dreaming about?”

  His breath brushed my cheek.

  “Space. Floating away on a strand of spider silk into someplace magical.”

  He chuckled. “You are tired, aren’t you?”

  I glanced over my shoulder and smiled back at him. He set his hands on my shoulders, lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “I think I know what Countermeasures’ big secret is, Kaitlin Osgood. It’s you. Something about you, but I haven’t figured it out yet.” His hands moved to cover my shoulders as my heart stopped. “Your skin, your hair. It glows in this light.” He was so close, his confused emotions flooded through me.

  I shivered, my own mind completely out of focus. Ashley sensed a trap, shrieked at me to run. Kaitlin demanded that I stand my ground and let the game play out to its end. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Cam, I…” I hesitated as I turned to face him. He let his hands drop to my arms. “I just don’t think I’m up to this tonight. I’m so tired I’m starting to see things.”

  “Let me settle things with Justin and I can walk you to your room.”

  Now that sounded like a really bad idea.

  “Thanks, but I want to touch base with Jessie before I turn in. I forgot to ask him about our schedule for tomorrow.”

  He watched my mouth as I spoke that little white lie, his own lips gently parted. My stomach turned liquid. I felt myself swaying forward.

  I took a deliberate step back. Too fast. This was moving way too fast. Too many unanswered suspicions, too dangerous. I bit my lower lip and looked away, trying desperately to get my head back on my shoulders. It didn’t want to go.

  “Hey,” Cam whispered. He brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, traced my cheekbone with his thumb. I risked a look up at him. I knew Ashley was all over my face. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t hide it. Cam’s blue eyes held only a gentle understanding.

  “Hey,” I managed.

  “So, you need to check in with Jessie?”

  I nodded.

  “Then let me walk you out.”

  I smiled, and Ashley slowly faded away again. He released me, and we walked side by side through the restaurant where we bade Justin goodnight. Cam held the front door open for me.

  I stepped through, then turned. This time, I was the one laying a hand on his arm.

  “Thank you, Cam.”

  “Thank you, Kaitlin. Hope you get some sleep.”

  As I walked away, I let my laughter trail behind me down the hall.

  “Oh, god.”

  Once again, I found myself staring at the elevator buttons.

  Push number nine, go back to my room, huddle in my blankets, savor the sensations of attraction, replay the lingering phrases of our verbal chess match.

  Push number twelve, haul Jessie out of bed and report my increasingly clearer readings of random people’s intentions. Suddenly, my hallucinations seemed trivial. And Jessie hated it when I talked about what I could do. He was more than willing to rely on my “intuition” as he called it, but when I talked about it in more concrete terms he would get irritated and shut me down. I didn’t really want to deal with that right now.

  Push number six, see if Jessie was still at the bar. And if he wasn’t, I could let it go until morning. Maybe by then it would be over, just the result of some really intense exhaustion.

  A good compromise. I hit the button and the elevator began to sink down through the layers of the ship. I rubbed my hands over my arms where the touch of Cam’s hands had brought my skin to life.

  I think I know what Countermeasures’ big secret is, Kaitlin Osgood. It’s you. Something about you, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

  God, what in the hell did that mean? He couldn’t possibly know what I could do. That information wasn’t in anybody’s database, not even in anybody’s secret file. Few people from my old life suspected. Even fewer people from my current life had hinted at it.

  It’s called flirting. Has
it been so long?

  I put my hands to my face, laughed into my palms. My stomach lowered from beneath my lungs, settled back into the depths of my torso and I knew I had arrived at my destination. I dropped my hands from my face and stepped out into the darkened hall. The thick green carpet was almost black in the low lighting; the faux stone work along the walls became mysterious in its own shadows. This deck was primarily suites. I passed an empty lounge, a vacant play area.

  When I reached the little sports pub, the table where Paula had worked lay empty, the bar unmanned. Jessie’s massive presence was nowhere to be seen. I turned, ready to make my escape, when I spotted a figure at the back of the bar. His dark green t-shirt and black cargos had acted as camouflage; only the faint ship’s light from the window gave him away.

  Gerard.

  I stopped, watched him for a moment. His larger than life persona had faded. He was too far away for me to feel, but he looked so sad, so lonely. For a second, I nearly forgot myself and stepped out of the shadows to go to him.

  “Fuck.” He pushed his beer glass away and shoved his chair back.

  I stayed where I was and watched him leave. I liked Gerard, didn’t want to see him hurting, but he would only ever hear, “Are you alright?” as “Please fuck me.” So, I sent him my concern and well-wishes silently. I, of all people, knew how powerful thoughts could be. Maybe it would do him some good somehow.

  I retraced my steps toward the elevator. As I passed by the lounge, I saw a group of men—crew members—congregated in their crisp white shirts, ties either loosened or pulled open entirely. My white dress in the ghostly track lighting must have caught their attention. One of them looked up from their soundless conversation, stared me straight in the eyes. I nodded, kept walking.

  A cold sweat rushed over me.

  Black eyes, shoulder-length wavy black hair. Angular facial bones. Full lips.

  I rattled Ashley, demanding a name for that face. All I could remember was…enemy. He shouldn’t be here. A name, a name!

  Ten doors further. Into the elevator and straight to Jessie’s room. No. They were following me now, all of them, close enough to read. Their desire to seize me tore at me from behind, claws ripping at my hair, my skirt. My head, the pressure was back—so intense.