Wednesdays and Fridays for her spy training, she’d told everyone she’d returned to college to earn her MBA because she wanted to climb the corporate ladder. But she hadn’t even been able to tell anyone she worked as a secretary for OPUS, since the general public wasn’t supposed to know the organization existed. As far as anyone outside OPUS was concerned, Ellie was an accountant for an agency that did government auditing, which was the cover for Ohio’s OPUS office in reality. She’d be reporting to ChemiTech in that persona to perform a standard auditing of the records for every government contract ChemiTech had been awarded, something that should look to Daniel like a happy coincidence and nothing else.
Hiding what she did for a living and covering up her spy training were only small lies, she assured herself. And they didn’t affect her friendship with Daniel. Besides, she’d never expressly said she was going for her master of business administration. She’d been thinking of MBA in terms of Most Buff Agent. And she for sure could be that. She worked out every morning.
She thumbed through the rest of the dossier and tried to sort through her myriad feelings. This was a plum assignment, not at all the sort of thing that generally went to a trainee, which was probably another reason Noah had told her she’d have questions. Ellie had been assigned to it expressly because of her connection to Daniel—her cover would just be that much more convincing. If she wrapped this up quickly and efficiently—which, of course, she would—she’d shoot right to the top of the list for future plum assignments.
But would she be abusing Daniel’s friendship and betraying his trust if she investigated him for wrongdoing without his knowledge? Then again, if she wanted to rise to the higher echelons of OPUS—and yeah, baby, she did—she couldn’t let little things like abuse of a friendship or betrayal of trust stop her.
Wow. Her first big rite of passage as an agent. And she wasn’t even an agent yet.
Bottom line, she thought, OPUS wanted her to complete an assignment. Period. And Ellie, like the premier OPUS agent she intended to be, would complete it to its fullest extent. She just hoped that doing so wouldn’t wreck the lives of two people who had become very important to her—herself and Daniel Beck.
I T WAS DARK by the time Daniel Beck climbed the fourth flight of stairs in his apartment building at the end of another long day. But then, it was almost always dark outside by the time he called it a day. Even in the summer, when darkness didn’t come until very late, he was often holed up in his lab working on some project till after hours.
Unless, of course, it was the weekend. Weekends he was doing something else till after hours. Weekends were when he made damned sure he enjoyed the things he earned as a hardworking man in contemporary American society. Which, interestingly, were the same things he’d been denied as a geeky teenager and even geekier college student in not-too-long-ago American society: a social life and smokin’ sex. On account of he hadn’t had anything remotely resembling a social life—or sex of any kind—until he’d been out of college for more than a year. Therefore, he had a lot of making up—and making out—to do. Frankly, so deprived had Daniel been as a young man, there were times when he thought he’d never get caught up. Which actually suited him fine, because it meant he had a lifetime ahead of him that was full of smokin’ sex.
The jingling of his keys as he fumbled for the one to his front door were a fitting accompaniment to the clinking of the biker jacket he was entitled to wear because, unlike many wearers of such garments, he actually owned a motorcycle. It was a welcome change from the fifteen-year-old, four-door Chevette he’d had to drive throughout high school and college, something that had contributed significantly to his social-life-and-sex-lacking
Hiding what she did for a living and covering up her spy training were only small lies, she assured herself. And they didn’t affect her friendship with Daniel. Besides, she’d never expressly said she was going for her master of business administration. She’d been thinking of MBA in terms of Most Buff Agent. And she for sure could be that. She worked out every morning.
She thumbed through the rest of the dossier and tried to sort through her myriad feelings. This was a plum assignment, not at all the sort of thing that generally went to a trainee, which was probably another reason Noah had told her she’d have questions. Ellie had been assigned to it expressly because of her connection to Daniel—her cover would just be that much more convincing. If she wrapped this up quickly and efficiently—which, of course, she would—she’d shoot right to the top of the list for future plum assignments.
But would she be abusing Daniel’s friendship and betraying his trust if she investigated him for wrongdoing without his knowledge? Then again, if she wanted to rise to the higher echelons of OPUS—and yeah, baby, she did—she couldn’t let little things like abuse of a friendship or betrayal of trust stop her.
Wow. Her first big rite of passage as an agent. And she wasn’t even an agent yet.
Bottom line, she thought, OPUS wanted her to complete an assignment. Period. And Ellie, like the premier OPUS agent she intended to be, would complete it to its fullest extent. She just hoped that doing so wouldn’t wreck the lives of two people who had become very important to her—herself and Daniel Beck.
I T WAS DARK by the time Daniel Beck climbed the fourth flight of stairs in his apartment building at the end of another long day. But then, it was almost always dark outside by the time he called it a day. Even in the summer, when darkness didn’t come until very late, he was often holed up in his lab working on some project till after hours.
Unless, of course, it was the weekend. Weekends he was doing something else till after hours. Weekends were when he made damned sure he enjoyed the things he earned as a hardworking man in contemporary American society. Which, interestingly, were the same things he’d been denied as a geeky teenager and even geekier college student in not-too-long-ago American society: a social life and smokin’ sex. On account of he hadn’t had anything remotely resembling a social life—or sex of any kind—until he’d been out of college for more than a year. Therefore, he had a lot of making up—and making out—to do. Frankly, so deprived had Daniel been as a young man, there were times when he thought he’d never get caught up. Which actually suited him fine, because it meant he had a lifetime ahead of him that was full of smokin’ sex.
The jingling of his keys as he fumbled for the one to his front door were a fitting accompaniment to the clinking of the biker jacket he was entitled to wear because, unlike many wearers of such garments, he actually owned a motorcycle. It was a welcome change from the fifteen-year-old, four-door Chevette he’d had to drive throughout high school and college, something that had contributed significantly to his social-life-and-sex-lacking
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