"Tell me about your lovers," he said lightly, his hand stroking my back. It felt nice and I scooted closer.

"Not lovers, plural," I corrected, "lover, singular. Men," I groused, "always thinking women are as promiscuous as they are."

"I stand corrected," he said. "Tell me about your lover."

"That's really too romantic a t.i.tle for him," I said, remembering the groping in the confines of the car. "I was sixteen. It was homecoming and his father had a big sedan. End of story." Blane's hand paused on my back.

"How was it?" he asked carefully. I tried to concentrate. Sleep was crowding into my brain along with the booze and my thoughts were fuzzy. I consciously had to make my mouth move to answer him.

"Quick. Painful. Embarra.s.sing." Those were the feelings I would forever a.s.sociate with that encounter. And that was my last thought before sleep claimed me.

When I woke, weak light cast a dim glow in the room and I realized it must be morning. I lay on my back, Blane's arm beneath my head, as he lay on his side against me, his other arm across my stomach. Closing my eyes, I relaxed, enjoying the moment.

Blane's hand moved down my stomach and underneath the waistband of my shorts. "I knew this was a bad idea," he whispered in my ear. "I can't seem to keep my hands off you." Without another word, his hand parted my thighs and a long finger slipped inside me. I gasped at the intrusion and his mouth covered mine. Our tongues dueled even as he stroked me and I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. My arms lifted and wound themselves around his neck.

Blane added a second finger to the first and I bit back a moan. My hips rose of their own volition to meet his thrusting fingers and my breath came in pants. Heat flared between my legs as his thumb slid over a spot that made my body jerk against his hand.

"G.o.d, I want you, Kat," he groaned against my lips.

A pounding on my apartment door shattered the coc.o.o.n around us. Blane's hand stilled and I wanted to cry in disappointment. The pounding came again and Blane was up and out of the bed, heading to the front door. Scrambling up on legs that were shaking, I grabbed his shirt and stuffed my arms into the sleeves. I didn't have a robe but it was long enough to serve as one.

Blane pulled open the front door, gun in hand, and I nearly collapsed in relief to see CJ standing there. I had been afraid it might be James.

CJ eyed the two of us and Blane's gun, her hand still poised to knock, and I saw her eyebrows climb skyward.

"Er, sorry to interrupt," she said uncomfortably, looking past Blane to me.

"Not a problem," I said quickly. "Blane this is my neighbor, CJ. CJ, this is Blane." CJ gave Blane a curt nod.

"I was just wondering if you saw this." She held up today's newspaper. Stepping around Blane, I took it from her, read the headline and gasped.

"What is it?" Blane said, looking over my shoulder at the page.

"It's James," I said numbly. "He's entered the race for District Attorney." I frantically skimmed the article below. "It says here the previous candidate had pulled out of the race citing the need to spend more time with his family. He's endorsed James in his place." Blane took the paper from my fingers as I tried to absorb this information, reading the article himself.

"Come by when you have a minute," CJ said, giving me a meaningful look.

"Yeah, um, okay," I said nervously. "I'll be over in a bit. Just need to get dressed." With a nod and once last glance at Blane, still absorbed in the paper, she retreated to her apartment and I closed the door. Blane dropped the paper on the couch and turned toward me. My mind flashed to what CJ had interrupted and I could feel myself blushing furiously.

"I'd better get going," he said, eyeing me with regret. He glanced at his watch and tucked his gun into the small of his back. I looked up when he stood in front of me. "I'm going to need that," he said softly, and I didn't resist as he pushed the shirt down my arms, my breath catching when he touched me. Putting it on, he rolled up the sleeves and carelessly did up a couple b.u.t.tons, his eyes never leaving mine. His fingers came up to softly brush the bruised skin of my cheek and I saw his eyes turn cold and hard. Then he was kissing me again, his arms crushing me to him. When we finally broke apart, I was gasping for air. He rested his forehead against mine.

"I'll see you tonight," he said softly and I nodded, unable to speak. Then he was gone.

I hurried through a shower, throwing on some sweats and leaving my hair wet before going over to CJ's. She answered quickly, pulling open the door for me.

"Want some coffee?" she asked, and I gratefully accepted. A slight pounding in the back of my head told me I hadn't escaped last night's imbibing unscathed.

"What did you find out?" I asked, sipping the scalding liquid as I curled up on her couch. She plopped down beside me, again in unrelenting black, though today she'd opted to leave the eyebrow ring out.

"An extremely complex encryption algorithm," she said simply. I looked at her blankly, uncomprehending, waiting for the rest. Rolling her eyes, she explained. "It's like the key to a lock only not just one lock, but lots of locks." Okay, that was easier to follow.

"But what is the lock for?" I asked, and she shrugged.

"There wasn't a way to tell," she replied. "I'd say it was for secure communications, but it wasn't the right kind for that. You said it belonged to Mark, right? Any idea where he might have gotten it?"

I didn't want to involve her any further, but at this point, I didn't see how I could help it. I needed her expertise. "I think it came from where he worked," I said, "a company called TecSol." Her eyes widened, in fear or awe, I couldn't tell.

"The company that did the cutting-edge online voting software," she breathed.

"You've heard of them?" I asked, surprised. She nodded jerkily.

"Everyone has," she replied. Except me apparently, I thought grumpily. "What they've done is groundbreaking. They supposedly created an unbreakable method of encryption that solved the performance problem of true random number generators without compromising the integrity of the encryption. They haven't said exactly how they solved it because it's proprietary and they're patenting it."

"Okay, you lost me," I said, holding up a hand to stop her. "Layman's terms, okay?"

"When you send information over the internet, it has to be encrypted, you know that much, right?" I nodded. Everyone knew that. "Each site has its own encryption code generated for them to use and only they have the key, that's what makes it secure. But everything is hackable, given enough time and talent. TecSol created a way for each individual transaction to be encrypted using a different key. The problem was, it was too slow to be able to handle the traffic generated by something like a nation-wide online election because the encryption process used a true random number generator."

"What's that?"

"Someone may think it's easy for a computer to randomly generate numbers," she said, and I silently agreed, "but it's not. A computer that just spat out random numbers would be, by definition, broken. There's really only two ways a computer can generate random numbers and that's a pseudo-random number generator or a true random number generator."

"What's the difference?" I asked, sipping my now tepid coffee.

"I'll give you an example," she said. "If you wanted a random number, how would you go about getting it?" I thought about it for a moment.

"I guess I'd roll some dice," I answered. She grinned.

"Exactly. So, imagine rolling dice for your random number, but then writing down all the results you get. You'd get a list of random numbers, but it would be a predetermined list. That's a pseudo-random generator and algorithms like the one I found are used to create them. You give the formula a beginning number or seed and then it puts it through the formula to generate the random number. Random, yes, but predetermined and calculable, if you know the seed."

"Then what's a true random number generator?" I was caught up in her explanations in spite of myself.

"It's where you use something truly unpredictable to generate the numbers, kind of like a virtual die attached to a computer, and it's the only real way to get a random number. Unfortunately, it's not as fast as the other method, so not practical for what TecSol was trying to do."

"What's truly random?" I asked, curious.

"Oh, lots of things," she said. "Atmospheric noise, radioactive decay. Things like that, unpredictable and without a pattern is the key." I struggled to make sense of all this given what I now knew.

"So Mark had a drive with an encryption algorithm on it that is the one, we think, TecSol is using to encrypt their online voting software?" CJ nodded, her face losing its excited animation and becoming grim. "So they didn't really solve the problem, did they?" I asked. "They're just saying they did and using the pseudo-generator thing instead."

"I think so," she said. "Which give us a serious problem as well as tells us why Mark was killed."

"They can't let anyone know," I finished for her. "If it leaked out their software wasn't secure, they'd lose their contract with the city as well as any pending contracts and probably get sued on top of it. The whole business would be sunk."

"Everyone's going to be watching how this software performs," CJ said. "And that's not the worst of it." I looked at her questioningly. That part sounded pretty bad to me and reason enough for them to kill us. "You're a.s.suming they know about the flaw and can't fix it. It's possible, probable actually, that the flaw is by design."

"By design?"

"If they know the encryption key for every transaction, then those packets can be intercepted, decrypted and modified," she explained. Our eyes met in mutual understanding.

"To steal an election," I said. We sat in silence for a moment, processing this.

"Does anyone else besides that guy, Kade, know you have this?" CJ finally asked, and I shook my head.

"No, wait," I corrected myself. "Blane knows, too, though he doesn't know I gave it to you. I told him I hid it. But I trust him."

CJ gripped my arm tightly. "Don't trust anyone, Kathleen," she said in earnest. "There are people that would pay millions for access to what we found and they won't let us stand in their way. They'll kill us as quickly as TecSol would if they knew we had it."

I searched her eyes and knew she was right. A chill went through me. We were sitting on a powder keg and I didn't know what we were going to do about it. A thought struck me.

"Oh my G.o.d," I gasped in dismay. "The election! It's in three days. And now James is running for DA." I thought for a moment. "James and the Santini brothers are tied together somehow. They wanted him to run. They're going to use the software to make sure he wins."

"Who are the Santini brothers?" CJ asked, and I quickly explained their ownership of TecSol and the now dormant case Blane had told me about.

"If James is District Attorney, then he'll be able to run interference for any further cases against TecSol for election fraud," I said, "paving the way for them to go nationwide with the software."

Tampering with an election went against everything I believed. My father had taught me respect for my country and its history. The fact that someone would try to put in place a way to engineer election results in the "good ol' U. S. of A." as CJ had put it, made me angry. "We have to do something," I said.

CJ's eyes had the same fire I knew was in mine and I thought I'd found a kindred soul. She smirked.

"d.a.m.n straight, we're going to do something," she said.

And we began to plan.

Chapter Ten.

It was several hours later that I finally went back to my apartment, though the plan CJ and I had come up with seemed farfetched. I didn't know if we could pull it off - it wasn't like I was a Mission: Impossible kind of girl. I'd argued for a long while that we should go to the police. CJ had been vehemently against that, though her reasons seemed more paranoid and conspiracy rampant than logical to me. The whole thing seemed bizarre. This wasn't how my life was supposed to go. Murder, fraud and conspiracy were the things of fiction, not reality. At least, not my reality.

CJ said she would get the drive ready and I was supposed to pick it up from her on my way to work. Not only was she going to overwrite the data, but she was going to affix a miniscule GPS transmitter to it so we could follow where Kade took it. She'd been adamant about wanting to come with me tonight, but I'd been steadfast in refusing her. Only my explanation that Blane said he'd be there tonight persuaded her not to come. She didn't trust him with the information, but I think she thought he'd keep me safe. I hoped she was right.

The thought of Blane made me cover my face with my hands and groan in embarra.s.sment. I couldn't believe that I had stripped in front of him last night. I swore I was never drinking again (yeah, right). Though, it hadn't seemed like he'd minded my little striptease. I wondered what would have happened if CJ hadn't knocked on my door this morning. Who was I kidding? I knew what would have happened. I thought I should be grateful she'd interrupted, but I wasn't. Although I'd tried not to become emotionally involved with Blane, it had been a futile effort. I was self-aware enough to know that I was teetering on the edge of falling for him, which scared me utterly.

As I glanced around my apartment, taking in all the new furniture and things that Blane had bought for me, I wondered whether he might feel something for me, too. It seemed too much to hope for, I knew what a player Blane was, but I couldn't help myself. I was cursed as an eternal optimist and the thought of seeing him again tonight made me feel good and eased the weight of worry about what CJ and I were planning.

I was getting ready for work when there was a knock on my door. Toweling my hair dry, I hurried to the door, careful this time to look through the peephole first before answering.

"Gracie!" I said, throwing open the door and smiling in welcome. Gracie looked like a runway model, even wearing low-slung jeans and an oversized sweater like she was now. She smiled back and I gestured for her to come inside.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, closing the door behind her.

"I - what happened to you?" she interrupted herself, eyeing the bruise on my cheek. I grimaced.

"Nothing," I answered, not wanting to talk about it. "Just a misunderstanding." Gracie looked like she didn't believe a word of it.

"Yeah," she said grimly, "I've had those kind of misunderstandings before."

"So what's going on?" I asked, anxious to change the subject. I headed toward the kitchen. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Sure," she said, following me. "Looks like you redecorated," she commented, glancing around. I didn't say anything to that. I barely understood Blane's generosity myself, much less try to explain it to someone else.

Grabbing a couple of mugs, I filled each with some coffee I'd brewed. I offered one to Gracie, pointing out the cream and sugar on the table. After we'd fixed our coffee to our satisfaction, we sat side-by-side on the couch. I tucked my bare feet up underneath me.

"I wanted to let you know about some information I had," Gracie said, sipping slowly at her coffee. At my questioning look, she clarified, "About Sheila's client."

"You found out who he is?" I asked eagerly, but she shook her head.

"I couldn't find out an actual name, but I heard he's looking for someone new and is going to be at a party tomorrow night."

"What kind of party?" I asked.

"It's a special kind of party," she answered. "Every once in a while, my employer will throw one of these. They're to introduce the girls to new clients and to old ones who may be looking for someone different."

"And he'll be there?"

"That's what I've heard," she said. "I was wondering if you wanted to come. I could tell Simone, that's my boss, that you're thinking of getting into the business. So you wouldn't be obligated to be with anyone, but maybe you'd learn something that would help us track down who killed Sheila." It sounded safe enough but I was wary of the circ.u.mstances.

"Are you sure I wouldn't have to," I searched for the right words, "be hired by anyone?"

"Absolutely," Gracie rea.s.sured me. "I promise. You'll only go with somebody if you want to." She hesitated. "Have you given any more thought to trying it out?" I shook my head.

"I just don't think it's for me," I dismissed. Gracie shrugged.

"Okay, if you're sure," she said. "So do you want to come to the party?"

"Let me think about it," I said. The prospect of going to a party to be looked over like I was cattle was rather daunting, even if I was just posing as an escort. We chatted some more while we finished our coffee, then she glanced at her watch.

"I've got to get going," she said, "but here, let me give you this." Reaching into her purse, she scrawled something on a piece of paper and gave it to me. "This is my address. If you ever need a place to stay," her eyes flicked back to the bruise on my face, "just come. I won't ask any questions."

I really appreciated her thoughtfulness and I impulsively hugged her. "Thanks, Gracie," I said sincerely. She seemed a bit surprised, but returned the hug.

After she left, I had to hustle to get ready. I was grateful to be able to return to my work uniform of pants and a long-sleeved boat-neck t-shirt and leave the Britney outfit at home. Hurriedly locking my door, I knocked on CJ's and waited.

Opening her door, she handed me a small package. "Here's the drive. Be careful and don't drop it," she admonished.

"I won't," I a.s.sured her.

"Give me your cell number so I can reach you later," she said, and I gave it to her, watching as she punched it into her cell phone.

"Good luck," she called out as I headed down the stairs. I hoped I wouldn't need it.

Scott was bartending with me again tonight and I gave him a friendly smile as I stowed my purse under the bar.

"How's it going?" he asked as he wiped down the bar.