to defend her country.
“I’ve always felt—I mean, since the first time I got in trouble—like I had to walk the straight-and-narrow path or else. I just had this little impulse to do something rebellious, but then I got scared.”
“Is that what this weekend with me is about? Being a little rebellious?”
“No,” she said too quickly. “I mean…maybe, a little.”
“I see,” he said, smiling.
And now he understood his appeal to her. She was a rebel without an outlet for her urges, and he was her way to rebel. He was dangerous, but not too dangerous. It wasn’t the way he’d intended to gain her trust, but it had worked nonetheless.
“You’re not offended, are you?”
“Let’s see—a beautiful, intelligent woman wants to spend the weekend with me. Which part should I be offended by?”
Yasmine shrugged and looked ahead as they walked. There was some shift in her mood then that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
And the question remained—had she engaged in any other system intrusions? Was she only telling him part of the truth? Was her daring to hack into terrorist Web sites just a hint of her secret activities?
Alex glanced at Yasmine again, her perfect features aglow in the streetlights. He couldn’t fathom her, this rebellious beauty who’d captivated him from the moment he first saw her. And he hoped like hell that she was innocent.
But then what? What if she really was innocent? Did he think he could just tell her the truth and that they could continue as they’d started this weekend? No, he knew there would be repercussions, and no matter what he learned from his investigation, both of them were going to get hurt.
ALEX HAD SET HIS WRISTWATCH alarm to sound at two in the morning, and as soon as he heard it go off, he pressed the button to stop the tinkling alarm. Beside him, Yasmine slept soundly, her steady breathing marked by the occasional pauses of deep sleep.
He allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark, then lay in bed biding his time. He could get up right now and search her computer, search her apartment, look for any and all answers to the question of her involvement in illegal activities.
Part of him couldn’t wait to know the truth, was eager to prove that she was innocent. And another part of him dreaded the other possibility—the chance that she really was still a hacker. If his attraction to her had clouded his judgment that badly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that, either.
But he’d come this far. He’d concocted a false identity for himself, lied his way into Yasmine’s life, and he couldn’t back down now.
One more glance in her direction to confirm she was sleeping, and he slipped out of the bed, silent and easy. Grabbing his boxers from the floor, he slid them on and eased his way out of the room and into the living room, where the lights on the tree still twinkled.
Alex sat at the computer desk and with a nudge of the mouse, took the monitor out of low-power mode. Yasmine’s flat-panel screen came to life, bright blue in the near darkness, inviting him to explore whatever secrets the hard drive held.
The type of people who spent their free time invading other people’s systems tended to be a paranoid sort when it came to their own computer’s security. Passwords and firewalls abounded, but Yasmine’s system came to life without a single password request.
Without that hurdle to jump, he easily started exploring. Through folders hidden and not so hidden, he looked for clues about her Internet activities. That everything was so easily accessible was a good sign, a sign that she didn’t think like a hacker anymore.
And after a half hour of poking around her hard drive, he’d have to say, if she had any secrets, they were hidden extremely well. On the Internet, she seemed to have a penchant for Ebay and online shopping sites, a couple of news sites and blogs, and that was it. Nothing nefarious. She didn’t haunt any of the sites attractive to hackers, didn’t even go to sites that suggested she might have an interest in system security anymore.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
His eyes glazed and his body telling him what he needed most was sleep right now, he glanced at the dark hallway that led to the bedroom.
No sound came from that direction, but something made his hackles rise. He went totally still and listened.
Nothing. Maybe it had just been