CHAPTER 15
Callan and the others were taking care of adding the ghost program to the compound's server and systems, and within the office, camera covered, Ria took care of sending the various files and information through the independent program she had attached to a ghost drive she was now able to use on the computer system she had been given to work with.
There were no outside lines on the computer; it was completely self-contained. It wasn't even attached to the main compound server. There was no way out of it, no way inside it except from the seat she was sitting in.
The ghost drive was simple. It attached to the computer as another hard drive, but once it disconnected, all signs of it were wiped completely from the computer it was attached to. There was no way to tell it had ever been there.
Efficient for her, because it allowed her to go through the files she needed to decrypt to reveal the code; very bad for Dr. Elyiana Morrey, though. Because many of the transmissions Ria had questioned had come from her office.
As she worked, she was very much aware of Mercury sitting across from her. He did as he always did, read one of the magazines lying on the table beside the chair, but unlike always, her skin prickled with the need to rub against him.
Rubbing against him was a pleasure in and of itself. The fine, supersoft hair that covered Mercury's body was unique. The sensation was oh, she really shouldn't go there.
"The look on your face is going to get you f**ked."
Her head jerked up and she felt a flush suffuse her face at the look he was giving her.
"Locking the door is easy." He glanced to that lock. "And very simple."
She shook her head and turned back to her work. This part of her job was child's play. It was simply gathering the suspected files, sending them through the program, then saving to the ghost drive those that needed decrypting. The real job came when it was time to decrypt them.
"How close are you and Dane?" he asked a few minutes later.
Ria lifted her head slowly and stared back at him. He had laid the magazine aside and watched her, slouched in that chair, one ankle lying on the opposite knee, his elbow propped on the chair arm as he rubbed at his chin with his index finger. The pose was so sexy, so virile, she wanted to come from the sight of it alone. But the question, posed with just the right amount of serious interest, warned her there was more beneath the surface than a sexy, brooding male.
"Haven't we been through this?" she asked.
"No, we have satisfactorily answered whether or not you've slept with him or intend to sleep with him," he said to refute her. "That doesn't answer the question why he felt he could invade your bedroom or why he displays such an air of protectiveness toward you."
She shook her head at that.
"My mother worked for Vanderale. In the main office. When a neighbor heard of my mother's death, she contacted Dane to find out if I was in the car with her, because she hadn't heard one way or the other about a child. Dane was the one who found me in our apartment three days later."
She had been hungry, though there had been food in the kitchen. She had been thirsty, and there was water available. But her mother hadn't been there, and she had been a good girl. She didn't climb and she didn't try to cook. And her mother hadn't contacted the neighbor to watch Ria that weekend because the neighbor had been ill. Ria's mother had had secrets, and she had taught Ria how to stay alone if she needed to.
"Mom was just supposed to be gone for a few hours," she said softly. "I was to be good until she returned."
"And she didn't return?"
Ria shook her head. "Dane arrived. He stepped into the bedroom, and the moment I saw him, I knew my fears that my mother wasn't returning were true."
She remembered that as clearly as she remembered yesterday. Staring back at him as he stepped into the room, his expression lined with sorrow as he moved to the bed, picked her up and carried her from the apartment.
She shook her head. "I'd drank water from the bathroom tap. I could reach it." She shrugged. "There had been some cheese, a bit of fruit in the fridge and I'd eaten it. And I slept. Huddled in my mother's bed."
For three days, alone. Mercury stared back at her, hearing a child's horror in the too calm words that the adult spoke.
"The Vanderales took good care of me." She cleared her throat. "They found a foster family to take me in. And when that didn't work out, they found a better one. We finally struck it lucky the third time, but I was already in my teens. They compensated the families for taking care of me. Dane would often take me shopping for the clothes I needed and school supplies. He brought me Christmas presents, and sometimes, I'd spend an odd weekend here and there on the Vanderale estate when they were there."
But she had never had a family of her own. She'd been shuttled from one place to the other, and he had a feeling a few of those places hadn't been happy ones.
"How did you come to work for them?" He watched her, piecing the information Jonas had on her together with what she said.
She shrugged. "I was on the estate one weekend when I was sixteen. I'd been driving Leo insane. I was always being a brat." She lowered her head. Mercury guessed she had always been looking for attention, looking for a place to fit in. "Anyway, he pushed me into his office, sat me down at a desk and told me that if I could find the puzzle in the papers there, then he would teach me to ride one of the horses on the estate. That was what I was begging for." She smiled. "I thought he didn't think I could do it. Five minutes later, I found the code he had me looking for, but I had also broken the code."
"And did he teach you to ride?"
Her gaze slid away from his. "Eventually, yes. Leo always keeps his word."