Without a Trace by Nora Roberts

men like him deserved. The back of a woman’s hand.
    She started the coffee, too incensed to feel uncomfortable with rooting through a dead man’s cupboards.
    He’d had no business dismissing her. Just as he’d had no business kissing her the way he had. It had felt as if she were being devoured. And yet when it had finished, she’d been whole. It had felt as if she’d been drugged. And yet her mind had been clear, her senses sharp.
    However she’d felt, however it had finished, she would never be quite the same. She could admit that here, alone, to herself. She was too practical a woman for self-deception. Her feelings were perhaps more easily touched, perhaps more readily given, than she would have preferred, but they were her feelings, and she would never have denied them. She’d enjoyed the feel and taste of Trace’s lips on hers. She would remember it for a long time. But she was also an expert on self-discipline. Enjoyable or not, she wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
    Trace was still working when she came back into the room. Without ceremony, she slammed the coffee cup down next to him. He acknowledged her with a grunt. Gillian took a turn around the room, told herself to keep her mouth shut, then jammed her hands into her pockets.
    “Access, number 38537/BAKER. Tabulate access code five. Series ARSS28.” Gillian blurted the series out almost like an obscenity. “And if you’re not too pigheaded to try it, it may work. If not, switch the first number sequence with the second.”
    Trace lifted his coffee, pleased she’d left it black, surprised she’d made it well. “And what makes you think you can figure out the access code to one of the most sophisticated computer systems in the free world?”
    “Because I’ve been watching you for the past hour, and I do a little hacking as a hobby.”
    “A little hacking.” He drank again. “Broken into any good Swiss bank accounts?”
    She crossed the room slowly, almost, Trace thought not without admiration, the way a gunslinger might approach a showdown. “We’re talking about my family, remember? Add to that the fact that I’m paying you, and the least you could do is try my suggestion.”
    “Fine.” Willing to humor her to a point, Trace tapped out the sequence she’d recited.
    ACCESS DENIED
    With only a slight smirk, he gestured toward the screen.
    “All right, then, transpose the numbers.” Impatient, she reached around him and began hitting the keys herself. The only thing Trace noticed for a moment was that his shampoo smelled entirely different on her.
    REQUEST FILE
    “There we are.” Pleased with herself, Gillian leaned closer. “It’s rather like working out a system for blackjack. A professor and I played around with that last semester.”
    “Remind me to take you with me the next time I go to Monte Carlo.”
    They were closer. One step closer. Smiling, she turned her face to his. “What now?”
    There wasn’t a hint of amber or gray in her eyes. They were pure green and brilliant now. Even as he watched them, they changed, filling with speculation, awareness, memory. “You talking about the computer?”
    She needed to swallow badly. “Of course.”
    “Just checking.” Trace turned away again. They both let out a quiet breath. He began typing, and within seconds data came up on the screen.
    He moved from screen to screen. After all, he knew quite a bit about Hammer already. He’d been briefed intensely before he’d gone undercover and had learned more during his stint as a low-level delivery boy. During his assignment, he’d managed to pass along names, places and dates to the ISS, and he’d been on the verge of being transferred to the newly implemented main base before he’d been shot.
    Frowning at the screen, he rubbed a thumb over the scar.
    But he’d been sedated for days, hanging between life and death. His recovery had taken two months of hospital care. He’d been debriefed, the assignment had been blown, and