“You copied or stole back sensitive data and turned it over to Calhoun?”
Dahlia nodded. “In the last three years, that’s just about all I’ve been doing.”
“Dahlia, don’t hedge. What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s a reason for a high-security clearance, Nicolas. I don’t even know you.”
“You know me. And for the record, you don’t even exist, let alone have a high-security clearance. If you got caught, they would hang you out to dry.”
“Well, of course. That was understood. I’m the poor girl raised in the sanitarium, as batty as they come, seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. They’d put me back in the sanitarium.”
“Only if you were arrested. The kind of thing you’re talking about can get people killed.” Nicolas felt the first stirrings of a black, swirling anger in his gut. She was risking her life, and Jesse Calhoun and whatever agency he worked for knew it. As far as he could see, they did nothing to help her. They simply used her.
“Nicolas.” She swept her hand lightly down his face. A mere brush of her fingertips. Her touch jolted through his body, set his heart pounding, and heated the blood in his veins. “Don’t get upset over my life. I enjoy my work. It’s an outing and a chance for me to utilize the skills I’ve developed. I wanted to do it. The thing that’s important to understand about me is, I don’t do anything unless I want to do it. Not anything. Not even when I was a child. I may seem impulsive, but I’m actually not. I think things over and weigh the pros and cons and make a decision. Once I make it, I make the best of it, no matter how it turns out, because it was my choice and ultimately, I’m responsible. I like it that way. The rear admiral or whoever he was, couldn’t talk me into anything I didn’t want to do. Neither could Jesse or Milly or even Bernadette. I’m just not like that.”
“They used you, Dahlia.” There was ice-cold rage in his voice.
Dahlia was grateful for the bracelet of fingers around her ankle keeping the shimmering energy already radiating violence away from her. “Is that how you see yourself, Nicolas? A victim? They send you out into a jungle or a desert and you have no backup, no one to help you if you did something so simple as to break a leg. If you were captured or shot, how much help would you have?”
“It isn’t the same thing, Dahlia.”
She tilted her chin at him. A small thing, but the gesture told him a great deal without words. He was tramping on some idiotic feminine code she had, and if he didn’t back down, he was in serious trouble. He held up his free hand. “Don’t attack me—I can’t change who I am any more than you can. Regardless of whether or not we agree on this, it was dangerous. If Calhoun suspected there was something going on that was a threat to national security, he should have pulled the plug.”
“With no proof?”
“So what do you think was going on? You must have looked at the data.”
“I think Jesse was right. I think the three professors given a grant by the defense department came up with an idea for a stealth torpedo that would really work, and someone stole it from them. An investigation was launched, by Jesse’s people, and when they thought they knew who stole the research, they sent me in to recover it.” She watched his face closely as she deliberately mentioned the stealth torpedo.
Nicolas was silent, fear and anger washing through him. The anger deepened into full-blown rage. “They had no right involving you in something like this.”
Dahlia tried to repress the relief flooding through her. If Nicolas was a plant looking for information, she doubted he was a good enough actor to conjure up the violent energy his anger was generating. “Are you going to listen or not?”
“I’m listening, and then I’m going to hunt down the bastards who sent you into a minefield while they sat back risk-free in their comfortable offices.”