This is a good time to provide another adult-only reader reminder. I seriously don't know who wrote most of this into this chapter.
Ghosts That Haunt—48
Mariah's head shot up when her father entered her office. He pulled the door closed behind him, and she thought back to the last time he had done so. She sincerely hoped he wasn't there to talk to her about Debi again.
Her father seated himself in the spare chair opposite her desk. "Have you talked to Casey lately?"
Since John's visit a few weeks ago, her husband called her whenever he could, usually every two or three days. She explained that to her father and then asked why he wanted to know.
"There's a man downstairs looking for Mariah Casey. When Marge told him there was no such person, he asked for Mariah Adderly." Her father walked around her desk to stand beside her. He pulled her keyboard and mouse where he could more easily use them and pulled up the surveillance program for ISI's building and logged in, zoomed in on the face of a bored young man holding a thick envelope seated in the lobby. "Any idea who he is or why he wants to see you?"
Mariah studied the black and white security image. He looked to be about her age, but she was certain she'd never seen him before. She shook her head. "He didn't show Marge any ID?"
Her father nodded his head. "He's Robert Flores, and he works for the CIA." He stepped back from her desk and added, "I had him checked out. Officially, he's in Canada as part of a commerce group working on trade issues."
She stared at her father thoughtfully. She supposed John could have sent the man to her, but she doubted it. After what had happened in Los Angeles, he would have warned her if someone official were coming to her, and he certainly would have told her what it was about. Beckman likely wouldn't, but Mariah couldn't imagine the General would have sent someone without having told John first.
A sigh escaped her father. "I'll call Diane and see if I can find out what's going on," he told her. "In the meantime, you go nowhere without an escort." Her first thought was Victoria, and he obviously had the same one. "Call Izzie and tell her to keep Victoria inside and to answer the door to no one."
As Mariah reached for the phone to do as he said, her father left. Isobel Gerrard spoke softly when she answered the phone. After Mariah identified herself, Mrs. Gerrard told her Victoria was down for a nap. She relayed what her father said and told the other woman about the man who had appeared at ISI asking for her. Mrs. Gerrard asked sharply, "Do you want me to stay here with you?"
She considered it. She would rather have someone she knew than someone she didn't, especially since she had rapidly reached a place where she trusted only a handful of people, and she was certain her father would insist on around-the-clock protection. "Let me talk to Dad," she prevaricated, "and I'll get back to you."
Finding it difficult to focus on her work, she finally pushed the intelligence reports on Cymbala aside and took out her BlackBerry. She was hesitant to call John since he had his hands full and because Flores was CIA. Perhaps under the radar was the better option. She opened the e-mail package on her phone and sent a message to the address on which he had contacted her after he disappeared. When she had sent it, she wondered how to make sure he saw it. She chewed her lip, and then she simply sent John a text, coded, of course, before returning to the reports on Cymbala.
It didn't much surprise her to answer a summons from her father an hour or so later. She made her way to the director general's office late in the afternoon, and when she was ushered in, her father looked grim. "Not surprisingly, Diane Beckman refuses to talk."
Mariah snorted as she took a seat. She would have been far more surprised if the General had talked. If Beckman had had anything to do with Mariah's visitor, she would obviously deny it. Then again, Mariah suspected the General would have told her father had she been involved. She considered who might have wanted to talk to her other than the NSA or CIA, but she drew a blank. "You're going to have company, Mariah," her dad told her. "An operative will be with you at all times until I know what's going on."
"I want Isobel Gerrard," she said. Her father was about to argue, so she added, "Since she's already spending her days as my daughter's nanny, she might as well be mine, too."
She watched her father think about it. "Fine. Provided Izzie's willing, she can stay with you at home. I'll have someone escort you to and from work."
"Mrs. Gerrard has already agreed," Mariah said and realized she'd surprised her father when his brows shot up.
He nodded. "I suppose you got in touch with your husband," he said.
Mariah shook her head. She had reached out, but she hadn't yet made contact.
"If you haven't done so already, try," he said.
Promising to do so, Mariah left his office. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised when she picked up a shadow outside it. If she hadn't known the operative behind her, she would have demanded to know what he thought he was doing. She was tempted to stop in the ladies' washroom just to see what he might do. Back in her office, she checked her e-mail. Nothing. She pulled out the Cymbala material and tried to get back to work.
Her mind simply wasn't on task. Instead, she couldn't stop turning over what the American might have wanted with her. If something had happened to John, she felt certain she would have been told, was certain Chuck or even Ellie would tell her if no one else did. She was equally certain that John would have been in touch if the Americans were now willing to let her back in the country. Since she'd received a message from Sheryl Ballenger who assured her that her marriage was legal and promised the paperwork was on its way, she ruled out the possibility Flores had come to deliver paperwork. John, after all, had agreed to let her attorney send that to her, and if Sheryl had decided to have it hand-delivered, Mariah doubted the lawyer would send a government operative to do so.
When the workday was over, she locked the material she worked on in the office safe and said goodnight to Dave. Her shadow picked her up outside ICOM and stayed with her. As she approached the lobby, Jonathan Hackett, one ISI's better operatives, stepped up next to her and put a hand in the small of her back as he escorted her outside. Mariah flinched, pissed that he dared to touch her. She hissed, "Move it, or lose it." He obediently dropped his hand.
She typically walked home, but this evening a car pulled to the curb, and Hackett put her in the back before joining her. She said nothing, knew it would do her no good to protest having guards since they were only following her father's orders. At her building, Hackett rode up the elevator with her. Her lips twitched as she unlocked her door and realized he had not said a single word to her since picking her up outside her father's office earlier in the day. He stepped inside Mariah's apartment long enough to make sure Mrs. Gerrard was there and then nodded and left. Mariah suspected he would sit outside her door until he was relieved or she left for work the following day.
That irritated her, mainly because she had finally convinced her father to call off the operatives who had previously been assigned to her home.
Mariah could smell dinner, and she smiled at Mrs. Gerrard as she shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the small coat closet. She scooped her daughter up from the play blanket on the floor and kissed her, walked to the counter and sat where the other woman set a plate of pasta with puttanesca sauce next to a salad in front of her. "Victoria had some carrots and peas," she was told. Mariah smiled and kissed her daughter's forehead again before putting her in the high chair to her left at the end of the counter. She longed for a glass of wine, but she still nursed Victoria, so she requested milk when Mrs. Gerrard asked. While she ate, Victoria made noises, banged a teething ring on the tray of her high chair, and Mariah smiled at her from time to time and spoke softly to her.
As she finished eating, Mrs. Gerrard asked if her father knew any more about the man who had come looking for Mariah. She shook her head, and the other woman said, "Go get changed, and I'll clean up."
She felt guilty while she did as she was told. Isobel Gerrard surely had other things to do than guard her and her daughter. When she had put on a pair of cotton sleep pants and a knit top, nursed Victoria and then bathed her and dressed her for bed, Mariah completed Victoria's nighttime ritual and returned to the living room and said as much.
"My husband's gone, Mariah, and I have no children," the other woman said. "It's nice to have something to do."
"I'll sleep in Victoria's room," she offered.
The other woman smiled and said, "Keep your own room, Mariah. I don't mind to sleep in the baby's."
Mrs. Gerrard had cleaned the kitchen while Mariah put her daughter to bed, and the other woman settled on one of the couches with, of all things, knitting. Mariah nearly asked her what she was making. She told the other woman she was welcome to watch the television if she liked and picked up her laptop. She carried it to the counter where she could set it up so that Mrs. Gerrard couldn't see what she was doing. It wasn't that she didn't trust the other woman but more that she would prefer not to answer questions.
She made her way through her three e-mail accounts, ignoring the fourth—work—while she was at home. It was, after all, the last account John would likely used to get a message to her. She was disappointed there were no messages from her husband. She closed the computer and frowned out the windows at the city lights. "Call him," the other woman suggested.
Mariah stared across at her. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, all things considered. "Mrs. Gerrard—" she began, but the other woman stopped her with a deep sigh and pointed a knitting needle at her.
"And you can stop that nonsense, Mariah. I've known you since you were younger than Victoria. I've put up with it so far, but if we're going to spend this much time together, it's long past time you called me Isobel." Her mouth curled into a slight smile. "Or you can call me Izzie."
It was difficult, but Mariah tried not to betray that she knew how John and her father had come to call her that. "Isobel," she said cautiously.
The other woman snorted. "Casey told you." She shook her head and turned her knitting to continue the next row. "Your father and your husband should have both known better," she said with a short chuckle.
Mariah walked toward her and dropped on the sofa facing the one on which the other woman sat. "Did you really do a striptease down to just your shoulder holster and your panties?"
"To those two's eternal horror, yes," Isobel laughed and then shrugged. "It got the job done, got the two of them a suitable diversion so they could get the documents we were after and get clear, though for a moment I thought I had done all that for nothing since they stayed for the show, so to speak." Mariah stared, and Isobel quirked a brow. "I looked a lot different in those days, Mariah. I weighed maybe one-twenty and was pretty nicely endowed, shall we say?"
Choosing not to point out that the other woman's body didn't show signs of having changed that much, mainly because she really didn't want to think about what John had said about finding Isobel attractive, Mariah remained silent. She had seen photographs of the woman seated opposite her when she was a young woman, so she knew it was true. "John said Dad dared you."
Isobel smiled fondly. "Your husband wasn't entirely honest, Mariah. Casey rather enthusiastically proposed and backed the idea, but he has the bare facts right: When I balked, your dad dared me." She shook her head a moment, and her expression turned inward before she continued. "V. H. knew I never backed down from a dare." Isobel set her knitting in her lap and levelled her gaze on Mariah. "Casey loves you, Mariah." Afraid she'd cry, Mariah simply nodded. "Go call him. Find out if he knows the Americans are sending people after you."
She crossed to the counter where she had set her BlackBerry down.
"I'll give you some privacy," Isobel said and started to gather her things together.
Waving her back to her seat, Mariah took the phone, opened the door to step out on the balcony, and automatically scanned rooflines as she did so. If they wanted her dead, they'd had opportunities through her open drapes—two of the "walls" in the open living area were floor-to-ceiling glass. She hit John's speed-dial number and leaned on the railing, looked across toward Parliament Hill, while she waited.
It was odd how weak-kneed she felt when John's gruff voice asked, without greeting, if she was okay rapidly followed by his asking if Victoria was alright. Mariah felt a knot in her throat. Every time she heard his voice, she wanted so badly to go home, but she had promised to stay put until it was safe for them to go back to the States. Before she could unknot her throat and answer, he asked, "Riah?"
"We're both okay," she said. "I called because—"
He cut in, told her to hold on a minute, and she listened to the noise on his end, listened as it faded away. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. He told her, "Okay," and she went on and explained about Flores.
For a long moment he said nothing. Just as Mariah was about to break the silence, he asked softly, "Did your father check this guy out?" When she told him he had, he made the thoughtful growling hmm she associated with John calculating the angles. "Riah, I'll see what I can find out from the CIA, but I can't do anything from here—and I can't come to you."
She swallowed thickly. "I know, John, but Dad asked me to call and see if the guy was legit or if we should be worried." She sighed, straightened from the railing, and once more scanned the rooflines around her. "In the meantime, Victoria and I have babysitters twenty-four seven." She began to pace the balcony, briefly wondered if his side were listening in on the call. She doubted, after all, that John had fully earned his agency's trust back, and if they were sending CIA officers to see her, they might well be fully spying on her. "He called Beckman, but she wouldn't tell him anything about the guy."
It was odd how she could almost feel a shift in John just from the value of the silence coming through her BlackBerry.
"Who's the babysitter?" he finally asked.
"I have an operative for back and forth and the office," she said, "but Isobel Gerrard is staying with us at home." John gave an amused snort. "By the way," Mariah said, dropping her voice to an intimate tone, "according to Isobel, you didn't quite tell me the entire truth about her little striptease."
"It didn't strike me as the sort of thing I should admit to my angry wife," he said, his voice unrepentant though soft as well. "I remember the last time I had to confess to spending time with a naked woman when you were pissed off at me."
Mariah thought about Ilsa a moment. "The good news is that Isobel wasn't actually fully naked, I suppose, and as long as the last time you were actually in the company of a naked woman it was with me, I think I can live with a little—shall we say—distortion of the facts."
"I promise you're the only naked woman I've spent time with in the last year." She smiled, and then John said, "I notice you've apparently gotten over your fear of her and stopped calling her Mrs. Gerrard."
She shot a look over her shoulder where Isobel sat complacently knitting. "I wouldn't say I don't fear her," Mariah told him, knowing she would be a fool not to be slightly afraid of a woman who had the kind of record Isobel Gerrard had, "but it is hard to think of a woman wearing a twinset and pearls and knitting something from fluffy pink yarn as anything less than friendly."
There was silence from the other end, but then, finally, "Riah, you can trust her."
Turning to lean back against the balcony railing, she studied Isobel through the windows a moment or two. She did, but she'd prefer to not have to. "I know," she told him.
"Speaking of naked women," he said, and Riah braced herself.
When nothing followed that statement, she prompted, "Were we speaking of naked women? I don't remember that being plural, John."
His snort made her smile. "I was hoping you might be naked."
The grin split her face even though he couldn't see it. "Since I'm out on my balcony, I'd probably freeze to death."
"Get inside."
Mariah tilted her head, surprised. "I'm perfectly safe," she assured him.
"Get inside, Riah," he repeated, even more firmly this time, she noticed. Before she could repeat that she was safe, he made a threat. "I'll call your father, and he'll put you somewhere you can't be seen if you don't get inside right now."
"John, you just kissed your chance at naked woman goodbye," she told him tightly.
"At least you'll be a live, dressed woman," he shot back. She ground her teeth and was about to tell him it wouldn't do him a damned bit of good when he added, "I'm certain I can find a way to get you to be a live, naked woman."
"In your dreams," she bit out.
"Get inside and then argue with me," he told her.
Mariah didn't move.
"I'm dialing your father while you stand there figuring out what to call me," he assured her.
She heaved the heaviest sigh she could manage and walked toward the door to her balcony. She slammed the door for good measure—loud enough for him to hear but not loud enough to wake Victoria, though it made Isobel jump. "Inside," she snapped. "Happy now?"
"Not by a long shot," he assured her. "I'd be a lot happier if you were here and naked."
"Where is here, by the way?" she asked to keep from telling him she wished she was there and naked, too, since it would only encourage his mistaken belief he had a right to order her around as he saw fit.
"Home. Kind of." She was about to ask what that meant. "Grimes lured a tiger into Ellie's place."
Apparently, her hearing deserted her, and the image she certainly hoped was erroneous made her feel faint. "John?"
"Don't worry," he told her. "Tiger tore the hell out of their place, but the cleanup crew is putting it back the way it was." She heard John give an amused snort. "Never tranqed a tiger before."
Mariah had gone to her bedroom while he explained, and now she dropped on her bed, sagged. "You were inside a confined space with a pissed off tiger?" she asked, horrified as her imagination went to work.
"It was a pet," he admitted before conceding, "but it wasn't happy. Closest I ever got to big game hunting."
She supposed she ought to be glad he hadn't killed an endangered animal, though she wasn't about to say so and be accused of being a communist again.
"About the naked," he prompted.
"I'm fully dressed," she told him primly.
"Get naked," he ordered.
Mariah blinked at her phone a second then put it back to her ear. "Why?" she blurted. "You aren't here."
"Just do it, Riah," he coaxed.
She remembered why she was mad at him. "I don't know why you think you get to tell me what to do—and don't you dare say being my husband gives you the right," she hastily tacked on when she heard him draw breath to do, she presumed, exactly that.
"Come on, honey," he coaxed, and it occurred to her that he almost never called her by anything other than the version of her name only he typically used.
She chewed her lip a moment. "Wait a minute." She set the phone down and got up and locked her bedroom door. Feeling like an idiot and sincerely hoping her father hadn't had the place fitted with microphones or cameras—and she briefly wondered if she ought to sweep her room just in case—she did as he told her.
"Where are you?" he asked when she picked up the phone and said his name.
Certain she was scarlet from head to toe, she admitted, "In my bedroom."
"You're naked?" he asked, and she confirmed it, sure she was now covered in a far deeper shade of red. "Lie down on your bed, Riah."
She chewed her lip a moment. "Where are you, John?"
That earned her a dirty little grunt. "Our place," he assured her. "They don't need my supervision."
Mariah lay down when he repeated that particular instruction. "If I were there with you," he told her softly, "I'd start by kissing you."
Closing her eyes, she imagined it, imagined it would be one of the soft ones, the ones that tasted, coaxed, and she could feel it, could feel the press, the warm tingle, against her own lips.
"I'd put my hand on your breast," he told her softly, and she could imagine that, too. "Do it for me," he practically whispered, and she put the hand not holding the phone over her breast. "I'd cup it, run my thumb over your nipple."
This time, she didn't wait for him to prompt her. She ran her own thumb lightly over her tightened nipple just as he often did.
"I'd taste you there," he told her, and there was a hungry edge to his voice. Her thumb and forefinger tugged at her nipple, and she imagined John's mouth drawing on it instead. Her breath hitched.
"That's my girl," he practically crooned in that smooth, deep tone that set her on fire when he used it. "Next, I'd give your other breast equal treatment."
She moved her hand, repeated what she'd done, and listened to her husband's soft moan.
"Down your abdomen, Riah," he told her, "slowly." She heard his breath hitch as she moved her fingertips between her breasts. Her breathing quickened when she imagined the feel of his mouth and tongue where her fingers trailed lightly toward her belly button.
"I can practically smell you," he said in a near whisper, and her fingers stopped a second while her middle one traced the edges of her belly button as his tongue sometimes did.
"Lower, Riah, but list to the side."
She let her fingers glide toward her hip. A slight smile tipped her lips. If he were with her and doing with his mouth what her fingers mimicked, she'd feel the frustration he intentionally caused when he was in a mood to make her as crazy as possible before he gave her what she wanted.
Perhaps that was why, despite following his instruction, she told him with a hint of sultry, "How do you know I'm doing as you say? It isn't as though you can see."
His soft laugh had a nearly pornographic edge to it that had her wishing he was truly there. "You're a rules woman, Riah. You follow them."
It was hard to take offense at that, particularly since it was true, but she wasn't about to admit that to John. "Maybe I'd like to break them."
There was a pause. "Yeah? How?"
"Get naked with me," she whispered as her fingers returned to her breasts. His swift intake of breath told her all she needed to know. She'd wait for him, though she didn't wait to add, "Go to your room, John."
"I'm not our daughter," he growled in her ear.
"No," she agreed, decided she liked telling him what to do for a change, "but you've been a very bad boy."
A particularly suggestive grunt escaped him. "You gonna drive?"
"Just get naked, John, and I'm sure we'll find a mutually satisfying solution."
While she waited, she closed her eyes again, trailed fingers over warm skin and wished they were John's fingers, wished it was his skin gliding below her own fingers.
Then she felt a sudden flood of embarrassment, wondered why on earth she was going along with this, and hoped like hell no one was listening in.
"You didn't hang up out of mortification?" she heard him ask, and she nearly did exactly that. Before she could question what they were doing, he told her, "Don't think about it, Riah, just do."
"I want you for real, John," she whispered.
"Take me," he offered, but her brain froze when she imagined him lying on his back in their bed, naked, erect and waiting, and she couldn't get the words out of her mouth.
"Put your hand back on your breast, Riah," he told her. Each time he told her what to do, she ran her fingers over her body when that soft, deep voice of his told her to. She slipped fingers over her skin, down her stomach again to her thigh, stroked up the inside, just as he told her and just as he'd actually done many, many times. His voice lulled her enough that she complied silently—if she didn't count the increase in her heart rate and the uneven breaths, gasps, and moans as she listened to him tell her what he wanted her to do.
She imagined him touching himself, and she moaned at the image, heard a groan from him in return just before he told her to touch herself, to stroke, to slide a finger inside herself, to add another, to stroke with her thumb as she moved her fingers in and out. She gasped his name, but she kept following his instructions despite the tiny little voice that briefly intruded to suggest this wasn't right.
It didn't take much to stomp that voice right back into silence. It was easier when John told her to put the phone down, touch her breast with the hand that had been holding the phone. She set the BlackBerry on the pillow beneath her ear and continued to follow his increasingly breathless instructions until she felt it, imagined it was John's body and not her own hands that caused her to fly apart. Something between a whimper and a moan escaped her, and she heard John groan out her name.
"It's not the same as being naked in the same country—let alone the same room," she grumbled when she finally picked her phone back up.
"At the moment," he told her, "it's probably safer."
Mariah slid between her sheets, pulled the covers up to cover her despite the fact no one could see her. "Is that your way of saying you don't want more children?"
"Not what I meant," he told her. She smiled, imagined that expression he sometimes got that said he wasn't exactly sure whether to take her seriously or not.
"Any closer to eliminating the threats?" she asked.
John sighed. "No." After a moment, he added, "Ellie and Woodcomb are headed back stateside. Trust Captain Airhead to contract malaria." When she asked, he assured her Ellie's husband would be fine.
"Have you thought any more about your daughter, Alexandra?" she asked.
"Riah," he said in a tone that definitely held a warning.
"I've given it a lot of thought, John," she told him, and she had. "Give in to the curiosity you're bound to have. You don't have to admit you're her father, but at least see who she is."
The silence stretched, and if it weren't for the fact that she hadn't heard the signal that would have told her the call had been disconnected, she would have thought he'd hung up on her.
"I'll say it again," he told her gruffly. "She's better off if she continues to believe her father is dead."
That was something else to which Mariah had given a lot of thought. "Have you considered that Keller might have told others? Have you thought about the fact that she and her mother are unprotected? Seriously, John, her mother's been a target once, and it's only a matter of time before she is as well."
"I don't have to see her, meet her, to do something about that," he reminded her, and that told her the two McHughs were likely under protective surveillance.
Her husband changed the subject then, told her he'd spoken to his mother. Jane apparently wanted to see her granddaughter, and Mariah told him she'd be happy to make arrangements for his mother to come see them. Then she remembered why she was in Canada and not California.
"Maybe I can get leave when this is over," he said. "We could go there."
Mariah smiled, remembered the first time he took her to see his family. "Only if Julie can catch us in the act again."
John's "Hell, no!" was fast and emphatic.
"Come on," she teased, "you want to gross her out as much as I do."
"She and Jan didn't exactly catch us in the act," he reminded her. "You know she thinks you're hot, right?"
It was probably the disgruntled note that sounded like possessive jealousy, but she couldn't resist adding a perky, "Really?" Riah pushed a little further when he gave her an irritated grunt. "So I appeal to more than one Casey?"
"Yeah, well," John said silkily, "no naked women for you, either—especially not my sister."
"Oh, John," she said on a sultry note. "I'm not at all interested in naked women that way or even in other Caseys—but I am interested in the only male Casey I know, especially if he's naked."
They talked a little more, this time about Victoria, and when they finally had to hang up, John gruffly said, "Love you."
Riah's smile was huge when she said, "I love you, too."
After he disconnected, she lay there a moment and considered what he'd talked her into doing.
She couldn't deny it gave her ideas.
As she showered, she considered possibilities. Unfortunately, the leather and lace Gaultier corset John found so inspiring was in Los Angeles, but she'd had to do some shopping since she arrived in Ottawa. She searched her underwear drawer and found what she was looking for, and then she went to her closet and found her camera equipment.
Using the camera on her BlackBerry wouldn't do for what she had in mind, so she set up the tripod, estimated the correct angle, and then set the timer before she climbed on the bed to test it. She made a slight adjustment and tried again. Satisfied, Mariah got dressed, so to speak.
Since she knew John liked her stockings, she opened a new pair and put them on the bed. Then she lifted the panties that would have John making comments about obscenity, she noted with a grin, and stepped into them before she pulled what there was of them over her legs and settled the two narrow straps into place, one at the beginning of the curve of her hip, the other about where the waistline of a pair of normal bikini panties would hit, and then adjusted the lace skirt that was really more a strip of scalloped floral lace over the lower part of her hip. She made sure the bow on front was centered. Then she wrapped the matching lace basque around her and fastened the hooks and eyes before she drew up the straps that would have done a dominatrix proud and adjusted them so that they fell where the top of a bra's cups should have. Instead, the lace that passed for cups skimmed her nipples but did nothing to hide them.
She drew on the stockings, one at a time, smoothed them into place and buckled the attached garters to their tops. Looking in the mirror, Mariah made a few adjustments and then turned to look over her shoulder at the back. What she wore hid nothing, she admitted, but that was the point.
It took a while to get a photograph she thought John would like. Frankly, she was a little startled by how she looked in the photographs. For a second, she found it hard to believe it was her, and then she had second, third, and maybe twentieth thoughts about what she intended to do. Finally, she gave herself a stern, mental talking to, and then she deleted the ones she didn't think made the cut. She transferred the photograph she'd chosen to her BlackBerry and sent it to her husband with the message, Not quite naked, but it ought to do.
After she'd taken the underwear and stockings off and dressed for bed, she put the camera and tripod back in her closet. She heard her phone beep. The text was terse: Trying to kill me?
You're useless to me dead, she sent back.
The next day, Mariah realized she had been worried about the wrong kind of surveillance the night before. Late in the morning, she was up to her eyeballs in intelligence reports on a tiny dot of a country in Eastern Europe when her phone rang. She was intent on a satellite photograph as she absently picked up the phone and said, "ICOM. Adderly speaking. How may I help you?"
"Mrs. Casey," came the frosty tones of General Diane Beckman. Mariah had been using her maiden name, so to hear her married name bitten out as if the woman were talking to an especially slow child who'd committed a serious felony startled her.
"General," she said quietly.
"I've already spoken to your husband about this matter," the woman clipped out. "Now it's your turn."
Baffled, Mariah settled back in her chair and waited.
"If you and Colonel Casey wish to engage in phone sex, you should be aware that our agency often listens in on international telephone calls, especially those placed by foreign agents to ours. Not only do we listen in, but we take a special interest in the misuse of government equipment."
Mariah decided she hadn't been anywhere near this embarrassed the night before when John had talked her through masturbating for him.
"Furthermore, Mrs. Casey," and the General made her title sound like it might just get revoked once more, "I suggest you write this number down." She proceeded to list a telephone number that Mariah dutifully recorded on a sticky note—if for no other reason than the other woman's voice made it impossible to refuse had she desired to do so. "The next time you wish to send your husband pornography, I suggest you use his personal phone rather than the one our agency issued him."
Mariah tried to stammer an apology out, but the General cut her off.
At least her voice wasn't as iron-hard when she said, "Casey will not be punished as long as neither of you are foolish enough to abuse government property this way again."
"No, ma'am," Mariah promised faintly.
There was a sigh from the other woman, but Mariah thought she heard a hint of amusement when the General acerbically admitted, "Two of our analysts have had to be informed that if they don't destroy the copies they printed of your . . . portrait, that it is entirely possible your husband will find out they've seen it, and should that happen, it would be best if they saw to it that their affairs are in order."
John really would kill them—maybe not actually, she admitted, but they would likely wish he had. Mariah stayed silent, though, since she thought it might be the best way to get this over with quickly.
"With any luck, Mariah," the General continued, "it won't be much longer before the urge to abuse government equipment will prove unnecessary. In the meantime, use more private channels."
After she set the handset back in its cradle once General Beckman had hung up, she didn't know whether to hide in shame or laugh. She also wondered whether the government equipment Beckman thought she might have the urge to abuse was John or his phone. She was, though, surprised she hadn't heard from John, especially since she was certain the General had blistered his ears as well.
Unfortunately, her boss also had a thing or two to say to her. When her father turned up in her office at mid-afternoon, she could tell from the way he didn't look at her face that he knew. He took the seat opposite her desk and stared at a point somewhere on her desktop.
She considered putting him out of his misery, but then she decided to wait and see what he'd say. "Mariah," he finally sighed out, "I really did not need to hear you let Casey verbally molest you."
Though it was embarrassing that her father had apparently listened to the recording, she was strangely amused that he placed all the blame on her husband.
"I especially did not need to see a photograph of you looking like something out of the kind of men's magazine shops hide behind counters where your mother grew up."
That did make her laugh.
"It isn't funny," he assured her. "I only saw it because I had to go see the head of International Affairs, and they were passing that picture around the bullpen."
"Maybe you should be glad I didn't send John a video."
From the glare he directed at her, he didn't find that remotely amusing.
Mariah sighed. "If it helps, Dad, General Beckman has a similar problem."
That did get him to meet her eyes, and then that look she remembered from her childhood appeared on his face. His mouth straightlined, and his dark brown eyes burned as one brow ratcheted up. "Two agencies are passing around nearly naked pictures of my daughter?"
It was funny that she was no longer embarrassed—or at least not as embarrassed as she had been—and she gave a little thought to that. Three years ago she would have gone into a dark depression over the mere thought that anyone knew what she'd done. Now, she wanted to teach her father a lesson about privacy instead of gushing apologies and considering hiding in a dark, isolated room for the rest of her life. "Picture," she corrected, "but if it helps, I considered not getting dressed at all."
Her father said through tightly gritted teeth, "It doesn't help."
"It was meant to be private, Dad," she told him. "It's not my fault if you and our government think it needs to intercept private communications between me and my husband." She cocked her head. Though she very sincerely didn't want to know the answer, in order to make a point, she asked, "If I intercepted your phone, what might I learn?"
Beneath the olive skin she used to wish she'd inherited, a deep flush ran up his face.
"Don't answer," she told him. She really didn't want to know. "John isn't going to tell me state secrets on the phone, Dad, so I suggest ISI, CSIS, and anyone else who thinks he might should give it up—unless they want to hear me have sex with my husband again."
When he left her office, she was pretty certain ISI, at least, would not intercept anymore of her calls.