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‘Well, how about tonight? Mother’s invited me over for dinner but I can ring her and say you’re coming too…’
‘I’m afraid I’ll be working late tonight as well,’ she said, her tone of regret disguising a guilty twinge of relief. She and Madeline Prior politely tolerated each other for Stephen’s sake but Kalera had never felt truly comfortable in her prospective mother-in-law’s company. She knew that Madeline had doted on Terri and still maintained close contact with her son’s former wife by regularly baby-sitting little Michael. Kalera, with her unconventional upbringing and brazenly eccentric parents, was a dubious addition to Madeline’s carefully cultivated social circle. Added to which was Kalera’s uneasy suspicion that, although she had never said so out loud, the older woman secretly held her somehow responsible for Stephen’s continuing estrangement from his son.
‘What—again?’
‘It won’t be for very much longer,’ she soothed, crossing her fingers. Duncan couldn’t continue to keep her late every night, not without seriously disrupting his own social life. He would soon get bored with his game, especially if she persisted in acting unperturbed by his attempts to sabotage her evenings. ‘Once I start training my replacement I’ll make sure she takes on the overtime.’
‘So, he has settled on one, then…’
‘Actually, no, we’re still at the interviewing stage,’ Kalera confessed, and then nibbled anxiously at her lip, wondering whether even that innocent remark was revealing too much.
There was a small silence. ‘I suppose he’s still trying to con you into changing your mind?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Oh, well…at least that means there’s still a chance for my mole to clinch the job.’
The sharp edge to Stephen’s sardonic comment gave Kalera a moment’s uncertainty before she laughed. Of course he was joking! Even if Stephen were to go to such absurd lengths to try and plant one of his employees at Labyrinth, he certainly wouldn’t tip his hand by boasting about it on an open phone line.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help, as she rang off, harbouring a tiny niggle of doubt.
‘Thanks for picking that up,’ said Kirsty, setting down her coffee perilously close to her keyboard as she collapsed back in her swivel chair. ‘I just nipped along the hall for a cup of stamina—I went to an ace party last night and I’m still feeling a bit ragged. Was it an important call?’
‘It was as far as I was concerned…it was Stephen.’
‘Oh!’ Kirsty blushed with a redhead’s easy brilliance, her fresh, freckled face drenched in guilt. ‘I…er…’
Kalera took pity on her. ‘Don’t worry, I know you were only obeying orders from on high.’ She turned back towards Duncan’s office, tossing over her shoulder with a crispness that made Kirsty surreptitiously grin, ‘Expect to shortly have them countermanded!’
Duncan, however, when confronted by his perfidy, stood staunchly by his view that it was a simple security matter—he didn’t want his chief rival to have easy access to Labyrinth’s communications system and thus the opportunity to hack into the network.
‘Easy! I thought you said your new firewall was impenetrable without the proper encryption codes,’ scoffed Kalera.
He swivelled his chair gently back and forth, looking up into her indignant face. ‘As of this moment, yes. But let’s face it, in Cyberspace there’s always someone coming up with something newer than new. Someone with the will, the skill, the time and the resources might figure a way to crack the encryption or bypass the codes. And there’s always the risk of human error opening up a window of opportunity.’
‘If you don’t trust me I don’t see why you want me continuing in your employ,’ Kalera said stiffly.
Duncan’s voice dropped to a husky drawl, a counterpoint to the expensive creak of leather as he leaned forward in his chair to cover the hand she had planted on his desk. ‘Darling, you know that I’d trust you to the ends of the earth with the cherished secrets of my soul…’
The outrageously flattering words were uttered with such fervent sincerity that Kalera’s whole body was suffused by a traitorous warmth. Her breath clogged in her lungs as she became aware of the intimacy of the admiration in the navy eyes and the searing familiarity of his touch. For a brief instant she was transported back into a darkened bedroom where she had wantonly invited his admiration and recklessly sought pleasure from those clever, caressing fingers.
With a gasp she snatched her tingling hand from his warm grip and his mouth twisted into a wry smile as he added, ‘It’s him I don’t trust.’
Implying that she shouldn’t either!
Kalera sniffed to express her disdain and assumed a detached politeness for the rest of the afternoon which only faltered when she returned from doing some photocopying and ran into Bryan Eastman, head of their research division, coming out of Duncan’s office, an unaccustomed grimness pulling his thin, pale face into tight lines of anxiety.
Bryan was as close to the typical preconception of a computer nerd as Duncan was distant. He was short and as skinny as a rail, myopic and, with his prematurely thinning sandy hair, wispy beard and hunched gait, always looked much older than his twenty-five years. He was utterly dedicated to his work, but his juvenile sense of humour and penchant for practical jokes rescued him from being a complete obsessive.
When he saw Kalera he pinned on a weak smile but his light blue eyes skated anxiously away from hers as they paused to exchange pleasantries. Instead of lingering as he usually did to ask after Anna, on whom he had a massive unrequited crush, he edged quickly out of the conversation, the deep frown returning to his bony brow as he hurried off down the hallway.
Duncan was on his feet staring out of the window when she re-entered his office and, studying the set of his back and his uncharacteristic stillness, she forgot that she was supposed to be punishing him with her aloofness.
‘What’s the matter with Bryan? Is there a problem with “Janet and John”?’ she asked as she placed the copied reports he had requested on his desk. Since Bryan practically lived at Labyrinth and had no personal life to speak of she couldn’t imagine anything but work could cast him into such gloom. Although she knew none of the technical details, she was aware that his research team was in the final stages of developing a piece of multi-language speech-recognition software under the codename of the old-fashioned children’s reading primer.
Duncan turned slowly and looked at her with a strangely shuttered expression, almost as if he didn’t see her, then he blinked and his moment of abstraction passed. He padded back towards his desk, a dangerous smile prowling across his firm mouth. As he got closer she could see that his navy eyes were alight with a fierce exhilaration, a classic sign that his imaginative intelligence was responding to a fresh challenge.
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
Kalera waited for him to expand on the bald statement with his usual aggressive optimism, but instead he picked up the reports and silently flicked through the pile.
‘Bryan looked really worried. Is it going to mean a delay to the project?’ Kalera prodded, knowing that Duncan believed ‘Janet and John’ had the potential to become one of Labyrinth’s international top-sellers, superseding all similar programs currently on the market. He had certainly made a huge investment of money and resources, and at this late stage of development time was of the essence.
