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kitchen where he opened the freezer and examined his stash of frozen dinners. It wasn’t home cooking, but it was convenient, he thought, as he pulled out a chicken and pasta dish, stripped off the wrapper, and put it into the microwave. While he drank another beer, he booted up the computer in the spare bedroom he used as an office, then brought the food to the desk.
    He was tired, but he was too wound up to relax, and he might as well get some work done.
    He’d told the other Rockfort agents that he couldn’t help suspecting Elena Reyes. He had no proof that she’d done anything illegal, but with her access to the whole company’s operations, she was in a perfect position to steal information from S&D. Not only that, but she had the skills to cover her tracks.
    Or was he digging into her background so relentlessly because he was obsessed with her—and investigating her gave him the perfect excuse to get to know her better, at least in the abstract?
    For a moment, he let his mind zing back to the scene in the ladies’ room when he’d held her in his arms. He’d felt protective and at the same time vulnerable. Maybe crashing through that window and getting shot at had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
    With a rough sound, he stopped thinking about his reactions after the takedown and went to the file he’d compiled on Elena, skimming back through the notations he’d made. Her father was a political refugee from San Marcos. He’d come here legitimately, but did Dad still have ties to his country of origin? What if he was involved in something illegal and had dragged his daughter into it?
    And what about the brother, Alesandro Reyes? Elena had a well-paying job at S&D. Her brother had had the same opportunities in his adopted country, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He worked for a rental car company where the pay couldn’t be anywhere near what his sister was making. But he did have unexpected luxuries like a top-of-the-line Buick and an apartment in a high-priced building. Did he have other sources of income? Or was he forcing his sister or his parents to subsidize his lifestyle? And if so, how?
    Even as Shane made a note to dig further into Alesandro’s background, his thoughts went back to Elena.
    Did she have a secret life that she was keeping hidden from everyone at S&D? A relationship she was hiding? And what would be the significance if she was? Could she be seeing someone who was influencing her behavior?
    Was she under stress—with signs he could pick up, like moodiness and paranoia? Was she hiding financial transactions or extreme views?
    He laughed. Maybe if he’d investigated Joe Duckworth for those tendencies, today’s hostage situation could have been avoided. But Duckworth hadn’t even been on his radar screen. He hadn’t been investigating former employees.
    Once again, he went back to Elena because he’d rather investigate her than Joe Duckworth. And it was too late to do anything about that bastard, anyway, besides bury him.
    Shane had several pictures of Elena. One must have been from her high school yearbook. And some were snapshots that he’d gotten off the Web, like the one that went with her S&D employee bio.
    He studied one of the head shots, admiring the waves in her long, shiny dark hair and the thick lashes that framed her dark eyes. She was a beauty, even though she didn’t do much to enhance her looks.
    Not like Glenda, who had always spent a good deal of time at the makeup table.
    He clenched his teeth, wondering why he had dragged his ex-wife into the evening again.

Chapter 4
    In a mansion in the tony acres of Potomac horse country, Jerome Weller picked up the remote and turned off the news.
    The hostage situation and shoot-out at S&D had made CNN and Fox. But after hours of breathless reporting, the anchors had run out of anything new to say. The talking heads were just rehashing old