Hard Target by Tibby Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

her was that he’d be able to duck out of the way before she managed to slug him. A smile played about his lips. Despite the animosity casting a dark cloud over their tattered relationship, he still enjoyed sparring with her both verbally and physically. Always had. Though he outweighed her by a considerable amount, her skill at hand-to-hand had been slightly greater than his, making them fairly evenly matched when his height and greater weight came into play.
    Reaching to the nightstand, he found his cell and peered blearily at the time—six p.m.—then rubbed his eyes. He needed to check his email, but that required his glasses and those were in the other room. Silently, and with as little motion as possible, he slipped out from under Alex’s white coverlet and padded to the little galley kitchen. He slipped his glasses from his go-bag and perched on a kitchen stool before activating the touch screen on his phone. He slid the frames on his nose. Smears of black on white became individual letters. For once his email held nothing of note. Lots of spam. A red indicator said he had one text message. He tapped at the screen and the message opened. From Gibbons, it read, How’s the new girlfriend ?
    Simon automatically glanced around to see which windows were in view of the street, though he already knew. Wooden shutters, currently closed, assured his privacy. The sleeping area drapes concealed the only other window in the apartment.
    He dialed Günter. His friend answered on the first ring. “All right?”
    “Yes. Well, no. But yes.” Simon took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m fine, but there’s a potential problem.”
    “What’s that?” A door closed on the other end of the call.
    “Am I interrupting…?”
    “No. Just going over some stage blueprints with David.”
    Remembering Günter’s long-standing gripe with the musician, Simon cringed. “Hey, are we okay?”
    “Depends. Did you steal the documents the FBI accused you of taking?” Leave it to Günter. The man knew how to cut to the chase.
    “No.” At least one question in Simon’s life offered an easy answer. “I didn’t.”
    “Then we’re good.”
    Simon focused on the sea of books scattered across Alex’s counter and homed in on a biography of Gustav Klimt. Returning his glasses to his face, he lifted the book and flipped through its pages, reading almost as fast as he turned them.
    “I didn’t do it, so technically I didn’t lie when you hired me.” Though he’d been forgiven, he still felt the need to defend himself.
    “Exactly.” A chair squeaked. “You never told me what you did for the CIA. Or is that classified?”
    “It’s classified, but you already know my Ph.D. is in computer science with a specialty in security.” Simon closed the book and rifled through Alex’s snail mail.
    “You were a professional hacker?”
    Simon coughed and continued shuffling through the pristine newspapers and unopened bills. Apparently Alex hadn’t been home in quite awhile. She must’ve been hot and heavy on this op if she hadn’t kept up with the financial section of the Times at least.
    “Right then. How did you two meet?”Günter asked.
    “At a guest lecture I gave at Columbia on financial systems security.” Simon recalled Alex’s swishing ponytail when she’d walked up to him after the question-and-answer session. “I thought she was a student. On our third date I figured she might be a foreign operative so I hacked into her computer. Turned out she was FBI.”
    “How did you get to be so good with history and all that other stuff you dabble in if you’re a computer whiz?”
    “They’re just things that interest me.”
    “Is there anything you can’t do?” Günter laughed, clearly self-conscious, though Simon didn’t know why. The man was intelligent and accomplished in his own right.
    “Sports…women…life?” He dug up several things he knew for certain he’d never be good at.
    “Hate to tell you, mate,