No Regrets

"Noelle," said David, in a low, coaxing voice. "Don't be so stubborn. Just listen to him, please?"

She looked across the room at David. He looked tired, worried. She realized that he must have been up all night watching out for her. Protecting her. She wanted to repay him for his help, but she just couldn't bring herself to compromise her principles.

With a heavy sigh, she resigned herself to another two hours penned up in this stuffy room. "Fine. I'll listen, but don't expect me suddenly to change my mind because you keep asking me the same questions. I might be tired of answering, but the answers won't change."

Monroe nodded, giving her a look of newfound respect. "Just how far did you get with the encryption algorithms—

the ones you were offered the grant to develop?" he asked.

Noelle looked at David, suddenly remembering what he had said. They wanted something from her. She was in a position of power here. She was smart, she could figure out a way to play that to her advantage.

Noelle crossed her arms over her chest and offered Monroe the same look she'd seen David give her when he was stonewalling. "No. First you tell me where I am."

Monroe looked over his shoulder to where David was lounging against the wall, looking bored. The older man's expression was written clearly with a this-is-all-your-fault look.

As he turned back to Noelle, a faint, indulgent smile tugged at Monroe's mouth. "Okay. You're in southern Colorado at a CIA safe house."

Noelle felt a surge of victory, but tried to keep it from showing on her face. "Who were those men who broke into my house?"

Monroe shook his head. "First, you answer my question. How far had you gotten in your development?"

"More than halfway." It seemed like a vague enough answer. Truthful, but holding no real information.

Oh yeah, she could play this game."

"How long would it take you to complete the work?" Monroe asked.

"Who were those men?" she countered.

"They were members of a terrorist group called the Swarm," he answered with a knowing grin, matching her vagueness and raising her an ounce of frustration.

At this rate, they were going to be here all night, and neither one of them would gain any truly useful information.

She decided to throw him a bone in the hopes that he would do the same. "It would take me two months, maybe as little as four weeks if that was all I was working on. At the end of that time, I would be able to enter any string of code based on the over three thousand variations possible in the sample ciphertext that was given to me and have a solution." It was a fairly simple code and she was sure she could figure it out in a few weeks.

"And if you were given a different sample of text? How much longer would it take you?"

Noelle shrugged. "I can't say without seeing it."

Monroe opened his jacket and pulled out an envelope that contained a folded piece of paper. He opened it carefully and smoothed the paper out in front of her.

Noelle glanced down at the page and instantly, her heart began to pound with excitement. She'd seen something like this before—from the Russian professor she'd been working with. The symbols were the same, but their use was entirely different. She could already see a complex pattern among the flowing symbols, something vague and elusive, but definitely there.

"This isn't just text," she stated. "It's mathematical."

Monroe frowned. "How can you tell? You've been looking at it for all often seconds."

Noelle pointed toward several symbols. "These are Greek, not Cyrillic. Their sequence and placement leads me to believe that the other symbols are variables in some sort of an equation. Or equations. I can't be sure."

David and Monroe shared a guarded look. "Now we know why they wanted her," said Monroe. "The Swarm must have figured out there was a mathematical angle and knew she was one of the few who could pull it off."

Her palms itched to reach out and grab the paper. This was the kind of puzzle that Noelle loved to solve. She could feel it already. This was something she'd never done before. It had weight. Importance.

It was a true challenge, and Noelle loved a challenge.

Before she could begin to see the pattern, Monroe slipped the paper back inside his jacket and leaned back.

Noelle tamped down her disappointment.

"We need you, Dr. Blanche. We've had a team working on this for months and they haven't even gotten as far as you did in a few seconds."

Noelle swallowed and tucked her hands under her thighs so she wouldn't reach out for the paper. "And you think I can do better than your team?" she asked, trying to sound casual but sounding more breathless instead.

Monroe shrugged his wide shoulders. "You already have. This is important. We're talking averting-a-nuclear-disaster-important. This text contains the location of several... misplaced weapons from the Cold War."

War. It always seemed to come back to that with the military.

Her stomach twisted as she realized that she wasn't going to get a chance to see mat script again. She wasn't going to be able to tear it apart into the right pieces and put it back together so it made sense. Order out of chaos.

Resigned frustration burned hot in her belly, but there was nothing she could do about the way she felt. She'd have to settle for being disappointed.

"I wish I could help," she said, meaning it. "But I won't get involved with military projects. To crack it I'm going to need to develop some algorithms. They'd be specific to this sort of code, but still generalized enough they could be used again. I can never be assured that my work won't be used offensively."

Bath men clenched their jaws in frustration and the room filled with the palpable tension of men longing for violence. Probably against her.

"We need to find out what's on this page," said Monroe.

'Then I suggest you start looking for number six on your list of experts, Colonel Monroe."

"We could offer you a substantially larger sum than the grant," offered Monroe.

"I don't want the money. It was never about the money."

"But you're going to lose your job if you don't do something. At least this way, you'd have a way to pay your bills."

"I'll figure something out. I've worked crap jobs before. I can do it again." She had no intention of telling them that a crap job wasn't going to pay for her monumental student loans as well as her rent.

"Why won't you help us? Do you have something against your government?"

"No, but I have read enough history to learn from it. Over and over there are stories of scientists who discovered or invented great things only to have them turned into something deadly. I won't let that happen to my work. My parents are both scientists, and they taught me that I must have as much responsibility as I do brains because I'll be held accountable for the things that I create and how they are used."

Monroe's mouth twisted with a grimace. "It's ridiculous of you to hold yourself accountable for something that is out of your control. You can't possibly be responsible for the actions of everyone who will use your work, be it for good or evil."

"But that's where you're wrong. I have a responsibility to think ahead and make sure that my work can't cause harm.

I may not be able to think of everything, but I have to try, and in this case, it's a no-brainer."

Monroe leaned forward and she could sense a truly frightening quality in him that would make even a man as strong as David show respect. A hard, ruthless cold glinted in his eyes. "If you don't help us, we can't offer you our help in return. You'll be captured within days, if not hours, and the men who take you will ensure that you do this work by whatever means necessary. We can't let that happen."

Noelle felt true fear slink in a cold spiral down her spine. She sensed more than heard the underlying message: If the U.S. couldn't have her, no one could. And he wasn't bluffing.

David stepped forward, but Monroe held out a hand to halt him. "This isn't a game or a way to display your antiwar sentiments. This is a matter of national security and we will not let you fall into enemy hands. You're simply too dangerous."

Noelle had to swallow to make room for the words to get past her fear. "But I'd never help them."

"You would. In the end, you would. You're not trained to resist torture. They'd find your weakness and exploit it.

And once you served your purpose, they'd kill you. No appeals, no second chances, no remorse. If you walk away from our offer, your life is over. For the sake of national security, before I let you leave, I will order your death." He let his words hang in the air, so cold and thick it was hard for her to breathe.

Noelle didn't want to die. She didn't want to endure torture and help an enemy of her country. But more than that, she didn't want to be the cause of the death of countless others. She knew that her work could be twisted, mutated into something dangerous. Deadly.

It was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, but she looked Monroe in the eye and said, "I'm sorry. I can't help you."

Scanned by Coral

CHAPTER SIX

David had never seen the colonel so distressed. For a man who was used to hiding his emotions, it was odd that he would suddenly become so transparent.

David didn't like it when things were odd. That meant that he was being played, or something was really wrong. He just didn't know which. Yet.

"You've got to give her kudos for her resolve," said David, as they watched her over the closed-circuit hidden camera.

Her head was propped up on her arms and her shotSlders shook with the unmistakable signs that she was crying.

David bit back a curse and looked away, unable to control the urge to rush back in there and comfort her. He'd gotten soft in his time away from Delta Force. It was the only explanation for his nearly overpowering need to soothe her.

"I'd love to go in there and congratulate her for her stubborn streak, but it seems kind of silly to compliment a corpse," said Monroe.

David's body tensed. "What the hell are you talking about, sir?" he demanded. "You were only bluffing about killing her to keep her out of the Swarm's reach, weren't you?"

Monroe shook his graying head. "This is big, son. There's only so much I can do. The U.S. government can't let her fall into enemy hands. Her knowledge is too dangerous to be let loose. I doubt they'll even be willing to put her in a secure facility if she won't play ball. There's just too much of a risk she'd be captured while en route." He looked David in the eye. "My guess is that they'll give her another day here to cooperate, and if not, then she'll be executed as a threat to national security."

"What?" bellowed David. Rage bubbled just below the surface, along with something else. Something deadly. He wasn't going to let her die. He'd brought her here for protection and he'd kill any man here before he'd let them hurt her. Including Monroe.

A couple of suited agents from the other room poked their heads in the door, offering questioning glances, but Monroe waved them away.

"They can't do that, sir," said David through his clenched teeth.

"They will do it if we don't convince her to help. I'm sure of it."

David blew out a string of vile curses.