Read Online Relentless Adversary by Jayne Castle - Free Book Online

beat-lunge attack that drove the tip of his covered blade firmly against her jacket.
    Acknowledging the hit, Kelly stepped back, catching her breath for the next phrase of the bout. They paused for a short rest and Locke lifted his mask. Silently Kelly followed suit, meeting his eyes across the distance.
    "You're good." He smiled easily, jade gaze raking her face. "You nearly had me a couple of times."
    "Nearly isn't good enough," she reminded him, aware of the perspiration on her forehead. Locke didn't look as if the match had yet begun to tire him.
    "Perhaps during this next phrase," he suggested encouragingly, his smile taunting.
    "It will be my pleasure," she assured him as they once again brought the foils up in salute.
    "You realize, of course," he said quite neutrally, "that I can't afford to let you win."
    Something in the evenness of his metal and silk voice alerted her.
    "Trying to use a little psychological warfare?" she mocked as they slipped on the masks.
    "I'll use whatever it takes," he agreed as they went into the on-guard position.
    "It won't work," she assured him.
    "No? How about this: I know all about your little catwalk through the data base a few months ago."
    Kelly froze, her clear, calculating, strategy-oriented mind thrown into complete chaos at the simple words.
    "You see?" he murmured softly. "You're suddenly an undefended target." He moved forward in lazy offense, and Kelly retreated without thinking, her mind on his shattering comment.
    Desperately she forced her mind and her nerves to regroup.
    "When did you find out?" she asked coldly, determined not to let him see how much turmoil he had created. But she was very much afraid he already knew.
    "Yesterday, when I went back for another look at the transactions that had been going on around the time of one of the unrecorded shipments," he told her offhandedly.
    "I had nothing to do with the theft!" she gritted defiantly.
    "I know that. You were content just to shift some rather large sums of money around, weren't you?" He executed a rapid change of engagement to the high inside line by passing his blade under hers and forcing her to engage in quarte.
    "No money was stolen!" she snapped, covering the target area he sought.
    "I spent this afternoon trying to figure out exactly why anyone would want to play with the data the way you had been playing with it."
    She retreated as he tried a feint disengage. He was going to find this match a walkover, she realized disgustedly. She could no longer concentrate as completely as would be necessary to defeat him.
    "And I couldn't come up with very many reasonable answers," he concluded, forcing her back again.
    "I'm glad something in the whole mess was beyond your ability to decode," she shot back bitterly. She was tiring rapidly now and knew he was beginning to play with her. The knowledge filled her with self-disgust.
    "There's a lot about you I have yet to decode," he
    agreed, deliberately opening a line in an invitation to the attack.
    Kelly accepted heedlessly and found him more than prepared for her lunge. He took her blade with his own, maintaining contact and using his superior strength to force her foil outside the limits of the target. A split second later his explosive response brought him another scoring hit.
    Kelly backed off, lifting the mask away from her damp face and using the back of her sleeve to wipe her forehead.
    Across the room Locke removed his own mask and the glittering warlock eyes pinned her with the look of the hunter.
    "I'm afraid your psychological warfare is going to be successful, after all," she admitted harshly. "I don't think I'm going to be able to give you much of a contest this evening."
    "Does it rattle your confidence that much to know I found out about your maneuvers with the computer?" Locke asked with cool interest, setting his foil down as she did the same.
    She drew a deep breath, letting her heart return to normal, and tried to think. Mentally she was again fencing