NEWS! Dangerous Curves is burning up the contest circuit! In April, Dangerous Curves was announced as a finalist in the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers Readers & Bookbuyers contest for published authors. In May, it came up for 2005 National Readers’ Choice Award. And in June, Dangerous Curves became a finalist in the Daphne du Maurier contest. top

“Greed, betrayal and adventure make for one thrilling read. Dangerous Curves hits all the right notes with its combination of romance and danger.”  Jill M. Smith, Romantic Times BOOKclub

“Taut romantic suspense with great mystery.”  Morgan Chilson, The Best Reviews

“Absolutely fantastic.”  Harriet Klausner, www.barnesandnoble.com

"A wonderful edge-of-your-seat read, Dangerous Curves grips you from the first page. I couldn't put it down. Don't miss this one!" Christine Feehan, NY Times Best-Selling author

Dangerous Curves gets an early review from Tracy Marsac at www.newandusedbooks.com! Tracy says, “Jacey Ford brings great acclaim to the romantic suspense genre with her debut release Dangerous Curves!” Thanks, Tracy.

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Computer hacker Raine Robey was one click away from downloading secure credit information for over one hundred thousand of American Trust Bank’s most valued customers when her telephone rang. She ignored the insistent summons, knowing she didn’t have much time before AmTrust’s automated sweepers detected her presence behind their firewall. It was important that she get in and out without getting caught. The job depended on it.

Her fingers faltered on the keyboard, however, when she heard the voice on the other end of the line after her answering machine picked up. It was a voice she hadn’t heard for almost a year (ten months, two weeks, and three days to be exact)—a voice she had never expected to hear again.

"Raine, it’s Calder. Calder Preston."

Right. Like she wouldn’t recognize his voice. Her heart beat faster, thudding against her ribs like a drum gone berserk. While her brain might want to forget him, she feared her heart never would.

"I understand that you’re in Atlanta, and that you’ve started your own business. I think I have an assignment that might interest you."

Raine stared at the computer screen in front of her as AmTrust kicked her off their server with the familiar phrase blinking triumphantly: Access denied. She glanced at her watch. It had taken the sweeper almost ten seconds to detect her. In hacker terms, ten seconds was a lifetime. She could have raided their data, sold it to the highest bidder, and booked herself a vacation to China in ten seconds.

Not two days ago, AmTrust’s Chief Technology Officer had sat in his twenty-first floor office and bragged about his hacker-proof security.

Hacker-proof, my ASCII, Raine scoffed as she reached across her cluttered desk to pick up the phone. She would prove to the CTO that his system was vulnerable, and she’d convince him that the bank should retain her to fix those vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, she’d have to do it some other time.

"Partners In Crime. This is Raine speaking," she said into the mouthpiece, striving for her best professional voice.

"Oh. You’re there."

"Yes, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get to the phone before the machine picked up. What can I do for you?" Raine asked, twisting around in her chair to stare at the closed blinds opposite her desk. She had no idea what time it was, had been determined to break into AmTrust’s so-called secure server when she woke up this morning at two a.m., her brain buzzing with the problem. Rolling her shoulders, Raine closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was merely speaking to a business prospect—not the man with whom she had been having regular sex ten months, two weeks, and three days ago.

Calder cleared his throat. "I heard you’d moved back to Atlanta."

"Yes," Raine acknowledged.

"I’ve been transferred here, myself."

"I know."

There was a long pause before Calder spoke again. "Look, Raine, I know this is awkward—"

Raine opened her eyes, determined to keep the emotion out of her voice as she interrupted, "You mentioned a business proposition that might be of interest to my firm. I don’t see anything awkward in that. Why don’t you explain the nature of the assignment, and I’ll let you know if my partners and I can fit it into our schedules." Yeah, right. Like that was a problem. Partners In Crime was only six months old and they were struggling to make ends meet. Unless Calder wanted them to run naked along Peachtree-Dunwoody road, they’d jump on this job like starving Chihuahuas on a pork chop. And they might not even scoff at the streaking job if there was a paycheck involved.

"All right. If you want to pretend the past never happened, I’ll go along with you," Calder said, then added a quiet, "for now."

Raine heard some rustling on the other end of the line and could picture him settling back in his chair, at ease with whatever life was going to throw at him next. She’d always envied his outward sense of calm, maddening as it had sometimes been when all she’d wanted was a down-and-dirty fight and he’d do nothing more than calmly reason with her.

Reminding herself that one didn’t fight with one’s business prospects, Raine leaned back in her own chair and attempted to mimic Calder’s Zen-like air.

"A month ago, I received a crudely written letter from an elderly man," Calder began. "The letter said only, ‘Help my daughter.’ At first, I just ignored it. I mean, who’s got time to deal with vague pleas like this?"

Raine made an appropriately agreeable noise although she had plenty of time to deal with just about anything these days. No errand was too small to get procrastinated off her to-do list.

"The letter sat in my inbox for a few weeks, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Finally, a couple days ago, I decided to pay the guy a visit. The thing is, the guy who had written the note was in really bad shape. The nurse taking care of him said it must have taken his patient weeks to write it, and that he probably waited months for the opportunity to slip it into a stack of outgoing mail."

"So why would he have gone to so much trouble?"

"That’s exactly what I asked myself. I figured that this poor guy’s daughter must need some serious help for him to have expended such an effort to enlist the FBI’s aid."

"Why didn’t you just ask him for details while you were there?" Raine asked.

"He was recovering from pneumonia. His caretaker said he was difficult to communicate with even when he was well. As it was, he was barely conscious."

"What happened to him in the first place? To make him so sick to begin with, I mean."

"Car accident. Twenty years ago, this guy was at the top of his game. Headed up R&D for Jackson Motor Company here in Atlanta. Then one day, driving the Pronto, one of JMC’s very own brand of cars, he gets rear-ended and his car explodes. He’s thrown from the vehicle and suffers brain damage and a severed spine. He’s needed full-time care ever since."

"That’s awful," Raine said, turning to rest her head against her palm, the wrist brace she wore on her right arm rubbing against her cheek.

"Yes, it is. JMC paid for his medical care after the accident, but Mr. Enslar’s daughter now foots the majority of the tab for one of the most expensive nursing care providers in the state."

"How did you find that out?"

"I work for the FBI," Calder answered dryly. "I have my sources."

Okay, she’d give him that.

"Besides, while I would never classify myself as being as proficient with a computer as you, I am not without technical skills. Gaining access to the records stored in a local nursing care company’s computer didn’t present much of a challenge. Even for me."

Raine nodded silently, giving him that point. Calder was definitely not as skilled as she was, but he had not been assigned to the fledgling computer crimes division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation twelve years ago just because he looked good in a dark suit.

"In any event, my research led me to his daughter, one Hope Enslar."

"What kind of trouble is she in? Drugs? Prostitution? Pornography?"

"The answer would be ‘D. None of the above.’ That’s what I can’t figure out. Ms. Enslar has a record the Pope would envy. She’s never been arrested. Never had so much as a speeding ticket. She attended Georgia Tech on an academic scholarship and graduated with a Master’s degree in applied mathematics. After college, she was offered a job at none other than Jackson Motor Company and has been working there ever since. She’s been promoted regularly and visits her father often. Hell, she even votes. I can’t find anything to indicate that Mr. Enslar’s concerns about his daughter have any basis in reality."

"Did you interview her?" Raine asked, and heard the frustration in Calder’s voice when he answered.

"No. I’d look like an idiot if I tried to question her. What am I supposed to say? ‘We have no victim. We have no crime. But we do have a note from your dad and he’s worried about you.’" Calder snorted. "No, I need more to go on than that."

Raine let the information Calder had just relayed sink in for a moment. "What is it that you suspect, then? Is the old guy just trying to get attention? Maybe he’s lonely and wants someone other than his daughter to come visit."

"I don’t think that’s it."

Raine heard more rustling on the other end of the line and guessed that her former lover was now pacing around his small government office like an agitated panther. He’d always hated hunches, preferring cold, hard facts instead. Unfortunately, hunches turned out to be right often enough to make it impossible to just dismiss them out of hand.

"So, what do you want me to do?" Raine asked. "Try to see what dirt I can dig up on Ms. Enslar through less-than-legitimate means?"

"That will do for a start," Calder answered. "Although I doubt you’re going to find anything more than what my sources uncovered."

"And if that doesn’t work?"

"I want you to go undercover."

Raine jerked upright, almost dumping herself out of her chair and knocking over the Coke that was sitting near her elbow. "Damn," she cursed, lunging for a napkin to stop the river of cola from reaching her keyboard. With that staunched, she turned her attention back to the conversation. "I can’t go undercover. I don’t work for you anymore, remember?"

"I’m not likely to forget that anytime soon," Calder replied, then added, "much as I might want to."

Raine felt her face go hot with anger. He wanted to forget? What about her? It had been she who lost her job when all hell broke loose, not him. It was her reputation that lay in tatters, not his. And her heart that had been broken. Definitely not his.

Taking a deep breath, Raine reminded herself that it was not a good business practice to fight with potential clients. "I can’t go undercover," she repeated. "I am a partner in a legitimate corporate services firm. We assist our clients in enhancing their computer security, investigating the backgrounds of their current and prospective employees, and deterring corporate espionage. We don’t go around pretending to be people we aren’t."

"That’s bullshit and you know it, Raine. In order to accomplish your corporate mission, you have to pretend to be someone you’re not all the time. When I called just now, you were hacking into somebody’s computer system, weren’t you?"

Raine leaned back in her chair and repositioned the phone against her ear, the Velcro fasteners of her wrist guard scratching her neck.

"And I’ll bet you weren’t logged on as rainerobey@partnersincrime.us, were you?"

She frowned. Of course she hadn’t been using a legitimate username to break into AmTrust’s server. Anonymity was the hackers’ friend, the one thing that let them slip undetected—and uncaught if they were detected—into one system after another. Only an amateur or an idiot would use her real name while hacking. Still, there was a big difference between posing as someone else while hiding behind a computer screen and quite another to do so in person. It wasn’t something Raine had ever balked at doing when she’d worked for the Bureau, but in the time since she’d handed over her proverbial tin star and pistol almost eleven months ago, she’d spent most of her time here in her two-bedroom apartment. Hiding out from the real world, she supposed. In here with her computers, she was safe. The computer world was predictable, without risk. The real world, on the other hand, was full of danger—full of people with questionable motives bent on destroying other people’s lives. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face that world again.

But starving to death from lack of funds didn’t sound like much fun, either. Besides, she had Aimee and Daphne to think about, too. They had signed on with her to form Partners In Crime and had just as much riding on the company’s success as Raine did. She couldn’t chicken out and let them bear the brunt of the new business development because she was afraid to leave her computer-filled cocoon.

Raine picked up the nearly empty Coke can beside her and drained the last of the lukewarm drink.

"All right," she said finally, "I’ll start by seeing what I can dig up electronically. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go undercover."

"Good. I suppose I don’t need to tell you that is an unofficial investigation?"

"If it were official, you wouldn’t have called me," Raine said.

Calder paused before answering, softly, "I called you because you’re the best hacker I know. Inside the Bureau or out."

“No,” Raine said. “I’m the second best hacker you know. The best one framed me for murder ten months, two weeks, and three days ago.”

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