Princess of the Universe ©MacGeorge

        Duncan found an out-of-traffic space in the eddies and whorls of Nieman Marcus' main floor, waiting for Amanda to complete her hunt for a new perfume. The cloyingly sweet scents of innumerable cosmetics, lotions and other feminine concoctions made his nose twitch. But his over 400 years of fiercely fought battles, of hunting and being hunted, had taught him volumes about patience and about stillness. As far as he was concerned, there was no more challenging test of those abilities than to follow Amanda around on a shopping spree. He parked his body and his mind, letting his thoughts drift with the ebb and flow of the people that wandered through his line of sight. He could feel Amanda nearby, her presence a soft brush of awareness in his mind.

       She wandered among the sparkling, colorful counters staffed by carefully groomed women in pastel lab coats. Saturdays were always crowded and all the sales people were occupied, demonstrating, selling, smiling, trying to be the living embodiment of the benefits of their products. Amanda was an arresting sight among the myriad women crowding the counters. She was tall, lean and stunningly attractive, dressed in a designer black jumpsuit that clung to her lithe body, revealing every perfect curve. Other eyes openly followed her movements as she picked up perfume testers, touched scarves and jewelry, and elbowed her way through the bodies pressing around the various displays. She was the kind of woman who evoked envy in other females, not admiration -- spite, not sisterhood. She had a self-involved presence borne of a thousand years of survival in a violent, ugly and male-dominated world. She held herself apart, superior, different from the mortal women about her, and they could sense it instinctively.

       Finally having found the scent she wanted, Amanda picked up the tester and located the nearest sales clerk, clearing her throat to get attention. The young woman, blond hair pulled back in an elegant chignon, eyes heavily lined and colored, cheeks pinked to perfection, continued shuffling papers at the cash register, then turned her back to ask another customer if she needed help. Amanda cleared her throat again and waited for several minutes while the other woman's questions were answered. Turning to another customer, her back still to Amanda, the sales clerk busied herself again. Amanda impatiently drummed her fingers on the glass counter, finally saying, "Excuse me!" loudly enough to be heard over the soft rock music filtering over the crowd noises from hidden speakers. Her words had no effect, and the women around her secretly curled their lips at her arrogance and her frustration.

       Suddenly a well of space and silence formed around Amanda and she felt a tall bulk behind her. "Excuse me, miss?" Duncan said softly in his softly accented baritone. The male voice made the woman turn, then stop as the paint on her cheeks was overwhelmed by the blood rushing to her face. Her eyes widened and her smile evolved to a silly grin as she gazed into the soft brown eyes of the most handsome man she had ever seen -- tall, dark, athletic looking with high cheekbones and a full, sensuous mouth turned up in an utterly disconcerting smile. His long almost black hair was tied back before it fell neatly between broad shoulders encased in a rich leather jacket.

       "Yes, sir," she breathed, "What can I help you with?"

       Duncan took the perfume bottle out of Amanda's hand and handed it to her. "I believe my friend would like to purchase a bottle of this," he said.

       She took it without looking at it, her eyes transfixed on his face. "Yes, sir. Of course. Is there anything else I can show you? Anything you'd like to see, I mean?" she stumbled over her words.

       It took several minutes for her to complete the transaction, especially since she had a hard time seeing what she was doing when her eyes seemed permanently glued to Duncan's face.

       Duncan opened the door for Amanda, then stepped through the exit and took a deep breath, grateful for the fresh air and sunshine. Amanda had shot him an angry glance as they bought the perfume and hadn't said a word since.

       "Hungry?" Duncan asked, idly wondering what Amanda was irritated about. "There's a good Italian place up the block."

       Amanda stepped forward, turned and faced him, bringing him up short as he almost walked right into her. "Did you enjoy that, MacLeod?" she asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

       "Enjoy what?"

       "That . . . that little display of male ego you just put on!" she spat.

       "What? What display? What are you talking about?" He seemed completely mystified.

       Batting her eyes and waggling her head, Amanda deepened her voice, placing her hands on her hips. "I believe my friend would like to buy something, my dear, and I, Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome, will deign to cast my eyes on you if you will lower yourself to actually do your job!"

       "Oh," she continued, raising her pitch and clasping her hands under her chin, "I'd do anything for you, sir. Is there anything else you would like? Me, for instance? Want to go to my place? How about I spread my legs for you right here?" The last question was spat out in anger before she turned and stomped away.

       "Amanda!" Duncan shouted. "What . . .?" He ran after her, catching her by the shoulder and turning her around. "I was only trying to help! What did I do wrong?"

       "What did you do wrong?" Amanda asked. A dozen different emotions seemed to flicker over her lovely face as she tried to articulate her anger. "Oh, MacLeod, sometimes you are so dense!" was all she could manage to say before she spun on her heel, her long strides carrying her around the corner while Duncan watched, hands spread at his sides in unconscious appeal.

       He stood for a moment, cast his eyes heavenward in mute supplication to whatever gods there were for patience and understanding, then followed her around the corner. She had moved quickly and after a moment, he could no longer sense her presence. He wandered for a few blocks, hoping to move within sensing range but eventually gave up and headed to the car. Amanda would come back to the loft in her own good time. Hopefully she would explain what the hell was going on. Or not. For all of his 400 years of experience, sometimes women, especially Amanda, still managed to mystify him.

       Amanda walked until her feet started to hurt. These shoes with the high, heavy heels may be fashionable, but once again women's designers had given no thought to practicality or comfort, she ruminated. She nursed her irritation, blaming Mac for her hurting feet, finally going into a gourmet coffee shop, setting her packages down and ordering a café latte. As she sat sipping the hot, smooth drink her anger faded slightly.

       At some point, she knew, she was going to have to go back to the loft and face Duncan's questions. That innocent, little boy, who me? look wasn't going to get him very far, Amanda thought, pressing her lips together. He knew the effect he had on people, women and men. Playing on it like that, using it, was . . . she sought for a word . . . unethical. That was it. Duncan of all people should know better. Him and his boy scout rules. Honor and integrity above all. The memory of the classic lost-puppy-dog look he had laid on the clerk, and her goo-goo eyed response made her angry all over again. Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice reminded her that she used that big-eyed look all the time to get her way with the male of the species and that she was being a little hypocritical. She brushed the voice away. It was different for men. It was especially different for MacLeod. It was especially different for MacLeod when he was with her. She didn't need or want to be constantly reminded that he was, as human beings go, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

       Damn it, she thought. I'm over twice his age. I'm beautiful, physically gifted, smart (well, reasonably smart). Men fawn all over me all the time. I can have any man I want. What on earth am I getting jealous about some casual flirtation of a big lummox of a Scotsman who can't seem to keep a relationship going for more than a few months at a time? Well, there was that time with that Tessa woman, but that was different.

       She stopped, her cup halfway to her lips, realizing what she had just acknowledged. Jealousy. That's ridiculous, she thought dismissively. Mac loves me. Of course he loves me and has for hundreds of years. He would do anything I asked. Well, anything within reason.

       Her eyes narrowed speculatively while she softly blew on the hot drink. I wonder . . . she thought. Then started as her cell phone rang.

---

       Amanda felt MacLeod's presence before she got to the dojo door. She considered taking the stairs for a moment, but that would imply that she was afraid of meeting him, that she was wrong. So she smoothed her features, resettled her numerous packages and sauntered into the dojo where he was spotting weights for one of the gym's regulars. Amanda felt every eye in the room on her as she slipped almost unconsciously into a suggestive 'come hither' walk, deliberately walking hard on her heels because she knew it annoyed Mac to risk damage to his precious wooden flooring.

       Hours later, Mac finally appeared, his sleeveless tee and sweat pants soaked from a strenuous workout. His face was flushed as he found a bottle of water in the kitchen and gulped it down, his hair loose and damp around his face. The blatant display of male pulchritude was annoying.

       "Well aren't you the epitome of testosterone," Amanda purred from the couch as she flipped through a magazine.

       Mac finished off the bottle of water. His only response to her sarcasm was a raised eyebrow. "Have fun shopping?" he asked neutrally.

       "That's not all I do, you know," Amanda said defensively. "I got a very interesting call this afternoon. Some guy who runs a local computer software company was given my name by an old . . . colleague . . . and he wants me to do a little investigative work to find out who's stealing his trade secrets. I went over and spent a couple of hours going over his problem, and I start work there tomorrow, working undercover to find his company traitor."

       "That's nice," Mac replied, stripping off his shirt and heading for the shower, restraining his tongue from adding that any legitimate activity would be good since it would keep her out of trouble, thus keeping him out of having to pull her ass out of the fire – again.

       Dinner was tense and conversation abbreviated. Each expected the other to explain or apologize, but neither was prepared to acknowledge the need for an apology. Mac read, Amanda fidgeted and they finally made it to bed like two cats circling around and around, establishing their exclusive space.

       Amanda lay in the dark, restless, eyes narrowed, playing out scenarios in her mind. From what she had been told, there were a number of possibilities about who was stealing Empressario's trade secrets, most of them leading straight to the firm's three or four knowledgeable insiders. But how could she, under the guise of a mere secretary, get them to talk about, much less reveal, any potentially self-incriminating information?

       A soft snore attracted her attention and she glanced over at the sleeping man next to her. His back was her only view, but it was such a delicious back, warrior's muscles magnificently defined under satiny bronze skin. As she contemplated that stretch of smooth flesh and muscle, a malicious thought crept into her mind and a small smile formed on her lovely, perfectly oval face. Maybe there was a way she could kill two birds with one stone. Have her cake and eat it. And teach one Duncan MacLeod a thing or two.

       "Duncan?" She ran her hand over his arm, shoulder and up his neck, under the silken fall of long brown-black hair. She felt the rhythm of his breathing change as she coaxed him towards wakefulness. He didn't sleep heavily anyway, she knew from long experience, and until he had rolled over on his back he was probably only dozing.

       "Duncan, are you still awake?" she moved closer, laying the length of her body along his, moving his hair away and whispering so her breath warmed the back of his neck.

       "Hmmm," was the only response she got. He was awake now, she was certain, just being stubborn again. He could be so inconsiderate.

       "MacLeod?"

       "What."

       She spooned even closer, wrapping her arm around his chest, running her fingers lightly through the soft curls there. "I was thinking about this Empressario job, and it occurred to me ..."

       "Can't this wait until morning?"

       "You're such a grump!" she complained, then kissed the hard muscle stretched across his neck and shoulder, feeling him respond ever so slightly as she lay a trail of kisses lightly along that taut line. He was very seducible.

       Sighing in surrender, he rolled over onto his back, clasping his hands behind his head and gazing at the ceiling with an ever-suffering look of determined patience on his face. "Okay, Amanda. What is it?"

       "Well," she launched, propping her head up on her elbow while she continued a teasing exploration of touch on his chest, brushing lightly, repeatedly against his nipples. "I think there are only a few people who might have sufficient access to the company's program development system, and who have enough knowledge of those programs to be able to extract subroutines that actually can be used independently, *and* have economic value. Now," her hand moved lower, sliding across his flat, hard abdomen, "I don't have enough knowledge of computer lingo and programming and such to convince anyone that I have real expertise, but . . ." those busy fingers found the band of his silk pajama bottoms, slipping underneath where it was very warm. "You do." The body under her hands tensed, and Mac turned away, once again providing a view of his back.

       "Oh, no you don't, Amanda! You're not going to drag me into one of your schemes. This is your business, not mine," Duncan said with absolute conviction.

       "Oh, Duncan," her tone took on a pleading, wistful sigh. "You are always telling me that I have to find a way to make a steady living that doesn't involve larceny of some sort. If I could catch the bastard who's stealing from Empressario I'd not only make a nice fee, but it could lead to other things -- a real security consulting business." She pulled on his shoulder until he lay back again, then slid onto his chest, her breasts pressing provocatively through the thin silk of her nightgown. "It would only be for a week or two," she said, her eyes big and earnest. "I really need you, Mac, and you would be helping catch a bad guy. I thought you liked catching bad guys." She dropped her head to his chest, letting her tongue slide along the ridge of his collarbone.

       Despite the growing evidence that her ministrations were beginning to effect him, MacLeod frowned at her. "I'm no computer programmer, Amanda. And don't you think you ought to be able to handle this on your own? You can't come running to me every time you need help with one of your security consulting assignments, you know."

       The implication that she couldn't handle her life without him almost generated an angry retort, but Amanda carefully schooled her face while she secretly plotted revenge. She slid down further on his chest, that mischievous tongue and those soft lips making themselves felt, nipping, sucking.

       His chest rose as he took in a deep gulp of air. "Amanda!"

       "Yes, Duncan?" She continued her explorations, this time pushing her busy hand down all the way underneath his pajamas, feeling the soft curls below and meeting hot, velvet, throbbing skin.

       "This is no way to discuss this…rationally," his voice trailed off as she closed her hand around his hardening, rising flesh.

       "Oh, Duncan," she breathed, yanking the pajamas down off his hips and sliding further down his body, looking for new places to apply those pliant, talented lips. "Who said anything about rational discussion?"

       MacLeod surrendered, letting sensation carry him away, his broad fingers convulsively griping her short, dark hair as she suckled him, teasing him with tongue, lips, teeth and hands until an inarticulate groan rumbled out of his throat and he couldn't keep himself still any longer. But just as he shifted underneath her, gathering muscle mass to turn them so he could move on top, Amanda stopped, the sudden cessation leaving him aching with fierce need, his breath coming in short gasps.

       He took her pause as a signal that she wanted similar attention, and he was eager to provide it. He reached down to pull her up to him, wanting to put his mouth on those firm breasts, to tease the rosy nipples into hardness, to bring a flush to her skin, but she pushed his hands away, leaning on his thick wrists as she straddled his hips. She had trapped his erection between their hot bodies and the slightest move made his eyelids flutter and his chest muscles twitch.

       This is sooo easy, Amanda thought, even as her own building desire made her pulse pound in her ears. MacLeod's hair was spilled wildly on the pillow and his complex brown and gray and green eyes were heavy lidded as his mind was preoccupied with his body's urgent needs that she had so successfully brought to the boiling point. Part of her wanted nothing more than to put her mouth over those lips, losing herself in those dark eyes. But again she schooled herself, exercising unusual self-discipline.

       "Not yet," she whispered. His skin was shining with moisture now, and she had spent centuries learning exactly what he liked best, and what made him most crazed. She concentrated on crazed, running her fingers and her mouth lightly across every sensitive spot she knew, constantly insisting that she wanted to do this, wanted to be in control. His nature, she knew, would dictate that he let her do what she wanted. But the gentle, slow seduction went on too long, building his tension past excitement, beyond desire to near desperation. She could see it in the bunching of his shoulders, the clenched jaw, the now steadily throbbing erection from which she would give him no release. It took conscious effort not to go further, not to spread her thighs in welcome as she felt her abdomen clutch over and over again, her own tension almost unbearable, her thighs wet with sweat and other, sweeter fluid.

       "Enough, Amanda," he panted, finally acknowledging defeat, pushing her over on her back, his weight pressing her deep into the bed. She pulled his face down to hers, wanting to feel those soft lips moving over her own. She opened her mouth to him, unable to stop the low groan from escaping her throat as his tongue invaded that space, warm, moist, thick, alive as it moved across her teeth, exploring beyond. She was almost out of control. She wanted him there, she wanted him in her, moving inside her, filling all her spaces. She reached between their hot, wet bodies and folded her hands around his hard cock, moving slowly against his skin, one hand trailing further down between his thighs. He closed his eyes, straining against her touch.

       "Careful," he gasped in warning, "you'll take me right over the edge."

       But she slowed, once again her touch just a maddening tickle as they invaded his soft, dark curls, stroking the heavy sacks beneath until he couldn't contain a low moan and she felt his sweat drip onto her breasts, running and mingling with her own. She gently held the full, round balls, took a deep breath of her own and then hardened her grip, just slightly.

       Mac's eyes suddenly opened and his chin went up as he acknowledge the hold, then hissed as she tightened her grip still more, his whole body going absolutely still. "What are you doing?!" he choked.

       "Holding a rational conversation, Duncan," Amanda replied, barely managing to control her own breath, but keeping her grip steady as she locked almost black eyes with swirling brown ones. "I just wanted you to realize that you have needs, too. And . . . vulnerabilities." Her hand closed a little tighter. MacLeod face paled and his hand clamped down to circle her arm in a bruising grip. She knew that in another second he would act to protect himself, so she loosened her hold gradually and let him go.

       Now his eyes were angry as he grabbed her upper arms and hauled them over her head, pinning them. "So you want to play rough?" he asked, his smile something less than forgiving. "Well, I can play too, you know."

       His mouth came down again, but this time not so gently, almost smothering her as his tongue invaded, moving across teeth, bruising lips. Then the mouth moved down, making a hot trail across her chest, pulling hard at her breasts, creating suction against her nipples until she cried out. His explorations finally moved lower, finding her already slick and wet, ready for entry. But he now had other plans in mind, using his fingers against that tight fold of skin at the edge of where he could feel the heat rise. He massaged, gently, rhythmically until her hips rocked involuntarily in time to his motion. He could see the sweat pool in the indentation at the base of her throat and felt her body tense, her breath coming in short gasps and her eyes closed as she retreated into a self-absorbed bath of sensation.

       But just as she strained against him, he stopped. Her eyes opened, looking at him with anger and a little desperation. But she only met a sly grin as once again his hot tongue explored her neck, her ears, her nipples, her belly until she squirmed against him, then finding his hand at that electric hot spot that sent her hips into involuntary spasms as he expertly built her to the crest of another wave of now painful need. He was patient, even relentless, though his own burn was almost uncontrollable, his cock hard and throbbing.

       "Mac, damn you!" she finally insisted. "Come on!"

       He parted her thighs, moving his body between them, leaning over her, his distended, weeping erection spreading cool liquid on her belly as she pressed towards him. But he just lay against her, letting the warmth of the their two bodies be his stimulation, moving over, but never into where she wanted, needed him to be. When she looked into his eyes, the sight of his flushed face, the dark pools of his dilated brown and green and gray eyes growing more distant the closer he came to orgasm, frustration turned into near panic. He felt her jerk angrily underneath him and with a self-satisfied smile he finally let go of her hands, allowing them to rake his chest, drawing blood. But still he was unrelenting even as she pulled herself up to him, teeth and fingernails cutting deep into shoulder muscle until he flinched. She had wanted a contest, well he would give her a contest.

       He sat up and pulled her into his lap and now she was fighting him, grabbing his hair and yanking his head back to reveal his neck where she again bit deeply into flesh, wanting to hurt. She tried to reach between them, to grab his cock but he held her tight, giving her no space, squeezing the breath out of her, all the while rocking against her until he shook with the effort not to climax.

       "Mac!" her cry was strangled, small. "Please!" He looked into her face and saw tears of frustration there and was instantly sorry he had let the game go so far. He let her down gently then slid into her, gasping with a need to come that was closer to pain than pleasure, but forcing himself to wait, watching for Amanda's reaction. She sighed in relief, then groaned as her body reacted, reaching for him as she wrapped her legs around him, making inarticulate noises as he filled her then filled her again, and again.

       They moved together, hearts pounding in the same beat, bodies moving in absolute sync. Mac rode the wave of hot, heaving sensation, thrusting into the warm tightness of her body, finally helpless against the power of ancient instinct. He heard her cry out when he climaxed, but even though he was afraid he had hurt her, his hands clenched around her, his hips thrust and he strained to bury himself in her as deep as she could take him. But she was in the throes of her own climax, her head thrown back, teeth biting down into her lower lip as she hung onto him with a harsh gasp, pressing her body into his, wanting him so far inside that it hurt, riding the long, convulsive waves of her own orgasm.

       They clung together, their chests heaving, sweat mingling, dripping down their bodies. Mac's ears rang and his skin tingled as he had strained and climaxed, forgetting to breathe. Amanda lay beneath him, sated, limp and panting, waiting for what she knew would come next. This was what she had planned for. The icing on the cake. He held her for a minute then raised his head, reaching to tilt her chin so he could see her face.

       Her eyes were closed tight and tears had traced a path down her flushed face. "Amanda? Are you okay?" he asked, pulling away. He carefully moved a lock of damp hair off her forehead.

       She buried her head against his shoulder, clinging to him fiercely. "I didn't mean to make you so mad, Duncan!" she cried softly. "You didn't need to punish me." Her voice was that of a hurt child.

       "Punish you?" Duncan's heart sank. "I . . . I thought it was a game, you testing my limits, me testing yours." He rocked her gently. "I'm so sorry, Amanda. Did I hurt you?"

       "Only a little," she said softly, raising her face to his, her huge dark eyes inches from his own. "I didn't really hurt you either, did I? It's just that . . . you're so much bigger and stronger than I am, I wanted to feel like I had a little power, too."

       "Of course you didn't hurt me, my love," he murmured. Duncan moved to lie beside her and held her awhile, gently stroking her hair until her breath slowed and she snuggled up next to him. I am such a jerk, he scolded himself, ashamed that he had reacted so childishly. He knew could be a bully sometimes, always needing to be in control. Was it so threatening to let her feel power over him? It was something he'd have to think about.

       Amanda lay in the dark as MacLeod's breathing deepened and he finally slept. Her face was set with hidden purpose and plans as a secret smile played across her face, thinking again about having cake and eating it, and how particularly appropriate the phrase was in this case. She turned away from her lover, pulled the covers up around her shoulders and closed her eyes.

       There was an unusual awkwardness between them the next morning. Each showered separately, carefully polite, air-kissing as they passed each other in the bathroom. Duncan fixed omelets, Amanda's favorite. The minimalist conversation extended past the meal as Duncan cleared the dishes while Amanda read the paper.

       "So," he finally broke the awkward silence. "What's this Empressario thing you wanted us to do?"

       Amanda's face, hidden behind the business section of the newspaper, lit up with a knowing, self-satisfied smile, quickly hidden as she lowered the paper to give MacLeod a wide-eyed look. "Us?"

       "Well, you know, if you need help, Amanda . . ."

       "That's okay, Mac. I'll manage. I wouldn't want to involve you if you're not interested."

       "Hey, I'm interested! Catching bad guys, right?" He moved close, leaning against the counter and giving her his best, most winning, endearing smile.

       God, I'm good! Amanda thought triumphantly to herself. "Well, if you really want to . . ." she said aloud, hesitantly.

---

       "Duncan! You can't go looking like that!" Amanda protested, emerging from putting her makeup on in the bathroom to find the man in slacks, a cream colored turtleneck sweater and a deep blue cashmere jacket specially tailored to conform to his broad shoulders and slim waist.

       He looked puzzled, looking down to see if he had a giant stain somewhere he hadn't noticed. "What's wrong with this?"

       Amanda put her hands on her hips, looking at him in disgust, shaking her head. "You look . . . you look like a GQ ad, that's what's wrong! Who would ever believe you're a computer geek? Don't you have anything a little . . . I don't know . . . unfashionable?"

       "Unfashionable?" he sounded mystified.

       "Something that doesn't fit?"

       "Let me get this straight. You want me to wear something that doesn't fit and that's ugly in order to impress your new client that I know something about computers?"

       "Right," she said, nodding her head with certainty. "This is my job, MacLeod. I'm posing as a secretary, you're posing as a genius computer nerd they've brought in to develop new ideas. I've cleared it with Mark Thomason and he's expecting you at 9:30 this morning. Now come on, I have to leave in a minute and you can't show up looking like a calendar model."

       She crossed to his dresser, pulling clothes out, looking at them, throwing the rejects, which was almost everything, onto the bed as Mac protested her treatment of his wardrobe.

---

       "There, I guess that'll do, given the time we've got," she sighed, looking him over as though he were a piece of meat from the local butcher shop.

       She had found a tattered old pair of jeans, rolling up the cuffs enough to show the white socks she had made him put on with his loafers. To disguise his muscular build she had come up with one of her own oversized tee-shirts she sometimes used as a nightshirt, worn over one of Methos' abandoned oversized, bulky sweaters. The bunched up fabric gave the impression of body softness and much more flesh than Mac really had. It was also eccentric looking, to say the least. Finally, she had taken his long hair out of its clasp, mussing it, parting it in the middle and pulling it forward, braiding a small strand on each side of his head, plaiting one of her small gold earrings into the ends, all over Mac's strong protest. He hadn't worn braids in his hair for several centuries and the whole thing seemed to be getting out of hand. A look in a full-length mirror was more than enough to make him want to back out of the whole deal, but Amanda's big brown eyes were shining with such accomplishment, he didn't have the heart.

       Another reluctant inspection revealed a tall, disheveled, lumpy guy with bad hair and no taste. He hated the way his hair fell into his face constantly and the sweater was hot and itchy against his skin. It was obvious why Methos had left it behind. Probably what offended him most was the white socks and loafers, but he just sighed, giving into Amanda's obvious enthusiasm. She was so pleased with her work that she vowed to take him shopping that evening so they would have a larger variety of equally hideous, ill-fitting, unfashionable attire for him to wear in the days to come. He could hardly wait.

       As they walked to the car, she looked at him sideways and frowned.

       "Don't do that," she instructed.

       "Don't do what?"

       She waved her hand at him. "That . . . way you walk. Can't you look . . . shorter?"

       "Amanda, I can't make myself shorter!"

       "Well, you don't have to walk like a . . . I don't know! You look like you own the world, like a clan chieftain. Slump or something!"

       He frowned at her, raising a dubious eyebrow.

       "And don't do that either!"

       "What!?"

       "Those "looks" you have. The winsome smile, the cocky raised eyebrow! You're supposed to be an insecure, socially inept computer nerd. Come on, MacLeod, get into it!"

       On the way there, she went over the layout of the office. She was posing as the temporary secretary to Mark Thomason, the CEO, who had hired her to find out who had been selling some of their specialized language translation and encryption subroutines to competitors while they were still in the development stage. MacLeod was going to be assigned as a new member of the same product development team responsible for those projects. He was to insinuate himself into the group and see if he could figure out which of its members might be the thief.

       Amanda went in first, alone. Mac waited about a half-hour, watching those who entered the building. The place really did seem to have a rather bizarre corporate culture. More men than women, most fairly young, less than 40 years old. They wore very casual attire, shorts, sandals, short-sleeve shirts, no ties. There was a lot of long hair on the men, frequent ponytails, which made Mac wonder about Amanda's insistence that he couldn't wear his hair that way. With a reluctant sigh, he finally decided it was time to go in, and found himself in front of a receptionist who looked at him dubiously. He had donned a pair of glasses to complete his nerdy look although he had wanted them primarily because they helped keep his hair out of his eyes. Unfortunately, they were a little big, so they kept slipping down his nose.

       "I'm, uh, here to see Mr. Thomason," he informed her, pushing up his glasses, uncomfortably aware that her immediate impression of him was not positive.

       He waited while she made the necessary announcement, looking around the space. The front area was outfitted in ultra modern woods and metals, with "Empressario, Inc." emblazoned in large letters behind the sleek, clean-lined receptionist desk. There was a bank of elevators behind her and hallways to her left and to her right, with nothing visible beyond.

       Then Amanda appeared, looking delicious, he realized. Dressed in a tight, short black dress, her long legs and beautiful behind made a tantalizing spectacle as she undulated down the hall in front of him, escorting him up the elevator to the third floor and past a large room full of modular cubicles. He tried to remember to simultaneously slump, not smile and to shorten his stride a little as he followed behind. Unfortunately, he was so preoccupied with all those instructions he didn't watch where he was going, stumbling over a trash can placed a little too far into the walkway.

       He leaned over, picking up the papers that had spilled, flushing in embarrassment. He wasn't used to feeling so clumsy. A pert face surrounded by an astonishing volume of curly red hair appeared around the corner of the cubicle.

       "Oh. Sorry," she said. "I left it there for the cleaning people, but I guess they didn't get it." She reached down to help him clean up, holding out the plastic receptacle for him to use.

       "Thanks," he said, with a smile. He immediately erased it, but the woman reacted with one of her own. He found himself flushing again at his own feeling of ineptitude.

       "Anytime," she said. Her eyes followed the odd looking man with the sweet smile as he shuffled down the hallway behind the tart that the CEO had hired for a secretary.

       Mark Thomason's office was a designer's showplace of modern chic. Lots of plants scattered over the slick, curving, paper-free surfaces in light wood and black marble, lots of electronic gadgets, phones, computers, printers, scattered around. Amanda brought him in and closed the door, introducing him to her client seated behind the desk.

       He rose, and kept rising. He was really tall, probably 6'7" or so, but with a bony thinness that made him look almost frail. Sandy colored hair, what there was of it behind a receding hairline, horn rim glasses similar to the ones MacLeod was wearing, and wearing a sport shirt and chinos with, if Mac was any judge, extremely expensive running shoes. The studied casual dress was accessorized with a Presidential Rolex on one wrist and a gold chain on the other that was worth well into the thousands of dollars. Definitely upscale casual.

       As Amanda introduced them, he came around from behind the desk and firmly shook MacLeod's hand. Mac could read the tiniest bit of surprise on his face when the man felt the hard ridges of callus that lined his palm.

       He waived expansively to the couch and chairs set up in a side area.

       "Sit down, Duncan. Amanda has told me you are both a security and a computer expert. I assume she's also explained my little . . . problem?" As he escorted them to be seated, Mac noted with mild annoyance that he placed his hand possessively on the small of Amanda's back.

       "Well, I'm hardly a programming expert, but I probably know enough to get by for a few days. Amanda's told me you believe there is someone inside your organization who may be peddling programs still in the design stage to your competitor. I assume you have a log of everyone who accessed those programs?" As he spoke, Amanda gave him a funny look, trying to catch his eye about something.

       "Of course. Only a few people have access, and they all are part of the design team itself. As I'm sure you know, programmers have a tendency to work at all hours, but none of the records seem unusual or inappropriate. We operate on trust, Duncan. The people on the team all have a tremendous stake in the future of this company. It just doesn't make sense that they would jeopardize that, even if McMillan Software was paying them really well."

       Amanda kept looking at him oddly, crossing and uncrossing her legs, folding and unfolding her arms. Suddenly he realized what she was trying to tell him. He had sat as he always did, filling up the couch, ankle over his knee, arms spread to his sides across the back. Not the body language of an insecure man. With an internal sigh, he slumped down, lowered his legs to cross at the ankles and carefully folded his hands in his lap after pushing his glasses back up his nose and moving his hair, again, out of his face. He tried to make himself look smaller, although why it mattered in front of the man who had hired them, he didn't know.

       Thomason described his competitor and went over each of the members of the design team, one of whom was evidently his wife or live-in companion from the slight change in his voice when he spoke of her. He got an odd, subtle sense of disdain from him about the rest of the team, belying his flowery praise of their creativity and productivity.

       "Well, Duncan, why don't I get someone to get you signed up, find you a cubicle and put you to work. No one will expect you to actually participate in design or programming for several weeks anyway until you have learned all the in's and out's of what the current projects are. Hopefully, by then, we will have figured out how this happened."

       As he stepped towards the door, Thomason pulled Amanda back a little and, unaware of MacLeod's 400-year-old sensitivities, whispered, "Are you sure about him, Amanda? He doesn't look like an expert at anything!"

       "Oh, don't worry, Mark. Mac's got a lot of hidden talents. He'll be okay. I'll keep a very close eye on him." Amanda turned, winked at Mac and slipped out the door, well aware that he had heard the conversation. She smoothly slid behind the secretary's desk just outside his door, saying for anyone within earshot, "Yes, Mr. Thomason, I'll get Mr. MacLeod set up in payroll for you right away."

       He spent the rest of the morning being shuttled about from person to person, filling in forms, being led around the facility like a dog on a leash. This was a world with which he was unfamiliar, the universe of the office worker. He had been many, many things in his 400 years, but a paper pusher had never been one of them, and – he sincerely hoped – never would be again. He was finally escorted to a gray-walled cubicle in a long row of similar gray-walled cubicles, outfitted with a computer, a chair and a telephone. His keeper of the moment handed him about six inches of manuals to read and left him at last to his own devices.

       Slipped into one of the manuals, however, were the personnel files of the four other members of the programming team under suspicion. He scanned them quickly but they really just gave him a sense of age, education and work history. They had all come to their positions after a few consulting jobs as junior programmers, were in their late twenties to mid-thirties and made pretty good money, but not enough to be called wealthy. Amanda would have to do considerably more background work on these folks, he decided, glad she would be expected to do that mundane task and not him. As he was congratulating himself for that, a bespeckeled Asian woman with long dark loosely braided hair and bright eyes appeared at his cubicle. He decided he really hated cubicles. They gave you a false sense of privacy.

       "Hi!" she had a large, friendly grin. She stuck out her tiny hand which he instinctively engulfed with his large one. He suddenly felt like a great clumsy bear next to her delicate elegance. "I'm Phuong Doh. I'm in the cubicle right on the other side of that gray wall between us. I hear you're going to be on the team."

       He murmured polite introductory phrases, but he needn't have bothered as she rattled off rules on expense keeping procedures and computer access time. She walked as she talked, and politeness dictated that he trail along behind, only realizing after several minutes that she was leading him somewhere and he hadn't a clue where. Her babbling washed over him without sinking in until she started mentioning names, and then they stepped into a conference room.

       Mac catalogued the programming team members as they were introduced. Indy (short for Indaka) Singh, an Indian of medium height, slightly stocky, with a shy smile. He spoke with an impeccable English accent. Oxford educated, Mac recalled from his personnel file. Meg Reading, of the wild red hair and spilled trashcan, greeted him like a long lost friend. And finally Jamie Haden, thin, mustached, long dark thinning hair tied back in a ponytail. Didn't say much at all, but Mac knew from his personnel folder that he was single, got most of his education from community colleges. Performance reviews indicated that he was extraordinarily bright, easily angered and frustrated and with no shortage of ego. He had risen up through the ranks on the basis of sheer creativity.

       They all greeted him tentatively and Mac watched their eyes shift, one to the other. They didn't trust each other, and they clearly didn't trust him.

       Phuong appeared to be in charge of the team, so she made formal introductions, then started the meeting as they all settled into chairs around a utilitarian table. A large white board dominated one end of the room and Phuong launched into a status report on each of the major program elements outlined on the board behind her. Mac listened with one ear while watching his new co-workers interact.

---

       Amanda was bored out of her gourd. She had answered the phone, attempted to type a few letters but since word processing was not a skill she had ever mastered, her erstwhile boss had turned over most of his real typing needs to the office secretarial pool. Amanda was well aware of the gossip that was swirling around about the motivation for her employment, but decided it might actually work to her benefit if she wasn't really expected to demonstrate any secretarial competency.

       The one main advantage she had was that hers was one of the few desks with no easy view of her computer screen. So the multitude of passwords she had been granted into the company's records could be used even as she sat pretending to work. Just in case anyone dropped by she kept a Solitaire game going so she could quickly change the screen. Everyone expected you to be playing Solitaire in an office, she had discovered from conversations overheard in the lunchroom.

       She had already accessed the financial records, and there was nothing there that leapt out at her as unusual, so she started hunting around for stockholder records and found nothing. That was odd. Every company had to have a list of its stockholders. She stood, smoothed her tight skirt down until it almost hit the middle of her thighs and sauntered over to the Legal Department.

       She found the office of the General Counsel at the opposite corner of the third floor. It was almost as large as Thomason's office, but decorated in dark woods and antiques. She arranged herself in the doorway and cleared her throat.

       The man behind standing behind the desk was facing away, and he turned at the noise, and paused. A slight flush touched his face as he smiled at his visitor.

       "May I help you?" he asked, his voice dripping with southern charm.

       "Well, I certainly hope so," she answered, deliberately running her eyes over him in an appraising look. He was a big man, about 6'2", probably an ex-football player gone soft and slightly chubby. His black hair, with a few tell-tail streaks of gray mixed in, was too long, like he was either too cheap or too absent minded to get a hair cut. He was in an expensive but well-creased linen sportcoat and no tie. The overall impression was rumpled and slightly greasy. With the careful southern accent, he reminded her vaguely of that cartoon character, Foghorn Leghorn.

       "My name is Amanda Devereaux. I'm working for Mr. Thomason," she purred.

       "Well . . . Amanda, I'm Joe Insel, chief Legal Beagle of Empressario."

       "I know. Mr. Thomason asked me to get him a list of all the stockholders holding more than 5% of the shares, how much they have and when it was purchased. I thought it would be in the system, but didn't find anything there." She sauntered into the room as she spoke, finally leaning up against the desk, her arms crossed, pushing the white mounds of her breasts above the scoop neckline of her dress.

       "Uh," he hesitated, his eyes wandered to somewhere below her chin but above her waist. "I don't keep those records in the main computer. I can have my secretary print out the list if you'd like. I'll bring it around myself later," he smiled.

       "Oh, that's okay. If you want to give me the disk, I'll print it out. Mr. Thomason needed it right away." Amanda perched on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs. Of course her skirt traveled a few more revealing inches up her white, lean, perfectly formed thigh.

       "Well, uh, no, those disks are kept locked in the Legal Department safe. Tell you what, I'll personally bring the list around to you later," he came around the desk and leaned against it next to her, brushing against her leg as he passed.

       "Well that would be so nice of you," Amanda smiled, looking up at him and slowly closing and opening her large dark eyes.

        As she found her way back through the maze of cubicles some small voice in the back of her head reminded her of her anger at Mac's "lost puppy dog" look and its effect on the salesgirl. That was different, she assured herself.

       "That whole section will have to be re-done," Jamie growled. He had gradually hunched further and further down in his chair until Mac feared the man's thin butt was going to slide clear off and the whole lean frame would end up on the floor. The team had been going over and over a complex translation program that seemed unable to handle a particular past transitive grammatical complication. The code for dealing with all the possible combinations and permutations based on context was proving unwieldy.

       "Why not incorporate artificial intelligence?" Mac said quietly as several others in the team were arguing over whether it could even be done at all.

       There was a sudden silence in the room as all eyes turned to look at him. Jamie's lip curled in disdain. "The concepts of artificial intelligence do not apply to language rules, MacLeod. They are simply rules."

       "Not really," Mac responded, rising to pick up an eraser and clearing some space on the white board. They had been dealing with Russian as an example, so he wrote several sentences in Russian, altering the verb form each time, slightly changing the context. "Language is a dynamic, growing, living thing, changing tremendously over time and within a particular usage. If you take the most obvious translation variances, offer them to the user as choices while providing the literal, and record their choices as well as the context of noun, verb, adverb and modifiers, and let the system "learn" as those choices are made, the program becomes much more flexible, offering more choices or different choices to the user, who could be working in a literary, technical or business context." He drew a decision tree, pointing out how the use of a learning program would take the basic translation program and make it more attuned not only to the nuances of the language as its user wished it to be defined, but providing a greater variety of translation alternatives.

       "If you maintained a technical assistance site that downloaded what the computer had "learned" from each of the major users, you could build a huge database of very sophisticated language usage based on geographic region, type of business, all kinds of different parameters." Duncan put down his dry marker, suddenly aware that there was dead silence in the room, that he had gotten carried away with his own enthusiasm for the idea and was no longer personifying the insecure techno-nerd he was supposed to be. "Anyway, uh, that's just an idea," he finished, shuffling back to his chair and slumping into it.

       "I wasn't aware you spoke Russian," Indy said a little imperiously.

       "Uh, that's one of the reasons I was hired," Mac improvised. "I speak a few languages."

       "Well, I think it's a really neat idea," Meg piped up. "We've never really gone into artificial intelligence programming, but it could take us in a direction no one else is going and really give us an edge."

       "We'd have to learn a whole new concept, though, and this product is scheduled to reach the market by next Spring," Phuong reminded everyone.

       "Yeah, right," Jamie groused. "Marketing makes promises and we're expected to keep them. Look, even if we just go by the grammar rules, this code will take forever!"

       "Can't that kind of simple coding be assigned to a junior programmer or even contracted out?" Mac asked. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. The problem was intriguing and he was too easily drawn in to really try and solve it. He was NOT here to do programming projects for this company, he reminded himself firmly, only to find a thief.

       "You can't trust some low level programmer with this stuff, especially with all the theft that's been going on!" Phuong insisted.

       In for a penny, in for a pound, Mac told himself. Now that he'd gotten started it didn't make sense to withdraw. "But if you break it down into small components, a few verbs at a time, and don't give access to the main program development files, they could be quality control checked, then incorporated later."

       "He's got a point, Phuong," Meg agreed. "I could supervise a couple of the newbies. They're clueless anyway. If that worked, we could use contract programmers anywhere in the world, as long as we're sure the system is secure."

       "Hmm. I'll think about it," the woman said, her eyes darting around the room to each team member. "In the meantime, you all have your deadlines on the other major sections. We'll meet again next week and I'll expect a progress report on each one."

---

       He had been home for over an hour, had started dinner and was beginning to get worried when Amanda finally showed up. She threw up the gate to the loft, tossed her purse on the nearest chair and immediately headed to the wine he had already opened and set out to breathe, pouring herself a glass and taking a large gulp.

       "Hard day at the office, dear?" he inquired teasingly.

       "Mmm," was her only response as she sipped again. "Something like that." She kicked off her shoes and sprawled in Mac's big, ornately carved leather chair. "I spent most of the afternoon wading through stockholder transactions and fending off their big oaf of a General Counsel. Bleah!" she said in disgust. "I also heard a rumor that you practically took over the strategic planning meeting on the programmer team. That's not exactly conforming to your established character, Duncan." Her voice was reproving, if a little amused. She rose and sidled over to him, laying her long arm around his shoulders as he served up salad. "You just can't help yourself, can you? Dudley Doright, clan leader to the last."

        "Dudley Doright? That's a new one. I thought I was permanently stuck with "Boy Scout"," Mac responded in mild irritation. It did bother him that he hadn't managed to just sit there quietly when he found a potential answer rumbling around in his brain.

       "You are culturally deprived, MacLeod. Don't you know who Dudley Doright is?"

       "No, but while we're not on the subject, I noticed you weren't exactly trying to fend off the attentions of your new boss, Mr. Very Tall and Very Rich Thomason."

       Amanda stole and nibbled on a carrot Mac had been peeling for the salad. "Ooo, we aren't getting jealous are we?"

       Mac made a small snorting noise as he plopped the salad plates onto the small table he had set out for dinner. "What you do is your business, Amanda, and you have successfully traded on your beauty and, uh, other talents for far too long for me to deny that it works, but these days mixing business and pleasure is not only considered bad strategy, but legally inadvisable."

       "You're right, Mac. What I do is my business," Amanda snapped.

       Dinner was silent and tense until they had worked their way past salad, into the grilled fish and vegetables and had finally polished off the bottle of wine and Mac served up coffee as he settled into his big chair to read.

       Feeling a tad guilty for her ill treatment of her lover and best friend, Amanda straightened up the kitchen in penance, then searched for something to talk about and, hopefully lighten the mood. "I know it was only your first day, but what did you think of the programming team?" she finally asked.

       Mac looked up from his book he had been looking at but evidently not reading, since no pages had turned for almost ten minutes. "An interesting group. Didn't learn anything in particular except that Jamie is arrogant and suffers fools not at all, Indy is too quiet, Phuong works too hard at being in charge, and Meg is . . . well she's hard to figure. Cute, agreeable, willing to flout authority a little, but didn't have a lot to say.

       "That's the redhead, right?" Amanda inquired with a raised eyebrow. "The one with the trashcan?"

       "Mm hmmm," Duncan nodded, evidently finally getting engrossed in his book. He looked up at the following silence to find Amanda standing in front of him. She took the book out of his hands and laid it aside.

       "I think you have a weakness for redheads," she said softly, worming herself into his lap and nuzzling his neck. "You think I should die my hair red?"

       But Duncan had stopped thinking much at all, and whatever personal tension there had been between them was replaced by a different and much more pleasant type of friction.

---

       Several days passed while Mac just did general reconnaissance and got to know the team well enough to engage them in private conversations, and Amanda was . . . well he wasn't sure what Amanda was doing, except that she spent a lot of time on the phone and hunched over a huge computer printout for several nights running.

       Lunch, normally an ideal time for socializing as far as Mac was concerned, seemed to be spent at desks at Empressario, munching on fast food. Mac took his little plastic container of salad and sought out one of his team members with a pre-planned question designed to provide an opportunity for conversation. As expected, she was hunched over her keyboard, a hamburger and french fries congealing in neglect in its styrofoam container.

       "Hey, Meg, got a minute?" Mac asked.

       She looked up, her expression completely preoccupied. She really was kind of cute, Mac decided. He started to lay on the charm that was second nature to him, but stopped himself, carefully choosing his words and controlling his expression and posture.

       "Sure, Duncan. What'cha need?"

       "Well, I was going through the subroutines you guys have been working on, and they all seem to be scattered in different files. Don't you have a consolidated file in the main testing directory?" He pulled up a chair and opened his salad container, munching away as he looked over her shoulder.

       "Yeah, but only Phuong and Mike have access to it. Us underlings only deal with the subroutines. Hang on a sec. Let me finish here." She entered a few commands, hit the 'execute' key with a flourish and sat back. "That baby will take about 45 minutes to run and we'll see how she goes," she murmured mostly to herself.

       "Gee, that makes it hard to revise and do quality control of the whole program," Mac improvised.

       "Nah. The whole structure of the program is built around separate sections that can work independently. That's the advantage of event driven, hub processing instead of straight-line programming." Meg seemed unconcerned as she reached for another french fry, still staring at the screen.

       It was an odd sensation. For just about all of his long life, Duncan MacLeod had generated an automatic and highly charged reaction from the women he encountered, and sometimes the men. He had come to accept it as a 'given' in his relationships. This deliberate muting and distortion of that impact had triggered the strangest reactions in himself – reactions he felt ill equipped to handle. Did Meg not like him? Without his Immortal charisma was he just a boring geek with nothing to interest her, either intellectually or physically? Suddenly Mac felt insecure, uncertain in his ability to interest or please this wild redhead. He didn't like the feeling.

        "Just Phuong and Mike? Why does the boss need access to the development programs? That seems weird."

       "Oh, Mike likes to keep his hand in. Run tests, do a little personal quality control. He's a hands-on kinda guy."

       "He tests the programs himself?" Mac was surprised. "The company CEO tinkers with programs in development?"

        "No, he doesn't tinker with them, but he likes to get into the code and see for himself how the program is structured. It's a control-freak thing."

       "You sound like you know him pretty well."

       Her body went still for a few seconds before she reached for another cold french fry. "Well, I used to think I did."

       "Uh oh," Duncan sympathized. "Ex-boyfriend?"

       "Not exactly. We still see each other but he's gotten kind of full of himself the last year or so. The idea of having power over other people's lives changed him, I think," she said softly.

       "Power affects a lot of people that way. They start to think its owed rather than earned." Duncan commented.

       She smiled. It was a sad, lonely expression. "You make him sound mean and petty, but it isn't like that. He just . . . I don't know, got sort of distant, like I was more of an employee instead of someone who had watched and help him grow from a geek with a few neat ideas to an . . . Empressario," she gestured grandly to the space around them.

       "But you've stuck around," Mac observed.

       "Yeah. The company is really as much mine as his, and I guess I still sometimes see that little-boy excitement in him from time to time. He can be really sweet when he's like that."

       "And you've stayed on as a programmer all this time?"

       She shrugged, flushing a little. "Actually, I own a piece of the company, but I work as a programmer because I enjoy it. I'm good at it. I never had any particular desire to do anything else. I guess Mike always wanted more, and now he's found it." Her voice was just slightly sad, her eyes downcast as she toyed with her fries.

       "Does he?" Mac asked. "Or has he lost what was really important?"

       Meg turned to look at this odd man, hearing a certainty, a comfort and wisdom in the voice, and just for a moment, caught a glimpse of smoky eyes tinged with deep layers of meaning and sympathy. The shift confused her and when Mac caught her curious gaze he suddenly became engrossed in his salad. "Well," he said busily, looking for a more comfortable topic, "I'd like to see all the program files so I can learn how all the sections work together."

       "Well, I don't suppose there's any reason you shouldn't have access. Here." She wrote down the file directories, names and access codes. "Although I'm surprised Mike didn't give you these already."

       "He controls the access codes himself?"

       "Oh, yeah. Except for the team, he's the only one who has complete access." She laughed, a distant small smile warming her eyes. "It's a control freak thing again. Sometimes he changes all the passwords and doesn't tell us and if I didn't know where he keeps the passwords in his desk drawer we'd be days sorting it all out," she laughed sadly, shaking her head. "He can be such a doofus sometimes." Her words were full of affection, and as he left, her distant expression was evidence that her thoughts were far away from that little blinking cursor on the screen.

---

       "Well where have you been?" Amanda hissed as he raised the gate on the elevator and wearily dumped his book bag on his desk. "I started to heat some leftovers, but gave up on you over an hour ago. I was beginning to . . . well, I was wondering where you were."

       "I teach on Wednesday nights, remember? I DO have a life outside of your consulting adventures, you know. As it was I was late since I had to stop in the men's room before class to change."

       Amanda watched out of the corner of her eye as he moved to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. He had changed into a loose blue sweater and taken the braids out of his hair, letting it fall in soft waves around his face.

       "I know you wouldn't want to disappoint all those coeds in heat," Amanda commented dryly. But she did turn on the burner under the leftover stew.

       He paused with the drink halfway to his lips. "Amanda . . ." he started.

       "This will be ready in a couple of minutes," she interrupted hurriedly, pulling a bowl down from the kitchen shelves.

        But she paused when she felt his hands on her shoulders. "Amanda," he said softly, his lips close enough to her ear for her to feel his warm breath on her skin. "You've been angry with me for days and I don't know why."

       "Nonsense," she sputtered, yanking a drawer open to pull out silverware. "What would I have to be angry about?"

       But he turned her shoulders until she faced him, holding her still, tipping her chin up with his hand until she was forced to meet his eyes. "Nothing, Amanda. You have nothing to be angry or jealous about. Nothing." He emphasized the last word, punctuating his declaration with a kiss that melted the strength in her knees. Without looking, she managed to reach the knob on the stove, turning off the heat under the neglected stew as they both decided that dinner was not the nourishment they were interested in at the moment.

       It was much later, the stew had been polished off and both Immortals were feeling mellow and closer than they had in weeks, when Amanda solicitously brought Mac a brandy as he lounged in his thick terrycloth robe on the big bed at one end of the loft. She snuggled in beside him, pulling more printouts from her the large bag she had taken to carrying recently.

        "What's that?" Mac asked curiously.

       "There are some odd stock transactions by our friend Mr. Thomason and his General Counsel, Mr. Insel of the wandering hands," Amanda replied. "They've been exercising stock options. There's nothing wrong or illegal about that, but they've been doing it in small increments over the past six months. Just seems odd to me so I thought I'd do some background financial checking on them, as well as on all your programming buddies."

       "Anything interesting?"

       "It's hard to say. There's a lot to sort through. How about you? Find any suspicious fingerprints on those little keyboards?"

       "Not really, except that Thomason keeps tight control of access, which isn't surprising at all." Then he told her about the sad, sweet conversation he'd had with Meg Reading. "But there's no master development program on the system that everyone can use. Everything is broken down into small sections so it's hard to see the whole picture. I suppose it's a precaution taken because of what's happened, but it's very inefficient if you're trying to build a whole system. But . . . the way they're building it, I suppose just having the individual modules out there is all that's necessary."

        Amanda looked at him dubiously. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about, Duncan."

       "Well," Mac replied, "They are working in event-driven programming concepts." When Amanda's look moved from dubious to confused, the Scot started using his large hands to describe what to Amanda were entirely alien concepts. "Every transaction in the program passes through a hub, which directs the next event based on a complex algorithm, which means instead of going through a straight-line decision tree, any decision can go back to any point in the program at any time."

       His audience of one looked no more enlightened than when he had started. He sighed. "For your purposes, Amanda, it means that whole modules can be built independently, and added on to the hub processor, or gatekeeper. If Empressario is having its subroutines stolen, it can be done at almost any phase of the programming because each subroutine, under certain conditions, can be a separate program. The trick for anyone trying to steal the work is to know which ones are unique and interesting, and are far enough along in development to be worth taking, and to have access, and which can actually stand on their own."

       "That's a lot of "and"s, Duncan," Amanda sounded even more dubious than she looked.

       "I know. But I can show you how it would work, but it'll have to be after hours. I assume you can get us in?"

       Amanda looked distinctly insulted and made a rude noise. "Tomorrow night soon enough?"

       Duncan shrugged before he leaned over and turned out the light. "Okay, okay. Didn't mean to offend."

---

       Mac pointed to a line on the screen. "See here?" he whispered. "If you pull the file out beginning here, and . . ." he paged down through the incomprehensible gibberish Amanda saw scrolling by, ". . . stop here. Then insert the file I found in the experimental production files, you have a complete subroutine that can run by itself." Amanda barely listened as Mac prattled on about subroutines, suddenly transfixed by the small red light that played on the back of Mac's head.

       "Duncan, get d . . ." she reached for him, trying to push him out of the way, but he was torn from her grasp instead and propelled forward, collapsing over the keyboard as blood spattered the screen. Amanda hit the floor, an adrenaline rush suddenly throwing her heart into pounding pandemonium. She lay on the floor in the silence that followed, speculating on whether the shooter knew whether or not there had been someone else in the room. It had been dark, the only light was from the computer screen Mac had been working on, and she had been sitting far to one side dressed, as usual, in black.

       She crept on her hands and knees to the window, peering carefully out. The office building across the way was dark but the shot had to have come from there. She needed to check it out but . . . she looked behind her at the inert form of MacLeod slumped over the keyboard . . . she only had another 10 minutes or so before the security guard made his rounds and she had to clean up this mess. She quickly turned off the computer to douse the light and pulled Mac back into the chair. An ugly wound stained his forehead where the bullet had exited, leaving brain matter spattered on the keyboard and screen. Ick. It would be awhile before Mac woke up from this one. What to do with him in the meantime?

       She slid to the windows on the other side of the big room, looking down. Three stories below was the back entrance and steps. The next window overlooked some decorative bushes. Hmm, a possibility. But two windows down, was the loading dock. The half-full dumpster was open directly below. Perfect.

       She returned to MacLeod, guiding the chair slowly, carefully, catching him and righting him as the body wanted to slip sideways, grunting with his weight. "Damn, MacLeod, is all that muscle mass really necessary?" she whispered to an unhearing ear, finally making it to the window. She opened it, grateful that the building was fashionably old and had standard casement windows. At the same time it occurred to her that the place really needed a much more advanced electronic security system. If she could sell them on it, that would be a pretty piece of business.

       She was busy calculating the profit from such a transaction as she picked MacLeod up by grabbing him from the back around his chest and heaving upwards. It took several tries, but finally she at least got his head and arms out the window. Using his belt, she pulled up some more, getting his chest out so all you could really see was his butt and legs, with the rest of him hanging out the into the night air. She kicked the chair away and, pushing on his admittedly admirable ass, even from this unlikely viewpoint, finally got enough of him over the windowsill so that gravity and leverage took over, and his legs disappeared along with the rest of him. She winced as she heard him strike the side of the dumpster before he bounced in.

       "Oops," she whispered sympathetically. "Well," she sighed to herself, "At least he's already dead."

       He really wasn't going to be very happy about this, she mused, rushing to the ladies room to find paper towels to clean up the disgusting mess on the computer and keyboard. Finally done, she did a quick visual check of the room, slipping into a dark corner cubicle as she heard the security guard striding noisily down the hall, whistling some mindless non-tune.

---

       "Duncan?" she whispered, trying for enough volume to be heard, but not to attract attention. She had already been standing here in the chill of pre-dawn for 20 minutes, after having checked out the building across the way and finding nothing. "Damn it, MacLeod, what's taking you so long?" she almost shouted out loud. Sheesh, they were going to be here until dawn at this rate.

       Then she was heartened as she heard a rustle of movement coming from the oversized garbage can, accompanied by a verbal noise that could have been a groan or a curse or some combination. Then the noise of movement got louder, and the verbalization more distinct. Sounded probably Gaelic, although she thought she made out her name a few times, and was suddenly grateful she had never learned that language. What he was saying was probably not flattering, and he would undoubtedly regret his words later. Then the language shifted, some Anglo-Saxonisms and French thrown in, and she knew for certain that he was not singing her praises, and she only hoped he regretted his words later.

       At last one blood-smeared hand appeared over the top of the large rectangular metal container and with a grunt of effort and groan of pain, the rest of a disheveled, dirt-smeared Scot, complete with used styrofoam food containers and discarded papers stuck to his clothing in various places, lifted himself over the top and down, directly into a puddle of stagnant water where his legs immediately gave way and he ended up sitting hip deep, clutching his shoulder which was hanging at an unnatural angle from his body.

       After a minute he looked up at her, eyes shining black and murderous in the light from the street lamp, blood staining his forehead and one whole side of his face.

       "Oooh, Duncan," Amanda purred sympathetically, kneeling, but not too close. She didn't want to get her Ferragamos wet unless she had to. "Does it hurt? I'm so sorry!" She solicitously picked off the loose garbage hanging from his clothes.

       "Does it hurt?" Mac growled. He attempted to struggle to his feet, finally resorting to pulling himself up using the dumpster as a prop. "Aye, amadán bean,¹ 'o course it hurts!" He braced himself, turned to face the dumpster, took a deep breath and slammed his upper body into the metal wall, crying out as his shoulder joint was forced back into place. He leaned his forehead against the cool metal for a minute, breathing deeply against pain that seemed to occupy every part of his body, but with centers throbbing in his head and shoulder, although he was pretty sure there were a couple of ribs broken as well.

       "Wha' happened? Wha' are we doin' here?" Mac mumbled, turning and stumbling towards her. His eyes were glazed over with pain and confusion as his healing brain attempted to sort through four centuries of memory, searching for an anchor of time and place and circumstances.

       Amanda took his arm carefully, avoiding what were evidently ketchup stains, or some other disgusting liquid substance, smeared on his shirt. She tried to support some of his weight, but he was reeling and weak, and she was afraid he'd bring them both down into the dirt and wet of the alley.

       "It's okay, Duncan," she tried to sound soothing. "You just had a little, uh, accident up in the offices upstairs. I had to get you out of there fast, so I did the best I could. At least I didn't let you land on the concrete!" she smiled at him as though offering him a great gift.

       They reached the car and Amanda managed to get him into the passenger side, where he leaned back with his eyes closed, gripping his head as though he were afraid of an imminent skull explosion.

       He was muttering in Gaelic all the way up the elevator from the dojo, stripping his clothes off as he made his way to the bathroom, uncharacteristically letting them fall to the floor. Amanda wisely said nothing, picking up the filthy, smelly, bloodstained clothing, putting them in a garbage sack and setting them outside the door. She poured a large brandy for each of them, changed into a silk nightgown and was draped sensuously on the bed when he finally emerged from the shower. He was definitely cleaner. Whether he was in anything other than a murderous mood was yet to be seen.

       "Feeling better?" she inquired innocently.

       "Me head is still ready ta explode, and I've still nae explanation from ye wha' happened!" he growled. Evidently the head injury had him, at least for the moment, reverting back to old speech patterns.

       "Well," she said, pulling him down to the bed and sliding her hands across his broad, naked back, still warm and damp from his shower, "Someone . . . shot at us."

        "At us?" he repeated, his slow turn and the steel glint in his eye caused her to suddenly find a tiny flaw in the hem of her nightgown that needed close attention.

       "Well, at you, I guess. They used a laser sight."

       "That doesn'a explain why I ended up in a trash can w' me ribs broken and me shoulder torn outta its socket," he returned grimly.

       "Well, I couldn't very well leave you there. It was a disgusting mess! The security guard was on his way so I . . . kind of ."

       Duncan turned towards her, put all his weight on his large, heavily muscled forearms, leaning close. "You what, Amanda?"

       She scooted to the other side of the bed, sitting primly, combing her short hair back with her fingers. "Pushed you out the window," she almost whispered.

       "Excuse me?"

       "Well, at least the dumpster had some padding. It was either that or the concrete or the bushes, Duncan. I really did the best I could under the circumstances!" she retorted defensively, her chin lifting in defiance.

       "Padding?! Nighean gràineag!²Do ye ken what it felt like to wake up in a giant garbage pail? aosd, mìllte, loibht...!³"

       "Duncan, please! If you're going to insult me please at least do it in a language I can understand so I can defend myself!" Amanda said in a huff.

       Duncan just sighed and lay back, resting his forearm over his eyes. "I'm sorry. Everything's all jumbled up in my head right now."

       Amanda scootched up beside him, spotting an opportunity for easy forgiveness. She moved his arm away from his face, first kissed one closed eye and then the other and gently rubbed his temples and watched as his tense face relaxed slightly. After a minute she leaned down whispered close to his ear. "There. Is that better?" she asked, getting a murmured affirmative response. "There are other places I could kiss and make all better," she observed mischievously, letting her hands wander across his chest.

       Duncan opened one eye and glared at her balefully. "Tha mi sgìth⁴, Amanda. And you don't get off that easily." He turned away from her, reached up and turned out the light and in minutes was gently snoring.

---

       The next morning Duncan was only in a marginally better mood, although certainly more intelligible in his speech. Amanda was carefully silent as he dressed in his more standard attire of a dark sweater and slacks, his hair neatly tied back in a silver clasp.

       She finally broke the quiet over breakfast. "I suppose I don't blame you for quitting, Duncan. I'm really sorry you got killed."

       "Quitting?" he looked up from his toast in surprise. "I'm not quitting. Some bastard shot me! You think I'm going to stop now? No, I was just going to take the morning off and do a little research into McMillan Software since it would seem they are prepared to go to any lengths to protect their inside source."

       "I've already done some background checking and if they're doing payoffs, its not from any accounts I can get to. And believe me, MacLeod, if I can't get to them, nobody can." Amanda sat back, suddenly feeling much better about the result of the previous evening's misadventure. A pissed-off Duncan MacLeod would be a much better partner than a one driven solely by guilt. And she knew she had way overplayed the guilt at this point.

       "Tell you what. If you want to do some background checking, see what you can find out about our Mr. Thomason and his friend the General Counsel, as well. Those stock transactions make my nose itch, and when my nose itches . . ." she didn't finish because Duncan had reached over and carefully scratched the end of her nose.

       "In that case, I guess I'll follow your itchy nose," he said, leaning over to kiss the tip of the body part under discussion, then moved down to find the lips beneath.

       "Mmm," Amanda purred at the conclusion of the sweet kiss. "Maybe you should get shot and fall into a dumpster more often."

       The smoky eyes that met hers glinted with amusement and a slight hint of irritation. "I didn't fall, I was pushed. And don't press your luck." He gathered his coat and katana and headed to the door. "I know a few local contacts that might just have some interesting information. I'll let you know what I find out," he called just before the door slammed behind him.

       "Mike Thomason, watch out," Amanda whispered to herself with a smile as she finished her coffee. "The tiger is on the hunt."

---

       Whatever MacLeod was up to, Amanda still had her own job to do, and she slipped behind her desk only about fifteen minutes late, in keeping with the persona she had established. Thomason was scheduled to be out of the office for most of the week on various sales and networking visits, which gave her clear sailing to dig more thoroughly into the stock transactions of the major Empressario stockholders, namely Thomason and Insel. It also meant a lot of computer printouts and phone calls tracing back majority ownership of the entities to which the stocks had been sold. So far she had found a mix of double blind corporate holding companies and brokers, who had passed the stocks along to a fairly innocuous and anonymous set of buyers. The whole investigation was taking on the feeling of going down a blind alley. A very stupid blind alley, she thought to herself, especially since her growing instincts that her own employer might be the culprit would not exactly generate the fee she was hoping for, or motivate him to be a reference for other clients.

       As she gradually pieced together the financial situation of the company, though, a slow, sad intuitive realization began to worm its way into her conscious thought process. None of the pieces of the financial puzzle, taken on its own, made sense. But together . . . and having a sense of the personal dynamic of the people in the company that she had gained during her two weeks (honed by the previous thousand years of observing the human condition), she decided there was another possibility entirely that neither she nor Mac had even considered.

       She glanced at her watch. It was nearly noon. She wanted to circulate around to the programmers on the design team to find out if anyone was noticeably troubled at Mac's absence. She headed to the ladies room and was freshening up her lipstick when she heard a small sniffling noise in what she had thought was an empty room. A surreptitious glance under the stall doorways revealed a pair of small, sneaker-clad feet.

       She knocked softly on the door. "You okay in there?"

---

       Mac drove into Chinatown and circled several blocks looking for a parking space for his T-bird, ending up several blocks from his desired destination. The drive and the walk gave him time to think. The events of the previous evening, the injury to his head and the mental confusion it had caused, stirred intense memories of who he had once been, with the requisite comparisons to who and what he thought he was now. That barbaric Highland son of a clan chieftain had been so secure in his view of the world. As the alpha male of his small universe, he had been taught that it was up to him to control his own destiny, as well as that of his clan. After four hundred years, he had at last learned that, for most things, control was illusive if not ephemeral.

       That thought brought him around to an insight into Amanda's behavior of the past several weeks, frowning as he walked in the slight drizzle past a multitude of carry-out restaurants and curio shops, his hands buried deep in his pockets. Relinquishing control, allowing others to take the lead -- specifically, acknowledging Amanda's right to determine the course of events that were important to her -- was a struggle for him. He was fundamentally prejudiced against it, both by his own nature and from his suspicion that whatever the beautiful millennia-old ex(?)-thief planned, it was a fast track towards folly.

       But Amanda had said she had changed, and even given him some of the credit for her metamorphosis from n'er-do-well to respectability. How could he acknowledge that possibility if he never allowed her to live life however she wanted without his constant intervention? As for his obsessively controlling nature, he sighed, letting go of that aspect of his personality, even a little, was probably going to take at least another 400 years, assuming someone didn't take his head first.

       He pushed open the heavy glass door of the pawnshop which had been his destination, the harsh clanging of bells announcing his entrance. As he made his way towards the back he glanced at a long series of glass cases full of cameras, watches, electric guitars, old typewriters and office equipment, all sad artifacts of their owners who had, in desperation, sold their worldly goods for some higher (or lower) purpose than the items' original use.

       Just about the time he reached the back of the store, a figure pushed through a concealing curtain of plastic beads. She was very short and very round, her coal black hair pulled straight back into a tight bun, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, ash precariously balanced on its tip. As she recognized her visitor her wrinkled face crinkled up with a smile, her black eyes disappearing completely under the folds of skin.

       "MacLeod!" she said in delight, ash flying off her cigarette with each of the two syllables spoken. She removed her cigarette and leaned as far over the counter as her short legs and arms would allow, grabbing Mac's face and pulling it across for a sloppy but enthusiastic kiss.

       <<Mr. Li, get your skinny butt out here and see who's come to see us!>> she shouted in Chinese towards the back of the store.

       "How are you and Mr. Li, Anna?" Mac asked with a smile, resisting the impulse to wipe his cheek. He had known Anna's family for generations. Their fortunes had diminished over the decades from antique dealers (and, Mac had suspected, smugglers) to pawnshop owners. Mac had floated them a loan once or twice, as he had for Anna's father. While they operated just barely this side of legality, he felt a sense of obligation to the family. Anna's great-grandfather had been an important secret source of information for his newspaper articles disclosing the control of Chinese criminal families over the shipping in and out of Seacouver the previous century. He knew Anna's contacts with the underground economy were still strong, however, including the organized crime bosses in the area.

       Mr. Li, a thin man, in marked contrast to his wife, was first-generation Chinese and the result of an arranged marriage. He poked his head through the glass bead curtain. <<Ah!>> he bowed, dipping his body low to indicate respect for an important person. <<Mr. MacLeod, it is an honor that you visit our humble establishment.>>

       Mac bowed in return, careful to incline to a similar depth. <<The honor is mine, Mr. Li.>>

       After an hour of tea at the back of the shop, which also served as a living area, and the requisite chitchat in the increasingly smoke-filled room, during which Anna chastised Mac about getting married and "having a son to carry on the family name just as Mac had carried on the name of his father and grandfather," Mac finally got around to his questions. As he had suspected, the Li's were as well connected to the less upright members of Seacouver's business world as their ancestors had been.

       After a few phone calls conducted in rapid fire combined Chinese and pidgin English, Anna was able to provide the number of a downtown public phone booth used as a contact for such business transactions. With many admonitions to take care and not to wait so long to visit again, Mac finally extracted himself and began tracking down the numbers that had called the booth over the past couple of months.

       That required a long afternoon spent with one James (Jimmy) Briar, computer hacker extraordinare, and 13-year-old student in his dojo martial arts classes. He had caught the kid one afternoon hacking into private financial records on his laptop in the dojo office, his eyes wide with surprise at the size of Mac's accounts. They had formed a mutual pact -- Mac wouldn't tell Jimmy's mother about his 'hobby' if Jimmy would keep his mouth shut about Mac's financial holdings.

       After only a few hours, Jimmy had successfully accessed telephone company records and come up with a list of numbers calling the phone booth in question during the past month, one of which Mac thought he recognized. His growing suspicions were confirmed when he pulled out Michael Thomason's business card.

       He was almost to Empressario's offices when he remembered to call Amanda. It was after closing time, so he reached her at the loft.

       "I know who tried to get me killed, 'Manda," he announced with a growl, his anger of the previous evening returning.

       "Uh, Mac, there are a few things . . ."

       "I'm on my way to Thomason's office now. You should probably . . ."

       "Mac! Wait for me. Don't . . ." but the cell phone went staticky and died as he went into a tunnel on the freeway.

       He looked at the small instrument in frustration. He didn't really want her there anyway, he decided, and ignored the phone when it chirped again insistently on the other side of the tunnel.

---

       Michael J. Thomason looked up from a large stack of progress reports he was attempting to plow through when a dark shadow fell across his desk.

       "MacLeod! Well, you are looking dapper this evening," he smiled. "What are you doing here so late? I heard you hadn't even come in today."

       "Well, I had a little problem last night," Mac said, wandering casually to the window, looking out. "Don't suppose anyone noticed a broken window or anything on the north side of the building?"

       "Broken window? Nobody reported it, but then it something like that might not be brought to my attention. Why? Did you break a window?"

       Mac rounded on his erstwhile employer, his eyes dark and glittering. "No, Michael," Mac said, drawing the name out in disgust. "Your friend did when he took a shot at me."

       Thomason looked momentarily baffled. "My friend? Wha . . . someone shot at you? My God! Were you hurt?"

       The man puts on a pretty good act, Mac thought as he watched Thomason rise to his feet. But the tall man backed away as MacLeod moved closer, for the first time noting that the consultant he had hired as a computer security expert had extraordinarily broad shoulders and moved like a well-honed athlete.

       "You are very fortunate, Thomason, that your friend was a bad shot."

       "What do you mean? You keep saying my friend. You can't possibly think . . ."

       "I don't think, Thomason. I know."

       Thomason's face had gone white as Mac moved within striking range and he stumbled backwards, hitting the edge of the coffee table, waving his hands in front of him, then losing his balance until his arms flew in circles and he crashed backwards, splintering the table and sending magazines and decorative paperweights flying across the carpet. He quickly rolled away to his feet, dashing towards the door in panic, but Mac caught him and spun the tall man around, twisting his long arm behind him and pushing until he could slam the lean frame up against the wall.

       "Just for the record, Thomason," Mac growled, "I really don't like people shooting at me."

       "Mac, back off!" Amanda barked from the doorway.

       There was a tense silence as MacLeod's forearm continued to press into the back of Thomason's neck. The only sounds were of Thomason's gasping breath and a small squeak of dismay from Meg Reading who had peered around Amanda at the doorway.

       At last, Mac reluctantly relented, releasing his captive's wrist and cautiously moving a few feet away.

       Thomason straightened his glasses which had gone half-cocked on his head and smoothed his thinning hair back as he attempted to regain his composure, but his face was flushed into a radiating rosy hue. "Goddamn you, MacLeod, I should sue you for assault!" But one look at the dark scowl on the other man's face, and Thomason decided discretion dictated a somewhat less aggressive response. But his chin went up defensively. "I have no idea what is going on here, but I think you can consider yourself fired, Ms. Devereaux! You and your . . . friend here will leave immediately or I'm going to call the police."

       "Oh, I don't think so, Thomason," Mac growled. "I think they'd be very interested in how you've been secretly buying up shares while the stock price has been depressed, using holding companies – secret corporations in which you have a controlling interest. You know that if you buy more than 5% the SEC will require you to make those purchase public. And as an insider, if you had bought them under your name you would have been required to report them anyway. All this during a period when the stock prices are sinking and you know they will continue to go down as rumors fly about theft of your proprietary programs. Then, voila! You announce a deal with McMillan. They pay a control premium and you and your friend Insel reap enormous profits when the company is sold. That's the deal, isn't Thomason? That's where you've been this past week, negotiating a deal?"

       The tall man's lips pressed together, white showing around the edges. "How did you know that? Those negotiations are private!"

       "Mac," Amanda tried to interrupt, but MacLeod was on a role and wasn't about to be deterred.

       "There never were any thefts, were there, Thomason?" Mac moved in again. For all that he was a good five inches shorter, there was no question who was the more powerful presence. "All this was just your manipulations, of me, of Amanda, of McMillan. And when it looked like I was getting close, you tried to kill me!"

       "Mac!" Amanda finally snapped, her tone penetrating his growing ire.

       "Kill you?!" Thomason gaped at MacLeod. "Are you nuts? I was trying to save my company, you idiot! Without the cash infusion of McMillan we will go down, everyone here will be out of a job! I can't let that happen to my people!"

       Thomason didn't back down this time, his own anger overcoming MacLeod's threatening physical presence. "Yes, I directed that my shares and options be sold, but only because I stopped taking a salary three months ago when sales plummeted and I didn't want McMillan to realize we were in as deep a trouble as we really were. Insel also stopped taking a salary, and we've both hocked our homes, our cars and everything else we own to keep people paid around here." He finally sat in his chair with a deep sigh, burying his face in his hands. "And I don't know what you're talking about with the holding companies. I just sold to private markets. They tend to be dominated by those kinds of businesses. Private investors who don't want their names bandied about in the market."

       "If both of you would just stop playing cock-of-the-walk for a minute," Amanda inserted quietly, "we can get to the bottom of this." She stepped aside and gently propelled Meg forward. The redhead's face was dead white, her small freckles standing out like paint spatterings across her cheeks and nose.

       "It was me," she said quietly. Her lips started to quiver, but she pressed them together to control her trembling. "I . . . I wanted you back, Michael. All you seemed to care about anymore was this damn business. You weren't having any fun, like we did when we were just starting out. I thought . . . I thought if you lost the business we could start over again, just you and me."

       Thomason's eyes raised to hers and there was a long moment of silence. "You stole the programs?"

       She nodded. "I only gave McMillan bits and pieces, just enough to peak their interest, hoping they would see the value here and buy you out. But rumors of theft started to fly, got into the press and this . . . just unraveled. Then, when MacLeod looked like he was getting close to discovering what I'd done, I hired someone to scare him off, but . . ." the trembling began to get out of control. "But the guy said he had killed him and wanted his money, and . . ." tears slipped freely down her cheeks. "I didn't intend for anybody to get hurt! He was just supposed to scare you, but he said you moved at the last minute . . ."

       Mac sent a dark look Amanda's way. She had pushed him, evidently, right into the line of fire rather than out of it.

       "He called me and said if he didn't get his money, he was going to hurt me!"

       At that, Thomason rose from his chair and moved quickly around the desk, folding the small woman into his long arms as she buried her face in his chest. "Oh, Meg, why didn't you just come to me? Talk to me?"

       "Dammit, I tried!" her voice was desperate, muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "But all you would talk about is how we have to keep the business going, how we have all these people to worry about, to take care of!" She pushed away from him, her nose and cheeks swollen and red with tears. "Well what about us, Michael? Don't we deserve to be taken care of?"

       MacLeod had gradually edged towards the door as Amanda simultaneously edged towards the Scot.

       "Feeling a little foolish, are we?" Amanda murmured out of the corner of her mouth. "I told you to wait for me."

       Mac's mouth opened for a retort, then closed. The mouth turned up slightly at one corner as one shoulder rose in a sheepish shrug.

       Both of them were attempting to exit quietly and unobtrusively when Thomason called them back.

       "Wait! Amanda, please wait."

       She turned at the door, expecting another hostile blast for their false accusations.

       "This guy, the one Meg hired. What should we do about him?" The voice was edged with fear and a little panic.

       "Tell us how you were supposed to contact him, Meg, and we'll take care of it," Amanda said reassuringly.

       "You mean Mr. Tough Guy there?" Michael said derisively. "That seems to be his highest calling in life."

       Amanda placed her small hand restrainingly on Mac's bicep and felt it tense.

       Meg reached up to pat Thomason on the cheek. "It's okay, Michael. He's really not so bad once you get to know him. And after all, I did pay someone to shoot at him."

       Amanda felt a soundless vibration from MacLeod that gave the odd sensation of a low predator's growl, but the man managed to stay still as Meg went to the desk and wrote out a telephone number, then handed it to Amanda. "I was supposed to wait at a phone booth at this corner address. He's supposed to call at 2 o'clock this afternoon to set up a place to meet."

       "Does he know what you look like?" Amanda asked.

       "Well, we met in a dark bar, but I was seated at a back booth and had on dark clothes and a scarf. I don't know how much he saw."

       "Okay, Meg," Amanda gave the woman a comforting hug. "We'll take care of this, but I think you and Michael have some things to work out in the meantime."

---

       Amanda was silent as they made their way to the car, but Mac could almost hear what was going on in her head. <<Damned, egocentric, control freak, violence-prone, know-it-all testosterone-driven nincompoop!>> And she was right, he realized. He had assumed he had all the answers. It had never occurred to him that this might be about something other than power, than violence, than ego, than money. After 400 years, he thought in disgust, you'd have thought he would have learned at some point to think with something other than his gonads.

       Amanda, however, was working very hard at not smiling in triumph, and a little pity. As Mac trudged along in silence beside her, she knew he was in serious self-flagellation mode. There wasn't a thing she had to say. He was going to manage to do a superb job of making himself feel like an idiot without her intervention.

---

       Amanda stood waiting by the phone booth Meg had designated dressed in a light, long coat, complete with red wig with a scarf thrown over the false hair for good measure. It was on a busy street, bustling with the post-noon hour business crowd, whose throngs didn't even notice the dark-haired man with the ponytail leaning up against a building across the street, reading a newspaper. At precisely 2 pm, the phone rang.

       "This is Meg," Amanda answered breathlessly.

       "You got the money?" a male voice demanded.

       "Look, you weren't supposed to kill him! You were just supposed to scare him," Amanda put a tearful whimper in her voice.

       There was a long pause at the other end of the line. "Look, lady, somebody was working with him, okay? The asshole moved just as I shot and he died. Shit happens. You got rid of him, didn't you? And I wasn't paid to take out two, just him. I saw other guy push the body out the window into the dumpster. Did us both a favor. I won't even charge you extra for actually killin' him. But I want my money, or I can always find a new target, ya know what I mean?" the voice was gruff with menace.

       "Okay," Amanda added a sniffle for good measure. "I've got your damn money. Where do you want to meet?"

       "Down by the river, under Soldier's Bridge. An hour. Don't be late." The phone clicked, and all Amanda got was a dialtone.

---

       She was on time, but her date was so late she was beginning to think she had been stood up. The sun was beginning to set when a small man dressed in camouflage fatigues finally stepped out of the foliage, causing Amanda to swirl around, almost reaching for her sword as a reflex before she deliberately stopped herself.

       "There you are!" she said, clutching the bag she was carrying to her chest in mock-fright. "I was about to leave. I thought you weren't coming."

       "Just waiting to see if this was a setup, lady," the wiry man replied with an ugly smile full of bad teeth. His light brown hair was cut close, military style and he carried himself with a loose confidence borne of long years of training and combat experience. A mercenary, without doubt. A .09 millimeter handgun was leveled straight at Amanda's chest. "Now hand over the ten grand."

       Amanda nervously tossed the bag towards him, and without taking his eyes off of her, he leaned down to pick it up. He stood, opened the bag, looked inside briefly and smiled in satisfaction. "Been nice doing business with you," he smirked, raising the weapon to shoulder level, aiming straight for Amanda's chest.

       "Excuse me," a male voice said behind him.

       The man swirled, but suddenly found a large hand clasped around his gun as his arm was twisted hard enough to tear tendons and wring a cry of pain as he turned and looked straight into the eyes of the man whose brains he had watched splatter over a computer screen only a day and a half before.

        "Surprise!" Mac said with a smile just before he hit him and watched the head snap back, and the body crumple to the dirt with a satisfying thud.

       "Ow!" Mac growled, rubbing his hand. He normally didn't hit with his knuckles, too much opportunity to mess up your hand, but he had wanted to make sure this guy would be out for awhile. Besides, he really didn't like being shot.

       Amanda wandered over and nudged the guy with her foot to make sure he was truly unconscious, then bent over to check his pockets.

       "Hmm," she murmured to herself, looking through his wallet. "Fred Smith. Probably an alias. Got credit cards in here with other names on them. My guess is this guy is a gun-for-hire with a colorful rap sheet." She took a couple of hundred dollars out of the wallet, leaving the smaller bills, and replaced the billfold, picked up the bag with the payoff money and headed back up the steep path to their car. A few steps later she turned. "Well, come on, MacLeod, don't just stand there. We've got to move him before he wakes up."

       Mac frowned after her retreating back, then squatted down and heaved the man onto his shoulders with a grunt, then struggled after Amanda with his burden.

---

       "I told the police he had attacked me in an alley. Turns out there's a murder warrant out for him in New York and one in Miami," Amanda explained. It had been a week since the unfortunate confrontation in Thomason's office. The broken coffee table had been replaced, although the dark bruise on the CEO's cheekbone where Ma