by Shandi Boyes
I smile like a fucking lunatic, ecstatic Melody is part of our operation. It’s only a small role, but its importance is undeniable. She trained just as hard as me when we were kids, and I’ve often wondered if she still uses her skills. Her email proves she still has what it takes. She not only unearthed the account holder’s name, which just happens to be Isaac Holt, she linked his account to multiple other offshore accounts.
I send Melody’s worksheet remotely to my printer before returning her email. I’m halfway through a gushing bout of praise when my phone dings, announcing I have another message. Hopeful it’s Melody, I tap on the notification band at the top of my screen.
Although my message is from an unknown caller, I know who it belongs to. The tone of his message is very descriptive, not to mention the demand behind it.
Unknown number: Should I follow your plan or make one of my own? If you’re not here in thirty, the decision will be out of your hands.
When an image of the Ravenshoe courthouse stairs being swarmed by media downloads onto my screen, I snag my jacket off the coatrack and hotfoot it out of my apartment.
With traffic light, I make it to the courthouse in half the time Dimitri demanded in his text. I’ve barely thrown my arms into my suit jacket when my gallop up the stairs is unexpectedly cut short by Alex.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Anger pumps out of him as readily as air whizzes out of his nose when he stops next to me. “I asked you to show me how to work her laptop, not steal information off her computer!”
My hands ball as I struggle not to scream my frustration into the street. Out of all the days in the year, today has to be the day Alex discovered I snooped on his Honey Pot’s computer.
It was for the greater good, but I don’t see Alex understanding that when he roars, “Regan thinks I stole information from her, that I used her to better my position.”
“That was never my intention. I had no plans to use the information I found. I just forgot that anything uploaded to the Bureau’s servers remains uploaded no matter how great your hacking skills are.” Everything I’m saying is the truth. Once the Bureau is in, you can never get them back out.
Veins bulge in Alex’s neck as spit flies out of his mouth. “You forgot? How can you fucking forget me instructing you to log out of her computer ten minutes before you did?” I could throw Grayson into the deep end with me, but I won’t. He agreed to come out of undercover work to help me nab Castro, so I won’t put him on bad terms with his brother.
After shoving a computer log printout sheet into my chest, Alex digs his cell phone out of his pocket. “If that isn’t enough proof, how about this?”
Anger envelopes him when he spins his phone around to show me an image of Regan in a skimpy white towel. I’ve seen her like that before, but it was via a live stream, not a still shot. “You were watching her.”
“No.” I immediately deny, shaking my head. “I logged out the instant she entered the room.”
“The instant she entered the room in nothing but a towel.”
A lady dashing up the courthouse stairs yelps, startled by Alex’s vicious roar. I understand why he’s upset, but if he’d give me the chance to speak, I could explain it isn’t anything like he’s thinking. His anger isn’t allowing him to see things clearly.
“What if she didn’t have a towel on? What if she were naked?” He steps closer, his chest thrusting. “I brought you onto my team because I thought you were one of us… one of the good guys.”
“I am—”
“No, you’re fuckin’ not,” he interrupts, shouting. “You’re just as rogue and corrupt as Theresa.”
You know those balls I mentioned yesterday? The ones I was struggling to juggle? They’ve fallen, and their crash is brutal. “Who are you to talk? You slept with a target while undercover.”
“Regan wasn’t a target.” Alex gets right up in my face, stealing every sense of normality I have. “She should have never been dragged into this fight. She’s an innocent—”
“Just like Izzy?” I butt in, returning his glare. “Yet here she is, at your request, being pranced in front of Isaac like a little plaything just like Theresa forced you to do with Regan. There’s only one difference… you stupidly fell in love.”
I’m given a clear reminder that Alex is a Rogers when he pops his fist into my eye. It has the last of my balls falling to the ground while doubling the inane thoughts in my head, but before any of them can transpire, Reid, Alex’s lacky, steps between us.
“Step back, Alex.” He fists Alex’s shirt before endeavoring to do the same to mine. I push him off me before he can. Wrongly assuming I’m stepping up to him, Alex comes at me again. “Step back!” Reid shouts for the second time. “He’s not worth it.” He glares at me like I’m a piece of dogshit he trod in before shifting his focus to Alex. “And you’re not here for him, remember?”
I could laugh at their pathetic attempt to pin everything happening on me. Not once have I stepped over the line agents are forced to toe the past seven years. I was following direct orders.
Just not all of them were given by Alex.
“Nothing I did was outside of my role,” I growl when my anger becomes too much for me to bear.
A festering pit of annoyance boils in my gut when Alex snarls, “A role you no longer hold.”
I want to retaliate, a rebuttal is sitting on the tip of my tongue dying to be expelled, but I hold it back, aware that the relinquishment of my position from Alex’s team could be a godsend if I play my cards right.
I won’t be required to uphold the Constitution of the United States if I’m no longer an agent.
I’m free to do as I wish.
I can even side with mafia royalty if I want.
16
Brandon
“And here I was thinking The Forty-Year-Old Virgin was based on fiction.”
As I shoot daggers at Harvey, a familiar chuckle barrels out of Phillipa’s cell phone resting on the bench stretched across one wall of a surveillance van. If I had known Grayson was hijacking the feed of the camera in the button of my shirt, I would have brushed up on my performance.
Ha! Who am I kidding?
My dating skills are as disastrous as my investigative skills of late.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Phillipa assures me as she runs her hand down my arm in comfort. “What?” she pushes out breathlessly when subjected to Harvey’s cocked brow. “He was barely alone with the girl. No one likes performing in front of an audience.”
“Ah—”
“Shut up, Grayson. All agents know undercover gangbangs are excluded from successful Honey Pot ruse tallies.”
When Grayson laughs, my lips quirk in surprise. I’m not stunned by his lack of denial. I told you he’s dabbled in many situations while undercover. It’s the fact Phillipa is aware of his shady past. Is she keeping tabs on him as she does me, or have they talked more often than they’ve let on?
Realizing now isn’t the time for an in-depth investigation into fellow agents’ personal lives, I mutter, “I’ll give it a shot when she returns from the harbor. Until then…” Even Grayson groans when I nudge my head to the stack of paperwork Harvey had couriered from Parkerville. He knows firsthand there’s no such thing as a day off when you work for the divisions we do.
After slapping hands with Agent Moses, who’s slotted into his new position of a doorman rather quickly, I ride the elevator to Regan’s penthouse apartment. Isaac’s security team removed the camera from the hallway of this apartment building not long after Regan moved back to Texas.
As I mosey down the corridor that’s wider than most living rooms, I dip my chin in greeting to the undercover operative dusting a chandelier lamp partway down. Although our team is small, we set up an unprecedented around-the-clock watch for both Melody and Isabelle. Whether retired or current, agents came out of the woodwork when I commenced cashing in the favors I amassed as part of Tobias’s crew. It was rare for Tobias’s favors to be recipro
cated, so his team was owed many at the time of his death.
“Calm those nerves, punk. You’re not picking up your girl for the prom.”
I hear Grayson’s cheeks incline when I garble out, “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one attempting to pick up a taken woman.”
“True.” His infamous chin-scrub any time his thoughts wander crackles down the wireless earpiece in my ear. “I much prefer the married ones.”
While shaking my head, I tap on the microphone in my shirt to indicate for surveillance to commence before racking my knuckles on Regan’s penthouse entrance door. When my knock is followed by a short stretch of silence, I whisper, “I thought you said no movements were recorded this morning?”
“They weren’t. I’m looking at the sheets right now. People have come and gone, but neither Isabelle nor Regan were seen leaving. Call out. Maybe she’s laying low?” My jaw tightens when Grayson adds, “Not surprising considering she’s sleeping with the enemy.”
“She’s still an agent.”
“A compromised agent,” Grayson fires back, his tone unusually stern. “She’ll get no sympathy from me.”
After calling him a grumpy bastard under my breath, I give his suggestion a try. “Izzy, it’s Brandon. Are you home?”
Although no voices project through the thick wooden door, I hear the scuffling of feet, then, a few seconds later, the door is pulled open.
“Damn… my brother had good taste.”
Regan is gorgeous, but I can’t look at her in the same light Alex and Grayson do. For one, Alex may kill me, and two, Regan is too fierce looking for me. She portrays a woman who’d rather whip me than snuggle with me. Melody and I experimented sexually our first year of college, but bondage never entered the equation.
I peer at Isabelle over Regan’s shoulder when Regan removes my coat without speaking a word. Isabelle is giggling like she heard my inner monologue, but her chuckles are barely heard over Grayson’s numerous lewd comments. I’m glad his last few months undercover didn’t affect his ability to rile me, but I wish he’d pick a better time and location.
I can feel my cheeks heating, and it has nothing to do with Regan’s thorough pat-down. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she was the agent in the hall. I feel seconds from being told to bend over and unclench my butt cheeks so she can finalize her search of all the cavities in my body.
“Admit it, you’re hard,” Grayson mutters down the line, still laughing. “I am.”
Fighting to hold back a gag, I dip my chin in thanks to Regan when she hangs my jacket in the entry closet. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad it was as good for you as it was me…” When Grayson’s words are stolen by a groan, I make a mental note to thank Phillipa for keeping him in line.
Just as Regan tells me, “It was my pleasure,” Isabelle joins us in the foyer. The past twenty-four hours have been good for her. She looks like she got some sleep, and her eyes are glistening from I don’t want to know what.
When she curls her arms around my shoulders to greet me with a hug, I whisper in her ear, “She scares me.”
“Good one, punk. Bring out the frightened-boy act. It works on anyone with a vagina.”
The annoyed expression on my face from Grayson’s grading of my act can be excused for shock when Regan mutters, “I heard that.” She saunters into a living area three times the size of mine before spinning back around to face Isabelle and me. “And you should be scared.”
She snags a stack of paperwork off the coffee table before entering a hallway on our right, her brisk strides only slowing to do one final glance of my body.
My chin automatically lifts when Grayson’s gravelly tone is switched for Phillipa’s songful one. “She’s onto you.”
Although curious to discover what gave away my ruse, I don’t have time to unravel the woman who has Alex twisted up in knots. The gala is two nights away. We’re down to the wire.
Once I’m confident my expression is neutral, I shift on my feet to face Isabelle. “I hope you don’t mind me popping in like this, Izzy, but I couldn’t call you on your cell since Hunter smashed it, and I don’t have any of Regan’s contact details.”
I realize we have more than Grayson, Phillipa, and Harvey listening in when a female voice from down the hall says, “I can give them to you. All you have to do is ask.”
Laughing to hide her unease that she’s forever being watched, Isabelle guides me toward the living room, freeing up some privacy. “Sorry, she’s a little…”
When she struggles to find the words to describe Regan’s overbearing personality, I offer up a suggestion. “Like Isaac?”
Grimacing, she nods.
“She’s got you played, punk. She’s all but admitting she is sleeping with a target because she knows you won’t do sweet-fuck-all about it, so why are you still hesitating? Let’s get this done.”
That’s easy for Grayson to say. He’s not the one standing across from the woman Tobias classed as a daughter with the hope of forcing her to become a Honey Pot against her knowledge. Although I’m skeptical she’ll ever be in danger, it still feels like I’m using her.
After scrubbing my hand down my face, I test the boundaries of our friendship, hopeful our mutually respectful relationship will get Grayson off my back for a few hours. “I just wanted you to know I understand you not being able to come to the gala with me. With everything going on, you’ve got more pressing matters to handle than being my date for a night.”
Shock is the first thing to register on Isabelle’s face. It’s closely followed by remorse. “The gala is this weekend?”
When I nod, she stomps her foot down.
“It’s Friday night, but you don’t have to come.”
“I told you, she’s as rogue as they come,” Grayson mutters in disappointment when he spots the guilt on Isabelle’s face not even the world’s shonkiest camera could hide. “She’s Leesa 2.0.”
I’m about to step into phase two of my plan when assistance comes from the last person I expected. “You should go,” Regan says, walking out from the hallway. “Having you out in public with another man will help make the jury believe you have no association with Isaac.” A sugary smell similar to the one you get when you enter a bakery filters in the air when she reaches us. “It will also aid in your innocent plea. Only people with something to hide are concerned about prosecution.”
“You don’t think it will be distasteful for me to go to a fancy gala with a death hanging over my head?” Isabelle asks at the same time Grayson murmurs, “Smart and beautiful. Alex got lucky.”
Regan shakes her head. “No. You knew of Megan from an FBI agent perspective, but you have no personal connection to her whatsoever. You don’t mourn the death of a stranger.” She looks like she’s dying to bump her hip against Isabelle’s, but since she’s unsure if that’s a normal thing for one woman to do to another, she adds a chirpy tone to her words instead. “And with you being out of Ravenshoe for a few nights, I won’t have to check your room every ten minutes to make sure Isaac hasn’t snuck in.”
Have you ever felt like the odd man out? That’s what I’m experiencing right now. Regan looks like she’d rather wrestle a tiger than continue with our conversation, and Isabelle is concentrating so hard, you’d swear I was asking her to divulge national secrets. And I’m just standing here like a dork, unsure if I’m coming or going. Even Grayson is quiet.
After what feels like an eternity, Isabelle locks her eyes with mine and asks, “What time are you picking me up?”
I almost fist bump the air, but since Regan is watching every expression crossing my face, I keep my euphoria on the down-low. “How does eight sound?”
Isabelle cringes like she didn’t wake before the sparrows every day the past eight months. “Eight sounds great. I’ll see you then.”
“Great, see you then.” Not thinking, I swoop in to plant a kiss on her cheek before pivoting on my feet and high-tailing it to the door.
<
br /> “Don’t forget your jacket, dipshit,” Grayson reminds me, redirecting the course of my steps.
Once I have my coat in my hand and a good amount of distance between Regan’s apartment door and the elevator car, I say, “Let phase two begin.”
This one will be trickier than the one we just undertook. It isn’t every day you endeavor to steer a mafia prince onto the right side of the law.
“This isn’t what I meant by phase two,” I mumble, shoving the printout Melody emailed me yesterday morning back into Grayson’s hand.
Once the account number Melody unearthed was linked with the intel the Bureau’s mainframe automatically uploaded from Regan’s laptop when I helped Alex with a log-in issue, an avalanche of revelations were exposed. The down payment Isaac made to the Popovs two weeks ago was only a smidgen of the icing on the cake. Whatever he’s buying is substantially more than a mail-order bride because its ticketed price came in at a little over 2.4 million dollars.
Although I’m curious to discover what Isaac is purchasing, I can’t forget my exchange with Alex yesterday morning. “Your brother fired me after hitting me. I’m not on his team anymore.”
“So a little misunderstanding means he doesn’t deserve to know the man he’s chasing is a criminal?” Grayson asks, glaring at me. “Those payments add up to over two million dollars—”
“I know what they add up to. I can count. Doesn’t change my mindset, though.” I’m pissed as fuck Alex retaliated with violence. I get he thinks I saw Regan in a compromising position, but if he had given me the chance to assure him that wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t have been so worked up.
“The Bureau has been hunting Isaac for years. You have proof his business matters aren’t legit, but instead of manning-up because your ego got a little bruised, you’re being a prissy punk-faced motherfucker who’s acting like it’s the first time he’s been hit.” As Grayson slumps onto my rock-hard designer couch, he grumbles, “Tobias would be rolling in his grave.”
