by Beth Yarnall
Super Agent nodded, the fluorescent lighting creating a halo around his cleanly shaven head. I didn’t usually go for bald guys, but this one had macho to spare and there was a Zen-ness to him, a calm that seemed to quiet the rush inside of me. Who needed hair? Lord knew I had enough hair for the both of us, cascades of thick, black curly stuff that took forever to comb out.
“What should I call you?” I asked to change the subject.
His gaze drifted to the cup in front of him. “I think it’s probably best if you called me Agent Poole.”
Wow. Where was Guinness when you needed them? This had to be a new land speed record for getting dumped. “Fine.”
“Maggie—”
“Miss Castro. We may as well be consistent.”
He finally had the balls to look at me. “I didn’t mean for that to happen back there.”
“You’re not married, are you? Because that would just be the cherry on top of my giant, craptastic sundae.”
He held up his bare left hand.
“Well, that’s something, I guess.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t. Okay?” I grabbed my purse. “Thanks for the protection, the fantastic make-out session, and the coffee. See you around.”
As I walked past, Super Agent grabbed my wrist. “Sit down. Please.”
“I don’t need this. I’ve got enough going on with an angry mob of reporters, my sudden national notoriety, oh, and that other little thing…the murder rap hanging over my head.”
“I need your help.”
“Right.”
“Sit down and let me explain.”
I wanted to say no. I really did. But the look in his eyes stopped me. I sighed and slid in across from him, pinning him with the beady eye. “This better be good.”
“What do you know about Trinh Pham?”
“You can get it with chicken or shrimp?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He sat back and studied me. “She’s the woman the senator was having ah…how can I put this delicately…relations with besides you.”
“I have a paper cut you could pour lemon juice on. Why don’t we do that instead?”
“So you don’t know anything about her.”
“I know she was getting what I wasn’t, riding my boyfriend like she was winning the Kentucky Derby. And that she’s a screamer and her boobs are as big as your head. Also, she has a stupid tramp-stamp tattoo and wears too much makeup. That enough for you?”
“Wait a minute. What do you mean she was getting what you weren’t?”
“I mean I saw more of Chuck Puckett bucking underneath her than I saw of him the whole year we were together. Including that time we went to the lake for some fun-in-the-photo-op sun. Look, I need to get home and feed my cat.” I started to scoot out of the booth.
“You don’t have a cat. Stop avoiding my questions.”
I halted midslide and slowly turned back to him. “How do you know I don’t have a cat?”
The reddening of his mocha-latte complexion might have charmed me had I not had the sudden feeling that an anvil was about to be dropped on my head.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said, his words careful and testing.
“Watching me.”
“You’re my assignment.”
“I’m your…” And then the anvil hit. “Well, isn’t that stalkerific. I am so out of here.” This time he didn’t stop me. Tears burned behind my eyes, and I was so intent on putting him behind me that I didn’t realize he’d followed me until I got to my car.
“Maggie, wait. Let me explain.”
“Help! Rape!”
He clamped a hand over my mouth and backed me up against my car. “Don’t do that. People are watching us,” he whispered.
I blinked up at him with wide eyes. His explaining skills could use a lot of work. So now it wasn’t just him watching me, but a whole passel of unseen stalker agents. What had I done and to whom to have this landslide of good fortune?
“We’ve had the senator under surveillance for months. At first, we thought you might be involved. I was assigned to monitor you. I know you didn’t kill the senator because I was following you. You were home watching a movie until the senator called and invited you over. He was already dead when you got there.”
I tried to talk around his hand. He really needed to stop muzzling me.
“Promise not to scream again?”
I nodded and he removed his hand.
My words came out in a rush of relief. I was saved. “You’re my alibi. Tell the police. They’ll listen to you.” I was so giddy about having an alibi that the creep factor of kissing the guy assigned to shadow me took a few seconds to click in, then, “Oh…eww.”
“What?”
“Back at the church when you ki—”
His annoying hand was back.
“Not here. People watching, remember?”
I glared up at him. He was in severe danger of losing a digit.
“Get in the car and I’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter Four
We were finally getting somewhere, but it sure wasn’t any place I’d ever wanted to visit. Super Agent spun me a web of deceit, double agents and doubling down. Gambling, that is. Apparently, Chuck Puckett had his fingers in more pies than a professional pie-eater. I sat and listened, all the while trying to reconcile what Super Agent was telling me with the Chuck Puckett I knew. His tale just didn’t jibe…if you overlooked the Asian cowgirl thing.
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy? Tall, blond, talked like Madonna? Wouldn’t eat anything that grew underground or walked on two legs?”
“Of course.”
“You’re the super agent here; why would you need my help? It seems to me you’ve got almost everything figured out. Oh, except who really killed Chuck Puckett. It would be ever so nice if you could riddle that one out.”
“Did he ever give you anything to hold for him?” he asked.
“You mean like a bag of money or the passwords to his offshore bank accounts? No.”
“What about presents?”
“Just the obligatory Valentine’s, birthday kind.” Chuck Puckett bought me things all the time. Sometimes little things, sometimes big things, but nothing that sent up any flares for me.
“And you’re sure you’d never seen Trinh Pham before? Maybe in the senator’s office or home?”
“Keep saying her name and I’ll do to you what I did to Chuck Puckett.”
He clamped his legs together. “Sorry, it’s just that you’re the only one who’s ever seen her.”
“And more of her than I’d ever want to.” My thoughts skidded to a halt and rewound. “What do you mean I’m the only one who’s seen her? You know I don’t have a cat and probably know what movie I was watching when Chuck Puckett called, but you don’t have any surveillance footage of Slutzilla?”
Embarrassment tinged his cheeks again. I’d never thought a guy blushing could be so sexy, but Super Agent was making it work for me…big time.
“No. And you’ve seen her twice. That makes you an exception we think she’ll want to rectify.”
“Rectify as in…?” I made a slicing motion across my neck.
He nodded. “We don’t know who she is or how she fits into the equation. Our best guess is she’s a hired assassin who went rogue, but we’re just not sure. We think she might not have known you’d be there the night she killed the senator.”
“How do you know she killed Chuck Puckett? What about Thug and Boston?”
“Who?” He shook his head. “Never mind. You. You’re a fairly reliable witness since we know you weren’t involved in any of the senator’s activities, and you told the police you’d seen her there. By the way, next time you’re arrested, maintain your right to remain silent until your attorney arrives.”
“You say that like you think there’ll be a next time.”
&n
bsp; “This wasn’t your first arrest.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What don’t you know about me?”
“I don’t know why you put peanut butter and jelly on a bacon cheeseburger.”
“Try it and you will.”
“Not a chance. I’m a vegetarian.”
His squinty-eyed grin did interesting things to the parts of me that Chuck Puckett had long left to gather dust. Under normal circumstances I would have been half in his lap by now, but even though we’d fogged the windows, the knowledge that other agents were out there watching us kept me firmly in my seat.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
I blinked innocently up at him. “Like what?”
“Like I’m a bacon cheeseburger slathered in PB and J.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Agent Poole.”
“God, you have a smart mouth.” His gaze dropped to my mouth.
My lips parted and my breathing sped up. His did too. The steamed-up car windows suddenly felt intimate, as though we were all alone in the world. He reached for me, grasping the back of my head, and pulled me to him. Our lips met on my low groan. This felt right, his body up against mine. It felt right and hot and oh, so intense, I thought I’d melt right there in a puddle of need and want. He made a deep-throated sound and bent me back to lie down.
All the years I’d had my old Pontiac, I’d never been so grateful for bench seats. I pulled Super Agent down on top of me. He was heavy in a really good way. It had been so long since I’d had a man on top of me. And he knew what he was doing, tracing my jaw with kisses, his hand creeping up under my shirt. Wrapping my arms around him, I brought him closer. He fit me so well I let out a purr of pleasure and wriggled closer, rubbing my pelvis against his.
He gripped my hip to still my movements and rose up to look down at me. “Keep doing that and it’ll be over before it starts.”
“Are we starting something? ’Cause it feels started to me. In fact, I might already be halfway finished.”
He grinned down at me, that cheese-eating grin I now associated with his being inordinately pleased with me. His gaze traced every inch of my face and I felt the longing mirrored in his expression. “You’re so crazy beautiful.” His words were barely audible, almost as though he was speaking to himself. “If I had you I wouldn’t want anyone else.”
No one had ever spoken to me like this. All I could do was stare up at him, completely dumbfounded.
“Do you think…” He cleared his throat. “Do you think we could put a bookmark here and come back later?”
“How much later?”
“Until we find Trinh Pham.”
“I told you not to say that name.” I pushed at him to get off me. Of all the things he could’ve said to me, that was the one thing guaranteed to douse my ardor. “Thanks for the cold shower.”
He sat back slowly, watching me straighten myself as though I’d vanish or something. “My job is hard enough as it is.”
I looked pointedly at his lap. “Not likely.”
“You distract me. I can’t get distracted.”
“Seems to me you don’t have a job anymore. You know I’m not a part of whatever it was Chuck Puckett was doing. You won’t tell the police I didn’t kill him, and I gave you all of the information I have on the Vietnamese Vixen. As far as I can tell your job here is done and maybe we should be too.” I was bluffing…badly. I couldn’t stop looking at him like he was a big ole giant bacon cheeseburger with peanut butter and jelly and I hadn’t eaten in days. Years, even.
“That’s the thing; my job with you isn’t over.”
“It’s not?”
He shook his head. “My job now is to protect you, make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Like a bodyguard?”
“Exactly like a bodyguard.”
I would have made a crack about the ways in which I’d like him to guard my body, but reality locked the words in my throat. It wasn’t enough that the tattooed tramp had banged then killed my boyfriend, leaving me to take the rap. I was now at the top of her hit list with nothing but Super Agent between me and death.
Chapter Five
When Super Agent had first proposed his staying in my apartment to guard me, I readily agreed, swept away by visions of foreplay days and fornicating nights. Boy, had I been wrong. He stuck to his no-nookie rule like he’d been sworn to the priesthood by the pope himself. Just when I began to doubt his interest, I’d catch him looking at me as though he’d mentally stripped me and was cartographically tracing my every slope and curve.
It was those looks that kept me awake at night, wondering if I’d ever get to touch the tightly packed muscles I knew lurked beneath those horribly baggy suits. After I accidentally on purpose caught him coming out of the bathroom with nothing but a towel around his waist, he stayed dressed night and day. I was pretty sure he was showering in those damn suits now.
To make matters worse we hadn’t heard a peep from the Mata Hari madam, and I was beginning to think Super Agent’s theory of me being on her hit list was as farfetched as me losing the extra twenty pounds I’d been carrying since the day I was born.
“Can’t I just go to the store and say hi to my friends?” I asked one bright and shining morning.
Super Agent glared at me over the top of his coffee cup. “No.”
“I can’t afford to stay home from work another day.”
“The press is still hounding you.”
“Not as badly as they were before. Besides the store has security.” My job as a beauty advisor for Estelle Landers Cosmetics wasn’t as glamorous as a special agent for the FBI, but it paid the bills and kept me ankle-deep in beauty products.
He looked back down at his phone and made a “we’ll see” noise. The majority of his speech had been reduced to noncommittal grunts and long-suffering sighs. I wanted to say it was my charm, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. Our forced confinement was getting to him too.
“I’ll call my boss to let her know to put me back on the schedule.” I pulled out my cell phone to make my call. “Next week we’re having a gift with purchase, and I can’t afford to miss the extra sales money.”
“You’ll have to explain me.”
“Hopefully you’ll be gone by then.”
He raised his eyebrows at me.
Jeez. Such a Sensitive Sally. “You know what I meant.”
He returned his attention to his phone, leaving me to stare at the top of his head. Conversation over. All morning he’d been texting and emailing his thumbs to bloody stumps. Something was afoot.
My phone rang, and a quick look at the display told me this was a call I needed to take in private. As I slipped off the barstool and padded down the hall, I could feel Super Agent’s gaze on me. I’d never taken a call out of his presence and I could almost hear his gears spinning out questions three at a time. Two could play the I’ve-Got-a-Secret-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na Game.
I closed the door to my bedroom and went into the closet. “Hey, Jonas.”
“Hey. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”
“No worries. Were you able to find anything out?”
“I posted the image you gave me on a couple of forums and I think I may have found your guy. There’s an artist out of Amsterdam who recognized the ink. I’ll text you the deets.”
“Thanks, Jonas. I owe you.”
“When are you going to come in so I can finish you?”
Jonas still needed to fill in the color on my newest tattoo. “Probably next week.”
“Text me and I’ll fit you in. You know, now that you’re not with the senator anymore, we could go out. Dinner or something. What do you say?”
“I say I’ll text you next week.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not serious?”
I cut my gaze to the wall where Super Agent sat on the other side, stewing like an overfilled crockpot. “’Cause I’m not. Thanks again, Jonas. Bye.”
I disconne
cted the call and sat down amongst my shoes, waiting for Jonas to text me “the deets”. A couple of days ago Super Agent had put me in front of a sketch artist to get an idea of what Trinh the Trollop and her tattoo looked like. When he wasn’t looking I snapped a pic of both sketches to do some sleuthing of my own. Why not? No one in this mess had more at stake than me.
A bing later I had the name and phone number of the shop that had possibly inked Tramparella’s tattoo. Now all I had to do was figure out how to dial overseas.
Suddenly the bedroom door burst open. “What in the hell do—” Whoa. Super Agent sounded scary when he was pissed. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of that. “Maggie! Where are you?” Oopsie. Too late.
I slid the closet door open. He didn’t sound half as scary as he looked. His chest was all puffed up, and his shoulders looked a mile wide. Now I knew why he wore such horribly baggy suits. It was like he’d grown two sizes, his anger filling in the gaps between the sags.
It took him a moment to find me amongst the dresses and skirts. “Why are you in there?”
I held up my phone.
He offered me a hand up. I took it, fighting my way out of the closet one-handed. By the time I escaped, he was shaking his head and battling a smile. “You are the oddest woman I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t.” Uh-oh. Angry Agent was back. “I didn’t see any harm in you sending that picture because I didn’t think anything would come of it. But now… Stay out of this investigation. You have no idea who you’re dealing with here.”
I did a double take. What now? “You’re listening in on my phone calls and reading my texts?”
“We thought it best in case Trin—”
I pointed my phone at him. “Say her name and you’ll be gargling your balls for weeks. And who in the name of all that is private is ‘we’?”
“You’re not going to go out with that Jonas guy, are you?”
“What? That’s the take-away from this clusterfuck?”
