Under the Rose

by Nolan, Kathryn

  “Evandale,” Sam whispered. He was less than a foot away from me. I slapped a hand over his mouth. Shook my head. The siren felt like a hammer between my temples.

  “Ma’am?” The woman said impatiently.

  “Um, what?” I strained to hear her.

  “Ma’am, I said your passcode is 1-7-9-7.” I slid quickly across the floor and typed 1797.

  It stopped.

  The alarm fucking stopped. It left a tangible hush in its wake, like stepping into a quiet forest after a busy day in the city. Sam and I stared at each other with gaping mouths.

  “Ma’am? Hello?”

  “Oh, yes…um, it worked, thank you,” I said.

  “While I have you, do you still want the security cameras disabled for the weekend? I can reactivate them if needed.”

  Relief collapsed me against the wall. My guess was that Ward had put that into action—no camera footage, no tape, no record of the thieves who’d just dined here.

  “Nope, keep the cameras off as discussed,” I said firmly. “And thank you.” I ended the call.

  “You did it,” Sam said hoarsely.

  “I did do it,” I said. That had felt good. Really good. I beamed at up at my nemesis. “Not too shabby, eh?”

  He took one giant step and brought our lips together. It was a rough and dirty kiss, a hard kiss. It felt way more than good.

  It was hot as hell. The demanding feel of his hands in my hair, holding me still, had me jelly-kneed in an instant. I liked this feeling of being taken by Sam Byrne. Actually more than liked—this was becoming my new craving. I’d always liked slamming Sam down onto his back with a knee to the chest. It was undeniably gratifying to best a superhero. But now, as his tongue stroked against mine, I remembered Sam pinning my wrists, holding me down. The deep trust we had as sparring partners mirrored our intimacy as rivals—as much as we argued, you couldn’t spar with someone you didn’t trust not to hurt you.

  Sam’s thumbs stroked across my cheekbones, and I whimpered. He pulled back. We were panting in the still-sudden quiet. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t need to apologize every time you kiss me,” I whispered.

  “I miss…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve missed watching you kick ass, Evandale.”

  I’d spent all those weeks at Quantico secretly watching Sam succeed—had he also been watching me? But if he had, wouldn’t he have seen how every little thing sent me into a nervous tailspin?

  Police sirens sliced through the softness. Sam shoved us both back against the far wall, and our necks craned to stare at the front door.

  “Excuse me, is everything okay in there?” Knock knock knock. “It’s Glen, from across the street? Just wondering if you need the police?”

  Sam straightened his bowtie and adjusted his cufflinks. Winked at me again. And walked confidently to the door.

  No one had ever told me that your annoyingly smug enemy could wink at you and turn your bones to mush. If they had, I would have been better prepared for my body’s aroused response.

  “Glen?” Sam’s deep voice was assured. Calm. Always use their names had been a little psychological trick our instructors used to tell us. “Is that you?”

  I could hear a man sputtering, surprised. “Oh! I didn’t…I mean, is everything okay? Also, who are you?”

  “Julian King,” Sam said. “I’m the new director here at Philosopher’s Hall. We had a private event this evening, and I’m tidying up. Tripped the damn alarm while I was securing the windows, I’m afraid.”

  The whine of the police sirens was definitely on our block now. The red-and-blue lights rippled across the walls of books across from me. But their engine wasn’t slowing down.

  “Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine,” said Glen, who was clearly the block busybody. “I only wanted to make sure you weren’t a murderer or a thief or a common vagrant.”

  “No thieves here, I can assure you,” Sam said. “And we’ve always appreciated the care you show. Shannon has spoken highly of you during our meetings.”

  More surprised sputtering from Glen. “Oh my goodness, Shannon said that? Shannon’s a dear. Happy to be of service. And glad everything’s all right. You have a nice night.”

  “Same to you, Glen,” Sam replied.

  I marked Glen’s footsteps back down the front stairs. And then the cop car sliding right past us, off to chase down another crime.

  “Nicely done,” I breathed, letting out the world’s biggest exhale.

  Sam nodded, glancing behind him. “Okay. Alarm off. Cameras off. Cops gone.”

  I propped my hands on my hips. “Let’s go find those love letters.”

  31

  Sam

  My job hadn’t been this exciting in years. My job had been tedious and panic-inducing. Depressing. Working for Codex was actually having fun. It was different and intriguing and satisfying all at once.

  I glanced sideways at the gorgeous firecracker standing next to me.

  She was certainly not the reason I was enjoying hunting down criminals again.

  Although Freya was the reason I’d acted against my better judgment—or any judgment—twice. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her full smile—the one that made her so very Freya. The one she’d flash to her favorite professors or friends or those boyfriends I’d hated. It was wide, cheeky, dimpled. It was carefree and silly.

  And she’d pointed it right at me with precision.

  What choice did I have except to steal one more kiss?

  “If you were nineteenth-century love letters encoded with perverted messages—where would you hide?” she asked, straightening her glasses.

  “Where were those rooms you saw that had the glass cases?” I asked.

  Freya glanced at her phone. “Good call. And we’ve got a deadline. We’ll know in sixty minutes if we’ve been on the right track.”

  “Staying here longer than an hour anyway is risky. We need to move,” I agreed. “The longer we’re here, the more likely we’ll be discovered.”

  She brushed past me, waving her hand. “Second floor. Race ya to the top of the stairs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not everything has to be a—”

  But she’d already scooped up the ends of her dress and was sprinting up the carpeted staircase. I shook my head and took off, too compelled to win.

  “Cheating already, Evandale,” I said, flying past her on the steps.

  “Cheating would be tripping you,” she panted back.

  I hit the top of the step and turned around with hands raised in victory. She finished a second behind me, bent over at the waist, laughing softly.

  “Point to Byrne.” I smirked. “What are the total points so far for this case?”

  “Can’t recall, I’m afraid,” she said breezily.

  “Four-three. I can recall. I’m winning.”

  She knocked her knuckles against a door marked Private. “You’ll get another point if you can break us into this door.”

  I shook my head with a grin, reaching into my back pocket for the lock-picking tool I’d hidden.

  “Ha,” Freya said. “I knew you’d bring it.”

  “How many laws are we going to break tonight?”

  “Until you’re fully corrupted,” she said. Strands of golden hair were starting to fall from her bun, framing her face. “Don’t think I’d forgotten you were the best lock-pick at Quantico. Next to me, of course.”

  “Tell me that purse is filled with zip-ties.”

  She snapped it open to reveal strips of duct tape and zip-ties. A trick our professors had taught us if you were caught in a dangerous situation but forced to carry light. Subdue them. Zip-tie their wrists. Slap a strip of tape over their mouths. They’d also taught us how to pick locks—which came in handy for an agent more than most law-abiding folks realized.

  She used her phone flashlight to light the tiny keyhole. I dropped to one knee, wiggled the tool inside. Twisted, ear to the door. Twisted. Twisted one more time.

/>   Click.

  “Got it.” I turned the knob and slowly opened it, prepared for hidden danger. We’d heard not a peep this whole time, but those Empty House assholes seemed to lurk in every corner. The thin beam of her flashlight revealed a storage room filled with boxes and files.

  Freya flicked the light switch.

  “That’s a lot of boxes,” she breathed.

  “Yep.” It was. More than any two people could conceivably get through in an hour.

  “This is what the letters look like.” She found pictures from the internet on her phone and propped it on the closest flat surface. “They’re obviously hella old, and Henry told me they’d need to be stored in packaging that protected them from touch and damage. I think we’d recognize something like that. They’re not in a file folder, you know?”

  “Yeah. I think so too.” I ran a hand through my hair, wondering what the hell we’d just gotten ourselves into. “We’ll work each room together to make sure neither of us misses anything. We’ll start here, then move to that room with the glass cases.”

  She walked to the bathroom and came back with a handful of tissues. “Use these to wipe down prints. And we’ll need to be careful not to upset anything. Everything has to go back the way we found it.”

  “Good call, Evandale.”

  “I aim to please, Agent Byrne.” She gave me a sassy salute and set to work yanking open drawers.

  Like our academy days, we fell back into a focused silence—the way we used to sit for hours when studying or test-taking. We moved through the small space, both muttering to ourselves as the minutes ticked by. I ran my hands along the baseboards, stood on a chair and examined the ceiling for false panels. She knocked on walls and listened for hollow spots.

  Nothing.

  The room with the historical documents seemed more promising as we swept in, both of us examining the 300-year-old documents put forth by Philadelphia’s political philosophers and great thinkers of the time. I checked my watch.

  Twenty minutes down, forty to go.

  “Cora Alexander is having an affair. Or affairs,” I said. “That’s what she and I were speaking about when you were in the bathroom.” I stumbled, forced away memories of what we’d done in there.

  “What now?” Freya said, face impressed. “Affairs?”

  “Julian is her confidante. Her two lovers—her word—have been sending her letters to their house. It’s probably one of the reasons why she’s also been fascinated with the George Sand letters. She’s living that life.”

  “And Thomas…?”

  “Is okay with it, apparently,” I said.

  She shook her head as she slid her fingers through old books, shaking them out. “Thomas believes he’s cursed because Bernard had him steal an extremely valuable first-edition of Don Quixote. And Cora’s over here bangin’ two dudes and getting love letters about it.”

  I studied her for a moment. “What did you mean back in the hotel room? You said”—I worked to keep my tone light—“you said you weren’t the kind of girl who ever got love letters?”

  She turned, surprised. “Oh. I forgot I’d said that.”

  I didn’t push. Instead I went back to examining the two small closets in this room. Waited. A second later, she joined me, sliding into the tight space, already anticipating I’d need the extra eye.

  “I didn’t have a lot of friends in middle school or high school,” she began. She avoided eye contact, but her body never stopped brushing against mine—her hips, her shoulders, her fingers. “You know I was—still am—close to my mom. Extremely close. I was never, ever raised to think my nerdy interests or hobbies were weird or wrong. They weren’t mainstream at the time, but fourteen-year-old me didn’t give a shit.”

  She had one bookcase shoved aside in the closet and was running her fingers along the wood paneling. I dropped to my knees to help her, putting us on eye-level.

  “I cared about books and the characters in those books. I cared about my mom and our cats. And I cared about being smart. More than smart. Brilliant. When I first started being bullied my sophomore year, it seemed so juvenile I told myself it didn’t matter. Who cares if you’re smart? And why is that a reason to make fun of someone?”

  “Teenagers think differently,” I said. “But why would anyone make fun of you?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You’re…” I shrugged, my fingers accidentally brushing against hers on the spine of a book. “You know.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Funny,” I said begrudgingly. “And happy. And nice. At Quantico, everyone always wanted to be around you and laugh at your jokes.”

  Freya’s expression opened up dramatically. “I always thought they wanted to be around you.”

  “I don’t think many people feel the need to be around me,” I said. “Which is fine, since I have no time to be around people.”

  She bit her lip. I ignored the response that incited in my body. “You’re smart and thoughtful and believe in honor and duty. You’re basically a real-life Superman. Trust me. Our classmates wanted to be around you.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, unsure of how to answer that.

  “Did kids make fun of you for being too smart?” she asked.

  “I thought you said there was no way I could have had a shitty high school experience?” I was teasing, but she winced.

  “I’m sorry I assumed that,” she admitted, poking her head around from the bookshelf. She was barefoot, hair a mess, glasses askew.

  Adorable.

  “It’s okay. Truly, it is.”

  “No, but I am, Byrne. I can’t imagine…” She shrugged. “I can’t imagine living with your father when you were a teenager was enjoyable.”

  “Having a strict father meant that if kids at school were making fun of me, I never knew,” I said. “I was always head down, studying. Serious. Extracurriculars, like football, were only to improve my transcript.”

  “When did you enjoy being a kid?”

  “When my mom was alive.”

  Stupid. It was stupid to say things like that, especially in front of Freya.

  She stood quickly as if perceiving a threat.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked, looking up at her from the ground.

  “That’s fucking sad.”

  I couldn’t look at her emerald eyes, shimmering with empathy.

  “Not really,” I mumbled.

  “I’m so sorry you experienced that,” she said.

  “It’s nothing,” I said firmly. “Tell me about why you didn’t get love letters.”

  Freya shook her head. She was standing over me, and this position of powerful submission was destroying the remaining shreds of my self-control. Her hand moved across my forehead, brushing a strand of hair back into order. When she did it a second time, I grabbed her wrist. Put my lips there. Her throat worked as we stared at each other.

  “Tell me about the love letters,” I said, voice thick. She nodded but left the closet to examine the room at large. She grabbed one side of the giant red rug in the middle of the floor. I got up, left the closet, grabbed the other side. We lifted, rolling it away.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  I was on my hands and knees, searching for hidden latches or trap doors. “Goddammit. No.”

  Frustration mounted the more we searched and the less we found.

  “Let’s move on to the next place,” she said. We did, pulling apart the bathroom and another room of books. I waited until we’d gotten to another natural conversational point to push her again—but she’d already started speaking.

  “My senior year, I suddenly had these two friends. Courtney and Jessica. And they were popular friends. The instances of bullying I had been experiencing stopped because of them. No more mean whispers or weird rumors.” She paused. “It changed everything. Friends in books are one thing. Friends in real life felt like finding secret treasure, felt like…” She trailed off and looked heartbroken.
r />   Having never truly explored feelings before, I didn’t know what the fuck to do with what was happening inside my body.

  “Are you okay?” Freya asked. “You look like you’re about to punch this table into two pieces, Hulk-style.”

  “Just listening,” I managed. “What happened with these friends?”

  “They weren’t friends.” She sighed. “For the whole year, they kept this notebook they shared with their elite circle of teenaged jackals, who shared it with the whole school. The notebook kept track of things I’d done that were embarrassing. They wrote down secrets I’d shared in there. Crushes.” Her cheeks flushed at that, lip curled. “Every boy I’d ever even thought about, they told. Transcribed notes I’d written them. And they gave it to me on the day we graduated, after I’d given the valedictorian speech.”

  “You were valedictorian in high school too?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” she said, giving a real tiny smile. I was grateful to see it. “I was truly happy on that stage. My mom and I had planned a trip to Prince Edward Island, where we were going to do an Anne of Green Gables tour.”

  “Your first favorite book,” I said.

  She cocked her head at me. “What?”

  “Anne of Green Gables was your first favorite book.” I shrugged, tried to appear nonchalant. “You told me that once, probably at Princeton.”

  There it was again—her toothy, charming grin, aimed right at my heart. It was the definition of enchanting.

  I rocked back and forth on my heels. “You were saying?”

  Her gaze lingered on mine before she launched back into her story. “That day, on that stage, I’d achieved a goal I’d worked hard for and truly believed in. Even then, I knew it was the first step to becoming an FBI agent. But we all know how that turned out.” She said it sardonically, but there was no mistaking the note of pain hidden beneath. “I didn’t think I’d care, really thought I was mature and beyond something so childish. But I loved having friends.”

  She didn’t have to say more—full devastation was splashed across her face. For only a moment, but I caught it. Understood it.

  “I was the joke of my school. Had been the entire time. Every dinner and sleepover and study session that year had been an elaborate fake. Looking back on it, it was extremely obvious. I mean, these were seventeen-year-olds, they weren’t exactly subtle. But I think all of us are pretty adept at ignoring the obvious when we don’t want to admit something painful, don’t you?”