In Deep with the FBI Agent

by Lynne Silver

  Ari was biting her lip. “Actually, Val, speaking as someone who went from having a trust fund to no money, it kind of is a big deal. How many times did we sneak off campus for lunch? Or collect money from everyone for group birthday presents. It adds up.”

  Casey was nodding. “It did. Every weekend, people would meet at the mall to shop, go to movies, and eat in the food court. You know how much that costs? I couldn’t be part of it at all, so I was constantly pretending I had dates with boys from other schools. In truth I was working so I could help my mom pay our rent. The worst was junior year, when everyone got their driver’s licenses. At our school it wasn’t are you getting a car, it was what kind of car are you getting? I could barely afford the DMV fees, not to mention my mom was way too anxious about me driving.”

  Valerie, who’d driven her father’s hand-me-down BMW, stood and placed her palm on Casey’s shoulder. “Wow, I’m sorry. We were really clueless idiots, weren’t we?”

  “About certain things.” Casey sat again. “But everyone was worldly and knowledgeable about things I was clueless about.” She looked Arianna in the eye. “I remember you complaining once that they ran out of ice cream sundaes in first class on your way to Amsterdam, and you had to have a cookie instead. Boo hoo. I’d only been on a plane a handful of times in my life to visit my dad in Tampa.”

  “First world problems,” Arianna murmured. “We had ’em. But if it’s any consolation, my arrogance has been paid back. Tenfold.”

  “I know.” Casey sighed. “And I’ve outgrown my bitterness. Honestly, I realize now I only thought I was poor because everyone around me was so rich. We lived in a relatively nice apartment, rarely worried about food on the table, and I managed to afford college, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted. I was incredibly wealthy compared to most folks, but like most teenagers, I was a bit of an idiot about a lot of things. The hardest part was never knowing whether my mom would be up making me breakfast or hiding in her bed.” She stopped talking, because although she’d opened up more with Arianna and Valerie than she had with anyone from her high school days, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to share about her anorexia.

  Valerie pressed a hand against hers. “Wow. That’s rough.”

  “Thank you,” Casey said, remembering that Valerie’s mom had died a long time ago. What would be worse? To have a needy mother or no mother at all? No mother at all, she decided in a heartbeat. When Casey had hit bottom in college, her mother had been there to pick up the pieces.

  “I hate to cut this short, especially when we’re getting to know you for real,” Val said, “but I have to go. My sitter…”

  Casey shrugged. “I have to go back to work, too.”

  “Me three.”

  Both women looked at Arianna.

  “Well, I do,” Ari defended. “I’m trying to earn enough to rent a new gallery space. The pop-up shows are fun, but I want a home again.”

  Casey was about to make a snide comment that Arianna should simply ask her fiancé, aka America’s thirty-seventh richest bachelor under forty, for a loan, but she realized that was something high school Casey would’ve said. Adult Casey understood there were some things a woman had to do for herself. Buying her own business was one of them. “Good luck, and please invite me to the next show.”

  “I will.”

  “Invite Sam, too,” she said impulsively. “The walls of his house could use some art.”

  “Whoa,” Ari crowed. “You’ve been to his house? Things are more serious than I thought.”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, but she was laughing as she stood and the three women exited the conference room. “He made me an omelet.”

  “Is that what we’re calling sex these days? I can never keep up,” Valerie said.

  Both women whirled. “Valerie Wainwright Moore,” Arianna said, “you naughty girl. Marriage has affected you. I love it.”

  Valerie’s cheeks were pink, but she was smiling.

  Casey thought it was slightly funny, but as it was her sex life they were joking about and they were in her workplace, she kept a straight face. “Shh, this is my office, and it’s a school. There are children around.”

  At that moment, Adrian Flores, this year’s hottest senior, strolled by. “Oh, hey, Ms. Cooper.” He sauntered past, squeezing by in the corridor, and Ari’s lips parted.

  “Please tell me he’s a teacher.”

  “Senior,” Casey said.

  “Why didn’t our senior boys look like that? I might’ve liked high school more.”

  “He’s eighteen,” Casey said, emphasizing the teen in his age.

  “And I’m only twenty-eight. When I’m forty, it’d be no big deal.”

  “You’re also engaged,” Valerie said, dragging her bestie away, giving an apologetic look to Casey.

  “Oh, right.” Ari held out her hand, ring side up, and they all admired the sparkler on her third finger. “Lance is all the man I need.”

  “Let’s go, Ari,” Val said. “Before we get Casey fired.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Casey said. “I need to get some papers from my car anyway.”

  The three of them strode out into bright sunshine that felt more like a summer’s day than spring, and Casey waved good-bye to her friends as they hopped into their cars. As a staff member, her spot was somewhat farther way.

  She grabbed the papers from the front passenger seat of her car, then stood outside for a moment enjoying the weather. She’d been inside all morning staring at a screen and needed some solar recharging. As she leaned back against her car, face turned upward at the sun, two voices from a nearby car rose in pitch. Students, who maybe should have been in class. Only seniors were allowed off campus during the day, and though Casey wasn’t a teacher, she was still an adult staff member and it was her obligation to check on the kids and bust them if they were underclassmen. It was her least favorite part of her job and made her feel like a narc and a fraud.

  It was almost laughable that she, Casey Cooper, queen of sneaking off campus during lunch periods, even as a freshman, now had to police the infraction. A sigh escaped her, and she stood, soaking up the sun and biding her time before she had to go crack skulls.

  Then the actual words of the kids started to penetrate her hearing and she stood, spine rigid against her car as she listened, hearing the word “hacking” repeatedly.

  Two voices. Boys, from the sound of it. She kept spying.

  “They’re not going to catch me. Their firewall is a joke.”

  Firewall? That was something to protect computer systems, right?

  She froze, realizing her mouth was around her knuckles, leaving teeth marks, to prevent her from shouting. Part of her wanted to jump out and bust these boys, but she knew it could ruin Sam’s investigation. Quietly—so quietly—she turned toward the voices, phone in hand to try to get a photo. She managed to get a shot of the two boys standing three cars away and then sank down next to her car and waited the boys out. As she waited, she glanced at the photo and whispered, “Busted.”

  The two boys were at once the least likely suspects and the most likely. They were the kind of boys who would have been friends with Sam back in high school. Both of them were in eleventh grade and honor roll students. Sean was the head of the computer games club. She never would’ve suspected they were hackers, maybe even going into the school’s computers to change grades, but maybe that’s how they’d been making the honor roll the past three years.

  Once they were gone and she had the parking lot to herself, she debated what to do. The boys were students here, so her first stop should be Nancy’s office, but Nancy had made it clear she wasn’t coming clean about the school being hacked. Either the school hadn’t been that affected or Nancy was keeping it quiet and obviously still wanted it to stay secret. Casey couldn’t go to her boss, but she couldn’t ignore what she’d overheard, either. She had to do something.

  Decision made, she dialed Sam’s number, but it went straight to voice mail. Grea
t. Now what? Was it the kind of thing she should text? What if he was undercover or something and his phone beeped? One would hope he’d be smart enough not to go on an undercover assignment with his real phone. She didn’t even know if he was the kind of FBI agent who went undercover. It sounded dangerous and she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of dating someone who put his life on the line.

  No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t like the idea of Sam putting himself at risk. Oh, boy, what did that say about her feelings? It made the pressure for tonight’s date even greater. It had been months, maybe even longer, since she’d been on a date with someone she really liked. For a while last year, she’d dated the single father of one of the third graders at Montgomery Prep. She’d liked him a lot and thought he might’ve been the one. Unfortunately, he’d made it clear he wasn’t interested in repeating the whole marriage-and-kids thing.

  Since she wanted marriage and kids, things hadn’t worked out. Luckily, he’d moved to Los Angeles over the summer, so nothing was awkward at work. Though there weren’t rules about her dating parents at the school, it wasn’t a great idea. What was that expression? Don’t shit where you eat? Crude, but smart.

  She hung up and headed back to her office. The rest of the day she was jumpy. She spent hours logging into the internal school systems she rarely had a need to access. In fact, she’d never logged into the grading system before. She tried to figure out if the two boys had changed anything, but she was no expert.

  She also debated again and again whether or not she should send an email to Dan and Nancy about what she’d overheard, but she didn’t want to piss off Nancy. Also, if she told both them and Sam it would be obvious it had been she who had spilled the secret to the FBI. Nancy wasn’t a dummy and she wouldn’t see it as a mere coincidence if the same two Montgomery Prep students she’d tagged as suspects suddenly got picked up by the FBI. That kind of situation was hard to keep quiet.

  She waited until that night when she was with the expert. But for the first several minutes of the date, she said nothing. Sam had picked her up at her apartment looking super hot in faded jeans and a white collared shirt, buttoned at the cuffs. It was a sexy, nerdy look and he owned it.

  She leaned up to kiss him on the lips and let it linger as his arms wrapped around her, turning a mediocre day into an awesome one. Finally, she pulled back and frowned. “Sam, I have to tell you something.”

  He pressed a kiss into her forehead. “Is it something serious? Is this where you tell me you want to be friends?”

  She found a smile. “No. This isn’t about us. Well, sort of…”

  “What’s going on, Case?”

  Her stomach gave a happy quiver at his casual use of her name. “Let’s sit.”

  She pushed open the door to her apartment and stepped toward her couch, and Sam followed. When they were both seated, she pulled out her phone, opened to the photo of the two parking lot hackers, and handed it to Sam.

  He frowned down at it. “What’s this? Who’s that guy?”

  She glanced over his arm to the phone and realized she’d slid the photos too far over. “Whoops. That’s Matt. Wrong guy.”

  “Who’s Matt?” Sam asked, looking curious and maybe jealous. “A friend?”

  “Sort of. I went on a few dates with him, but no chemistry. He owns a tutoring and SAT test prep company, and a lot of Montgomery Prep students use his services.”

  “But you’re close enough to him to have a photo of him on your phone.”

  She made a swatting motion with her hand as if brushing the notion aside. “I think I have the picture so I could email it to one of the school parents who asked for a tutoring recommendation. But never mind about him, check this out.” She slid the image to the correct one of the two boys in the parking lot. “I think they’re your hackers.”

  His brows rose and he leaned forward squinting at the tiny screen. “What makes you say that?”

  She repeated the conversation she’d overheard and waited for his response. When he didn’t say “Eureka!” or slap a gold star on her chest, she felt a pout coming on. “Well? Don’t you agree? Who else would it be?”

  “I think that’s an excellent lead, and we’ll look into it.”

  “That’s it?” She felt a mixture of disappointment and excitement. She’d been worried her revelation would cancel their date, but it seemed Sam wasn’t going to ditch her to jump on this lead that very instant.

  “Give me their names and I’ll email the agent on duty and ask him to run a background check. I’ll ask him to be very discreet so your school doesn’t know you’ve been giving me this information.”

  “Okay.” Casey spelled out the first and last names and gave all the information she knew about the two teenagers. When Sam had finished typing it all into his phone and sending it off, he stood. “Ready for our date?”

  “Are you ready?” she asked. “Are you sure you don’t need to follow up on my lead?”

  He grabbed her hand and started for her door. “They’re not a terrorist threat. No one will die if this waits for my direct attention. To be honest, I doubt they’re our guys. The hacker I’m looking for is probably a social engineer.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s not worried about getting through firewalls. He’s stealing passwords and going in as an existing user. I’ll let a colleague know to investigate, but I’m not giving up my night with you.”

  Perfect answer. Her heart was skipping happily inside her chest as they headed to the elevator and out into the spring evening.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, glancing sideways at him as he drove away from her apartment.

  “Georgetown,” he said.

  “Oh.” Okay, kind of cliché, and a little disappointing that he’d simply take her to a restaurant after all she’d confessed about her eating issues, but when he escorted her inside an unfamiliar large brick building, she frowned in confusion. “This isn’t a restaurant.”

  He glanced at her. “Are you hungry? They serve food and I hear it’s good, but we’re going to play first.”

  “Play?”

  They stepped forward in line to the hostess desk, where two perky young women grinned brightly and handed them each a pair of white ankle socks. Casey frowned down at her new footwear while Sam gave his name, then one of the hostesses grabbed two menus and set off into a cavernous modern restaurant with a crowded bar scene. She and Sam followed. There was a game on and crowds of fans were standing, beers in hand and cheering.

  Sam and Casey bypassed the bar and walked past several booths where people were dining until they came into another large room with no tables except for one high-top. It was a long room bare of furniture, and it had a strange looking scoreboard in chalk hung on one wall.

  Casey glanced at Sam. “Bowling on carpet?”

  Sam smiled at her. “Bocce. Ever played?”

  She shook her head. “No. You?”

  “Nope. We’re going to learn together.”

  The hostess left them, and they bent their heads over the laminated card on the tabletop. The card explained the rules of the game, which seemed pretty simple. Sam dashed off to get the balls set up while Casey waited.

  “Ladies first,” Sam said and handed her a small white ball, called a pallina.

  She smiled at him and stepped forward. “Aim for the middle, right?”

  He glanced at the instruction sheet. “Yep.”

  “Here goes nothing.” She gave the ball a heave and stumbled slightly on her high heels. Really, a little dress code warning would’ve been nice. Men. Didn’t they understand a woman needed to know not to wear a pencil skirt and cleavage-revealing blouse with three-inch stilettos if he was taking her bowling? Excuse her…bocce ball.

  “Nice one,” he said.

  “Would’ve done better without these.” She stood on one foot at a time to pull off her heels, then balanced as she slid on the white ankle socks. “There’s a look for you,” she said with a grin, knowing a short, tight black ski
rt was not that cute with socks, but her competitive nature demanded it. She wasn’t going down without a fight, and a girl needed proper footwear.

  “It’s a good look,” Sam said, with a husky bent to his tone. Casey caught the direction of his glance and noticed he was staring at her legs intently.

  “Yo, eyes up here,” she called and purposely leaned forward on the high-top, knowing her cleavage would be in direct line of sight. Sam followed orders, moving his gaze from her feet toward where he meant to stop on her face, but he got distracted by the boobies.

  Excellent. This game was in the bag. As long as his brain was halfway on her tatas, he’d be useless.

  Only Sam wasn’t like normal men, damn him. He caught on to her game almost immediately and his eyes narrowed. He stepped closer and held out his hand.

  “Help me?” he said. “Roll up the cuff once.”

  She swallowed and eyed his tan, muscular forearm. It was as if he’d read her internal checklist of turn-ons, and strong forearms with a sprinkling of hair was at the top of her list. Challenge accepted. It was on. She stood and reached for his shirt cuff, making sure to brush every inch of bare skin visible along his wrist as she folded the cotton over. She maintained eye contact with him, not looking to inspect her handiwork, but watching his Adam’s apple bob.

  “Next arm,” she murmured and let her fingertips run across his palm, down to his wrist to roll up the next sleeve.

  “Thank you,” Sam said and turned to get his ball for his turn.

  “My pleasure,” she said, emphasizing the word pleasure.

  He tossed the ball with graceful form, too graceful for someone who claimed never to have played the game before. She was going to have to up her moves. After Sam stepped out of the way, it was her turn to get her red ball to toss. She made the most of retrieving the ball by waiting until Sam was a few feet behind her, and then she bent at the waist, making sure to aim her ass in his direction. From her position, she called, “Oh, my bad. I picked up the wrong color.” She stood, swiveled, got the correct ball, and then bent again, smiling into her chest at his barely disguised groan.

  Before she tossed her ball, she gave him a sly look. “I forgot I have the red balls, while yours are blue.” She released the ball with precision owing more to her cockiness than her athletic prowess and then sauntered back to where Sam was awaiting his turn. “Your move.”