I immediately released my lower lip.
"Yeah, well, I guess some things never change," I mumbled, ducking my head so he wouldn't see the heat flooding my cheeks.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. You've changed."
I looked up again to find him giving me a slow up and down. I wondered if he realized his eyes were resting on my cleavage area.
"Well, you haven't," I shot back to cover the uncomfortable rush of heat flooding my system.
And it was true. He hadn't changed. He looked exactly the same. Maybe a couple more lines at the corners of his eyes, maybe a hint more of a tan. But it was still the same man. The same masculine air about him that had me on the edge of my seat just being in the same room as him. I inhaled involuntarily, knowing that the scent of Hilfiger aftershave would hit my nostrils.
"So, what have you been doing with yourself, Maya?" he asked.
I gave myself a mental shake. Right, small talk. I could do this. I glanced out the window. Danny's van was there, parked across the street, the plain white exterior betraying nothing of the sophisticated computer equipment inside. The boss spared no expense when it came to surveillance. Mostly because she expected results, I reminded myself.
"Oh, you know," I said, leaning in, laying a flirtatious hand on his arm. His eyes immediately went to it. "Same old, same old."
His eyes didn't leave my hand. "Still modeling?"
I tilted my head back and let out an attempt at a "tinkling" laugh. "Oh, God, no. I mean, it was fun, don't get me wrong. But I'm onto…bigger and better things." I gave him a deep look through my carefully applied fake eyelashes. And moved my hand from his arm to his right thigh. "But enough about me. I want to hear about you. What have you been up to?"
I saw his Adam's apple bob up and down, his breath quicken. I squeezed my fingers around his knee and felt his thigh tense beneath my hand.
We sat like that for a full two seconds, his throat bobbing up and down, my hand squeezing, my head flooding with a million memories I thought I'd long ago buried, as warring emotions bubbled up in my throat.
Finally he broke the silence.
"Okay, Maya. Cut the bullshit. What the hell are you really doing here?"
Oh. Snap.
I removed my hand, running it though my hair. I did a wide-eyed thing, blinking. "What do you mean?"
He propped both elbows on the table, leaned in close. "The coy act is cute. But this was no chance meeting, was it? What did you do, follow me here?"
I gulped. I could almost hear Danny sweating in the truck.
I bit my lip and dropped the flirty act. I leaned both of my elbows on the table, mirroring his posture until I was inches from his face.
"Yes."
My earpiece crackled to life. "Maya, what are you doing?" came Danny's warning tone.
"Yes, I followed you here. You're being set up, Brandon."
"Maya!" Danny hissed.
I ignored him. "Your wife hired the private investigation agency I work for to get proof that you're unfaithful."
"Dammit it, Maya," Danny said, and I could hear him throwing something heavy—and no doubt expensive—in the van.
"Been catting around, Brandon?" I asked his shocked face. Then paused. "Again."
He held my gaze, letting out one word on an exhale. "Wow."
"Oh, it gets better. My co-worker is across the street right now with a telephoto lens, taking pictures of you meeting a gorgeous brunette for afternoon coffee. Which," I said, watching his jaw harden, his unnervingly pale eyes flash with anger, his nostrils flare, "he'll be delivering to your wife ASAP. By the time you get home from work I'd fully expect every one of your Armani suits to be strewn across the front lawn, stud."
He was breathing hard, his eyes narrowing into fine slits. "You set me up?"
I nodded slowly. "Uh-huh."
"But coffee isn't an affair," he ground out. "You've got nothing."
"True." I faked a disappointed look. Then before he had a chance to respond, I leaned across the table and planted my heavily lined lips on his. It was just a quick movement, only lasting a second before Brandon pulled away. But I knew Danny had been ready for it. A second was all he needed to snap the shot.
Unfortunately, it was also all I needed to be transported back in time. His lips were still as soft as I remembered them. As sweet, as warm. I tried to mask the shaky, weak feeling flooding through my veins as he scraped his chair back and stared at me, the faintest outline of my plum colored lipstick still on his bottom lip.
"I can't believe you just did that," he said, disgust coming out on a snarl. Then he turned and pushed his way through the room.
* * *
"What the hell was that about?" Danny demanded, throwing the side door of his surveillance van open and stepping out onto the sidewalk, camera still in hand.
"You tell me!" I shot back, as I jogged across the street to meet him. "Why didn't you tell me who the mark was?"
Danny blinked at me, confusion filling in his eyes. "Jamie didn't give me a name. I didn't think it mattered." Then the confusion was slowly replaced with something else as I saw some sort of puzzle pieces fall into place. "Wait—you knew that guy."
"Yes, I knew him! That should have been painfully obvious from the intimate conversation that you just eavesdropped on." I was taking my anger out on Danny, I knew. It wasn't fair. He was just doing his job. This wasn't his fault, especially if he really hadn't known who Brandon was.
"Okay, I give in, who is this guy to you?"
I blew a breath of air so hard it ruffled my hair. "That was Brandon Duke. My ex-fiancé."
Danny blinked twice. "Whoa."
"Yeah, no kidding," I mumbled, shuffling my stilettos on the sidewalk.
"You okay?" he asked, eyes softening, the words he'd just heard taking on new meaning now.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied.
Danny ran a hand through his hair. "Well, he obviously recognized you, too."
"Obviously."
"So this case is obviously a bust." He sighed, putting his camera back in the van.
"Wait, what about the kiss?" I asked. "You got it on camera, right?"
Danny gave me a get real look. "It was totally one-sided, Maya. And, trust me, it looked that way. That guy was practically shoving you off of him."
Fab. As if my ego hadn't taken enough of a beating today.
"There's got to be something usable on the recording?" I grasped.
But Danny just shook his head. "Look, it was bad luck you knew the guy. I'm sure the boss will understand. But this is a bust."
I clamped down hard on my lip, fighting back tears. Jamie had faith in me. I couldn't let her down. Not over something as annoying as an ex-boyfriend.
"Wait, just…just give me one more chance."
Danny raised an eyebrow my way. "Maya, you've totally been made."
"I know but…but maybe I can just follow him around a little. Run some surveillance. I mean, if the wife suspects he's not faithful, maybe I can catch him with someone else, right?" I asked, giving him my biggest, brightest smile that I hoped didn't look as desperate as it felt.
Danny inhaled deeply, narrowing his eyes at me. "I don't know…"
"Please, Danny? I mean, maybe it works to my advantage that I know him. I know his habits. I know where he goes, what he likes to do." Who he likes to do.
I must have sounded convincing enough, as Danny blew out that breath and nodded. "Okay. But I have a photo shoot I've got to get to in an hour."
I waved him off. "No sweat. I can do this on my own. Just point and shoot, right?" I asked, gesturing to the camera.
Danny shook his head at me. "I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"
God, I hoped not.
* * *
3:45—picked up dry cleaning at Happy Time Lucky Cleaners on La Brea. 3:53—sat in traffic along Wilshire. 4:29—drove through the Suds Supreme car wash. 5:13—stopped at Vons grocery store.
My log book looked much the same for the las
t two days. I was beginning to think that Brandon officially led the most boring life in the entire Los Angeles basin. Work, home, mundane errands. I'd mentally given myself until the weekend to find something—anything—to prove that he might stray from his wife, but so far the worst thing he'd done was not recycle the glass bottle he'd drunk his sparking water from at lunch.
I watched the door to Vons through the car window, leaving the engine running to facilitate the necessary A/C. It was closing in on ninety today, and, despite what anyone says about a dry heat, it was still hot. I sipped at the Diet Coke from my cup holder as the door finally swung open and Brandon emerged.
With a wine bottle in his hands.
I perked up in my seat.
This was promising.
I watched Brandon get back into his Jag and pull out of the grocery parking lot. I set the Coke down and followed him back into traffic. Half an hour later we pulled up to a large office building, near the CAA complex. Brandon valeted his car and went inside. I scanned the busy street, contemplating my options. But the truth was, if he was meeting a hottie at the office, his wife wouldn't have needed to hire us. She would have been able to get the goods on him easily enough herself. Plus, the wine bottle had stayed in the car.
I circled around the block, finding a spot at a meter halfway down on the opposite side of the street. I had to crane in my seat to watch the front lobby of Brandon's building, but at least there was some shade here as the sun set behind the CAA.
I popped a piece of gum into my mouth and picked up the camera on the seat beside me. Danny had said the zoom was bitchin' (his words, not mine), so if there was anything to capture, this baby would do it. I crossed my fingers that I'd have a chance to use it soon.
I played with the camera for a few minutes, testing out the zoom on a pigeon nibbling falafel remains from a garbage can. Then I flipped on the radio and listened to the beginning of the Angels game, doodled on an old drive-through receipt I found between the seats, downloaded a couple of useless but free apps on my phone. Just when I was hitting my boredom limit, I saw Brandon's tall frame push through the doors again.
He'd changed. He was in a pair of dark slacks, a dress shirt, and a blazer. Slick. Nice. Totally date-worthy.
I shoved down any emotion that the familiar sight shot through me, instead telling myself I had a job to do. And this was my moment to do it.
I turned my engine over as I watched the valet bring his car around, then flipped a quick U-turn at the light, easing my Jetta into position behind him just as he pulled back out into traffic.
At this time of evening, the streets around Century City were total gridlock. Luckily, I didn't have to suffer through the logjam of commuters too long, as six blocks away, he pulled up to The Grotto, a quaint little northern Italian place. How quaint, I had firsthand knowledge of. It had been our favorite date night spot, too.
Again I told that emotion worming its way through my belly to settle down, ignoring the flood of memories—some good, some bad, all tainted with a sheen of regret. I drove past the restaurant, circling back to park my car in the Bank of America lot across the street. Then I grabbed my borrowed camera and slipped out into the fading daylight, jogging across the street just in time to see Brandon enter the restaurant.
The thing that made The Grotto popular with the Hollywood crowd, who were all about seeing and being seen, were the floor to ceiling windows all along the front facade. While I'd been here at least a dozen times with Brandon, tonight was the first time I realized how awesome they were for surveillance, too. I took up a spot near a long-abandoned phone booth and watched through them as Brandon gave his name to a hostess, who then pointed to a table behind her. Brandon nodded his thanks, then strode purposefully toward the back of the restaurant.
His date was already there.
I put the camera to my eyes, fiddling with the zoom mechanism to get a good focus on him. Brandon passed several tables full of chatting couples until he reached the back of the restaurant and approached a table holding…
I swiveled the lens to catch the companion.
…an older man in a grey suit with thinning hair.
I dropped the lens from my eyes. Great. I'd caught him in a "clandestine" business meeting. I blew out a breath, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. I should have known he wouldn't be so indiscreet as to meet a date right out in the open.
I tried not to feel too discouraged as I walked back to my car, my own stomach growling at the scents coming from The Grotto's kitchen. I told myself the night was young, anything could happen, right?
Four hours later the night was not so young. I'd watched Brandon eat and leave, then followed him to the same house in the hills he'd gone to every night. It was just off Laurel Canyon, big enough to be pricey, but not as ostentatious as I might have envisioned his settling-down-with-the-little-wife place to be. I'd yet to catch a glimpse of said wife there, but it was possible the place boasted enough rooms that she was hanging in the background somewhere.
Brandon, however, seemed to prefer the front room. A study? Library? All I could see from my vantage point—parked at the curb behind a giant oleander bush—was a club chair and a couple of bookcases. And Brandon, drinking the wine he'd purchased. Alone. He hadn't even talked on the phone, texted anyone, done anything. There was no date. No girl.
I leaned my head back against the headrest, cracking my neck from side to side as I looked out the window and up at the faint stars just barely visible in the sky beyond the glare of the Hollywood lights.
Three days of tailing him and there hadn't so much as been a phone call to an affair. I knew, because I'd tapped into his phone records. He hadn't met anyone else, talked about anyone else, done anything that remotely looked suspicious. Reality check time: Just because Brandon had been unfaithful to me, didn't mean he was being unfaithful to his wife. I closed my eyes, reliving the look of anger on his face in the coffee shop. If I hadn't been so focused on my own emotions, I might have read it more properly as being angry at the loss of trust, not angry at getting caught. I knew his "caught" face, and that hadn't been it.
I hated to admit it, but as much as I wanted it to be him who was inherently flawed when it came to commitment, and not anything to do with me, he now seemed the pillar of faithfulness.
* * *
"See, the trick is to find the back door of the program," Caleigh told me, fingers clacking along the keyboard, echoing in the agency's empty lobby. "Every program has it, and it's just a matter of trying the right sequence of numbers to unlock it."
I peered over her shoulder, trying to follow her movements as she opened another window and keyed in a sequence of numbers. Four sequences in, she sat back with a grin of triumph on her face.
"And we're in!"
"Wow. I'm impressed," I told her.
"That's nothing You should see me with a SIM card." She gave me a co-conspirital wink. "So what do you want to see first?"
"The wife's financials," I said, definitively.
Caleigh nodded, letting her fingers do the walking through the credit database she'd just pulled up.
I'd hated to call her after hours, but the truth was I wasn't sure exactly how the boss would look on our hacking into a database to check up on the client who was actually paying us. But something just wasn't adding up. Could I see Brandon cheating? Maybe. But I was beginning to think maybe the wife needed him to be a cheater more than he was. In which case, that was exactly what I'd report to the boss in the morning, case closed.
"Okay, Lana Duke," Caleigh said, eyes squinting at the computer screen. Thankfully, Caleigh had just been coming off an evening with Mr. Fetzera filled with shots (hers tossed into a potted palm in his hotel suite) and strip poker (mostly him, since Caleigh was about four shots behind him). She'd been on a high, having finally caught pictures of him nearly nude with her by his side (even if he had been half passed out at the time) and had been more than happy to help me.
"She has
two accounts open at the moment in her name, several joint with the husband," Caleigh relayed.
"What do the joints look like?" I asked out of curiosity.
"Fat." Caleigh whistled. "Very fat. Wow, this guy is loaded. Once the divorce goes through, I may have to call him up."
"Trust me, you don't want to do that," I mumbled, not quite ready to elaborate on just how well I knew. "What about the wife's solo accounts. Drained?"
Caleigh hit a fey more keys, bringing those up on the screen. Then she paused. "Huh."
"Huh? What's 'huh?'" I asked, peering over her shoulder.
"Well, her accounts are actually pretty healthy, too. Look at this," she said, stabbing a finger at a line on the screen.
A line that had seven zeros on it.
I felt a frown crease between my eyebrows as I stared at the figure. Okay, so the wife was loaded, too. The question was, how?
Caleigh had already run the standard background checks on her. Lana Duke hadn't been employed a day in the two years since she'd married Brandon. She hadn't inherited any money, hadn't come into the marriage with anything to speak of.
So where had the money come from? And, more importantly, if she didn't need Brandon's money, why was she trying to set up her husband?
* * *
I followed Lana as she walked east on Dayton, toward Rodeo. She had on a pair of pumps, stretch pants in a riding style that would have been ridiculously unpractical for actual horseback riding, and a long, flowing blouse in a pale peach silk that perfectly complemented her cosmetics-induced tan. She wore huge sunglasses, her hair loose on her shoulders, and carried a giant Hermes bag over one shoulder.
I was about half a block behind, wearing a wrap dress I'd gotten on sale at Target, a pair of strappy sandals from the clearance bin, and a vintage necklace that looked like diamonds but was actually made of polished glass. I was trying really hard not to hate her.
I watched as Lana ducked into the Valentino shop. I halted my progress, feigning interest in a display of tennis bracelets in the window of the store to my left. Okay, honestly, I didn't have to feign very hard. They were stunning. I was a little mesmerized by their bling, but I managed to keep one eye on the door of the boutique.
Bond Bombshell Page 2
