by CD Reiss
A man slides in two seats down from me. He has soulful brown eyes and a nose that’s been busted. He’s not much older than I am, but they seem like they’ve been hard years. I smile at him, and he smiles back. One of his front teeth is a little chipped. I’ve seen chipped teeth look worse.
“How is this table running?” he asks with a vaguely Eastern European accent. His blink is hard and long. A tic.
“I’m batting five hundred,” I say, mixing my sports with my games.
The couple doesn’t give him the same warm welcome.
“I’ll take those odds.” He throws a few hundreds on the table, and the dealer changes them for chips.
We play the next hand in silence. I end with a pair of nines, which doesn’t get me far. The couple leaves with a tip of a hat and a nod.
The next hand is dealt. I watch Chipped Tooth. He reacts to every card. Extra blink. Tap of the corner of the card. Shifting the cards quickly means there’s something there to organize. He doesn’t move any of them.
“Did you see that kid over back that way?” Chipped Tooth jerks his thumb back in the general direction of… I don’t even know. His hairline is deeply receding, and he scratches right where the hair meets the edge of his forehead.
“I didn’t see anything,” I say, tossing ten into the pile. “I just got here.”
“Young girl, couldn’t be more than eight years old, caught with her hand in a lady’s purse. The cops cuffed her. Can you even believe it, a kid that young?”
This has nothing to do with me. But it has everything to do with me, and I can barely finish the hand before I talk myself into getting up and taking care of whatever it is they’re doing to this girl. The psychology of it is so cheap that I should see right through it, but I don’t because I am justice. I was never caught, but I was lucky, and I can make another girl like myself just as lucky, and maybe one day she’ll be an FBI agent too.
It’s not that simple. It doesn’t go through my head all that clearly. It’s too fast, it’s too bright, and it’s too loud. But I’m standing and collecting chips before I can work through the sound, the light, or the speed.
I win the hand with three of a kind.
“Where was it?”
He scratches his head again. His fingernails are manicured. “I guess… um… I think it was by the bathrooms.”
Of course it was by the bathrooms. I could have told him that. I take a few steps away from the blackjack table, scanning for the walls… are there any walls? Is there an end to this room? A boundary line along which the bathrooms would be situated?
“Hang on,” Chipped Tooth says. “I’m sure I can get you there if I’m actually walking it. She your kid or something?”
“No, but I have some experience with this.”
“Okay. Okay, I can take you there, but she may be with security already. Are you a social worker or something? Work with troubled kids?”
“Sure.” I don’t want to say I’m an FBI agent. That’s just silly.
“I’m a doctor myself,” he says. “I have a practice in Texas. San Antonio. Have you ever been?”
“No.”
He leads me in one direction, then another, then around the bend and down a wide indoor boulevard lined with stores. The text comes in. It’s Keaton.
—Where are you?—
— I don’t know —
I look at Chipped Tooth. Who is this guy with the European accent? What kind of weirdly specific story is he telling? Suddenly, my instincts kick in like a stalled lawn mower engine. He’s asked all the questions and every single one put me on the defensive. Something’s wrong. Very wrong. Keaton warned me about con artists and I thought I was too smart to hear it.
“What’s your name again?” I ask.
“John.”
“Cassie!” Keaton’s voice comes over the din of bells and whoops.
I turn toward it and wave to him.
When I turn back, Chipped Tooth is gone.
37
keaton
She’s standing there in one piece, not a hair out of place. Panic drops off me, leaving a relief so profound, I’m left breathless.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m sorry I got lost.”
I kiss her long and hard. I don’t have to tell her I was being overprotective, or that I thought I’d put her in danger by leaving her alone. Nor do I want to describe the sense of panic I’m still shedding. She’ll want to do something about it, and I don’t want to put her in danger.
I just want to kiss her. Surround her. Worship her wholeness and her well-being. I want to feed her my relief without defining it.
“What’s with you?” she asks when I let her get a breath.
“Just glad to see you.”
“Well…” Her eyes scan the room as if she doesn’t know what to say next. She looks as if she’s hiding her own secret. “We should go.”
“Did you want to play a few hands?” I stroke her arms, still appreciating the solid reality of her life in the world when I was convinced it would be snuffed out.
“Nah,” she says. “Let’s just go if you don’t mind.”
“Did something happen while I was gone?”
“I won fifty bucks at poker.”
I don’t know if she’s off or I’m off. But something’s off. Maybe she’s embarrassed to win money at a low-risk game. Maybe she’s put off by how relieved I was to see her. Maybe, since I thought everything was getting turned upside down, my view of the world is still sideways.
I assume it’s me and take her home.
* * *
By the time we board the plane, she’s back to normal, from what I can see. She’s lively and bright, thanking me for a wonderful weekend. I kiss her and thank her back, but my thoughts are caught in a net.
With her head on my chest and a book in front of her, I pretend I’m asleep on the plane. I need to think. I need to not just decide my future—that was done weeks ago. I need to acknowledge the decision and do something about it.
Vegas was the proof.
I can’t leave her behind. Even without Kaos in the picture, for better or worse, Cassie Grinstead is a part of my life. Pretending otherwise is a fool’s errand.
I’m going to have to neutralize Kaos myself.
38
cassie
Orlando stands at the front of the briefing room that morning and makes an announcement. It’s over. One little Nazi in the Springfield cell had a cert kwon, and once the Cyber Crime division used it to confirm his ID, he flipped like a pancake. Federal authorities all over the country were banging on doors six hours later in secret night time raids.
And all because I told them about the little hacker coins.
Ken’s shaking my hand as well as he can with a bad shoulder, Frieda’s fist-pumping, and everyone at the field office is clapping.
“All right, all right.” Orlando’s at the podium, tamping enthusiasm by bouncing his palms at us. “You can thank her later. For now, we want t’s and i’s crossed and dotted, in that order. We caught these guys because of the exceptional work of one agent”—he indicates me in the crowd of agents and staff—“but we won’t get them put away without the careful work of every other individual in this office.”
We disperse. I shake more hands, feeling a curious emptiness. I wanted this, and yet it’s not what I need.
“Grinstead!” Orlando calls as he goes into his office. I follow. “Close the door behind you.”
I do it. He sits behind his desk, and I stand in front of it.
“They have psychics over in Quantico,” he says.
“Sir?”
“You put in for a transfer to division?”
“CID, sir.”
“That’s what I nominated you for.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re being sent to Cyber Crime.”
I open my mouth to tell him that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted criminal.
“I have to be honest,” he says. “This is the right call.
You have a razor-sharp sense of that world. And someone over there doesn’t want you in CID.”
“But I can’t get into a division I wasn’t nominated for.”
“Apparently you can.” He stands and holds out his hand. “Congratulations, Special Agent Grinstead. You are to report to the Division Office in San Francisco in two weeks. Case dossiers will be on your desk in a couple of days, if not sooner.”
I shake his hand, eyes wide in disbelief, gratitude, and utter bafflement.
* * *
It’s midnight when I get home from the best day ever. My feet hurt, my hair is scraggly, and my suit is wrinkled, but I feel expanded, lit from within, tied to the earth and filled with helium.
—We need to talk—
I send this without thinking that it might sound as if I don’t want to see him again. But I figure I can clear it up quite quickly once he’s in front of me. I don’t know if he’s in California, New York, or a mile away at the club.
When I pull into my driveway, I check my phone. Still nothing back from him. I’ll compose something more inviting once I’m inside.
The flickering blue light of the TV tells me Nana’s up, but when I open the door, I find her sleeping on the couch with a blanket over her, wine glasses on the side tables, and a half-complete kitten puzzle on the card table. I’m a little disappointed. I want to tell her about my reassignment. She’s always wanted to go to California; now I can take her there.
The sound of creaking floorboards startles me, and I almost reach for my gun when I see Keaton coming out of the shadows, drying his hands with a dishtowel. I’m surprised. He’s the last person I expected to see and the first I want to tell.
“Hello,” he says.
He starts to say more, but I can’t wait another second. I leap on him and smother his face with kisses. He’s all leather and rainy London mornings.
“I’m so pissed at you,” I say between kisses. He’s holding me straight as I climb him. The blue light flickers on his face.
“Why?” He pulls my leg around his waist.
“Just showing up here? Presumptuous.”
He’s hard already. I feel him against me as we kiss and drag each other to the kitchen so we won’t wake up my grandmother.
“Not cool,” I whisper. “Bad form.”
He pushes me up against the kitchen counter and I’m absolutely wild with sensation. The TV light flashes on the open door and the teacups hanging under the cabinets, drowned out by the stars I see when I wrap my legs around him.
“I needed to see you,” he says. “You took the air out of the room with you.”
His needy, clutching hands push up my shirt, under my bra. I don’t even feel the corner of the counter biting into my back. I don’t feel a thing but his lips and his fingers. I think I’m grabbing his shirt. I think I’m kissing him back.
But his softly spoken words fill the sound range. I can only hear him and feel his body where it presses against mine. “Everyone else looks flat and grey now. There’s no life in anything. You carved a place in my world and everything else fell into it.”
We thrust our hips together in a rhythm, the length of him flush against me, end to end.
“I think I can come like this,” I say.
“What’s stopping you?”
The blue light disappears and we freeze. A rustle of blankets. A creak of the couch.
“Nana?” I say.
“Where are you?” she calls.
Keaton and I look at each other. We try not to laugh. He could let me go so I can deal with my grandmother. Instead he presses me into the counter.
“I’m home.” I try to sound normal.
“That nice man was here looking for you.”
“I know, Nana.”
There’s a long pause. I wish I knew where she is, but I can’t see her.
“I’ll be going to bed then.” She says it more loudly and deliberately than normal. I hear the floor creak and her bedroom door snap closed.
“She knows,” Keaton says.
“She’s old, but she’s not stupid.”
“Then she knows I’m going to fuck you senseless.”
“Let’s not confirm it for her, okay?” I whisper so low I can barely hear myself.
“The only thing that’s going to be holding you straight is my cock.” He bites my lower lip.
“My bedroom is past her door. She’s a really light sleeper.”
He takes a breath, looks around. I’m thinking a quick dash to a hotel. Maybe we can fuck in the car or something. But he opens the pantry door and leans over to check it out.
In half a second, we’re crammed inside between the unbleached flour and the serving trays. The only light’s coming through a tiny window above us. Below it sits a little stool for getting to high shelves. He closes the door behind him, knocking over a bowl of Halloween candy. We stifle laughter.
He doesn’t waste a second, pulling his belt out of the loops and looking at my pants as if I should know better than to be wearing them at all.
I take the hint and wriggle them down, getting one leg out.
“What were you so happy about today?” He says it while he’s fishing his dick out of his pants, which freezes me in place for a second.
I’m happy because I got a pay raise, a promotion, and a new title.
Special Agent. Cyber Crime division.
And here I am, in my pantry about to fuck a cyber criminal.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asks.
“There’s been a change.”
“What sort of change?”
He doesn’t seem particularly concerned. Maybe he thinks there’s a guy in my life who he’s going to have to vanquish, or maybe he thinks I have my period or something. I hate doing this to him, but more importantly, I hate doing it myself. I want him. I want to peel away his layers like an onion and find the center. Or never find the center and just die trying. I can’t decide this now. It’s all too big to figure out while I throb between my legs and my knees feel like butter on the counter, keeping their edges while slowly softening.
“I don’t want to lie.”
“What an intriguing way to begin,” he says, drawing his hand up my shirt, under my bra, squeezing away a few more IQ points until I am half dullard.
My brain is mush. My mouth is dry.
Keaton cups my jaw, slides his hand back, and pulls my hair until I buckle. “Maybe you’ll tell me on your knees.”
I drop to them. He steadies me with the hand that’s not yanking on my hair until I’m looking up at him with the spot of moisture at the tip of his head an inch from my nose. I flick my tongue out and lick it off. He breathes through his teeth.
I did that. I made this beautiful man tilt his head back and suck on air as if it’s a drug. And I know there’s no going back. From this point on, it’s only going to get harder to tell him. I shouldn’t care. If he’s a criminal, then he’s on my radar and it doesn’t matter. My job is to hunt him and people like him and my job is my life. But it’s not. I don’t know what my life is anymore. I care about this man. I crave his attention and his approval. I want to get to know him, and now I won’t be able to. How can I not be honest with him about that, or give him the opportunity to prove to me that he won’t be on the wrong side of the law while it is my job to defend it?
“I got reassigned,” I say. “I’m moving to San Francisco in two weeks.”
“Well done, my artful dodger!”
He seems too happy. The obvious reason is that I haven’t told him the division. It seems crazy to tell him with the hard heavy weight of his erection an inch from my nose, the glistening drop of pre-cum begging for my tongue’s attention.
“Cyber Crime division.” I choke it out before I can think too hard about it.
I’m ready for him to step back and thank me for my time. I’m also ready for him to fuck me as though I’m his enemy, which might not be the worst way to say goodbye.
“You think you’ll be chasing after m
e then?”
It seems ridiculous that I’d ever chase Alpha Wolf, or that I’d ever catch him.
“You tell me.”
I’m giving him a chance to assure me that he is just an investor. I’m giving him the chance to surgically remove everything he has admitted and insert a same-shaped lie.
He doesn’t.
He draws two fingers over my cheek and slides them into my mouth. I take them, closing my lips around the webs at the base.
“I’m going to tell you something, all right.”
He smiles and puts his fingers back in my mouth before I can ask him for his reassurances. He puts them far back, as if testing my abilities. I take them, locking eyes with him above me, sucking on the way out. I want his cock. I want to show him how deep I can take it, but he only gives me his fingers. With his other hand, he reaches onto the shelf with the spilled Halloween candy and grabs a lollipop. The kind with bubble gum inside.
“I’m going to tell you when and how to take whatever I put in your mouth.”
He unwraps the lollipop with his teeth, spitting out the shavings of paper like confetti. When the deep red ball is freed, he removes his fingers.
“Open up.” He taps my lips with the lollipop. I open them and he slides it against my tongue, to the back. “Say ah, Special Agent Grinstead, and take the lolly.”
Something about being called Special Agent, or maybe just special, floods me in arousal. I want more than anything to please the man who said it. I open my throat and the lollipop goes down it.
“Brilliant,” he says softly, twisting the pop out then back in. He leaves it on my tongue, and I close my lips around the white stem. It’s strawberry.
“Yum,” I say around the pop.
“Indeed.” He takes it away and puts it in his own mouth. “What are you going to do when they tell you to get Alpha Wolf?”
