Outside the Law

by Carsen Taite

  Syd smiled but didn’t stop. “Welcome to my world.” She slid her fingers inside the rim of Tanner’s pants and traced her skin. “There’s a bed right behind us. I vote we take off these clothes.” There. She’d said what she wanted, and the moment she did she knew she’d wanted Tanner this way since the first moment she’d seen her again. Hell, she’d never stopped wanting Tanner. Wanting wasn’t the issue. Before practical thoughts could intrude, she helped the situation along by pulling Tanner’s shirt over her head and tossing it onto the floor. She sucked in a breath at the sight of her naked torso, as beautiful as she remembered, and Syd licked her lips with desire.

  Tanner moved closer, her hands on either side of her head pulling her into a deep, pulsing kiss that left her swooning. When they broke for air, Tanner whispered in her ear, “Are you sure?”

  She wasn’t and she was. The swirl of her warring emotions was a force of its own, and she surrendered to the only certainty she knew. No one before or after Tanner had made her feel like this. The world fell away and everything that was important was in this room, making her heart race and her body thrum with anticipation. She’d spent her life trying to control every little detail, and she’d failed miserably. But here in this moment, she had complete control, and she was going to do the thing that would make her happy, even if it wouldn’t last. “I’ve never been more sure.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before Tanner swept her into her arms and carried her to the bed. She’d set the stage and now she relaxed and let Tanner take the lead. Tanner slowly undressed her, taking time as she removed each garment to check in with gentle kisses that stoked the growing heat between them. By the time they were both naked, Syd’s entire body was on fire. “I’m so ready for you.”

  Tanner lazily drew a finger through her very wet center and traced it along her thigh. “Really? I can’t tell.”

  Syd reached up and rubbed her flattened palm over Tanner’s breast, smiling as Tanner shuddered in response. “Two can tease.”

  “Who’s teasing?” Tanner leaned down and captured Syd’s nipple between her teeth, slowly circling it with her tongue. Syd fisted the bedsheets and arched into the intimate embrace, riding the thrilling combination of pain and pleasure to the edge. When Tanner moved to her other breast, Syd thrashed on the bed, desperate for release but determined to prolong the pleasure.

  “I’m so close,” she managed to whisper between whimpers of pleasure.

  Tanner cradled her close, her hand drifting lower. “I want whatever you want. Tell me.”

  Words she’d longed to hear. In a different context, a different time, the message would have been life-altering, but for now she was happy just to be here with Tanner even if this paradise was limited to the confines of these four walls for only as long as they could stave off the rest of the world. “I want you.”

  Tanner nodded, her eyes reflecting a familiarity Syd had never felt with anyone else. Tanner settled between her legs and stroked softly with her tongue, her fingers easing inside, building pressure in a slow and steady pace. Syd surrendered to the sensations that transported her to another place, a place where there was no past or future, only the here and now, and she came in fantastic, rushing waves of ecstasy.

  * * *

  Tanner heard footfalls in the hall and she tiptoed to the door, shoved a twenty-dollar tip at the room service waiter, and waved him away. She slowly rolled the cart into the room, trying her best not to wake the woman she’d made love with for the past three hours.

  “I smell cheeseburgers. Please, God, let there be cheeseburgers.” Syd sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Tanner said as she leaned down to kiss Syd. “I was trying not to wake you.”

  “You didn’t wake me. Cheeseburgers woke me.” She tugged Tanner to her and kissed her soundly on the lips. “You are perfectly innocent. Except, wait. How did the cheeseburgers know where I was? Did you tell them?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Seventeen orgasms and cheeseburgers. What more could a girl ask for?”

  “There may not have been exactly seventeen orgasms, but there were a lot.”

  “Who’s counting?”

  “Apparently, you.” Tanner reached for a French fry. “I’m starving.”

  “You always are after…” Syd’s face reddened. “I mean, you always were, you know, after we…” She sat up straight and assumed what Tanner knew to be her “I’m in control” face. “Is this weird? And by this, I mean—”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Tanner said, not entirely sure she wanted to have this conversation.

  “I mean is it weird, having sex again with someone you used to have sex with a very long time ago?” She looked down the covers where her fingers were nervously fiddling with the sheets. “Having sex with me?”

  Was it? Tanner had been rolling the same question over in her head for the past hour while she’d lain awake and Syd snored like a freight train. She’d never imagined she’d have another shot with Syd, especially not after all these years, and she wasn’t sure what it meant that they’d fallen into each other’s arms. It hadn’t been weird. It had been spectacular. They’d made love with the same energy and passion they’d had when they were young twenty-somethings, fresh in the throes of newness. She’d had an hour to piece together what to say when Syd woke up, and all she’d been able to come up with was some version of let’s try this again, but she hadn’t quite concluded whether the “this” was the romp in bed or something more.

  Which led her to examine Syd’s choice of words. Was this just sex to Syd? For Tanner, the intimacy they’d just shared had closed the distance between them, but maybe the markers of distance were too entrenched for Syd to see what just happened as anything more than a physical connection. She wanted to know, but she was scared to ask and ruin the moment, so instead she simply said, “Nothing weird about it. Other than your obsession with cheeseburgers.”

  “They’re the perfect food.” Syd pointed at the barely two bites left on her plate. “All the food groups are represented and you can eat it with your hands.” She cast a longing glance at Tanner’s plate. “Are you going to eat the rest of yours?”

  “Did Aguilar not feed you any lunch?”

  “Holy shit!” Syd swung her legs out of bed and walked across the room to her purse. “I totally forgot.”

  Tanner cursed her timing. She hadn’t meant to bring up anything that might allude to their earlier argument, but Syd looked to be on a mission. “Come back to bed.”

  “Wait.” Syd held up one hand while she dug in her purse with the other. “This may not be important, but it was the only thing I could grab while the alarms were going off.” She pulled her hand from the bag in a voilà gesture, waving what looked like a business card in the air. She tossed it to Tanner like a paper football. “I don’t know if this is important, but there are numbers on the back, so I figured it might be worth looking into.”

  Tanner picked up the card and examined both sides. On the front was the name of a restaurant supply company, Bastrop’s, with a phone number but no address. On the back was a series of handwritten numbers. She read them several times but didn’t see any obvious pattern to indicate the numbers were related. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it belongs to Carlos, but it was in between the seats of the couch in his super-expensive suite at the Ritz. Five rooms, not including the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Do you really think a guy selling homemade Mexican food makes that kind of money?”

  “No, Syd, I don’t, which is why I was so freaking worried when you went off the grid with him.”

  “I was fine. I promise.”

  Tanner sighed. Syd was as stubborn as ever, but it was hard to be mad at her when she was sitting naked in bed, picking over the last of the French fries. She tapped the card against her thigh. “You realize that if this turns out to be important, it might not be usable because of how you procured it?”

  “Let me worry about that. If those numbers on the back are bank accounts, then it doesn’t really matter how I came by them since we don’t need a subpoena to get the records.”

  “We have to call Peyton.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, dear. Your little adventure with evidence has to take precedence over this.” Tanner pointed at the bed. “If these are bank account numbers, which is a stretch, and your pal Carlos discovers them missing, the accounts might suddenly disappear.”

  “Damn. I was hoping now that I have my energy back, we could go again.”

  Tanner wished the same thing. Whatever this was between her and Syd, even if it didn’t mean anything beyond the pleasure it provided, she wasn’t ready to let it go. “Two hours max. We meet with the team and then come back here. Okay?”

  Syd sighed dramatically. “Okay.”

  Tanner placed the call to Peyton, struggling to keep her focus on the conversation and not Sydney, who took her sweet time deciding what to wear. When they were both dressed and ready to go, Syd looped her arm through Tanner’s and led the way like the whole thing had been her idea. Tanner had no choice but to follow.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Syd walked through the door at Peyton’s ranch, acutely conscious Tanner had established a distinct physical distance from her the moment they arrived. She got it, or thought she did. Tanner didn’t want the team to know how she and Tanner had spent the afternoon. The problem was she didn’t know if Tanner’s distance was about respect or regret. She couldn’t help but notice Tanner had stepped around the issue when she’d asked how she felt, but since she didn’t know how she felt about it either, why should she expect Tanner to be able to articulate her feelings?

  Bianca greeted them the moment they walked in. “Hey, you two. I was beginning to think Syd had flown back to DC, but I see she was in good hands.” She winked at Tanner and then focused on Syd. “Did Tanner take good care of you?”

  Syd struggled for a response, but shock at Bianca’s implication robbed her of words. Could she possibly know that Tanner had spent the last few hours taking exceedingly good care of her? She shot a stinging look at Tanner, who jumped into the conversation.

  “Syd’s fine. You think a little adventure with a cartel boss is going to throw her off her game?”

  “Cool,” Bianca said to Tanner and then leaned close to Syd to whisper, “These federal agents think they do all the dangerous work. Please.”

  Bianca led the way to the kitchen and Tanner started to follow, but Syd jerked her back. “What did you tell everyone about where we’ve been this afternoon?”

  Tanner frowned. “Nothing.” She held her hands up. “I swear. They didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. All I said when I called was that you had something to show them and we should meet soon.”

  “Okay.” Syd’s heart rate started to slow. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”

  Tanner squeezed her shoulder. “No worries. What happened is just between us. I’m not about to tell these guys about it.”

  Syd supposed she should thank Tanner for the discretion, but her words stung. Get a grip, Braswell. Syd didn’t want her personal life laid bare, especially not when she’d scolded most of the group about boundaries. Tanner was right. Whatever had happened between them needed to stay between them, which made sense since it wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t like they were going to be picking out wedding venues and inviting all their friends along to witness public professions of love. Love wasn’t even on the table.

  Suddenly very uncomfortable with the thought train in her head, Sydney rushed past Tanner into the kitchen where the rest of the team had already assembled. She needed conversation neither with nor about Tanner. Peyton looked up as she walked in and grinned. “Hey, Syd, I hear you set the hotel on fire this afternoon.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” she sputtered.

  “Just kidding. Don’t worry. I’ve already given Dale a hard time about pulling the alarm, but we need to figure out a better plan if you plan to go rogue in the future.”

  “Rogue. Very funny,” Syd said, her pulse settling into a normal rhythm. “The guy said he wanted to show me something and I was supposed to say no thanks? Ask one of these fine federal agents sitting around the table what they would’ve done in my place.”

  Dale jumped in. “She’s got a point, but Peyton’s right too. We do need a better system.”

  “No, we don’t,” Tanner said. When everyone looked at her, she kept going. “There’s not going to be a next time. If someone’s going to get close to Aguilar, it’s not going to be Syd.”

  Syd started to say that was none of Tanner’s business, but Peyton interjected. “Let’s table this subject for now and talk about what happened today. Syd?”

  “Lunch was pretty vanilla. He talked about his grandmother and her recipes and how she inspired his vision for the restaurant chain. I threw out a few hooks about how I was looking for new challenges, ones that were way more lucrative, and he was very Yoda in his responses. Veiled comments suggesting that if I wanted to learn from the master, I had to earn the master’s trust and all that.”

  “Strange,” Peyton said. “But not unexpected. It’s not like he can afford to trust anyone in his line of business. What did he want to show you?”

  “I don’t know.” Syd fake frowned at Dale. “Someone set off the fire alarm in the building. But I think he was going to show me expansion plans for his business. He made some comments about how it wasn’t enough to own the restaurants—to control the output, he needed to control all the systems.”

  “Sounds to me like he was talking about more than just the restaurant biz,” Mary said. “The most successful cartels control everything from growing to packaging to distribution.”

  “Show them what you found,” Tanner said.

  Syd pulled the card out of her purse and passed it to Bianca, who was sitting next to her. “I found this in the couch cushions and grabbed it as we were leaving the room. No one saw me take it, and I probably shouldn’t have, but it seemed harmless and I wanted to have something to show for my little foray into undercover work.” She pointed at the card. “Check out the numbers on the back.”

  Bianca flipped the card over and held it up for everyone to see. “Any clue what these are?”

  “Too long to be phone numbers or bank routing numbers. Account numbers maybe?”

  “Account numbers were my first thought,” Tanner said. “If that’s correct and Aguilar figures out someone has them, you can bet he’s going to shut down these accounts.”

  “It’s a little like looking for a needle in a haystack, don’t you think?” Syd said. “It’s not like we have time to call every bank there is and ask if they have accounts matching these numbers.”

  “Hey, Tanner,” Peyton said. “Don’t your people have fancy computers designed to sort data? Can you get one of them to run these numbers through their list of databases and see what they come up with?”

  “Not without raising some flags. We’re still working the Gellar angle, right?”

  “Yeah, bad idea.”

  “Wait a minute,” Syd said. “I might know someone who can help. She used to be assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit but transferred here a couple of years ago and works in white-collar. If she still has contacts at the BAU, they have crazy good access to information, and no way would it get back to Gellar.”

  “Excellent,” Peyton said. “Check that out. Now, let’s talk about this Agent Kelly that Gellar has working on the case. We need to figure out how best to use her.”

  Syd listened to them discuss a way to test Kelly’s loyalty, but after a few minutes, she tuned out. Tanner’s thigh was nestled close to hers under the table, and she couldn’t quite tell if she was the only one pressing into the touch or if Tanner was too. Her head swam with memories of how they spent the afternoon, and all she could think about was getting Tanner back in bed. Ironic that naked and vulnerable, it felt much easier to cover the problems in their past that had caused them to break up. There was a message there, but taking the time to dissect it would only pull her out of the very good, very comfortable feeling of enjoying whatever she and Tanner had right now. There would be plenty of time, when this case was over and when she had to head back to her real life, to sort out what this all meant, but right now, she only wanted to feel, and making love with Tanner felt perfect.

  * * *

  Tanner didn’t start to feel strange until they walked into the lobby of Syd’s hotel, but when they crossed through the doors, she was struck with a sudden sense of nerves. She motioned to the bar. “Do you want to grab a drink?”

  Syd looked at her like she was a space alien. “Uh, we have alcohol in the room.”

  “I know, but I also know you’d much rather have some sugary concoction than straight whiskey.”

  “Why do I think you’re speaking in code?” Syd ran her hand down Tanner’s arm. “Are you the sugary concoction or the whiskey neat?”

  Tanner grinned. Syd had always been able to cut through bullshit and get to what mattered, and all that mattered in this moment was pleasure, not any worries about what the future might hold or what all of this meant. Right?

  Tanner wasn’t completely convinced. Syd’s words and actions both conveyed that the few hours they’d spent naked in her bed were about nothing more than sex. Good sex. Great sex. The kind of perfect sex that only two people who knew each other’s bodies extremely well could have. Once, that intimate knowledge meant more than sex, but Tanner had no idea what it meant now. She had a nagging feeling they should sort that out before they got naked again, and if they were going to talk, it would be easier to do so if they weren’t a few feet from Syd’s bed.

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