by CD Reiss
“Not with you?” I say. “That’s such a cliché.”
“Too much American television as a kid.”
He opens the passenger door. When the dome light comes on, he is rendered in three dimensions again.
I don’t have to get in. I can just go home and wait for my team to get back from Springfield and tell me what happened.
I step forward. One step closer to the car and one step closer to him. “Where are we going?”
“Little place I know.”
There’s no “little place” in Doverton or Barrington. There are box stores and mom-and-pop shops that are already closed. There’s a bar off the highway and a twenty-four-hour sandwich place. There are plenty of nice places to go and good places to sit, but none match his cozy implications.
I get in the car, wondering if I should have worn my sneakers.
Chapter 12
keaton
It’s twenty-two miles to Barrington. The highway is dry, and the air is cold and crisp. I go the speed limit and no more, as is my habit. I don’t risk exposing myself by getting tickets.
“It is too cold?” I ask as she rubs her hands together.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Do you like Doverton?” I ask.
She laughs a little. A short, sharp thing meant to say more than words can. “It’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“It’s small.” She shrugs. “Catty.”
“Bigger than Barrington. Some people in Doverton say they inbreed.”
“Like I said.” She looks at me just as I’m looking at her. She is just stunning. “Catty.”
I have to look back at the road. “How long have you been here? From Flint?”
“Can we stop this?”
“Stop what?”
“You know everything about me.”
I know what she means, and I’m not going to waste time denying it.
“And have you not looked for me in your records?” I shoot back.
She looks straight ahead, lips pressed together. Up ahead, lights dot the sky at the factory roof and on the very tops of the cranes. I pull off the highway.
“What did you find?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Not a stub. People whose families immigrate usually get a stub. But you? Nada.”
There had been an FBI stub as recently as six months ago. In a way, knowing it’s gone is comforting. It means they’ve started.
In another way, it’s chilling.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“You know the factory?”
“That’s a great place to murder someone.”
“Not if you want to get away with it. Half the town descends on it at seven a.m.”
“Are you on schedule to open?”
“Yes.” I don’t offer more because I don’t want to talk about the fucking factory.
The service road is rutted and bumpy. We’ll clean it up after we bring in the heavy stuff. For now, the car rocks like a boat on a stormy sea.
“How much do you know about me?” she asks.
“Not much.”
“Please. If you don’t know my social security number and the name of my first pet, I’ll eat my shoe.”
She thinks I’m lying. She doesn’t trust me, and she shouldn’t. My anger is in inverse proportion to how much of her trust I’ve earned.
“If you need salt, I’ll allow it.”
I stop at the factory gate. A guard sits in the little house. He’s not an ounce under three hundred pounds. His name is Bernard, but everyone calls him Butthead.
I roll down the window. “Bernard.”
“Mr. Bridge.”
“Keaton. Please.”
“Sure.” He peers into the window to see Cassie. “Ma’am. Can I see your driver’s license?”
“She’s all right,” I snap. Worse than Cassie’s distrust is her seeing someone else not trust me.
“Mr. Harden says.”
“I practically invented corporate espionage,” I say, losing patience. “I daresay this lady won’t pull a trick I can’t see coming.”
Cassie reaches one hand over me with her wallet stretched open with her fingertips. She’s closer. I can smell her. Vanilla and gunpowder. My God. She’s made of candy-coated bullets.
Bernard takes one look at the FBI ID and opens the gate. Cassie leans back, but I caught a whiff of her already, and it’s enough.
“You invented corporate espionage?” she says. “That was exculpatory.”
“Not really. It’s a quote from Gizmodo.”
I drive through the gate. The hulk of the factory grows larger as I approach. The windows on the first and third floors are lit with low-wattage LEDs. I pull into my spot and put the car in park.
“Want to make a wager?” I say.
“Again?”
I look at her. She’s leaning forward, genuinely interested. I like her curiosity mirroring mine.
“I bet you can surprise me.”
“I’m really boring.”
“That would surprise me indeed.”
I get out of the car.
Chapter 13
cassie
Keaton opens the door for me. The parking lot is in crappy condition, and even though my shoes aren’t too high, my heel lands on half a rock and I lose my balance. He has me by the elbow before I even realize I’m falling. His hand is strong and gentle. He lets me go as soon as I’m on my feet.
“Thank you.”
We walk along the side of the building. Dim lights on the ground floor glow through the web of scaffolding, cross-hatching the ground in front of us.
“We can take the lift,” he says.
“I’m not afraid of a few stairs.”
“Really?”
“I can make four flights in under a minute and a half, carrying a firearm and spare cartridges.”
He reaches into the darkness and clicks something. A light goes on to reveal an elevator car built inside the scaffolding. It’s for construction, with a wood plank floor and a big orange lever. We get in, and he slides the gate closed. With a tap of the lever, we move up.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says.
“I’m not.”
He flicks a switch and the car goes dark.
“Oh,” I gasp.
The lights over Barrington are visible, and behind it, Doverton glows just in front of the curve of the earth against the navy sky. The stars are a pin-poked wrap over the earth. We stand in silence, our perspective changing as we rise ninety feet and stop with a jerk.
Keaton slides open the gate on the factory side with a clatter and slap. He holds out his hand and I take it. Pause. His face is in shadow. His expression as we touch is hidden from me, but as his thumb brushes the tops of my fingers, I don’t need to see it to know the contact is intentional and sexual.
I step onto the roof. He follows, laying his hand on my shoulder. Touching. Again. I’m conscious of how disproportionately carnal the pressure and placement feel against how tame they really are.
“Here,” he says, leading me to a little café table with two folding chairs surrounded by outdoor heat lamps.
The floodlights clack on when the motions sensors detect our bodies, making the roof both bright and black. The table is in a trapezoid of shadow. There’s a pitcher of water and glasses. I glance quickly into the glasses. Dry from what I can tell. Good.
Keaton pulls out a chair and I sit, noticing a square yellow Post-It stuck to the center of the table. He sits across from me and pours water in my glass first.
“Not trying to get me drunk, I see.”
“If I had wine, would you drink it?”
“No.”
“Why not?” He pulls his glass closer to him.
I touch mine. I’m thirsty, but don’t pick it up. “It’s hard to hide drugs in water. Easier in alcohol.”
“You think I’m the kind of man who needs to drug women?”
; “To get laid?” I go right for the point. “No.”
“What then?”
“You might drug an FBI agent.”
He leans forward, into a patch of light. His brown hair’s brushed back, but a curve of it escapes and falls against his forehead. His left ear has a thin gold hoop tight around the lobe, hinting at a history I can only guess. Gorgeous, yes, but the promises of secrets, knowledge, depth are what make me throb between my crossed legs.
He’s breathtaking.
“There’s no need to drug you or any agent. If I want something from the part of you that carries a badge and a gun, I can take it without you even knowing it. I can own you. I can own your job. Your family and friends are safe because I choose it.”
I’m tricked by his looks. His promise. The timbre of his voice. I’ve been lulled. He is what he is and has always been. And here I am—alone on a rooftop with him.
“So are you Alpha Wolf?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny any digital persona is linked to me.”
“You don’t scare me.”
His smirk is devilish and comforting, as if mischief has a charm all its own. Then he leans back and drinks his water as if he knew I was waiting for him to go first. He puts down the empty glass. “Good.”
I sip my water.
“So,” he says. “You heard there are plans being made on an onion site.”
“Third Psyche.”
“The link’s written on the back of that Post-It.” He flicks his fingers at the yellow square stuck to the center of the table. I reach for it. With an efficient but languid gesture, he covers my hand as it’s over the paper. “Not so fast, Ms. Grinstead.”
“Cassie’s fine.” There’s a snap in my voice. I don’t care if he knows I’m annoyed.
“Cassie. First you tell me why you want the link.”
“I told you.”
“I believe you. But there’s more. No one wants a promotion for the sake of one.”
He’s touching me. Skin on skin. He doesn’t move his fingers across mine, but if he does, I’m going to melt into the chair. I can stay like this all night, until he tightens his palm and puts downward pressure on his fingers. It’s encouraging. A barely perceptible invitation to speak what’s in my heart.
It’s all I need at a time when I would have denied needing anything.
“Because I want to catch criminals. I can catch bigger and better from CID.”
I don’t take my eyes off the way his hand covers mine. Not as I speak, nor during the long silence after I’m done.
“Small-time crooks don’t cause enough trouble?”
“Maybe.”
“Or do you have too much empathy for them?”
I snap my hand away. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, the lady doth protest too much. You have to know law enforcement attracts a criminal element.”
I will my lips shut, but my mind simmers, then boils. “You can go to hell then.” I wish I could get up and walk away, but that yellow Post-It is calling.
“I will. I’m sure of it.”
“Said the black hat who’s going straight.”
“We have more in common than I thought.”
“My record’s clean.” I lean back. “I don’t know what you think you saw or where you saw it, but it’s fake.”
“I didn’t say you were guilty of anything. Your mother was obviously a petty reprobate by choice. You were dragged along for the ride. Yet I saw a little flicker in your eyes when you said your record was clean.” He points at each eye as if trying to recall the little glints. “You’re proud of not getting caught.”
I have to divert this conversation before I get sucked into it. “You were the king of the dark web. You were making millions in hacked accounts.”
“I was.”
“Guns.”
“Yes.”
“Drugs.”
“No. Never. No drugs, no people.”
“Every thief has a code.” I know that all too well. “Why leave it?”
“Taylor needed the money.”
“Are we done here?” I ask.
“As you wish.”
I reach for the Post-It again, and again he puts his hand over mine. I let it stay. With everything that was said and revealed in the last five minutes, that pause before I shake him off is the moment I let myself like his touch.
He slides his hand away, and I curl my fist around the paper, snapping the glue off the tabletop.
“The link comes with a warning,” he says.
I turn over the paper. The link is written in pencil. “A warning?” I fold the Post-It and put it in my pocket. “Are we enemies now?”
“No, but I don’t want you to make any.” He looks at the sky, apparently thinking. “You’re not callous. If you have to believe you are, I understand. And working in law enforcement, you’ll get callous or die. But not you. Not yet. But…” He laces his fingers together across his belt. “When I went looking for something to put on this piece of paper, I might have been noticed.”
“You?”
He knows what I’m asking. Was Keaton Bridge noticed or was Alpha Wolf? I don’t go further because I know he’s not going to answer.
“It’s not my intention to expose you to danger. If I had my way, you’d toss that paper in the rubbish and forget the whole thing. But you’re too far gone. So take it. Catch the bastards.” He leans forward now, putting his elbows on his knees. His head is only slightly lower than mine and he’s dead serious. “Do not speak to Keyser Kaos. Do not speak to anyone who knows him. If you’re wise, don’t speak to anyone whose identity isn’t known.”
His voice is so even that I shutter any thoughts of disobeying him.
“Are you going to be all right? Are they going to come after you?”
He starts to say something. Stops himself. Leans back.
What have I done? I tuck my hands into my sleeves. The heat lamps only do so much to chase a chill.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” is his final answer. “I want you to have this. I want to do something for you.”
The link could be a setup. He could be a beautiful trap. But he’s not. I can’t know the results of his gift, but when he says he wants to do something for me, I believe he’s telling me the entirety of his intentions.
“Why did you decide to go straight?”
His look is quizzical, as if he’s revving up to deflect.
“Surprise me. I know you want me to surprise you, but you gotta meet me halfway here.”
“How do I know you won’t use it against me?”
“You don’t.”
I figure it’s over after that. We’re at some kind of stalemate. This isn’t a guy who gives up a piece of information without a fight. He knows its worth too well. His eyes flick across my face as if he’s reading me, but that’s not what he’s doing. I know it as well as I know when a mark is just distracted enough to think she’s not. He’s calculating the value of his story.
“I went straight, as you call it, because there are some things I can only do with a name, and a face, and a history in this world. I needed to do those things.”
“You needed to invest in QI4? Why?”
“Some things can’t be written and explained in a tight little fable. The short version is—I did it for friendship.”
The alarm bells that bark when I’m around him shut down for a second. That wasn’t the answer I expected. The fact that he’d make a sacrifice for a friend clues me in to the existence of a complex, layered person, not just a sexy, secretive criminal.
“I’d like to hear the long version some time.”
“There won’t be a long version.”
Won’t be?
He says it as if the story is still being written and it’s about to be cut off.
***
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Also by CD Reiss
ROYALTY SERIES
King of Code | White Knight
Princ
e Charming | Prince Roman
Hollywood Romances
Shuttergirl | Bombshell | Bodyguard
The Games Duet
Marriage Games | Separation Games
The Corruption Series
Spin | Ruin | Rule
The Submission Series
Submission | Domination | Connection
Other Standalones
Forbidden | Hardball
