A Perfect Wife (Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Elle Gray

  I won’t lie. Like Rosie, I had my doubts early on. But the way we all came together, everybody pulling their own weight, and doing what was necessary to get the job done, was amazing. It was a beautiful thing to see.

  And now that we’re a team, and that core of trust between us is growing, it makes me excited to see how we do moving forward. We are going to do some really good things and take some very bad people out of circulation.

  “Thank you, guys,” I say. “You have all made me the proudest I’ve ever been in my entire career.”

  Everybody raises a beer and cheers. I know not every day is going to be good like this. There will be some very bad, very dark days ahead of us. But as I look around the room and see how these disparate parts have come together to form a unit, to form a family, a sense of pride fills me.

  There may be dark days ahead, but I’ll enjoy this day. It’s a good day.

  Forty-One

  Outside the Residence of Blake Wilder; Downtown Seattle

  A light drizzle starts to fall as I turn the corner and head for the gates to the underground garage at my place. There’s still a smile still on my face, and I’m still buzzing from spending such a great day with my team. Everything is great right now and I want to hold onto this feeling as long as I can. I know there will be plenty of days I’ll long to feel something like this again.

  I don’t even realize there’s a cop car behind me until they hit me with their blue and white sirens. I automatically glance down at the speedometer and see that I’m not going over the speed limit, and I haven’t broken any traffic laws.

  “What the hell?” I mutter.

  I pull over, less than a hundred yards away from the gates, roll down the window, and shut off the engine. Keeping my hands on the wheel, I stare straight ahead through the windshield. A moment later, I look up to see Deputy Chief Torres standing there glaring down at me.

  We’ve never actually met, the Deputy Chief and I, but I know exactly who he is. He’s Paxton’s arch-nemesis. From everything I’ve learned of the guy, I can see why. He’s a bad cop and a worse person.

  “They have you out on the beat again, Deputy Chief?” I ask brightly.

  “Can you step out of the car, please?”

  A frown creases my lips. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “Step out of the car, please.”

  “Not until you tell me what this is about,” I reply.

  His face darkens as he stares at me, his eyes ice cold. “You have a taillight out,” he snaps. “Now, step out of the car, please.”

  “Deputy Chief, I’m SSA Blake－”

  “I know who you are. Now, step out of the car,” he growls. “Don’t make me drag you out of there.”

  His hand is hovering near the butt of his service weapon, which automatically makes me feel the weight of mine on my hip. I hadn’t even thought about it when I left this morning. Clipping on my weapon is such an ingrained part of my routine, that I just did it. And now that there is a serious tension crackling in the air between us, the weight of my weapon seems even greater.

  There are a thousand ways this could go bad. And a thousand different spins he can put on it to make any incident my fault. Knowing what I know of Torres, the idea that he would stage a situation where he had to put me down isn’t outside the realm of possibility. And there is no way I’m going to dance to his tune. Not when the stakes are this high.

  “If you know who I am, then you know I’m not some punk who’s intimidated by you, and doesn’t know their rights,” I fire back. “And you have no legal reason to demand that I exit this vehicle. Now, if you have something to say, spit it out.”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you one more time－”

  “Tell you what, you call your superior and I’ll call mine. Then we are going to wait for them to arrive so we can all have a pleasant conversation together,” I say.

  Torres stares me down for a minute, the anger in his face growing. He seems upset that he can’t push me around, and that I’m not scared of him. He lets out a sigh and moves his hand away from the butt of his weapon. His posture is relaxed, his hands behind his back, but still looks at me with pure hatred in his eyes.

  “I only want to talk to you, Agent Wilder,” he says. “Now, please step out so we can have a conversation.”

  With his hand away from his weapon, I feel a little more secure, so I give him a nod. “I am carrying. My sidearm is on my right hip.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Moving slowly and carefully, I open the car door and step out. My body is tense, but given my injuries, there’s not a lot I can do to defend myself except for pull my weapon. But Torres doesn’t move. He continues to stand at parade rest, his hands behind his back, his eyes boring into mine. I lean back against my car, appearing casual, but I leave my hand close to my weapon, just to remind him that I can draw quickly if things go sideways.

  “So, what can I do for you, Deputy Chief?”

  “I want to know who gave you the information from our task force.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Agent Wilder. You don’t do it very well.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. But I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He sighs and shifts on his feet; my hand reflexively drops, hovering close to my weapon. He looks at me with a smirk curling one side of his mouth upward. He got under my skin there and he knows it. Dammit.

  “So, is it just coincidence that you cracked a case that we’ve been working on for more than a year now?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Call it what you want. It doesn’t matter to me,” I counter. “All that matters to me is that Cassie Cooper is home safe and not just another victim. Oh yeah, and the monster who murdered eight women is off the streets and will be locked up for the rest of his life.”

  “Where’d you get the intel. Did somebody give you the murder books?”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Listen to me carefully, Deputy Chief… we received a callout to a murder in Caribou Pass. It was a call out the SPD declined to take, citing the fact that it wasn’t Seattle jurisdiction,” I tell him. “We took the callout. The victim was Brad Sunderland. He was the fiancé of Cassie Cooper. And we, apparently unlike the SPD, actually investigate crimes. One thing led to another, so on, and so forth. The trail led us all back to Stavitz. End of story.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” he scoffs.

  “Frankly, I don’t care what you believe,” I spit. “We caught a case and we solved it. Sorry we made you look bad. But maybe you should work on your investigative technique. Maybe you should try solving a few cases now and then and get used to the feeling of it. You might like it.”

  “Where’d you get the intel?”

  “We generated our own intel.”

  “Receiving stolen property is a crime, you know. Especially confidential SPD materials. You did know that, right?”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t do anything of the sort.”

  He laughs softly to himself. “I see why you and Arrington get on so well－you’re both arrogant, narcissistic, and think you’re better than everybody else.”

  I shrug. “Oh, I don’t think I’m better than everybody else. Just some, specific, people.”

  He falls silent and we stare at each other for a long moment. The tension between us practically crackles like lightning.

  “You’d best watch your ass, Agent Wilder,” he says. “Seattle can be a violent place. People get themselves killed all the time.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Nope. Just giving you a heads up,” he tells me. “And to also say that you might want to think twice before trying to make the SPD look bad again.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’ll see you again, Agent Wilder,” he says. “In the meantime, you might want to watch your back. Lots of dangerous types out there.”

  “Thanks fo
r the warning.”

  I watch him walk back to his cruiser and wait until he drives off before I get into mine. That exchange was bizarre, to say the least. Not to mention ominous as hell. I need to get to Detective Lee and tell him to keep his feelers up and to watch his back. Part of me wants to go have a conversation with the Chief of Police, but I don’t know if he’s part of Torres’ camp or not. Better to not risk it.

  All I should be focusing on right now is resting, healing up, and getting both my mind and body ready to get back out there and start kicking in doors again. Whatever that was with Torres, and with the SPD as a whole, isn’t important. But I’ll still watch my back anyway.

  As I drive through the gate, I frown and silently curse Torres for dulling the shine on what had been a beautiful day.

  Epilogue

  Residence of Blake Wilder; Downtown Seattle

  The quiet buzzing of an incoming text message on his cell phone woke Mark up. He cast a quick glance over at Blake and saw that she was still asleep. He took a moment to admire her in the sliver of silver moonlight slanting through the window, illuminating her like a spotlight. It made her hair shimmer like spun gold, and made her pale skin glow, as if with an inner light.

  She was a beautiful woman. Just looking at her made Mark happy. Happiness was a rare commodity in his life, so whenever he stumbled onto it, he wanted to hold it tight. But he knew that he couldn’t hold Blake tight, no matter how much he wanted to. He knew this relationship he had with her, whatever it was, had a shelf life on it. It wasn’t something that was going to last. The only question he had was: how long could he hang onto it before he had to give it up? Before he had to give her up?

  Moving slowly and with a practiced stealth, Mark slipped out of bed, pausing at the doorway to look back at Blake. Her breathing was slow and even, the heavy breaths of deep sleep. That was good, he thought. Mark padded quietly down the hallway and looked at the message on his cellphone.

  Despite assurances, target has been active again. Tripped alarm on database.

  Mark keyed in a quick reply and sent it off: Installing surveillance phase two.

  He maneuvered through the dark with ease, finding his bag where he’d left it, near the dining room table. He froze when he heard the sound of a floorboard creaking. Mark cut a glance behind him and let out a small breath of relief when he saw the hallway remained empty.

  From his bag, he pulled out three motion-activated video cameras. He took a moment, looking around the apartment before deciding where to put the first camera. He nestled it into the bookcase, giving him a wide view of the entire room. Next, he moved over to the entertainment credenza and found a hidden place for another that would give him a view of the desk area. And the third camera, he would mount in the bedroom.

  Once those were done, he pulled three microphones and went about finding discrete places for them. He taped one just underneath her desk. A second underneath the mantle above the fireplace, and a third in a planter that housed a plastic schefflera. That gave him full audio coverage of the room as well.

  With the audio and video feeds in place, Mark looked at the hallway again. Still empty. So, he went over to the desk and opened up her laptop, giving it a moment to boot up. Once it was up and running, Mark slipped a thumb drive into the port and gave it a moment. When the icon came up, he double-clicked on it and it automatically installed a sniffer program. It would track her every keystroke, allow them to access every website she visited, and access the files on her desktop.

  As it installed, Mark sat back in the seat and ran a hand over his face. He felt a pang of guilt lance through him as he thought about what he was doing. Mark knew this was just a job. It was no different than the hundreds of assignments he’d undertaken before. And yet, this time it was different. This time, he felt a stab of guilt that he’d never felt before.

  There was something about Blake he had come to care about. That had never happened to him before. He’d never gotten emotionally involved with a mark. But Blake was different. Blake was special. Something about her really resonated with him. Deeply. But this was the job.

  His phone buzzed again with another incoming message. He looked at it and frowned.

  Target must not access NSA incident files.

  Target does not know of their existence. All is well, he wrote, then hit send.

  A moment later, another message buzzed through. Be sure it stays that way. If target cannot be contained, target must be neutralized. Should it become necessary, would you prefer off-site team handle neutralization?

  A rueful grin touched Mark’s lips. They knew he had developed feelings for her, or they wouldn’t have offered an off-site team to carry out the hit if one was required. Mark desperately hoped it wouldn’t be required. He had been subtly trying to move her away from the investigation into her parents’ deaths. He knew if she kept at this, and eventually tumbled onto the files they were trying to keep her from, they would move to neutralize her, one way or another.

  His employers could not risk exposure. They knew of Blake’s tenacity, and also how talented she was as an investigator. They were right to be afraid. But by the same token, he was afraid as well. Afraid that if she succeeded, the world would lose one bright, shining, beautiful light.

  Mark ran a hand through his hair, trying to order his thoughts to formulate a coherent reply. He couldn’t think of anything profound, so he settled for a quick message, and hit send.

  If it becomes necessary, I will do it myself.

  The icon disappeared from the desktop, signaling that it was done. The program was uploaded. The die was cast, and there was no going back now. Mark pulled the thumb drive out of the laptop, reset everything to how he found it, and then closed it down. He returned the thumb drive to his bag, and looked around the newly wired apartment, trying to shut off the feelings of guilt that were pressing down on him.

  His job done, Mark walked back to the bedroom and slipped beneath the covers, spending the balance of his sleepless night admiring the way the moonlight sparkled upon her skin.

  THE END

  I hope you enjoyed The Perfect Wife, a sequel to The 7 She Saw.

  My intention is to give you a thrilling adventure and an entertaining escape with each and every book.

  However, I need your help to continue writing and bring you the third book.

  * * *

  Being a new indie writer is tough.

  I don’t have a large budget, huge following, or any of the cutting edge marketing techniques.

  So, all I kindly ask is that if you enjoyed this book, please take a moment of your time and leave me a review and maybe recommend the book to a fellow book lover or two.

  This way I can continue to write all day and night and bring you more books in the Blake Wilder series.

  * * *

  By the way By the way, if you find any typos or want to reach out to me, feel free to email me at egray@ellegraybooks.com

  * * *

  Your writer friend,

  Elle Gray

  * * *

  Click here to get your copy of A Perfect Wife (Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thriller Book 2) today.

  Also by Elle Gray

  Blake Wilder FBI Mystery Thrillers

  Book One - The 7 She Saw

  Book Two - A Perfect Wife

  * * *

  Arrington Mysteries

  Free Prequel - Deadly Pursuit

  Book One - I See You

  Book Two - Her Last Call

  Book Three - Woman In The Water

 

 

 
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