Chapter 13
Colt
I arrived at the park and made my way down to the lake. I intentionally wanted to get there early to see if she’d set up any sort of recording trucks or other agents to sneak around trees in black like they couldn’t be seen. The tactics of three-lettered agencies like this were old school. And very easy to spot. I parked my bike and made my way down to the lake, keeping my eyes peeled from behind my sunglasses. The sun was shining bright, even though there was a chill of fall in the air. There were some people around, but not many. And most of the benches were taken up.
I snagged one down on the end for Olivia and myself because that end of the lake seemed less crowded.
I was glad she chose this park. It was the park I always chose when meeting up with people I didn’t always need to be seen with. It was less crowded. Less busy. There weren’t many kids around because the playground was on the other side of the property. Away from the water and the men wanting to get out on it with their pathetic boats they’d used their entire life savings to buy just to piss off their wives. I never understood men like that. The exact reason why I never attached myself to a woman was because I wanted to be free to make my own decisions. If I wanted a boat, I could buy a boat. I had no one to talk to about it and no one to discuss shit with. If I wanted to get up at four in the morning and go for a ride, I didn’t have to worry about some woman waking up and nagging my ear off about it once I got home.
Men confused me just as much as women did.
I sat down on the bench and watched the sun beat down into the water. A soft breeze wafted over the lake, rippling the water my way as the mirrored reflection because muddled. I kept my peripheral vision peeled. Anyone who seemed to stare or walk a little too close too many times became a deal breaker for me. The way I saw this deal, it was between the agent and myself. No one else. Especially none of the police cronies who had apparently hung onto way too much information after we had been paying them to do the exact fucking opposite.
I really hoped Maverick talked with them soon. Because we needed to figure out why the fuck they were keeping shit on us.
“Nice day to feed the ducks.”
Had I not been so in control of my faculties, I would have jumped. Holy shit, I didn’t even hear her coming up on me. My head slowly panned over and I watched her sit down. Her long, limber legs in her high-waisted work pants and her button-front professional bullshit shirt tucked into the waistband. She had a slim orange belt in the belt loops of her pants that held up things like her gun holster and her badge. She had a gray cardigan around her shoulders and her black hair was twisted up into a bun.
And she, too, had on sunglasses.
“Long night?” I asked.
The slow turn of her head told me I was right.
“Didn’t hear me coming?” she asked.
Thank fuck for my sunglasses, because my eye physically twitched at her question.
I watched her unwrap a bag of hamburger buns and she pulled one out. She handed it to me and I looked down at it, wondering why the hell she was handing me bread in the first place. Before I knew it, ducks had swarmed around us. Quaking and barking at us to feed them. It was drawing attention. And it was attention I didn’t like. She shoved the hamburger bun into my hand and I took it, then watched as she pulled one out for herself.
Then silently, the two of us began to feed the ducks.
I pulled the bread apart and tossed it as far away as I could. The ducks were drawing more attention than I wanted. What the hell was her game? What was she trying to pull? I wasn’t sure if I could trust her at this point. Especially with how much the plan to communicate with her had rattled my crew. But now that she was willingly drawing attention to us, I felt I could trust her even less.
That didn’t stop me from being drawn to her, though.
“So, how did your guys take the news?” she asked.
She pulled out another hamburger bun and sat it on my knee.
“About as good as you could expect once they found out one of their own would be communicating with the authorities,” I said.
She pulled another bun out for herself and went back to feeding the ducks in silence. I reached for the bun she sat on my knee and ripped the bread apart as fast as I could. The quicker we could get through the shit, the sooner the ducks would go away.
And the sooner we could get people to stop staring at us.
“Don’t be so nervous. No one in this area knows me. My credentials are covered up. And I didn’t bring anyone with me,” Olivia said.
I couldn’t help the sigh that left my lips. I was no longer hellbent on hiding my frustration. I was stunned by how well she could read me, and for once, I didn’t mind someone knowing how much they got underneath my skin.
“How’s Duke doing?” Olivia asked.
“Really? Small talk?” I asked.
“We could talk about Old Man Dean, if you wanted,” she said.
“How do you know their names?”
“I don’t know all of their names. But, your beloved police have basic information files on all of you. I locked them away in my desk before I left.”
The veins in my neck popped with anger. Oh, Maverick wasn’t going to be happy to hear that.
“How long has Dean been with the club now?” she asked.
“We aren’t here to talk about my club, Agent Banks,” I said curtly.
“So, you don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you. But, we aren’t going to make small talk in order to try and trust one another?”
“I don’t ‘not trust’ you,” I said.
“Is that why you get nervous every time I do this?”
I watched her reach into the bag and pull out another bun. My body locked up instantly. More ducks. More squawking. More attention. She handed it to me and turned her face to meet mine, then gave me the smuggest grin I’d ever seen on a woman’s face. I ripped it from her hand and grumbled to myself, then continued feeding the ducks.
We sat there in silence, feeding the little fuckers until the food was finally gone.
“It’s tough to trust a woman that is also threatening to throw my ass back in jail,” I said.
Olivia crumpled the empty bread bag up. “Not my fault you won’t cooperate. I understand the code. I also understand your desire to make sure your club doesn’t go down for something they aren’t responsible for.”
“And how could you possibly understand that?”
And then, I saw it. The slightest twitch at the corner of her eye. It wasn’t covered by the sunglasses she had on her face, and I knew I’d found another button to poke at.
But poking buttons wouldn’t garner the trust we needed to do any of this right. Especially if I was going to be syphoning information from her as much as she was going to be from me.
“Want to play the question game?” Olivia asked.
“The what now?” I asked.
“The question game. You never played that as a kid?”
“I didn’t do much ‘kid stuff’ as a kid.”
“Sorry to hear it. Then again, I didn’t do much of it, either.”
“Why not?”
“Is that your question?” she asked.
She looked over at me and kept her stare locked with the profile of my face. She hiked her leg up onto the bench we sat on and her knee touched down against my thigh. I tried not to jump at her touch. I tried not to give away how skittish I was when around her. But, the electricity that trickled up my pelvis and bombarded the back of my neck was unexplainable. The warmth of her skin penetrated my jeans. Just from the touch of her fucking knee.
I slowly turned my sunglassed-face over to her and watched a grin play upon her lips.
She had a nice set of lips.
“The rules of the game are simple. You ask a question, I answer. But, you have to answer the question you asked before I ask a question. Got it?”
“And if you ask a question, you answer it as well?” I asked.
“I do, yes,” Olivia said.
“Then, yes. ‘Why?’ is my question.”
She nodded. “My mother died when I was eleven. I stepped up as a teenager and took her role when she died. You know, to take care of my father and everything.”
My lips parted in shock at her quick and easy story.
“Not what you were expecting?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it,” I said.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Why didn’t you have much of a childhood?”
I drew in a deep breath and regretted every decision I had made up until this point. What a shit game.
“My parents had me young. My mother and father both had a questionable lifestyle, filled with strip clubs and various drugs, until my younger sister came along. I was fifteen before they cleaned up their act, and I hardly knew them. My grandparents raised me. I was never close with my parents growing up. Learned to do everything myself from a young age,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Colt.”
And for a second, it sounded as if she really meant those words.
Huh.
“My turn?” I asked.
“Is that your question?” Olivia asked smugly.
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“Yes. It’s your turn.”
“What’s your favorite color?” I asked.
She quirked her eyebrow. “Out of all the questions you could ask, you want to know my favorite color?”
“Just testing to see if you’ll be honest with me,” I said.
“Okay. Fine. Yeah. My favorite color is red. Though, when spring rolls around, I tend to gravitate toward yellow.”
“Mine’s green.”
“Green’s a good color. A solid one,” she said.
“You going to analyze me now because of my favorite color? And no, Miss Sarcastic, that isn’t my question,” I said, grinning.
She giggled, and the sound brushed over me a calm that relaxed me into the bench. My leg moved closer to hers, pressing her knee further into my thigh. Her head fell off to the side as her elbow crooked over the bench. I found myself wanting to see her green eyes behind those sunglasses of hers.
“My question,” Olivia said.
“Shoot,” I said.
“How long have you been with your club?”
“Since I was eighteen. So… seventeen years?”
“Do you enjoy it?” she asked.
“No rule against multiple questions?” I asked.
“Not if I answer them back.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for our game, then,” I said.
“So, do you enjoy it?”
“I do. They’re more like a family to me than my parents ever were growing up. I missed that during my more formative years.”
I watched her nod her precious head, taking into account all of the words I’d said. I could practically see her brain splicing them apart. Looking for hidden meanings and ulterior motives. Which told me a lot about her.
She didn’t trust anyone she ever came into contact with.
Just like me.
“Your turn,” I said.
“Well, I’m not with a club, but I’ve been with various federal agencies since I was hired for the FBI right out of my master’s program at twenty- three. So, almost eight years? And yes, I do enjoy what I do. But, the traveling gets to be a lot sometimes.”
“You don’t like to travel?”
“I like to travel to exotic places. The Bahamas. The Polynesian Islands. South America. Not Greensboro, North Carolina.”
I chuckled. “Not a fan of the south?”
Olivia smiled. “Not a fan of big cities, in general.”
“I’m not, either. Too many people. Too many sounds. Redding still feels a little big to me sometimes. And yes, I do like to travel. Never been out of the country, but I figured one day I’d get to Ireland.”
“Any reason for Ireland?” I asked.
“My mother was Irish. Only half, but still.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
I dipped my head toward my lap and threaded my fingers together. For some reason, I had the urge to reach out and wrap my arm around Olivia. And I sure as hell knew that wouldn’t fly for any fucking reason.
“Whose question is it?” I asked.
Olivia giggled. “No clue. Let’s make it yours, though.”
“Okay, then. Here goes nothing. Why do you think you understand my club?”
And when I slowly looked over and locked my eyes with her face, I could have sworn I watched her breath hitch in her throat.