After one hell of a day, I needed something that I had not indulged in since I was in Tijuana: a drink. After a much needed nap, I met up with Amanda at a bar on the marina downtown. We nabbed a table next to the open window looking out at the water on the other side of the street.

“So let me get this straight,” Amanda said, after taking a big sip of her margarita. “Fuckboy from Tijuana—aka the hottie who pretended to be your boyfriend—is an undercover agent.”

I peeled at the label of my Corona, my eyes unfocused. “He’s not an agent, he’s an ex-convict. But with how closed off the Reyes circle is, we needed an ‘in,’ so we had to use him.”

It was possible that I shouldn’t have been telling Amanda classified information. But she was in my circle of trust, and I always liked to keep her informed on my whereabouts. Besides, as a lawyer, she knew the rules of confidentiality.

“Does your boss—does Ned know?” she asked, we were still grappling with what to call my boss now that we were broken up.

I took a deep breath and stopped my nervous label peeling to return Amanda’s gaze across the bar table. “Ned doesn’t know anything. For now at least.”

“Only Dr. Eva Napleton would get herself into a situation like this.” Amanda’s lips slowly curved upward in a devilish smile.

“Uh-oh. I see the lawyer wheels turning.”

“Caught in the act. But hear me out. Why would you want to keep it under wraps? If you slept with him, that means you have a sort of power over him. Like how James Bond always slept with the enemy and got insider information.” She leaned forward, clearly excited about her James Bond reference.

“I see the logic…sort of. But I’m not sure this is the same thing as a James Bond movie. And I doubt that I have any power over him. I mean, he canceled our plans this evening. Well, to be fair, he begged me to hang out, then I gave in, and then he ditched me.”

I couldn’t help but feel my heart sink just a little knowing I wouldn’t get a chance to see him tonight outside of work hours. Sure, Eva was too much of a rule-follower to hook up with him again.

But Alexa just might seduce him one more time--just for fun.

“What a dick!” Amanda blurted.

“I know. Very big dick.”

Amanda sighed. “Well on the plus side you are proving our hotness vs. asshole theory. I mean, not that it’s good that hot guys are assholes. But at least we are right about something. And by the way, I have to ask …how was he?”

I chuckled at the theory Amanda and I had come up with when we were undergrads at San Diego State. We wanted to do our senior thesis on the correlation between guys who were attractive and how big of assholes they were—something important that needed proving in our twenty-one year old minds. Unfortunately our advisors didn’t see the worldly importance of our thesis, and we had to branch off into pursuits in our perspective fields of law and forensic psychology that were more mainstream academically. Still, it was a running joke that we had going, and so far the theory had largely stood up to all of the men we met.

Amanda’s phone buzzed and she picked it up. “Speaking of hot guys.”

She showed me the message, smiling proudly.

Hey Bambi, this is Casey. I know you’re studying abroad right now in Asia, so here’s your weekly shirtless selfie.

“See?” She beamed. “I do still have it. The bartender definitely was gay. And can I please respond to him?”

I laughed. I’d forbidden Amanda from talking to Casey after we got back from Tijuana, as much as she wanted to see him. So she made up a story about studying abroad in Asia for an unspecified amount of time.

“Fine,” I relented. “

“Yes! I’m going to see what he’s up to tonight.”

She shot him a quick text, then continued. “Alright, alright so we got a little off topic. You never answered my question about Tijuana, by the way,” Amanda said, raising an eyebrow. “How was it? For real. You haven’t been straight with me about that night. I can tell.”

“You know I usually don’t kiss and tell.”

“Oh please. You haven’t had anything to tell lately. Or did you keep a secret from me?”

I clenched up, thinking about the last, and only secret I kept from Amanda: that I cheated on Ned. I was so ashamed after the fact, I couldn’t bear to tell a soul. The night it happened I was so drunk and out of it, and Ned had been so distant for so many months that I was loving the attraction I got from that man many moons ago. In my heart I knew my indiscretion was more likely a symptom of a bad relationship than it was a cause of us breaking up, but the fact that I had done such a thing still ate away at my conscience regularly. I knew I should probably have told Amanda of all people, but I just couldn’t.

In this instance however, I deemed it a good idea to share with her the gloriousness of kissing Corbin Young. In fact, I didn’t know how we had avoided talking about this four weeks after the fact.

“Fine. Now you know I’m not one to make comparisons. But,” I leaned across the table and whispered, cupping my mouth with both hands. “It was the best. Sex. Ever. For once in my life, I felt almost…”

“Totally alive?” Amanda said with a perk in her voice. I didn’t recall ever seeing Amanda quite on the edge of her seat like she was right now. “I’m getting excited for you, vicariously, if you can’t tell.”

“I was going to say, ‘loved.’ But when I say it out loud, it sounds funny. It was like...he was inside my soul. You ever feel that? Although I know you can’t love someone from a one night stand,” I said.

“Maybe you do, for a moment,” Amanda said philosophically.

“Can you call what you have love, if it’s only for one moment? Isn’t that just lust?” I tried to reason.

Amanda’s phone buzzed again, killing the air around the seriousness of my question. She eagerly grabbed it.

“Oh my gosh, he’s coming here. You wanna get some weed? He sells it.”

“Amanda! I’m a—” I lowered my voice. “I work for the DEA. I can’t be out buying weed from street dealers.”

“Of course you can. Come on, this is California. Weed’s practically more legal than alcohol. Plus, if you get caught just say you were doing some undercover research. It’s the perfect cover story.”

I hesitated. Amanda touched my hand with hers.

“Eva. I have a two thousand page discovery document to read this week. Two thousand. I need some weed to read. Now that is a heck of a rhyme, don’t you think?”

She smiled like a six year old who wanted her parent to buy her candy at the grocery store.

I relented. “Fine. So is he just going to come by? Or where do we meet him?”

Amanda looked at her phone. “He says that we can grab an eighth from his contact in the back bar here, and he’ll be here a little later. Here, follow me.” We grabbed our drinks and walked past the crowded bar toward the back. In the past hour or so the local college students had started to fill the place up.

We walked down a hallway until we reached a steel blue door. A large, bearded Hispanic man with his arms crossed stood as still as a statue next to the door, his eyes on us.

“Hi there,” Amanda said to him with a smile.

“Can I help you?” the man replied without uncrossing his arms.

“Yeah. I’m looking for Casey’s contact. Casey sent me,” Amanda said.

“Yeah, okay. Casey sent me, too,” the man said without smiling. “That’s what everyone says, lady.”

She pulled out her phone with the texts from Casey and showed them to the bouncer. He examined them closely, even pulling up the number attached to the name to make sure she hadn’t just typed ‘Casey’ on any old number in her phone. After a minute he seemed satisfied, turned, and knocked twice on the door. “Hey, Jefe. You got visitors.”

“Send them in,” said a deep voice with a hint of a Spanish accent.

We bopped in with swagger, feeling good from our drinks. The room was dimly lit, and I could just make out the figures of four men sitting around a poker table through a cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. Something seemed off. My DEA instincts kicked in. Instinctively I looked for all of the possible exits out of the room. There was the main door behind us, but other than that the place was enclosed like a 1930s speakeasy.

A Hispanic looking man rose from the table and addressed us. I swallowed hard, as I recognized a man who I have only seen in ‘most wanted’ reports: Marco Reyes.