15

THE ALLY

The first person I turn to for advice isn’t the man you’d expect.

“So you’re okay with me investigating Tara on the sly?” I pass my dad his stethoscope and watch as he hangs it over his neck, looking very much like a nice, ordinary doctor. The effect is ruined when he heads straight to the safe hidden in the wall of his closet. “It’s not only me who thinks she might be the Peep-Toe Prowler. Grant also suspects she’s involved.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told her,” my father says calmly. “What you do with your free time is of no concern to me, and I refuse to get involved. Have lunch. Go shopping. Break into rich people’s homes and steal their valuables. I don’t care. I’m just glad the two of you are spending time together.”

“Dad, I’m not the one stealing—” I begin, but he slips the stethoscope into his ears, and I give up. Explaining to my father that I’m with the good guys for once is useless. Equally useless is getting him to believe that he—or anyone he cares about—is in danger from the law. Like most great men, he has an ironclad belief in his own infallibility.

Which, given his current arrest record, is a touch ironic.

I watch as he places the chestpiece near the safe’s dial and makes a few twists and turns. His brow furrows as he listens for the telltale click of the drive pins falling into place. Childhood memories of this exact scenario remind me that he requires complete silence to get the job done. There’s no playing, no talking, no fun. Just watching and learning from the best.

Despite my early exposure, cracking safes is a task I never mastered. Neither is being quiet and unobtrusive, but I slow my breathing and prepare not to make any sudden movements for as long as it takes him to gain entrance.

Fortunately for us both, less than sixty seconds pass before my father swings the safe door open in triumph.

Or, rather, as much triumph as you can expect from a man as cool and collected as my father. Even in moments of victory, he’s like Clint Eastwood getting his man.

“Fifteen and then seven.” My dad slips the stethoscope off with a shake of his head. “I had it backward. Take my advice, baby doll: never get old.”

I blink at him. “Couldn’t you have called down to the front desk and asked them for the combination?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that.” He extracts an envelope from the safe and hands it to me. “And I hope this little ruse of yours is worth it. I was saving this for a rainy day.”

A knock prevents me from showing my appreciation in full, but I manage to brush a quick kiss on his cheek before he goes to open the door.

“Ah, Agent Sterling. Right on time. Your punctuality is always a delight.”

Simon cracks a smile—an actual smile—before he notices me standing in the middle of the room. Then he can’t drop the joy fast enough.

“Hello,” I call cheerfully. I also wave the envelope, since there’s a good chance he might turn tail and flee otherwise. “My dad entrusted his deepest, darkest secrets to me, so you might as well come in. I’m not giving them up easily.”

He doesn’t cross the threshold, opting instead to look between me and my father with a confused purse to his brow. “What is this?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m merely a vessel.” My dad pauses. “But you’ll find that the list is fully intact. Don’t make me regret my decision to share it with you, yes?”

And with that, my dad walks to his bedroom, pulling the wide French doors closed behind him. It’s a grand exit, the only kind he’s capable of, and I sigh at how neatly he pulls it off. My dad sure kept all the suave genes for himself.

“Stop gawking at me, and get inside already,” I say to Simon irritably. “I’m not going to hurt you. This isn’t what you think.”

“You have no idea what I think,” Simon says. He takes a step and shuts the door but refuses to move beyond the threshold. His already uptight posture is so tense, it’s a wonder he can move his legs.

Good thing I know how to get them going again.

“Are these really the secret locations of all the lost Fabergé eggs?” I ask as I pretend to open the envelope. Predictably, Simon lunges across the room before I manage to crack the seal.

He’s fast, but I’m faster, and I hold the envelope just out of his reach. “How much money do you think I’d get if I took the grand tour and recovered them for myself?” I add in a teasing voice. “They’ve only been missing for, what, a hundred years?”

“Give it to me.”

“Not until you do something for me first.”

“This isn’t funny.” He swipes again, but he’s reluctant to get close enough to make physical contact. In all the time I’ve known Simon, I don’t think he’s willingly touched me a single time. It’s almost as if he’s afraid I’ve got FBI-agent-turning powers at the tips of my fingers. “The only reason I came here today is because your father said it’s important.”

“It is important.” I stop the game as quickly as I started it and press the envelope into his hand. I also seat myself on the couch while he’s still staring perplexedly at it. “Sit down, Simon. I promise this won’t take long.”

I’ve never considered Simon a particularly handsome man, especially not when set against the brawny, all-American charm my husband oozes in abundance, but he has a straitlaced attractiveness I imagine might appeal to women who don’t mind cozying up to blocks of ice. His chilly exterior remains in place as he seats himself across from me, careful not to let our knees bump.

Eventually, he thaws. “Is this about you trying to catch the Peep-Toe Prowler on your own?” he asks.

I’m less surprised by the fact that he knows about my efforts and more surprised that he doesn’t seem to be censuring me for it. Talk about unprecedented behavior. Warily, I reply, “I’m not doing it on my own. My friends are helping.”

“Huh.”

Not You guys are a menace to society. No Stay out of it or else. Just huh.

In Simon terms, that’s as good as an invitation, and it’s one I don’t neglect to take him up on. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Christopher Leon,” I say. “Especially as it relates to him being a potential double agent.”

Simon’s glittering blue eyes meet mine in a moment of rare understanding, and I’m grateful, for what might be the first time in my life, that FBI agents don’t have to be spoon-fed the details. It’s no accident that I chose my father’s hotel room as the location of our tête-à-tête today, and Simon knows it. As Grant was all too quick to point out when I first told him about Tara being in town, neither friend nor foe nor FBI mole can get inside this room without my father knowing about it. It’s the only truly secure place in the city, the only place a man—or woman—can feel free to talk without fear of being overheard.

Simon wouldn’t have been willing to speak to me under any other circumstances. But now that we’re both here…

He holds my gaze for another long moment before releasing all of his anxious, uneasy energy in a long breath. He even leans back against the seat, his tight-pinched nostrils taking on a normal human shape for once.

“I guess you’re better than nothing,” he decides. “How much do you know?”

“Very little, unfortunately. Despite your fears to the contrary, Grant doesn’t come home every night and tell me all the FBI’s secrets. Getting information out of him is like pulling a falcon’s teeth—and yes, I’m aware that birds don’t have teeth. That’s why my metaphor works.”

“No.” His face is perfectly grave. “It still doesn’t work.”

That Simon. Always a barrel of laughs.

“All I know is that after I told Grant about Tara being back in New York and about how she and Agent Leon seem to be on a first-name basis, he reacted like I’d punched him in the face,” I say. “Then, yesterday…”

I stop, unsure how to frame this next part. Simon and Grant are best friends, and I’m sure they have some kind of bro-camaraderie in which conversations about our life together take place, but I like to think our marital problems aren’t part of them.

He doesn’t need to know that Grant backed me into a corner or that I spent the better part of last night figuring out how to wriggle my way out of it. After all, I may not be a great wife, but I am good at extricating myself from tight spots. My husband wants me to promise to lead a clean, happy existence for the rest of our days together. In exchange, I get one last opportunity to be an active part of his life.

At first glance, it looks like a bad deal—a terrible deal—trading one moment of glory for a lifetime of the opposite. I’d have to be a fool to take it. But there’s more at stake here than the state of my fingernails, I’m sure of it.

I just need to find out what.

“Yesterday…” Simon prods.

“So I came up with this plan for going undercover with my grandmother, right?” I say, leaning forward with an eagerness that takes him aback. “It’s not much, but she’s going to show me around, take me to parties—the normal society stuff she’s done her whole life, only this time, she’s doing it with her favorite granddaughter in tow. It’ll allow me to keep an eye on things from the inside without drawing anyone’s suspicions.”

Simon nods as if that makes perfect sense, and I have to prevent myself from swelling in triumph. I knew it was a good idea.

“But when I mentioned the plan to Grant, he freaked out. He told me it’s not safe because Christopher wants to cut me up and store the pieces of my body in his freezer—or, you know, something along those lines. I’m paraphrasing.”

He nods again, and a frisson of alarm moves through me. Wait—that’s a real possibility?

“Leon has always shown an unhealthy amount of interest in you,” Simon says. “You and Grant both.”

“What? So there really is a crazed, rogue FBI agent out for my blood? Why has no one mentioned this before?”

“Oh, calm down,” he says with an air of disgust. “I’m sure you’re not in any real danger. If that were the case, Grant would pack you up and ship you out at the first opportunity.”

I swallow heavily. He would certainly try.

“And if anything, it’s Grant who’s in trouble, not you. I never had many personal dealings with Leon, and I was moved off the Peep-Toe Prowler case early on, but something about that guy doesn’t fit.”

“He was nice to me,” I venture optimistically.

Simon quells that optimism with a glance at the envelope in his hand. “Most people are, when they want something.”

I can’t argue with that. “So what does he want?”

“Your contacts? Leverage over Grant? Who knows?” He shrugs. “I won’t go so far as to call him a double agent, but I can say for sure that Leon attempted—unsuccessfully—to get access to you when Grant first started investigating your father. From the looks of it, he’s attempting the same thing now. He’s a brave soul for trying, I’ll give him that much. I can’t imagine you’re worth that much trouble.”

“Maybe he has a crush on me.”

The scorn with which Simon refuses to answer that says it all. “Look, I wish I could be more help, but my hands are tied by bureaucracy. I’ve already been reprimanded for fighting the reassignment, and I’ve been warned against trying again. Pushing too hard now could end up hurting Grant more than it helps him.”

“So that’s it? You’re going to let him move forward with this on his own?”

He releases a sound that’s a borderline snort. “If I were capable of stopping Grant once he gets an idea in his head, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

There’s no mistaking his meaning. If Simon were capable of stopping Grant once he gets an idea in his head, I would have been removed from the picture—and Grant’s life—years ago.

There’s a finality to that truth that clatters hard in my chest. I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I don’t care for Simon’s stringent personality, but I’ve always felt confident knowing he’ll protect Grant in the field—even if it means doing so with his life. But he couldn’t protect Grant from me, and he can’t protect him from Christopher Leon.

We bad guys can’t be trusted. There’s no telling to what depths we’ll plunge to get our way.

My heart sinks. “How much danger is he in?”

Simon doesn’t have to ask what I mean. “Some. Enough. More than I care for. When it comes to finding answers, you know how little he cares for his personal safety.”

“And there’s really nothing you can do?”

“Officially? No. It’s out of my jurisdiction. But if you want my opinion, the sooner this case is wrapped up and Leon moves on, the better it will be for all of us. If history has proven anything, it’s that Grant won’t take Leon’s interference lying down.”

I believe him. Grant’s tenacity is a thing to be feared and admired. Witness the lengths he’s willing to go to reform his criminally minded wife.

“As much as I hate to say this, you and your friends might be the best chance we have of settling things quickly. You have access we don’t—both legal and illegal.” Simon shudders, as if even saying the word illegal causes him pain. “Do your thing, Blue, and do it fast.”

Any thrill I might have felt at being imbued with such responsibility—especially from Simon—is cut short by his next words.

“Oh, and one more thing?”

It’s almost too much to bear. What’s next? An offer to crown me queen?

“If there’s anything I can do to help—unofficially, I mean—all you have to do is ask.”