16

GRANT

“Tell me he’s a known terrorist. Tell me he’s robbed six banks. Give me anything I can use to get that man out of my life for good.”

The empty café where Mariah waits for me isn’t one I normally frequent, but I drop into the seat opposite her knowing full well not to order coffee. The brew they serve here tastes like black tar steeped in horse shit. Most of New York knows it and avoids the place accordingly.

In other words, it’s a great place for a clandestine meeting between friends.

“Hello to you too, Emerson. I see you’re feeling particularly vengeful this morning. Bad night?”

She has no idea. It’s not every evening you spend bargaining for your future with the love of your life. “Let’s say it was interesting.”

“I like interesting things.”

“So do I,” I say, not falling for it. I like Mariah, would even call her my friend, but I’m not about to explain the subtle nuances of my marriage to her. Some things are best kept between spouses—especially when those things involve blackmail and life-or-death ultimatums. Or, as we call it, a regular Tuesday. “What do you have for me on Leon?”

“You’re no fun, you know that?” she grumbles. She turns her attention to the laptop screen in front of her. “Most agents who ask me for risky and highly illegal favors give me at least a little entertainment in exchange. I don’t leave the office very often. If I want to live at all, I have to do it vicariously.”

“You’re out of the office now, aren’t you?”

“Only because I didn’t want anyone to hear your screams when I show you what I found.”

It’s preamble enough for the both of us, and she angles the screen so I can see what she’s pulled up. It’s not, as I expect, the most up-to-date record of events. The words on the scanned article are almost impossible to read, a newspaper story that was poorly printed to begin with.

“Is that Leon?” I lean forward, doing my best to make out the picture at the top, which looks to be around a dozen years old. In it, a grainy youth hangs his head, his arms behind his back in a telltale gesture of defeat. “Is that Leon…getting arrested?”

“Sure is, boss man. And for armed robbery, no less.”

Holy shit. I lean closer, but proximity doesn’t change the facts.

Armed robbery is big—it’s something not even Penelope and her friends can lay claim to. It’s also something I rarely deal with, as most of my criminals use brains rather than brawn to achieve their ends. Even in my wife’s heyday, she never used anything more dangerous than a lighter and whatever chemicals Jordan happened to be carrying in her purse at the time.

“I don’t understand. It took you all of twenty-four hours to uncover this information. How can the FBI not know?”

“What makes you think they don’t? It wouldn’t be the first time they overlooked a few criminal details in the name of justice.”

She doesn’t have to say the rest—that she’s a prime example of a record being expunged by the powers that be, that my own marriage skirts the line of reasonable personal risk. The longer I work for this organization, the more I’m coming to learn that we all have something to hide—and the things we hide might be what make us so valuable.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like that guy.”

“And here I thought you were jealous because he’s better looking than you.”

I casually flip Mariah off, but my insides aren’t so dismissive. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not Christopher Leon is the world’s most handsome man—but whether or not he’s the world’s most dangerous man is particularly relevant. Especially since I may have willingly sicced my wife on him.

“How much time did he serve?” I ask.

“Uh…” She scans her screen. “It looks like a hundred hours of community service. He was only seventeen at the time, and he pled out, so he was never officially charged. The two guys who were with him got five years each.”

“Of course they did. Was he the one who turned them in?”

Mariah nods with a wince. I don’t know why she feels bad about it. It’s all too easy to picture a fresh-faced Christopher Leon smiling as he sent two men to do the time for a crime he committed.

“So what else did he do?” I ask. “Skin animals? Throw rocks at toddlers on the playground? On a scale of one to serial killer, how bad is he?”

“A negative three? Sorry, Emerson—that one brush with the law is all he’s got. From there, his record is nothing but awards and accolades and ass-kissing of a magnitude I’ve never seen before.”

“Tease.”

“I don’t create the facts. I find them.”

“So that’s the whole story? He was a little shit of a kid who made a mistake, turned his friends in, and became one of the good guys to make up for it?” I shake my head. “No, that doesn’t fit.” It doesn’t explain why he’s acting so suspiciously toward me—toward Penelope—now.

“Don’t lose heart. There’s an interesting pattern to his behavior you might want to take a look at.”

“You are a tease!” I push my chair closer to hers. “What’d you find?”

“The police never recovered the jewelry he and his friends took. Don’t get too excited—it wasn’t anything noteworthy, just some necklaces and rings worth around ten grand—but if there’s a plea bargain involved, it usually means the items are returned.” She pulls up another screen, this one showcasing two columns of addresses. “I thought that was strange, especially since he and his mom moved into a pretty nice apartment after that.”

I sit up. “How nice?”

“Nicer than a waitress and a juvenile delinquent can usually afford. About ten thousand dollars nicer, if you ask me. And there’s no father listed on his birth certificate, so I’m guessing it’s not delayed child support kicking in.”

I sit up even straighter. The tale of a low-income woman raising a son on her own isn’t foreign to me, nor does it lower Christopher in my eyes. If anything, it brings him up a few pegs. My own mother worked countless double nursing shifts to make sure my childhood wasn’t lacking. From the day my dad walked out on us, she became everything to me—mother, father, financier, friend. Our home had also been a modest one, more comfortable than grand.

Of course, I was always up front about that fact. And I didn’t wave a gun at innocent people when things got tough.

I think about the suits Christopher wears, the names he drops, the car of my adolescent dreams he’s driving around town as we speak, and say, “Well, that’s interesting. He’s always made it seem like he comes from money.”

“I’m starting to wonder if that’s only what he wants us to think.” Mariah scrolls down, pointing out the similarities between the two columns. “Look here. The addresses on the left are all the places he lived over the next two years until he went to college—without a scholarship or loan package, I might add. The man paid cash for an Ivy League education. The addresses on the right are unsolved home invasion cases over the same period of time. Notice anything interesting?”

I do. Not one of the addresses is situated more than a few miles away from the other; most share a zip code. It’s hardly enough to convict a man, but if that map hanging on my office wall means anything, it’s that proximity and opportunity are usually related.

“So we think he made his journey up the Bureau ladder the easy way?” I’d always assumed his personal connections were the cause, but there are a few of our good leaders I can imagine being open to a friendly bribe. Considering how bad Christopher is at his job, it would make sense if he greased the way with stolen money.

“If you call a life of crime easy, sure.” Mariah’s tone indicates that she disagrees, but that’s an argument for another day. “It might even explain why he entered law enforcement in the first place. Getting away with theft is a hell of a lot easier when you lead the investigation yourself.”

And there it is. The clincher. Everything I need to convince me that I’m on the right path, that Christopher Leon is the Peep-Toe Prowler, despite the fact that he wears size eleven wingtips. He’s got access and information to pull off the jobs in the first place, resources and connections to cover up his tracks afterward. It would even explain why he’s so sloppy at the crime scenes—he’s purposely confusing the evidence.

But… “All right, if we go with that theory, it doesn’t explain why he wants Penelope to be involved,” I say, brow furrowed. “Unless he’s stuck and wants her help, but she would never do that.”

“No?” Again, Mariah’s tone is less than conciliatory, but I ignore her. Not because my wife is fully reformed—far from it—but because she would never lower herself to be someone else’s sidekick. Christopher might need her, but she definitely doesn’t need him.

“Of course, he might not know she’s unwilling,” Mariah muses. “Or he might have other plans for her, like needing another close friend to take the fall.”

I push my chair out with a start, heart leaden. “Fuck me.”

“No, thanks. You’re not my type.”

I kick the leg of Mariah’s chair, but it does little to alleviate my feelings. I’d need to smash about fifty such chairs to do that. “It wasn’t an offer. It was an observation. That’s not a bad theory—it fits almost everything.”

She makes a slight bow from her seated position. “Thank you. I’ll be here all week.”

“Do you happen to know what other cases he’s worked since he started at the FBI?”

“No, but I could find out for you. Why?”

Because if Mariah is right about Christopher—if I’m right about Christopher—then I may have stumbled onto something huge. A powerful man who takes what he wants, when he wants it, and then sets up other criminals to do the time for him. No one is in a better position to pull that off than a federal agent, a man whose crime spree has gone unchecked for years, a man who’s growing bolder and braver with each passing success.

Like I said before—he’s nothing more than a toddler pushing his boundaries.

Too bad this boundary has every intention of pushing back. I told him before that he’d put Penelope behind bars over my dead body, but that wasn’t wholly accurate. If he’s trying to pin these thefts on my wife, it’s not my death he should be worried about.

It’s his.

“Just get me a list and case details,” I say. Since my voice is hard enough to scare the café waitress into hurrying back behind the counter, I amend it with, “Please. If that’s something you can do.”

“I can pull that up in my sleep. Next time, you should try and get me a real challenge.”

“I’ll see what I can do. And Ying?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t mention this to anyone, okay? No need to start blowing smoke before we’re sure there’s a fire.”

“Sure thing, boss.” She sends me off with a wink. “But what are you going to do if the flame catches?”

That’s easy. I’m going to burn this whole operation down.

* * *

“I put you in an untenable position.”

My wife looks at me through perfectly round, accusing eyes. “Yes, you did.”

“It was wrong of me, and I admit that.”

“That’s very big of you, thanks.”

Her words are conciliating to the extreme. From the moment I got home, full of apologies and regrets about the deal I offered her yesterday, she’s been nothing but gracious in her acceptance of them.

The brat. She’s always been a terrible liar. Those perfectly round, accusing eyes are a dead giveaway.

“Then you’ll forget everything, and we can go back to normal?” I ask. It’s a long shot, but I have to make the attempt. Now that I have a real idea about what Christopher Leon is up to, the risk of letting Penelope play investigator is too high. He’s been waiting for his chance to get her involved, and I practically handed her over on a silver platter. “We can pretend it never happened?”

She blinks at me, her face a beautiful mask of innocence and devilry. It’s the exact look that got us where we are today, the look that captures everything I adore about this woman.

“Not on your life, Grant dear. I’ve done some hard thinking, and I’d like to formally accept your offer.”

I groan. Of course she would.

“I am going to keep investigating the Peep-Toe Prowler by whatever means necessary, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Her eyes meet mine in a clear challenge, and I’ll be damned if that challenge doesn’t spike straight to my groin. “I’m not afraid of Christopher Leon—and even more importantly, I’m not afraid of you.”

“I know you aren’t. You never have been. It’s the best and the worst thing about you.” In case she takes this as a compliment, I add, “Mostly the worst.”

She flashes a smile at me, and I recognize it at once—it’s that bright, brilliant smile of old, the smile I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again. I’m unprepared for how strongly the sight of it affects me, like a cannonball shot into my chest.

This woman, I think, will someday be the death of me.

If I’m lucky. If she lets me. If she doesn’t come to the same realization I have—that this staid, ordinary life we share is all I have to offer—and runs away as fast as her feet will take her.

“You should know that I have reason to believe Christopher Leon is using the FBI as a cover for his own crime ring,” I say in the absence of more appropriate sentiment. “He has a history of armed robbery and turning on his accomplices so they take the fall in his place. I think that’s why he’s been so interested in us, why the Peep-Toe thefts are so similar to yours.” I give her the details.

Penelope’s eyes widen in a combination of excitement and alarm, and I know she understands. All the things I want to say, all the things I can’t—she apprehends them as easily as if I’d said them all aloud.

“He wants to set me up?” She throws herself onto the couch and waits until I settle into my favorite armchair before continuing. “That’s why he’s being so nice and making all these overtures? To get me on his side?”

“That’s my theory, yes. He’s pretending he wants to set you up as a consultant for the case so you’re directly involved. He also wanted to get his hands on you years ago, back when I was starting the investigation on you and your dad, but he couldn’t get the access he needed.”

“Why’s that?”

I set my jaw. “Because I wouldn’t let him.”

Her lips turn up in a gentle smile. “Aw. Agent Emerson. Always my guard dog.”

“Yeah, well.” I take a deep breath in an attempt to balance myself. When she looks at me like that, mocking me with her nicknames and insinuations, it’s all I can do not to pick her up and haul her off to the bedroom. “Either he’s getting desperate, or he’s come up with a new plan to involve you, because he’s even more determined this time around.”

“So that’s it, then.” She speaks with the finality I’ve come to know and fear. “I have to accept his offer. There’s no better way to find out what he’s up to than to get as close as possible.”

“No.”

“But you said—”

“No.”

“We could set up a trap—”

“No.” I’m prepared to sit here and continue my flat denial for hours, but I realize her request to be involved includes more give-and-take than that. And I want her to be involved—I do. In this and in everything. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but the less you have to do with that man, the better. Until we know for sure what his plan involving you is, we can’t counteract it.”

She opens her mouth to argue, but I forestall her.

“I think your plan to spend more time with your grandmother is a good one. You’ll be able to see if Christopher shows up anywhere he’s not supposed to, ask around if anyone can recall seeing him at any of the parties where jewels went missing. I can’t take my suspicions to the FBI yet, which means having you work undercover is the most ideal course of action.”

She nods. “Okay. I can accept that. I don’t like it, but I can accept it.”

The amount of relief I feel equals the size of a mountain. “And you can also keep feeling Tara out, if you want. I have a few guys keeping an eye on her movements, but she’s not easy to track, since they lose eyes every time she goes into the hotel. Your extra surveillance will help.”

She bolts upright in her seat, eyes wide. “Oh, no! Tara.”

“She spent a few hours this morning getting her hair and nails done at a Gramercy salon, according to Paulie,” I offer. I don’t add the colorful list of adjectives Paulie used to describe how she looked when she finally emerged. He always did have a thing for the high-maintenance ones.

“No, I mean Tara. Knowing Christopher. Working with Christopher.”

“Yeah, we already suspected that. That’s why we’re watching her.”

“But what if she’s his backup plan?” Penelope asks. She makes a grunt of irritation when I don’t immediately respond. “Last year, when you tried to get me to steal the necklace out of our safe and I didn’t take the bait, what did you do?”

“I used Tara,” I say, realization settling in. “She was my backup plan.”

“Exactly!” Her triumph is a beautiful thing, flushing her with color and energy. “If they’re working together, it can only be because Christopher is planning on making her take the fall if I don’t pan out. He’s using her.”

“Huh. You might be on to something. That would fit the narrative.”

“Oh, geez. Do you want to be the one to warn her, or should I go do it?”

I struggle to keep a laugh from springing to my lips. The reluctance in my wife’s voice isn’t hard to miss. “I’m sure Tara’s fine. She’s not a woman to get caught unaware.”

“I know, but she could be in trouble.”

“No offense to your stepmother, but I’d much rather Leon pin it on her than you. And so, I might add, would you. Just yesterday, you wanted me to arrest her on any pretext I could find.”

“Yes, but that’s when I thought it was fair.”

I can’t help it—the laugh escapes. I doubt I’ll ever be able to fully understand the moral code under which my wife operates, but the one thing I can count on is that her own convoluted sense of right and wrong will always come out on top.

“I’ll have my guys step up their surveillance,” I promise. “And don’t forget she also has your dad looking out for her. She’s not without protection. The best thing we can do for her is find a way to get the evidence we need on Leon.”

“She doesn’t have my dad.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Penelope looks up at me, nose wrinkled. “She doesn’t have my dad. I don’t think they’re together—at least, not in a Biblical way. They’re just friends. He doesn’t feel that way about her anymore.”

Knowing what I do about sexy jewel thieves and the men who marry them, I very much doubt it, but I don’t say so. “Even if they aren’t sleeping together, I promise he still cares enough to protect her. He always will.”

“That’s awfully sentimental of you.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got some experience in this area.”

Her response to that bit of truth is to rub up against me like a cat, her lithe, compact body doing its best to make me forget everything else. For a woman whose job is predicated on sitting perfectly still for hours on end, she has a remarkable talent for constant movement. She slinks and slides and presses her breasts against me until I can’t think of anything but how much I want to take them in hand.

As punishment—both mine and hers—I don’t.

As proof that punishment—both mine and hers—is something I will never control, she yanks me by the belt buckle and grinds her hips against mine. I feel the sweet, unyielding pressure rocket through me.

“I’ll stop by the hotel later to warn her anyway,” she says, as though unaware of how much the touch of her body affects me. “I might not like her, but I know she’d do the same for me.”

Ah, jewel thieves. Why did I ever think I could figure them out?

“So does this mean we have a deal?” A smile plays on her lips as she continues her full-bodied assault on my sanity. I find out why when she lowers her voice to a purr and adds, “Partner?”

“Yes, Penelope,” I say, liking the sound of that word on her lips more than I thought I would. A partner implies longevity. A partner promises forever. The thought of losing her to Christopher’s machinations causes a visceral reaction, but losing her in any capacity does that. “This means we have a deal.”

The full implication of what I’ve done is borne on me when she jumps back, releasing a delighted squeal and clapping her hands. The coy temptress is gone as quickly as she came, replaced by the resilient, mischievous woman I first fell in love with.

Damn, but it feels good to see her again. I only wish it was me and not the promise of life-threatening danger that drew her out.

I groan. “What did I do in a past life to deserve you in this one?”

“You probably started a school for underprivileged youth,” she replies with a laugh. “No—a dozen schools for underprivileged youth. And an orphanage to match each one. I bet you even won a Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Either that or I was a mass murderer.”

“Yeah. That too.” She grins. “Should we seal this thing with a kiss or a handshake?”

I reach for her. “Oh, I’m definitely picking the first one.”

It’s not the most official way for an FBI agent to contract with an independent investigator, but I don’t care. It’s how this FBI agent and this independent investigator are going to do things.

She tastes, as she almost always does, of cotton candy. I never know if it’s her terrible diet that causes spun sugar to spout from her mouth, or if it’s part of her bewitching charm, but kissing her is always a feast for my senses. If she’d let me, I’d hold her here and keep kissing her until she begged me for mercy. Each curve of her body is worthy of hours of exploration, and hours of exploration in her arms are exactly what I need right now.

But of course, Penelope refuses to play along. She always refuses to play along.

“Don’t you dare try to keep me vertical right now,” she says and grabs my tie. Wrapping it around her fist, she tugs until I can feel the choke hold around my neck. “We’re taking this thing horizontal immediately.”

“Or what?” I ask, my voice strained—and not because of the tie. “You’ll strangle me?”

“It’s what you deserve,” she says and tugs again. This time, she brings my face level to hers and nips playfully at the side of my mouth. “No taking your time today, Grant Emerson. I need this to be fast and hard.”

I don’t bother asking why. For me, sex with Penelope has always been a transcendental experience; so much more than the fusing of two bodies, I like to think it’s the fusing of two souls. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see it the same way. For her, sex is more like a game—a power play that usually finds her coming out way ahead. In this, as in all things, she likes there to be a fight.

Which is fine in theory. Fighting this woman is easy. Fighting this woman is fun. Winning against her? That’s a different story.

“Fast and hard, huh?” I ask.

“Unless you think you can’t handle it?” she asks archly. “I wouldn’t want to force you to do anything you’re not capable of.”

“Brat,” I growl and close the distance between us.

Fast and hard isn’t a challenge where this woman is concerned, not by a long shot. If I gave in to my baser instincts, fast and hard is the only way we’d ever make love. It’s so easy for me to push her to the couch, catching her whoosh of surprise with my mouth. It’s even easier for me to bypass her black miniskirt to slip my hand between her soft, parted legs.

Penelope’s legs have always been one of my favorite parts of her, mostly because I know what they’re capable of. Their feats of endurance and flexibility are second only to how they feel under my hands.

Still, I move quickly over the silken skin, feeling her quiver as I reach the eager heat at the apex of her thighs. Her excitement is no surprise, nor is the way I react to it. If, at any point in our relationship, she’d shown the least reluctance to welcome me into her arms or into her bed, our story might have had a different ending. Fortunately, she’s always been consistent in this regard. I might not know what’s going on inside her head or heart, but her body has always been an open book. She wants me.

She wants me fast, and she wants me hard.

And I, weak bastard that I am, give her exactly that.

We don’t bother removing all our clothes. There’s no need. All it takes is a bit of kissing and a tilt of her hips before we’re both primed and ready.

There is no finesse. I don’t get to run my tongue and teeth over her body or finger the supple rise of her breasts. The way she arches against me demands that I thrust inside her without affection or regard.

I do, but I can’t help feeling both affection and regard. With this woman, there always will be. I pause at the entrance to her body, gazing down at her flushed skin, at the frustration of her lip sucked up and chewed between her teeth, and tell her how much I love her—the best way I know how.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Penelope Blue,” I say, my breathing hard. “Just when I think I’ve got the upper hand, you turn everything upside down.”

“I’m going to turn you upside down if you don’t hurry up,” she retorts.

“Now that’s something I’d like to see,” I say.

The tussle lasts for all of five seconds. She’s pinned underneath me on the couch, her clothes so wound up and askew, they bind her limbs. I outweigh her by at least seventy pounds, and my arms are braced on either side of her head. In no way, shape, or form should she win this match.

But she smiles up at me, a calculating gleam in her eyes. I’m so distracted by how beautiful she looks like that, her lips swollen and her game face on, that I don’t notice her hands snaking down between us. A thief’s hands always move faster than you’d expect.

Her grip on my hard length is both sudden and excruciating. It’s not a painful excruciation, though. This is the opposite of that; it’s pleasure in its purest form, a woman who knows how to drive a man to distraction with a few expert flicks of her wrist.

There’s no pretending I’m in charge anymore. While I’m busy trying to keep myself from losing control, she manages to wriggle out from beneath me. She pushes me to my back and climbs astride, pausing only long enough to fit our bodies neatly together.

“You cheated,” I say, but I can’t find it in me to care.

“I always do,” she says and begins moving again. “I always will.”

In true Penelope Blue fashion, her movements are not simple ones. She squirms and undulates and holds nothing back. No matter what task she takes it upon herself to do, she’s always like that—dedicated and uninhibited. It’s one of the things I love most about her. The sky could fall around us, but still, she’d sit astride and scream my name, refusing to acknowledge anything until she’s damn well good and ready.

The waves of her pleasure tug at me with their familiar insistent pull. The result is a rushed but powerful orgasm, the shudder of our release difficult to hear over the pounding of blood in my ears.

I’d like to do more to her—so much more, and for so much longer—but I know better than to push my luck. Especially since we stay on the couch, horizontal together, until the sun starts to set outside. We don’t talk, but her head nestles perfectly in the crook of my neck, our limbs intertwined and our hearts beating in sync in a rare moment of unity. With each gentle stroke of my fingers down her spine, I can’t help but recite the same two sentences over and over in my head.

She’s my wife. She’s my partner.

And for now, she’s safe in my arms.