11

THE WHISKEY ROOM

(Eighteen and a Half Months Ago)

At first glance, the Whiskey Room was the least intimidating watering hole in all of Manhattan. There was something about a pub-style bar amid all the bass-thumping, overpriced social clubs that made me feel instantly welcome. It might have been the sticky wood-grain bar top, the beer taps that splashed foam all over the glass, or the way people walked through the door and immediately loosened their belts.

Literally. Ties were unknotted and jackets shrugged off. Shirtsleeves were pushed to the elbow, and high heels dangled from toes. The men and women inside this bar were clearly coming down from a hard day at work and looking to drown their problems.

I could respect that. I didn’t necessarily agree with it, but I could respect it.

Then I noticed how many of those jackets came off to reveal shoulder holsters and heard the guffaws of a pair of men crowing over a successful five-hour standoff. A girl could be blinded by the glint of so much honor and good intentions collected under one roof.

“Are we sure this is the wisest decision right now? I thought we were supposed to hide from the FBI, not seek them out.” Jordan looked much more at home here than I did. She wore a pencil skirt and a silky red blouse, and she could probably pass as just another agent-at-arms ready to wind down for the night. Me, I’d opted for black leggings and a black T-shirt—all I needed was a dark beanie, and I’d look like every criminal these guys ever bagged. My entire wardrobe was, unfortunately, a product of my career choice. It was either this or my jogging gear again.

At least the shirt plunged in a deep V at the front and was fitted to my body. I noticed a look of approval or two on the way in.

“Oh, it’s a terrible idea,” I agreed and ushered her toward a booth in the back. It was fairly isolated and gave us a good view of the door, which suited my purposes just fine. I had a man to catch, but I didn’t necessarily need an audience while I did it. “You were a fool to come with me. There’s a fifty-fifty chance we’ll walk out of here in handcuffs. More like sixty-forty, if I’m being honest.”

Jordan slid into the seat opposite me, one brow raised in concern. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Not really, but I liked being upfront about our chances of success. “What’s that saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Look around. You can’t get any closer to the enemy than this.”

The brow stayed firmly raised, and she didn’t take me up on the offer to peruse the bar’s impressively fit clientele, causing a healthy chunk of my confidence to slough away. She was wavering, I could tell—questioning the wisdom of entering an FBI bar, of being part of my team, of continuing an acquaintance with me, period. I couldn’t blame her—that was the worst part. I wouldn’t have stuck by me, either.

“It’s okay if you want to go.” I tried not to let my voice sound as wobbly as it felt. “Riker didn’t bother to hide his feelings about this idea, and there’s no guarantee Grant will show up anyway. He only mentioned the bar in passing that one time.”

“But you think he’ll come?”

I did. I couldn’t have said exactly why I thought he’d be here, waiting for me, expecting me, but the feeling was unshakeable. He was unshakeable. I saw him everywhere I went these days—not in real life, of course, but you know what I mean. A flash of his broad shoulders here, the low timbre of his voice there, the image of him shirtless all over the place.

What? An imagination can be a tricky thing if you let it in the driver’s seat, and my imagination had shoved me out of the car days ago.

After the initial debacle at the library, my reaction was to go into hiding. My whole body thrummed as I realized what—or rather, who—I was dealing with. An FBI agent, yes, but more importantly, a man who knew things about my past. Dangerous things. Profitable things. See, Grant wasn’t interested in me as a person. Oh, I think he liked flirting with me, and I was sure it suited his masculine pride to know that all he had to do was smile and touch my lips to make my insides turn to mush, but other than that? I was a conduit, a source of information. Nothing more.

He wanted my dad’s fortune, not me. No one ever wanted me.

That was when I realized I had nothing to fear from him, imaginary or otherwise. The jerk thought I might know something about the whereabouts of my father’s long-lost treasure, and he’d hit on the idea that a love affair was the fastest way to access it. He was that low. He’d use his charming wit and disarming smile to try and take the one thing from me that no one had gotten over the years.

People had tried—believe me, they’d tried. My stepmom, friends of my father who cared more about the money than whether or not I had somewhere to sleep, so-called friends who chatted me up only to drop me when it turned out I wasn’t sleeping with diamonds under my mattress… My entire life was a testament to the allure of cold, hard cash.

Well, fine. Two could play this game. I could smile wide and bat my eyes, too. I could lower his defenses and probe for information. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to know where the Blue Fox hid his fortune—and he wasn’t the only one willing to go to unscrupulous lengths to find out.

We’d see how he liked it when I turned his insides to mush.

“He’ll be here,” I said firmly.

“And you really want to do this?” Jordan asked. “You want to start this war with this particular man?”

Yes. Absolutely. Without question.

In fact, my heart picked up as I pictured him sauntering through the bar door, at how smoothly he’d assimilate me sitting here so he gave nothing away, at how quickly I’d let him. He was the professional, but I had street smarts. He held the cards, but I called the game.

Damn, but it was going to be fun seeing which of us would eventually come out on top.

“I know it’s crazy, but yes, I do. I’ve never been this close to someone who might have hard evidence about my dad’s disappearance. I think I might actually be able to make this work.”

Jordan’s head tilted as she examined me. It was one of her long, silent looks, the kind that made me squirm and feel like I was about to be sent to my room without dinner. But when she finally spoke, she surprised me. “Do you remember that time we almost got arrested outside the courthouse?”

“Which time?” Unless I was mistaken, there’d been more than one.

“Um…the first? It was early on. We must have been sixteen or seventeen at the time. Riker was going through his emo phase, so his nails were all painted black.”

Oh yes. That was a phase I wouldn’t soon forget. It had suited him. “We were seventeen, which means you must have been only fourteen or so. God, you were cute back then.”

She wrinkled her nose at me. She was still cute, and we both knew it. Life had been cruel to her in more ways than one, but from the outside, you’d think she was raised behind a white picket fence instead of institution bars. “That cop kept telling us to leave, but you and Riker wanted to wait for the hot dog vendor to make his rounds.”

I remembered it well, and so did my salivary glands. “Oh man. His hot dogs were the best. I think it was because he never changed the water he cooked them in. It was like ten years of flavor in every bite.”

She ignored my reminiscences with a grimace. “You told the cop that exact same thing, so he asked to see the money we intended to use to buy our food.”

“Of course we didn’t have any.” I grinned. We never had any back then. We used to pay for each meal with our wits. “Do you still remember how it all went down?”

“Of course I do. You told him exactly how we planned to get our hands on the food.”

It had been a simple but beautiful plan, as all of ours were. Jordan was set to run across the street and start a garbage can on fire while Oz dropped something metal into a stranger’s pocket to set off the courthouse security alarms. The cop would have to choose which problem to check out, which would leave Riker free to harass the vendor while I slipped up from behind and took all the sweet, semitoxic hot dogs my arms could hold.

“It was a good plan,” I said with a sigh.

“It was a great plan,” Jordan agreed. “And I was sure you’d blown it by outlining all the details in advance, mocking that cop to his face. You were always doing that—breaking the rules, riling up authorities.”

I could see where she was going with this. “That was the most successful job we’ve ever pulled, I think. That poor guy had no idea what to do when the cart arrived and you sauntered across the street, setting not just one, but three garbage cans on fire. He couldn’t believe your audacity.”

“That was technically an accident,” Jordan said. “I only meant to do the one.”

It didn’t matter. The results were the same. The cop knew very well that all four of us were in on it—thanks to my handy tip ahead of time—but he couldn’t arrest us all. In his hesitation deciding which one to go after, we all got away.

Teamwork, that’s what that was. The one advantage we’ve always had.

Even though it was a good memory—a happy one—Jordan’s brows came down in a moment of gravity. “After that, I thought you were the bravest and luckiest girl I’d ever known. I still do. No matter how dire the circumstances, you always manage to make them work in your favor. You were born to do this stuff.”

I knew what came next. This was the part where she pulled the plug. This was the part where she told me the hazards of my friendship were too high, that she was leaving just like everyone else.

“But?” I prompted.

Her moment of hesitation seemed to go on forever, giving me plenty of time to go through all the sensations of loss and despair, the two so familiar by now that I almost welcomed the numbing lash of them.

“But nothing.” She shrugged. “I trusted you then, and I’m trusting you now. Taunt your cop and tell me where to set the fires, Pen. Oz and I have your back. We always will.”

The prick of oncoming tears had me blinking rapidly and pinching the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t sure anyone had given me such a nice compliment before, recognized that my ability to survive was one of the only things I had to offer the world.

To save myself from the embarrassment of breaking down, I mumbled something about needing a better view and approached the bar, my smile brittle and my determination to see this thing with Grant through even stronger. Jordan was right. The trick when dealing with officers of the law was to throw them off their game. In the general balance of the world, they held all the power. They were so sure of their position, their superiority, their ability to stay on the straight and narrow and come out triumphant. It never occurred to them to question what they’d do if they suddenly found themselves in a thick and tangled brush. Whereas my kind of people had nothing at all. No power, no superiority, no path. We hid in the shadows and grew impervious to thorns. Most importantly, we had each other.

I dared Grant to try and scratch me now.

“Hello, bartender,” I said with a bright smile, made all the brighter by the glitter of tears I refused to let fall. “I’d like a tonic water with a twist of lemon, please.”

Jordan joined me, her presence at my elbow palpable and comforting.

So of course, I ruined it. “And my friend here would love nothing more than an Irish Car Bomb to get her going.”

Jordan grimaced, but she accepted the Guinness-Bailey’s-Jameson boilermaker the bartender handed her in good form. “You’re hilarious, Pen. You should say that a little bit louder next time.”

“Relax.” I hooked my foot on the barstool and appraised the crowd of people playing pool and chatting at tables, none of them paying us the least heed. “These are stout-drinking folk. They’re used to it.”

We sipped our drinks for a minute—well, I sipped while Jordan did her best to stop the overflow of alcohol spilling out of her glass—as I renewed my appraisal of the crowd. Ordinary guard dog, ordinary guard dog, ordinary guard dog…not a single K-9 unit in sight.

“Still no sign?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t see him.” I placed my drink down with a sigh. “He’s probably stuck doing paperwork for that failed library job, poor man.”

Jordan laughed and then immediately covered her mouth, as if finding my stunt funny was cause for arrest. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll be angry about that when he sees you again?”

Nope. Not even a little. He was too good an actor—too good at playing this game—to let something like anger get in the way of winning. I may not have known him long, but I knew that much for sure.

“I can handle Grant Emerson,” I said firmly.

“That’s good to hear,” Jordan said and nodded at the door. “Because I think he just arrived.”

Every nerve ending wanted me to turn around and glance in the direction she indicated, but I was determined to play it cool. “Oh yeah? What makes you think it’s him?”

She grinned. “Because he’s heading right for us.”

* * *

“Well, well, well. You do know where the Whiskey Room is.”

I could tell the exact moment when Grant reached us. Not by the sound of his voice—that low rumble of his almost-but-not-quite-Southern twang, the vibrations shaking me to my core—but because he leaned in, placed a hand on the small of my back, and dropped a kiss on my cheek.

A kiss, of all things. This man I barely knew and didn’t trust, this man I’d fled from last week as if my life depended on it, had the nerve to put his lips on my skin. Not in a creepy way, either. It was friendly, gentlemanly, one of those gestures only polite and incredibly confident men can pull off.

If that weren’t bad enough, there was also just enough stubble on his jaw to remind me that he might have been friendly and gentlemanly, but he was also very much a man. All my senses spiraled outward at once. I was still trying to find my balance when he gestured at the agent standing behind him.

“I don’t believe you’ve met my friend and partner yet,” he said with a casual air.

Well, crap. They were multiplying. “Um…no. I don’t believe I have.”

“Then let me introduce Simon Sterling. Simon, this is Penelope Blue—the woman I was telling you about.”

Oh, I bet he had. I could just picture the two of them standing by one of those boards where they try to figure out crimes, my face and my father’s face connected by a red string. That’s how official the two of them looked side by side. Simon had the wide shoulders and cocky stance I’d come to expect from this particular breed of man, but he was more urbane than Grant—and that wasn’t a compliment. I couldn’t say if it was the severity of his necktie, pulled tight like a noose, or the way his cold, blue eyes glittered like ice as they took me in, but this was clearly a man who considered himself above his company and had no intention of being charmed by my quirky criminal ways.

Good. I had no intention of being charmed by him, either. One FBI agent whose smile stopped my heart was enough.

“I’m sure it was all wonderful things,” I said and extended a calm hand. I also congratulated myself on my foresight in bringing Jordan along. It hadn’t been my intention to make her play wingman, but if anyone could get somewhere with this uptight man of the law, it was her. Unpleasant, fastidious men like him loved her tender ways. “This is my friend, Jordan.”

Based on the twinkle in Grant’s eye as he politely expressed a greeting, I could tell he knew her name already. “Wonderful,” he said and meant it.

Simon wasn’t quite as excited at the prospect, but some kind of secret message passed between the men, and they arranged themselves in a divide-and-conquer stance. Obviously, Simon was to take Jordan aside and pump her for details, while I was to be assigned Grant’s undivided attention.

I was more concerned for myself than for her. Jordan was like a vault—she’d learned a long time ago to hide her true feelings from the authority figures in her life, foster parents and FBI agents alike—and she could handle herself. Me, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about. Already I could feel myself basking in the warm, soft glow of Grant’s gaze, leaning into his strength as if it could carry me across mountains.

“I thought for sure I scared you away last week,” Grant said, his expression neutral. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to discover I was wrong.”

With that, the game was back on. I wasn’t scared—and he’d soon come to learn that he was wrong about a heck of a lot of things.

Jordan picked up her cue in an instant, putting a hand on Simon’s arm. “And I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet someone of your expertise. I have so many questions I want to ask.”

Simon looked down at her hand as though it might burn him. “About crime?”

“Oh, no. I know enough about that already.” I thought I heard Grant choke a little at Jordan’s honesty, but it might have been my imagination. “What I’m really curious about is a movie I was watching on TV the other night. There was this FBI agent scaling the side of the Empire State Building using nothing but suction cups, but based on my understanding of air pressure and surface tension…”

Her voice trailed off as she directed him toward the booth we’d been sitting in earlier. I had to bite on my lip to keep from laughing out loud. I was wrong about the tenderness in Jordan keeping Simon busy. Her inquisitive mind would more than take care of that. I doubt Simon could teach her anything she didn’t already know, but she’d at least make sure he tried.

“You have good taste in friends, I’ll give you that,” Grant said as soon as they moved out of earshot. “I like her.”

So did I. “I hope your partner can be trusted with her. He seems…” By the book? Straitlaced? Unpleasant? “Serious.”

Grant twisted his head to look at me. “He is serious. But he’s also been my partner for a long time. I can safely promise you that no harm will come to her through his hands.”

Much as I hated to admit it, I would have to trust this man enough to take him at his word. Of course, that didn’t mean I failed to notice that he fully reserved the right to cause harm through his own hands. I wasn’t stupid.

I smiled to show my blessing. Grant smiled back to accept my blessing. And that was that.

“Excellent,” he said and turned his attention to the bar. “I’ll have what the lady’s having. And get her another.”

“Make mine a double this time, bartender.”

The bartender winked at me and carefully poured out two glasses of tonic water. Grant took his in hand with an almost perplexed look on his face.

“Sorry to ruin your big moment,” I said. “But I don’t drink.”

“Ever?”

“Not since I was about eighteen years old.” I shrugged an apology and set to work squeezing my lemon. It behooved me to tread lightly moving forward—especially regarding my tales of the past—but if I wanted to get answers out of this man, I would have to open up enough to keep him interested. Give and take, push and pull. Nothing in this world was free. “I drank a lot of malt liquor and bottom-shelf vodka when I was young—and I mean a lot.”

“Fake ID?”

“Five-fingered discount.”

Grant’s eyes flashed in an expression of interest, the same way they always did when I surprised him with the truth. “Ah, youthful dissipation. I know it well.”

Somehow, I doubted that. “Oh yeah? You hit up a lot of liquor stores when you were a kid, Agent Emerson?”

He laughed and loosened the knot of his tie, just like every other lackey in the place. Unlike everyone else, however, there was a sensuality about the action, a man allowing himself to come undone at just the throat. A flash of that vulnerable spot, taut with muscles and sprinkled with hair, was all that he released to me.

Oh, dear God. It was enough.

“I wasn’t always an officer and a gentleman. I had my fair share of youthful shenanigans.”

“If you called them shenanigans, I promise you had no such thing.”

This time, his laugh was a rumble, that force of nature not even his massive strength could hold back. “You’re a fascinating woman, you know that? The stories I bet you could tell…”

He had no freaking idea.

Or maybe he did.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” I changed the subject with a smile, fishing around in my bag. My fingers sought the peace offering I’d brought with me. “I came to apologize for storming out on you the other day, and to give you this.”

“This?”

I handed over a carefully wrapped box the size of his palm. “I’ve got a few connections. It’s probably better if you don’t ask.”

His face revealed absolutely nothing as he took the gift in hand, but I could tell he was surprised. Three times I’d encountered this man, and I was already beginning to figure him out. His laughter was genuine, his smile devastating, his sense of humor perfectly intact. He was also phenomenally good at hiding any emotion other than that. Amusement and interest were allowed to run free, but the rest of it—the suspicion and the alarm, the fact that he genuinely thought I just handed him a stolen piece of jewelry or drugs in the middle of a federal agent’s bar—was quashed before it had a chance to surface.

He was good. He was very, very good.

But I was better.

“It’s a bit early in our relationship for presents, don’t you think?” he asked, but he tugged at the ribbon, his movements as methodical as if he were unwrapping a bomb. “I’d have gotten one for you, but I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know my name, what I do for work, and that I have deep-seated daddy issues. What more is there?”

He paused in the middle of sliding open one end of the paper. “Why did you bring your friend Jordan with you today?”

Well, well. He wasn’t wasting any time, was he? Fine, then. Neither would I.

“She insisted. My friends are very protective, especially when it comes to things like this.” I shrugged to show I wasn’t intimidated by him. “Besides, I didn’t want to come in alone only to be bombarded by federal agents trying to pick me up. They have this strange thing for me.”

“They do, huh?”

“Can’t seem to get enough. Sometimes, it feels like there’s one waiting for me every time I turn around.”

His grin deepened so much, there was actually a hint of a dimple. “I wonder why that is?”

“I suspect it’s my weirdly skinny fingers.” I nodded at the present. “It takes you a really long time to open things.”

“Sorry. It’s my grandma’s fault. She always liked to save the wrapping paper so she could reuse it. That woman never threw anything away.”

I could tell by the way he paused that he wanted me to offer a tidbit of my own in exchange, but I couldn’t have told him anything about my grandparents if I wanted to. My dad’s parents died when he was young—hence the life of crime—and we never talked about my mom at all. I could count the things I knew about her on two hands.

She’d been beautiful and funny and good. Her family disowned her when she married my dad. She died giving birth to me less than a year later. And the one time I asked about any aunts or uncles or cousins I might have floating around out there, my dad shut down so quickly that I’d never had the courage to bring it up again.

I’d had to be content with the two of us. Until, of course, he’d remarried and changed everything.

“Um…my stepmom was the opposite?” There. That would have to be enough to satiate the beast. “Unless it had substantial resale value, she threw everything away.”

He paused long enough for me to realize I’d made a huge error. “You have a stepmom?”

Shit. Crap. Damn. I’d assumed the FBI would have been diligent enough to find all the records of my father’s past—including the courthouse wedding that tied him to a woman young enough to be his daughter. But if they’d somehow missed that one, I’d just handed them a whole new lead on a silver platter.

“Well, mom is pushing it,” I said quickly, hoping to make light of my mistake. Maybe if I didn’t draw attention to it, he wouldn’t realize I’d spoken without thinking. Maybe he’d believe it to be another plant. “She wasn’t really the maternal type. Her idea of bonding time was to take me shopping with her. I had to pretend to steal something and keep the security guards busy while she got out with ten times as many goods.”

There. Hopefully, that would keep him busy for a while. Nothing I’d just said was a secret—there were several juvenile arrests on my record to attest to it—and I was establishing a foundation of trust.

“More shenanigans?” Grant asked, but he didn’t comment further. He might have, but he finally opened the package to reveal a box of extra-extra-large condoms. His laugh was all I needed to assure me I’d made the right choice.

I pointed at the slogan on the front of the box. “Guaranteed not to inhibit blood flow.”

When he looked up, his eyes were fully crinkled. “You have connections, huh?”

“I told you not to ask.”

“Oh, I won’t.” He held up three fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “I also won’t push my luck by asking if you’d like to take these out for a test drive.”

A twinge of regret took up residence alongside the desire in my gut. I mean, it wasn’t like I was actually going to sleep with the guy, but he could have at least made a push for it. It would have been fun to turn him down.

“So, what now?” I asked. “I tracked you down. I apologized. I introduced sexual tension into our relationship. What comes next?”

He dropped a few bills on the bar to cover our drinks and rose. His movements were silent but assured, and when he extended a hand to help me to my feet, I took it.

“You didn’t introduce the sexual tension.” He didn’t relinquish his hold on my hand. If anything, his grip grew tighter, determined to shackle me to his side. “That’s been there a lot longer than you realize.”

Not true. I knew this man was going to be a problem the first time I laid eyes on him, standing on the other side of those docks as I hyperventilated inside a cargo box. Now, as then, I couldn’t seem to ignore the thrill of being near him. The hard, heated wall of his body pressing against mine was doing dangerous things to my self-control.

“As to what we do next, I was thinking we should abandon Simon and Jordan and head out to dinner,” he said.

“Dinner?”

“Absolutely. Dinner, dessert, and one of those heartfelt conversations that goes long into the night.” He lifted a hand to my cheek, brushing my skin so gently, it almost didn’t count as a touch.

But it did. It counted big time.

“I can’t wait to learn everything there is to know about you, Penelope Blue. Shenanigans, evil stepmother, and all.”

Of course he couldn’t, the sneak.

“Will you come?” he asked. Anxiously, I thought.

I cast a look over at Jordan and Simon, the former chatting animatedly away as she scribbled what I could only assume were complex chemical equations on a cocktail napkin, the latter with that look of overwhelmed incomprehension men always got when Jordan talked shop. Oz was the only man I’d seen who accepted that side of her without so much as a blink.

“I meant what I said before.” Grant’s voice was earnest. “Simon won’t hurt her. You have my word on that.”

“Oh, it’s not her I’m worried about,” I said. And I wasn’t. As I accepted Grant’s hand and invitation, I knew damn well that I was the one who was going to need all the help I could get.