18

THE INTERROGATION

(Present Day)

Tracking down a rogue FBI agent and his cat burglar cohort isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

In the movies, all it takes is a few taps on the keyboard to access surveillance cameras or the lucky timing of a GPS tracker placed surreptitiously in a shoe. We are, unfortunately, without cameras or trackers or any other technological advantage that might give us an edge. What we do have, however, is a whiteboard. It’s the one Jordan uses to keep her highly organized lists of grocery items and complex chemical equations, but I’ve taken it over.

Man Hunting Task List, I scrawl at the top. Now that I know Riker has been arranging clandestine meetings with criminal overlords behind my back, we need to act quickly. We don’t have a lot of time to root around for information—the second Grant lifted that necklace from the safe, the countdown began.

We started this race a year and a half ago, standing near a sewer grate. Two people not exactly meeting for the first time but doing a heck of a good job pretending we were. Now that the finish line is within reach, I’m ready for the final sprint.

My heart might be broken and my best friend a traitor, but never let it be said that Penelope Blue gave up without a fight.

“As far as we can tell, we have three leads,” I say. I tap the marker on the top of the board and start by writing Blackrock in bold letters. “We know they’re going to try and sell the necklace to Blackrock in exchange for information, so Riker, you should start there.”

He looks up from where he’s slouched in the corner. “Why me?”

I don’t have the time or the energy to placate him right now. “Because you’re the only one who knows what he looks like or where he is. Find him, tail him, and see if Grant and Tara are skulking around. You might be able to intercept them before they can hand the necklace over.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he mutters. “He’s not just sitting around an office taking appointments. He doesn’t check in on Foursquare.”

“But you’ve met him before, and you had a plan to deliver the necklace, right?” Jordan asks, much more gently than I was about to. “Can’t you find him that way?”

“You don’t find Blackrock. He finds you.”

I wish he’d stop acting like we’re too stupid to understand the intricacies of criminal relationships. The four of us understand nothing but criminal relationships. It’s all we know, all we’re good at. Just ask my husband.

“So they don’t have any way to contact him either, right?” I ask. The effort to remain calm stretches my smile thin. “We have time?”

“They have the necklace. That’s enough—especially since you said Grant had Tara leave fingerprints behind.” He looks at me, a cold, hard chip of ice on his shoulder. “There aren’t a lot of things that would get the attention of a man like Blackrock, but an FBI agent tying his wife to a chair and running off with both his mistress and government property is one of them.”

“She’s not his mistress.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The woman he betrayed you with in every other possible way. He’s a real prince.”

Jordan stages another timely intervention. “Can you think of any other way to contact Blackrock, Riker? Side routes, a friend of a friend, a bribe?”

“I can try, but I’m telling you—he’s not an easy man to find. The one time we had an actual face-to-face meeting, it was in the back of an unmarked van with a gun pointed at my head.” He looks at me again, as cold and angry as ever. “He’s as dangerous as he is powerful. It’s why I was trying to keep you out of it.”

I’m not sure whether I can believe him anymore, so I ignore the comment and start writing again. “Okay, that brings us to number two on the list—Paulson Jewelers. Jordan, I think you should follow through with our original plan by making a visit and poking around. Take Oz with you and pretend to be looking at engagement rings or something. The staff might let something slip about Grant or Erica or anyone else who might be involved.”

“What are you going to do?” Jordan asks.

That’s the two-million-dollar question. I turn my back to the group and slowly write out the last item on the list. Three careful letters—letters I’ve become hauntingly familiar with over the years.

“FBI.” The marker screeches as I finish. “One of us is going to have to report the theft and see how deeply the authorities are involved.”

Jordan sucks in a sharp breath. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

Not at all. I cap the pen and survey my board with something approaching triumph. I might not have Riker’s flair for planning a flawless heist from start to finish, but it’s not bad.

“It has to be done,” I say. “Either the feds are in on this scheme, which means they know where Grant is right now, or he’s using them just as much as he used me.”

“Which means…” Jordan doesn’t have to finish. If he’s using the FBI as a way to get to my dad’s money, then Grant is even more dangerous than we suspected. That’s a whole different level of treachery.

“Simon isn’t going to be happy to see me, but I have to talk to him. He knows Grant better than anyone.” Better than me, even. “Fair warning, though—he’s probably going to slap me in handcuffs and throw me in a dungeon. There might be torture involved. That man has wanted to waterboard me since the day we met.”

“What is it you’re always saying, Pen?” Riker asks. “If they haven’t arrested us by now, they’re obviously not going to?”

“That was before my husband ran off with a two-million-dollar necklace that was supposed to be in their safekeeping,” I say, but there’s no use painting it in any other light. It’s off to the gallows I go.

* * *

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the illustrious Mrs. Emerson.”

I stiffen at the sound of Simon’s voice mocking me from behind, but I don’t turn to face him. First of all, I’m not Mrs. Emerson. Grant made the offer of his name when we got married, but I politely declined. And by politely, I mean that I told him the only way I’d ever cease being a Blue is if we swapped last names entirely.

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t take me up on the offer. Seems his idealized view of being absorbed into another person’s identity only goes one way.

Second of all, I’m not about to give Simon the satisfaction of subservience. I came in prepared to play nice, but that was before he had me detained and thrown into an airless interrogation room for eight hours while they went over the crime scene. If he wants to talk to me now, he can face me inside the interrogation room like a good little federal agent.

“Have anything to say for yourself?” he asks.

That I want nothing more than to climb into the mail cart and hide there until it’s safe to leave? Too bad. I’m not giving him that ammunition. Instead, I smile sweetly and lift my wrists. “Are the handcuffs really necessary? I walked in of my own free will, if you recall.”

Now that his pecking order has been established, Simon takes the seat across the wood-grain table from me. He’s wearing his customary noose-like tie, his brown hair weighed down with enough product to set the entire room on fire. His nostrils pinch once he sees how unruffled I am, but I’m not sure how else he expects me to react. This is hardly the dungeon of my worst nightmares. Some air conditioning would be nice, but it turns out FBI interrogation rooms are a lot nicer than the inner city ones they show on cop dramas. I feel like I’m inside an accountant’s office more than anything else.

Well, an accountant with a BDSM fetish, maybe. These handcuffs are tight.

“Let’s call them a precautionary measure.” Simon pauses until I lower my wrists again. “Your fingerprints were found at the scene.”

“Of course they were. It’s my house. I live there. I occasionally touch the things inside it.”

“Including the safe?” He tosses a manila folder in front of me, and an arc of photographs of my living room fan out in an artful arrangement. “There seemed to be an awful lot of fresh prints all over it.”

“I don’t know if you remember, but I came in to these exact offices to drop off Grant’s passport last week—you can check that with your security log. As it happens, we keep the passports in the safe. I had no choice but to open it. Mine’s probably still in there, if you guys haven’t already bagged it up and sent it off to forensics.”

Simon looks as if he doesn’t want to believe me—his face screwed up like a child being denied an ice cream cone—but he doesn’t have any other choice. It’s the truth, after all.

“Okay, fine,” he concedes. “You have an excuse for that one.”

“Let me stop you right there—I have an excuse for all of them, and I’m not afraid to use them.” I lift my wrists and shake them at him, the metal rattling like old prison chains. “Take these off, and maybe I’ll be willing to give you information that’ll help your investigation.”

“Do you have information that will help my investigation?”

I cock my head at him. “Did you happen to notice a few restraints on the chair in the living room? The ones that made it look like someone was tied up there for a while?”

“We noticed.”

“Well, that someone was me. I was there when they took the necklace. I saw the whole thing.”

He sits back, clearly surprised by my candor and unsure what to do about it. I should probably be more insulted that he thinks me incapable of telling the truth, but it’s no worse than Grant’s reactions over the past year and a half. I can almost picture my husband in the room with us, leaning against the door, his eyes crinkled in amusement as I make no attempt to fool him.

Something inside my chest snags. Whatever his faults, Grant has always been prepared to accept me for who I am. Lying, telling the truth, wasting precious government resources with wild goose chases…I like to think he takes pleasure in them all.

Then again, I also like to think he’d never betray me when it comes to the important things.

“So you saw the theft take place?” Simon asks.

“Yep.”

“And you didn’t report it right away?”

“Nope.”

He makes a strange grunting noise, not unlike a pig crossed with a crow. “And you have the audacity to ask me to undo your cuffs? It sounds to me like you were an accomplice. You’re not going anywhere.”

I shrug. “Suit yourself, but I think it’s only fair to give me a pass on this one. The reason I didn’t report it is because Grant is the one who stole it.”

Simon’s reaction is immediate. He leans sharply across the table, his face inches from mine. “You lie.”

“I wish. Look me in the eyes. Give me a polygraph. Torture me. It’ll still be what happened, even after you take out your frustrations on me.” I don’t look away from the icy gaze he has locked on me. “I know you don’t like me, Simon. You never have, and I don’t blame you for it. But that doesn’t make this any less true.”

“You were in on it, weren’t you.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question. “You made him do it.”

“No. I walked in on him in the middle of the job—and believe me, I was just as surprised as you are.” Just as surprised, just as outraged, just as hurt. “But he did have an accomplice, if that makes you feel better. Once you finish running the prints, I’m sure you’ll find a match for her.”

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Tara Lewis. That’s T-A-R-A L-E-”

“I know who Tara Lewis is,” he snaps. I can tell the exact moment his brain makes the connection—Tara Lewis and Penelope Blue, related by marriage, bonded by loss—because there’s an almost-human glimmer in his eyes. “It was really her?”

“Oh, it was her. The pair of them had been cooking it up for days, if not longer. They were on pretty intimate terms, if you know what I mean.”

He looks suspicious at that, eyeing me slantwise, but he makes a fastidious motion with his hand that I assume means he wants me to keep going. Unfortunately for him, this isn’t a free-for-all. I’ve learned everything I need to know. The FBI is no more aware of Grant’s whereabouts than I am.

“So, there’s your mystery solved,” I say. “I gave you the names you wanted. Now, will you please let me go? Since you don’t seem to be doing anything to find him, I’d really like to get back to searching for my missing husband. There are a few words I’m saving for his ears only.”

Simon holds my gaze for a moment longer before pulling out his phone and stabbing the buttons. “Shit. Shit, fuck, damn.”

It’s the most discomfited—and human—I’ve seen him, and pity moves through me. He and I don’t have so many differences, after all. We both want nothing more than for Grant to walk in and look us in the eye. We both want to know how something as meaningless and empty as money could have turned him rogue.

But then Simon glances up at me, and I can tell that any human feelings he has aren’t going to last. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew you were pulling him in too deep.”

I brace myself for what’s coming next—the accusations and the fury, Simon pulling out the handcuff keys and swallowing them so I can never walk free again—but I’m saved by a knock on the door. Simon begrudgingly calls for the visitor to enter, and I’m greeted by my lawyer, arrived to uphold my rights.

By lawyer, I of course mean Oz.

He’s in an impeccable costume, as always, a sort of scrambled together, absent-minded professor look, with his button-down shirt untucked on one side and a coffee stain down the front. He fumbles to make it through the door while balancing his briefcase, but his eyes are alert behind wire-rimmed glasses.

It’s so perfect, I almost want to give him a standing ovation. If he’d come in sharp and polished, the kind of lawyer that accomplished jewel thieves are expected to keep on retainer, Simon might have dug in his heels and refused to let me go. But this? It sealed my innocence in ways that a thousand truths could never do.

My friends are seriously the best. I knew they wouldn’t let me disappear into this building for so many hours without sending an extraction team. We could teach Simon and Grant a thing or two about loyalty.

“I’m here on behalf of, ah, Penelope…Blue, is it?” Oz consults one of the papers in his hand, which shakes just enough to give the impression of a drunk who’s not as drunk as he’d like to be. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I just got the call a few hours ago, and the subway was a mess. Is this the right room?”

“It’s the right room.” I cast a meaningful look at Simon. “I’m being unlawfully detained in here.”

Oz blinks at my handcuffs. “Are you? That can’t be right.”

“She’s free to go,” Simon mutters. He scoops up the file with one hand. “But don’t leave the area. We’re not done with you.”

I feel pretty confident they’ll never be done with me, but that’s beside the point.

“Simon—” I call out before he has a chance to leave, raising my hands to show he still has to physically release me.

He doesn’t want to do it—draw nearer to me, be close enough to actually touch my skin—but he pulls the keys out of his pocket all the same.

I use the moment of intimacy, strained though it is, to ask the question that’s nagged me since I walked in here. “Will he be in a lot of trouble for this?”

Simon stops in the middle of turning the key.

“It’s just…” I bite my lip and try to think of a way to phrase my question without giving anything else away. “I know I’m the last person in the world you want to share government secrets with, but is there something I’m missing? Can you think of a reason he’d go out on his own like this?”

“I might ask the same thing of you, Penelope Blue.” Even though he rhymes as he says it, the phrase holds none of the singsong quality of Grant’s playful tone. He’s stark and cold, and he bites off the syllables like they cause him pain.

He’s not the only one. My heart pitters once, patters twice, and then fizzles to a stop. In that moment, I realize I’m done. With lying, with pretending, with tiptoeing around like I have something to hide.

“I refuse to believe it,” I say. “Not even he’s willing to go that far to find my dad’s fortune. He wouldn’t just throw everything away like that.”

“Are you sure?” Simon yanks the handcuffs from my wrists, the edge of the metal leaving yet another painful mark. “As far as I’m concerned, he threw everything away the day he married you.”

* * *

“Thank you for rescuing me.” I stretch on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on Oz’s cheek as soon as we round the corner and escape the watchful eyes of the FBI building. “Your timing was perfect. I got all I could out of him—it was like talking to a particularly uninformed wall.”

It’s kind of ironic, saying that to a man who is a particularly well-informed wall, but Oz just shrugs it off.

“The worst part is, I’m not any closer to the answers. The authorities weren’t even aware of the theft until I reported it. If they have any idea where Grant is or what he’s doing, it goes a lot higher than Simon’s pay grade.”

“No need.”

“For thanks?” On the contrary, I don’t thank Oz enough. He’s silent and capable in the background, always there when I need him. “There is too a need. I’m pretty sure Simon was prepared to keep me there until Grant himself came to save me.”

“No. For answers. We’ve got him.”

Cryptic though the remark may be, I understand Oz in an instant. There’s no need to continue feeling Simon out for information because the team managed to track Grant down on their own, bless every last one of them. Poor Oz has to physically restrain me as I tug on his arm, peppering him with questions. “Where is he? What is he doing? Can I talk to him? Please tell me Tara died in the crossfire.”

That last one makes him break out in a smile. I was wrong before when I said that Oz has no distinguishing marks. When he smiles to reveal charmingly crooked teeth and a near-dimple in his right cheek, I’d spot him anywhere.

“No one has killed anyone yet,” he says. “We thought you’d want to go first.”