31

THE PROMISE

(Present Day)

There aren’t many places you can hide from an FBI agent who also happens to be your husband.

I come up with at least a dozen destinations that are immediately discarded for being too obvious. I can’t go home, since his name is on the deed. I can’t go to the rare books room, because I’m pretty sure he has the librarians there on payroll. My friends’ apartments are probably being watched, and the rec center is closed today. The obvious answer—to find a small, dark hole I can wedge myself into until the world stops spinning—is the worst option of all.

Grant always knows I’m in there. He’s seen me—seen through me—right from the start.

That’s my excuse, anyway, for why I end up casing a bank in the middle of a busy downtown street. There’s a sewer grate at my feet and an apartment building about two blocks away that I could theoretically crawl underground to.

Not that I will, mind you. There’d have to be someone I love an awful lot waiting for me at the other end.

“The first thing I’d do is get Oz in as an employee,” I say aloud. A few passersby look startled to hear me speaking to thin air, but this is New York, after all. Stranger things than a tearstained and disheveled woman standing on the street corner talking to herself happen all the time. “Not as a security guard, because that would be too obvious. A teller, maybe, or the custodial staff.”

I nod once, liking the sound of that last one. He’d need to get on early in the planning process so we could use his input to inform future decisions. The layout of the bank, employee protocols and habits, any weaknesses in their daily routine…in order to pull off a job of this caliber, we’d need all the eyes we could get. If we got Jordan in there, we might even be able to plant explosives that would rip the safe door right off its hinges.

For all of five minutes, I entertain myself planning a heist I have no intention of performing. It’s soothing, this familiar act of what-if and what-next. We could go back to the way things used to be—me and Jordan and Riker and Oz—taking on the world and winning.

But, of course, that’s impossible. I took that option away from us that day in the courthouse.

There was never any coming back from that, I realize now. Optimism, arrogance, naïveté—call it what you will, but the truth is that I let my feelings for Grant blind me to the reality of my situation. I am and always have been a thief. A good one, if what my father says is true. One of the best.

My spine straightens as I replay my father’s words in my head, hearing him this time with perfect clarity. No tight spot was ever too tight for me, no escape so difficult I gave up and let the authorities take me in. I might not be the fastest or the smartest thief out there, but the one thing I’ve always had in abundance is determination.

Penelope Blue doesn’t give up easily.

“Casing the bank again, I see.”

I don’t turn at the sound of Grant’s carefully casual voice by my ear, though my pulse leaps. I wish I could say I’m surprised to find him here, but Grant Emerson doesn’t give up easily either.

We’ve always been evenly matched that way.

“A girl’s gotta eat,” I say with a shrug. “Especially since somebody took the only thing of value she had.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about Penelope Blue being able to land on her feet,” he replies and nods across the street. “She’s got at least half a million dollars stored in a safety deposit box over there.”

I release a short, bitter laugh. “You know about that, too?”

I’d opened the account in a fit of perversity a few days before our wedding—an attempt to ensure he wouldn’t stumble onto my ill-begotten goods, my last-ditch attempt at holding onto something of my own. A safety net, I realize now. A safety net against the inevitability of despair.

“Wait, what am I saying?” I add. “Of course you know about it. In the past year and a half, I haven’t done or said a single thing that you weren’t aware of ahead of time. My dad, the painting, Oz, Tara, the first place I’d run to get away from you…you know everything.”

His lips fall at the corners. “That’s not true.”

Something about how sad he seems—how betrayed, of all unfair sentiments—reminds me of how upset he was at the motel before my dad’s thugs whisked him away.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “You didn’t know about Erica being my grandmother. Well, that makes two of us, so that doesn’t count.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What, then?” I turn to him, anger pricking at my eyelids. I want to play it cool and aloof, become the devil-may-care jewel thief who always has an escape route, but it’s hard. Mostly because for the first time in my life, I don’t want to get away. The place I want to be most in the world is right here with him. “What could possibly be left for you to know?”

“You have no idea, do you?” he asks.

I shake my head. I really, truly don’t.

His voice drops to a low rumble. “No matter how hard I try, no matter how many hours I spend by your side, I’ve never been able to figure out if you love me even a fraction as much as I love you.”

My knees wobble and grow unsteady beneath me. I want to clutch his arm to hold myself up, fall into him and let him catch me, but I don’t.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “You were using me as bait. You admitted as much back there at the diner.”

“Not only as bait.” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the tawny strands in what looks like desperation. “Did I know about your father being alive? Yeah, of course I did. A man like that doesn’t just disappear. Did I know he put all his money in the de Kooning painting that went missing fifteen years ago? You bet your ass I did. He was my thesis at Quantico.”

“He was?”

He drops his hands and casts that stricken glance my way, ensnaring me like prey in headlights. “I told you all this. That day at Christmas, at my mom’s house, I told you that nothing and no one disappears without leaving a trace. I promised I would find him for you.”

He didn’t. He hadn’t. I would have remembered something like that.

“Why? So you could turn around and put him in prison for the rest of his life? Forgive me for not being grateful.”

Grant releases a short, bitter laugh. I don’t like the way it grates, so far from the genuine joy I’ve seen in him in the past.

“He won’t be there for long,” Grant says. “When I checked in with Simon, they were already working on the negotiations.”

“Negotiations?”

“I told you that, too. Like you, like Riker, like Oz and Jordan and Tara, your father is more valuable as a resource than a prisoner.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate, as I remember all too well his description of my kind of people: slightly shady but useful enough for the good to outweigh the bad. For the first time, I start to detect a glimmer of hope on the horizon, see the shape of a future in which a life with this man isn’t impossible.

“There are quite a few suits at the Bureau who would like to see him behind bars, but he has some valuable contacts we’d like to get our hands on. Half of his known associates are wanted by Interpol, and I’m willing to bet the other half are wanted by the CIA. As long as he’s willing to cooperate, I should be able to get him a light sentence in exchange for information.” He settles a heavy glance on me. “Especially since he has such a good reason to stick around now.”

“So you knew you might be able to get him a light sentence this whole time? But that means—”

His laugh is short and bitter again. “That I never set out to hurt you or your family? That I would do everything in my power to keep you out of harm’s way? That I would run interference between the FBI and your friends for years to ensure their safety as well as yours?”

I can feel my lips start to wobble along with my knees. “You did that?”

“Of course I did,” he says roughly. “There were times—so many times, so many temptations—when all I wanted to do was slap a pair of handcuffs on Riker and drag him into the twisted depths of the justice system. It would have been so easy to separate you two that way, to get rid of my competition with the snap of my fingers and a day’s worth of paperwork.”

“But you didn’t.”

Grant draws close, strength radiating off his body. “That man will never be my favorite, but as long as your happiness depends on his, I promise to protect him. It kills me every time you look at him with that unquestioning love and loyalty in your eyes—that unquestioning love and loyalty you can’t seem to give me—but I will protect him. You have my word on that.”

“Oh, Grant.”

The hard edge of his anger ebbs away at the sound of my voice, but he still doesn’t reach for me. He’s watching, waiting, a man who knows that moving too soon could result in a loss of the prize.

He’s not too different from me in that regard. He might have a badge in his pocket and a gun at his hip, but this man has lied and cheated and stolen since the day we met. And he’s been good at it, too. Better than me.

He’d make a hell of a jewel thief, if only he’d put his mind to it.

“I know you may never be able to forgive me for taking that record cover from you, but you have to understand that the way I handled it has always haunted me,” he says. “I had to act fast. I didn’t expect to find the painting in your apartment that day—I’d long since given up on it by then. I only planned to find your dad.”

“But you did take it,” I accuse. “You took it and you kissed me and you made me cry.”

He winces. “I’m so sorry. If it’s any consolation, it was the record that made me realize I’d fallen in love with you.”

There’s that word again. Love. Not adoration, not devotion, not obligation. Love.

“The moment you claimed to have painted a hundred-million-dollar de Kooning as a five-year-old child, I knew you were just as naive and wonderful as you seemed.”

“I’m not naive.” Or wonderful.

“I knew that even though you were a thief and a liar and a beautiful, magnificent tease, the anguish you felt for your father was real. That vulnerable girl, the one who opened herself up to me even though she fought it every step of the way, was the end of me. I’d already fallen in love with you, but that was the first time I allowed myself to admit it.”

“You lie.”

“Not this time. And not next time, either. Not ever again, if I can help it.”

Any attempts I might have made to continue holding him back crumble in that moment. I should have been angry that he stole a hundred million dollars from me and angrier still that my father was being forced to compromise his position for the sake of government intelligence. I should have been panicked at the thought of giving up my life of crime for something as silly—and as wonderful—as a man.

But looking at him, knowing how guilty he feels for the role he played, knowing full well he’d do it all over again if he had the chance, I only feel admiration.

This is exactly why I married this man in the first place. To keep my friends close and my enemies closer, to be near the intel and the action, to live in a fast-paced game of cat-and-mouse where every day is a new opportunity to win.

And also because I can’t imagine my life without him in it.

“Penelope, I know I promised I’d never ask, but I can’t do it anymore. I can’t wake up to you each morning without telling you how I feel. I can’t make love to you every night without showing you how much you matter to me. Since the day you jogged into my life, so full of courage and fire that you’d confront your biggest enemy head-on, I’ve been entranced by you. Every day that goes by, I fall further under your spell.”

“Grant, I—”

“I know you don’t necessarily share my feelings, but is there a chance that might change? Do you think, if given time, you could love me even a little? That’s the only thing I need to know—the only question I have to ask. I have to know if it’s all been a game for you or if at least part of you feels the same way.”

“Of course I love you,” I say.

He doesn’t register my words right away, brushing over my barely audible response as he continues to plead his case. “And if you can’t reciprocate my feelings, please know that you have people you can turn to for help. I haven’t had much time to talk to Erica—your grandmother—yet, but it sounds like she had as much trouble tracking you down as your dad did. Apparently, that’s why she let us use the necklace as bait in the first place. You and Tara left the hotel before she could find you, and it’s weighed on her ever since.”

“Grant, I said I love you.”

“And if you need space or time or a divorce—”

“Grant!” I speak sharply enough that several people turn to stare, but that’s fine with me. Breaking down in public has never stopped me before. “I freaking love you, okay? I love your nerdy childhood relics and your strange relationship with your mother and your determination to beat me at my own game. I love that you’re sneaky and underhanded and that you’d go to these lengths to protect the people I care about. I even love that you know everything about me and somehow still want me.”

I realize, as I say it out loud, that they’re the truest words of all. “You see me,” I add. “You accept me. You always have.”

That’s when he reaches for me. I know what happens next. He’s going to cup my face. He’s going to run his fingers over my lips. And I’m going to let him.

Of all the embraces this man and I have shared, it’s that one—simple and sweet, a gesture of love that says everything our words can’t—that undoes me the most.

He knows it, of course. He always has.

“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you,” I say. “Riker might have saved me from the darkest parts of my past, and I’ll always love him for that, but you…” I offer him a tentative smile. “You’re my future, Agent Grant Emerson. You’re the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. You’re the one I’d do anything to keep.”

“Anything?” he asks in a rumbling voice.

“Anything,” I say. I turn into his embrace like a cat.

“Then I want you to marry me all over again.” He replaces his fingers with his mouth, a sweep of a kiss that leaves me breathless. “And this time, my love, you better mean it.”