9

THE LIBRARY

(Eighteen Months and Twenty-Four Days Ago)

“You stood me up.”

The scream that left my throat at the sound of those words is impossible for me to look back on without shame. In my line of work, the most important quality a girl can possess is a cool head in moments of surprise. Even if a flock of birds flies straight at your face while you hang precariously by your toes over a pot of boiling tar, you don’t show even a mild spasm of alarm.

But I showed a major spasm of alarm. I screamed and then felt a warm, glowing joy that I’m also rather ashamed to admit to now.

“Grant!” I shoved the book I’d been holding deep in my bag. It wasn’t really a hardback copy of In Cold Blood I was reading—it wasn’t a hardback copy of anything. A clever invention of Oz’s design, the book had been hollowed out to allow me to smuggle snacks into the library.

It wasn’t as strange as it sounds. Libraries are crazy strict when it comes to crumbs getting inside their rare books room, so much so that they actually check your bag before you head in. It’s the height of irony that I could have easily squeezed myself in through the vent and stolen every last book in the room, but woe to the woman who tried to eat a Twix anywhere near a first edition Dickens.

“How did—? What are—?” I looked around for a quick escape route, but unless I was willing to squeeze through the aforementioned vent, I was out of luck. “Um. Wow. Hi.”

Grant wasn’t dressed for work this time, the dark suit having been replaced by worn jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt that did amazing things for his pectoral muscles. He was also growing some weekend stubble, indulging in a scrape of golden hair along his chiseled jaw.

More than anything else in that moment, I wanted to rub myself on that stubble like a cat. I wanted to feel it abrade my skin until I was raw and clean and new again.

Happily, I refrained from that, too—but it was a close call. I would have to seriously watch myself around this man.

To make matters worse—or better, depending on your perspective—his face contained nothing but a smile, his eyes twinkling as they appraised me in my moment of nonglory. I’d had nonglorious moments before, of course—slews of them—but my audience usually consisted of my friends.

“Hold still,” Grant ordered.

For the briefest of moments, I considered putting my arms up in surrender, so powerful was his aura of command. But then his hand came at me, and all I could do was remain affixed to the chair. My whole body froze in place as I croaked, “Whaaa—?”

“You’ve got something right here.”

I remained still as his palm cupped my chin. He brought a thumb to my lips to wipe away what I could only assume was a smear of cookie and chocolate.

I won’t tell you how close I was to sucking his thumb into my mouth in a move wholly inappropriate to the time, place, and man. All I will say is that it was a good thing I couldn’t move.

“Eating in the library?” He made a deep tsking sound. “Shame on you, Penelope Blue. You’re lucky I don’t turn you in to the authorities.”

I relaxed ever so slightly. He wasn’t arresting me. He was flirting with me.

“You can’t prove a thing,” I said quickly. “I swallowed the evidence.”

His eyes deepened in color until they were almost black. “Now that’s something I like to hear.”

There was nothing to do after that but accept that I was trapped. I had no idea how he’d tracked me down here—my monthly sojourn to the New York Public Library wasn’t widely publicized—but I suppose it could have been worse. If he’d caught me last week with Riker, for example, where a certain Jaeger-LeCoultre watch had changed hands, things might have been really uncomfortable.

“You stood me up,” he said again, and this time, I didn’t scream. I only gulped and tried to collect the wits that had scattered to the four corners of the room. “I sat at that restaurant for an hour, taking up the best table in the place while dozens of hungry patrons glared at me from the lobby.”

“I got lost,” I lied, thinking fast.

“You could have called. I would have given you directions.”

“My cell phone didn’t get service out there.”

“I know for a fact there are two gas stations on the main stretch of highway that still have pay phones.”

“I have an unnatural fear of using pay phones. I read a study once about how many germs collect on the handsets. They should really take those out in the name of public health safety.”

The twinkle in his eyes dimmed just enough to make me feel like a jerk. I’d never stood up a man for a date before, and the vision of him sitting there alone, with pain in his puppy dog eyes, made my stomach churn. It was as unfamiliar as it was unpleasant.

Guilt. That’s what it was. I was feeling guilt.

“I was really hoping you’d be there,” he said.

“If it was at all possible, I would have been.” I meant it as lip service, a lie to cover my tracks, but as I spoke, I realized I meant every word. It wasn’t because Oz had almost rolled the keg I’d been hiding in down five flights of stairs, or that I’d only just gotten the lingering smell of beer out of my hair that morning. A meal with this man would have been…educational, to say the least. “I’m sorry, Grant. I wanted to be there more than you know.”

He studied me for a long, careful minute, as if weighing the sincerity of my apology. It would have been an ideal time for me to come up with an actual story in my defense—something about getting hit with a twenty-four-hour bug or a grandmother languishing in the hospital—but that seemed worse. I hadn’t met him for dinner because I’d sent him on a fool’s errand so I could rob an unsuspecting—if slightly crooked—man of his favorite wristwatch.

The truth was bad enough. I wouldn’t compound my sins by adding even more lies.

“Okay.” He pulled out the chair opposite mine and lowered himself into it. There was something strangely erotic about the action, this lowering of his massive body to a chair of normal human proportions. He moved so carefully, containing his strength for my benefit. “Let’s try this again, then, shall we? What brings you and your snack foods to this dark hole in the library? Are you doing research?”

“I think the better question is, what brings you to this dark hole in the library?” I countered. “Were you following me? Cashing in on your fancy FBI connections to hunt me down?”

Even more of the light went out of his eyes, and I cursed my clumsiness. This was a case where I needed to tread lightly and parry swiftly. Flirtation was all well and good, but there was more at play here than a man suffering from a bruised ego. He’d known something was going down at that party last week. Something had gone down at that party last week, and I may or may not have been his primary suspect for that something.

Direct confrontation would only bring the questions and answers to a head—which was the last thing I wanted.

String him along. See what I could discover. Play. That’s what I needed to do here.

“I’ve always wondered about that, actually.” I gave my hair a toss and leaned over the table, showcasing pure, feminine interest—as well as a healthy glimpse of cleavage. I had wiles. I could backtrack. “About whether you guys use your fancy FBI connections to woo the ladies.”

A smile played on his lips, there and gone again. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, just that you could be pretty dangerous if you put your mind to it. You could look into my records, find all my weaknesses, handcuff me somewhere dark and secluded. You know—if you wanted to.”

“You think I want to handcuff you somewhere dark and secluded?”

I didn’t have to feign the sexual interest that rumbled low in my throat and in my belly. “Don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. “You come to this library every month and have for at least the past two years,” he said, his voice disappointingly businesslike. “You sign in at the front desk and usually stay for about three hours. The librarians know you bring in food, but they like you, so they pretend to look the other way. You should be more respectful of their restrictions, though. Rules exist for a reason.”

Holy crap. He was following me, and for a lot longer than I’d realized.

He was also blocking the door. Even though it didn’t look like he was carrying a gun, he could easily overpower me with the bulge of just one of those muscles he was packing.

A familiar panic surged through me. I was trapped—in more ways than one.

“You have a bad poker face, you know that?” Grant said. He leaned over the table and touched my lips, this time with the press of three fingers. I shivered. “You look like I just accused you of murder. Relax—I’m not following you. I saw you come in and asked at the front desk which direction you’d gone. The woman was very helpful.”

Oh, I bet she was. “Did you flash her your badge or your smile?”

He pretended to be offended.

“The badge?” I echoed. “Or the smile?”

He showed me the full force of the latter: the crooked pull of lips over teeth, the crinkles of his eyes blending into his hairline. “Which one do you think?”

Dammit. I couldn’t even be mad after that. I’d have given myself up for that smile.

“Well? I’ll admit to being curious. What’s in here?” He looked around to see what might entertain me in a twenty-by-twenty room that smelled like old leather and dust despite the high-tech air filtration system that kept all the paper at peak temperature and humidity. Books with various faded colors lined the walls; several older tomes were kept behind glass for greater protection. There was even an intern at the door, posted to make sure no one came in without the proper authorization first.

“Books,” I said.

“I see that. Is there a particular one that interests you?”

“Not in this room.”

“No?”

“Too fancy for me. I like those mysteries with cats and bakeries in them—preferably the ones that come in paperback form. I don’t approve of books you can’t take into the bathtub with you.”

He lifted a brow at that. “Not even the ones worth tens of thousands of dollars? Some of the books in here are incredibly valuable.”

There was an insult in there, I was sure of it. I was tempted to defend myself against the accusation that I stole from underfunded public institutions—I’m a thief, not a monster—but I had just enough common sense to realize he was still fishing.

It was that realization—the creeping certainty that Grant didn’t know nearly as much about my activities as he claimed to—that goaded me to speak next.

“Oh, I know how valuable they are. I’ve been systematically stealing the entire library, one book at a time, replacing each item with a reproduction as I go.” I pointed toward the back of the room, where the library kept an assortment of foreign language manuscripts. “I started with the French translations, in case you’re wondering.”

And then I almost gave away the whole show by laughing. The pucker of Grant’s brow was just worried enough to indicate that he believed me—or, rather, that he believed me enough to send a guy or two in here to investigate.

Looking back, I’d have to say that was the moment everything changed for us. Oz got a job that very night as part of the library’s nighttime custodial staff, and he gleefully informed us that a team of FBI experts showed up to inspect the rare books room every night for the next week. It was a monumental waste of government time and resources, but I’d done nothing illegal that Grant could arrest me for. Only a small white lie, a playful flirtation with the man they sent to spy on me.

I like to think that was the moment Grant and I declared war, our swords crossed, our wills engaged. One of us was going to come out of this triumphant, and I had a pretty good feeling it would be me.

“Parlez-vous la langue de l’amour?” he asked. Clearly, he wasn’t yet aware of my mastery on the battlefield. “Merveilleux. Vous êtes une femme de la profondeur.”

It was a nice recovery, especially if you factored in the way gruff French syllables melted off his tongue and turned everything in the room to liquid along with it. Unfortunately, my French was limited to words like croissant and baguette and other tasty carbohydrates.

“You speak French?” I asked instead. It wasn’t hard to infuse my question with the appropriate amount of doe-eyed wonder to build up his vanity. I was beginning to suspect there was nothing this man couldn’t do. “Intelligent as well as gorgeous. Geez—some men have all the luck. Then again, some women are lucky enough to have a chance to appreciate it.”

“Some women don’t seem to care about that chance,” he said pointedly. “You stood me up, remember?”

Dammit. We needed to move on from that. There was no way I’d be able to convince him that date had been anything but a ploy to get rid of him, which meant it was better if I didn’t try.

“I’m actually just here to think,” I said by way of distraction.

He blinked. “I’m sorry?”

I gestured around. “I don’t read the books, but I like being surrounded by them. I like that this room is big enough to feel spacious but small enough that I can always keep my eye on the exits. It’s a nice place to think.”

I could tell he wasn’t ready to write off the book-stealing theory, but his interest was definitely piqued. “What do you think about?” he asked.

Whatever we planned to steal, most of the time, but I wouldn’t admit to that one out loud. “Oh, you know—things. Life. Death. The existentialism of mankind. My dad.”

I wasn’t sure how that last one slipped in there, but it was the most accurate of all. My existentialism was about as good as my French.

“Your dad?” Grant reached for my hand and began playing with my fingers. It was hard to describe exactly what he was doing or why. He ran the pad of his index finger along the slope of each one of my digits, as though measuring them before moving to play with the underside. I had to wonder if there was some kind of sneaky FBI trick behind it—like he was secretly scanning my fingerprints—but all he had to do was dust the table after I left for that.

Whatever his motivation, I was distracted enough that I didn’t think to temper my response. In hindsight, that was also something I should have paid more attention to from the start. Whenever Grant touched me, even if it was only a teasing handhold on top of a table in full view of the public, I had a tendency to lose control of myself. Hands, lips, fingers; later on, when we’d move to more interesting parts like thighs and the spaces contained between them…it was more than a caress.

It was an attack.

“He used to come here all the time when I was young.” I stared at our hands as I spoke. “He called it his quiet place, his thinking place.”

I wasn’t sure if Grant believed me or not, but he played along for the moment. “Did you come here with him?”

“No. He used to tell me children weren’t allowed inside this room—that was why he chose it. It was the only way he could get any alone time. Up until a few years ago, I thought you had to be twenty-one to enter. He was that adamant about getting away from me.”

“You must have been one hell of an obnoxious kid.”

I laughed out loud, caught unaware. “I’m sure I was. It worked, though. A bar or a strip club I might have been willing to break into to get near him, but this place?” I shook my head. The way my dad felt about this library was almost religious. “It might as well have been Fort Knox.”

“I’m surprised you’d let that stop you.”

Was that a dig at my criminal tendencies? Rude. “I would’ve tried, but I have a healthy respect for librarians.”

He watched me with that inscrutable look in his eyes for a moment longer. He no longer played with my fingers but kept his hand on my wrist, almost as though he was checking my pulse. It was probably some kind of truth-telling test—which, for the record, I would have passed in full—so I didn’t pull away.

“Where’s your dad now?” Grant asked.

Wouldn’t he like to know? Wouldn’t I?

I’d decided some time ago that the only possible answer was that he was killed—either in an attempt to get that necklace or in the hours immediately following. Not because I’d had one of those dark epiphanies where I felt his loss in a physical way, and not because I had any hard evidence, but because I wasn’t sure I could accept any other option.

Fifteen is awfully young to be thrust upon the world without a penny to your name. Yes, I was a bit more worldly-wise than most, possessing a skill set that would always ensure my survival. And yes, I had a stepmother who could have theoretically provided for my care, but circumstance hadn’t favored me then any more than it did now. Tara and I had butted heads right from the start of their marriage. She’d been only five years my senior and much more interested in becoming my father’s protégé than taking care of his actual protégé—a fact she never attempted to hide from either of us.

When my dad failed to come home that first night, we fought. When he didn’t come home the next day, we panicked. When he didn’t come home the next week, we scoured all his regular haunts, looking for the supposed treasure he’d amassed.

When a month went by and the hotel we’d been living in finally kicked us out, Tara gave up. She disclaimed any interest in being saddled with a brat of my ilk, especially if there wasn’t an inheritance to soften the blow, which meant this ilky brat was left to fend for herself.

I felt a long-buried surge of emotion move through me at the memory. It was anger and despair, a sense of vulnerability that made me want to encase myself in diamond-crusted armor and stay there forever.

My father had to be dead. He had to. The alternatives that presented themselves over the years—that he’d taken his treasure and assumed a new identity, that he’d been caught by the feds and coerced into cutting a deal and retreating into witness protection, that he couldn’t face the infamy of having been caught doing something so amateur as triggering the alarm on the Dupont family safe—would have worked perfectly well, assuming he hadn’t left me to face the aftermath alone. But he had, and that was all the proof I needed. No shame was too great, no deal so sweet, that you’d sentence a kid to a life on the streets.

Death was the only thing I could believe. I couldn’t handle it otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” Grant said when I didn’t answer right away. A portion of my thoughts must have shown on my face, because he tightened his grip on my hand. “Is it hard for you to talk about?”

“No, that’s not it. I just…” I stared at that hand, so warm, so comforting, and slipped even further under his spell. “I haven’t seen him for a long time, and coming here is my way of connecting. I miss him.”

“I know the feeling,” he said. “I miss my dad, too.”

I glanced up, sure he was patronizing me, but a wistful expression had taken over his features. He looked boyish.

“You have a dad?” It was an incredibly stupid thing to say—of course he had a dad—but he caught my meaning with a smile. You have a dad who’s gone? You have a dad who paved the way for a broken heart?

“He left my mom when I was pretty young. I don’t have many memories of him, but the ones I managed to hold onto are all good. We were happy together, you know? Throwing a football, fishing, going to baseball games. Man stuff.”

“Man stuff,” I echoed. Could this guy be any more virile? He was probably tossing the pigskin before he could talk.

“I know he was technically a jerk—he left for a younger woman and never looked back or sent a dime in child support—but I still feel like he was a good guy under it all. A bad person doesn’t spend hours teaching his five-year-old how to dig for the best worms or patiently answer all his questions about the seventh inning stretch.”

That showed what he knew. Bad people could pretend to do almost anything.

“It’s a talent of mine, actually: cutting through the bullshit and getting an accurate read on a person.” His dark gaze swallowed mine. “Well, it used to be. So, how about you?”

I blinked, breaking the spell. “How about me what?”

“Your dad? Was it a divorce situation like mine, or did he pass away?”

In context, it was a perfectly normal question to ask. When a woman sat in an empty room that reminded her of her father, growing morose and lost in her reflections, it was polite to inquire about the circumstances. Expected, even.

But most women weren’t descended from the elusive Blue Fox. Most women weren’t considered the last living human to set eyes on his one-hundred-million-dollar fortune. And most women weren’t respectable jewel thieves in their own right.

Which begged the question: Why was Grant Emerson, FBI agent and guard dog extraordinaire, so interested in my father? And why the hell was I sitting here, feeding him answers?

Amateur. Idiot. Fool. Take your pick—the insult fit, and I deserved each one.

“I have to go,” I said and pulled my hand back. I got to my feet and slung my bag over my shoulder. More than anything else, I needed to get away from Grant’s persuasive fingers and a room that was starting to feel very small.

“Go where? Maybe I can take you. I’m parked not far from here, and government-issued cars are pretty nice, if I do say so myself.”

Right. He probably expected me to ride in the back, where the doors locked from the outside and the only way out was with a full confession.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.” I moved toward the door, but I stopped and turned before I got halfway. My emotion had made me even more reckless than usual. “And for the record? This is low. Even for the FBI.”

“Penelope Blue, what did I do?” Even now, he played with the way he said my name and made me question everything. The deep V between his brows looked so damn sincere. “Don’t leave like this. I’m sorry. It was an insensitive thing to ask.”

It wasn’t insensitive. It was dangerous.

But no way was I sticking around to explain the difference.