24
Okay, so maybe storming off to find Miles without much preplanning wasn’t my best idea ever. Geographically, Brooklyn seemed close enough to Times Square. But now I’m circling an apartment building for the third time, in the dark, trying to locate the entrance. The street isn’t even well lit, I’m starving because I skipped dinner, and the bottom half of my sweatpants are soaking wet because a bus sped past and sprayed a bunch of icy slush at me. Maybe this whole Miles, why the hell are you working with my family chat could have waited until morning.
I’m about to call it quits when an Exit Only door near the end of the building opens, revealing a woman struggling to look at her phone and keep control of a small brown dog tucked under one arm.
“Let me get the door for you,” I offer, reaching for the handle and flashing the woman my most innocent smile.
She looks grateful when she steps outside. “Thanks.”
I pause for a second, waiting while she places the dog on the salted sidewalk. It heads right to a patch of old snow to sniff around. I’m inside the building and down the hall before the woman questions what just happened. She might not even think twice about it. I find apartment 16A, but instead of knocking I stand there like an idiot worrying about, of all things, the state of my hair, the fact that I’m in sweatpants, and I can’t remember which underwear I’m wearing.
God, Ellie. You came here to question him, not to hook up.
Right. I came to question him.
The door to apartment 16B opens and a guy walks out, but he stops when he sees me. I pretend not to notice and finally give a light knock on the door.
“I did not know you guys delivered here,” the neighbor says.
I glance at him and realize he’s pointing at the huge brown paper bag I’m carting—a half-assed, last-second cover story for my presence here. The logo of a popular Manhattan deli is on it.
“Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “We do. For an extra charge.”
“Man, I love that place.” He leans closer, trying to peek in the bag. “What have you got there, anything good?”
I grip the opening of the bag, holding it shut—it’s full of trash I snatched from the hotel recycling bin. “Sorry, orders are subject to our privacy policy. Deli-customer confidentiality. We’ll do the same for you, guaranteed.”
“Oh, okay.” He gives me a bewildered look and shakes his head. “Have a good night.”
Finally the apartment door opens. One glimpse of Miles and for a second, I forget why I’m here. He peeks around me, watches the retreating neighbor. “I just need to grab my wallet. Mind setting that stuff on the counter?”
I step inside what appears to be a very tiny studio apartment. The bed that sits in the center of the room occupies nearly half the apartment. To the left is a tiny kitchen with a single countertop. To the right is a door that if opened would likely reveal a bathroom. The whole place is maybe three hundred square feet.
“Did anyone follow you?” Miles asks.
“Just a couple of people. I told them to wait outside.”
“Funny, real funny. Want to know where your cousin planted that tracker?”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He hands me a blue stainless steel water bottle with a narrow neck. I recognize it because he used it all the time last semester.
I unscrew the cap and attempt to angle the bottle at the light. “Did he stick it to the bottom?”
That would definitely be tough to spot because of the narrow opening.
“Nope,” Miles say. “He just dropped it in when I wasn’t looking and let me drink it.”
“Seriously?” I’m momentarily stunned by Oscar’s brilliance. “How do you know?”
“Process of elimination.” Miles shrugs. “I’ve got a device that detects trackers. I couldn’t find it in an exterior location despite setting off the alarm in my midsection. I’d guess it’s something between my small and large intestine.”
“Process of elimination indeed.” Shaking my head, I hand the bottle back to Miles. “It might be my fault. I basically called him predictable and told him he needed to up his game.”
“Does he know—”
“Where you’re staying?” I finish. “No, he doesn’t. Dominic hijacked the mission, turned the tracker on himself. He got the address, then shut down the chip, destroyed the evidence.”
“Remind me to thank Dominic,” Miles says, releasing a breath.
He looks so tense that I almost step forward to rest a hand on his arm, touch him in some comforting way, but then I spot neon-orange and blue tennis shoes lying on the floor by the door—the same shoes he was wearing in the photo Dominic showed me—and I’m back to business.
“What are you doing with my dad, Miles?” I blurt out. “Why? And when? Did you… I mean do you—”
Lines of worry crease his face. He steps closer, but I retreat until my back touches the counter. “I didn’t know it was your dad until I saw you with him this week. And then I couldn’t talk to you about it because I thought that…” His face flushes, and he doesn’t finish.
But it’s clear what he thought. That I’d lied to him. That I was still loyal to the people I promised him I wouldn’t be loyal to. It hurts, but it’s not like I expected him to forget all the details of my past, to never doubt my intentions. That would be asking a lot. But it still hurts.
“Okay, so what are you doing here? How did you get inside this job? Are you working for the FBI again?”
“Not again, exactly,” he says. “More like still.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t really answer my question.” I’m up to my ears in evasive answers today, and I’m getting pretty sick of it. “You didn’t even know about my family until I told you, and then less than two months later you’re inside one of their biggest, most dangerous cons. Tell me what I’m supposed to think about that, Miles, because I’m pretty fucking confused right now.”
My voice elevates with each word, and Miles looks even more concerned. Then I curse myself for even showing him that I care. I thought he needed to see my cards for us to keep being us, but now it feels like we’re playing a different game and I haven’t been given the instructions yet.
“I’m going to answer your questions, I promise.” When he steps toward me this time, I have no more space to back up. He lifts a hand as if to touch me but pulls it back at the last second. “You must be going crazy right now. Being four different people at once—even for you that’s… I can’t imagine. And seeing your dad again, working with Agent Sheldon, the woman who put your mom in prison.”
“What are you doing?” I lean back, afraid of letting his warmth hit me. “How did you find out that I wasn’t here out of loyalty to my family?” The answer forms right after I’ve finished asking the question. “You heard my phone call to Agent Sheldon?”
Someone had been following me the other day when I called from the stairwell to report about the agency information packets. And Miles had revealed himself shortly after.
“I did hear the phone call, but I knew before that. At the open auditions, I was watching the footage. That’s part of my job.” He gets brave and this time follows through with his attempt to touch me. Though his fingertips rest so lightly on my cheek. “I saw you and Dominic talking, watched your body language, and I knew things weren’t as they seemed. But I didn’t know if you were there on your own agenda or someone else’s. Didn’t know where Dominic fell into your plans.”
There’s heat and tenderness behind his words, but I’m not ready to give in yet. “So you and my dad work together? You’ve talked to him?”
“He has no idea you and I have any connection or history. Neither do my handlers. Sharp and Sheldon don’t know, right?”
“Right,” I concede after pausing a second to try and recall when I mentioned Agent Sharp by name. “And since you’re erased from Holden’s records now, they aren’t likely to put anything together.”
I remove his hand from my cheek. I’m still stuck on this image of Miles and my dad working together. For weeks, after Miles moved out of the apartment beside mine, I imagined him in his trademark gray and navy sweats, climbing a rope with a drill sergeant whistling at him from the ground. I’d pictured him seated in a classroom, wearing his military school uniform, back straight, hair trimmed to regulation. It’s like that Miles vanished when I hit the delete button on his records the night I broke into Holden.
Concern and hurt flicker across his face when I lower his hand back to his side. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking…” Frustration builds as I work to form an answer. I step around Miles and move farther away, closer to the door. “For the first time ever, I’ve told you everything. No secrets. I’m not sure I like this feeling. Not sure I’m made for this kind of thing.”
Now there’s no doubt I’ve hurt him, and he leaves the evidence there on his face for the length of several heartbeats. Then the blank Miles look appears and he nods. “I see.”
We stare at each other from opposite sides of the room. This should be my exit, but I’m rooted to the spot. The Miles in front of me is identical to the boy who sat with me in front of the fireplace in his parents’ guesthouse and admitted that he hadn’t been that close to any girl before. That he liked the real me better than the confident, sure-of-herself version.
I cross the room in two seconds flat as if under a curse, but again I hesitate. He just stands there watching me with those beautiful blue eyes, saying nothing, but I can hear the words inside his head: It’s your move. The force controlling me is magnetic. I lean my forehead against his chest and just stay like that.
Probably worried about scaring me off, it takes a bit for Miles to lift a hand and attempt to touch me again. His fingers land lightly on the back of my neck, and it’s like that night at the homecoming dance. The smallest touch feels like a dozen Miles Beckett hands all over me.
His lips brush against my temple. “I didn’t expect this, either, Ellie.”
“Expect what?” I whisper, thinking he means the assignment with my family.
“Feeling this…” He takes my hand, pulls it to his heart. “This weight, like a physical ache whenever I think about you or see you. I mean, I knew that there was something here, I just didn’t know it was this much.”
His words float over me and I’m right there with him, my chest heavy, my stomach in knots from fear and excitement. Miles’s mouth finds mine, his kiss hungry and intense. Hands roam through my hair, down my arms, under my jacket. I drag him backward. We both fall onto the bed. I lean over Miles, and he tugs off my jacket, tosses it to the floor. His T-shirt follows my coat. I’m so busy enjoying the taste of his mouth, the warmth of him stretched out beneath me, that I barely notice Miles lifting my shirt halfway then releasing the material. His hands land on my face and when I tug my mouth from his, he holds me at a distance.
“I’m sorry,” he says, so dead serious I’m wishing for a joke to follow. “About not talking to you. If it were the other way around, I would have been crazy worried.”
I dip my head down and kiss his neck. “You’re definitely gifted at apologies.”
“Anything else I’m good at?” He works my shirt over my head and then kisses me again. “I wouldn’t hate an itemized list.”
“Everything,” I say against his mouth. “Just everything.”
The dinner I skipped; the cold, damp sweatpants I’m wearing; the urgency I had getting over here and probably should have getting back all vanishes for a little while. The more he gives, the more I want.
A while later I’m stretched out on top of Miles, his careful fingers in my hair and gliding over my back, and it suddenly seems so easy to take things further, so very possible.
“Do you have any con—”
“No,” Miles says before I even finish, like he’d been thinking about it, too.
“What happened to the Boy Scout who’s always prepared for anything?” I joke, but my face still heats up. I wish I hadn’t asked the question, not before he brought it up anyway.
“Preparedness usually comes from being in a bind,” he says.
“So next time…” I prompt, enjoying the blush on his cheeks. It’s darker than mine, I’m sure.
“I’ll be a perfect Boy Scout.” He grips my waist and flips me over. “But I do think we have plenty of ground to cover before going there.”
His lips drift down my neck, down my chest and stomach. I close my eyes and sink into the soft mattress. His fingers are toying with the waistband of my panties when a loud knock echoes from the door.
Both of us jolt upright, nearly banging heads. Miles looks at me and holds a finger to his lips.
“Delivery from Number One Wok,” a voice says from the hall outside the door.
My heart falls back down from my throat. “It’s Dominic.”
The relief on Miles’s face is almost more concerning than the knock on the door had been. Who did he think had come calling for him? The Zanettis? But instead of asking, I scramble to get my clothes back on. Miles pulls his T-shirt over his head while also straightening the comforter covering the bed. By the time he ushers Dominic inside, everything is in perfect order.
“Next time, let’s skip the ninety-second wait in the hall.” Dominic assesses the place, then his gaze bounces between Miles and me. “Like I can’t already figure out what the two of you might do when you’re alone.”
Miles sighs. “What’s up?”
It must be something if he hauled it all the way out to Brooklyn behind our chaperones’ backs.
Dominic holds out his phone, giving us a view of the screen. “My first tracker. Planted it on Bruno. The guy left his watch lying on the bathroom sink, then walked away to answer a phone call. It was almost too easy.”
“Brilliant,” Miles tells him, clapping his shoulder.
Dominic grins, clearly proud of himself. “So…who wants to spy on some Zanetti mobsters?”
Miles and I look at each other, and then he turns to Dominic. “I’m in.”
I snatch my coat from the floor. “Me, too.”