by Tessa Vidal
“The FBI field office on Wilshire.” She leaned forward to give Barney the address, and he changed course. Still, there was zero chance the best driver in the world would be there in ten.
Maybe an hour and ten.
Not a problem for me. She wasn't hard to look at, and I had every intention of getting to know her a lot better. Why not start right now?
“I was impressed with how well you did at the press event,” I said. “You handled those reporters like a champ.”
“You don't have to patronize me. Actors aren't the only ones who get a lot of practice talking to bullshit reporters.”
Prickly. “Sorry. I didn't mean to sound patronizing.”
A brief silence. “Yeah, all right. I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have snapped at you. But you'll find law enforcement officers aren't a big fan of surprises.” She toed at Yukon's cage. He snuffled in his sleep. “I'm impressed at how much time you've spent educating yourself about dogs. Most people don't bother.”
“I guess I'm not most people.” And it was time to shift the topic of conversation away from me. “You have an interesting area of expertise.”
She didn't say anything.
“What got you into gemstone fraud?”
She looked at me. The seats of those old-school Fleetwoods were almost as wide as actual limousines, and I flashed back to memories she didn't know we shared.
“You don't have to be polite,” she said.
“I'm not, I'm really interested. You'll find actors are fascinated with character, and an FBI agent with a specialty in gemstones, you've got to admit, that's a hell of a character.”
She brushed a hand over her forehead. For a minute, I thought she was going to close her eyes and pretend to nap along with Yukon. “In college, I had a double major in geology and criminal justice.”
“That tells me what you studied but not why.” I touched my agate. “I like to know why people do things.”
She shrugged. “The thrill of the hunt. The search for buried treasure. I started out in geology, but most of the jobs out there aren't about treasure-hunting. They're in the petroleum industry.”
“So you got into another kind of hunt. Stolen and faked gems, and the people who perpetrate those crimes.”
She looked surprised to be understood. “Essentially, yes.”
“What's the most exciting find you ever made?”
She rubbed her chin. I scooted closer. But then she shook her head. “I don't know, Clarissa.” It was the first time she'd used my first name. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
Her mouth was so close.
“Just one more.” I leaned in. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“We really shouldn't get into our personal stuff.” Her voice had gone all husky.
“All right.” I dropped my own voice a register. “I was just wondering.”
“No, I don't have a girlfriend.”
“Then maybe you don't mind if I do this.” I kissed her as softly as a butterfly lands on a flower. Her closed lips were soft, twin rose petals waiting to bloom. The shoulder harness prevented me from pressing myself hard against her firm body, but the tug backward only enhanced the sense of urgency. I couldn't really have her, so I had to have her.
She wasn't pulling away. There was no more mumble about not getting into personal stuff. Instead, she too flexed forward against her shoulder harness. Her arms came up to wrap around my back.
Yes. Hell, yes.
I kissed her again, harder this time and not so sweet. There was no innocence in the way my insistent tongue-tip fluttered at the seam of those rose petal lips.
She opened to me slowly, so slowly it could only be a deliberate tease. Our open mouths began to exchange delight with each other. Our tongues darted here and there to tickle the most sensitive nerve endings. She tasted of coffee and butterscotch, and she felt like heaven.
Chapter Five
Ronnie
The lingering aftertaste of that completely inappropriate kiss still burned as I jumped out in front of the FBI field office. If I scrambled fast enough, I could tell myself nobody saw me get out of that pastel dinosaur. Flashing my badge at my colleagues, I speed-walked toward the elevator.
I couldn't deny my attraction to Clarissa Stanton. A one-off might be fun.
Bailey's ringtone sang on my hip. Yeah, right. I once thought a one-off might be fun with Bailey. And here we were, fourteen years later. I put the phone on airplane one-handed. Punched the elevator call button with the other. Onward.
I walked into my office to find Special Agent in Charge Matt Dauphin sitting behind my desk. I couldn't even be surprised. What was one more world-class goat rodeo on a day like this?
He looked like the television version of a mid-career FBI agent― tall, reasonably fit, gray skin, short gray hair. Even his eyes were gray. “Nice work today, Agent Rales. Both in court and on the street. You managed a tough situation very well.”
Just like you're trying to manage me.
“It would've been nice if you'd told me about the media event with Clarissa Stanton.”
“Then we would've had this discussion twice instead of just the once.” He put down a pink-and-white cardboard box tied with pink string.
Deep-fried quesitos. I didn't even have to open the box. “It won't work this time, Matt. Cheese-filled doughnuts will get you only so far. What the hell were you thinking, throwing me into that situation without a word of warning?”
“I wanted your unfiltered reaction to Clarissa Stanton. Naturally, if I'd had any idea about the bombshell Sims planned to spring on us...”
“You set me up, and Sims set me up, and I'm not real happy with either of you right now. But I don't expect any different from Sims.”
“You handled it splendidly. As I knew you would.”
He was dancing around something, and it wasn't Whittaker Sims accusing the FBI of withholding evidence. Any good defense lawyer worth his salt tries to prove the FBI has withheld evidence. “You said you wanted my unfiltered reaction. To what?”
He steepled his hands. Considered the ceiling. “To Clarissa Stanton.”
“Why? Stanton is a distraction. Easton acted alone.” My cheeks felt hot. I hoped they didn't look hot. No fucking way was I going to mention that kiss.
“So what did you think of her?”
“Stanton?” My lips tingled. “I think it doesn't matter what I think of her.”
He dropped his gaze from the ceiling to my eyes. “So you really don't know.”
“Know what, for fuck's sake?”
“You've met before.”
“Our paths crossed at the shelter. I wouldn't call that meeting.”
“She's that good an actress.” He seemed impressed. “Even up close.”
“People think they'll see more if they stand in close. The opposite is true.”
“You always say that.”
I nodded.
“You got that from your lessons with The Amazing Darrell.”
I nodded again.
“What if I was to tell you that Clarissa Stanton was another close-in magician?”
“What if I was to tell you that I'm tired of the games?” My favorite letter opener had a lapis lazuli handle. I picked it up to cut the string on the box. There were half a dozen quesitos inside just begging to be eaten. Sugar, cheese, egg, and vanilla. Add your choice of caffeine or alcohol, and you had a meal that met the complete nutritional needs of your average law enforcement officer.
“How deeply did you dive into Stanton's background?” he asked.
“Not very. She wasn't involved.”
“Los Angeles looked deeper.”
“Somebody with LAPD is earning extra cash under the table selling tips to the tabloids.” Even Bailey had done it a time or two over the years. I'd asked her to stop, and she'd said sure, but she probably only stopped telling me about it.
“No doubt, but the tips aren't always wrong. One of the officers collected a champagne flute handled by Ms
. Stanton. Of course, they sent it to their own lab, but I have a contact there, and she shared some disturbing information.”
Here it comes.
“Stanton's fingerprints are a perfect match to a suspect arrested in 2007 in another gemstone swap.”
I let my mouth drop open. Was it possible? “The DeWitte Red Beryl.”
“It was never recovered. LAPD couldn't crack Malory Maine.”
“Son of a bitch.” I remembered Clarissa's passionate defense of Patsee Easton's creepy lawyer. He'd once been Malory Maine's creepy lawyer. “She used me. In discovery, I had to testify that she never left my sight. I still have no idea how the switch was made. Nobody does. The prosecutor ended up dropping the case. Nobody could prove a damn thing.”
Malory had seemed so light and free. So happy. You'd never guess she was actually a liar and a thief. I'd been dazzled. Deceived. Distracted. After she walked the runway, we found ourselves back in the gold limo, the lights of the city glittering all around us. Her lips skittered against my lips, velvet on velvet. A quick, impulsive kiss, followed by a more lingering one.
Wow. Sound familiar, anyone?
That fucking kiss. Was that when it happened? Was that the distraction she used to switch the stones? But how? She'd seemed so fully present in the moment. So engaged.
Her tongue slid so easily into my warm mouth. Her vanilla scent filled my nostrils. Her knee slipped between my thighs, a bold suggestion.
Her attention seemed to be fixed on me and nothing else, nobody else. We felt like the only two people in the world.
Wow, wow, wow. And she'd gone straight for the same move today. Fucking hell. Kissing women in cars must be her go-to play.
Sure, it was. That classic car was also a classic old-school drive-in fuck-mobile.
And she did it so well. In all those years with Bailey, we'd never shared a kiss that sparkled all the way down to my core like that.
Fuck.
This woman was more dangerous than an ocean full of sharks.
Matt's voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. “Well, you're getting a second chance to find out. I want you to develop this friendship with Clarissa Stanton.”
Now I understood why he took my desk to leave me standing here flat-footed. “I didn't hear you say that. No, Matt. No. Hard no. I'm a gemologist. I don't work undercover.”
The son of a bitch had the gall to smile at me. “Nobody's suggesting you go undercover. Anyway, it would be a funny kind of undercover when she knows going in that you're an FBI agent.”
He's your boss. You can't strangle him. Yet.
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“You and Stanton have a certain level of rapport. It came across even on the brief clips they used of the two of you on TV just now.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hear me out. She doesn't know we know she's Malory Maine. She thinks she's playing us. Using you to get inside FBI operations.”
“She used me to get some good publicity for her cause,” I said carefully. “The dog shelter. And that's it.”
Matt showed some gray teeth when he smiled. Uh oh.
My calves backed into a chair, and I finally sat down. Hard.
“You are now the official FBI consultant on Stanton's new film.”
I opened my mouth in an exaggerated O, then closed it again. What could I say?
“And the best part? The request came from Stanton herself. She thinks it's all her idea.”
“Clint will be unthrilled,” I said. Clint Kasparov, a fortysomething agent who played up his resemblance to George Clooney, had recently snagged the plum job of Hollywood liaison.
“Let me handle Clint. Filming begins next week in New Orleans. Stanton's character is an FBI agent gone rogue, and she wants to consult with an actual female agent.”
There were a ton of female agents who would be thrilled to be assigned to a movie set in New Orleans. I lifted an eyebrow.
“There's a subplot about an emerald heist. And the director is in negotiations with the Smithsonian to loan him the actual stone that's the centerpiece of the heist. If he's successful, she'll have unprecedented access to a priceless gem.”
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “The Ademar. Ninety carats of flawless Colombian emerald on the hoof. Seriously, she won't be able to resist.”
“The Smithsonian is going to be able to resist just fine. They're not going to loan their priceless gem to serve as fucking bait for the FBI.”
“And that's where you're wrong.”
“I'm not wrong, Matt.”
“You are, because you don't have all the facts.” He steepled his hands and looked to the ceiling, the picture of male arrogance.
“What fact am I missing now?”
“I'm glad you asked, Special Agent Rales.” His grin turned boyish as he whisked a large leatherette-and-velveteen box out of his jacket.
Wary, I opened it in slow motion. “What the actual fuck?”
“A perfect replica of the Ademar Emerald created from lab-grown material indistinguishable from the real thing even under one hundred times magnification. And that's not all. The stone has been fitted with a nanobot GPS tracker which will allow us to follow its location at all times.”
“Nanobot GPS trackers are five years away.” I picked up my loupe to examine the piece. Damned convincing. Damned beautiful. Just like Malory Maine. “Maybe ten years.”
His grin kept growing. “The CIA has already been using them for eighteen months. And they've loaned one of the little beauties to the FBI, specifically because of the link between terrorism and high-end gemstone laundering.”
So all the Smithsonian had to do was play along. It could be the perfect trap. I'd want to take a deeper look later, but there was no obvious sign of the tracker under the loupe. The nanobot might not even be visible under a conventional microscope.
“All right,” I said slowly. “This is almost too good. Why would Stanton want me on the set?”
“It isn't that mysterious, is it?” He looked me up and down. “She wants a wedge into FBI operations, and she thinks she can get that wedge by going through you. There's no way she'll risk going after that stone unless she thinks she's ahead of us every step of the way.”
“Most stars would prefer to work their wiles on, Clint ‘I'm George Clooney's lost twin’ Kasparov.”
“Yeah, well, lucky you. Stanton isn't most stars. She may be looking to mix pleasure with business.”
She wanted to seduce me and then betray me. The work of a sociopath. Even though I kind of, sort of, knew that all along, I couldn't reconcile that with the Clarissa Stanton I'd seen fussing over the care of her new dog.
How could a beautiful woman seem so real and be so false?
TWELVE YEARS BEFORE, big-eyed Malory Maine almost got away with the perfect crime. And whoever she was working with did get away with it. No matter how many times I went over the sequence of events, I could never figure out where the switch was made.
After the party, we'd been returned to the DeWitte lounge to laugh and sip champagne while the security team escorted the choker on its final trip to the lab. Our Waterford crystal flutes clinked together. At twenty, Malory was below the drinking age in the state of California, but nobody cared about that right now. She was warm and sweet, sitting too close to me, our legs rubbing. This was a formality. A final check of the gem before it was locked away in the vault.
She twisted on the leather couch to kiss me again, a champagne-flavored promise of much more. Soon, we would be free to go, and I already knew we'd be going back to my place.
I kissed back. Our tongues sparred.
There was absolutely not a hint of warning. The team from the Los Angeles Robbery-Homicide Division burst into the lounge in an overwhelming show of force. I stood up fast, but Malory sat stunned.
“What the hell, Bailey?” I asked. “What's going on?”
Bailey's eyes were flat stones that
skipped away from my face. All business. “Malory Maine. Please stand up slowly. That's right, nice and slow.”
Malory pushed herself to her feet. Her long bare legs suddenly looked vulnerable, like the breakable legs of a baby giraffe. “Is there a problem?”
“Turn around with your hands behind your back.”
“Bailey,” I said.
“Please be quiet, miss.” Bailey spoke to me like a robot. A robot with a warrant for somebody's arrest.
I felt as stunned as Malory looked.
“Malory Maine, you are under arrest for felony grand larceny. You have the right to remain silent...”
I spotted my mentor hanging back near the front door. “Johannes?”
As a cuffed Malory was being walked out by two officers who gripped her by the upper arm, he stepped into the light. His face was gray and marked by lines I'd never seen before. “The lab ran it through twice, Veronica. You'll want to check the read-outs for yourself, but there's no mistake. The stone you left with is not the stone you brought back.”
“PROBLEMS,” I SAID NOW. “Two of them.”
Matt nodded his permission to continue.
“The statute of limitations has run out on the DeWitte Beryl. And Johannes shut down the business in 2009. A well-publicized theft and then the great recession.” It hadn't been a good time for the industry. He'd left Los Angeles, hell, left the country. The last Christmas card I got some six years ago had wandered in from Switzerland. “The stone now belongs to the insurance company. It's their job to track it down if they ever get a lead.”
“Agreed,” he said. “The DeWitte Beryl is no longer an FBI case, if it ever was.” The famous Robbery-Homicide Division of LAPD had taken point on that one. “We can't get her for that. We'll have to make a case based on whatever she's planning now. And the odds are high she'll go after the Ademar. The opportunity falling into her lap is simply too good to ignore.”
“She's quite a wealthy woman now in her own right. What's her motive to continue taking that kind of risk?”
“The Ademar, even after being laundered, is going to run around fifty million dollars worth of motive. Besides, I had the front line do some preliminary digging, and I agree with LAPD's analysis. She's planning something.” He dropped a thumb drive on my desk. “You'll find the complete file in there, and you'll want to study it in-depth. She's been studying you for some time. In fact, she hired a private investigator to check into your background.”