by Tessa Vidal
“No,” I said. “I can't. It's too much.”
“I'm sorry, Ronnie. I know it's a lot.” Clary's gentle finger touched the corner of my eye.
No more fucking tears. I'd wasted enough tears on Bailey Flowers. I straightened my spine. “If she's planning to frame an FBI agent, she's got to know that isn't going to stick. It might buy her a few days of distraction at the most.”
“A few hours might be all she needs to get away. The Ademar Emerald could be her swan song. It's big enough to walk away from a house in Los Feliz. She probably has a new name and a new place already lined up halfway across the world.”
Didn't want to believe this. Couldn't believe this.
“She wants to involve me too. That's why she approached me in Fort Stockton.” Clary's long painted nail pinged her now-warm champagne flute. “She wants to turn me so I'd be working against you. Supposedly, it's my big chance to redeem myself. I'm supposed to be spying on you and keeping her in the loop about your movements.”
I was speechless.
“I told her I'd have to think about it, but I'm just playing for time. I figure she's setting me up as much as she's setting you up. If the Ademar disappears, and I get fingerprinted, the two people who attended that show with the DeWitte Beryl are now on the scene of another missing gem. They'll throw us under the jail, we'll never stand a chance.”
“She wants to put us both in the frame,” I said slowly. “That's what you're telling me.”
“I think so, yeah. I'm sorry, Ronnie. I really am.”
“I think I believe you,” I heard myself say. “I really think you have a credible theory.”
Should I believe this? Was the theory credible? Or was I allowing myself, once again, to be distracted by the beautiful Malory Maine?
But, ignoring our past history, Clarissa was the one who seemed plausible. The one who was making sense. I could write off my past doubts about Bailey as jealousy or anger about the other women, but she'd gone too far this time. You didn't use an LAPD badge to question someone in Texas. Not without a warrant, not without local or federal assistance.
Clarissa was right. Bailey was up to something, and it wasn't just her chasing after me one more time again.
Well, fuck. This was going to be a real roadrunner rodeo.
Matt would not be happy if the trap we were setting for a movie star caught a veteran cop red-handed instead. The great publicity he imagined was turning to shit right in front of me. A dirty cop never looked good in the news. And Bailey's arrest wouldn't do wonderful things for the relationship between the FBI and LAPD either. Was this the road to my next promotion, or the non-stop flight to the Nome, Alaska Field Office?
Didn't matter. Clary's freedom, Clary's character, wouldn't be stolen from her again. If Bailey had really done that, Bailey was going to pay.
Chapter Eighteen
Clary
Back at the hotel, we were faced again with the choice of three bedrooms. Yukon, happy and unconflicted, was soon snoozing away in the crate located in the room assigned to him. That left me and Ronnie to stare at the other two doors.
We were anything but unconflicted.
I wanted to kiss her again. Hell, I wanted so much more than kisses. But Ronnie was in shock. Her entire world had been shattered. I couldn't rush her.
She didn't pick a door. Sitting down hard on the plump leather sofa, she stared at a spot on the Persian rug that was no different from any other spot on the rug. “How could I be so wrong about somebody for so many years?”
Sitting carefully beside her, I put an arm around her slumped shoulders. “You were really young when you first got involved with her. She took advantage of that.”
“I feel so stupid.”
“You know you're not stupid. You need your sleep. We both do.”
In the end, she walked through one door, and I walked through the other.
I SPENT A SLEEPLESS night tossing and turning in a wide king-sized bed much too big for one person. Giving her that space was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. All through the darkest hours of the night, I kept second-guessing myself.
Should I get up, go to her, wrap my arms around her? Bailey Flowers had been screwing with her head for a long time. Ronnie needed time to think without somebody else shoving their own thoughts into the equation. Yet I ached all over with the need to curl myself around her.
I'd taken back my life from what Flowers had done to me. I'd changed my name, started over, built again, and done pretty damn well even if I said it myself. Ronnie, by contrast, was only now realizing the full extent of what Flowers had done. It was a big adjustment.
She was already starting to get free. She'd already moved out.
She'll be all right as long as you don't push too hard.
Have trust in the process.
Or so I kept telling myself, over and over again. I must have slept after all, because I sat up hard to see the bright gold of late morning peeping around the curtains. We'd probably already lost the chance to get into New Orleans before sunset.
The suite was silent, although not for long. She'd taken Yukon for his walk and returned with a brown tray loaded with two strong, tall coffees.
“My hero.” I grabbed for the caffeine with both hands.
Her smile was wan, but it was there.
Threading our way out of sprawling San Antonio was a blur. Ronnie said nothing of any substance. Was she having second thoughts? My theory seemed solid to me, but she struggled to accept it. She'd been involved with Flowers for a long, long time.
“I need to get with Matt,” she said suddenly. “I can't process this by myself.”
We'd already gone over this point last night. Several times. “You're not on your own. You have me.”
“You're not FBI.”
“Look, we already know there's a bad cop in the mix. How do we know there isn't a bad FBI agent involved as well?”
She paused but not for long. “I've doubted Matt before. But it's irrational. Matt's good people. A tad conniving, but you don't get to the top without a little of that. He's a good man.”
“I'm not saying anything against Dauphin. He probably is a good man. But we know for a fact there's no fucking way Flowers is pulling this off on her own. She's the go-to person to get in and out of the evidence room, but she isn't a lab tech or a banker or a lawyer or any of the other things you need for a stone-swapping operation that moves hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen gems.”
Silence.
“Bailey Flowers is not acting alone,” I repeated. “And we have no way of knowing who else is involved. There are exactly two people we can trust right now. Me and you. Three people, if you count Yukon as a people.”
He snuffled behind us, and she forced a smile. “Yukon is definitely a people.”
The road kept unrolling. I had my eye on a black pickup moving up on the right a little too fast, but it turned off at the next exit.
“This is hard for me,” she said. “Not knowing who to trust. Not knowing where to turn.”
“Tell me about it. I haven't been able to trust much of anybody for a very long time.”
“She took that from you.”
“It wasn't just Bailey,” I said. “It was the whole enchilada. Everybody was against me. She wasn't the prosecutor. She wasn't the judge who let the case move on to trial. She wasn't the gossip reporters or the people who retweeted Malory Maine's mug shot. It was everything. Everybody. The minute somebody heard my name, they thought they already knew who I was. That girl who got away with something.”
“I've seen the way you are with Yukon.” She glanced at me, and even that brief look felt hot against my face. “I've seen the way you are with people. How real you are. It was hard for me to figure you out. The more time we spent together, the more real you seemed.”
“I am real. I promise.”
“But, all the time, I was fully aware you'd investigated me down to my favorite flavor of Fanta.”
“Yea
h. And I should have told you that upfront.” I took a deep breath. “The thing is, somebody framed me for stealing something valuable, and I couldn't prove my innocence, not really. As long as the real thief stays out there, as long as the stone remains missing, everybody's going to keep thinking Malory Maine is a criminal.”
“And I was there. I was part of that.”
“You were there. You were a magician. I fully admit I investigated you. I thought you had to be the thief. If Bailey hadn't come to me, if her story hadn't been so odd...” I couldn't finish the sentence.
“We would have never known. We would have mistrusted each other forever.”
A chilling thought.
“My heart should have whispered the truth to me,” I said after a while. “To be honest, I think my heart did try to tell me. Over and over, from the first moment we met again in your limousine outside the courthouse.”
She didn't say anything for a long time. Then: “I think maybe my heart tried to tell me too.”
THE REST OF THE DAY was a blur. Eventually, we had to throw in the towel and admit we weren't reaching New Orleans that night. At a busy truck stop, I stepped into a quiet corner to phone my people, and they got back to me with a small Acadian-style cottage B&B. Dog-friendly, of course. Oak trees and Spanish moss. Frogs singing in the dark.
The cottage had a single bedroom, dominated by a queen-sized bed. “I can sleep on the couch,” I said.
Ronnie laughed. “Don't be ridiculous.” Twisting, turning, she was face-to-face right up close to me.
Those lips of hers. So soft. Almost hesitant. Those little testing flickers of the tongue. They shaped themselves into the prettiest words.
“Kiss me,” she said. “Hold me. I need that.”
“I need it too. Oh, God. So much do I need it too.”
Still letting her take the lead, I kicked my shoes away anywhere and let her guide me sprawl-legged on my back down to the surprisingly fresh, firm mattress. This was more than kissing, this was Ronnie tenderly using fingers and tongue to lift and tug and pull away my clothes inch by easy inch. She wasn't in a hurry. She wanted to linger.
Hell, so did I.
Why rush to whatever came next? This moment, the moment when we came back to each other, was everything.
“You're so beautiful,” she said. “So sweet.”
“I'm not sweet.”
“Yes, you are. The sweetest.”
I wiggled and scooted and happily let her disappear my clothes. That magician's gift of hers wasn't all bad, hell, it wasn't anything bad at all. Poof, and I was naked, and her roving, restless tongue was already gliding its slippery way around my sensitive globes. She sucked happily on my right nipple, testing its stiffness, while her fingers pinched and caressed my left nipple. The contrast between suck and pinch was delicious.
“Take off your clothes,” I said.
“Not yet. I want you naked and spread out for me. All for me.”
In a way, it felt selfish to be so open, passive, and sprawl-legged. It felt like I was taking. But she needed this. She'd been used and deceived for far too long, and she needed to make a start toward reclaiming her own power.
“I'm here for you,” I said. “All for you. Everything you see, it's yours.”
But, of course, I couldn't resist undoing those buttons on her blouse, which puffed open to reveal a matching blue bra. Had I ever thought of Ronnie Rales, girl FBI agent, as a woman who ever chose her bra to match her shirt? I had not. She was full of surprises. Delightful ones.
She licked and flicked, and my busy fingers drifted under the band of the bra in question. Her nipples were as stiff as mine. Her heart was racing.
“Unh, unh, unh.” Her breath tickled my boobs. “Not just yet, you.” With a shrug and a wiggle, she snapped my hand out of her bra.
I gasped but slumped to let things happen for a minute. Her head bobbed down lower and lower. Her shorter hair felt good when she used her very scalp like a brush to massage into my belly and inner thighs. A teasing tickle...
“Please,” I said. “Please.”
“That's what I like to hear.” Her breath was now between my legs.
Between my folds.
“More, harder,” I said.
And she laughed. Her tongue continued to dip and swerve and tease. Sometimes, she pulled back and used no tongue at all, just more of her head rolling between my legs and against my trembling delta. It was so damned hard to hold back. I wanted to clamp down with my thighs, squeeze down with my two hands, trap her head in the perfect spot to smash her sculpted face against my trembling pussy.
“Please. More.”
“Mmmphf.”
The timing was all hers. All under her control. I walked my buttocks in place against the firm mattress. My triangle bounced against her lips. Her tongue descended and then ascended again. How long, how long, how much? So much teasing.
So much torture.
So much heaven.
My hips moved in circles now, and her tongue swept even deeper. She'd positioned her upper lip in the perfect place to push my clitty button. The pressure wasn't quite on the nose, just a little bit off, just the right amount of wrong to make it hit all the most vulnerable nerve endings. No tricks, no toys, nothing you could film for a porno. Just raw heat. Just exquisite tongue. Just...
Heaven.
That word again.
I was back in heaven.
Chapter Nineteen
Ronnie
I lost myself in the beautiful arms of my dream woman. Yes. I could admit it now. Clary Stanton was the woman who haunted my dreams. The woman I could never have. The kind of woman who seemed so far beyond me I gave up and stayed year after year with a user like Bailey.
After sex like that, after the emotional exhaustion of the past few days, after the long drive, I slept hard, but then I snapped awake into the blackness of a country night. Yukon was snuffling in his sleep, and Clary had turned to snuggle her velvet body into mine.
Beautiful Clary. Her beauty was more than physical, more than what the fans saw on a movie screen. There was a deep sweetness to her. A refusal to be bitter. There were lots of ways to get good publicity when you were a star. You didn't have to spend a year training to work with a challenging dog.
She cared. Even though she was afraid to share her heart, she had a heart. A huge one.
If only I'd had more time with Malory...
But fate had taken that time away from me.
Not fate.
Fucking Bailey.
And she wasn't acting alone. She couldn't have been. The lab guy helped her, some guy whose name I'd long since forgotten. Hadn't he too moved to Switzerland after DeWitte closed its doors?
Who else? Johannes himself?
No, not Johannes. I couldn't, wouldn't believe it. Not him, not my second father.
My only real father.
I'd wasted so much time on somebody who wasn't worth it. Because I was alone. Because I'd almost always been alone. And when I did have somebody important to me, when I was finding my place in the world, Bailey burned it down. The theft embarrassed me, but it ruined him. The vaults were as impregnable as ever, but no one quite trusted DeWitte anymore with their most valuable gems.
Clary tightened her arms around me. “Quit thinking. I can hear you. Sleep.”
“Sorry.”
“But you're still doing it.”
“All this brings up so much about those days back then. About Johannes. He was like a father to me, and now I haven't heard from him in years.”
She snuggled closer. “When I thought you were in on it, I thought he must be in on it too. Only he went ahead and took his ill-gotten gains and fled to Europe.”
“He went out of business. It was a bad time for any luxury business anyway, and the disappearance of the beryl didn't help matters any.”
“I thought maybe that was the cover story.” She nuzzled at the nape of my neck. “We had each other so wrong, didn't we? We really did.”
/> “We only had a few hours to get to know each other. It just wasn't enough.”
“It wasn't. And yet...”
We were both silent, remembering. Those few minutes in the limo kissing, me and Malory Maine. They were a secret treasure, a memory I could never share with anyone― a memory I could never forget. Those kisses colored my dreams from that night forward.
“We had something,” I said. “We didn't know what we had, and we weren't given time to find out, but we had it.”
Sleep claimed us again. And then came the morning.
TIME MOVED FASTER IN New Orleans than I thought it would. The schedule demanded fourteen days of intense filming. Clary, who was in virtually every scene, got up at four thirty in the morning and crawled back into bed at eleven or twelve. Claus Keller had hired someone to walk Yukon, but I mostly waved the guy off in favor of doing the job myself.
Yukon and I had bonded, and I needed the time to think.
Bailey was planning something, and we needed to be planning something too. The trouble was, I was trapped between secrets.
Clary couldn't know about the nanobot tracker in the fake Ademar. She couldn't even be told the Ademar was a fake. The very existence of these trackers was, Matt assured me, a high-level CIA above-top-secret national security matter.
And I'd promised Clary not to share her theories with Matt. At least not yet. If not for the nanobot, I might have felt forced to break that promise. I couldn't risk a national treasure by not sharing with my SAC.
But the real stone wasn't at risk. At least, I had that worry off my plate.
Much of the actual filming was taking place on a horse farm over an hour and a lake away from the city. I'd expected clubbing in the French Quarter and got winding country roads instead. Clary loaned me the Fleetwood's keys, and sometimes I excused myself from the set to drive around the area. Yukon wouldn't like Louisiana in the summer, but the humidity wasn't so bad this early in the spring, and we took pleasure in finding a new hidden path every day.
Once I drove past a broken sign in the shape of a roadrunner. Little Roadrunner. The Google didn't know anything about it, so I snapped a picture to show Clary later.