No, I wasn’t going to let him get within a two-mile radius of Saidy. Hopefully.
“I don’t want to be late,” I snapped at Saidy.
She turned so that only I could see her and made a please-drop-dead face at me. Oh well. I’d rather have her be mad at me than hurt.
“Thank you so much for the offer, but since Fletcher’s already going that way, I’ll just follow him,” she said in a sickly-sweet voice when she turned back to him. If I didn’t know better, I would think she was trying to make me jealous.
“Don’t be a stranger.” Sullivan winked.
Saidy gave him a little wave. “Bye-bye.”
Bye-bye? She never said that to me, even in four months of dating. What. The. Hell?
Sullivan turned around and headed for his car that was parked directly behind mine. And this was why it was dangerous to start caring about someone while you were working undercover. It meant your mind had a million distractions. I hadn’t even realized the giant SUV had parked behind me and that I was at Sullivan’s mercy.
“Get in your car,” I ground out.
“Excuse me?” Saidy whipped around to look at me.
“You’re going to be late. Let’s hurry.” I jogged to her car and held the door open for her. Saidy somehow conveyed her displeasure toward me with her eyes. It was an incredible talent. Not many people could make you feel three-inches tall with a single look…
“Follow me to that address.”
She smiled in the way that promised retribution, “Okay, but I’ll have to make it up to you somehow.”
I smirked. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
She shut the door and I headed back to my van as Sullivan pulled past me, giving me a cocky salute.
I pulled out and tried to remind myself that she probably wasn’t used to driving as fast as me, so I tried to drive like a funeral home director who was afraid of a casket falling out of the back.
Fifteen minutes later, we were on the right side of town, and I was parking in front of the address she’d given me.
My boss’s address.
The chief of police.
I stepped out of the car at the same time she did. “I can’t believe I’m late!”
“What time were you supposed to be here?”
“Five o’clock!”
I glanced at my watch. It was 4:58. “You’re on time.”
She spun around to glare at me. “That means I’m late. I still have to unload the baskets from the car.”
“Well, good thing I’m here to help. Do you want to make sure this is the right place before we unload the car?” What I really meant was, why are you at the chief-of-police’s home? On his day off?
“I think this is it.” She studied the front of the house as she scrunched her eyebrows together. “I’m sure of it.”
With that she spun around on her high heels and hurried to the back of her car. She pulled out a box that made her look tiny in comparison. She was a scrappy one.
“Here!” I leapt forward, taking it from her. “Let me carry that.”
I glanced at the box that was full of fabric and random pieces of wood. This really was heavy.
“Thanks. Do you mind taking this one too?” she asked as she stacked another one on top of the box in my hands. Somehow, the second one was even heavier. She placed another box on top of that one, then she pulled out a large basket full of papers to carry herself.
“Er, why are you here?” I grunted as I shifted the boxes to a better angle and followed her up the sidewalk to the house.
“For a complete redecorating of the main living area. It’s a birthday surprise for his wife. I love when people do thoughtful things like that,” she told me with a raised eyebrow.
Just then, a roll of ribbon wobbled out of the top of the box and smacked me in the face. “You’re like a freaking traveling Hobby Lobby.”
Her laughter was genuine and still as contagious as ever. “What did you think I always went shopping for? My shoes all fit on one shelf.” She winked, then hit the doorbell with her elbow.
Thinking of her shoe shelf reminded me that I probably wouldn’t get a chance to see that shoe shelf again unless I did something drastic to salvage our relationship.
The door opened and Wendy, my boss’s wife, stood there smiling at Saidy.
“Hi there, I’m Saidy Perez with Bespoke Perez Design. Your husband scheduled this appointment with me?” She ended in a question, as though she wasn’t sure how Wendy would receive her.
“I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve been looking forward to this so much. My husband told me about the surprise this morning.” She ushered Saidy inside, then looked at me again in surprise.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Saidy said. “This nice man helped me find the right address. I’m afraid that’s why I’m a little late, I ended up on the other side of town.”
I noticed she didn’t explain our connection beyond the immediate one.
Wendy smiled and nodded, pretending like she’d never seen me before. She was good. Maybe she should have been the one going undercover.
“Why don’t you come into the living room, and you can set everything down there?”
We followed her into a living room full of dark couches.
“Wow,” Saidy managed. She glanced around the living room in deep thought.
I didn’t see what the problem was. All I saw were lots of comfortable couches to crash on.
“Yes. You can see my little problem, can’t you?” Wendy agreed with her.
“So. Much. Leather,” Saidy managed as she set her basket on the floor.
“What’s wrong with leather?” I asked.
Both of them looked at me. Wendy practically rolled her eyes, and Saidy looked horrified. Like somehow all of the hours she’d spent talking home décor to me were wasted—which, they probably were. All I knew was that Saidy could make any space feel like home.
“Er, forget I said that.”
Wendy gave me a pointed look. “Would you mind going into my kitchen, young man?” Her emphasis on young man did not go unnoticed. “And bring me the small basket on the island?”
She was making a strange motion with her eyebrows and pointing in the vicinity where I needed to walk, even though I knew this house inside and out. It wasn’t hard to guess I would find more than a basket in the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back.” I hurried in the direction of the kitchen; grateful it had a door I could shut behind me.
Chuck Maxwell, the police chief of Riverly, sat at a small table by the kitchen window, eating a sandwich and reading a newspaper.
“You know they have all of that online now, right?”
He kept eating his sandwich and staring at the newspaper.
“What are you doing in my house?” Usually, he met me on the back patio.
“Your interior decorator needed help finding your place.”
That made him look up. “What’s Wendy think?”
“Practically jumping up and down with excitement.”
“Good. I’m paying that woman enough.” He shuddered and took another bite. “It’s my birthday present to Wendy. She’s been pestering me to redecorate for twenty years. I figured it was time.”
“Well, you’ve made her a happy woman, Chief.”
“How’d you run into the designer?”
I cleared my throat. “She showed up outside of Sullivan’s. Which is coincidentally only one number different than your house, but on SE Virginia. Oh, and she’s my ex-girlfriend.”
He folded his paper carefully, ironing out the wrinkles. “She didn’t see anything, did she?”
“No, you know Sullivan isn’t that careless. But I made a point of getting her attention and getting her out of there. She thinks I have work to do in this neighborhood.”
He looked at me sharply. “She doesn’t know what you do?”
“As far as she knows, I’m the owner of a start-up called Exploratory Solutions.”
“Good. Keep it th
at way. I ran a full background check on her, she seems like a good woman. But we can’t blow your cover. If you managed to keep your cover while you were dating, it shouldn’t be too hard now.”
I nodded and slipped my hand into my pocket for the USB I needed to hand off to him. I slid it under his carefully folded newspaper. I didn’t want to risk Saidy walking in and seeing me handing something to the chief. Explaining that away would be difficult. “New drop-off times. And he’s coordinating something big. Just don’t know the particulars yet. It’ll happen in the next month.”
He patted the newspaper. “Big money?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “We’re pretty sure it has to do with an entire warehouse. Some type of auction. In person.”
His face lit up at the possibilities. “It doesn’t begin and end with Sullivan. He’s a facilitator. We want everyone in connection to him. Make sure when we do this, it’s everyone connected.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Contact me when you and West have specifics. Now, let me read my paper in peace.”
I turned around and grabbed the basket, hurrying back to the living room. “Sorry it took so long, I accidentally knocked it off the counter.”
I handed Wendy the basket, nodded to Saidy, then turned to go. What I really wanted to do was stop and ask Saidy when we would have the chance to talk, but that would have been a little too awkward in front of my boss’s wife.
“I’m going to go close the door on my car and be right back,” I heard Saidy say just as I opened the front door.
I held the door open for her, and she gave me an impish grin as she stepped outside onto the porch. We walked side by side down the sidewalk.
I jolted when she slid her hand into mine and squeezed it briefly before letting go again. “Thank you for being so sweet to me today. I was so flustered about doing this job. I was determined to make a good impression. Instead, I was late—sort of—and lost. And you were nice. Even after everything.”
“I think you made a good impression.”
“Really? What makes you think that?”
I snorted. “She looked positively gleeful when I came out of the kitchen and you were showing her paint chips. I think she thinks you invented paint.”
Saidy tilted her head back and laughed. The top of her head now reached my nose, but she was wearing some really high heels, so that explained it.
Then, she looked at me questioningly. I wondered if she still felt the same attraction that I felt for her. Maybe? Maybe I was only being hopeful. Maybe she really was over us.
“Well, good luck with your decorating.” I gave her an awkward wave as I turned to go back to my van. I stopped at the edge of the curb.
If I didn’t ask, I would always regret it.
“Where did I go wrong?”
She turned to look at me. She didn’t need to ask what I meant. “You never chose me. I didn’t expect to be treated like a princess. You know that. But when it came down to it, you weren’t even there.”
“That’s not true—”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to argue about it, Fletcher. We were great together—for a time. But that ended. And I need to get to work. So please just go.” Her voice cracked on the last few words.
With a sigh, I turned and headed to my van.
I stopped when I felt her eyes on me still.
“I want to do better, Saidy. I want us to be better together.”
“When, Fletcher? You’ve been promising things would get better for a while now, and it’s only gotten worse. I can’t keep being miserable waiting for better.”
Her heels clicked against the pavers as she walked up the sidewalk and porch steps, into the house of the very man who’d just asked me to keep my secret a little longer.
Chapter Ten
Fletcher
“Well, we’ll finalize the details on our end as soon as you give us the go. We already have the warrants, and the cooperation from the county sheriff. It’s a go.”
I nodded as I listened to the police chief finish updating us.
Turned out that it didn’t take long to find the rest of that information he’d wanted. Three days, to be exact. Three days of long hours and nights decrypting the files I’d encrypted for Sullivan. And then there was the fact that we were trying to find out what had happened to Jenkins. Jenkins had mysteriously disappeared, Sullivan was acting cagier than normal, and West was now trying to get hired as the fixer.
Sullivan asked me to be available in the next week at a moment’s notice. He promised me triple payment to be available ‘some evening soon for a private business deal.’
It could only mean one thing. A large amount of money was going to transfer hands, and he wanted me to be there to ensure he got it. I’d been there for a few of his other business deals, all of which had been fairly standard black-market sales.
But this, this was an auction. It would be a chance to arrest the buyers as well.
Sullivan was planning on moving a lot of merchandise. Paintings, art and historical artifacts he’d slowly “acquired” that would fetch him a nice price tag. Millions of dollars would exchange hands on the auction night.
“You two have done a great job with this operation. You’ve brought us more evidence than the rest of our officers combined. You ready for another UC job after this?”
I shook my head at the same speed West nodded. The chief looked at me. “You sure? You’ve seemed to find your stride this round.”
The three of us sat at a small table an hour from Sullivan’s place. We didn’t want to risk him seeing us in Riverly. “You know I’m a terrible liar. I can’t keep this up much longer.”
With a grunt, Chuck Maxwell stood up. “Well, you’re great with information. You’ll make an okay detective when this is over.”
With that, he left the back room of the small diner. We’d met him in Burnside, hoping to evade detection. Of course, he’d already had a private room saved where we could talk uninterrupted. Unfortunately, we hadn’t even managed to get lunch while we were there.
West nodded. “You got the promotion.”
“The way he said it made it sound like a demotion. An ‘okay detective’ doesn’t sound promising.”
“From what I’ve heard of detective work, it might be.” He folded his hands behind his head. “I wonder who my next partner will be?”
“You can think about it while we grab lunch.” I stood up and pulled the keys from my pocket. I was tempted to swing by my house and look in on my bike, but I didn’t dare risk it. Our meeting had been so carefully set up today that I couldn’t blow our cover simply because I was worried about my townhouse and my motorcycle.
I still had a house in Burnside where I’d started out as a beat cop and had my first undercover job. Burnside was where I had first become a police officer and gone undercover for the first time. That is, until I applied to transfer to Riverly and began a new undercover operation. I’d kept all of my stuff in Burnside, not wanting anything that would connect me to the beat cop I’d been. Keeping secrets was easier when there were less of them.
“I miss my bike,” I muttered as we stopped at a convenience store at the edge of town to grab lunch. My service van required a three-point turn to fit in the tiny parking space.
“I’ll get you a tricycle,” West promised.
“Actually, I’ll borrow yours and save you the expense.” I put the car in park. “Something greasy to keep you up all night?”
“You see, Fletcher, the problem is, you need an iron stomach like me.”
“I’ll be sure to pick you out an extra green hot dog from the food case.”
I climbed out of the car.
“Make it extra greasy!” West called as I slammed the door.
I mean, I liked some greasy food as much as the next person, but West took it to a whole new level. A painful level. I don’t know if his body had ever seen a raw vegetable.
Shaking my head, I opened the door to the c
onvenience market and stepped inside. The small store was familiar and had a certain homey feel to it.
I’d spent quite a bit of time there when I’d been on an undercover job in a nearby trailer park. That had been my first undercover assignment, and I was miserable the entire time. I’d hated lying, and it turned out that I was really bad at it. Nearly everyone in the trailer park knew I was a cop. That was also a lesson in not doing undercover work in the same town you’ve been a beat cop in.
I carried my loaded basket to the front counter. “Hi, Marni.”
“Hi, Johnny.”
Johnny had been my undercover name when I’d lived in the trailer park. I’d learned some important life lessons when I’d been investigating the supposed gun runner. One of them being that I did not look like a Johnny, and I never remembered that that was my undercover name. In the interest of keeping my cover in the Sullivan investigation, I went by my real first name so that I would always respond.
“How’s life?” I asked Marni.
“It’s good. Dean bought me a ring.” She held up her hand and showcased a camouflage silicone band.
“Wow! That’s…pretty.”
Marni rolled her eyes. “I would have preferred some diamonds. But at least he finally got me something. He says we can get married next year.”
I shook my head. Marni had been my next-door neighbor when I was undercover in the trailer park. Her boyfriend had been promising to propose the whole time I was there. He never did. I was glad he was finally taking some initiative.
“What’re you reading?” I gestured to the magazine Marni rested her hand on while she rang up my lunch with her free hand.
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
She slammed the magazine closed.
“Oh, come on, Marni…you know I won’t make fun of you.”
She shook her head. “It’s just a boring magazine put out by a group of bloggers.”
I rested an index finger on it, and slowly pried it out from under her hand. “How to know if you should quit your job. Home salon tips. Don’t be a Frugal Fran.”
World's Worst Boyfriend: A Romantic Comedy Adventure (Fake It Book 3) Page 9