by Tami Lund
She giggled. “Sorry, I have to pee,” she said, reluctantly sliding away from his warmth and climbing out of bed. “And we’re out of condoms, remember?”
“Damn it.” He rolled out of bed. “I guess I’ll go make breakfast and then run to the store. Maybe then I can get lucky?”
“The likelihood is high,” she assured him just before stepping into the bathroom and closing the door.
• • •
They discussed the case as they devoured Quinn’s homemade pancakes.
“She’s ripe for the plucking,” he said. “We have a massive amount of circumstantial evidence. We just need one solid thing. I can get it.”
She knew his heart was in the right place. He wanted to help. And he was smart enough to recognize that letting Whitney Bianca think she’d lured him into her lion’s den was the way to do it. Except—
“She’ll eat you alive.”
“She doesn’t stand a chance.” Quinn snorted.
“You don’t know her as well as I do.”
“I know myself. And I know how I feel about you.”
Instead of arguing her point, she asked, “How do you feel?”
Quinn focused on shoveling food into his mouth. When there was no more pancake to sop up the syrup on his plate, he pushed away from the table and focused on carrying dishes into the kitchen. Finally he stopped in the entryway between the rooms and placed his hand on the doorframe, pressing so hard his fingers turned white.
“I don’t know,” he said with such stark honesty, she sucked in a breath and held it.
“I … I care,” he managed. “I don’t know what else to call it. But there’s something there, Kyra. And it’s real.”
It’s real.
• • •
Quinn and Kyra both went into the office on Monday morning. With FBI case files, there were always mounds of paperwork to be done, even if the case was not yet closed. Plus, Quinn wanted to check on the child-kidnapping ring he’d busted just before getting tapped to help Kyra with her current case. He needed to make sure the prosecutor was doing her job and those bastards would rot in prison for the rest of their lives.
Raquel showed up with her baby shortly after they arrived. Quinn retreated to his desk, but Kyra followed her into Nico’s office so they could all make silly faces at the little baby girl.
Quinn sucked down a sixteen-ounce Coke. Too bad it wasn’t mixed with Jack. Or rum. Or anything with a little more kick. His life was such a fucking roller coaster at the moment, he didn’t know which end was up.
First, there was the whole incident with Kyra answering his phone, talking to his incarcerated father. He wanted to know what the hell they talked about, but he was too chicken to ask, too mystified to bring it up again.
She accepted the fact that his father was a criminal, knew enough about his fucked-up childhood that she should have run screaming for the hills, yet she hadn’t. She was still there.
Then, just a couple of hours later, he was faced with Kyra, standing in the middle of the living room, holding a baby in her arms and smiling as serenely as the damned Mona Lisa.
That should have been his cue to go running for the hills, but instead, all he’d done was stand there and stare at her, imagining it was his baby she was rocking.
What the hell was wrong with him? Quinn Daniels, looking at a woman and envisioning the whole white picket fence concept? Seriously? He really had gone off the deep end. Kyra Sanders was pretty damn amazing in bed—was pretty damn amazing in general—but thinking about a future, about having kids with her?
What the hell was wrong with him?
Although in truth, she had her own damn faults, too. Like her refusal to let him lure Bianca into their net by letting the woman believe she could seduce him. Their last conversation about the subject had veered so far off course, he’d ended up confessing he had feelings for her. Despite the unresolved case, they’d headed to the store, giggling like teenagers as they bought not one, but three boxes of condoms. Then they’d retreated back to the house and fell back into bed, where they pretty much spent the next thirty-six hours, other than to eat or use the bathroom.
Denial at its finest.
• • •
He hunched over his desk while he munched on pretzels from a bag he’d found stashed in a desk drawer, checked email, and made sure the paperwork from his last case had been filed correctly.
Various co-workers stopped by his desk, asked how Kyra’s case was going. A couple of buddies wanted to know what it was like playing house with her. When the first one asked, Quinn nearly choked on a pretzel.
It was nice. Really nice. Too nice, if he was imagining her with his child, for Christ’s sake.
To his buddy, he simply grunted and pretended to be absorbed in whatever was on his computer screen. When the most recent co-worker moved away, Quinn glanced up to see if anyone else was paying him any undue attention. Kyle, one of the interns from the local university, was talking to some guy he hadn’t seen before. Kyle nodded and then pointed at Kyra’s desk, which was empty at the moment.
The guy’s gaze swept the room until it fell on him, and then his eyes widened with what Quinn assumed was recognition.
That’s when Quinn recognized him, too, from the photo he’d pulled up on his computer after finding out the name of the person who had rented the car parked in Whitney Blanca’s driveway.
Keith Oshard.
He looked older than the FBI file pic, but then again, Oshard had been an agent for nearly twenty years and had probably taken that picture when he was a rookie.
Did Kyra like older men? She and Quinn were about the same age, right around the thirty mark, whereas Oshard had already begun his fourth decade.
Quinn stood abruptly and began walking toward the man. The older agent’s brown hair was thinning, he noticed as he deliberately picked apart the man’s physical appearance. He had brackets around his mouth, too. Did he smoke? He was willing to bet that if he did, it had been one vice Kyra hated.
He wasn’t nearly as fit as Quinn, either. The guy’s arms were too thin, his waist a tad too thick. There was no way this loser would be able to hold Kyra by the thighs while he nailed her against the wall in the shower.
When he realized what he was doing, Quinn tried to shut it off. Comparing himself to Oshard would get him nowhere. She was with him now, so whatever the hell she had felt for this guy over a year ago didn’t matter. Besides, he’d cheated on her, and Quinn couldn’t imagine doing that to Kyra. There was no reason to compare himself to the other guy, no reason to wonder if this guy had Kyra’s normal background, so therefore had a hell of a lot more in common with her than Quinn ever would.
Oshard turned as if he meant to leave the room, but Quinn clamped a hand onto his arm before he could escape. He reluctantly turned back and offered a shaky smile.
“What are you doing? Here, I mean? In this building?” Quinn asked.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Yeah, I know who you’re looking for. She’s not here right now,” he lied. He hoped to hell Kyra didn’t exit Nico’s office any time soon. The director’s office was located on the far end of the room from where he and Oshard stood at the entrance to the field agents’ area, but if the door opened and Kyra stepped out, Oshard would likely spot her.
“Okay, well, I’ll just go—”
“Nope. You’ll just come with me.” He tightened his grip on the man’s arm, leaving Oshard no option but to walk with him.
“I don’t even know you,” the son of a bitch blathered. “Why do we need to talk?”
Was he lying? What the hell was he doing at the Detroit office anyway? Quinn’s case research had turned up a pattern: every few weeks, Oshard took off a Friday or a Monday for a long weekend.
While that in itself wasn’t anything that would raise a red flag, a deeper investigation showed that on each and every one of those long weekends, Oshard had flown to Detroit, all the way back to a few months after Kyra’
s case had gone belly up when Whitney Bianca disappeared into the wind.
Keith Oshard was a bastard for what he did to Kyra, and he was two times a bastard because he was a dirty agent to boot.
A year ago it could have been a reasonable assumption that Oshard had strictly had an affair on Kyra without realizing until after the fact that he was sleeping with her case. Then when he realized the score, instead of turning Whitney in like he should have, he’d gone into defensive mode and covered his own ass, knowing how bad it would've looked if the government had discovered he was sleeping with the enemy. Still wrong, still not fair to Kyra, but to someone who saw the world in shades of gray instead of black and white, Quinn could grudgingly see where it might be acceptable, might be swept under the rug.
But this—these regular visits, a year later—was proof positive the bastard was really and truly a dirty agent. He wasn’t covering his own ass anymore. He was aiding and abetting.
Quinn was more than half tempted to haul him into Nico’s office and explain what he’d learned. He knew Nico would believe him and would see justice met.
But he wanted a shot at the guy first. He wanted to let Oshard know that Kyra was his now, and if the son of a bitch ever so much as thought about her again—
Apparently, even Quinn had some gray area.
“I think we need to talk in private,” he suggested as he dragged Oshard along, looking for an unused interrogation room.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Oshard protested.
“I do,” he said shortly. Although the dude had a point. Why get caught shitting in his own nest?
He forced Oshard to walk with him down to street level, to the main lobby. He paused next to Sheila, the uniformed woman who had been guarding the main entrance to the FBI building for as long as Quinn had worked there.
“Don’t let him leave,” he said to her, and he released his grip on Oshard’s arm to pull out his phone and shoot a text to Kyra. The formidable Sheila crossed her arms and glared at Oshard, a silent challenge the agent did not accept. He simply stood there, a sullen look on his face.
Taking care of some business downstairs. Text me when you’re ready to go.
Quinn stuffed his phone into his pocket, grabbed Oshard’s arm again, and frog-walked him across the street to a small coffee shop tucked into the lobby of the building there. The place was always packed first thing in the morning and then again shortly after lunch, but at this time of day, there were only a handful of patrons milling about, contemplating their next caffeine fix.
As he reached for the door, a tall woman with dark hair and large breasts covered by a tight red shirt walked out. Quinn barely noticed her, but Oshard’s eyes grew wide as saucers when he caught sight of the tits.
Fucking asshole. How the hell Kyra could ever consider going back to this guy, after the way Quinn treated her? Or maybe the real question was, how could Quinn seriously think she would?
He shoved Oshard into a chair, then flipped another around and placed it in front of the quaking agent. He straddled the chair and crossed his arms over the back.
“I have information for Kyra’s case,” Oshard blurted just as Quinn opened his mouth.
He froze for several heartbeats and then snapped his mouth closed. “Damn it.”
“I can help bring Whitney White down.”
“She goes by Whitney Bianca now.”
“I know. She also has amazing tits and you, for some reason God only knows, haven’t been swayed by them. And it’s pissing her off royally.”
Something niggled at the back of Quinn’s mind. “Criminals don’t do it for me,” he said aloud while he struggled to figure out why Oshard’s words struck a chord.
Oshard tugged at his shirt collar. “I’m a breast man. Always have been, ever since I stole my first Playboy magazine from under my dad’s bed.”
Why the hell did the man feel the need to confess that to him? “All women have breasts. Including Kyra.”
“Yeah, but Whitney’s are fucking amazing.” Oshard rounded his hands, held them about two feet from his chest. “And she knows how to use those babies.” He shook his head as if he was mystified. “You want to know how she pulled me away in the first place?”
“No.”
“A tit job. She wrapped those babies around my dick and jerked me off. I swear to God, it was better than a blowjob.”
Quinn scrubbed his hand over his face. Was this guy serious? Who the hell gave this much detail to a complete stranger? Or anyone, for that matter? The most he could ever imagine telling his friends was that he and Kyra were sleeping together. Period. It was none of their damn business what all that entailed.
“Thank God the rest of the FBI isn’t so easily swayed,” he said.
“No shit. But then again, after what you and Kyra have done together—”
The light bulb flipped on in Quinn’s head. “It was you.”
Oshard flushed, cleared his throat. Tugged at his shirt collar again. He acted like a perp who’d just been caught.
“You were fucking spying on us.” The flash of light Kyra swore she saw when they’d been making love on the window seat. She insisted it had come from Whitney’s house.
“You should close the blinds,” Oshard replied.
“Why were you spying on us?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, asshole. We aren’t in the federal building anymore. Don’t think I won’t drag your sorry ass into the alley and beat the shit out of you.”
“What the hell does Kyra see in you?”
“She sees someone who doesn’t lie and cheat. Someone who cares enough about her not to stray. Ever.” He gave the man’s shoulder a shove, and Oshard’s chair balanced precariously on two legs for a few seconds before slamming down and jarring his entire body. “I’m going to fucking take you down for invasion of privacy, besides the dozen other charges I’m going to hit you with.”
“I can help you close this case.”
He refused to believe it. He didn’t want to believe it, because he was still pissed off over the fact that Kyra’s ex had been watching while he’d had sex with her. Goddamn it, that was private, meant for just the two of them.
“Why would you do that? According to my intel, you’re still screwing Bianca.” He didn’t actually know that for a fact, but he felt reasonably certain, because why else would Oshard fly across the country every few weeks? Why else would there have been a rental car, signed in his name, parked in her driveway? Quinn had seen the diagram of Whitney’s house. That flash of light had most likely come from one of the bedrooms on the upper level. Circumstantial, maybe, but it was enough to convince him that Oshard was still banging Whitney.
The way the man’s face reddened told Quinn his hunch had been right. “Yeah, well, things have changed. I—I thought she wanted to get married. We were gonna run away together, leave the country.”
“Holy shit, you fell for her. For real fell for her. Christ, you are an idiot. How the hell did you manage to pass all the tests to become an FBI agent?”
“By the skin of my teeth,” Oshard admitted. “And yeah, I fell for her, okay? She’s a pretty damn addictive lady.”
Just like Kyra. Except with Kyra, Quinn knew what he was getting. And it was a hell of a lot more than a nice pair of tits.
“You’re talking to the wrong agent,” he said. “I’m clean. Unfailingly so. I’m going to take you down with her.”
“Kyra will give me amnesty.”
“Kyra’s not the director here. Nico won’t give you amnesty.”
“Then I won’t go through your director.” Oshard glanced at his watch. “I’m on my way to the airport now, headed back to Dallas. I’ll talk to my director. He’ll believe me. He’ll also pull Kyra, make her return to Texas.”
Quinn bristled at the blatant threat. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying I’m going to tell him you’re screwing Kyra. She knows our director’s
policy on interoffice relationships. I’m surprised she did it again. One quick conversation and she’ll be forced to leave Detroit. If she isn’t fired outright.”
He had no idea if the threat was real or not. But he wasn’t willing to take the chance. He could not lose Kyra. “Tell me what you know,” he said with resignation.
“I want amnesty. Talk to your director.”
“Son of a fucking bitch.” He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Nico.
Chapter Thirteen
“How long are you planning to stay mad at me?”
“I don’t know yet. You did a pretty shitty thing.”
“I allowed your ex-boyfriend to tell us everything he knew about the perp we’re trying to take down. Yeah, I can see how that’s pretty shitty.” Quinn’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
Kyra had been furious with him since she’d stormed into the conference room where he and Oshard had been cooling their heels, circling one another like leery predators—or alpha males, ready to fight over the lone female in the pack.
Oshard still had feelings for Kyra; Quinn had deduced as much when his eyes lit up as soon as she walked into the room. If he didn’t have feelings for her, then he certainly had hope that she would be his saving grace. The agent was in a hell of a hard place at the moment, and he was clearly willing to do just about any damn thing to get out of it.
Quinn had feelings for her, too, and he’d just admitted as much to her two days ago. He had every right to puff up like a peacock and step between them, a silent warning for Oshard to keep his hands off.
So whatever Quinn had expected Kyra to do afterward, it sure as hell hadn’t been for her to turn on him and begin raging for going behind her back like this.
“You had a private meeting with Keith,” she retorted while they stood outside Nico’s office, waiting for him to wrap up a conference call so they could debrief and come up with a game plan. “You texted Nico before alerting me. Obviously, you had some sort of conversation before pulling me in.”