by Susan Sey
The problem was Liz. Because the plan as it stood had him living in her back pocket for the foreseeable future, and, unfortunately for Patrick, the years apart had done nothing to tone down the odd and uncomfortable threat she posed to his self-control. He could keep her at arm’s length with the usual truckload of sexual innuendo and the occasional barbed comment, but he couldn’t convince himself it was for her own protection. She’d made a career out of living in the same world Patrick did. She was no innocent to be sheltered.
The distance was for Patrick’s protection. It always had been. But what the hell. It worked. It would again.
“Two weeks,” he finally said. “I can give you two weeks.”
LIZ CHECKED her watch as she barreled down Main Street toward the FBI’s Resident Agency in Grief Creek. It had been twenty-two minutes since she’d said a tense good-bye to Patrick at his sister’s restaurant; she had another two to make this meeting.
She briefly considered canceling due to the O’Connor family’s impromptu destruction of her carefully constructed game plan. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t beg off and she wouldn’t be late. The new plan she’d hastily sketched out to her boss over the phone a few minutes ago was a bit unorthodox but it had merit. Now it was just a matter of selling it face-to-face.
Which she would do in precisely—she checked her watch—one minute. No tardies, no excused absences. Because Special Agent in Charge Grayson Bernard believed firmly that punctuality and discipline were the foundations of the civilized world. Some agents muttered words like rigid and tight-assed behind his back, but Liz wasn’t among them. Using nothing but strict procedure, dogged effort and the unflagging strength of his convictions, Bernard faced down the chaos and wrenched order from it. Liz respected that. Hell, she aspired to it.
Patrick O’Connor’s devil-on-holiday smile raced unbidden through her mind, hot and fast as a prairie fire. Liz scowled. Chaos personified, she thought, and clamped down on the frisson of awareness that smile always sent skittering over her skin. For that reason alone, Patrick O’Connor would always be the enemy in Liz’s mind, no matter how reformed he claimed to be.
She skidded her government-issue sedan into a parking spot, nearly kissing her neighbor’s paint job. She refused to let herself be late on account of Patrick O’Connor and his fallen-angel face. Not now.
Snatching up her briefcase, she bolted out of the car and into the building at a dead run. She had her butt planted in the single chair outside SAC Bernard’s office with thirty seconds to spare and gave his admin a smile that rode the line between pleasant greeting and teeth-baring menace.
The woman blinked, murmured into her headset, then said, “SAC Bernard will be with you in a moment.”
Liz nodded and ran a quick hand over her hair. It had suffered considerably on the ride in from the reservation. Her car had air-conditioning but she’d needed the slap of fresh air that only a seventy-five-mile-an-hour breeze could provide.
She yanked impatient fingers through her snarls and scowled. She was a cop, damn it. The badge meant everything to her, and she’d be damned if she’d let a criminal—no matter how slick, how potent, how reformed—knock her off her stride. And she’d be double damned before she’d give her SAC a reason to wonder if such a thing could even be done.
Bernard’s office door opened a moment later. “Agent Brynn,” he said. “Right on time.”
Liz rose to her feet. “Sir.”
She stepped past him into his office. He swept a hand toward the small of her back without making contact or even coming close. Observing the courtesies without opening himself to a harassment suit, she realized. And she thought she’d achieved a level of automatic deference to the rules. Compared to Bernard, she was a rank amateur.
She stopped beside a straight-backed chair in front of his desk. She didn’t consider sitting in it and Bernard didn’t invite her to do so. He settled himself into the position of authority behind the desk, steepled his fingers and pressed them against his lips while he considered her. His suit and his eyes were the same color—a cool, flinty gray that discouraged bullshit of any variety.
Liz pushed back against jumping nerves. Her proposal was solid, her players lined up. The only weak link was her.
Ten years of her father’s so-called care had taught Liz that survival depended on granting instant obedience to powerfully charismatic and dangerously intelligent men. Particularly those who viewed the U.S. legal system as a trifling inconvenience rather than a public service. She’d spent the past twenty years trying to scrape that axiom out of her subconscious. Trying to transform herself into somebody powerful enough to protect the innocent from men like her father.
But then along came Patrick O’Connor. Granted, he’d shown none of her father’s inclination to exploit women or children, but he was enough like her father in style if not substance that he should disgust her. Enrage her. Anything but light up this firestorm of shameful want inside her. Which meant she hadn’t come quite as far as she’d thought, transformation-wise.
But she had come a long way. Long enough that she wasn’t defenseless anymore. Long enough that she now had a badge and a gun and the law on her side. Long enough that she could handle this. Could handle him. She had to. She needed to walk through the fire of her fear and come out the other side triumphant. It was the only way to heal herself completely, and she knew she could do it.
The trick was in convincing SAC Bernard to let her try.
“I received your request to approve an inter-agency counterfeiting task force,” Bernard began, brows drawing down in his smooth, even face. “I’m curious as to why you’re not handing this matter over to the Secret Service. Counterfeiting falls under their jurisdiction, you know.”
Liz nodded, met his gaze directly. “Yes, sir. But enforcing federal law on Indian reservations falls under ours. My territory includes the Grief Creek Ojibwe reservation, which has given me cause to develop and maintain working relationships with many of the reservation businesses. That includes Brightwater’s Casino and Restaurant, from which this particular complaint originated. When I made contact with the offer to turn the complaint over, the Secret Service stated a preference for working in tandem with the FBI on this.”
“Who are you looking at over there?”
“Maria di Guzman, sir. This matter falls within both her territory and her area of expertise.”
He nodded once, though whether in approval or assent Liz couldn’t tell. “She’s good. Does the job.” He rose and walked to the window and watched scanty traffic trickle by on Grief Creek’s main drag. “Frankly, Brynn, I have no problem with an inter-agency task force. A show of solidarity across the agencies, rising above politics to get the job done. It’s good for business, but it’s also the right call. I don’t fault your instincts on this.”
The silence held an unfinished quality that had Liz’s nerves buzzing. “But you question my instincts in other areas,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “Sir.”
Bernard clasped his hands behind his back, his face impassive. “You’re a good agent, Brynn. Among my best. Ordinarily, I’d have no problem with you cultivating an informant. But I have serious doubts about the wisdom of bringing Patrick O’Connor into this matter.”
“I do, too,” Liz said tightly. “But he’s in it now, with or without us. I’m just taking an unfortunate situation and working it to the FBI’s advantage.”
“I have yet to determine whether or not the FBI will be served by allowing O’Connor an official role in this investigation. Your performance in previous cases to which he was attached was less than I’ve come to expect from you. It makes me loath to approve your use of him again.”
Liz refused to flinch. “I’ve closed every case to which O’Connor was attached, without exception.”
“The record shows that you closed the cases. But it also shows that, in at least one case and potentially more, O’Connor fulfilled only the bare minimum of his obligations to the FBI while using
his undercover status to pursue his own agenda.” Bernard angled his head and watched her shrewdly. “You were dancing with the devil, Brynn. If you didn’t get burned it’s because you got lucky.”
Liz’s stomach churned with an uneasy mixture of nerves and shame that she kept cleanly off her face. “To the best of my knowledge, O’Connor neither participated in nor facilitated criminal activity of any sort during his tenure as a confidential informant.” She met the SAC’s gaze directly, forced her own not to waver. “Do you suspect otherwise?”
Bernard lifted one eyebrow and said, “Brynn, please don’t waste my time. Three years ago, you employed the man to gain access to Brightwater’s Casino as part of a drug trafficking investigation. He did as he was asked, yes. But he also staged a three-ring circus under your nose that involved a poker tournament, his felonious parents and a jewelry heist.”
“An attempted jewelry heist,” Liz said stiffly. The last case she’d worked with Patrick had not been her finest moment. “And it wasn’t his attempt. It was his parents’.” Bernard gave her a level look. “Plus the relationship he developed with his brother-in-law during that time was crucial to securing the man’s eventual cooperation with the investigation. Cooperation which, as you know, allowed us to close the case.”
Bernard maintained a meaningful silence, then said, “Your lack of perception disturbs me nonetheless.”
Liz clasped her hands behind her back. “It’s been three years since I last worked with O’Connor. I would argue that my instincts have sharpened, as has my confidence as an agent.” The words were solid, her voice steady and sure. But it cost her. The hands behind her back were slippery with sweat, and her knees felt like water. But it wasn’t because her SAC’s scathing assessment of her skills was so accurate. It was because he was so miserably off the mark.
She’d never made the mistake of thinking she’d tamed the mighty Patrick O’Connor, that he worked exclusively for her or at her command. No, he was dangerous to her on a whole different level. A more personal level. A level her SAC knew nothing about, and if Liz had her way, never would.
She said it again, for herself, for her SAC, this time putting all the steel in her spine into her voice. “I can handle O’Connor.”
Bernard held her gaze for a long, searching moment, then exhaled what, in a softer man, might have been termed a sigh. “I’m afraid that will have to be good enough.”
“Sir?”
“Sit down, Brynn.” He flicked that broad hand toward the chair she’d forgotten was at her hip. “Your case just got more complicated.”
Chapter 3
LIZ SAT, automatically reaching into her bag for a notepad and pen while Bernard took his seat behind the massive desk. Not a single mote of dust clung to either the desk or to the picture of his pretty wife and their pretty kids angled at its corner. Good housekeeping? she wondered. Or dust with a healthy sense of self-preservation?
“O’Connor’s old mentor is back in town,” Bernard said.
Liz narrowed her eyes as several missing pieces clicked into place. “Jorge Villanueva,” she murmured. “Fled the country the night I busted Mara O’Connor, what, six years ago now?”
“Yes, well, his passport photo was identified by agents working at LAX last month.”
“This certainly clarifies a few things.”
“Indeed.” Bernard angled his head and the afternoon light picked out the first strands of silver streaking across his temples. “You were with the Jewelry and Gem squad at that time, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Liz said. “In Vegas. We’d been tracking the O’Connor family for some time, Mara in particular. The weak link. We figured we’d bust her, and mommy and daddy would come running, ready to cut a deal.”
“How did you wind up with Patrick O’Connor instead?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t even know he was pulling anything that night. He just waltzed into my office and started giving terms like he owned the place.” Her lips twisted into a wry smile at the memory. “They were good terms so I took them.”
“And the parents?”
“Already en route to Monte Carlo.”
“They abandoned their daughter?”
“Without a second thought.”
A small smile curved Bernard’s lips. “So much for honor among thieves.”
“Patrick flaked on Villanueva midheist that night,” Liz said. “Saving his sister meant giving up his partner and his half of the haul without a flinch.”
“It also meant forcing Villanueva to slice his way to freedom through a very young, courageous agent.”
Liz fell silent. She hated what Villanueva had done—and the violence with which he’d done it—but she couldn’t help wincing at the choice Patrick had faced. Circumstances had demanded that he screw somebody. Would he abandon his sister or betray his partner? Neither option was particularly appealing.
She shook off the weakness of sympathy and forced her mind back to the implications of Villanueva’s unexpected return to the country. “Villanueva wasn’t exactly taken by surprise, though. He’d skipped the country before O’Connor even finished giving his statement. Why’s he back now? What’s he after? Revenge?”
Bernard shook his head. “Unlikely. Villanueva’s a pro. For that matter, so is O’Connor. Neither of them probably expected much from the other in terms of loyalty. No, these guys worship a different god.” Those flat gray eyes of his went one degree flatter. “Money.”
Liz felt her brows creeping toward the ceiling. So much for Patrick’s supposed retirement. “You think Villanueva’s in town to hook up with O’Connor for a job?”
“I don’t know. Intelligence speculates that Villanueva’s been living like a king in Central America these past six years. Dealing arms to warlords with deep pockets. But it’s not what he chose. It’s not his home. It’s exile. And the guy who put him there is living the high life in Hollywood.”
“Palm Springs,” Liz said automatically.
“Whatever. The point is, everything O’Connor touches turns to gold, and if Villanueva’s in the market for a triumphant return to the U.S., he probably wants some of that magic at his disposal. O’Connor owes him and they both know it.”
Bernard leaned back and frowned as he went on. “A reunion’s going to happen, Brynn. And it looks like it’s going to happen on my turf. The only question is whether O’Connor’s open to resuming the relationship. Bringing him onto your case as an informant allows us to keep an eye on that matter without tipping our hand, so I’ll approve it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He pushed back and from the desk, rose with his fingers splayed across its shiny surface. Liz rose as well. “You’ve got your team,” he said. “And you’ve got O’Connor as well. But I’d better see you playing him this time around. If he doesn’t know Villanueva’s in town yet, he’s not going to hear it from the FBI. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Liz waited for Bernard’s office door to click shut before she allowed herself to push a thumb into the headache brewing between her brows. She’d gotten what she’d wanted, she reminded herself. So why the hell was her stomach in knots?
She threaded her way back to the ugly little cubicle she called her office, and since she had the dubious pleasure of working directly next to the communal coffeepot, she poured herself a thick, vile cup. The caffeine surged into her system with a satisfying kick.
She savored the boost. She’d need it. She was about to attach herself to Patrick O’Connor for the foreseeable future.
Maybe she should make more coffee.
PATRICK REGARDED the pile of potatoes on his sister’s kitchen counter with suspicion. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You want me to what?”
Mara smiled at him. “Peel ’em.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
“Hey, you want to eat, you help cook.”
“What I want,” Patrick said, for what felt like the hundredth time th
at afternoon, “is to check into a hotel.”
Mara’s smile broadened. “This is a hotel, in case it escaped your notice. Restaurant on the first floor, casino on the second, guest suites on the third. Brightwater’s is a full-service establishment.”
“This is not a hotel. This is your private residence, which just happens to occupy the same floor as your guest suites.” Patrick gave her a sorrowful look. “I was looking forward to room service.”
“You’re living with the damn chef. What more do you want?”
“Any number of things spring to mind,” Patrick told her grimly.
The doorbell rang and Mara shouted, “It’s open!”
“You don’t lock your doors?” he asked, dismayed. “Did we even grow up in the same family?”
“People come and go in this place like Grand Central Station,” she said. “I’d spend half my life answering the door if I locked it.”
“Still.” Patrick frowned. “This is a casino and God only knows what kind of people might—”
“Oh, please. You expect me to believe you’re worried about my mixing with gamblers? I could stack a deck before I could spell, Patrick. And so could you.”
“Which is why I know exactly how important it is to lock the damn doors.”
“Why are you so worried about my doors all of a sudden?” she asked, her eyes direct and shrewd.
“What, a brother can’t watch out for his sister?”
“Of course he can,” Mara said quietly. “You did it our whole lives, right up until I figured out that’s what you were doing. Then you disappeared and I’ve been trying like hell to get you to come home ever since. This isn’t the first business blip I’ve cooked into an emergency to try to get you here and you know it. So I have to ask myself what’s different this time? What has the unflappable Patrick O’Connor riding to my rescue like some kind of white knight?”
He smiled at her, though truthfully, he rather missed his naïve baby sister. This beautiful, steady-eyed woman who’d taken her place wouldn’t be so easy to mislead. “Your imagination is as charming as ever, Mara.”