“But my timing is usually better.” Tasha slipped the rest of the way inside and shut the door behind her. “I’m sorry for not calling first and messing up your morning.”
Ford hoped Shay would skim over the part where Tasha got around the main door alarm and into the building without a key or a code. “No problem.”
“Okay, yeah.” Shay’s bare feet finally unfroze from the floor. She looked around, her gaze zipping to the pile of clothes on his breakfast bar then all over the room. “I’ll just go . . . find underwear.”
Tasha’s smile appeared genuine this time. “I can see where you would want to.”
With a nod and a quick jog, Shay grabbed her clothes and dashed into his bedroom.
Ford waited until the door slammed to move in on Tasha. “Why are you here?”
“Since we’re asking questions, let’s start with one of mine.” Tasha slipped around him and headed for Shay’s abandoned purse on the edge of the couch. “How did you go from watching Ms. Alexander at a safe and impersonal distance to having her in your bed twelve hours later?”
“I’m good at my job.”
The corners of Tasha’s mouth fell. “Oh, please. Not that good.”
She picked an envelope out of the side pocket of the purse with two fingers. Scanning the room and peeking at the door, she stopped her watch only long enough to glance inside the bag.
Ford wasn’t in the mood for Tasha’s covert stakeout of his family room. He grabbed the envelope and stuffed it back in the spot Shay assigned to it. It was bad enough he checked all of her mail and personal papers. She didn’t need two people working overtime to violate her privacy.
“You’re like the idiot younger brother I never wanted.” Tasha’s British accent slipped out.
Ford guessed that was on purpose because this woman didn’t do anything by chance. “Your brother is a professor at Oxford.”
“Yeah, I already have a smart brother. I was considering you for the role of the dumb one.” She glanced over Ford’s shoulder. “You’re back.”
Shay walked in wearing her jeans with his T-shirt. She hopped on one foot as she slipped on a sneaker without untying it first. “Do you want some coffee?”
Tasha bit her bottom lip. Actually looked genuine in her sorry-for-intruding act. “I’m good, but I actually need to talk with Ford about some estate stuff.”
The last of the wariness faded from Shay’s face. A concerned calm washed over her as she took his hand. “Who died?”
Ford waited. Tasha had veered off cover script. It was up to her to drag them back to the information he memorized in the file.
Tasha’s glance was so quick—a bounce down to their joined hands then back to Shay’s face—that someone not looking for it would have missed it. Ford picked it up and knew a list of questions clicked together in Tasha’s impressive brain. He planned to ignore most of them.
“An uncle, more than a year ago,” Tasha said, without even a blip on the lying scale.
Ford wondered if Ward knew about her ability to deliver line after line of false information without registering even the smallest sign of deception. The skill was both impressive and a little freaky. Clearly her home country got its money worth out of her intelligence training.
“I’m sorry.”
Tasha waved off Shay’s words. “No, I’m sorry for messing up your morning.”
There was a beat of silence before Shay clapped her hands. She grabbed for her purse and looped the strap over her shoulder. Next she treated him to a quick kiss on the cheek as she hovered on the verge of bolting. “I need to run some errands anyway.”
That was news to him. “You sure?”
“I want to check on my cousin.” Shay’s grip on her purse handles tightened until her knuckles turned white.
Forget whatever Tasha needed to say. This mattered. Shay hadn’t dropped one hint about Trent but now she went there. This could be the chance to poke around, to get on the inside without having to push in a way that felt manufactured and risked his cover.
Ford rubbed a hand up and down her arm, hating Tasha’s presence in the room with every pass of his palm. “Everything okay? Do you want me to come with you?”
Shay shrugged. “You’re busy and—”
“It’s no problem.” He jumped before she talked herself out of unloading whatever was on her mind. “I’ll be over to your place in twenty and we’ll go.”
“You should visit with your sister.” But Shay didn’t sound all that convincing.
Hooked. She wanted him to go with her. Wanted to share. It was the in he’d been looking for. He just wished they didn’t have an audience for the moment. “We’ll go see your cousin and then we’ll be done with family obligations for the day.”
“I did only plan to come in for a few minutes then go,” Tasha said. “I doubt I even need ten minutes.”
Shay smiled at both of them. “Tempting.”
“Then make it fifteen minutes.” Ford took it slow. Reeled her in.
Hated every fucking minute of it. This, the whole setup, made Shay a mark. Part of him knew she could be involved in Trent’s schemes up to her big brown eyes, but his instincts screamed no. And if she happened to be an innocent bystander in all of this, his actions made her collateral damage. His, not Trent’s.
On most jobs he shrugged that off and chalked the waves of danger up to an untenable but necessary job hazard. Something about Shay turned him around and had him hating the game. He didn’t want to analyze his wavering or even think about it, but this operation was different. Not just because the stakes were higher if he failed. No, this one hit on a personal level when he didn’t even know he had a personal life left.
“Fine.” Shay shook Tasha’s hand then gave a little wave on her way out. “Nice to meet you.”
By the time his front door closed behind Shay, Ford’s temper sparked over Tasha’s unexpected intrusion. Rage spewed inside him. “Really, Tasha. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You might want to remember you work for me.” She paced around the condo as if she were casing it instead of handing down some bit of work news.
“I don’t—”
“And you broke protocol.” Tasha brushed by him then turned around again. At five-ten with those high heels on her boots, she met him head on. “How long have you been sleeping with her?”
He knew he’d been busted. Tasha wasn’t dumb, and Shay barely wore anything when she opened his door. Still, Ford was not in the mood for a conversation about his sex life, protocol or not. “That’s not your business.”
“We both know it is.”
“I made contact earlier than planned.” The answer said something and nothing at the same time.
“Try again.”
Since he’d learned that skill from Tasha, it was no wonder he couldn’t slide it by her. He leaned against the arm of the couch and crossed his arms in front of him. “I seem to remember a certain operation in Fiji where you started sleeping with Ward.”
She stopped flipping through his unopened mail and glared. “Be careful what you say next.”
No doubt he deserved a punch, and he knew from experience she could land one that would have him gasping, but Ford kept pushing. It was his nature and he couldn’t always control it. This time he didn’t want to. “I was there for the start of your romance.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Is that what you’re having with Shay?”
Damn. “No.” Shit, he didn’t know.
He shifted, crossing and uncrossing one foot over the other. He finally went with standing up.
“Then you should also remember Ward and I kept cover. We weren’t casing each other. We didn’t know the other was working a covert job.”
“I’ll refrain from making a joke.”
Tasha dropped the mail and it whapped against
the counter. “Smart man.”
Ignoring her useless poking around, since it was not as if the paycheck stubs were even real, Ford went right to the heart of the issue. “Look, it turns out we may need Shay to find Trent. Consider my premature actions lucky.”
“This time.” Tasha opened his refrigerator.
He had no idea what she thought she’d find in there. He half wondered if she was so accustomed to searching that she couldn’t turn it off. “Everything is under control.”
“We’ll see.”
“Ready to tell me why you’re really here and making us come up with a revised cover as we talk?” With a palm against the stainless steel, he closed the refrigerator and cornered her in the galley-style kitchen. “Last I checked, I have a phone. Harlan doesn’t hesitate to use it at all times of the day to call me in. I’m guessing you wouldn’t either.” But since he never got assignments straight from her, Ford didn’t know. He reported to Harlan and Ward. They reported to her.
Tasha looked him up and down. Just stood there, not talking, drawing out the moment. The woman was a pro at making people squirm. Under her intense scrutiny, he fought the urge to shift his weight. They’d both been trained but no question her stamina for this type of bullshit outlasted his.
She finally sighed. “I suspected you’d gone rogue on this job.”
“No way.” He’d talked to Shay too early but did not ignore the end goal. After a fuck-up of epic proportions that left two people dead at the end of his time with the CIA, he’d reined his actions in. Or at least he tried, but the Paris trip might suggest the tendencies still lingered.
“Since I’m here, we can discuss your evening plans.” Tasha leaned the side of her arm against the refrigerator. “The waterfront employee.”
The partial sentences didn’t confuse Ford. He kept up fine. “What about him?”
“We’re thinking he was paid to plant the warehouse information. It’s possible his ‘help’ wasn’t as innocent as it seems.”
Just proved that convenient clues were often anything but. “When do we move?”
“He likes to drink after work. Bravo team can grab him at his favorite bar tonight and engage him in a little chat since that worked so well with poor Rupert.”
“Who else knows about this?” Because too many ears seemed to be a problem lately.
Her smirk looked like it should accompany an eye roll. “I’m not dumb. I know you’re worried about a mole, so this is limited to me, Ward, and now you.”
Ford picked up his phone and typed in the go code to his team, along with the time he needed them to muster at the Warehouse for prep. “I’m assuming the assignment is to get the information however we need to.”
“Do it fast.”
Adrenaline pumped through him. Every cell burst to life as his body and brain revved up to go in. “Sure, sis.”
“And leave your new girlfriend at home.”
Now that was just insulting. “This isn’t my first day on the job.”
“Since you stopped following the rules, I thought I’d make sure you remembered that one.”
An hour later, Shay typed in her cousin’s alarm code and opened the door to his basement studio with Ford at her side. A car horn honked and two guys argued over a tight parking space outside of the row-house apartment just off Capitol Hill, but she focused on the lock that always stuck.
Trent worked for the government and didn’t make anywhere near the kind of money he could from a private firm, but he could afford a better place. One bigger than five hundred square feet. The neighborhood housed Hill staffers and law students, as well as young couples who liked the buzz of the city. It was safe and not owned by Uncle Anthony, which Shay assumed played a big part in Trent’s reason for living there.
Trent had developed am I’m-not-my-father complex lately. It kicked in right about the time his anger came flaring back.
Even though he was really young when he graduated with his doctorate, he’d insisted he needed to stop living off of his dad’s dime. Shay suspected Trent’s choice to go with the public sector job also had something to do with Anthony pushing in the opposite direction. Her uncle was old school and believed you went to the highest bidder and made piles of cash while you could. He’d yelled for weeks when his son turned down lucrative positions for the top-secret one.
She admired Trent’s spirit but still wished he lived in her building, where she could keep a closer watch on him. That likely was also a reason Trent took this place. The last time they talked, he sounded off about needing control and being an adult, so a lack of interference could be a compelling draw.
The lock finally clicked and she ushered Ford inside. Questions had been swirling in her brain since meeting his sister. A kind of nagging sensation that something wasn’t right there. “Are you and Tasha close?”
“She treats me like an annoying little brother.”
Well, that answered that. Shay couldn’t really see Ford in the role of little boy, since he was all man now. She’d guess the battle of wills between the siblings bordered on epic.
“Were you?” She dropped her keys on the small table by the door and walked inside with Ford right behind her. The smell had cleared out but the place, with the curtains drawn, resembled a tomb.
“She would say I still am a bad boy.”
Shay glanced over her shoulder, saw the devilish gleam in his eyes and put the brakes on before they traveled too far down that road. “I’m not touching that.”
“Why?”
“It seems wrong to talk dirty when we were just talking about your sister.”
“Good point.” Ford went to the bookcase and cocked his head to the side as he skimmed a finger over the spines and read the titles. “Tell me about this cousin.”
“Trent. We grew up together, so he’s more like, well, an annoying baby brother.” She followed almost the same path Ford had to the bookcases but her steps caused the parquet floor to creak. She had no idea how Ford, who weighed a lot more than she did—at least she hoped that was true—managed to avoid the sticky areas.
He glanced over at her. “You haven’t really mentioned Trent before.”
That was a bit of a sore spot, and she didn’t know why. What they had was new and still finding its footing, but having a sister pop up out of nowhere threw her off stride. “Then we’re even because I didn’t know about Tasha.”
A sexy smile broke across his lips. “Touché.”
She walked into the bedroom area and then through the closet to the bathroom. The spaces flowed into one another and hadn’t changed at all since her last visit. No clothes out of place and his suitcases still stacked on the top shelf. She counted the sneakers, still not understanding why Trent needed thirteen pairs, and none had disappeared.
When she turned the corner and walked back into the living area, Ford had moved. He now stood by the front door. Staring at the doorjamb, he ran a finger along the crack, leaning in close to examine the imaginary line he drew.
“What are you doing?” She looked around, trying to calm the bubble of anxiety expanding inside her.
He stopped and glanced at her with a shy sort of you-caught-me expression on his face. “Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but I was checking to see if there were any signs of a break-in.”
The boy-investigator thing struck her as cute, but the words sent a shot of anxiety spinning down her spine. “Are there?”
“Not that I can tell.” He dropped his arms to the side and scanned the apartment from one end to the other. “What are we even looking for?”
“I don’t know, really.” That was part of the problem. She had no idea what Trent’s job entailed other than he couldn’t talk about it at all. Even the little she did know she couldn’t share with Ford.
Trent didn’t have much of a social life, due to his long work
hours. He dated now and then but usually only short-term, so there was no one for her to call on that score either.
“His keys aren’t here and the apartment is in good shape,” Ford said, “so I would say he’s off somewhere.”
“How do you know about the keys?” She had checked for those and Trent’s wallet first, but something about Ford mentioning the obvious had her focus splitting.
He gestured at the room. “I don’t see them anywhere, do you?”
Okay, she was officially paranoid. She kept dissecting and analyzing. Poor Ford said one stray thing and she ran off on a tangent. She chalked it up to stress. “No, you’re right.”
“When was the last time you talked with him?”
“I saw him about a month ago and he stopped answering texts and calls right around that time.” She knew the exact date because she slept with Ford for the first time exactly one week later, but she kept that piece of information to herself.
Ford’s face went blank. “What did he say?”
She couldn’t tell if he thought four weeks without contact was too many or if it painted her as overly cautious. His expression gave so little away. That ability to look neutral no matter the circumstance shook her. “Nothing really. That’s the point. Trent didn’t offer an explanation for his lack of communication or warn me about this absence. He just said work was out of control. His mood was different. He was different.”
She walked over to the love seat and dropped onto the cushion. “He’s been out of touch longer than usual. I can feel something is wrong.”
“Yeah, I can see where that would be the case.” Ford picked sitting on the coffee table over the other chair in the room.
She assumed he was thinking about how people normally carried on their work and private lives. But Trent never worked along those lines. He battled with his father and tended to think professors and bosses singled him out for harsh treatment. He carried a bit of paranoia that became problematic when it combined with his anger issue.
He could be so charming, winning over even the toughest critic, but at other times he dwelled in an odd state of victimhood. Shay didn’t always understand Trent but she did love him. Which was why she wanted to see him now. Just see with her own eyes that he was fine.
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