by Kris Calvert
“Nice to meet you.”
He stared a hole through me. It wasn’t sexual. It was intimidation. “You too, Mrs. Xanthus.”
“P-please,” I stumbled over the word. “Call me Polly.”
When I turned to look back at my husband, he was doing a lousy job of hiding his grimace. I knew Leo thought I was taken by the man. I was intrigued.
“Okay,” Leo said, deliberately walking between us to sit on the edge of his old desk and cross his arms. He was happy to be home. Leo was truly himself at Jackson House. “Get me up to speed.”
Tristan barely popped his brow. Stoic, the man scarcely moved and had few facial cues. I was going to have a hard time reading him. “We can go upstairs and take a look.”
“And?” Leo asked, looking for information Tristan obviously wasn’t going to give an opinion on. Instead, his lips thinned into a line. It was enough for Leo to know. I watched him stare into Tristan and as his shoulders sank, knew his heart was too. “Well,” he sighed. “What they’ve done to the room can be repaired. I’m not so sure about Oscar.”
Tristan gave me a passing glance and shook his head in sympathy. “You’ve seen him?”
Leo nodded. “What do you think, Tristan? Motive?”
“Nothing else was touched, Z.”
I recoiled at the sound of Leo’s old nickname. Xanthus was too much of a mouthful at the Bureau and he’d quickly became known simply as Z—a nickname I’d refused to use. Most of the one night stands and in-and-out-of-the-bed women Leo had had in his life called him, Z. I, on the other hand, called him by his given name. It made me wonder if Agent Bleu also had a nickname.
“They were after whatever was in the wall safe,” Tristan continued.
Leo nodded and stared at the floor. Cleaning out the safe hadn’t been one of my tasks when we gathered up what we could and left New Orleans faking our deaths. I wasn’t altogether certain as to what Leo had taken or left behind.
“What was in there?” Tristan tossed a casual one shouldered shrug that seemed to bait the question. Leo stared at him. Tristan Bleu was a man who seemed to tolerated a very low amount of bullshit and guilt was painted on both our faces.
“We took his grandfather’s polar bear skin rug from the master bathroom.” I blurted the words before I could stop myself, then sat in the chair across the room, not making eye contact with either of them.
Tristan bristled. “His what?”
“His grandfather had a—”
“Mon amour,” Leo begged, cutting me off.
I pulled my eyes from the floor to face my husband. “Sorry.”
Leo looked Tristan in the eye. “It’s a long story.”
The beginning of a sarcastic grin rose from the corner of Tristan’s mouth and I knew—the man did have emotion. “This… rug,” Tristan began. “It’s something Balivino would know about?”
I watched Leo’s lips thin in contrition. He nodded only once. “My grandfather—Kostas. A trophy from a big game hunt. One year on his birthday his buddies, including Balivino Jr. and Sr., sent prostitutes…” Leo paused.
“There was an orgy with hookers on the bear skin rug. We took it with us when we left for the yacht.” I said it quickly. I knew Leo wouldn’t.
Tristan switched his attention to me. I couldn’t read the man to save my life, but for the slightest of moments I thought perhaps he was a tad impressed.
Leo flashed me an eye of disapproval. I shrugged. Somebody needed to come clean. Oscar was knocking on death’s door. We were coming out of hiding. And for what?
“It’s true,” Leo admitted. “The thing is, I never expected anyone would ever have a reason to venture into the master suite. There’s a bigger safe here in this room. It’s where the money is and Balivino knows it. The only thing in the upstairs safe was my mother and grandmother’s jewelry—sentimental items.”
“Which you took.” Tristan was stating the obvious, but he did it with an edge to his voice. I couldn’t decide if he agreed with Leo’s actions or if he thought we’d asked for our current circumstance. Leo’s dark eyes told me he wasn’t backing down from his decision.
“Of course I took my mother’s jewelry.”
Tristan sat on the desk beside Leo for only a moment, gripping the edge with this fingers. “So—” he said pushing himself away.
“Why did they want your mom and grandmother’s jewelry?” I asked, throwing out the million-dollar question.
Leo and Tristan both stared me down. It was the obvious question. Why wasn’t anyone answering it?
Walking out of the parlor to stand under the massive chandelier in the hallway, Leo gazed up the spiral staircase and into the darkened second floor. “I guess now is as good a time as any. Polly? Do you want to come? Or stay down here?”
“Are you kidding me?” I jumped from the Louis XV chair to join him. “You’re not leaving me all alone in this big old house.”
Leo turned on another set of lights, illuminating the path up the staircase and past the many expensive paintings that had hung in the same place for almost a hundred years. Leo took each step deliberately, his anxiety evident.
Passing several guest rooms, all shut off to the rest of the house, we finally made it to the master suite. Pushing open the double entrance, I was disappointed not to be greeted by the usual fresh breeze from the open French doors—the fresh flowers—the warm glow of home. Turning on the lights, the doors were closed tight, the usual flowing gossamer curtains hung still against the wall—the room stale. The once elegant suite was now gloomy. Masculine, the space was filled with dark wood, the floors covered in black and gold Persian rugs. It had its own library with more first editions than I’d ever taken the time to count. An exquisite grand piano sat in the room—a piano Leo and I had made love on. But the fireplace was the centerpiece of the suite. Seven feet tall and made of hand-cut stone, I could stand inside it. The angels that were carved into the top still sported a bullet hole. A 1935 disagreement between Kostas and a gangster had left one of them with less than a wing.
Blood stains marked the floor between the walk in closet and the master bathroom. My heart sank and I found myself hiding my face in Leo’s back like a child.
“That’s the worst of it,” Tristan said. “The damage is inside. They took out the safe.”
“Took out the safe?” Leo dropped my hand to climb over the mussed rug and evidence roped off by the police. Tristan and I followed.
Inside the walk in closet, an entire wall had been demolished. Leo ran his hands along the jagged edges of the one-hundred-year-old mahogany panels. It looked as though someone had taken an axe to the room and when that didn’t work, they used something more volatile.
“What in the hell did they fire in here?” Leo asked, grinding the words through his teeth and his hands through his hair. “C4?”
“Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. PETN,” Tristan replied. “They found traces of it everywhere.”
I walked through the closet and past the safe to the back where clothes still hung, zipped up in protective bags. “What is PETN?”
“It’s a powerful explosive you can incorporate into gel and use to blow off locks. Which is exactly what they did,” Leo said under his breath as he sorted through the useless paper left inside the safe. “Balivino and his sons took everything I left behind.”
“What exactly did you leave behind?” I asked, unzipping a suit bag to find Leo’s black tuxedo.
“A few gold bars, twenty thousand or so in cash and fifty thousand in Deutsche Bank bearer bonds.”
He had my attention. I turned and stared at him. “What?”
“I needed to make it look like we were coming back.”
“But you took your mom and grandmother’s jewelry.”
Leo dropped his tired gaze to the diamond on my finger. “Believe me, it’s a pittance compared to what’s in the safe downstairs, but that one is nearly impossible to blow without taking down the whole damn house.”
Leo ran his hands thr
ough his hair and began to pace. Tristan stood in the corner, his musclebound arms crossed over his chest. I could tell by the look on his face he was expecting Leo to give a better explanation than he had. If he was coming to Leo’s aid now, surely he knew of the Xanthus family past. That had to make him more suspicious of what we were or weren’t saying.
Leo picked up a piece of the broken wood and tossed it back to the floor. “Who was the first person on the scene?”
Tristan uncrossed his arms, pulling himself from the wall he’d been holding up. “NOLA PD. Simon Marchant.”
Leo’s gaze narrowed. “I want to talk to him.”
I couldn’t hide the anxiety in my question. “Isn’t that too dangerous?”
Leo straightened his shoulders, shrugging off any fear I might have blanketed over both of us. I knew what he was going to say before the words crossed his lips. “I don’t care.”
I looked into the dark and brooding eyes of the man I loved and sighed. “Yeah. Me either.”
“Now wait just a motherfuckin’ minute,” Tristan sang out. “Excuse my language, Mrs. Xanthus.”
“Polly,” I corrected, not taking my intense stare from Leo’s eyes. He knew I was with him. We were a team.
“I’m here to keep you alive.”
Leo cracked a smile. I joined him. We were charlatans, Leo and I. We’d been taking risks from the moment we met. With Oscar lying in a bed fighting for his life, the two of us weren’t going to allow the Marcello crime family or the Balivino boys take anything more away from us.
“C’mon, Tristan. You know me better than that,” Leo said, slapping him on the back. “This isn’t our first rodeo. Even Mrs. X over there is seasoned in the art of whacking a mobster.”
“Leo.”
“It’s true.”
I shrugged nonchalantly and felt myself blush as I admitted to my mafia kill. “I took down The Shadow.”
“See?” Leo said, ushering everyone from the closet. “You don’t want to mess with Mrs. X.”
Tristan brooded. I knew he was here to help us, but if he was going to fight Leo at every turn, it was the kind of assistance we wouldn’t need.
“Look. You know I’m not much on procedure. I’ll help you do whatever it is you want to do, but if you want to meet up with Officer Marchant, we all go.”
“Fine.” Leo said with a conceding nod. “We’ll take your car.”
A shit-eating grin crossed Tristan’s lips revealing the biggest set of white teeth this side of the Mason Dixon. The man was gorgeous when he wanted to be.
“What?” Leo asked.
Tristan pulled a red bandana from his back pocket, tying it around his head. “No car.”
I bit down on my lip, flashing Leo a wicked smirk. He knew what I wanted and I didn’t even have to ask.
Leo caved. “Fine. I just happen to have a Harley of my own in the garage. Hopefully someone has bothered to start her up every now and again.”
Tristan looked away and smirked. Leo shifted his weight and knitted his brow. “What now?”
“She runs.”
Leo lost the playful expression he’d shared with me. “How would you know?”
“I fired her up yesterday,” Tristan confessed. “Just to see if she still had the juice.”
“What?”
“She does. Let’s roll.”
7
LEO
It was late when we finally suited up in the detached garage on the back side of the property that housed all six cars at Jackson House. I noticed my blue Maserati GranTurismo was parked inside and looked brand new. I’d tossed the keys to a kid at the marina when we made our getaway and told him to use it in good health. I’d heard through the grapevine he’d turned the keys over to the cops and my car had found its way home, but this was the first time I’d seen her with my own eyes.
“Nice.” Tristan gave the car a wayward nod over his shoulder. I took it as a compliment considering Tristan Bleu was a minimalist. A man of many means and a user of few. With a wealthy family he’d disowned long ago, I’d never known Tristan to stay in one place for long. It was the reason he was the best ghost agent I’d ever known—one of the best the FBI had to its name. Running operations all across the country, he came and went like the wind. It was how he lived his life. No strings attached. He was smart, cunning, and brutal when it came to women. I’d always had a love ’em and leave reputation, but Tristan barely even loved them. The less he seemed to care about the women, the more they wanted to throw themselves at him. He wasn’t a womanizer—not at all. He was a loner. And that meant women didn’t get close to him. I knew he had a regular call girl he used—used—but Tristan Bleu didn’t do relationships.
I appreciated his comment about my car, but dismissed it walking ahead to my Harley, then gave him a glance and verbal jab. “I’m surprised you didn’t fire it up. You know just to see if she still had the juice.”
Tristan was silent, too cocky to care I was giving him shit. Polly gripped my arm, silently asking me to lay off.
Tristan zipped up his leather two-piece. “Riding gear, Z?”
Polly shook her head no as I answered the question correctly. “Yes.”
Her blonde ponytail whipped as she turned her surprised face to meet. “Yes?”
I opened a closet door in the corner of the garage and stood back to point at the leather gear reinforced with body armor. The smaller outfit was obviously hers. Polly and I never had the opportunity to go riding, but I’d bought it for her all the same.
“Well,” she quipped, breezing past me to inspect the leather pants and jacket that zipped together at the waist. “You are full of surprises aren’t you?”
“Just keeping it interesting, cher.”
She turned and shot me a confident, sexy look that turned me on and ate at the very heart of me. How many times was I going to put her in danger? It had to end.
After changing, Polly tucked my wild hair under the bandana I’d tied around my head and kissed my lips. I stared down the half-zipped tight leather jacket into her cleavage and wished Tristan wasn’t with us. I was tired, full of pent up rage and horny was hell. Polly’s beautiful body all up in my face wasn’t helping. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Tristan kneeling at his bike, his back to us. Quickly, I turned and nipped at her breast with my teeth, feeling myself harden at her quiet gasp.
I hooked my fingers into the waist of her pants, knocking her hips into mine, moving from her breast to her collarbone, sliding my tongue along her long and straining neck to her earlobe for a bite. Her fingers twisted in my hair as she struggled with the bandana, grinding her hips into me, only making me harder.
“We shouldn’t leave together.”
Tristan’s words hung in the air and I stared into Polly’s eyes before kissing her on the forehead. It was my silent promise to finish what we started later tonight. “I agree.” I answered and walked away from Polly to pick up my helmet, keeping my back to Tristan until my hard on could think about the mission at hand and not what I planned on doing to my wife after freeing her breasts from the tight leather she wore.
“So what is the plan?” she asked, tying her own head in a red bandana. She was so damn hot in her leather pants and jacket, I could barely shut down the dirty thoughts that rattled in my head. It was a problem of mine. The higher the stakes, the more stressful the situation, the hornier I seemed to be. And right now I was a twelve on a ten-point scale. I stared across the darkened garage at Polly and she knew—she knew from my desperate look. I’d already silently confessed I needed her, and now that I would have to wait, she would purposely tease me, making it even worse. Curling one side of her mouth into a sexy-ass smile, she began to torture me.
“Z?”
It wasn’t until Polly widened her eyes and blushed, letting me know they were both waiting on me to answer, I realized I was lost. Lost in the moment. Lost in her.
“Yeah?” I answered, finally pulling my eyes from her cleavage.
“Are you u
p for this?”
I nodded at Tristan, now fully engaged and back on track. “Yes. Polly, I’m taking you back into the house. You’ll leave through the safe room. Exit on the street behind Jackson House. I want you to walk a couple of blocks. You have your gun?”
“Yes.”
Tristan took a disapproving breath and shifted his weight, setting his helmet back on the seat of his Harley.
My jaw tightened. “Tristan. I’d put my wife up against any agent on the range at Quantico and I’d trust her twice as much. She knows what she’s doing.”
Polly sauntered past him with confidence, her lips thinning into the fearless smirk I knew all too well. “Don’t worry Agent Bleu. I won’t shoot you.”
I watched Tristan’s eyes twinkle with admiration. Then she was gone. Out of the garage before Tristan had a chance to recover.
“I didn’t mean to—”
I held my hand up. “Apology accepted. Now get going. I don’t want Officer Marchant to wait on us. I want to be in and out.”
Tristan gave me a single nod and I opened the garage door for us to ride our Harleys out into the cool night air. With a thumbs up, he one-kicked his Fat Boy with flames and sped off, leaving through the service entrance toward the French Quarter.
I closed the garage door and followed Polly’s silhouette back into the house. Tristan’s apology was heartfelt, even if I didn’t allow him to give it. Listening to his bike in the distance and watching her, I remembered what my old life used to be like. Taking on the toughest cases I could get. Running with the fast and loose crowd. Bedding every beautiful woman from here to New York City. I’d done it all. Tristan was younger. Wild. Free. I knew his heart—I understood his need to get away from his family, even if our circumstances were different.
Meeting Polly had changed me as a man. She was a different kind of woman. She was brains, beauty and badass all rolled into one. And she was mine. I’d hit the jackpot. Every day I wondered what I’d done to deserve her, and watching her walk to the house in her tight leather pants after dressing Tristan down made me want her and wonder all the more why I deserved her.