Because the last time I’d seen those eyes, they had my reflection in them…
Deeply set, stark sea-green, Jeff DeSantos’s eyes were one-of-a-kind, unforgettable. They sat low beneath a pair of lush brows. The color of his irises clashed with the long dark fringe hairs that framed them, and the hue was clearer than Caribbean blue waters.
I could pick those eyes out of a lineup.
Or so I had thought…
Because twelve months ago, that’s exactly what my former fellow agents asked me to do, and when given a group of photos, I couldn’t find them. God knows I’d tried. And now they were practically glaring back at me. They were mesmerizing in that still-shot from the opera house, that captured security camera image of Jeff and my old undercover boss’s boyfriend, Jackson. Even now in that shoddy picture, I could still make out those eyes… and how they’d looked only moments before the gunshots began to fire.
I shook my head, tuning back into the news of the slimy senator and his missing scandalous daughter. I squinted at the screen.
“Security footage at the theater captured an image of two persons of interest in the attack—one cleared by police, the other unidentified man still wanted by authorities for questioning in the deadly assault on the renowned Senator Fletcher. The controversial politico has been the subject of much debate and even greater press coverage following the shooting in the Theater District of midtown Manhattan, which left the three-term member of Congress comatose in his…”
The TV channel suddenly cut without warning, flashing once before displaying a moving image of college basketball players.
My gaze dropped from the television to its black remote… and Carlos’s stubby, fat fingers wrapped around it. He glared at me.
“Aren’t you working tonight?”
I stared back. “No, Carlos, I’m off… as of two hours ago.”
He snorted, turning. I grabbed a discarded beer from the bar and saluted. As soon as he turned his back, I saluted him again, flipping him both middle fingers, and reminisced about a time twelve months ago, or hell even ten, when “work” meant something entirely different.
When I was one of New York’s newest FBI recruits… and on my way to coming onto something big.
Now the only thing I had big in the works was the hole in the pockets… and the amount of time I spent texting a man who’s probably a fake. Against my better judgment, and against every agency safety rule I’d ever been taught while I was still with the Bureau.
But that was the point. I didn’t work for the FBI, anymore... and only one thing was for sure when it came to Parker: I certainly had his attention. I was still surprised at how much he seemed to have of mine…
I was still staring at the TV screen when Parker replied to my lack of response.
Parker:
Come on… Don’t make me beg.
Sienna:
I suggest you invest in some lotion then. You’re going to need it for your knees.
I waited for his response, but it didn’t come. At least, not immediately. When it did, it was cryptic, and my pulse only crept up by that much more. Maybe I was losing more ground to him than I previously thought. He responded to my message with ellipses.
Parker:
…
I waited for more. No response.
Sienna:
What’s wrong?
Parker:
I was trying not to be honest, but I don’t know any other way to be. See, it’s like this, Miss Santiago… If I’m getting on my knees in front of you… it won’t be to beg for your forgiveness…
My breath caught. That last bit of my willpower was fucking obliterated.
Trial by Fire
GIOVANNI
The stench of power was in the air. It came in waves.
Every time another tycoon passed my path in New York City’s infamous Metropolitan opera, I caught another whiff of it. It was wafting down the seats, coasting from the corridors all the way to the stage, and by the time the aroma made it to my balcony section, it was safe to say that I was fucking swimming in it, breathing it in along with the theater’s very stale air.
It was addicting. I had been around it far too long.
The presence of powerful people often made weaker men sick, but in my case, it had turned into a drug, an addictive inhalant. I honestly believed that a warning sticker should have been administered to the back of these powerful players’ preppy, dollar-bill-wiped asses because the second I was exposed, the minute my barely legal ass was introduced to the world of wine tastings and fine dining and delicacies that laymen only dreamed about, I was irrevocably hooked.
No caution sign was going to keep me away now.
Ten years into the game, and I had not only become accustomed to the filthy aroma… I was basking in it. And when I caught sight of Senator Robert Fletcher on the other side of the room, it was like giving a hit to a heroin addict.
The only high more compelling than that?
The sight of the siren strolling towards me… and the plum dress she must have been copied and pasted into. She looked at me, smiling in a way that sucked the air out of the room and replaced it with her smell. For a second, it almost overwhelmed the reek of status and rank in the oversized room.
Almost.
She reached for me, wrapping her arms around my back for a hug. I fought the urge to keep her there. I smiled in that shy Jeff DeSantos way, neutralizing her with that newbie charm that had made the character I was playing seem so innocent.
I held her hand a second too long.
“You look fantastic.”
She beamed. “Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself. And if it weren’t for all those scratches around your eyes, you wouldn’t look anywhere near as debonair, Jeff. Or as ruggedly handsome. I don’t mean to brag…” she shrugged, “but I think the red welts have done your face some good. Really brings out the color in your aqua eyes.” Sienna grinned.
Her joke had hit its mark, and though she was laughing at the fact that she had put those welts there, I could see the “sorry” hidden in her heavily-hooded cocoa eyes. She was masking her true emotion behind a shield. I could empathize. How many thoughts had I hidden behind the eyes of the different people I pretended to be?
Dozens.
It was part of the job description, but I’d never seen someone else do it so well. And, fuck, I was supposed to be the “liar-for-hire,” but at the moment, it was easy to see that I wasn’t the only imposter masquerading at the Metropolitan.
I grew intrigued.
There was so much more to this girl. A plethora of layers were lying on the very surface of that beautiful exterior she called a body. I met her stare.
“Next time, I want some black and blue to further highlight my, uh, cheekbones… I’ll give you a call.”
She laughed. Hard. And I joined her, forgetting for once who I was, who I was pretending to be… and what the fuck I was there to do. I let my goddamned guard down. It wasn’t ten minutes later that the shots rang out in the opera…
The sudden sounds of the bullets stretched out of my dream and into my reality. In all actuality, the bullets weren’t bullets at all. Just the loud blaring of rock music as Grimm flipped radio channels in the Rolls.
Those stations flips startled me out of my sleep. Sleep. Hm. I didn’t remember what that shit even was anymore. I tried to slip back into slumber, but as soon as I did, the news report on the radio killed that small possibility with the mention of Senator Robert Fletcher’s name. The report blaring through the speakers was brief.
“The search continues for Audriana Fletcher, daughter of New York Senator Robert Fletcher, in the wake of the discovery of articles of the political heiress’s clothing in the Parisian River Seine, abandoned. No physical evidence was retrieved from the scene, but authorities remain optimistic about the Senator’s only daughter’s wellbeing. Governor Shelley Price of New York, known as Senator Fletcher’s longtime friend and close political ally, had the following
to say…”
Governor Shelley Price’s melodic voice sounded through the speakers.
“I know Audriana to be a strong woman and an amazing person. I have no doubt that we will find the youngest daughter of my good friend, Robert Fletcher, alive and well. The Fletcher family is a strong one, and if we could keep Audriana and Robert in our prayers, I am sure…”
I threw my watch at the power button of the radio, shutting it off.
In the back of my Rolls Royce, I rolled my shoulders, waking up with an angry grunt. Like a child on his first road trip, I called out to Grimm. I couldn’t help myself.
The anxiety was going to eat me the fuck alive.
“Shit, Grimm. Are we fucking there yet?”
He didn’t glance back. “Almost there, son… I mean, sir.” I smirked at his response. “A flight would have given you less of a headache.”
“Ticketing comes with flights, Grimm. Records. Receipts. And we both know how I feel about paperwork…”
I looked out the window. D.C. was quiet tonight.
It was past three in the morning. The familiar white glow of the Washington Monument was on the horizon, reflected in the Potomac River. There was a calmness in the water and air, a serenity that belied the busy streets that would awaken come mid-morning.
For me, this was home. Well, as much of a home as I was ever going to get. Considering all of its pretentiousness, the district that was lit in the distance had a seedy underbelly, a maddening quality built from money and prestige that turned ordinary men into monsters… and career seekers into snakes.
It was eat-or-be-eaten. And if you’d ask me on my death bed which one I was on that little spectrum… I’d tell you that I feasted with the best of them.
Grimm pulled into my garage not fifteen minutes later.
The lights on my condo were off. The Northwest DC corner high-rise was a far cry from the Southeast slums’ streets that a little street punk like me had slept in, and as I wiped off the memory of the opera, Sienna, and her dark-cherry smell, I stepped out of the backseat of the Rolls and onto a street that I hadn’t been on in six long months.
I’d almost forgotten what was waiting for me when I opened the door. Or rather, who was waiting…
She was in the kitchen.
Her platinum blonde, shoulder-length bob was swept across her face and behind her ear, and she looked over at me when I entered. But her rosy red lips didn’t spread into a smile; they took a detour downwards into a frown. Her full face scowled as she rounded the counter.
“Fuck, you guys are late. Any later and I might have called the cops.” She stuck out her hand.
“Mister DeSalt.”
I took it.
“Miss Lane.”
“I took the liberty of making your favorite, Mac ‘n Cheese. There’s a strawberry protein shake ready to go in the fridge. I’ve got all your greens. There’s a batch of fresh almond butter in the fridge, a bag of walnuts in the pantry. I made that cloud nine you call a bed. It was starting to get dusty. Looks brand new. Like you’ve barely used it.”
I smiled, sliding my bag off my shoulder. I let it hit the ground. “Well, I don’t.” I strolled over to the counter. “Strawberry’s a good choice. I’d rather have had the peanuts, Jess. And come on, I know it’s only been, what… five years that you’ve been working here, but I think it’s safe to say that the master bed is all yours when you want it. I have absolutely no reason to use it.”
Jess blinked. “Seriously? Who knows what sort of cum stains that bed has seen… Besides, where would you sleep?”
I stared. “Who says I sleep?”
“Well, where would you have sex?”
I smiled at Jess’s ever-present boldness. “Everywhere.”
She shrugged, turning. “I shudder to think.” She glanced back. “Your last little guest made this place a wreck. She asked for really stinky cheese to go with her eggs the morning after you left. She brushed her teeth in the kitchen sink, and she had the whole condo reeking of cheap men’s cologne. She could have picked a better fragrance.”
I eyed Jessica. “I suspect she didn’t pick the fragrance at all.” I sniffed. “It was her husband’s.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “Well, next time can you pick a woman with better taste? I nearly coughed up a lung trying to Febreze this place to cover up the stench.” Jess continued talking. I stood, listening, feeling the tug of a nervous tick. My phone felt like a ten-pound weight inside my pants’ pocket. I’d been thinking about it since I got back. I wondered why my phone wasn’t buzzing. I wondered why I wanted it to.
I pulled out my phone, checking the screen. Nothing. I sat it down.
Jess placed a hand on her hip, grunting. “Can’t you date a woman without, I don’t know… a ring on her finger and available penis waiting back at home?”
That caused me to grin. “Jess… if they had the penis they wanted back at home, they wouldn’t fuck me. I do what works. Married women work. No muss. No fuss. Their husbands get their ‘fuck-you’s’. I get all their ‘fuck-me’s’. Everybody wins.”
“Except for the husbands.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”
“After living in this house,” Jessica closed a cupboard, “nothing surprises me anymore. I’m surprised every day that I still stick around.” Her voice held the tiniest bit of a laugh in it. She was arranging my cabinets and their contents without even looking, her hands tinkering around the kitchen without prior thinking, and I realized all at once that Jessica knew my own place better than I did.
Not that I was in here much anyway. I placed one elbow on the kitchen counter, leaning in.
“You already know why you stick around…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jessica continued cleaning.
Absentminded, I grabbed for the phone once more. I heard a few more rumblings from Jessica’s side of the kitchen counter, but I was too engrossed in the display, my gaze too stuck on the center of my cell screen, to pay attention to what she was saying.
Suddenly I heard something that caught my ear. I looked up.
“Excuse me?”
Jessica sighed. “I said… who’s the next target? The next mark?”
“The next mark?”
She nodded at my phone. “The girl. Or woman. I’ve never seen you look at your phone this hard.”
I put the cell down. “There is no girl. There’s never a fucking girl. Not with this life, Jess. And definitely not with this job.”
Jess sucked her teeth. “Mmhmm. Sure.” She looked at the phone again. “And does she know about your life? This ‘job’ of yours?”
I glanced down at my screen again. “Now, see, Miss Jessica Lane—that would defeat the purpose.”
I peeked back up at my housekeeper.
“She is the fucking job.”
Fanning the Flames
SIENNA
I didn’t need this job. Not that fucking badly.
The day had been a bust. After begging Carlos for the day off, catching a cab into the city and having a homeless man or two rub against my wool skirt, I had walked into Lower Manhattan with an attitude that could part a busy New York City street with one stare.
An hour later, I was practically running out the way I’d come in, my tail tucked between my legs, tears brimming on the edge of my mascara-extended eyelashes. Tears that I refused to let fucking fall.
Not on these crowded streets. And definitely not in front of that misogynistic senior director, a slick-talking FBI agent who’d sneered at me the second I stepped in, his tone condescending. His haughty eyes looked down on me as his shaky secretary ushered me in, and as she closed the door, I caught the look of fear in her eyes, a silent suffering that told me this was going to be one of the longest interviews of my life.
Turned out to be one of the shortest.
I’d left his office with a hot head and a wet ass, my eyes stinging, my nerves still singing as they tried to recover from the feel of the foreign hands th
at had sent them soaring. He wasn’t even fucking smooth about the way he had tried to take advantage of me.
He wasn’t going to give me an assignment. This wasn’t an interview; it was a groping session.
Hopping on the train, I let my hair loose. The terminal was hot. Cool air rushed into my face as I squeezed my way through the subway train’s open doors to find the nearest available seat. Sitting there, I reminisced about the half hour I’d just spent. The coffee stains on my skirt hadn’t yet dried.
Thirty-two minutes later, what was left of my optimistic soul had sunk. And I slung my defeated ass across the threshold of Tino’s bar with no shame, minus half a shoe and an urge for a shot that was near nuclear.
A broken heel was dangling from my foot as I sat at the bar, one finger in the air, motioning towards the dark haired, military-looking man behind the bar. I caught his attention.
“Javi. I’ll take the DJ. No soda. No ice. Water back.”
“Don?” Javi came over to my side, wiping a glass. “Meeting was that good?”
“Better,” I grunted. “Bastard purposely spilled his lukewarm coffee on me and then faked an attempt to ‘clean it off.’ Right after he insulted me and insinuated that my ‘old connections’ in the Bureau wouldn’t buy my way back in. He hoped I was dumber and more desperate. I was only too happy to disappoint him.”
Javi shook his head, leaning in. “I’d heard of that prick, Horton. That sick shit. Are you alright?” He placed his hand on mine.
“Yeah, I’m okay. The coffee wasn’t too hot. Only thing that was hot was his face when I picked up what was left in his mug and threw it in his face. He stammered so hard I thought he was going to spit out a tooth. His own secretary looked at me as I walked out and smiled in appreciation. The guy’s a real prick.”
“And you don’t need another prick as a boss.” He looked over his shoulder. “Trust me.”
I lowered my voice. “No need to remind me that we already have a prick for a boss. But at least he’s your cousin. What I did need was a real shot, a chance to get back on the Bureau. Truth is, I’ve been a leper… ever since Delaney died.” I slammed my purse on the nearest stool, thinking about my now long-gone agency mentor. I’d always been a sneeze away from being kicked out of the force, but ever since the lawyer I’d been working for skipped town—the attorney I’d been working for undercover to catch her fugitive friend—I was an outcast, known to anyone around as an “Untouchable.”
Among the Flames (Kisses and Crimes Book 3) Page 3