Dangerous Games

by Tess Diamond

  A strong, deadly woman who would fight for what was right at any cost.

  Was there anything sexier?

  It didn’t hurt that she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Skin smooth as cream, and eyes so blue it almost hurt to look in them. Those golden curls he wanted to run his fingers through, drawing her closer, his lips covering hers . . .

  “What are we going to do about Thebes?” Maggie asked, breaking his reverie. He cleared his throat, shifting in his seat, uncomfortably aware of where his daydreaming was leading.

  “I’ve got some people,” Jake said. “They could hack into his computers. See what he’s hiding.”

  “But we know what he’s hiding,” Maggie said. “Or at least we know what the kidnapper wants—whatever file’s in the Capitol. That won’t be on his computer.”

  “True,” Jake agreed. “So what do you think is the best plan?”

  “Our unsub,” Maggie said. “He knows what’s in the file.”

  “So you want to con him into giving you the information?” Jake asked.

  “Why? Do you think it’s a bad idea?” Her delicate brows drew together defensively.

  “No,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea. He will get back into contact with us when Thebes doesn’t hand over the file. If you play it right, he could be more forthcoming than Thebes.”

  “It’ll be a shaky line,” Maggie mused, swirling the red wine in her glass. “I can’t push him too much, or seem too eager. If he realizes how in the dark Thebes is keeping us, that’s it. He has all the power.”

  “You can do it,” Jake said.

  “You think so?” Maggie asked, and there was a vulnerability in her voice that startled him. She’d been so confident, so ball busting so far, he’d almost forgotten what Peggy had told him about her last case.

  “I do,” Jake said. “You got the drop on me with Thebes, didn’t you?”

  A triumphant smile spread across her face. “I did,” she said smugly.

  “Don’t gloat,” he said.

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s not my fault I’m clearly a better tailer than you. And faster.”

  “I got pulled over!” he protested.

  “I don’t get pulled over,” she added primly, tossing her head.

  He laughed. “You’re a piece of work,” he said, affection and attraction making him feel loose and happy.

  “I try,” she said. She checked the time on her phone. “I really should get going,” she said. “It’s late.”

  “You good to drive?” Jake asked.

  “I had half a glass of wine,” she said, rising from the barstool. “I’m fine.”

  Jake walked her out, his palm coming to rest lightly on her lower back, his heart beating a little faster when she didn’t frown or pull away, but instead leaned into his touch.

  The street was empty and dark this time of night. Maggie turned toward him, smiling still.

  “This was nice,” she said. “Maybe you’re less of a pain in the ass than I thought.”

  “I’m shocked that you’re willing to admit that,” he said.

  “I should go,” she said, but she didn’t move.

  He wanted to bend down and kiss her. To grab that tantalizing dip in her waist and draw her close, until he could feel the softness of her skin, the press of her breasts and hips against him. But he knew he couldn’t. He knew that if he did, he’d ruin the gentle camaraderie they had found over a gold-plated meatball and a half glass of wine.

  And he didn’t want to ruin that—for her or him—or the them he was starting to hope they might become in the future.

  “You could walk me home,” he said with a laugh to tell her he was joking.

  “You’re a big boy, O’Connor,” she said. “I think you’ll be safe.”

  “See you tomorrow?” he asked as she turned and pointed her key to her car, opening it.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  He waited until she was in the car and had driven off, her brake lights fading into the distance, before walking back inside the bar.

  Giorgio was back at the bar, wiping it down. “You scare her off already?” he asked.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “She has an early morning.” They both did.

  “I like her,” Giorgio said with a smile.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, thinking of how her eyes crinkled when she laughed. The husky, infectious sound echoed in his head. “Me too, Giorgio. Me too.”

  Chapter 19

  Frank Edenhurst was a lot of things: a patriot, a crack shot, a damn fine chess player, and a decent husband—or at least, Alyce hadn’t complained yet, and it would be thirty-five years in October.

  Tactful he was not. Which is why, when Max Grayson sidled up to him in the senator’s office, sipping green sludge from a clear glass bottle, and asked him what he thought about the setup for the press conference at the Hale Building, Frank grunted and said, “This is a terrible idea.”

  “Nonsense!” Grayson replied, almost cheerfully. “It’ll poll great, rally the whole country. Foster a feeling of togetherness.”

  “It will bring attention to something that’s still thankfully under the radar and endanger the child’s life,” Frank gritted out. What in the world was the senator thinking, going along with this sycophant’s awful ideas? Grayson obviously had political stars in his eyes, and nothing was more important to him than a leap in poll numbers, not even the life of his boss’s daughter. But what was the senator’s motivation? After Maggie’s encounter with the senator last night, Frank was on high alert. The senator’s motivations weren’t clear—but the unsub’s were becoming clearer now. This was all about the senator. Frank had been monitoring the phones since four a.m., not just waiting for the unsub to call with the account numbers as promised, but keeping track of who Thebes was calling. So far, Frank had nothing, but that didn’t mean anything this early in the game.

  “It’s only a matter of time until the news breaks, anyway,” Grayson said, looking a little annoyed at Frank’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. “This way, we control the narrative.”

  His phone rang. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded at Frank. “You’ve got Grayson,” he said as he walked away. “No, no, I need at least three more cameras at the venue. I want all angles on the senator and his wife. And talk to me about lighting.” He snapped his fingers at one of the assistants running around. “Has anyone seen Mrs. Thebes?”

  “I don’t think she’s out of bed yet, sir,” the woman replied.

  Grayson rolled his eyes and turned back to his phone.

  Frank could barely conceal his sneer of disgust. That one was a piece of work.

  Speaking of pieces of work, Maggie had arrived, followed by Jake O’Connor. She took one look at Grayson as he paced back and forth, arguing about camera placement and scheduling mic checks, and she pressed her lips together so hard they nearly disappeared.

  “Have there been any calls?” she asked Frank. “Did the unsub give us an account number?”

  He shook his head, and she seemed unsurprised at the news.

  “And they’re still going through with the presser?” Maggie asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Looks like,” Frank said grimly. “Tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t listen. The compromise was that they pushed it back until tomorrow. To give us time to negotiate more.”

  “Well, let’s see about that,” Maggie said. Before Frank could stop her, she strode down the steps, snapping, “Grayson!”

  The man turned, pointing to his cell and then showing her his back.

  Frank winced. Bad move on Grayson’s part. Ignoring Maggie was like trying to ignore the sun in a heatwave.

  Maggie walked up to Grayson and without missing a beat, she snatched the phone out of his hand. “Hi,” she said into it. “Grayson will have to call you back.” She punched the screen with a fingertip to hang up and tossed the phone onto a nearby chesterfield couch, where it bounced twice and fell onto an antique Pers
ian rug spread across the floor.

  “What the—” Max’s ears turned bright red as he sputtered in shock.

  Frank shook his head, trying to hide his smile.

  “A press conference is a terrible idea,” Maggie said. “And if you didn’t have your head up your ass, you’d see that.”

  “This isn’t your call,” Max snarled. “I don’t take orders from you. I work for Senator Thebes, and this is what he wants me to do. Isn’t that right, Senator?” he asked meaningfully over Maggie’s shoulder.

  Frank turned and saw Thebes standing in the doorway, watching the confrontation.

  Maggie whirled around, zeroing in on him. “Senator, please think twice about this,” she pleaded, an ominous edge in her voice. “Think about what we talked about last night. This situation needs to be kept calm and controlled. Going to the press and whipping up a frenzy will light a fire we can’t control.”

  “She’s right, sir,” Jake interjected. “Once the press spotlight exposes a negotiation, everything ramps up. Things get much harder. Journalists get underfoot; hell, sometimes they get involved, trying to scoop the story. With all this focus on us, we lose any element of surprise we might have—which is a huge risk from a tactical standpoint.”

  “The kidnapper could easily panic.” Maggie picked up the plea, her voice impassioned. “The whole country will be watching the case. Everyone will be looking for him. That will make him paranoid—and you don’t want your daughter’s life in the hands of a person who knows everyone’s looking for him. We haven’t given him any reason to not negotiate with us or to distrust us yet, but a press conference will ruin all that. I warn you, this will blow up in our faces, and there will be consequences . . .” She trailed off meaningfully, fixing the senator with a knowing glance. He avoided her eyes and remained silent.

  “The public has a right to know!” Max Grayson insisted, walking across the room to stand next to the senator. “It’s a miracle Kayla’s friends haven’t been tweeting or Snapchatting or whatever the hell it is that kids do about it yet.”

  “They didn’t because we told them not to,” Maggie said icily. “They’re good kids. They want their friend found. That’s more than I can say about you.”

  Grayson stepped back as if he were wounded. But Frank knew—he could tell from the coldness in his eyes—that it was a performance. He held his breath, watching as Grayson gathered himself. Frank understood where Maggie was coming from, but, damn, if she didn’t push the envelope. He agreed that this Grayson character needed to be whipped into shape, but these hardball tactics were something only Maggie would be brave enough to try.

  “Of course I want her found,” Grayson finally said softly. “But we can’t count on any kids, good or not. We need to get in front of this, Senator.” He placed a hand on Thebes’ shoulder. “You’re a public figure. This is your job.”

  The senator took a deep breath, looking at Maggie, then at Jake, and finally Grayson. “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s do it. Is there a speech prepared?”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Maggie said, her voice low and rough with disgust. Before any of the men could say anything, she stormed out of the library. Her footsteps clipped along, but Frank could see her fury in her balled-up fists and the tightness in her shoulders.

  Frank sighed. Maggie had always had a problem with the shaky morality that unfortunately powered most of DC. This instance, more shocking than most, jarred him too: The slimy bastard had just decided to risk his daughter’s life for a PR move. But Frank had been on the DC beat long enough and worked with enough crooked politicians to accept it for what it was and work around it.

  Maggie never tried to work around it. She’d use nuance and deception only as long as it worked, but when the chips were down, she was open defiance through and through. Especially when something got in the way of saving a life.

  God, she’d been the best—a prodigious talent. He’d known it the first time he observed her at Quantico, running through a kidnapping scenario he’d designed to weed out the recruits who would break under the extreme pressure of negotiating. Maggie had a powerful combination of intuitiveness and a steady nerve that was rare not only in recruits, but in seasoned agents as well.

  In the final moment, some recruits panicked. Others didn’t get more than a few hours in before they lost their temper, or they couldn’t maintain the deception necessary to do the job, so that the lies leaked into their voices, dismantling their connection with the unsub. And a few just didn’t have the instinct—when to push, when to pull back, when to bargain, when to change the game, when to show authority, and when to show understanding.

  During the exercise, Maggie had been the last one standing. A slip of a girl with a curly blond halo of hair and serious, wide blue eyes. She never broke, not even when she sent in the fake SWAT and they reported back that both recruits playing the victim and kidnapper were “dead.”

  He’d found her on the steps after the class and introduced himself.

  “You were very good in there,” he remembered telling her.

  And he’ll never forget what she said back, her chin tilted up and she said, “I did everything right in the simulation, but in real life, they would’ve died, too.”

  “Kid,” he’d told her gently, “that’s this job sometimes.”

  It was the first lesson every rookie had to learn. And the most important.

  She’d taken a deep breath and said, “I know.”

  It would take Frank a few more days to look at her file to realize how intimately she did know . . . and that she was the kind of survivor who would keep rising out of the ashes no matter how many times she was burned.

  Today, he’d seen some sparks of life, glimmers of the old Maggie—in the way she’d tossed Grayson’s cell, in the icy disgust in her voice when she confronted the senator. It encouraged him more than anything else he’d seen in the two years since she’d left the Bureau. He’d kept tabs on her, of course, but for a long time, he’d feared that losing the girl at Sherwood Hills had broken Maggie for good.

  But now, here she was, back in the game and coming out swinging with the kind of fierceness that Frank had only ever seen in women agents. They worked harder because their intuition wasn’t clouded by macho power plays—and because they had more to prove.

  Maggie always had the most to prove to herself—that’s what made her so good. She strove to be better; she never got complacent.

  Because she understood the stakes in a way none of the rest of them did.

  “Frank, could we have a few minutes?” Senator Thebes asked, interrupting Frank’s reverie.

  Frank sighed. “Senator, if I were you, I’d listen to the experts on this.”

  Thebes glared at him. “It’s been decided, Frank.”

  Frank bit his tongue. He wasn’t stupid—he could tell something was up. But he knew he wasn’t going to get it out of this guy.

  Maggie, on the other hand . . .

  “I’ll be right outside,” he said. As he closed the doors to the office, he saw Max Grayson lean toward the senator, probably instructing him about the best lighting angles.

  Frank snorted, sitting down in a chair set in a corner that offered a good view of the stairs while remaining partly hidden by a giant fern in an elaborate brass pot.

  He’d only just sat down when Maggie descended the stairs, Jake O’Connor right behind her.

  “We should talk this over,” Jake was saying.

  “I’m perfectly capable of handling this,” Maggie said. “I don’t need an escort.”

  “I think you do since you seem to have the habit of going off without backup,” Jake shot back.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “You’re just mad I got the drop on you last night.”

  “I got pulled over, I would’ve caught up if it weren’t for that.”

  Maggie snorted. “Like hell. I’m a big girl, O’Connor. I can take care of myself.”

  “Gonna lone-wolf it, Goldilocks?”


  “I told you not to call me that!” she snapped.

  Frank watched as O’Connor grinned, his eyes lighting up in appreciation. “Sorry, I forgot.”

  Frank could see the smile in Maggie’s eyes, even if it didn’t show in the rest of her face. “Remember better,” she said.

  She stalked down the remaining few stairs, coming to an abrupt halt when she spotted Frank sitting there.

  Frank raised an eyebrow at her, and her cheeks turned bright red as she realized he must have overheard their ruckus.

  People fought like that for only two reasons, Frank thought: chemistry or loathing.

  From the redness of Maggie’s cheeks as she hurried down the hall away from both men, it was definitely chemistry.

  Chapter 20

  Maggie heard the kettle whistle, picked it up, and poured herself some white tea, dunking the teabag and stirring in some honey. Grabbing the steaming cup, she walked out of her kitchen into the living room.

  She’d spent the entire day at the senator’s mansion, but as the hours stretched with no call from the kidnapper, the tension ramping up with each minute that passed, Frank had finally pulled her aside as dusk began to fall.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be getting a call from our unsub,” Frank said.

  He was right. But Maggie couldn’t decide if this was a power play on the unsub’s part, punishment, or performance art. Was he just making them sweat? Or was he faltering, losing his cool when faced with the reality of what he’d done? Or was this all a game, and the real negotiating was going on behind her back between him and the senator?

  “This isn’t about money,” Maggie said, leaning against the library wall, watching the senator and Max Grayson work through his speech for tomorrow’s presser. Mrs. Thebes hadn’t left her room the entire day. “All his calls—they’re a distraction from his real goal. This is about something bigger than a payday.”

  “Any ideas?”

  Maggie shook her head. “None that I’m ready to share,” she said. “I can’t think in here. There’s too much going on. Too many people.”