Under the Rose

by Kathryn Nolan

  “So you don’t have a boyfriend?” I managed. “It’s, uh, best if we know the full extent of each other’s romantic attachments. Could be a vulnerability.” Sure, that sounded good.

  “I don’t, actually,” Freya said. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “Hardly,” I bit out. We passed another row of antiques—long, scrolling maps bearing the names of countries that no longer existed.

  “Were you serious about what you said earlier?” she asked, voice a whisper. I bent my head to be near hers, our fingers moving close on a glass case. “About the violence? Being concerned for our safety?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes. Six months ago, the Bureau lost an agent while breaking up an illegal art theft ring. It’s not as bloodless as we used to think.”

  Freya touched her bun, straightened her pearls. “Okay. I get it. And I’m so sorry for your agent.”

  It was another tenuous truce. But instead of strengthening my trust, it only made me feel muddled.

  “Thomas and Cora are ready to dine with you.” A voice slashed through our whispered conversation. Roy, the creepy trust fund kid.

  We both startled—Freya knocked a book to the floor with her flying arms. She immediately dropped down, grabbed the book, and smacked the top of her head on the table.

  “Ow, fuck me,” she squeaked. I stilled her by the shoulders. My thumb stroked the curve of her hairline as she watched me, looking grateful. She appeared to be in physical pain, which I’d never seen before. Sparring on the mats was one thing. Freya actually hurting herself was another thing entirely. It made me want to crack the table in two, throw it in the garbage.

  “Uh, hello?” Roy said impatiently.

  “Apologies from Birdie,” I said, turning to face him. Freya stood on wobbly legs. “She’s easily startled. Did you say the Alexanders are ready for us?”

  “Yeah.” Then he gave Freya a look of open admiration—trolling his gaze down her body. The action had me reaching for a gun that was no longer in my holster.

  “I think your fly is down,” she said. He blushed furiously—saw that his fly was, indeed, open. He made a toddler-like sound of frustration. And when Freya met my gaze with a tiny smirk, I gave her a nod of approval.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “Thomas and Cora wish to see you on the balcony.”

  “How was Dr. Ward?” Freya asked, following him through the crowd of booklovers. “His speech sure was passionate.”

  “You know how he is,” Roy spit out. “Needs to make everything into a fucking show. It’s why I have to wait until Saturday night to get what I came here for. But I have money and I want it now.”

  “What a jerk,” she said.

  “He’s a pompous ass,” he added.

  We followed Roy through a small dark hallway lit with gas-lamps, although it was barely 9:30 in the morning. The schedule Freya and I had found online had listed a continental breakfast and mingling hour that I assumed would be awkward and brightly-lit with coffee and stale bagels. I’d attended more criminal justice conferences than most. The ‘breakfast networking hour’ was always terrible.

  We stepped into an ornate, high-ceilinged room with a long table piled high with food. One wall was filled with open doors that led to a balcony terrace and a view of the city of Philadelphia.

  Thomas and Cora, looking even more polished than they had twenty minutes ago, waved us over.

  “Thank you for waiting while we attended to business,” Thomas said, eyes darting around. “Please, join us.”

  Freya and I perched on chairs at their table next to the ledge of the terrace. The morning skyline glittered behind us. Large pots filled with roses and evergreen bushes provided a feel of privacy.

  While the server took our orders, I studied our companions. Big, shiny diamond ring on Cora’s left finger. Matching diamonds in her ears. Most likely in her fifties but Botox-ed. Her clipped, mid-Atlantic accent spoke of boarding schools and elocution classes. Thomas appeared similarly sophisticated, dressed like a wealthy New York City oil tycoon.

  Roy, meanwhile, twitched like a weasel, shifting like he expected a goon squad at any second. As the server asked for my breakfast order, Roy took a call and stalked off with a harried expression.

  Thomas and Cora visibly relaxed with his absence.

  Thomas leaned over our small cups of coffee. “I trust you’ll be ready for our festivities. I remember being nervous my first year. But you’ll do great.”

  “Of course,” I said. “We’ll be attending with the two of you?”

  “How else would you get there?” he asked, quizzical.

  “Just verifying,” I said.

  Breakfast was served, but Freya and I didn’t touch our food.

  “We appreciated what Dr. Ward said about trust,” Freya said, once the server left. “I know how highly you value that among your friends. It’s a hot commodity these days, it appears.”

  Cora sipped coffee from a fine china cup. “That attitude is why we believe the four of us are going to be the best of friends this weekend. Don’t we, Thomas?”

  “We do.” His gaze on mine was sharp, searching. This man might be pretending to admire us, but he was certainly wary.

  I glanced at Freya, nudged my knee against hers. “Birdie and I are on the hunt for several items this weekend. I thought I might see if you knew their status.”

  “Oh?” Thomas asked.

  Freya nudged my knee back. “Love letters.”

  Cora smiled mysteriously. “We know of several dealers selling one-of-a-kind antique letters this weekend.”

  Freya traced a finger along the rim of her cup. Dragged the moment out. “Lucky number thirteen. We heard they arrived yesterday.”

  This glimpse of Freya—teasing out our suspect—snapped me back to the past so fast I felt dizzy. She was nervous to go undercover again. That much was clear to me. I could read all of her cues—touching her hair, biting her lip, trying to joke instead of answering a question. She did those things around me.

  But in class, during our undercover drills, I’d watched this woman come alive with the thrill of it. She had been a naturally talented undercover agent—a fact that my father had made sure I’d been well aware of. I wasn’t the only member of my family to be disappointed at the loss of Freya Evandale.

  Thomas glanced at Cora, who gave a discreet shake of her head. “Everything went as planned, as you well know. But has he been talking to you, Birdie?”

  Under the table, Freya pressed her knee hard to mine. Pressed and left it there, making my skin burn.

  “That’s a secret, now, isn’t it?” she said.

  Cora looked mildly irritated at that. Thomas looked confused.

  “We’d love to see them,” I said, forging ahead. “As soon as possible.”

  Freya dropped her spoon with a clink. Moved her knee.

  “Patience,” Thomas warned. “You’re not the only interested parties. You know this must wait until the final night.”

  “Who else wants them?” I asked.

  His face went cold. “You know I can’t talk about that here.”

  “We’re very excited,” Freya said quietly. “We tend to be homebodies back in San Francisco. Don’t get out like this. Sometimes interacting with other human beings is challenging for us.”

  She was vibrating a little. Irritated with me, I guessed. But I was pissed too. We needed to push here, and Freya was pulling back. Maybe I needed to lean forward, identify who I was in a menacing whisper, and take those letters back. Under pressure, I bet Thomas and Cora would sing like canaries.

  “We’re all aware of the other person who might be interested in letters that might be here,” Thomas said. “I’m sure you can already see what the issue is, given recent developments.”

  “We do see the issue.” Freya sipped her coffee with her pinkie up. “You promise we’ll have the opportunity to see what we’d like to see at the festivities?”

  “That is what we discussed,” Cora said. A line
formed between her brows. She was confused by us. We were veering past the ability to merely listen and nod.

  “Julian and I can be patient. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about this gorgeous hotel? We’re first-timers in awe of this magnificent location.”

  I shrugged a shoulder, grateful for the topic change. “I would have assumed the biggest antiquarian book festival on the East Coast would be held in a convention center.”

  “Convention centers are pointless and boring,” Thomas said. “Dr. Ward would never allow anything that pedestrian. He’s a man of unique tastes. He chose The Grand Dame because of its storied past.”

  “Bootlegging,” Cora added. “There was a speakeasy here in the 1920s, although you’d never know it now. The basement once masqueraded as a perfumery. Exotic scents from around the world for the wealthiest of this city’s upper echelon.”

  “Perfume bottles make an interesting hiding place for liquor,” Thomas said. “By day, the shop was filled with society women. By night, the shop was filled with an utterly different clientele. Jazz, escorts, drugs, alcohol. All happened in the rooms that exist beneath this street. The confluence of the Schuykill and Delaware rivers made Philadelphia a bustling city of underground bootleggers. Although The Grand Dame was never raided—historians believe the owner had so many police officers on the take they were able to keep out of legal trouble.” Thomas looked me square in the eye. “For eons, criminals and those who have been trained to catch them have often worked in concert.”

  Just like Gregory.

  “I seem to know more crooked cops than straight these days,” I said, holding his gaze. The sentiment went against my core values—but he wasn’t wrong about the devious connections between cop and criminal.

  “You’ll have to regale us with those tales during our festivities,” Cora said. “We’re always interested in gathering certain information.”

  Thomas glanced at his silver watch. “We should be off soon, my dear. Before we go, can you tell dear Cora what you were telling me the other night, Birdie? You promised we could continue our conversation.”

  Freya went completely pale. “You’ll have to remind me.”

  Thomas let us hang for a fraught few seconds. “I understand. We do have a lot of conversations. This was about those letters you were referring to. I’ve been trying to explain the cryptography to Cora for days, but she doesn’t understand.”

  Cora blinked innocently. His speech sounded too practiced, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another test. One of the informal codes they used to confirm loyalties on the fly.

  Beneath the table, Freya was shaking her stilettoed foot, knuckles white where they gripped her coffee cup. Her knee landed back against mine—a signal, I was sure—but I didn’t know shit about cryptography.

  “Maybe another time,” she hedged. “We should probably be off too. Right, Julian?”

  “Ri—”

  “Oh, please,” Thomas said. “Cora’s been asking me for days. Surely you can explain it again for us here?”

  Freya swallowed hard. “You’re sure you can’t explain it, Thomas? A brilliant man like you? I seem to remember you understanding the code-cracking immediately when I told you.”

  It wasn’t a half-bad deflection.

  “And yet I’d prefer if you told her,” he said, the knife-edge of his voice lifting the hairs on the back of my neck. “Right now.”

  14

  Freya

  This is what happened when computer nerds were forced into high-stakes undercover roles.

  Every investigative instinct I’d ever had seized up. Where Delilah would have been nimble on her feet, I felt clumsy and slow. Worse, my partner and I seemed to be on totally different wavelengths as usual.

  “Trust,” Thomas was saying, “certainly is a hot commodity, as you said, Ms. Barnes.”

  But before either of us could answer, my phone rang. I’d forgotten to turn it off, but thankfully the shrillest ring tone shattered through the elegant terrace.

  Which was a good enough distraction for me.

  “Yes, um, hello?” I said frantically.

  “Freya. I’m so glad I caught you.” It was Henry. “Listen, I forgot to mention something about those love letters. George wrote them using a cryptographic code, a detail that might—”

  “Oh my god,” I wailed into the phone. “This is terrible. Terrible.” I hung up on Henry and grasped Sam by the hand. “I’m truly sorry, Thomas and Cora, but I’ve had the most dreadful news. I need my partner. We shall be in touch, I’m sure.”

  Before they could answer, I forcibly dragged Sam past people whispering and pointing at us, back through the fancy, high-ceilinged dining room and into the dark, narrow hallway. The gas lanterns lent a dreary air to the space, even though it was a bright and sunny summer morning. This hotel’s nefarious past seemed more obvious with Sam and I squeezed together next to fluttering candlelight.

  “We’re fucked,” I said.

  “I think we should arrest them,” he hissed back.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “With your fake warrant and fake evidence?”

  His jaw clenched so hard I thought it’d break. “Our cover’s blown. They probably know who has the love letters. A little bit of pressure, and we can get what we need and get the hell out of here.”

  A door opened about fifteen feet from us—the back terrace. We exchanged a terrified look.

  “We need to have this conversation elsewhere.” Walking as quickly as we could without outright running, Sam and I strode back out into the glamorous lobby where I did the first thing I could think of.

  Pulled Sam back into the damn men’s bathroom. Locked the door this time.

  We huddled into the stall where his contraband gun was hidden. He looked debonair and handsome, even jammed into a men’s bathroom stall. “We’re floundering out there, and they’re onto us,” he hissed.

  “They were on to us when you pushed them too fast. What did we learn at Quantico? These relationships take time.” My hands went to my hips, blocking his exit.

  “I’m good at my job. I know how to handle people like Thomas and Cora. You need to be more aggressive with them.”

  “Hard to do when they’re asking me the tough questions, and you’re sitting there, watching me suffer.”

  “At a certain point, force is necessary.” Sam pushed past me, out into the bathroom and back onto the lobby floor. I was seeing red, tamping down the urge to tear my fucking hair out. He stopped dead in his tracks, and I smashed into his back.

  “I just saw the elevator close on the Alexanders,” Sam said. “Didn’t they say they’d booked the room next to ours?”

  “They did. Though I’m surprised they didn’t have security called on us yet,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Also, why is your back like a brick wall?”

  In an instant, Sam was shoving open the door marked stairway and sprinting up the stairs. But he wasn’t in fucking stilettos. Or carrying a bag with a small laptop in it. Grumbling, I stopped to slip off my heels and loop them around my wrist. Then I took off after Sam Byrne with a fury.

  “When did you get faster than me?” I panted.

  “I was always faster than you,” he shot back.

  We hit the second story doorway a second apart. But Sam still had time to flash me the smuggest grin before yanking it open. We needed to stop. Plan. Not run recklessly down the hallway like a pair of cops without an identity or an alibi or a warrant or cause to be here. I wanted this case to be over just as much as Sam did. But Abe had trusted that we could do this, and Sam was about to destroy everything.

  The door to room 213 clicked shut as we rounded the corner. Sam was already slipping our room key from his pocket—211. There was a beep, a click, and Birdie and Julian’s hotel room was revealed. The room was huge—luxurious. In the middle was a four-poster bed with too many pillows, everything in crimson and hunter-green. An antique-looking fireplace dominated one wall, and a small gold chandelier hung from the
ceiling.

  Interestingly, there was only one bed for Julian and Birdie.

  I pressed a finger to my lips as Sam paced. “Shhh. They’re right next door.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  He strode right up to me. My back hit the wall, but I kept my chin raised.

  “We are out of options. The faster we get those letters, the faster we never have to see each other again,” he said.

  The coldness of that hit me harder than I expected. I mean, of course I wanted the same thing. But it still stung. “I agree that I’d prefer to be done working together. Thomas and Cora seem too savvy to back down due to pressure. Especially since they’ve done nothing wrong. Literally nothing. Even if you had them investigated for using the code word I stumbled onto, none of their conversations online are even mildly illegal. I can usually get away with quick blackmail when they’re holding the stolen book in their hand. These two? We have nothing except that they’ve alluded the stolen letters might be here. But they could be alluding to any love letters. We don’t know enough.”

  Sam rubbed the back of his neck and broke eye contact. I could see his teeth grinding. With my head pressed to the wall, I could just hear the sounds of conversation from next door. Tilting my head, I pressed my ear there.

  We should listen, I mouthed, pointing to the wall. Sam looked unimpressed. With an eye-roll, I moved past him and toward the middle of the room—a small space between the dresser and a wing-backed chair.

  I slid down, hugging my knees to my chest and laying my laptop and phone nearby. Shot off a quick text to Henry asking him to send me the information on the cryptography in the letters. Ear to the wall, I tried to capture the threads of conversation.

  Going to be a problem…filtered through. Must have been why she ran…

  I pressed my ear as hard as I could.

  Letters…thirteen… more murmuring that was indecipherable. I pressed my ear so hard it actually stung a little. And when Sam tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped out of my fucking skin.