8

My cousin squeezed my arm and herded me into the Boathouse’s restroom. “You’ve been holding out on us!” She backed up, clasping my hands and spreading my arms as she admired my dress. “Look at you. Who’s the guy? Your mother was just over yesterday lamenting that the closest thing you’ve had to a date is watching movies with your super. Who is Bradley Cooper–hot, by the way.”

Pretty sure half the restaurant could hear, I shushed her with, “He’s a colleague. It’s not a date.”

“Ha! You tell yourself whatever you need to, girl, but I saw the way he looked at you.”

I mentally rolled my eyes. Yes, Tanner could be really good at role-playing when he needed to be.

This was so not good. April was a motormouth, and if I admitted I was on an undercover op, she’d go out and blab it to her date and who knew who might overhear. But if I let her think this was really a date, she’d tell my aunt, who’d tell my mom, who’d have wedding invitations ordered by Friday. If she didn’t have a stroke first over the fact that he was in law enforcement. “Okay, yes, it’s a date, but please don’t tell your mother. Or mine. I’d like . . . time.”

“Yee,” she squealed. “Of course, of course. I understand.” She squeezed my arm again. “I’m so happy for you.” She twirled out of the bathroom like the giddy teen she was, and I was pretty sure the phone lines to my parents’ house would be humming tonight.

I flushed a toilet without using it and emerged from the restroom to find Tanner grinning at me over April’s head as she hugged his middle.

He extricated himself from her arms, said something I couldn’t hear, then strode my way and splayed his hand across the middle of my back as if he was my boyfriend.

“Sorry about April,” I whispered as warmth spread through me. Tanner was a little too good at role-playing sometimes.

“It’s all good.” His hand moved up to give my neck a squeeze. “Honeybunch.”

I smacked him.

His chuckle resonated through me as we turned onto the walkway. It meandered through a colorful courtyard decorated with a variety of plants and sculptures, and he took his time twining me through it en route to his truck, even though we were already out of sight of his target.

We drove to my place in silence, and the instant Tanner pulled alongside my building next to my metal staircase, I flung open the door before he got it into his head to walk me to my apartment and . . . hang around until Nate arrived. “Thanks, it was fun!”

I scurried up the stairs with a wave and launched through my kitchen door before registering it wasn’t locked.

“There you are.” Aunt Martha sat at my kitchen table with Harold purring on her lap, a steaming cup of tea on her place mat. “Ooh, look at you. Were you on a date?” Her gaze slid down my dress to the damp hem and then slanted to the stove’s digital clock. “I guess it didn’t go well.”

“A small surveillance mishap. And I’m afraid I’m heading right back out again.”

“Righto, I just stopped by because I thought you might want to hear what I found out about Gladys’s missing painting.”

I blinked. “You have information for me?” I’d assumed she’d come to grill me.

Aunt Martha grinned. “I’m not just another pretty face.”

A knock at the hall door interrupted us before she could start. I hurried across the kitchen to the entrance and peeked out the peephole. Nate. I opened the door.

“Whoa,” he said. “I mean, wow! You look stunning, but it’s Sara—”

I gave my head a sideways jerk toward the kitchen to alert him to Aunt Martha’s presence.

Oblivious, he went on. “—who’s supposed to show up at the meeting.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” I interjected and jerked my head more urgently in Aunt Martha’s direction.

She trundled to the doorway with Harold nuzzled against her neck. “Did Randy tell you he ran into Serena and me at the MAC today?”

Nate’s gaze zipped back to mine, looking a tad panicked. “Did he recognize you?” he whispered.

“I introduced them. He took quite a shine to her too.” Aunt Martha went on in that singsong, the-early-bird-gets-the-worm voice, clearly trying to provoke Nate to stake his claim or risk losing it to his brother, when all Nate cared about was whether I’d blown my cover.

Aunt Martha shook her head. “Sometimes men are thicker than cheese,” she muttered into Harold’s fur.

“You free tonight?” Nate suddenly asked, as if he didn’t already have plans with my alter ego.

I glanced at Aunt Martha.

“I’m not staying,” she blurted. “Goodness! Who am I to stand in the way of a real date? Go. Go!” She made a shooing motion with her hands as if she expected me to leave on the spot. Except I needed at least five minutes of privacy to bring the actual woman Nate wanted to take out, back to life.

“Oh, I thought I’d lost this.” Aunt Martha caught up the poncho I’d hooked on the closet’s doorknob when I got home last night.

I mentally inventoried my wardrobe for an alternative hippy-like option and, recalling none, I blurted, “Could I borrow it?”

“Of course. You can keep it, if you’d like.”

I shrugged noncommittally. “I just thought it might be fun to try it out.”

“Good save,” Nate whispered.

I stood, holding open the door, expecting Aunt Martha to leave. Instead, she dug around in her purse, then victoriously held out a note.

“What’s this?”

“What I’ve learned so far about your suspects.”

“My sus—” Taking the list that cataloged more than half my suspects—namely, Gladys’s children and housekeeper—I pressed my lips together.

“I know. I know,” Aunt Martha went on. “You’re not supposed to talk about it. That’s why I grilled Ida and went from there.” Aunt Martha tapped the paper. “For instance, did you know Pete has cash flow problems because he overextended himself on a real estate deal?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Oh, well, what about Gladys’s son-in-law? Did you know he bought a classic 1964 Shelby Mustang in mint condition?”

“He’s CFO of the bank. I’m sure he can afford it.”

“Do you know what they’re worth?” Aunt Martha’s voice rattled the windows. “If he had that kind of coin, why’d he cancel their cruise to the Caribbean? That’s all his wife has complained about at the hairdresser’s for the past month or more.”

Aunt Martha went to a Central West End hairdresser for a wash and set every Friday, and I was beginning to think it was a prime location to plant a confidential informant. A hairdresser was privy to more secrets than a therapist.

Nate still stood at the door. “How much time do you need to get ready?”

“Oh dear,” Aunt Martha fussed. “Don’t let me hold you up.” She grabbed the poncho, must’ve remembered my request to borrow it, and dropped it again, then bustled out.

Nate said good-bye to her, then stepped inside. “You might want to check over the poncho. Make sure she didn’t plant a GPS tracker in it or something.”

I chuckled.

“You laugh, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She takes her sleuthing very seriously.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t own a GPS transmitter.”

Nate’s eyebrow lifted in a skeptical arch.

“Okay, come to think of it, Dad mentioned seeing her browsing an online spy shop last week.” I checked the pockets. “They’re empty. Where does Randy want to meet?”

“His apartment in Soulard.”

“Yeah that fits.” Soulard was historically the French district and one of the oldest St. Louis neighborhoods. “Randy looks like the type who’d want to live close to all those blues and jazz bars.” My cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen. Matt Speers. “I need to take this. Have a seat on the couch, and I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes.” I hurried to the bedroom and put Matt on speakerphone as I changed into my “Sara” getup.

“I took another look at the coffee shop’s surveillance video. Your mugger talked to someone just before he left. I’m emailing you the picture now.”

I snatched up my phone and shut off the speaker. “Hold on a sec.” I thumbed in my email and opened the image. “Randy.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah.”

“I snapped that from the screen with my phone, but I’ll download the clip and send it to you. This guy and your mugger talked for over a minute and both left around the same time.”

“Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you going the extra mile on this for me.”

“Hey, you can show your appreciation by babysitting the little terror.”

“Uh . . .” My mind whirled with questions about Randy. Did he know the guy who mugged me? Did he see him do it? Did he tell him to do it? Was that why he came into the MAC? Looking for another opportunity?

Matt laughed. “Little Terror is a pet name. The munchkin’s not that bad. But”—his voice sobered—“Tracey’s last pregnancy got really dicey toward the end, so I’m trying to give her all the breaks I can, and I’ve kind of maxed out all the family members.”

“Um . . .” I dragged my mind back to the conversation and strained to focus on what Matt was saying. “Sure. I can babysit. Just let me know when,” I said and clicked off. How hard could it be to take care of one pint-sized kid for an evening? If I ran into trouble, I could always call Mom. Witnessing my ineptitude might cool her jets on the whole get-Serena-married crusade. Then again, if he was a little cherub, it would only fuel her enthusiasm.

Ack. I had more important things to worry about at the moment. I turned the corner and came face to face with one of them—Nate. Was his brother in cahoots with the drug dealers?

“I think I should drive tonight.” I opened my clutch to grab my wallet and keys, and my pantyhose tumbled out.

Nate’s eyeballs popped and a tiny frown tugged at the corners of his lips.

I snatched up the pantyhose and tossed them into the hall closet. “I didn’t want them to run,” I explained.

“Right.”

Okay, that didn’t sound as if he believed me, and I didn’t want to contemplate what he might be imagining pantyhose in my purse meant. I was pretty sure he didn’t know I’d been out with Tanner. Not that it was really a date, anyway. Not that Nate would care if it had been. Or maybe he would. My heart tumbled around my chest. Maybe I wanted him to care. Oh man, I didn’t want to analyze that right now.

Nate pulled his keys from his pocket. “I’d better drive. Don’t want Randy looking too closely at your car.”

“Right.” But as much as I trusted Nate, I wasn’t sure we could trust his brother. And if push came to shove, I had no idea which way Nate’s loyalties would fall.

We let ourselves out my kitchen door, and the clang of a heavy footfall on the bottom step made me jump. “Tanner, what are you doing back here?”

His head cocked, and I remembered that I didn’t look like Serena with my floppy hat, hippy poncho, leather boots to the knees, and dark hair extensions. His gaze raked over my outfit and then settled on my face. A twitch at the corner of his lips was the closest he came to acknowledging whatever he thought of my performance. At least he didn’t seem mad over my not coming clean when he happened upon us last night. “I guess this answers my question about whether you knew your super was seeing another woman.”

“What brought you back?”

He held up my wrap. “You forgot this in my truck.” He motioned to my outfit. “Another undercover op?”

“Benton knows about it,” I blurted, suddenly feeling like a rookie who needed to call down the authority of her boss to prove she hadn’t gone rogue.

That telltale muscle in Tanner’s cheek flicked, as if that didn’t make him feel any better. Probably made him more annoyed I’d left him out of the loop. He threw a squinty glance Nate’s way. “You got backup?”

Clearly, he didn’t think Nate fit the bill. And with what I’d just learned about his brother, he might be right. “You volunteering?” I asked.

“What do I need to know?”

Tanner tailed us across town and pulled to the curb half a block shy of Randy’s apartment.

I adjusted the earpiece we’d stopped at headquarters to retrieve. “You hear me okay?” I asked as we headed up the sidewalk to the building’s front door.

“Loud and clear.”

“What on earth?” Nate veered toward the alley. “Hey!” he shouted and disappeared behind the building.

“What’s going on?” Tanner asked.

I raced to the corner of the building. “Someone’s getting beat up.”

The attacker shoved the victim at Nate and bolted straight into me. I caught him by the arm, but before I could crank it behind his back and shove him up against the side of the building, he yanked my blasted poncho over my face and drove me into the brick wall.

“Ser-e—” Tanner choked off my name. Hopefully before Randy caught it.

The next thing I knew, Tanner and Nate were jostling each other out of the way to help me up from the ground.

“Go! I’m fine. Get the bad guy!”

Tanner sprinted down the alley after him.

Nate hesitated half a second. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, go help Tanner. I’ll see to Randy.”

Randy pushed to his feet and swayed.

I dashed to his side and caught his arm to steady him. “Who was that? Why’d he jump you?”

“Just a punk.” Randy peeled my hand off his arm and momentarily stared at it before releasing it.

I stuffed it under my poncho. Had he felt the abrasion on my hand? In the exact same spot as he’d noticed Serena’s this afternoon?

He pressed the back of his shirt cuff to his cut lip. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m up to introducing you to anyone tonight.”

No kidding. In addition to the cut lip, he had a swollen eye, and judging from the way he cradled his middle, bruised ribs, maybe worse. But considering he’d been chatting with my mugger mere hours ago, I doubted the attack was as random as he seemed to want me to believe.

“Let me help you up to your apartment.”

His eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you have a British accent before?”

I forced a chuckle, hoping he couldn’t see the heat climbing to my cheeks in the deepening darkness. “I play up the accent for Nate because he’s fond of it.”

Nate and Tanner thankfully chose that moment to round the corner. Except . . .

“He got away?” I asked.

“Sorry,” Nate said.

Tanner’s snort suggested he doubted the sentiment.

“Who’s he?” Randy hitched his chin toward Tanner.

Nate and I exchanged a panicked glance. A good FBI agent would have a plausible answer on the spot. Crud!

“Calhoun.” Tanner extended his hand to Randy.

What was he doing?

“I’m a private investigator.”

I choked down my gasp and, conjuring up an accusing glare, played along. “Did my husband hire you?”

Nate’s hand fisted at his side. “I’m sorry, Sara. I don’t know how he found us.”

Not as sorry as Tanner was going to be if his admission changed Randy’s mind about introducing us to his forger friend. “Whatever my husband’s paying you,” I said to Tanner in my most desperate-sounding voice, “I’ll double it for your silence.”

“And how are you going to get your hands on that kind of money?”

I glanced back at Randy, the link to my potential meal ticket. “Do you think your friend can help me?”

Randy headed to the front of his building. “With a PI breathing down your neck? Not a chance.”

“Take her home,” Nate whispered to Tanner. “I’ll talk to him.” He disappeared into the building behind his brother.

“I don’t trust him,” Tanner said, steering me toward his SUV. “We had his brother’s attacker cornered, and Nate let him slip past him.”

“He’s not an agent, Tanner.” I slid into the passenger seat. “He hasn’t been trained to take down suspects.”

Tanner shut the door with a tad more force than necessary. “Why do you trust him?”

“What makes you think I do?”

He snorted and started his car.

I filled him in on Randy’s chat with my mugger and his coincidental visit to the MAC at lunchtime. “I have my suspicions of Randy, and I’m not at all sure who Nate would side with if he had to make a choice.”

“Maybe he’s ratted you out from the beginning. You thought of that?”

I muffled a gulp. I’d discussed the forgery case with Nate last night. It’d been his idea to go to the bar where we ran into his brother. But I couldn’t imagine him ratting me out.

Protecting his brother if he learned Randy was up to no good? Yes.

Helping Randy do something bad? No.

Although his brother clearly had no qualms. My Sara alter ego had told him how I planned to dupe my soon-to-be-ex-husband with the forgery, and he hadn’t so much as batted an eye.

“You do know his brother is no saint?” Tanner said. “He got his first DUI at seventeen and half a dozen speeding tickets before he was twenty.”

“You know this how?”

“I asked the office to run a background check during the drive to his place. The system has extensive information on him, even interviews with friends.”

That sounded as if they had an employment check on file. Like the one they did on me when I applied to the FBI.

“People can change.”

“But has he?”

“He must have, or Nate would’ve steered me away from him as quick as he could. If my brother was buttering his bread from the wrong side, I sure wouldn’t introduce him to an FBI agent. Would you?”

“Depends on my motives.”

Okay, I did not want to hash this out a second longer because I suspected Tanner’s motives at the moment didn’t have a thing to do with wanting to help me make contact with local forgers.

Tanner parked at the foot of my exterior stairs. The sky was moonless, and aside from a patch of light here and there from the odd window, the area was cloaked in dark shadows.

“That’s weird. I’m sure I turned on the outside light before I left.”

“Maybe the bulb burned out.”

“Nate changed it last week.”

Tanner jumped out of the truck right behind me. “I’ll walk you up.”

I climbed the steps without arguing and then rummaged through my purse for my house key.

Tanner, at six foot four, easily examined the negligent bulb. A moment later, light splashed over the landing.

“Loose connection?” I asked, fitting my key into the lock. The lock that seemed a lot more hacked up than I ever remembered it being.

“No, someone unscrewed your bulb.”

I whirled around to scan the driveway, treetops, and rooftops. “I think someone tried to pick the lock too.”

Tanner whipped out the gun he’d had tucked in a waistband holster as I grabbed mine from my purse. I lived in a good neighborhood. Not the kind where bad guys hung out in bushes, waiting for an opportunity. Trouble was, that fact made it more likely my visitor had chosen me for a reason.

Tanner examined the nearby window. “Looks like someone tried to pry open the window too. Let me go in first. Make sure they didn’t get in.”

I sucked in a sudden breath. “Oh no! Harold.” What if the intruder hurt him? Or kicked him out? He could be huddled under a bush somewhere, scared and lost. Oh, please, God, let Harold be okay.

“Hey, relax, Serena. I’m sure he’s fine.”

I blinked rapidly, nodding. This was crazy. I hadn’t even thought I was much of a cat person, but the little guy had really gotten to me.

Tanner took my key and unlocked the door.

He was SWAT and used to going first in situations like this, so who was I to mess up routine? I mentally ran through suspects in my current cases. None of them seemed the type to come looking for more trouble.

Tanner crept through the kitchen, checked the broom closet and every corner, then disappeared around the corner. I padded across the kitchen and positioned myself at the opening to the entranceway—a wide hall that stretched to my right into the living room and ahead of me to the two bedrooms and bathroom.

“All clear there,” Tanner whispered, emerging from the living room. Next he cleared the bathroom and my bedroom, then chucked his chin toward the spare room. “Do you usually keep the door closed?”

I crept closer. “No.”

Tanner slowly pushed it open, scanned the room by the scant illumination of the streetlight outside the window, then inched inside. “Owwwww!”

Gun first, I whipped around the corner of the door.

Tanner’s gaze swung to my gun. “It’s the cat! The cat!” He dove for cover as Harold’s yowl arced the room, followed by a soft thud on the other side of the bed.

I lowered my gun a cat’s whisker. “Take it easy. I wouldn’t have shot you,” I said, fighting to control the jitter in my voice.

Tanner sprang up and slapped on the light. “You could’ve fooled me.”

My hands were shaking, giving away how totally freaked I’d been, but I went for cool as a cucumber. “Hey, you would’ve been thanking me if that had been a bad guy.”

Tanner shook his head. “A bad guy would’ve been easier to deal with. Your crazy cat thinks he’s a kamikaze.”

I shoved my gun into my waistband and consoled Harold. “It’s okay, boy. You did good.”

“Did good? He almost took my eyes out!”

“Sure, but if you’d been a bad guy, we’d be cracking open a tin of tuna and singing his praises.”

Harold mewed a “yeah.”

“Okay, okay, Serene-uh.” Tanner squinted up at the ceiling—probably praying for patience.

The man was maddening. Tell me he wouldn’t have been freaking out if I’d gone into the room first and he’d heard me scream.

“Well, the good news is,” he said, “it doesn’t look like your prowler got inside. Any ideas who it could be?”

“Not really.”

He holstered his gun and headed toward the living room. “A suspect from the art theft profiled in this afternoon’s email blast? The timing would fit.”

“I haven’t narrowed in on anyone yet.”

“Could be taking preemptive measures.”

Hmm, I didn’t like the sound of that.

A knock sounded at the hall door. I hurried to answer it, grateful for the distraction. I flipped on the rest of the lights as I went and peered out the peephole. “It’s my neighbor, Mr. Sutton.” I yanked it open.

“Serena, what’s wrong? I thought I heard a scream.”

“Yes, sorry about that. Everything’s fine.”

He shook his head, deep furrows creasing his brow. “I don’t think so.” He held out a napkin. “This note was tacked to your door.”

“Note?” The only thing I could see on it was the Boathouse restaurant logo.

“May I?” Tanner opened the napkin and groaned.

“Written by a real slangwhanger,” Mr. Sutton said. “That’s an obnoxious writer. Maybe that can be tomorrow’s word of the day.”

“Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” I said, easing the door closed before I turned to Tanner and the note. “Do I want to know what it says?”

Tanner sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought you in on this case. I don’t know who he thinks we are. Probably doesn’t realize we’re agents.”

“What does it say?”

“‘Watch where you step or next time you might lose more than a shoe.’”

I crossed my arms over my midriff to fight the sudden wave of wooziness. “Clever play on words.”

“These men don’t play.”