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What went before... Twelve years ago
When I was on fire they called me cold as ice. They were right. Because on a good day I could kick every other broker’s ass six ways from Sunday.
In two years I’d amassed a small fortune of my own and an even more substantial one for my clients.
And it showed. Newest sports car on the market. High rise with a city view. Five-star dinners with Nicolai. My sister set up in the very best art school in the country. I had everything a woman of twenty-three could ask for. It should have been more than enough.
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Now...
By the time I exited the bedroom a few moments later, Jonah had dressed. He stood a good distance away from me, as if he was as gun-shy as I was. “Do you want to eat first, or shower?”
I considered the pros and cons. If I ate now, I’d be reinforcing the intimacy between us. If I showered so soon after our almost-encounter, the showerhead and I were going to become best friends, and it would make me that much more uncomfortable around him.
“Breakfast,” I said, and reseated myself. Taking the lid off my room service plate, I generously replaced the bacon I’d kited earlier on his plate.
He smiled as he lowered himself into his chair. “It’s okay, I was almost done anyway.”
I grinned and pushed down my Pavlovian response to his smile. “Need to be even-steven on bacon. Pork is a non-negotiable food group.”
“Ah, I didn’t realize the critter’s importance in your life. I’ll make a note of it.”
“Do that,” I replied, actually enjoying the repartee. Damn it, why couldn’t I just be hot for his body? Why did I have to like him too? For me, sex was exactly that, sex. An activity, not a lifestyle choice or something that governed future actions. So why was I making it different with him? I dove into our shared mission to divert my own attention from my confusion. “What’s on the agenda today? We’re in your ballcourt.”
“Gotta see my mom before she hears I’m in town and didn’t come to see her first. After Hank’s smackdown, I’m guessing the whole wife thing won’t work. I’m sorry for putting you in that situation.”
He sounded damned sincere. It made me marginally less cranky about the fact my body was acting in complete defiance of my brain. “So who am I?”
“You’re you, SA Arin Thomas. I’ll have to come clean with Mom about mystery wife, though. Hell, now that I think about it, she probably didn’t buy it anyway.”
I snorted. “If she’s as smart as you and Hank seem to think, she had you pegged the first day. Mom’s do that.”
“Yeah, they do,” he agreed. “She’ll make it painful, but forgive me before we leave.”
“Is there a reason I’m tagging along for this bit? Because I can just as easily do some background work here while you take care of business.”
“After we leave Mom’s I want to connect with some of my other friends. The kind Hank doesn’t hang with.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that impression last night. But what are they gonna make of me? And what do they know about you?”
He fidgeted. “That’s where I need you to play the wife/girlfriend card. Even more than I thought I needed you to with Mom. These guys know I was in the military, that I went back to school and all that, but they don’t ‘get it’. To them being successful is the babe in your car and the tats on your arm.”
I thought about it for a second. “And if you don’t have the tats...”
“Then you need the babe,” he finished. “I have a feeling this could be important, especially after what Hank said last night. Please, Arin?”
Oh damn. How could I possibly say no to that? “How appropriate are the clothes I brought?”
He blew out a breath. “Not very. But my sisters can help. They’re about the same size, grew up here, still live here. They’ll know what works.”
I huffed a big sigh, but in reality he’d been right last night. This was certainly no worse than dressing up as Reporter Barbie. I had no doubt I’d find it just as distasteful.
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Jonah Summers was the spitting image of his mother Sheila. She greeted us at the door of her modest bungalow, a gigantic smile wreathing her sharp, patrician features. What was handsome on Jonah was striking on his mother.
She took one look at me and turned to her son. “So is this the fake wife you’ve been waving under my nose for the past year?”
I stuck out my hand. “Ma’am, Special Agent Arin Thomas, FBI.”
She shook my hand, but turned a gaze that would have rivaled a laser back on her boy. “Doesn’t answer my question.”
He gave her the charming smile that had knocked my socks off more than once and folded her into a big hug. “There’s no wife, and Arin and I are here working something.”
She pushed out of his embrace and gave him a glare any mother would have been proud of. “Of course I know there was no wife, but you could have at least tried harder.”
“Or squirmed more,” I added, enjoying seeing Summers at a disadvantage entirely too much.
Sheila turned and fully looked at me for the first time, taking my measure. “Indeed, Agent Thomas, indeed.”
I smiled at her. “Arin, please. I’m not doing this in official capacity, but the badge helps sometimes.”
“Not this time,” Jonah interjected, obviously trying to regain some control of the conversation. With two strong women in the room. He was seriously delusional.
“So what can I do to help, Arin?”
“Nothing, Mom. I just wanted to say hi before I went to see the girls, that’s all.”
Sheila led us into her living room and asked us to be seated. The room was comfortable in a warm, kind of worn-out way. It was like coming home.
“So you disappear into the wilds of Colorado doing who knows what, never have time to spare for your poor, lonely old mother, and now can’t even stay for lunch?” She put a hand to her brow, as if she were the heroine in a talkie, about to swoon.
I laughed and Jonah looked pained, both of which were exactly what the woman had been aiming for.
“Lunch sounds fabulous, Sheila.” I elbowed Jonah, whose leg had crept perilously close to mine as he got comfortable. “You can dish on all sorts of deep, dark secrets your son doesn’t want divulged.”
She clapped her hands, delighted, as Harvard sent me a glare promising slow, painful death. I elbowed him again, and stood to help his mother set the table.
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By the time Sheila let us go, I had a whole bag of new insight into Jonah Summers. He’d been an insular child. Given his gift, I could certainly understand that. It’d be hard to make and keep friends if you kept compelling them to do your bidding. Although I could definitely see the benefit of it with siblings. Bianca had been an enormous pain in the ass, and I wouldn’t have minded controlling her.
The memory of her speared through me. It’d been a long time since I’d thought of her consciously in anything other than my little ritual every night. It was too damned painful. She’d been gone nine long years now, killed while on holiday in Paris. She’d been studying art and fashion, sort of a busman’s holiday before she went on to university in Milan. She’d been talented as hell, attending on a full scholarship, ready to take the world by storm, and it had almost broken my parents when she died. It had broken me. Right up until the time I avenged her death.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Jonah’s voice intruded into my melancholy mindset.
Bianca was long gone, and she wasn’t something I was willing to share with Summers, even though by now it’d probably been uncovered by Farrell. I’d taken painstaking care in camouflaging the payment I’d exacted from the man who’d been responsible for her death. Some things were just meant to be yours, and the little sister that I’d raised as my own was mine, no one else’s, not even my parents.
“I like Sheila,” I said, diverting the conversation away from me. “I can’t see anyone pulling anything over on her.”
He laughed. “We tried, but never succeeded all that much. I used to wonder if she had some of my talent, but maybe through voice instead of touch.”
I went still at his admission. It was perhaps the most personal thing he’d said in our short association, and from the way he was glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, he knew exactly how it affected me...and the new reality that had been revealed to me. Jesus. What in the hell would the world do if that Talent existed? Or had it already been leveraged, to horrible result? Hitler came to mind immediately, and the thought made me shiver.
For once in my life I was stunned into groping for an answer, and when it came, it was lame, and totally off topic. “Your mom’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure.” I sunk back into my seat and watched the scenery of strip malls and discount auto sales lots slide by as my mind whirled with horrible possibilities that I could do absolutely nothing about in the here and now.
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Jonah’s sister Jeanine was no less sharp than his mother, and almost laid him flat with a huge hug. We told her of our plan, which she obviously strenuously objected to, before she acknowledged that we held the upper hand because of Jonah’s talent.
My shock must have shown on my face, because she laughed as she hustled me into her spare room and started pawing through a closet. “You thought we didn’t know? Hell, Agent Thomas, when your younger brother can stop you from pummeling him with a single touch of his finger, you figure it out pretty fast. Mom made him stop after we figured out what he could do. Wasn’t fair. Of course that meant the little rodent called foul whenever we ganged up on him, and then we got punished.” She held out a pair of stonewashed jeans and a tank top, then eyed my feet. “Size seven?”
I nodded, still stunned into silence. Twice in less than an hour. It had to be a record.
She rummaged through the closet and pulled out a pair of black patent pumps.
“I hate to ask this.” I regained my voice and eyeballed the pumps. They had to be four inches tall and looked exceedingly uncomfortable. I’d have preferred the stilettos back at CASI. “But how and why do you have all this stuff?”
She laughed, and it was like hearing bells tinkle. “I’m a costumer for the Oklahoma City Playhouse. This batch is from a modern version of Grease. Seems to fit the image Jonah explained.”
“So I’m supposed to be the tarted-up Olivia Newton-John?” I would have laughed aloud if it wouldn’t have seemed so wildly inappropriate. First I’d been Reporter Barbie, then a fake wife, and now a good-girl-turned-bad? This was getting surreal. Hell, it was more than surreal. I felt like the field agent I left behind too many years ago.
“That’s about right,” she agreed with my assessment. “A lot of Jonah’s old crowd haven’t reverted out of their late teens and early twenties, and they’ve got the arm candy to prove it. If you want to know something from them, this is really the best way to go. Though you’ll have to lose the culture. Can you do Jersey or Boston? Since Jonah went to college in Boston, it’d figure he’d hook up with a girl from there.”
“Y’mean talk like I’m from Southie?” I asked, affecting a reasonably accurate South Boston accent. After all, I was a linguist.
Jeanine clapped her hands. “If you ever decide to give up the FBI, you’ve got a career in theater. That’s perfect.”
“I did a pull in Worcester and a lot of the Hostage Rescue Team was homegrown. Considering what I was up against there, this should be a cakewalk.”
She nodded in agreement, then got personal. “So how is he, really? He’s never been an open kind of guy, but since he started working in Colorado he’s shut down even more.”
I began to protest. “We’re just partners, of a sort.”
“Maybe.” She looked me straight in the eye. “But there’ll be more at some point. You two watch each other too much for there not to be. You already know him better than most of the people here. Use that, Agent Thomas, and keep him safe. I don’t know if we could handle losing him like we did Dad.”
I almost asked, but the look she was giving me now didn’t invite further discussion. If I wanted to know more, I’d have to ask Jonah, and I sure as hell wasn’t doing that, because I knew I’d have to open up about my own past, my own vulnerabilities. There’d be no one-sided conversation with him. He’d demand a fifty-fifty response and I wasn’t capricious enough to deny such an exchange.
So I gave his sister the words she needed to hear, poured myself into the clothes she’d given me, and got ready to meet Oklahoma City as a totally different person.
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We met Jonah’s “friends” at an auto boneyard. Chassis of everything from Pintos to Pontiacs were stacked like discarded playing cards. And in the center of it sat Dylan Smith’s kingdom.
The ramshackle single-wide was so far removed from the Skirvin I had to stifle a laugh. Then I remembered the “new” me—I’d never want to stay in a five-star hotel, because they were for rich-dick posers.
Jonah looked too good in his jeans and worn Sabbath concert T-shirt. The clothes were so obviously his, and so obviously out of his CASI persona I almost asked where “this” Jonah had been hiding. Almost. Because I knew he’d ask for something in return.
Just as the auto yard was diametrically opposed to the Skirvin, Dylan Smith was the complete opposite of Hank Crossly. Trim, muscular and obviously a brawler, he ruled over his little kingdom with a not-so-benevolent fist. His minions sat, clustered around him, in broken-down lawn chairs that had seen better days about a decade ago.
Jonah strode into the circle as if he’d never left. Smith sized him up with the same calculation I’d seen in Crossly.
Jonah had some scary freakin’ friends.
I saw Smith categorize Jonah in about two seconds and saw him realize Jonah was the most dangerous man in the yard besides himself. Then he crafted a smile as big as Texas and stuck out his hand. “Holy fucking shit. The prodigal son returns. Jonah fucking Summers.”
Jonah met Smith grip for grip and held on just long and hard enough to establish himself as a player, but not someone intent on honing in on Smith’s turf. Maybe because of that action the pissing match wouldn’t be too overextended. As Jonah dropped his hand I wondered exactly what he expected to get from these people, and how in the hell he expected to go about it.
As usual, he surprised the hell out of me. “Just in town for a few, thought I’d see if you could hook me up.”
Smith’s lips tightened before his attention shifted to me. He took his sweet time looking me over, head to toe. Even though it raised my hackles, I primped for him, shuddering inside as I did. This was way worse than Reporter Barbie.
Dylan apparently decided Jonah was okay based upon their misspent youth, but he wasn’t taking any chances with me. “Sure, but the skirt stays here.”
I pouted, but hadn’t really expected anything different. As they walked away, I teetered over to an old Buick and leaned against the rusting hood, blowing off the rest of Smith’s crowd. They wouldn’t talk to me, would be even more suspicious if I tried to make conversation, so instead I tried to look bored, all the while absently scratching at my bare arms. While I may not have the open sores half of the motley crew in the yard did, I knew the signs of meth addiction all too well, and could fake accordingly.
Jonah and Dylan took entirely too long, and when they returned, Jonah wore a triumphant smile the others would interpret as a deal going down. One look in his eyes told me different, though. As did the expression in Smith’s gaze. Where he’d sized me up before, now he was thoroughly assessing me, and the faint quirk of his lips told me he liked what he saw, which could only mean one thing. Dylan Smith was undercover. Deep, if neither Jonah nor I had been able to figure it out. And he’d given Jonah something, maybe even something good.
I did as expected and draped myself over Jonah, loving him up for a fix. He mumbled a “thanks, man, I owe you one,” then grabbed my ass and dragged me toward the entrance, only letting go when we were out of their line of sight.
I knew better than to ask what had happened, not here, not now. The car would be soon enough.