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She blushed and avoided eye contact. “So I’ll get you your money now.”
He snorted.
She seemed to realize what she’d said and began to stammer. “I mean, you know, for bartending the other night.”
Reluctantly, he released her, lowered her feet to the floor. Woman knew just the temperature of water to throw on him. Cold.
He took some tissues from a box on her desk and a minute to clean up, pull up his boxers, cargo shorts, and zip himself into respectable.
She watched him do all this, straightened her dress, licked her lips once. Her face was a soft, satisfied pink. Her eyes a warm shade of green. Lord, but that had been fun. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, skipped over it like you would roadkill.
She moved behind the desk and sat. He turned to her, realized he could barely stand, put his fists against the desk for support. Damn.
She opened a locked drawer in her desk. Was she…? “Gracie, I’m not a proud man, but if you pull out money right now, I will lose my shit.”
She closed the drawer, picked out a candy from a dish on her desk. A dish packed with watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers. He noticed her hand tremble as she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “What do you want?”
He wanted another shot at her. One where she didn’t climb him like a monkey and dismantle every bit of self-control he had. He shrugged, trying for casual. “You need a bartender. I need a job.”
Her head snapped up. Her eyes widened. “You want to work in my bar?”
“No. I want to work with your family.” Get access to your momma.
Her fine red eyebrows crashed together, weighted, it seemed, with heavy suspicion.
“Hear me out,” he continued. “I left my job to go undercover with that scumbag Walid to help with your family’s vigilante activities—”
“That was Tony’s ball of wax.”
“For someone so honest, you sure do lie a lot.”
She made a stunned sound, as if he’d goosed her.
Huh. Maybe he could’ve been a little less direct. “Look, I cleaned up a bunch of your family’s mess in Mexico. It raised questions at the bureau and got me fired.”
He paused to let that sink in but got no reaction. She just watched him expectantly.
He exhaled. “And since I know your family does the kind of work I believe in—the kind that changes lives—and since I know they can afford my fees, I’m trying to find a way into your organization. But since you’re not the trusting type, I figured we could start small.”
She scoffed. “Don’t mistake my lack of self-control for a lack of intelligence. You’re investigating my family. Looking into something that doesn’t exist.” Her eyes darted down and away. Her face heated to a powerful red, a lying-through-her-teeth red.
Well, that made two of them. Despite the smell of their honesty, cum, and sweat thick in the air. How fucked up was that? “Gracie, why would I tell you I’m ex-FBI if I’m undercover investigating you and your family?”
“I wondered.”
“Got an answer?”
She bit her lip. Damn, that was sexy. He shut down the replay of the last ten minutes. Not easy.
He bet she did have an answer, and it was probably pretty accurate. Her cyber skills and family connections were good enough to penetrate any cover he could’ve come up with. That’s why he’d gone with a truthful lie.
She leaned back and stared at him like he was seven layers of chocolate cake and she was on a diet. “Fine. With everything going on, it’s better to have you where I can see you. We can call it probation. See how you do.”
He processed what she’d said. Couldn’t help the big ol’ Southern grin. “Probation sounds like one step away from where I’d like to be. I’m happy to take you up on that offer. And any other offer you might want to make me. Boss.”
He winked at her.
Her face heated again, but this time with genuine embarrassment. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed, a loud burst that prodded a smile out of her. A beautiful smile. A we-both-know-the-truth smile and I’m-still-one-step-ahead-of-you. Was she?
“When do I start?” After all, he had a cruise to help finance.
Chapter 21
Nearing midnight on Sunday, surrounded by the steady quiet of her clean upstairs office, Gracie worked on identifying her enemy.
It was late, but her schedule was tied to the bar, so it didn’t feel late to her. Even if she’d been tired, she couldn’t have slept.
She’d managed to hack into the offshore account that either John or El or both had funneled money into. It was registered to an LLC. The company was a shell. Impossible to trace. So far. But the money had been used to purchase Bitcoin. And that Bitcoin had disappeared into the dark web.
So, that sucked. It didn’t necessarily mean they, or even one of them, had hired a hit man, but if she’d been an average person, without siblings who were assassins, she might go to the dark web for a hit man.
Maybe she should close the club.
No.
Closing the club would bring Momma and Leland around faster than she could say Benedict Arnold. And they didn’t mess around. They’d discover the looming threat on her life, including what she had on John and El. And any investigation would definitely lead them to Dusty and her letter.
Her shoulders slumped. Momma would not take any of that lightly. There would be anger and attack and retribution. But the problem wasn’t just about her writing a letter; the bigger problem was she had no idea how all of this might impact Ty.
The ungodly loud sound of her phone playing the Legend of Zelda theme blasted through the quiet office. She rubbed at her eyes, picked up. “Yeah.”
The voice on the other end was a whisper with a soft Spanish accent. “It’s Cee.”
Cee was calling her? The kid hated her. And it wasn’t like she was into random acts of forgiveness. Not with her background. Cee had grown up in El Salvador. She’d lost her father, her only living parent, a few years ago. She’d been thirteen. Her uncle had inherited her father’s Salvadoran wealth—and her. He’d squandered the money, sold their house, then sold Cee to a human-trafficking cartel. She’d been fourteen.
Justice had rescued her nine months later. “Cee, isn’t it late for you? What are you up to?”
“I’m in North Philly.”
“Philly!” Okay, stay calm. This is not how to get your new teen sister to open up. “Are you okay?”
“Can you come get me?”
“Of course. But tell me what’s going on so I don’t have a panic attack the whole way over.”
A long pause. “I fight with Momma. And deci
de to go on my own.”
“You ran away? From campus?” Impossible. Sure, she and Justice had done it—fifteen years ago. Security had grown more sophisticated since then, and after the drone attack Cee now lived in one of the tightest security zones in the country. “How?”
Cee sighed. Oh, sure, this was annoying for her. “Took out my chip and left it in my room. I hid in the trunk of a car leaving school.”
Ouch. She’d removed the GPS chip from her own wrist? Kid was creepy. And brilliant. She’d learned from the League in months what it had taken others years.
Momma had even had her IQ tested and discovered this kid, rescued from an illegal brothel, might be one of the smartest humans on the planet. Still, maybe because of that, she was also one of the most traumatized.
“Okay. Text me the address. Are you in a safe spot?”
A hot sigh. “I’m not a child or an idiot.”
Temper. Temper. “Well, you got one of those right.”
Gracie hung up, pushed her chair back, grabbed her car keys. As she exited her office, the steel door shut behind her with a clang that sounded final. It locked automatically with a whirring of steel pins sliding into place and a beep. Like all doors on this level and the one leading up to this level, it was blast proof.
She marched down the hall and turned the corner to her apartment to change into her mission gear and concealed carry. Not just because she’d been recently shot at, but because this was no ordinary kid.
Chapter 22
Sitting at the table by the foot of his bed, Dusty stared at his laptop screen. He’d been staring intently at Mack’s message for the last few minutes. Made no sense. According to Mack, a DC agent had been looking into the information Dusty had compiled on the Parish family, specifically Gracie Parish.
Why would this guy want to know about her? She was a side player in all of this, not a principal. Up until Mexico, she’d seemed the Parish kid most distant from her family. And though her file contained more information now, including the fact that she had a kid, nothing there explained this guy’s interest.
