Chapter 1
Ben
Dallas, Texas
Monday night
The day I walked into school in my Sunday suit, my hair slicked back, and my orange juice in a martini shaker I took from my house, I felt like the coolest kid in school. “Shaken, not stirred,” I told Mrs. Connor with a wink. I’m not sure if I earned detention for the wink or when I argued that a spy didn’t need to know algebra.
Not that it mattered. When Mrs. Connor asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was all about bull riding. Or driving a derby car at the local mud track on a Friday night. Or moving to Australia to wrangle crocodiles like the great Steve Irwin. In sixth grade, the only thing I wanted was a taste of danger—like James Bond.
I scan the interior of the Dallas Museum of Art and feel like I’m in the middle of a Bond movie, but unlike the Ian Fleming plots, the kind of danger surrounding me isn’t fictional. And to be honest, the taste of danger isn’t as sweet as I’d imagined.
Tonight the art museum is decorated with gold and white balloons and a live band is playing a broad range of music from across the decades. Waiters with trays of appetizers and champagne slip in between the guests.
An older couple around the age of my grandparents is sitting at a secluded table in the sculpture garden. It’s corny, I know, and I’d neveradmit it out loud, but there’s something mesmerizing about watching them interact beneath the twinkly lights strung between the live oaks as if they’re the only people in the world.
Somehow they’ve managed to ignore the three hundred other gala guests dancing, eating, and talking loudly around them. I don’t know who they are, and my first instinct is to be suspicious, but for a few minutes I give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they are good people—and not Mom and Pop Gambino.
My imagination paints them as a hardworking couple: He invested in the market when he was young and grew his wealth while working his way up the corporate ladder; his wife is a schoolteacher who truly did it for the love of her students while filling their home with love, children, and memories.
I let my mind play out their story, and when I see the husband gently cradle his wife’s hand, I can’t help but hope my version is right. It stirs a longing for my own story.
“So, no risk, eh?”
My attention is dragged back to the man standing next to me at the outdoor bar. Charles Rinault’s brown eyes are a little glassy but not enough to hide his interest in my answer. “Low risk, low reward. High risk...” I smile. “Well, with your success you must know the rest.”
Mr. Rinault’s expression lights up with pride. He’s a restaurateur, and from the story he’s fed me for the last twenty minutes, he started from nothing except a fat inheritance from his French great-grandmother he never knew. He took that money and opened two French nightclubs that also serve food, hence why he calls himself a restaurateur rather than what he truly is—a shady, criminal club owner.
It’s so cliché. Burlesque club owner? Sometimes I wish criminals would be a little more imaginative, but their lack of creativity makes my job easier. At least most jobs. My gaze slides back to the older couple again, and tonight my job feels... taxing.
Eighteen months ago my real life was put on hold when the FBI assigned me to go undercover as a financial advisor working for AJ Finance, a fictional boutique investment firm that requires interested clients tohave a financial portfolio in the high millions to even be invited to a concept meeting. But I’m only interested in one man’s accounts, and that man isn’t Charles Rinault.
“It’s my job to leverage the risk so that yourinvestmentremains clean.” The band has chosen a slow number, allowing the volume of the conversations around me to pick up, so I lower my voice. “I’m not here to convince you to use my service, Mr. Rinault. My client list is quite full, and honestly, I’m not even sure I can take another—”
“No, no.” Mr. Rinault slaps his glass of whiskey on the bar top and then throws a sloppy smile at the couple on the other side of him. “I want to invest. Just tell me what I need to do.”
A tall brunette enters my line of sight, her green eyes locked on me as her slender frame saunters in my direction. Her appearance at my side steals Mr. Rinault’s focus, turning it envious when her hand grazes the sleeve of my tuxedo. “I’ve been looking for you.” Her gaze shifts to Mr. Rinault and then back to me. “Are you going to be here all night?”
Her tone isn’t flirtatious, which matches the tight smile she gives me. She wedges her way between me and Mr. Rinault to order a drink from the bartender. Her eyes flash with a message.It’s time.
The move is intentional and gives me the chance to look over my shoulder in the direction my partner, Ruby Knight, alluded to. I scan the area searching for anything that seems... suspicious. Anything that stands out among the lavish show of wealth on parade by the guests who have all congregated in the name of philanthropy.And crime.
It’s not lost on me that some of these individuals hiding behind their overly bright veneer smiles are slimy snakes with hushed-up criminal histories. Or, like Charles Rinault, they believe laundering money withmeis worth the risk. I should feel out of place given the net worth surrounding me is in the millions, billions for some. Meanwhile, I spent last night budgeting for a summer fishing trip and debating whether a three-star motel is better than a two-star hotel.
In my notch lapel tuxedo—the same one James Bond prefers (I checked)—no one should suspect I’m not who I say I am, which means my meeting tonight with a crime boss shouldn’t draw any extra suspicion.
Especially when I disappear.
After a minute, my eyes catch on a familiar face—Lorenzo Ramirez—and every nerve in my body goes on alert.
Ramirez owns Enzo Coal & Oil, a family-run business started by his grandfather that deals in the extraction, refinement, and sale of fossil fuels. But beneath the façade of a legitimate business, Ramirez engages in illegal activity that includes money laundering and arms trafficking, which has put him under the scrutiny of federal prosecutors for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges. However, it’s the brutal murder of Special Agent Daniel “Danny” Morales that has me and the entire Dallas field office targeting Ramirez.
Morales was looking into the death of an undercover DEA informant, and somehow he got caught in the crosshairs of Lorenzo Ramirez. We intercepted an encrypted message to Ramirez indicating a “problem was solved,” and a bullet recovered from the scene was traced back to a cartel he’s worked with, but it wasn’t enough to convict.
That’s where I come in.
The one thing all criminals want to protect more than their freedom? Their money. And for my role as AJ Finance’s most proficient financial advisor, the FBI made sure I had a thick portfolio of clients who paid me to keep their money as starched as their white-collar shirts.
