She took a big gulp. "I'm probably going to lose my job, but you're the whole reason I'm in this town."
"Which agency?"
"Does it matter?"
"Humor me. I've narrowed it down, and I'd like to know if I win anything." He took a sip. "FBI. CIA. Homeland. Or the kind that doesn't come with a badge—you know, the kind that comes, takes what's inside my head, and then dumps the body."
She laughed. "I don't kill the men I'm trying to sleep with," she said. "Bad for morale." She set the glass on the side table and squared her shoulders. "Special Agent June Stratton. FBI, National Security Division. I'm here to protect what's in your head. But you already knew that."
"Stratton?" He ran his fingers through his hair. Jesus Christ. This couldn't be happening. He tossed his drink back in one gulp, picked up the bottle, and didn't bother pouring it in the glass. Instead, he walked toward the picture window, bottle in hand, and stared out into the dark water.
"You say that like you know me," she whispered. "The FBI version. Not the Juniper Calusa Cove manufactured version. Which, by the way, is still me. And I like being the person who pours you a drink and feeds you food four times a week."
"I think I'd like all versions of you," he admitted. What he didn't like was knowing other things. Things he needed to tell her right now. And if he’d thought finding out she was spying on him was a mood killer? Well, this was sure going to make it worse. "Junie Stratton, right?"
"How do you know that?"
The water didn't give him anything. It never did at this hour—just black glass with the dock lights smeared across the surface, and somewhere out past the end of the dock, the inlet bending toward the bay. He'd stood at this window at least a hundred nights with a glass in his hand and let the view helpempty his mind. It wouldn't empty now. It held her reflection, small and still behind him by the couch—watching him and waiting for him to explain how he knew her name so intimately.
He could keep her waiting. But that wouldn't be nice, and he was raised to be a gentleman, so he set the bottle on the sill and turned around. "I knew your husband," he said the words as softly as he could, but he could tell by the way her eyes grew wide, they'd landed harshly.
She didn't budge, and the glass stayed at her chest, both hands around it. "What? How?"
"I met him in a bar outside of Norfolk about four years ago. It was an unofficial business meeting. Lasted about four hours, I believe."
She set her glass on the side table and stared at him without blinking. "I was vetted. If you had known my husband, I wouldn't have been assigned to you. It's not possible you and Mark handled the same case."
"I said unofficial."
"Mark worked a few of those," she said. "And I knew every operative he worked with, and he never once mentioned you. I’d remember."
"It was one meeting called by a mutual friend." He moved from the window to lean against the back of the couch, close enough now that the lamp caught both of them, and the water released her reflection.
He wasn't surprised that she was on the defensive. He would be too. He also wasn't surprised that Mark hadn't mentioned him by name. Sterling "The Librarian" Fox couldn’t be whispered too often without consequences. Especially, in a covert op situation. Even more so when it was off the books.
That was both a blessing and a curse. Just like his mind.
"Who was your mutual friend?" she asked. "What was the meeting about?"
Sterling decided to tackle the conversation in bite size chunks. He'd need to feed her the intel so she could process the information, sorting out personal from professional, which would be hard since it was all intertwined.
"My buddy, Nick, called me." Sterling purposely left out Nick's last name for now. It would come up later, but he wanted to get more information out first. "Said he had a friend working something that I had a corner on and asked if I would sit down with him. So, I did."
"Why? What was it?"
That, Sterling wasn't prepared to tell her. "A special project some buddies were heavily invested in. I had come across it overseas on a couple missions. I gave him what I had and left it at that. Then I spent the next half an hour listening to him talk about this woman he’d met and how he was gonna spend the rest of his life with her. He was a little giddy because you'd just met, and you weren't the marrying type, but he was going to change your mind. I remember being a little jealous of a man I'd known for an hour."
"You're redirecting," she said. "Who was your buddy who asked you to meet Mark?"
"I told you. His name was Nick."
"I'm gonna need a last name."
"You're like a dog with a bone." He stepped closer, leaned over, lifted her glass and took a sip. "Nick Colter."
"Fucking Nick," she mumbled. "Everybody knows Nick."
"Ain't that the truth."
