AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’s with the stakeout team.” DeWinters frowned. “Wait, no one told you that? The captain put him on it.”
Anne clenched her jaw. DeWinters rolled back a few feet.
“Girl, I didn’t do it.”
Anne drew in a deep breath through her nose. “Who are they staking out?”
“Egerton—”
“And? What, they’re just watching him at his house?” she snapped.
“No, Spencer agreed to—”
Anne stormed into Lopez’s office.
“Sutton!” he scolded.
Anne slammed her palms on the desk. “This is my case. You sent a civilian in with a wire without telling me? On my case?”
“You’re too close to this informant, Sutton. You know it, and Jeffers knew it. He suspected you might be close to getting romantically involved with Spencer, and I couldn’t let it interfere with our investigation.” Lopez stood and held up a finger when she started to object. “And Spencer came to us after you spoke to him. Something must’ve gotten through. He said he’d prefer if you weren’t on surveillance, and I thought that would be best as well.”
“Where are they?” Anne could feel her whole body turning scarlet when Lopez hesitated. “I can find out, Captain!”
“What do you plan to do?” Lopez boomed. “Pull your boyfriend out of the investigation?”
“No. I plan on keeping the hit man we’ve been tracking from getting a second shot at murdering him. It’s Egerton’s daughter. That’s why her MO changes. When she’s working with him, the bodies are connected to his business, and all killed the same way. When she’s not, she’s being paid by someone else.” Anne paused and sighed. “Or she’s doing it for fun. Jeffers marked two of the cold cases as connected to no one. However, they were men that ran in the same circles that Clary would’ve run in.”
Captain Lopez held up a hand. “Explain the details to me on the road.”
***
Clary poured herself a martini and came over to the sitting area where her father and William were sitting. William watched her for a moment as she stirred her drink with the toothpick and then withdrew the olive. Her eyes blinked almost sleepily as she waited for their conversation to drift around to something of interest.
Clary was only present at their meetings off and on. William knew her in some capacity, since boarding school, but her friendship and her motives had always been a little hard to discern. He didn’t mind having her there, however, as her father was about as interesting as molded bread, and Clary’s personality had always brought a brightness to whatever room she was in.
Egerton had just finished discussing the finer points of the current market in antiquities, and would have prompted William to explain (again) how the dark web could help them smuggle and sell illegal items without the authorities tracking their deals online, when Egerton’s butler came in and announced that William’s girlfriend was here to see him.
William managed to keep his expression neutral since there was really only one person who might claim that title.
“I thought you were done with her,” Egerton said.
“Let her in.” Clary drained her glass and then picked up her cat-shaped purse. “She was a blast at the gala.”
“Oh, we’ve been talking since then.” William gave Egerton a wicked grin. “Sometimes you don’t want to let a girl off the hook completely. I mean, why let it go to waste?”
Egerton laughed and turned to his butler to instruct that Anne be let up. William thought his heart might very well stop. Anne was coming up here while William was wearing a wire in the den of the lion. They couldn’t have come up with a stupider plan if they’d been trying.
When Anne appeared, she was barely disguised. William recognized the pants and boots she normally wore during work hours, but the rest was odd. She wore a dark gray tank top, with the arms of a fuchsia sweater tied around her shoulders, and she had pulled her hair into pigtails.
“Hi!” She waved at William and came up to give him a hug. “Did you forget about our date? I mean, I know you said you were doing business today, but um…” She tapped on her wristwatch. “Lunchtime.”
“You can stay and have lunch with us, young lady,” Egerton said. He was looking Anne up and down in a way that made William want to twist his tentacles into a knot.
“Oh, um, we could. But—” Anne looked at William with big eyes. “We had a reservation. At Evie’s.”
What the hell? William looked into her eyes, trying to suss out what she could possibly be trying to tell him. Was she trying to get him to leave? By mentioning her daughter?
