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Noah punched in his password when prompted and listened to his voice mail. One of his buddies had called to tell him he’d scored four free tickets to the Nationals’ home game the following weekend. Free tickets on the third base line, cold beer and junk food. Since he expected to be home in a matter of days, he typed out a quick text accepting the offer and hit Send.
A tone from his BlackBerry signaled an incoming text message. Noah read the reply from Abbott: MAINTAIN STATUS QUO. BEST FOR CR SAFETY.
“CR” being Charles Rolston, no doubt. Confused, Noah sent a text back: IS CR IN OUR CUSTODY?
The reply was short and sweet: W/B IN TOUCH SOON.
Well, hell, that made zero sense. Who would be in touch? Abbott? Or Rolston?
This assignment had been fubar from the get-go. First he’d lost Rolston, and no one seemed to be upset by that fact. He’d have thought his ass would’ve been in a sling by now. But no, now he was supposed to “maintain the status quo”?
“Okay. I’ll check in later,” Alyssa said to her caller. “Tell Craig I’m sorry about the mix-up, but I’ve got ’er covered.” More silence, then, “All right. ’Bye, Perry.”
“Perry?” Noah asked her. He had a sudden intrinsic need to know all the players. Might make it easier to spot the bad guys that way, because right now, he apparently didn’t know squat.
Her usual smile faded and was replaced by a frown. “Perry Zellner. I thought you spoke to him when the federal prosecutor put you in touch with our firm.”
Shit.
“No, wait. You talked to Craig, didn’t you?”
He said nothing and held his breath.
Her smile returned as quickly as it had disappeared. “Yes, it was Craig. I remember because he handed the phone off to me to take your information and confirm the dates. Which I managed to screw up, anyway.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding, slowly, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “Not a problem,” he said.
“That’s nice of you to say, but really, it is my fault that none of the guys were available today. I had you on the schedule for next week. Not sure how that happened.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Must’ve gotten distracted.”
She said that as if distractions happened a lot. He couldn’t help noticing she couldn’t be more than twenty-five or so. In the hour he’d been in her presence, he’d learned she’d had at least three jobs—night supervisor for a rent-a-coputfit, a document clerk and a bodyguard. A bodyguard who answered the phone and kept the schedule? That didn’t make sense.
“How long has your company been in business?” he asked. Maybe they were a start-up and perennially short staffed.
She flipped on her blinker and took the next exit. “About twenty-five years or so. Why?”
“How long have you worked there?”
A few blocks away from the freeway, she turned into a well-kept residential area. An older neighborhood, filled with an eclectic mix of pre–World War II architecture, ranging from Mission Revival to Craftsman to Foursquare with the occasional Pueblo Revival thrown in for good measure. Or so he thought he remembered from the art history classes he’d taken in college.
“Almost six months.” She turned onto another side street. “Why?”
“Curiosity,” he said with a shrug. “You don’t look very old.”
She chuckled and cast him a sly glance. “Is that some clever way of asking me my age?”
His lips twitched. “I guess so,” he admitted.
She shrugged. “No biggie. I’ll be twenty-seven in two months.”
“And you’ve had three jobs since college?”
She looked at him, her brows drawn together in a deep frown. “How did you know I went to college?”
He flicked the light-blue-and-gold tassel hanging from the rearview mirror. “Unless this belongs to a boyfriend, I’d say you more than likely graduated from UCLA.”
“No,” she said, her tone sharp. “No boyfriend.”
For some reason, he liked hearing that she had no boyfriend. In fact, it sparked that legs-wrapped-around-his-hips fantasy all over again.
