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His jaw clenches but he doesn’t flinch as I dab at his wounds. “I warned you several times, nicely, to leave this alone, Nora. But you didn’t listen. So, I’m going to tell you one more time, in a way that will hopefully make an impression.” He pauses, gazing so deep into my eyes that my brain starts to squirm a little. “Don’t ask me about the cupcake shop or the mob or Cassie Ann Sweetwater ever again. I can’t tell you anything and Iwon’ttell you anything and if you somehow manage to figure it out on your own, you’re going to wish like hell you didn’t. Right now, as things stand, there’s still a chance to turn this around. A slim chance, but a chance. I can tell Wimpy you came to the shop today to confront me about some cheating rumors or something.”
“Wimpy?” I whisper, dread swelling progressively larger inside of me.
“The guy I punched. I’ll tell him I got crazy when I saw his hands on you and threw hands without thinking,” he explains. “Then, I’ll tell him that we broke up because you’re a goody-two-shoes, who doesn’t understand the true nature of my life or business, and that you’ll never interfere with our plans again. And that’s what you’ll do. From now on, you stay away from me and the cupcake shop. If you see me coming, you cross the street, and don’t so much as swing your car by that side of town. You never say a word about the Sweetwaters or what you think you know about their organization. You forget you ever met Cassie Ann Sweetwater. If you do all of that, then maybe,maybethings go back to the way they were.”
He leans closer, until I can feel his warm breath on my lips as he adds, “But if you keep pushing this, Nora, you’re going to ruin your life and my life and neither of us will be able to go home again. Is that what you want?”
I swallow past the fear and elation glomming together in my throat as the truth hits like a lightning bolt. “Oh my God, you’re in the FBI.”
I know I’m right when he curses and brings his fist down hard enough on the console between us to send fresh blood sliding down his damaged hand.
Chapter Two
MATTHEW “MATTY” EUGENE MCGUIRE
A man stuck between a
job that’s sworn him to silence,
and the only woman who’s ever made him
want to spill all his secrets.
“It’s okay! I won’t tell anyone, I promise!” Nora holds up her hands, the alcohol wipe dangling between two fingers like a tiny white flag of surrender.
But that flag is stained red with my blood and my superiors aren’t going to find this breach in my cover amusing.
At all.
I have to convince Nora she’s wrong. It’s the only way to keep my operation moving forward, keep myself on track to retirement in just a few short days, and keep her safe from all the various forms of fallout that can result from interfering with a CIA investigation into the mob. It doesn’t matter that the Sweetwaters are soft and cuddly gangsters when compared to their more murderous counterparts, they’ve still been known to hurt people.
The entire Beechwood family came down with life-threatening food poisoning not once, butfivetimes after challenging the Sweetwaters’ control of the region’s faux designer purse trade. It wasn’t until one of the Beechwood children almost died from a Salmonella infection that they finally pulled up stakes and got out of town.
Then there was the case of Gareth Swanson, an up-and-coming shoe counterfeiter, who thought he could cut into the Sweetwaters’ illegal Canadian export business without them noticing. Gareth simply…disappeared one day, leaving behind a house full of nearly perfect imposter Gucci trainers, two hamsters, and his toothbrush.
To this day, no one knows what became of Gareth.
Did he go on the run before it was too late? Or will Bad Dog officials come across a body wearing his signature purple tracksuit someday?
Judging from what I know of Cassie Ann and her people, I’d bet on the former—they truly do seem to avoid violence whenever possible—but there’s a chance it could be the latter, and I’m not willing to take any chances with Nora’s safety.
Beautiful, sexy, clever, stubborn as hell Nora, the woman who, for months, has been making it hard to imagine leaving Bad Dog…
And who just made it a little bit harder…
“I’m not in the FBI,” I say firmly.
Her nose twitches the way it does when she’s sniffing for a story. I swear, the woman should have been a reporter, not a fashion designer. “You sound like you’re telling the truth.”
“Iamtelling the truth,” I say, because I am.
You actually have toworkto be recruited by the FBI. You have to be motivated to serve in law enforcement and, most of the time, politically connected in some way. But if you’re a fourteen-year-old polyglot who can learn new languages in a month or less, the CIA comes to you.
I was recruited at a Model United Nations camp my junior year—an extracurricular forced upon me by my French teacher. She caught me sneaking into her classroom to make out with my date to the homecoming dance and threatened to call my parents if I didn’t nerd up for her favorite after-school activity.
I’ve been working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency in one capacity or another ever since.
For over fifteen years, I’ve hidden in plain sight at stock car races, polo matches, and everything in between, quietly absorbing life-and-country-threatening information in a wide variety of languages that I’ve passed on to the government without anyone being the wiser.
