AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So, hehadn’tbeen imagining that he’d heard her name. He briefly wondered if someone could hallucinate that they were hallucinating, and then wrestled his mind back to the here and now.
“Yes. Elias declined,” Cassiel replied, nodding in Elias’ direction. “But she was persistent about it. What was that, two weeks ago?”
“Twelve days,” Elias corrected with his usual precision.
Cassiel frigging loved that FBI mind of his. It almost made up for the fact that he’d had to listen to his sister howling that guy’s name while he was boning her brains out. Almost. He crushed a napkin in his fist. He just wanted to punch the guyonceand then they could be friends.
“She called me again yesterday,” Elias continued. “I didn’t answer, but she left a message hinting that she had another avenue she was pursuing. I was wondering if you had any idea as to what that could mean.”
Cassiel had several, and none of them were good. Ifhewere Cat, he’d be chasing down every one of Elias’ past co-workers, trying to get dirt on him, and by extension a member of the Loring family, which Cassiel knew was Cat’s main target. Elias worked at the FBI for six years. He was bound to have made some enemies, or at least stirred up some resentment with that fast track to glory that he’d been on before he met Bianca and chucked it all aside for her.
“She’s going to try to get your old mentor to talk,” Cassiel said, his eyes far away as he thought. “Diana… something.”
It wasn’t like Cassiel for a name to slip his mind, but he was still stuck on Cat.
“Mansfield,” Gabriel said immediately before anyone else could supply that name, which was odd. Cassiel’s head flicked around to his uncle. “You don’t remember her?” he asked him.
“I remember her from the other night, with Bianca,” Cassiel said, avoiding using the wordskidnappingorabductionor anything else that might trigger his sister.
He would have asked more questions, but Gabriel had a closed-off expression, then he forced a little smile and shook his head in Cassiel’s direction to let him know they’d talk about it later.
Cassiel shelved it for now. “Diana Mansfield,” he said, taking the attention off his uncle. “Cat’s going to try to get in her head.”
Elias guffawed. “Well, good luck to her trying,” he said. “Diana is a cipher.”
That got a huff of a laugh out of Gabriel, which actually worried Cassiel. His uncle had been the one to teach Cassiel how to keep his feelings to himself, and here he was, emoting all over the damn place. He might as well stand up on the table and shoutI have history with this womanfor crying out loud. If Cassiel didn’t know his uncle better, he’d say Gabriel had known her in the Biblical sense. But that was nonsense. Cassiel had had his uncle followed for a whole year, convinced he had to be seeing someone secretly or at least visiting prostitutes, but nope. Nada. No women in his life.
Like a good emotional dentist, Cassiel decided to prod the suspicious tooth and see if his uncle jumped.
“Cat may try and get dirt on Diana. Find out who she’s sleeping with,” Cassel said, keeping his peripheral vision on his uncle. Gabriel looked cool and collected.
Elias shook his head, laughing. “She’ll have even worse luck with that. I tried for six years to find out who she was dating, and I came up with nothing.”
“How do you know she was dating anyone, then?” Gabriel asked, his tone level.
Elias looked at him with narrowed eyes and a sly smile. “If you’d met her, you’d know she had to have been with someone.”
“Why?” Gabriel asked. Too seriously. It was tough for Cassiel to tell now. Maybe he was projecting something that wasn’t there.
“Because she’s smoking hot?” Elias held up his hands, as if to saydon’t blame meand looked at Bianca guiltily.
While everyone else at the table madewoonoises and laughed, Bianca shrugged.
“She is. Total babe,” she agreed, not at all bothered by the hubbub, and in fact, adding to it, wholeheartedly. “Those freckles? Sweet little seven-pound baby Jesus,” she said, fanning her face like she was going to faint.
“Exactly,” Elias said.
“Did you two ever…?” Bianca asked. And this time Cassiel saw his uncle flinch.
Holy shit.
“No!” Elias replied, shocked, although, he wasn’t all that shocked. “I mean, when I first met her, I thought she was gorgeous, but to her, I was just a kid. I mean, Iwasa kid,” he admitted, which Cassiel thought was big of him. “Everyone tried to go out with her, and everyone got shot down. We all thought she must have been dating someone and keeping it quiet. A lot of people do that at the bureau just to maintain boundaries between life and work.”
A dark look crossed his face, and Cassiel could read that he was probably thinking about the fact that he didn’t work there anymore. Well, boo-hoo. He got Bianca out of the trade, and a job that paid him triple what he was making, so Cassiel wasn’t about to offer up his shoulder to cry on.
But back to Uncle Gabriel. Cassiel was convinced now that something must have happened between them. He had to find out what.
“Cass. You’re handling the Cat situation, right?” Rafe asked, leaning back in his chair, one arm draped across Abbe’s lap in casual intimacy.
