Melinda studied her suspiciously. “You’re acting awfully odd. What’s going on here?”
Nick came to her rescue. “It’s my fault. I roped Jordan into coming with me to meet a friend for coffee. My sneaky way of keeping the date going.” He slid his arm around Jordan’s waist and pulled her close.
“Aw, aren’t you two just the cutest?” Melinda smiled at Nick. “Some other time, then. Oh, I know—Jordan should bring you to dinner at Corinne’s on Saturday. That way you can meet everyone at once.”
Jordan shook her head. No way, no how—that would mean lying to her friends all evening. “Oh, unfortunately, Nick already has plans for Saturday.” She spun around to face him, which put her body smack up against his firm—really firm—chest.
Wow
.
She pled with her eyes for him to play along. “You know, that thing you mentioned earlier that you have to do. On Saturday.”
“You mean that meeting with the developer I told you about,” Nick said without hesitation. “The one who’s building the new apartment complex in Old Town for me.”
She could’ve kissed him right there. Handy, these undercover FBI agents, when one needed a lie on the spot.
Jordan turned back to Melinda with a reluctant shrug. “Darn developer.” She patted Nick affectionately on his cheek. “Doesn’t he know how much I want to show off this tall, dark, and smoldering guy to all my friends?”
Nick threw her a look that said she needed to shut up. Fast.
Jordan clapped her hands together, not disagreeing with that. “So. I don’t mean to rush you out, Mel”—of course she did—“but Nick and I really should get going.”
She somehow managed to get her friend out without any more deceit or trickery, and shut the door behind Melinda with a groan. “I hate that I had to lie to her like that. Thanks for helping me out when she invited you to dinner on Saturday. This secret-agent stuff is not my thing.”
“Just hang in for twenty more minutes and then you can be free of all secret-agent responsibilities for the rest of the day.” Nick pointed in the direction of the door. “Starbucks. My treat.”
“Are you
sure
I don’t need a code word or something?” Jordan asked. “Maybe we should have one just in case.”
“You’ll be fine, Rhodes. Trust me.”
ON THEIR WAY
to Starbucks, Jordan noticed that Nick kept a watchful eye out as they walked the few blocks from her house—presumably checking to see if they were being followed. How surreal that this was her life now, she thought. Making up a fake boyfriend, lying to her best friend, and looking out for shady private investigators who had been hired by a money launderer.
Ah, to go back to simpler times, when she was merely the sister of the world’s most infamous Internet terrorist and daughter of a billionaire.
Nick held the door open for her when they arrived at Starbucks. She hurried into the coffee shop, savoring the warmth inside and the anticipation of getting her much-needed caffeine fix. She checked out the other customers, looking for anyone who might be their FBI contact. She shivered, a combination of nerves and excitement, and decided that she’d become quite the badass these days.
She
had an FBI contact.
Nick hadn’t told her anything about how this drop-off would go down, so she followed standard protocol and acted normal. She ordered her drink at the counter. “I’ll take a tall, one-pump, sugar-free vanilla soy latte please.”
Nick seemed to find her order amusing. Of course he did.
“Just a grande coffee for me,” he said.
Jordan stepped to the side to wait for her drink to be called, when someone bumped her from behind.
A firm hand on her shoulder steadied her. “Sorry. My bad,” said a man’s voice.
“No worries.” She glanced up at the man with nearly black hair who smiled apologetically as he left the coffee shop. She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her coat. Not unexpectedly, she had a text message from Melinda:
CALL ME LATER—I WANT ALL THE DETAILS ABOUT NICK.
BTW, HE’S SEX ON A FUCKING STICK.
Subtlety always had been one of Melinda’s strengths.
Jordan tucked the phone away when her drink was called. Nick walked over with his coffee.
“Ready?” he asked.
She cocked her head, confused. “Don’t we have that thing you need to take care of?”
“Already done.” Nick took her gloved hand in his and leisurely led her out of the store. To anyone watching, they were just an average, everyday couple getting coffee on a Sunday morning.
Jordan studied him as they stopped at the street corner outside Starbucks. Finally, she caught on. “The guy who bumped me.”
“Yep. The keys are in your left coat pocket.”
“Son of a bitch, that’s good.”
Nick grinned confidently. “I told you, Rhodes. This is what we do.”
NICK DROPPED JORDAN
off at her house and told her that he’d call her later. Not seeing the black sedan that had followed them the night before, nor anyone else who looked suspicious, he decided they could forgo the aren’t-we-the-loving-couple good-bye kiss. As he strode down her front steps, he caught himself momentarily wishing they
had
been followed.
The introspective side of him—which luckily didn’t exist—would’ve had a field day with that one.
Halfway down the block, he spotted his car, still parked on the street where it had been all night. He kept right on walking—he couldn’t risk that someone would see him driving it and trace the license plate. He headed to the nearest intersection to hail a cab, making a mental note to arrange to have someone from the office pick up his car and bring it back to his condo. His real condo.
He found a cab easily and gave the driver the address that would be his home for the next week or two. He checked his phone and listened to two messages from Huxley, who apologized profusely for forcing him into the assignment and screwing up his plans to fly to New York. Although Nick appreciated the messages, they weren’t necessary. No one had forced him into anything, and he had no doubt that every other agent in the Chicago office would’ve made the same decision he had. It was part of the job they’d all signed up for. If he’d expected to be pampered and coddled through his undercover assignments, he would have gone to work for the CIA.
His phone rang just as he was tucking it back into his coat. He saw that it was his brother, Matt, and answered. “I had a feeling you’d call.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a douchebag?”
Nick grinned at the inside joke. Back when he and his brothers were younger, they’d once gotten carried away and “accidentally” tossed three footballs through Tommy Angolini’s second-floor apartment windows after he’d claimed during recess that Scottish douchebags couldn’t throw for shit. Tommy had been wrong on two counts: first, in not knowing that they were only
half
-Scottish douchebags, and second, in doubting the athletic prowess of the McCall brothers.
Not surprisingly, that bit of good-natured fun had put an end to any trash talk from Tommy Angolini, but also had royally pissed off their father. A sergeant on the NYPD at the time, he had rounded up Nick and his brothers, brought them down to the Sixty-third Precinct, and locked them up in an empty jail cell.
For six hours.
Needless to say, after that the McCall brothers had all developed a healthy appreciation for the benefits of being lawabiding ten-, nine-, and seven-year-olds. The only person more traumatized by the lockup had been their mother, who’d spent the six hours crying, refusing to speak to their father, and making lasagna and cannoli—three helpings of which she’d practically force-fed each of her sons immediately upon their homecoming from the Big House.
“The last person who called me that watched while three footballs crashed through his living room windows,” Nick said.
“Seeing how you can’t seem to find your way to New York to save your life, I’m not too worried,” Matt shot back. “You’d better be saving the world from a biological weapons attack or foiling a plot to assassinate the president.”
“Nope. That’s next week’s agenda.”
“Seriously, Nick—you couldn’t even make it to Ma’s party? We’ve been planning this for months.”
Feeling like a major asshole, Nick distracted himself by looking out the rear window of the cab and keeping an eye out to see if he was being followed. “I know. But something came up that made leaving impossible. I’ll figure out some way to make it up to Ma. How bad is she taking it?”
“She says she’s not FedEx-ing you any more arrabiatta sauce,” Matt said.
Nick whistled. His mother had to be
really
pissed if she was threatening to cut off food. “That is bad.”
“Unless you suddenly announce you’ve got a girlfriend or you’re getting married or something, I think you’re going to be on her shit list for a while.” Matt chuckled. Being the middle child and peacemaker of the family, he didn’t hold grudges for long. “She’s getting crazy with this grandchildren stuff, you know. If I so much as mention that I’m having drinks with a woman, she’s on the phone with Father Tom, asking what days the church has free for a wedding.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no imminent announcement on my end, so I’ll be in the doghouse for a while.” Nick oddly caught himself wondering what his mother would think of Jordan. Tough to say whether the billion-dollar inheritance or the convicted felon of a brother would freak her out more. Not that it mattered. “I’m planning to come out there as soon as I finish this project with work. If Ma won’t let me in the door, think I can crash with you?”
“Sure. And don’t worry about Ma,” Matt said. “I’ll tell her there’s a new cute assistant DA that I ran into at the station. That should distract her for a while from your sorry-ass excuse for a son.”
“Thanks. And out of curiosity, did you actually run into a new cute assistant DA?”
His brother sounded sly. “Better than cute. You know I’m a sucker for a woman in high heels and a power suit. Hey—Anthony wants to talk to you next. Here he is.”
Nick heard muffled sounds as Matt handed the phone over, then his youngest brother came onto the line.
“Hey—anyone ever tell you that you’re a douchebag?”
And so it went.
Sixteen
AFTER THE EXCITEMENT
of the weekend, it felt strange for Jordan to return to her normal routine on Monday. All day at the store she was on edge, waiting for something to happen, some problematic development in the case: Xander had discovered the recording devices in his office; Mercks had clued in to Nick’s real identity; the FBI, for whatever reason, had decided to call the whole thing off.
It didn’t happen.
By Tuesday night, it was fair to say that she was essentially back to her normal routine, with one notable addition: Nick called to check in every night at nine thirty when she got home from DeVine Cellars. Through him, she learned that Xander and Trilani had met that morning, which meant first and foremost that Xander wasn’t suspicious—yet—and second, that the FBI was on their way to getting the evidence they needed to make the arrests.
“If this keeps up, you won’t be stuck with me for long,” Nick said teasingly. Then, for the third evening in a row, he asked if she had noticed anything unusual during the day.
“You keep asking that,” Jordan said. “Trust me, you’ll be the first person I call if anything seems out of the ordinary. I have no lofty ambitions of being a hero in all this.”
“Just keeping an eye on you, Rhodes.”
The next day, Jordan fought the downtown traffic and headed back to MCC.
So much for last week having been my final visit,
she thought as she rode up the elevator.
She and her brother got their usual table, right in front of the grimy, bulletproof window covered with steel bars. Nothing but the best seat in the house when visiting Kyle Rhodes.
He laid into her the moment he sat down. “Who’s Tall, Dark, and Smoldering?”
Jordan’s mouth dropped open. “Shut up. You’ve been reading Scene and Heard?”
Kyle gestured to the bars. “What else am I supposed to do in this place?”
“Repent. Reflect on your wrongdoings. Rehabilitate your criminal mind.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Yes, she was. Because her brother was number two on the list of people she really, really didn’t want to lie to, right after her father. “It’s no big deal. He’s just a guy I brought to Xander’s party.” Who, yes, happened to be tall, dark, and smoldering. Allegedly. And who
occasionally
made her smile, when he wasn’t busy getting under her skin. Like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Or a tick.
“For five thousand dollars a head, I doubt he’s ‘just a guy,’ ” Kyle said.
Suddenly, their friend Puchalski, the inmate with the black snake tattoo, was at their table. “So who’s this tall, dark, and smoldering jerk?” he asked Jordan, seemingly affronted.