“Goose.” The tone didn’t exactly warm up. Damn. “How’s Mishkwa?”
“Not the witch-infested hotbed of assassins one might think.”
“I believe the politically correct term is
pagans
,” he said mildly. “And if they’re still dancing naked and speaking in tongues up there, I’d be surprised.”
“Me, too,” Goose said. “Because, damn, Peter, it’s
cold
up here. Way too cold for naked dancing, though apparently it used to happen quite a lot. I guess there’s this pile of stones somewhere on the island that catches the moonlight just so a few times a century. It’s been closed for decades, but people used to—” She caught herself mid-ramble and cleared her throat. “I read about it on the ferry on the way over.”
More skeptical silence.
“My point is,” Goose said, “Rush Guthrie is clean. I can chase down the paper trail if you want, but this guy’s a real American hero. If he’s gunning for the governor, I’m Wonder Woman.”
Harris barked out a laugh. “Do you really not know how many of your coworkers are sitting in their cubicles at this very minute having Wonder Woman fantasies about you?”
“First, eww. Second, not my business or my fault.” Here in the privacy of a tiny cabin on an island in the middle of Lake Superior, she felt free to grimace. She took care to keep her voice smooth and amused, though. “Listen, Peter. You’ve made your point, okay? Can I come home now? Or am I still being punished?”
“For heaven’s sake, Goose, I’m not punishing you.”
“No?” Sourness crept into her tone.
“No. First of all, Snow had it coming.”
“Amen.”
“But even if he didn’t, even if you took him down out of pure meanness, I’d still back you based on your record alone. Three languages, expert marksmanship, a few dozen counterfeiters behind bars? I don’t like playing favorites, but you’re by far a bigger asset to the department.”
“So how is that a day after defending myself against the inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances of a colleague I’m the one interviewing homicidal park rangers with dubious political ambitions at the frozen ends of the earth?”
“Think of it as a time-out.”
“A
time-out
?”
“You lost your temper, kid.”
“The guy waved his boner at me, Peter. What was I supposed to do?”
“You could’ve brought it to me. I’d have fired the kid posthaste and you’d still be sitting in your cozy little cube playing with that computer you love so much. But no, you had to snap a quick picture with your cell phone and e-mail it to your entire contact list. Which included me.” He paused. “And my boss.”
Goose winced. “Okay. I lost my temper.”
“Hey, I don’t have any objection to your ripping Snow’s guts out. Kid deserved it, no question. But, damn, Goose. There are ways to do stuff like that. And you’re the last person I’d have thought I’d need to point that out to.”
“I know,” she said miserably.
“So you should also know that I have absolutely no use for an angry, impulsive agent making emotional decisions.”
She took a moment to master the panic bubbling up inside her. Sweet Jesus, was she about to get
sacked?
“Okay, fine.” She forced a smile. “You caught me. I lost my temper. It won’t happen again.”
“Bet your ass it won’t. Because you’re not coming home yet.”
Goose closed her eyes. “Come on, Peter. Have you read this guy’s file? He’s an ex–Navy SEAL sniper. I’m pretty sure he’s one of the good guys.”
“SEALs don’t generally just resign,” Harris said. “Particularly not to become park rangers. They get that far into the game and they play until their knees give out or their luck does.”
Goose frowned. The man she’d met today was alive and well—more than Goose would have liked, actually—so his luck had clearly held out. “Did I miss the part of his dossier that mentioned a medical discharge?”
“Nope. Our boy went the less conventional third route.”
“Which is?”
“Resigning in disgust over his superiors’ actions, orders and opinions.”
“Ah. I can see that, actually.”
“Now put that together with the fact that a handful of supernotes have turned up at the Federal Reserve bank here in Minneapolis over the summer. Supernotes that were traced to a half-dozen casinos scattered along the North Shore of Superior.”
“Interesting,” Goose said, and it was. Since the advent of cheap, good-quality color printers and scanners, Goose—along with nearly every other agent specializing in anticounterfeiting—had spent a lot of time busting enterprising teenagers trying to Photoshop fives and tens into fifties and hundreds. Supernotes, however, were a whole different beast. Supernotes were virtually indistinguishable from genuine currency, and producing them was no joke. It usually required the resources of an entire government—most recently that of North Korea—and the services of a virtuoso counterfeiter. The kind of counterfeiter an agent with any ambition would give her eyeteeth to bust.
“Churning out supernotes takes lot of infrastructure,” she observed carefully. “Offset intaglio printing presses, reverse-engineered starch-free paper, constant upgrades to the security strips, the color-shifting ink, the microprinting. Nobody up here could keep that kind of operation a secret. This place is ridiculously tiny.”
“We’re not looking at Mishkwa as the point of origin. We’re looking at it more as a point of entry. You have to admit it’s ideal. A remote, largely uncontrolled international border.”
Goose didn’t like where this was going, but she didn’t hesitate to connect the dots. “So we have Ranger Guthrie, a guy with an established history of thinking and acting outside normal civilian parameters who might have good reason to want to screw his government.” She closed her eyes as she rolled into the inevitable conclusion. “Who also happens to live in a prime location to do so.”
“Have I mentioned today that I value you as an employee?”
“Why haven’t we moved on this before?” She opened her eyes to glare out the window at the fat white flakes dancing on the frigid wind. “Why couldn’t I have checked this out in, say, July?”
“Because in July you weren’t going off on wet-behind-the-ears rookies with more testosterone than brains.”
“I’m—”
Fine
. She’d planned to say “fine,” but she wasn’t. The leftover fury at Snow still choked her and the desire Rush had refused to help her slake this afternoon still burned with an inconvenient persistence. Her boss might have a point there. She cleared her throat in lieu of finishing her sentence.
“Plus, in July this guy was a highly decorated military vet with a chestful of medals and the glowing praise of his ex–commanding officers. Now, however, he’s a crackpot who wants to stab the sitting governor with a flaming pitchfork.”
“I don’t know if I can play the pitchfork angle as a credible threat,” Goose said carefully. “The guy strikes me as more of a double-tap-to-the-forehead man.”
“The Secret Service doesn’t make assumptions about which threats are credible. We find out for sure.” Harris indulged in a significant pause. “You’ll want to be very thorough in your investigation, I imagine. Take your time. People with pitchforks are nothing to sneeze at. Remember what a truckload of fertilizer did in Oklahoma City.”
“Right,” Goose said, resigned. As if she needed a reminder about how explosive her situation was. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
THE NEXT morning found Goose up with the sun. Which wasn’t so surprising, considering she hadn’t slept worth a damn. Her stupid, analytical brain wouldn’t let go of a number of things—supernotes, a wildly arousing kiss, the shocking rejection that had followed it.
She’d finally given up on sleep around sunrise. She’d dressed as quietly as possible, thinking to sneak out before Rush woke. But upon tiptoeing into the tiny kitchenette, she’d found a note on the counter.
Clearing deadfall from the ridge trail. Go back to sleep
.
She snorted out a laugh in spite of herself. Apparently her version of quiet and Rush’s version of quiet were several decibels apart. That was what she got for trying to sneak around an ex-SEAL. She took a moment to wonder if there was actually any such thing as ex when a guy had had the kind of training Rush had. Probably not. When she considered all the years he had to have spent perfecting his craft—
She caught herself up short and pulled the thought out of her head with deliberate firmness. When Rush was in her head, she couldn’t think. She could only feel. Want. Crave.
Damn
it. She knuckled tired eyes. She wasn’t going there. She’d offered him a nice, civilized liaison, and he’d rejected it. Rejected her. End of story.
Or it should have been. But while he
had
passed on her offer, he’d also made her a counteroffer. A surprising but very tempting counteroffer that she’d spent half the night considering, though she knew damn well she wouldn’t accept it. Couldn’t, even if she wanted to.
First off, he was a suspect. Not that she believed for a minute that a guy as inherently honest as Rush was running supernotes. But with lust still sliding warm and sneaky into her blood at the memory of his wicked, no-holds-barred kiss, it was nice to have an official reason to say no. But even if she didn’t, her answer would still be the same. It had to be. Because he’d made it clear that he wasn’t after her body. Not only her body, anyway.
He wanted her soul, too.
But Goose’s soul was in no condition for sale or barter, so it didn’t matter what or how much she wanted. What he wanted she didn’t have. What she wanted, he wouldn’t give. And that
was
the end of the story, at least until she escaped this damn island.
And the only way to do that was to finish her job here. Do it well, do it quickly and get back to reality before she did something irretrievably stupid. Like kiss him again.
Coffee, she thought hastily when her brain veered into a high-def replay of yesterday’s kiss. A big, hot slap of caffeinated good-morning, that was what she needed. She rummaged around the tiny kitchen until the air went warm and promising with the smell of brewing coffee. Then she strapped on her snowshoes and headed for Lila’s to start doing her damn job.
It occurred to her after about thirty minutes of hard hiking that the sun was barely up. She had no idea what she could do in South Harbor to kill the sizable gap between now and polite visiting hours, so she was relieved to see the “Open” sign aglow in the tea-shop window as she approached.
Sleigh bells jangled as she entered the little shop. It was like walking face-first into a cloud of Christmas, she thought, all warm cinnamon, ground cloves and fresh nutmeg.
She snorted. Like she had any idea what nutmeg smelled like, fresh or otherwise. She doubted she’d recognize a nutmeg if it skipped up and French-kissed her. Her own family had stopped celebrating anything the year she’d turned sixteen. Even before that, Goose hadn’t been at the heart of any tradition her mother deemed important. So even if genuine nutmeg
had
come into play somehow, Goose wouldn’t have known about it.
“Agent di Guzman!” Lila came around the counter, wiping her hands on a crisp white apron. “How lovely to see you! Are you in the market for a cup of tea?”
“Whatever you’ve got brewing would be great.” Goose’s stomach grumbled something about how coffee didn’t actually count as breakfast, and she glanced toward Yarrow. The girl was filling the glass case near the register with an assortment of baked goods that likely accounted for the Christmas-scented air. “I wouldn’t say no to one of those Danish-looking things, either.”
Lila beamed. “Smart girl. I recommend the cherry cheese.”
“I’ll take it. Can I get a minute of your time to go with it?”
Lila gave her a sharp look but she nodded. “Have a seat at the counter. Yarrow will get you that Danish while I see to the tea. It’ll be just a minute while it steeps.”
“Thanks.” Goose seated herself on a stool near the register while Lila disappeared into the kitchen. She watched Yarrow plop pastries onto big trays and knock them into the display case like she was racking pool balls.
“So,” she said. “You’re Rush’s cousin?”
“Yeah.”
“You two close?”
“Sure.” Yarrow rolled a bunch of glazed doughnut holes willy-nilly onto a tray. “We have sleepovers every other Saturday. We talk about boys, paint each other’s toenails, make prank calls. It’s a riot.”
Goose gave herself a mental slap.
Cripes, pay attention
, she thought. She was usually better at this part of her job. Reading people, figuring out how they saw themselves and how they wanted her to see them. It was the key to a successful interview, and it was a particular strength of hers. Not that an impartial observer of the last, oh, say, twenty-four hours would know it.
“It sucks that bad, huh?”
Yarrow didn’t glance up, just shifted her less-than-tender mercies to some hapless bagels. “Yes.”
Goose lifted a brow. “You don’t want to narrow it down at all? Specify what exactly I’m referring to before you agree that it sucks?”
“Not unless you’re completely disoriented. Are you?”
“Disoriented?”
“Yes. As in unaware of your location in space and time?”
“We’re on Mishkwa Island in Lake Superior,” Goose offered. “Maybe five miles from the Minnesota-Canada border? It’s December.”
“Very good.” Yarrow shoved the bagels into the case with a thud. “Now add in the fact that I’m sentenced to at least two more years here, then ask yourself if there’s any portion of my life you think might
not
suck.” She gave Goose a scathing glance. “Or, I’m sorry, were you trying to open a discussion as to the
level
of suckage I’ve achieved in various arenas? Because I could talk for a while about that, if you want.”
Goose suppressed a smile. This kid might grow on her. “Two years, huh? What happens in two years?”