Chapter 17
Seventeen
Marie
“So,” Attie—excuse me, Agent Phillips asks. “Gonna clue me in on the sweatshirt?”
I roll my eyes at the other woman, but I know this is my own fault.
Once, I could have gotten away with wearing it, having rushed from home to the office (aka having rushed from Jace’s place where he’d banged my brains out) to meet with her about Angela and her special brand of chaos.
But this is twice now.
“You’re the one barging into my hotel room,” I mutter, stepping back and holding the door wide enough for her to enter. “You don’t get to critique my wardrobe choices.”
“So says the woman who’s always fabulously dressed who’s now, all of a sudden, wearing that .” She waves a hand along my body, from bottom to top, fuzzy socks to pajama pants to Jace’s sweatshirt.
“Ah, now you’re going to hurt my feelings.”
“That being,” she says without missing a beat, “a sweatshirt that decidedly seems to belong to”—her voice becomes a stage whisper—“a man.”
I roll my eyes. “Stop messing around and tell me why you’re here torturing me when you’ve already been torturing me at the office.”
“I’ll have you know,” Attie says, “that I’m working overtime on this case for your boss?—”
“You’re working overtime for your husband,” I correct.
“Who happens to be one of your boss’s hockey players.”
“Yes,” I agree. “So we both benefit from putting this nonsense with Angela behind us—you get to solve your case and earn the undying love of your boy toy?—”
“I already have it.”
My heart squeezes at the confident words.
To have that, to know it with such assurance…
I can’t lie—there’s more than one thread of jealousy weaving through me.
“And,” she goes on, “you get to have your boss less stressed because his ex is in jail like she should be and you can get back to doing your job as you prefer—without drama and sabotage.”
I scowl.
“What?” she asks.
“I hate it when you talk sense.”
Her mouth kicks up. “You love it, same as you’ll love my update.”
The last has me biting back the protest that was already welling up on my tongue.
Her smile grows. “Thought you’d like that.”
“What’s your update?”
Part of the craziness of the last weeks has revolved around Jean-Michel falling in love and being out of the office more. The rest is because we discovered that Angela was trying to con Titan Capital employees into giving up confidential information (a thread that we shared with Attie and the FBI).
Angela, the ex from hell.
Angela, the absentee mom to Jean-Michel’s daughter, Chrissy.
Angela, who took her absenteeism so far that she pretended she was dead.
Angela, who reappeared last year, tried to take half of everything, and then was spotted working with—or for, no one is really sure yet—the Lyon family, an East Coast crime conglomerate who’ve branched out to expand their smuggling and human trafficking business here to this side of the country.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’m not privy to all the details of the investigation.
Angela seems to be both everywhere and nowhere, kicking up dust and chaos.
Working with lawyers and criminals alike.
But tonight, Attie tells me they’re closing in.
The information passed along from our employee at Titan Capital is another layer, another piece of the puzzle.
“With any luck,” Agent Phillips says after asking me to look into a couple of other contracts that connect with our biomedical partners, “we’ll be wrapping this up in the next month or so and you can get back to controlling everything behind the scenes at Titan Capital.”
“Not the wine,” I quip, making a few notes in my laptop before saving and locking the screen. “I just drink it and leave the rest of the process to the powers that be.”
“I knew I liked your style.” She pushes up out of the chair, but when I expect her to head for the door, she just leans back against the dresser. “How long are you stuck here?”
“We’re friendly enough to chat now?”
“Come now”—a wink—“you know we’ve been chatting from day one.”
“Because you’re pushy.”
Another wink. “Because I know how to get the information I need.”
“You know my condo flooded.”
Because I was dragged out to dinner with Chrissy, Rory, and their hockey players, and Attie was dragged alongside me.
“I know, but I also heard you turning down offers to stay with the others left and right, and that”—she taps her temple—“piqued my spidey senses. There’s more to the situation than a flood, and I think that it has something to do with that sweatshirt you’re fondling.”
I freeze, realize that I’ve been gently running my fingers over the hem of the sweatshirt, back and forth, back and forth.
Fuck.
I am fondling it.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my pants—lest I go back to fondling—and start for the door. “Goodnight, Attie,” I say, mostly because I know calling her that instead of her preferred nickname of Ats drives her crazy.
“It’s Ats,” she corrects, right on cue, eyes narrowing slightly.
Victory is mine.
Ha!
Of course, it would be short-lived if she decided to do some scary ass karate shit to me as punishment for my teasing.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she trails me toward the door—albeit with a scowl.
FBI agents are scary.
“Ats,” I find myself correcting, if only to make that scary look disappear, and reach for the handle. “I’ll work on those files, get them over to you as soon as possible. And,” I add lightly as I pull the door open, “I’ll count down the days for Angela to receive her comeuppance.”
A genuine smile, without—thankfully—a hint of murder. “Damn right you will.” She pats my shoulder, but just before she steps through the door, she leans in and sniffs. “FYI, your sweatshirt smells like him.”
I open my mouth to retort—something, anything.
But she’s already gone.