3. Silence
Chapter 3
Silence
Whitney
Riley hurried inside Hard Pressed, her wavy, golden-brown hair in a ponytail swaying with her stride. She pointed at me. “You’re a liar.”
I bit down ever so subtly to hide my surprise. Did she find out about my assignment?
I hated being discovered. It was nerve-wracking during the best scenario, but in this case I could lose a friendship. One I had quickly come to value. Not that I didn’t value all friends, but Riley and I got on like we were sisters separated at birth. A friendship like that was rare, and I’d put off coming clean with her.
She stared at me with her chestnut-colored eyes, waiting for a response. Silence had saved my ass plenty over the years.
“Riley, girl,” Aunt Nadia said, and I’d forgotten she was in the room.
Riley came to the counter. “You’re not busy tonight. Why are you really skipping Open-Mic night?”
“I just need a quiet night,” I semi-fibbed.
Riley narrowed her eyes. “Nope. I don’t believe that, either.”
I threw my hands up in slight surrender. “It’s the truth.”
“Gamble said he saw you at lunch yesterday.”
Funny how criminals and law enforcement had certain things in common. Nothing got by those Riot MC brothers… and I did my damnedest to make sure nothing got by me, either.
“He did, but that doesn’t change the fact I’m staying in tonight. Let’s plan to hit the Beau Rivage on Tuesday—”
She curled her lip. “It’s too crowded there. Besides, Mensa will be running things tonight.” A calculating look crossed her face. “Which reminds me, Gamble said Mensa talked to you yesterday. Is that the real problem?”
My face froze. Seemed those Riot boys gossiped like women.
“She’s following his orders,” Aunt Nadia said.
I aimed some side-eye at my aunt. “Not orders.”
Aunt Nadia’s chastising look should have left me quaking in my sandals. She smiled. “You’re right. Not orders, you’re keeping his threat at bay.”
“Threat? He did not threaten you,” Riley said.
I shrugged a shoulder. “Not like Aunt Nadia makes it sound, but he wants me to stay away.”
Her eyes widened. “Well, he doesn’t get to decide that.”
Aunt Nadia tossed her hands out. “That’s what I’m saying, and I don’t understand why my niece is heeding that boy’s warning.”
I glanced between the two of them. “I’m not in the mood to poke the bear.” With a head tilt at Riley, I added, “You go and crush it tonight.”
Her brows arched. “I could crush it better if you were there.”
I smirked. “Now who’s a liar?”
“Whatever. Good vibes create more good vibes. Think about it.”
Aunt Nadia wandered toward the other end of the counter. “There’s nothing for her to think about. She had no problem ignoring what Mensa wanted when you and Finn tied the knot.” She gave me a sideways glance. “Go give that boy a hard time. It’s a free country.”
I stared at Aunt Nadia. “It’s where he works. That’s not cool.”
Riley chuckled. “And he lives at the clubhouse. What’s the difference?”
I just stopped myself from saying Mensa had a studio apartment near I-10 in Ocean Springs. That would have blown it.
I needed to come clean to Riley.
Which would mean Finn, Mensa, and all the Riot MC brothers would know.
No doubt they’d assume I’d been looking into the whole club, but all I really wanted was to investigate Mensa and lock him away. Nobody was that squeaky-clean. Nobody.
My eyes locked with Riley’s. “The difference is that I know he works at Twisted Talons. I didn’t know he lived at the clubhouse when I complained about your wedding reception being inside a tent.”
“That’s fair, but he really needs to get over himself. I don’t understand why he has a problem with you. Who cares if your brother works for the FBI?”
“Whitney,” Aunt Nadia said.
I jerked my head toward the back. “Come on back to the office. You want some sweet tea?”
Riley's eyes skated between me and Aunt Nadia. “Is it that blackberry stuff I had a few days ago? Because that is pure nectar.”
“As long as it’s blackberry season, Riley, I’m gonna make blackberry tea,” Aunt Nadia declared.
I led Riley to the back and poured her a glass of tea from an over-sized travel thermos Aunt Nadia kept in her office mini-fridge.
Time to face the music.
She sipped from her glass and her eyes rolled back in her head for a moment. “I don’t know how she does this without tons of pulp.”
I grinned. “Wish I could tell you, but she never makes it when I’m in the room, and she guards her recipe like a hawk.”
Riley waved her free hand at the office. “Why did you want me to come back here?”
“You mentioned my brother working for the FBI, but I did, too.”
Riley gave two quick nods. “Yeah, I suspected that when you visited me in the hospital.” Her expression turned wary. “But you mentioned you were between jobs to take care of your aunt.”
“Yeah, my status changed not long before shit hit the fan with the case against your dad.”
“What do you mean? I thought there was a man involved in this.”
I nodded. “Yes, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.” I blew out a breath. “My superiors assigned me to you in order to figure out how much, if anything, you knew about your dad’s activities.”
She put her tea down on the desk, and frowned at me.
A sour feeling grew in my stomach. “I didn’t want to keep it from you any longer. I’m sorry that—”
She shook her head. “But you asked me about Dad once .”
I tilted my head. “Right. The way you shut that down, my gut said you had nothing to do with it.” I paused. “When I wasn’t with you, I’d follow you. It became clear your story about avoiding and staying away from Tyndale was true. I’m sorry I didn’t do anything about your car being sabotaged. From where I watched the house, it looked like he was trying to take care of the car.”
As much as silence saved my ass, it unnerved me when others went too quiet.
After enduring her long stare, she said, “I interrupted you a moment ago. What were you going to say, you’re sorry that… what?”
“I’m sorry that I deceived you.”
Her head tilted. “I don’t think you’re sorry about that. I mean, you were doing your job. So was your brother.”
I shook my head. “Wyatt wasn’t on that case. I was just as surprised as you to see him at the hospital. You’re right, though, I was doing my job. I hope you don’t think we’re friends because I was assigned to you.”
Her lips twisted with skepticism. “Were you assigned to loving karaoke? Hmm? And don’t tell me you don’t love it because nobody gets as good at it as you are without loving it.”
My lips tipped up. “No, I’ve always had a thing for karaoke.”
“And those wrong, but incredibly strong, opinions about Ben Stiller? Were those a front?”
“No… and you’re the one who’s wrong. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is his best movie by far.”
“ Zoolander , but there’s my point. We’d have been friends no matter what spurred our meeting.”
I stared at her in admiration. “I love how open-minded you are, Riley. Most other people find out I had to cozy up to them because of a case and I’m cut out like a cancer.”
“Like I said, we’d have been friends regardless.”
I nodded once. “I appreciate that. Nobody’s ever been as understanding as you, so thank you.”
She swallowed a sip of tea. “You’re welcome. Now that we have that out of the way, you’re coming to karaoke tonight.”
“No, I’m not. The farther away I am from Mensa, the better off everyone will be. We can’t stand each other, and for good reason.”
“You don’t mean that. I’ve seen how you look at him.”
I smiled. “Sure, with suspicion and scrutiny.”
Riley laughed. “Yeah, if that’s what you want to call checking someone out.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t check him out. He’s not my type physically, and we’re definitely wrong for each other morally.”
“Morally?” she asked, her tone bordering on disbelief.
“No offense, I know he’s your cousin, but I doubt he has any morals. Or, no, that isn’t fair. His sense of right and wrong are the very opposite of mine.”
Riley stared at me for a beat. “Nothing’s ever black and white with him, that’s for sure.”
“I see shades of gray too, Riles.”
She tipped her head, a questioning expression on her face. “If that’s true, then the two of you are more alike than you think.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Once you tell Finn, the brothers are going to agree with Mensa. Keeping me out will be their priority.”
“But you aren’t working any more.”
I twisted my hands up. “Yeah, but the brothers won’t care. And something’s got to give soon. I need to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I definitely don’t have time for dancing around a man like Mensa.”
The breeze from the Gulf tickled the back of my neck before I set off on my jog. Part of me couldn’t believe that I routinely came to the public beach access to torture myself this way. Even though I’d been on my high school track team, I didn’t like running; I’d done the shot-put. But training at Quantico had been no joke – mentally and physically – I didn’t like running, but I quickly learned that a long run was the one time I could zone out the noise of the outside world.
I needed to zone out in the worst way because I had a ton of big decisions in front of me. After a few stretches, I wandered to the sidewalk that lined Beach Boulevard, and jogged.
It didn’t take long for my mind to clear so I could focus on the decisions I needed to make.
If I took over Aunt Nadia’s shop, I’d have to pack up my place in Jackson and move down here. I wondered if running Hard Pressed would be fulfilling enough.
If I still wanted a job within law enforcement, I needed to figure out what that looked like. Did I want to work with the Biloxi PD? Did I want to put out feelers for a job in the private sector?
I couldn’t ignore one of the biggest reasons I had resigned.
It sounded cliché, but my clock was ticking and I felt like I’d been married to my job, which wouldn’t have been fair to my future family. It wasn’t that field agents couldn’t have families. Most of them did. It was that I didn’t want that for my day-to-day life. By the flip side, I didn’t want my life to revolve around being a mom. There wasn’t anything wrong with that; I just needed to have an identity along with being a mom.
Being this aimless was new to me.
Another voice in my head asked if it was a waste of my education to settle for running Aunt Nadia’s shop? Considering that I’d majored in business (in case I didn’t get into the FBI academy), my education would actually help me. Not to mention keeping her shop in the family would be its own kind of achievement.
My breathing had become more labored as I hit my stride. Running along the Gulf of Mexico was so much better than running almost anywhere else.
It struck me that what I’d spouted off to Mensa at lunch had been true. I really loved it here. It was one-part tourist town, mixed with one-part Southern small town, and a dash of suburbia creeping in, depending on where you were in Biloxi.
The only downsides were that it wasn’t that close to Mom and Dad in Baltimore, and Wyatt would likely put in for an office transfer at some point. Then where did that leave me?
If I decided to go into the private sector or local law enforcement, my biggest fear was in the backlash of this situation. Dating a co-worker was very unusual for me, but I had thought that Ben and I had clicked. We weren’t the first two agents to connect – and it didn’t violate Bureau policies, either.
But I’d never expected Ben to throw me under the bus like he did.
In a conversation with our case manager, Ben said I had an obsession with nailing the Riot MC. He felt I had too much of a chip on my shoulder where Mensa was concerned. He’d repeated that during the questioning with the deadly force review panel. Add in my deepening friendship with Riley, and multiple people questioned whether I was capable of maintaining my cover.
They might have been right.
Being undercover wasn’t for the faint of heart. It was lonesome, grueling, and often felt like the case would never break. Those factors made it easy to get burned out. Plenty of people got burned out at their jobs, but losing any edge in an undercover case made a world of difference.
When I returned to Quantico for the routine stress test and mental health evaluation, I had expected to pass like I had six months prior. Yet the psychologist zeroed in on my issues immediately. While the recommendation was for me to take time off to get myself sorted, to my bones I knew it was time to hang it up. The competitive side of me despised this idea, but I couldn’t deny such stark clarity.
I resented that this realization came at the hands of Ben, a man who claimed to care about me. We’d gotten to that relationship stage where we talked about moving in together. I hadn’t fallen in love, but I had deep feelings for him.
My instinct said he’d been using me. Were the signs there all along? How did my judgment get so impaired where he was concerned?
I approached a major intersection along Beach Boulevard and turned around. Another bolt of clarity hit me: I wasn’t getting involved with another man any time soon. No matter what Aunt Nadia said to the contrary.