Chapter 8
Present Day
Because we had walked to the park, Bray gave me a ride to the coffee shop.
I sat at a small table and stared out the window while he ordered. Wallace’s death hadn’t fully registered, but the consequences of it were starting to set in like a million little teeth. If he really was gone, that meant I had no one watching out for me.
Bray returned to the table with a mug embellished with a heart drawn on the liquid’s surface. He set it down with a faint flush to his cheeks.
I arched a brow at him. He shrugged and set an enormous blueberry muffin sparkling with sugar crystals beside it. His knees bumped mine beneath the table when he folded himself into his chair.
“Sorry,” we said at the same time.
I shifted sideways and reached for the fancy drink. The gorgeous muffin would go to waste because I had lost my appetite with the news about Wallace.
Bray leaned forward on his elbows. He picked up his mug with one hand and blew on his drink. The rounded shape of his lips and the soft whoosh that came out of them made me sit up straighter.
“So!” I said for distraction without anything to follow it up.
He watched me with his bottomless gray eyes, expectant.
I couldn’t think of any words, so I lifted my drink and promptly burnt my tongue. “Shit,” I hissed and reached for the dribble on my lip.
“Oh, careful. Here.” He quickly grabbed a napkin and extended it. The table was so tiny, and he was so big he all but pressed it to my lips.
“Thank you.”
“I should have warned you; they tend to make things extra hot here.”
I looked around at the quaint shop’s deep brown walls, overstuffed furniture, locally sourced abstract art. The barista was doing a poor job of pretending not to stare at us. I caught a coy grin on her lips.
“Do you live around here?” I took a stab in the not-so-very dark.
“Am I that obvious?” He quietly laughed.
“Yes, Bray. Everything you do is obvious.”
His face fell. “Sorry, I thought it would be good to go somewhere familiar, given the circumstances.”
“Yes, and the issue with that is people know you here—like that barista who’s watching us like we’re on a date—and now they’ve seen you with me when I’m supposed to be undercover.”
His eyes widened the same way they had in the park when I pointed out his error in lurking in sunglasses and a hat.
“You’re right. Sorry. I’m sorry.” He looked over his shoulder like he wanted to hide under the table.
Despite yet another faux pas, his fluster came off charming. “Then maybe we should?”
“Should what?”
“Act like we’re on a date.”
The idea struck me as so absurd, I laughed out loud, which I realized a second too late only played into his ridiculous plan. “What will that fix?”
He glanced at the counter where the barista was still watching.
He lowered his voice and spoke through a smile.
“That’s Amber.” He nodded at her. “She and her wife own this place, and they’ve taken a, let’s say, keen interest in my social life.
That’s why she’s staring at us. And that’s why she put a heart in your drink,” he said like it just dawned on him.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’d rather she thinks I’m here on a date than here with a CI. ”
I glanced at the woman behind the counter. She was petite with, appropriately, amber-colored curls piled on her head. She wiped down the espresso machine with one eye still on us.
“Does she know what you do?”
“More or less.”
“Of course she does.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you suck at this!” I blurted in a harsh whisper.
He flinched, looking hurt.
“Sorry.”
I glanced around the shop at the other patrons, noting there were at least two other couples dressed similarly to me and Bray: T-shirts, yoga pants, hoodies. A Saturday morning coffee date was apparently a viable con.
“Give me your hat,” I demanded and held out my hand.
“My hat?”
“Yes. We can at least hope Amber forgets what I look like.”
He removed it and ran a hand through his mashed hair, leaving it ruffled and all sorts of perfectly messy. There was also the bicep popping out to say hello when he lifted his arm.
His hat sat low around my head, being at least a size too big. His scent lingered on it, a hint of scalp and citrusy shampoo. I took care to pull my hair forward to further shield my face. I had to look up from under the brim to see him.
“Thanks.”
He smiled at me, and the color of his eyes made me forget we were in fact a government agent and a career criminal meeting to discuss someone’s death rather than a couple enjoying coffee.
I gathered my mug with both hands and blew on it, hiding under the hat’s bill.
After a few quiet moments, Bray broke the silence. “You know, if we’re on a date, we should probably be talking to each other.”
My face warmed. I was embarrassed to tell him I had never been on a coffee date, and I didn’t know what to do. I discreetly eyed the other couples and noted one pair was holding hands on top of the table and the other was sharing a laugh.
Both options made me wildly uncomfortable.
“Maybe the date isn’t going well,” I said into my latte, which was nearing a drinkable temperature.
“Well, you’re already wearing an article of my clothing, so I have to assume it’s going at least somewhat well.”
I fought the smile tugging at my lips. He may have been a crap agent, but damn it, was he a charming fake date.
“I’m really sorry about Agent Wallace,” he said, and brought the mood crashing right back down. “Were you two close?”
There were much more important matters at stake than my emotional relationship with Wallace, what with him being dead, but opening up that box was not something I was prepared to do on a fake coffee date.
I glanced out the window and reminded myself Del Rio was ridiculously safe. The chances of being found here were slim to none. Not to mention, I had a big, strong secret agent sitting across from me with a gun attached to his hip, though my confidence in his skill with it was lacking.
I staved off the worry rising inside me with a sip of my latte.
Bray’s question, were we close, felt intrusive.
I had never talked about Wallace with anyone because I couldn’t.
Exposing our relationship was a death wish.
More than a few of my targets would have put a bullet in my head if they found out I was a rat.
Wallace had been the only consistent thread in my life for a decade.
He was all I knew, and the only one who truly knew me.
But were we close?
“Our relationship was … complicated.”
“How so?”
I huffed a dark laugh. “In pretty much every way you can think of. He saved me, in a sense. But he also controlled me—literally—for ten years. I couldn’t do anything without his permission or without him knowing about it.”
Bray nodded with a look on his face I couldn’t read. Something between pity and understanding.
“He was also the only person I really knew, but to say I even knew him is a stretch, which speaks volumes about my tragic social life. We were more like employee and boss, except one of us held the power to send the other to prison for life if he felt like it.” My attempted laugh fell flat.
Sympathy colored Bray’s face, and I realized something I couldn’t believe I had only just thought of.
“Wait, if Wallace is dead, does that mean I’m free?”
He turned to look out the window and stroked his chin, his thumb catching the scar on his jaw.
Anyone watching would have assumed our date had hit an awkward speed bump.
He looked back at me and pressed his lips together.
“Not exactly. With Wallace gone, and as of this morning, I’ve been reassigned as your interim handler. ”
The news hit me like a brick I saw coming a mile off. Of course I wasn’t free. I would never be free.
“Until when?”
“Until we figure out what to do with you.”
“I’m not a commodity.”
“No, but you are an asset. One with a decade of DSA knowledge, which needs to be carefully monitored.”
His sudden shift into dehumanizing me—so much for whatever butterflies our fake date had been giving me—made me bristle.
“You really do suck at this if you think I’m foolish enough to consider ever sharing any of the information I have.”
He sighed a tense breath. “Look, I don’t think you’re foolish. It’s … complicated.”
“It always seems to be with you agents.” I frowned and looked out the window.
The sunny morning was in full swing. People pushed strollers down the sidewalk, walked dogs, stopped for a chat on the corner.
It all looked so normal, a normal I had never known as an adult. A longing for it ached inside me.
I turned back to Bray and found him studying my face. It made me blush. “What if I decide to run?”
“Then I’ll have to chase you.”
As tempting as it sounded, there were multiple reasons I couldn’t run.
The truth was, I was safer imprisoned in my agreement with the DSA than I would be out on my own—or in actual prison.
There was only one scenario where I could ever safely escape, and it was beyond a longshot because it required finding something that had gone missing the night my father got arrested. Something no one had seen in a decade.
The thought chilled my mood and reminded me what was at stake. “How do we find out what really happened to Wallace, because I don’t believe he had a heart attack.”
Bray started to say something and then stopped. “I told you, I only have so much clearance. I’m doing the best I can, but I can only ask so many questions, and I don’t have access to his files.”
I tapped my fingers on the table, wondering if I should just spill the whole truth about me and Wallace right here, right now. “Then you owe me some other information. That’s what we’re doing here, remember? Information for information.”
His eyes hardened. “What do you want to know?”
“Why was your clearance revoked? What did you do?”