Chapter 8 #2
That left foot of hers kept casually swinging. He thought that might be her only sign of nerves.
“You have a choice to make,” Gray announced.
The hell she did. Her choice had already been made. She was going to belong to Cass. End of story.
“What choice would that be?” Agnes inquired sweetly.
Gray opened his mouth to speak.
“You have to turn your back on the Feds,” Cass said as he took a hard step forward. “Publicly. Very, very clearly. A fuck-you that all can understand. And then you swear allegiance to me. You can’t be a Fed and be mine at the same time. So you choose.”
A little furrow appeared between her brows as she glanced over at Gray.
“Undercover mission,” Gray said.
Her hands gripped the armrests on either side of her. Hard. As if…as if she was trying to keep herself from jumping out of the chair. That bright, bright blue gaze of hers swung right back to Cass. “You’re undercover.”
He didn’t say a word.
“You’re undercover. You’re not an MC leader—”
“Oh, I assure you, I am one hundred percent an MC leader. I bled for the title. I killed for it.”
“Cass.” A warning note in Gray’s voice.
What was new? Gray always liked to warn. And toe the line. And follow every rule in the book. Boring. So very, very boring. Cass could not help it, he had to flash his own smile at Agnes and his cousin as he said, “My world is shades of gray.”
“That is not funny,” Gray told him.
Cass thought it was a little funny.
“I’m not undercover,” Cass stated, voice flat. “What you see is who I am.”
“He is an MC leader. Cass just…ah, happens to be doing some work for me at the same time,” Gray allowed.
Her tight grip remained on the armrests. “Undercover.”
She did seem to like that word.
Agnes nodded. “And I’m going to be undercover, too.” Now her stare lingered on Cass. “As your lover?”
“As the woman who is so obsessed with me that she threw away her badge, betrayed her fellow Feds, and went all in with a criminal. Yes.” She’d be undercover. “Think you can handle that?”
Their gazes held. Tension thickened. He had a sudden flash of her as she’d been during that long, hot night with him. Tousled hair. Swollen lips. His hands tight on her waist as he heaved her against him and her warm, tight—
“Sounds like a dream job.” She nodded and flashed that slow smile of hers again. “Pretty sure I could do it in my sleep.”
Uh, say again?
“Consider me obsessed,” Agnes told him. “When does the job begin?”
She was shaking on the inside. Her stomach was in so many knots that she ached, but Agnes kept her bright and shiny veneer in place until Cass left the FBI building.
They’d come up with a game plan. A dramatic one, granted, but desperate situations could often call for dramatic measures. She was aware that wasn’t exactly how the old saying went, but, in this particular instance, she thought her version worked better.
“You’ll have to trust him.”
Gray’s low, rumbling voice. Because she was still in Gray’s office. Cass had vanished, but she still had her boss to handle.
Gray’s expression was hard. His eyes intent. No emotion entered his voice, and that was a bad sign. Gray was quietly furious. She could feel his rage in the air around her.
“If you trust him, I trust him,” she said.
“Cass says you believe we’re family.”
“Uh, you are family.” That would be why she believed it.
“And how did you reach that conclusion?”
“Bone structure. Plus, the fact that I haven’t heard a denial from either of you so far so, yeah…family.”
He leaned forward. His chair squeaked. “Did you think he was an undercover Fed when you fucked him?”
She actually…had, yes.
“Because he’s not.” A muscle tightened along his jaw. “He is not following some secret rulebook. Cass is not going to make the good-guy choices when you are in the field with him. He is the leader of the Night Strikers. He has done things that will give you nightmares.”
Those knots in her stomach got worse. “You don’t know what my nightmares are like.” She shouldn’t have said that. She should have kept her mouth shut.
Because sympathy flashed in his eyes, only to be blinked away. “And is that the reason you went to him? Did you think that he was an undercover Fed who could help you get the revenge that you’ve wanted for so very long?”
Yes. “I hate when you profile me.”
“I hate when you make profiling you so easy.” An immediate return.
“You’ve lived and breathed for revenge—you’ve done that for years, but, Agent Quinn, you just stepped straight into the fire.
Where you are going…” A shake of his head.
“I can’t be your backup. Malik won’t be your backup.
It will be you and Cass against the world, and you are going to learn fast that he plays dirty and hard. ”
Yes, she was getting that impression. “I can play that way, too.”
“Tell him about your past.”
She had already told Cass some about her past. Filling him in fully on all the dark and twisted details was on the agenda. She just wasn’t completely sure how he would react to everything.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. “Guess I have to get busy. Dramatic scenes to enact. New allegiances to swear. Busy, busy, busy.” She turned for the door. Agnes exhaled slowly. Her words were flippant, but when she reached out to touch the doorknob, her fingers trembled.
Don’t show fear. Do not hesitate. You are going to get what you want. Finally.
“If you go off the rails, if you cross the line while you are out there, you won’t be able to come back to the FBI. You understand that, don’t you?”
She stiffened.
“There are things that you cannot do. And one of those things? It’s commit premeditated murder.”
Gray…always profiling. And always…right.
Agnes glanced back at him. She used her bright and sunny smile on him. Most people never looked past that particular smile. Gray wasn’t most people. “I have no intention of committing premeditated murder.”
No, she’d make sure it never, ever looked that way…
“Agnes.”
“I learned a great deal working with you, Agent Stone.” True story. She had. “Thank you for the opportunity.” But it was time for her to take the next step.
And the next step?
That was to sever all ties with the FBI. Because she had to choose…
And the world would believe she was choosing Cass.
Time to burn bridges. The fire would need to be very, very bright. Good thing she had a pocketful of matches.