CHAPTER 18
Josie
“You’ve checked your phone four times in the last five minutes,” Caroline says.
I drag my eyes off the screen. “I have not.”
“You have. I counted. Four times.” She’s leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee she’s doctored with so much sugar my teeth ache.
As usual, she’s dressed in yoga pants and a slouchy sweater, but she carries it with the effortless grace of a beauty queen. Tall and statuesque, her black hair and brilliant blue eyes turn many a man’s head. I’ve noticed it here at work, the longing on more than one expression.
She stands with one ankle crossed over the other, watching me like she’s already three moves into a chess game I didn’t know we were playing. “Either you’re waiting on somebody you don’t want to see or somebody you do and you’re nervous about it. Which is it?”
“Neither.” I hold up my own coffee cup. “I’m caffeinating.”
“You’ve ignored your coffee the entire time we’ve been here.” She glances at her watch. “Which has been about fifteen minutes and my break’s almost over.”
“You’re very observant for someone who’s supposed to be doing reports.”
“It’s a gift.” She takes a sip. “Is it the Voronin case you’re worried about?”
And there it is. The off-ramp, handed to me clean, because Caroline is the kind of person who notices when you’re not quite right and gives you a dignified place to land.
The case is the easy answer. The case is true enough.
I am, in fact, on edge about it, because the man I’m falling in love with thinks one of his oldest friends just handed my name to a Russian who kills women for a living.
But I can’t say any of that.
“Partly,” I say.
She catches the word with a raised eyebrow. “Partly?”
I should leave it at that. Partly is a complete sentence. Partly is a fine place to stop.
But I don’t. I need a girl’s ear for the other thing that has me on edge. “I’m seeing someone.”
Both of her brows rise and her eyes round before a slow grin breaks across her face that makes her look about fourteen. “Shut up.”
“It’s not a big—”
“Who is it?” she demands, setting her cup down. “What’s his name? Where did you meet? Does he have a single brother?”
I want to spill everything. I’ve spent my adult life being trained to ferret out secrets and keep them held tight but now there’s this enormous bright fact in the center of my life and I badly want to set it down on a counter and let someone look at it with me.
“He’s—” I start, and then I don’t know how to finish it without saying too much, so I go vague. “He’s not the type of person I thought I would be with.”
“Nobody worth anything ever is.”
“He shows up, Caroline. He shows up for me in a way nobody really has. Maybe my dad. That’s the only person I can compare it to. He just… he sees what I need before I’ve finished deciding I need it, and then it’s there.”
Caroline’s grin softens into admiration. “That’s a hell of a thing to have.”
“Yeah.”
“So why are you on edge?”
I pick up my coffee so I have something to do with my hands. “It’s new. It’s complicated. There’s a lot riding on it and I just…” I shrug. “I want to make sure it’ll work before I go telling the whole world about it. That’s all.”
“So no one knows this mysterious guy?”
I don’t dare tell her Cole knows as she might go pecking at him for details and he’s promised to keep my secret too. But I admit, “My dad met him. Actually barged in on us one morning—”
“Oh my god,” she exclaims. “He caught you having sex?”
“No!” I laugh at the absurdity. “He caught us making breakfast, but we were only half dressed so I guess he inferred the prior sex part.”
“So embarrassing.” She chuckles, and I nod in agreement, the smile on my face indicative of my amusement at the situation.
She studies me for a beat, and I can see her wanting to push. “All right. I’ll stop digging. But for what it’s worth, Josie, you don’t have to have the whole thing solved before you let yourself enjoy it. Sometimes the working-it-out is the best part.”
“That’s annoyingly wise.”
“Former army. We’re wise and we’re annoying. It’s the brand. In fact, it should be on a patch.”
The door swings open before I can come back at her, and Reid’s eyes immediately go to the counter where Anna leaves her sweet treats. Brady Frost is a step behind him.
“Tell me those are the peanut butter cookies I heard everyone raving about,” Reid says, already crossing to the plate.
“That they are,” I confirm. “And don’t get me started on her snickerdoodles.”
“God bless Anna.” He takes three, stacks them like poker chips, and hops up onto the counter, his usual perch.
Brady doesn’t go for the cookies. He stops just inside the door, scans the room once out of habit—corners, exits, who’s where—and only then lets himself relax a fraction. He’s in plain clothes, a gray Henley and a jacket, nothing that says cop, which is the point.
The man is powerfully built, broad through the shoulders, with close-cropped dark brown hair and a strong jaw that tightens a notch whenever he’s irritated—which, in the same room as Caroline, is most of the time.
His eyes are a sharp hazel and he always carries himself like a man who’s used to being the most capable person in any room.
The only hint of anything soft in him is the smirk, which surfaces whenever he says something dry, like he’s daring you to take him seriously and betting you won’t.
Brady came to Jameson from the US Marshals after years of federal tactical work.
He has a reputation for having nerves of steel, which is exactly why Malik tapped him for the job he’s been buried in ever since.
He’s currently working undercover inside the Seattle Police Department to expose a ring of dirty cops.
The background Jameson built him is airtight…
a fabricated NYPD history, a service record salted with insubordination and a couple of convenient infractions, the precise résumé that makes corrupt men think they’ve found one of their own.
They bought every word of it and pulled him right in.
Caroline’s whole posture changes the moment he enters the room. Her spine straightens an inch and her chin comes up and the easy warmth she had with me ten seconds ago goes crisp at the edges.
“You’re a long way from your undercover beat,” she says snidely.
And she makes a good point. Brady’s deep undercover, so why would he be here?
“Good to see you too, Prescott,” he says casually.
“I’m serious.” She uncrosses her arms. “You’re supposed to be buried. Aren’t you risking the whole thing strolling in here in broad daylight?”
“They know I’m here.” Brady leans against the doorframe, unbothered, which I can already tell is the thing about him that gets under Caroline’s skin…
nothing seems to rattle him. “As far as my new friends in the department are concerned, I’m liaising with Jameson on a joint case.
They think I’m working you people from the inside like a mole.
” He shrugs. “So I came to get some false info from Malik this morning. I’ll head back to work with a folder of very convincing garbage I get to feed back up the chain.
Everybody’s happy. They think they turned me.
I think I turned them. We’ll see who’s right. ”
“That’s a good play,” I say, and mean it.
“It’s a dangerous play,” Caroline says.
“It’s my play.”
“It’s a dangerous play run by a man who thinks he’s bulletproof, which is how men like you end up in a ditch off I-90.”
Brady’s mouth curves, slow. “You worried about me, Prescott?”
“I’m worried about the paperwork. You go in a ditch, somebody’s got to write it up, and it’ll be me, because it’s always me.”
“I’d hate to inconvenience you.”
“You inconvenience me by existing,” she snarls.
Reid, from the counter, mouth full of peanut butter cookie, smiles around the crumbs. He looks at me, eyebrows up, like a man at a tennis match who can’t believe his luck with the seats.
Brady pushes off the doorframe. “You’re charming as always, Caro.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.
He winks at her and then turns to me. “You good, Josie?”
“All good,” I reply.
He winks at me too and not going to lie… he’s so gorgeously charming, my pulse skips a beat.
Bad Josie.
Brady glances at his watch and snags another cookie. “Only came up for some of these. Gotta get back to the grind.”
He fist-bumps Reid, ignores Caroline and squeezes my shoulder on the way out.
But then he glances back for just a second, attention landing on Caroline. “Try not to miss me.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ll do my best to manage the grief.”
Then he’s gone.
Reid waits until his footsteps recede, then lets out a low whistle. “You two should really just get it over with,” he says.
“There is no it,” Caroline barks.
“Sure.” Reid hops off the counter, brushes the crumbs from his hands, and ambles toward the staircase like a man who’s gotten everything he came for and then some. “Keep telling yourself that. See you later, Josie.”
And then he’s gone too, and it’s just me and Caroline and the high stain of red on her cheeks.
“What’s up with you two?” I ask.
“Nothing’s up.” She grabs her coffee, takes a hard sip.
“I find him frustrating. He’s arrogant, he’s reckless, he thinks the rules are for people with worse reflexes than he has, and he has never once since he’s come here conceded a single point to me, even when I’m right, which is most of the time. I can’t stand him.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “That was a lot of detail for nothing.”
“Shut up, Josie,” she mutters.
I laugh. “I’m just saying. For a man who’s nothing, you’ve got a comprehensive file.”
“I will put you back in the Salish Sea myself.”
My phone buzzes against the counter and I snatch it so fast, I bobble it. Once righted, I see the text from Finn, and the warmth that goes through me is embarrassing in its completeness. Four words and I feel it in my whole body.
I’m here for you.
“I have to go,” I say, scrambling out of my chair.
Caroline’s eyes track to the phone, then back to me, and her grin returns, gentler now. “Your guy?”