Chapter Thirteen
FBI SPECIAL AGENTS had varying reasons for requesting transfers. Jarrett Stanton was looking for a city that needed his help.
That’s what had landed him, two years ago, in a trim Creole townhouse two short blocks east of the French Quarter, close enough to hear the late-night trumpets floating through the alleyways, but far enough not to smell the slushy hurricane cocktails spilled on Bourbon Street.
Like Stanton, the house was dignified and symmetrical. Four bedrooms, a wrought-iron balcony that draped over the sidewalk, and, most critically, no yard to upkeep. Instead, he’d overseen the construction of a square, brick courtyard laid in a herringbone pattern.
Inside, he was hardly the lord of the manor.
The house hummed with the friction of female energy: three daughters in various stages of childhood with obsessions ranging from Disney princesses to gymnastics to ninth-grade debate club, all shepherded by Alma, his wife, his rock, and the only person who could conduct this family ballet in time with the Bureau’s demands.
For all that, Stanton had methods to tune the girls out when he needed to, one of which was to open the windows that faced the street and listen to the jazz filtering over the rooftops while he dressed.
Tourists might call the Quarter a theme park, and they weren’t wrong.
But Jarrett didn’t live for Bourbon Street.
He lived for the undercurrent, the quiet hiss of buskers rehearsing near the golden Joan of Arc statue, the smell of chicory from the French Market, the way jazz didn’t just echo here, it lingered.
He would miss it one day. He had come here to help right wrongs, to fight corruption. And yet the city had seduced him too.
He checked his Apple watch. The gala at the Four Seasons would be starting soon. He wanted to walk. The device on his wrist told him he was barely above eight thousand steps, not nearly enough.
Come on, Jarrett.
He stood in front of his bedroom mirror.
The stiff white collar of his tuxedo shirt flared awkwardly at his neck like the wings of a startled gull.
In one hand, he held a black bow tie, a strip of silk that may as well have been a Rubik’s Cube.
He turned it over in his fingers, looped it once, and frowned before exhaling a sharp breath.
Alma moved behind him with the silent efficiency of a mother of three and the steady patience of a kindergarten teacher.
Her own dress hung half-zipped, height elevated by heels.
“You’re making that face again,” she said lightly, smoothing his shoulders.
“The one you make before dental appointments.”
Jarrett offered a lopsided smile. “You ever think it’s a little ironic that I can take down a wire-fraud ring in Baton Rouge, but I can’t figure out how to tie this thing without Googling it?”
“You’re not allowed to mention federal investigations and internet tutorials in the same sentence,” Alma replied, plucking the tie from his fingers. “You’re more interesting than that.”
“Tell that to the kids.”
A raucous argument echoed down the hallway from a playroom that was a minefield of glitter hair clips and half-dressed dolls.
“That’s my Snow White headband!” Veronica shouted.
“It is not! Eloise found it in the car!”
“In my booster seat!”
Alma winced. “Okay, that’s escalating.”
Audrey, the eldest and the self-appointed house diplomat, poked her head in. “Do I have to start confiscating the princess gear again?”
Jarrett raised an eyebrow. “Is that a thing now?”
“I have a whole drawer of mouse ears, wands, and pixie dust,” Alma whispered, looping the tie with deft fingers. “It’s starting to look like the Orlando TSA station’s lost and found.”
Outside the window, the indigo dusk of New Orleans stretched across the skyline.
Jarrett’s gaze flicked to the digital clock on the nightstand.
Sixty-seven minutes until cocktails. Forty-seven minutes until he stood in a ballroom of state troopers, DAs, city officials, politicians, and the urban elite.
As one of five assistant special agents in charge, his competition to make it to the next level—special agent in charge—was fierce.
Jumping from ASAC to SAC was not just a matter of moving from GS-14 to GS-15.
It was politics, and tonight was an opportunity to show his boss he was comfortable operating in and around those who filled the New Orleans society pages.
A knock on the front door cut through the chaos like a conductor’s baton. Then a chorus of little voices: “She’s heeeeeere!”
The babysitter barely had time to slide inside before the girls flung themselves at her in joyful greeting. Alma took a few steps into the hall and called down the stairway to the landing, “Brush teeth in twenty! No glitter on furniture! The babysitter’s in charge if anything catches fire!”
And then it was quiet.
In the mirror, Jarrett adjusted the now-perfect bow tie. “How do I look?”
“Like a black James Bond,” Alma said, slipping her arm through his.
“Does that make you my black Moneypenny?”
“I don’t think they were married, or even romantically involved.”
“You really think I need to go to this?”
She laughed at him. “Darling, for the past three weeks you’ve been telling me you need to get better at this kind of thing.”
“It’s ridiculous to me that with both the criminal branch and national security branch as part of my ASAC duties, I still have to hobnob.”
“And why did you take the job of multiple people?”
“Because Cappy retired and someone had to do it while they transfer a replacement.”
“And because Augie Lloyd knew you could handle the double duty. You can navigate these waters. Zip me,” she ordered, turning.
After he zipped his wife’s dress, she added, “There’s going to be a whole lot more of this in your future, Mr. Bond.”
He smiled. Her banter had taken the edge off.
She reached up and kissed him. “And, don’t forget,” she added.
“What?”
“Shaken, not stirred.”