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Chapter One

Was someone pranking him?

For the first four minutes of his interview with prospective client Alton Beacher, Zach couldn’t quite decide.

It was the kind of elaborate joke Ben would find funny, but Ben was not about to invest energy (or money) in making Zach look foolish given that healreadythought Zach looked like a fool for struggling to keep his dad’s PI business afloat. Ben was probably right. Tactless, as usual, but probably right.

Nobody knew the dire financial situation of Davies Detective Agency better than Zachariah Davies, former accountant turned lead investigator.

Turnedonlyinvestigator.

In the midst of these bleak reflections, Alton Beacher’s light, slightly affected voice trailed off. The silence that followed was punctuated only by a faint chatter of Davies’s receptionist (and Zach’s kid sister) Brooke, coming from behind the office door. Judging by the giggles, Brooke was not speaking with another client.

Not least because they didn’thaveany other clients.

He’d spent the last month making new contacts in Monterey County, paying visits to insurance companies, lawyers, the risk-management directors of local municipalities, and anybody else he could think of who might need the services of a private investigator. Eventually, some of that footwork was bound to pay off, but so farnada.

Beacher’s pale brows drew together in a frown as he waited for some sign of life from Zach.

Zach pulled himself together. He lifted his coffee mug, took a stalling-for-time swallow, said finally, “Let me get this straight. You’re hiring me to pose as your boyfriend while I investigate a series of death threats you’ve received over the past couple of weeks?”

If he sounded skeptical—well, whowouldn’tsound skeptical? For one thing, Beacher was wearing a gold wedding band. For another, well, this was as far-fetched as anything in those goofy PI novels Zach used to devour as a kid.

No, actually, it was more like something out of a screwball comedy movie from the 1940s. This couldnotbe a serious job proposal.

Could it?

Beacher’s “Correct,” sounded stiff and a little defensive.

“Really?”

“Surely, you’ve run into this kind of situation before? You’ve been in business twenty years.”

Right. Did Beacher actually think Zach had been working as a PI when he was ten years old? Cracking the case of Ms. Gordon’s missingWall Street Journalin between Little League practice and mastering common factors and multiples?

In fairness, Davies Detection Agencyhadbeen around for twenty years. Zach tried to imagine his bluff, gruff ex-cop dad being asked to pose as someone’s boyfriend and nearly choked on his coffee.

No question Pop would have saidhard passto the Beacher case.Though less politely.

“What made you choose us?”

What Zach really meant was why pick a little indie operation rather than a large security firm with all the bells, whistles, and resources someone as rich as Alton Beacher would presumably expect. But Zach already knew the answer. A big, classy company would laugh Beacher right out of their expensively appointed lobby.

For one fleeting instant, Beacher looked uncomfortable. “To be honest, I was going to try that place at the other end of the shopping center.”

Zach set his coffee cup down very carefully. “Carey Confidential?”

Beacher nodded curtly. “But I didn’t like the look of the man. Those beady eyes. That sarcastic smile. No.”

Oh my God.Zach would have given anything, ANYTHING, to see Alton Beacher ask Flint Carey to be his pretend boyfriend. And the beady-eyes comment? That was pure gold.

But Beacher was right about the sarcastic smile. Flint did have—could have—an unpleasant smile when he thought you were being a bigger ass than usual. His eyes weren’t beady, though. They were hazel, that elusive combination of brown-green-gold, and disarmingly long-lashed.Maybea little narrow, especially when he laughed, which admittedly, was rarely.

Zach said gravely, “He’s a tough customer, that guy,” ignoring the feeling that somewhere, somehow Pop was shaking his head at him.

“Then I saw your sign, and it seemed like a…a…”

“Sign?” Zach offered.