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"You're late," he grumbled.
"It takes time to get this pretty." She gave him a saucy, confident smile.
Savannah Kane was more than a little pretty. She was a former Miss Georgia, but her blonde hair and light-green eyes had never impressed him as much as her analytical skills and her ability to blend into any environment, which made her a valuable member of his FBI task force.
"Your time was well spent," he told her.
"You look pretty, too, Flynn. Although, you could have shaved."
"It's my look," he said with a grin.
"I get it. That sexy scruff charms all the girls," she drawled. "So, why am I here? Is there a threat to the exhibit?"
"No. This is a personal situation. I was asked to bring a date."
"And none of your thousand girlfriends were free?"
"Since I don't know exactly what this is about, or what I'm walking into, I thought you would be a better cover."
"All right. Then I need some champagne. For cover, of course," she added with a laugh.
He snagged a glass from the tray of a passing waiter. "Here you go."
She took a sip. "Nice and expensive, just the way I like it."
"Good. I hope I didn't pull you away from an actual date."
"No Friday night plans for me. I was going to catch up on paperwork. My boss likes to bend the rules during the investigation, but when it comes to the after-reports, he's a stickler for detail."
He smiled at her pointed comment. "That's because my boss gives me latitude until he has to justify everything that happened under his watch."
"Your boss is Damon now. I'm sure he'll cut you some slack. He's one of us. We came through Quantico together."
Savannah was right. Damon Wolfe was one of them, even though he now headed up the LA field office and oversaw many divisions, including Flynn's specialized task force.
"Damon is great, but he has a boss, too."
"The many layers of bureaucracy," she grumbled. "It's why I like working for you so much, Flynn. You cut through the red tape with a ruthless pair of scissors."
"I love wielding those scissors."
"I know you do. Can you tell me anything about tonight?"
He tipped his head toward Arthur, who had been joined by his wife, Juliette, and was now talking to not only Gerard Bissette, but also an older couple in their sixties, as well as Kyle Logan and his date, and the museum director Victoria Waltham, a sophisticated blonde in her early forties.
Victoria had been around the art scene since she was an eighteen-year-old intern at the Benedict Auction House and had worked her way through galleries and museums to get to her current position. He'd met her when he was about fifteen. She'd spent a month at his father's gallery. She'd been about twenty-two then. She'd been completely disinterested in him, but she'd been very flirty with his father, something that had made him uncomfortable. But despite other things his dad had eventually been found culpable for, cheating on his wife had never been one of them. Not that that meant it hadn't happened. His father had turned out to be a master of deception.
"Flynn?" Savannah pressed. "Are you still with me?"
"Sorry. The man in the gray suit is a federal judge—Arthur Corbyn," he explained. "Next to him is the featured artist for tonight's exhibit, Gerard Bissette; Victoria Waltham, the museum director; Kyle Logan a gallery owner out of New York and his date; and I don't know the other couple. Arthur called me earlier today and asked me to meet him here. He has something to discuss with me but wants to do it in a social setting where no one would think anything of him speaking to an FBI agent."
"Is this about a case then?"
"He said it's personal."
"How do you know him?"
"I dated his daughter, Olivia, my senior year in high school." He paused. "You've heard that story." At Quantico, exercises and tests had forced them to reveal their darkest secrets, their deepest sorrows, to strip them bare, to forge trust and to make them less vulnerable down the road. Olivia had been part of his reveal.