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My man was happy and safe—and I had done that.
CHAPTER 45
duke
Kaz, some other fed (who I hadn’t met before), Elena, and I were crowded in the small observation room.
Kaz had pulled strings to get us in while his partner—a woman who looked like she belonged on a runway rather than in law enforcement—handled the interrogation.
Inside, Piper Novak sat with her attorney, a bulldog of a man with a bad attitude and a sterling legal reputation—precisely the kind of lawyer the rich and powerful hired to make their problems disappear.
“This room smells terrible,” Elena murmured. “And I spend most of my time in a stable with horse manure.”
She was right. The place smelled like frustration. Like waiting for bad fucking news.
Kaz grinned. “I think it’s the coffee.”
The other fed looked thoughtful. He was a portly man who went by the name Agent Smith, which he toldme made him feel like the guy in theMatrix, though he didn’t look like it. “I think it’s the old sweat that clings to the walls. You know, when we make the perp sweat?” He laughed at his own joke.
We looked at him like he was the most humorless person we knew. He took it in stride, saying, “This is why I don’t do stand-up.”
As if all of this didn’t make the room seem like a hellhole, we had fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like lazy summer flies.
Through the one-way glass, we watched Piper Novak at the metal table in the interrogation room, her spine straight, her manicured hands folded in front of her. The overhead lights washed most people out and made them look half-dead. Not her. No, she looked pristine, polished, untouched—like she was sitting in a boardroom and not an FBI interrogation room.
No fear. No nerves. Just pure, unapologetic arrogance.
I clenched my hands together, knuckles aching from how tight I was holding them. Like if I let go, the whole-damn world might slip through my fingers. Elena reached over, pried open my fist, and laced her fingers through mine.
She was here, I thought in wonder. She was here with me. She wasn’t going to let me go through this alone. I had fallen into luck like a greenhorn lands ass-first into a mud hole—messy, unexpected, but damn if it didn’t feel like I was exactly where I was meant to be.
On the other side of the glass, the door opened, andAgent Romy Boudreaux walked in. She was in a pair of tight jeans that made her ass look amazing, boots, a badge, a blazer…nothing special and yet she lookedfine. She also had a Cajun accent that was smooth as silk.
“Stop staring at her like that,” Elena teased.
“I’m human.”
“She’s somethin’, isn’t she?” Agent Smith muttered. “When she first walked in, I thought she was a perp ‘cause no FBI agent looks like that.”
“She finds out you talkin’ about her like that, she’s gonna kick your ass,” Kaz warned.
“I’d take her boot up my ass any time,” Agent Smith said with exaggerated wistfulness.
Elena rolled her eyes. “And these guys are supposed to be the finest of the finest?”
“Yes, ma’am, we certainly are,” Agent Smith replied cheerfully.
We were all trying to lighten the mood, but we all knew that it was a short reprieve because the shit was about to hit the fan.
“How y’all doin’?” Agent Romy Boudreaux said brightly, tossing a thick file on the table with a heavy thud.
She sat on a chair across from Piper and her lawyer Monty Thomas—her stancelazyas all get out.
Monty sighed like this was nothing more than an inconvenience. “Agent Boudreaux, what a pleasure.” It was obvious this wasnot a pleasure.
She smirked. “I hope you feel the same way in an hour or so,cher.”
Agent Smith grunted. “I thought we decided she wouldn’t do that Cajun shit no more.”