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turning away. Charlotte’s hips swayed to the distant music as she sauntered toward the door. Her calves flexed, revealing impressive muscles until she turned to her one last time.

“I think I’m going to duck out of here, Ms. Leon. I’ll see you Monday.”

Alex smirked as Charlotte opened the door, breaking the relative quiet of their sanctuary. After a deep breath, Alex arranged herself again and rejoined the party she no longer wanted to partake in.

CHAPTER 16

CHARLOTTE SPENT the weekend resisting the urge to call Jayson and tell him she was one major step closer to getting into Alex’s inner circle. It was his voice in her head that kept her from making contact. If Alex was ever going to vet her, it would be now.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, Charlotte was out of ways to keep herself busy. The ache in her hamstrings kept her from practicing for the FBI fitness test anymore that weekend. She knew she was on the brink of straining something if she didn’t let her body rest. She refused to limp on her date with Alex.

If Jayson were around, she’d be desperate enough to watch some sporting event with him. Her stomach tightened.

It was getting harder to ignore how much she missed him.

When Charlotte had binged everything even remotely interesting available for streaming, she wandered outside when she heard Frania ending a phone call. Her neighbor was sitting on a cheap plastic chair with her foot propped up on a matching, albeit dingy and mold stained, one.

“Hablando del Rey de Roma,” Frania said in Spanish as she glanced to the side before continuing to paint her toenails a shade of yellow not found in nature. She was still in her brown security guard uniform, the polyester pant legs rolled up her meaty calves.

“Why were you talking about me?” Charlotte asked, responding to the incomplete idiom meaning something like speak of the devil . She’d never learned why the saying mentioned the King of Rome.

“I was just thinking about how I haven’t seen you in so long.” Frania pulled a partially crushed pack of cigarettes from one side of her bra and a purple lighter from the other side.

Charlotte leaned against the railing to get downwind from the irritating cloud that would be emanating from her shortly. Frania was the last person she knew who smoked.

“I’ve been so busy with the new job.”

With a lit cigarette hanging between her lips, Frania went back to her pedicure. “Is that why my man hasn’t been around in forever?”

A lump formed in Charlotte’s throat. She hadn’t counted on Frania asking about Jayson’s sudden absence, but she should have. She formulated a lie without hesitation. “He’s back on that car theft task force thing. He’s been working nights for months.” Jayson had been recruited for the task force a few years earlier, so it was believable and didn’t require too much explanation.

Smoke filtered out of Frania’s nostrils and mouth as she frowned. “Well tell him I work nights on Friday and

Saturday, so he can come visit me during the day.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Leave me out of whatever game you two play,” Charlotte replied with a chuckle, holding her hands out in front of her as if physically repelling the mental pictures before they formed.

Frania laughed and then coughed. “You’ll never understand our love.” She started working on her other foot before going on to tell her about a reggaeton concert she was going to that night. When she invited her to come along, Charlotte smirked.

“I can’t. I have a date tomorrow,” she confessed after debating whether to share the information. She and Frania often talked about dating, so it would have been strange not to mention it.

Kicking the chair over to Charlotte, Frania rested her feet against the base of the second-floor handrail. “Bitch, you’ve been holding out on me? Sit and spill.”

“Don’t go making so much of it,” Charlotte warned as she sat. “It’s just dinner. It probably won’t go anywhere—”

“Get right the hell outta here with that doom and gloom.

You haven’t been out with anybody since that Brianna girl I told you was crazy, but you didn’t listen. You were this close,” she made the gesture for an inch with her fingers,

“to having her squatting in your house. I can’t believe you fell for that girl’s sob-story bullshit. And I told you it was bullshit,” she added with a knowing glare.

Charlotte winced while Frania went on her long-winded I told you so . She had been right.

The first night she met Brianna, Frania told Charlotte she had a bad feeling about her. Charlotte couldn’t see it then.

They’d met in the humanities class neither of them was particularly interested in. Brianna was gorgeous, smart, made good money waiting tables at a nice restaurant, had her own place. All in all, she was pretty great. Some people, like Frania and Jayson, called her too good to be true.

Within weeks of dating, Brianna had sort of moved into Charlotte’s place uninvited. When Charlotte told her she wasn’t ready for regular sleepovers, unfortunate events started to befall Brianna. First, she lost her job, and then vague medical issues kept landing her in the hospital without any diagnosis or plan for treatment.