Page 25 of Frankie and the Fed (Untamed Rascals #3)

I stared at the pictures from last night of Frankie accepting delivery of what turned out to be nothing.

A strange combination of relief and guilt swirled through me. She seemed disappointed that the boxes were empty.

She didn’t give me any indication of why, though. What was she expecting? Just goods for the museum, or something else entirely?

My shift was in an hour. I promised her lunch today, and I wasn’t going to miss that, but a message came in from Taggart that raised my hackles.

We have word that the suspect Francesca Woolbridge took delivery of goods last night. Send everything you’ve gathered on her.

Everything I have.

NO, my mind screamed at me. I needed to protect her, not throw her under the bus. We didn’t have enough evidence to move on her. What information does he have, and how did he get it? I hadn’t sent any updates and there were no goods.

I scrubbed my face, frustration mounting within me. I needed to delete the pictures. No, I needed to send them to Taggart, but I wanted to delete them. I wanted to say fuck it all and leave everything behind for Frankie.

She was dangerous to the equilibrium of my life.

I closed my laptop and shut off my phone. I wasn’t going to resolve anything today, and Taggart could wait until I had more solid information. What I needed was definitive proof one way or another.

Frankie regularly brought her personal laptop to work. I needed to get into it, then I could know what to do.

I grabbed the little black thumb drive I had been given before coming out. It would create a copy of her computer so I could review it without the pressure of getting caught.

I shoved back the panic and sense of betrayal. I had to do this. My hands shook as I shoved it in my uniform pocket, but I ignored that as well. Now wasn’t the time to doubt everything I’d worked so hard for.

Finish this job, get the promotion, make some actual changes. I had a plan and Frankie… I shook my head, clearing all thoughts of my life entwined with Frankie’s. I had to do this.

I stood around the corner from Frankie’s office while I texted her to meet me in the museum cafe for lunch. My hands shook, making texting difficult and dragging out what I really didn’t want to do. I needed to get in and out fast before she wondered why I was taking so long.

The second she disappeared down the opposite hall, I walked to her office. I tried not to hurry and draw attention to myself, but my hands hadn’t stopped shaking since this morning, making everything much more difficult.

Thankfully, the door was unlocked, and I just had to contend with my damp, unsteady hands slipping on the doorknob.

I smiled at a researcher as he passed me in the hall just as I was opening the door. Hopefully, it was less of a grimace than it felt like and conveyed just the right amount of ‘yes, I should be here’ and ‘work, right?’ to keep him from being suspicious.

I slipped into Frankie’s office, gently closing the door behind me, and rested for a moment against the door to calm my racing heart.

Her personal computer wasn’t immediately visible, but she brought it with her every day. I just needed to find it.

Her bag was empty.

Nothing in the drawers.

Shit, of course she wouldn’t have it today. I could still copy her work computer. Maybe there would be something there.

I grabbed the thumb drive and nearly dropped it from my trembling fingers. Shit. This shouldn’t be so hard. I was a fucking professional. I shook off the doubt creeping back in. I didn’t have a choice. I had to do this.

I plugged the drive into the computer. If it did what the tech guy promised, I would make a perfect copy of her hard drive. I just needed the password.

Please be basic, I thought as I searched the underside of her computer and around her workspace. I finally found it taped under the bottom of a drawer. Frankie was many things, clever with hiding things clearly wasn’t it.

The faintest tendril of hope spread through me at that thought, she wasn’t hiding anything, she couldn’t be. I typed out the random string of letters and numbers, wondering if she came up with it or if it was assigned to her.

Plug and play. That was the promise of this program. I didn’t need to do anything except plug it in and log in. The program should do the rest.

I looked at the time. Three minutes had passed. Not quite enough time for her to reach the cafe, much less worry about why I wasn’t there yet.

Soft voices carried in from the hall, ratcheting my heart rate up and making me sweat.

“Come on,” I muttered, watching the blue bar creep across the screen. I felt like a kid again, trying to download a song on the shitty dial up computer before my parents caught me.

My phone buzzed just as it finished.

F: I’m here. Sitting by the giant sarcophagus .

J: almost there. Just a quick bathroom detour.

I cringed at telling a woman who has had her head between my legs about my bathroom habits. The fact that it wasn’t real didn’t matter. God. Could I be any more awkward ?

I pulled out the thumb drive, closed her computer, and slipped out the door.

Five minutes. Not too bad.

I wiped my sweat slicked palms against my uniform just as I stepped into the cafe, hoping I looked nervous and excited to eat with her and not like I was sneaking into her office.

“Hey,” she said as I approached. She hugged me, and I hoped it felt awkward because of guilt and not because she was suddenly regretting our time together.

Jasmine and musk filled my lungs as I breathed her in, trying to ease the tension in me.

“Hi.” My voice shook, but only a bit, and I didn’t say more right away. Just being around her calmed my system despite the lies.

“Guess what I get to work on today,” she said as she picked up her menu, eyes sparkling, drawing me into her world and her joy.

“What?” I didn’t bother with my menu. I didn’t know how much longer I had with her, and all I wanted was to drink her in.

“Examine a new fossil,” she said, excited to share her work with me.

“Isn’t that what you usually do?”

She laughed, and even though I was serious, her happiness infused me, and I couldn’t help smiling.

“I spend an inordinate amount of time writing and reading papers, actually. I’ve spent a lot of time teaching at various universities, but that’s not really for me.

” She scrunched her nose like even the thought of teaching was repulsive, but I’ve seen her with the kids.

She’s a natural teacher. “This one is exciting, though. It’s seemingly intact and is currently estimated to be 3 billion years old. ”

“What kind of dinosaur would that be?” In my very limited tour guide knowledge and experience, I didn’t think they were that old.

She laughed harder, the sound deep and resonant. Her head was thrown back, and her soft purple wig tickled her pulse point along a faint bruise I had sucked into her last night. Beautiful.

“What did I say?”

“It’s not a dinosaur,” she said through fits of giggles.

“Isn’t that what fossils are?”I leaned toward her, regretting sitting across the table from her instead of in the chair next to her.

I wanted to run my fingers along her neck and trace the tattoos that decorated her skin, press my fingers into her bruises just to feel her heartbeat.

“Remind me someday to walk you through a brief history of the world.”

Someday. All the joy was sucked out of me, but I kept a smile plastered to my face, anyway.

“That sounds like it couldn’t possibly be brief,” I said. “Are you just trying to trap me with lectures?” I reached out and snagged her hand, no longer able to resist touching her.

“You caught me. It’s not even a little bit brief.” She flipped her hand over, pressing our palms together and brushing her fingers along my pulse point. The move was so simple and yet intimate that it stabbed into my heart, twisting it up in a way that could never be fixed.

I sat enthralled as she explained the new fossil. She spoke so animatedly. I couldn’t help being sucked into her story. All the while, her hand rested in mine, and the drive with the entirety of her work computer burned a hole in my pocket.

I pulled my hand away, unable to stay calm with the dichotomy, and hid behind a sip of my drink.

I couldn’t let myself forget why I was here, or what I had to do… or how much it would destroy us both for me to do it.

Lunch passed before I realized it, despite my best efforts to keep a distance.

“So, I was thinking I’d like to take you out again,” I said before my brain caught up to my mouth. I hadn’t been thinking that. I’d been thinking that I needed to never see her again. Fuck.

“Hmm, a fourth date. I rarely go that far.” Her eyes were lit up, though, so I knew she was teasing.

“Fourth date? The ghost tours and then last night.”

“Right now.” She looked at me like I was clearly missing something.

“You really think lunch at our workplace’s cafe counts as a date?”

“Well, I was certainly hoping to sneak behind that fake tree over there for a kiss and maybe some light groping at the end.”

My gut twisted at the thought of sneaking a kiss with her. I couldn’t. Not with the thumb drive in my pocket. Not when I still needed to access her personal computer. Not after taking so many risks last night.

The raw need I felt for this woman already threatened to drown me. Everything sat on a precipice, and a kiss here, now, was too much.

“How about we save the kiss, and I make you my famous chicken pot pie for dinner? My place isn’t exactly good for cooking, though.” I left the sentence hanging, hoping she would invite me.

“Right. You can cook. God, you’re perfect, aren’t you?” She said the last bit with a dreamy sigh, resting her head in her hand and staring at me with such a love-struck expression that it took my breath away. No one had ever looked at me like that, and I had to betray the one person that did.

I waited, sweat slicking my palms, for her to say yes and not question why I couldn’t cook at my place. “So? What do you think?”