Page 51 of The Devoted Game
Eventually she strolled out to join him, as he had known she would. As much as she wanted to pretend she was ontheirside, she wasn’t. She was on his. That was another one of those things she hadn’t owned yet.
He kept his attention on the city lights and the way the skyscrapers thrust toward the night sky with the brooding mountains in thebackground. Nice view. Out there and next to him. He didn’t have to rest his eyes on her to appreciate the way she looked tonight. Deep-emerald skirt and matching jacket that made the green flecks in those dark-brown eyes stand out. Black blouse beneath, vee-neck showing just enough cleavage to whet the appetite. And those sexy black shoes he’d already admired. Those appeared to be her favorites.
But the real attention-grabber was her hair. She had worn it down. Maybe because there hadn’t been time to do otherwise. They had been on her deck with a glass of wine in hand talking about her past one minute, and the next they had been rushing to get to Eighteenth Street.
He’d almost succeeded in erasing that hurry-up-and-wait Bureau mentality from his head. Jump higher, run faster. Play by the rules. Make sure the Bureau never looks bad. No risks. No gray area. Just black and white.Do as you’re told.
Grace leaned against the railing, asked nonchalantly, “You have any idea who could have leaked those details?”
As casually as she issued the question, he recognized the tension in her posture. He had won her over to some degree, and now she wanted to be able to explain away the possibility that he had done anything wrong.
“Not a clue.” He sipped his drink.Not a damned clue.
She turned to study his profile. “After I left you here that first night, you didn’t hang out at the bar?”
He looked her in the eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. But I didn’t talk to anyone. Ask the bartender if you feel the need. He’ll tell you that I repeated a single word several times.Another.”
She looked away. “I had to ask.”
“Sure.” He knew the way it was done. “We all do what we have to.”
“You didn’t bring anything written with you that someone could have taken from your room?”
He had to laugh at that. “Well, Agent, you were there. You saw what I brought with me. The clothes on my back. Not even a toothbrush.”He patted his back pocket. “And I don’t carry a copy of old case reports in my wallet.”
She exhaled a big, exasperated breath. “There has to be an explanation. If it didn’t come from Quantico, and it didn’t come from you ...”
At least she sounded like she believed him.
“Lots of people knew what went down,” he offered for lack of anything else to say.
“But not word-for-word details,” she countered.
She was right about that. “Other than the notes I kept in my office at Quantico and the official file, there was no place to get verbatim information except from a live source.”
A frown tugged at her pretty face. “What happened to your working notes?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? I walked out with nothing.” A memory bobbed to the surface of the cesspool of negativity in his brain. “They shipped my personal stuff to me later. Maybe the notes were in there. I suppose they could have opted to retain the work-related memos and notes.”
“What’d you do with the stuff they sent?”
“Never opened it.” He knocked back the last of the JD in his glass. “Still packed up in boxes at my place in the Keys.” She reached for her phone. “Worth needs to know that there may have been work notes at your residence. There could’ve been a break-in since you’ve been away.”
“Forget it, Grace. It doesn’t matter. Worth—the Bureau—wants me out of this. Don’t you get it? No matter what you prove, nothing is going to change. They don’t want the world to know what happened three years ago. As long as I’m guilty, they’re innocent.” He laughed. “The truly ridiculous part is that none of it matters. The boy died. Proving who was responsible won’t bring him back. Won’t change the fact that his daddy blew his brains out. Or that he killed an agent. It’s done. Over. Let it go.”
“And what happens when Devoted Fan emails us on Monday?” she countered.
“Worth will deal with it.” Tension he tried hard to ignore negated the relaxing effects of the one drink he’d consumed.
“What about the victim? Considering we don’t have a trace of evidence and there’s no pattern to his work, the victim could be anybody. He could be stalking that person right now. Are you just going to let the next one die?”
He turned his face back to hers. “You can do this, Grace. You were the one who figured out Jones was at the steel mill, not me.”
“That’s not true,” she argued. “I just juggled the priority list, that’s all. You were the one who ID’d her so we would even know who we were looking for.”
“The point is, you’ve got Pratt and Schaffer and all those other guys. Work with them. Let them in. If you keep pushing all your colleagues away, you’re never going to make it. This business takes teamwork.”
“You’re pretending this is all going to go away,” she argued, “and you’re wrong. He’s planned this very carefully. Whatever he has in mind for the next round, saving the victim will be about you ... not me, or any of the others. He wants to prove how invaluable you are. Each round will be harder, more personalized. Mark my word, without you, we’ll lose and someone will die. That’s assuming we can even fool him into believing you’re still on the case.”