“I have a man in Summersfield,” Sebastian said. “I’ll have him ask around.”
Rory groaned as traffic seemed to grind to a halt for no reason. In her low-slung Beetle, she couldn’t see past the UPS truck in front of her and was boxed in on three sides by SUVs. It was only three o’clock, for heaven’s sake. Didn’t these people have jobs? “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Take it easy. You go home and pack, and I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up and a plane to fly you here.”
She wanted to balk at the generosity, but she couldn’t. She’d let her wild-child sister down too many times. She had to hope that this time she hadn’t waited too long to rein her in.
IF THERE WAS ONE THING Adriano Constantin Esteleone knew, it was how to survive. You weren’t raised by a woman like Carlotta Esteleone on the mean streets of the Bronx without learning how to think on your feet. To survive, you had to trust and act on your gut instinct before you could analyze the facts of a situation. Stopping to think could get you dead.
He didn’t care what Sebastian Falconer said. Every fiber of his body told him a woman who looked like TNT was bound to detonate, and he couldn’t chance her blowing his cover.
“No.” Ace left no room for disagreement. The conference room in the basement offices of Seekers, Inc., also known as the Aerie, was boardroom-comfortable with its cream walls, soft lighting, leather chairs and oval cherrywood table. It still smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. But stuck in this leather chair, Ace felt as trapped as if he’d walked down the wrong alley in the middle of the night with a posse of thugs hard on his heels. He gripped the arms of the chair and scowled at Falconer, sitting at the head of the table. “I can’t have my attention divided like that.”
How could Falconer do this to him? He worked alone. Always had. It was part of the deal. As Ace Lyon, working as a grease monkey at Fletcher Automotive, he’d spent the last six months winning the Fletcher brothers’ confidence. And now Falconer wanted him to blow it all to bits for this woman just when the case was coming together? He couldn’t. This case was too important. It was scum like Fletcher who’d killed his mother and poisoned his sister. There was no way he was walking away. Not when he was this close to shutting down their corridor and getting his sister back on the right track.
“He’s right,” the woman who was causing all this upheaval said.
At least she was smart enough to know she didn’t belong in a place like Summersfield. She sat calmly across the table from him in her prim and proper green tweed suit. But all that wild red hair and those fire-gold eyes made her look as unstable as a homemade pipe bomb. That couldn’t be good.
“I want to know what happened to Felicia. That’s all. I’m not an agent or an operative or whatever it is you call the people who work for you.”
She was working as hard at ignoring him as Ace was at ignoring her. But it wasn’t happening. He was as aware of her as if she were a lit fuse and he was gunpowder. “Felicia’s hiding from Fletcher.”
“Felicia wouldn’t have left Hannah behind.” Rory almost knocked over the mug of coffee in front of her with her long fingers. “Something’s happened to her.”
“She’d leave Hannah behind if she thought it was the best thing for the kid.”
“She was leaving Summersfield,” Rory insisted, cupping curled fingers into curled fingers like two nested Cs.
“It’s all tied together, Rory.” Falconer tented his hands in front of him on the table. A deep V creased between his eyebrows as he laid out the facts for the woman. His dark gaze tracked from Ace to Rory. “Felicia was involved in the situation in Summersfield. There’s multi-agency task force involved in breaking this case.”
“Exactly,” she and Ace said at the same time. Finally Falconer was seeing the light.
Rory’s spine lost some of its starch. “That’s why she was coming to live with me.”
“Felicia was working for the ATF,” Falconer said.
“Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?” The healthy blush of Rory’s cheeks drained to the color of smoke. Her hands flattened on the table as if she needed the support to hold herself together. “Felicia? Undercover? No, she wouldn’t. Not with Hannah. Not after…” Fingertips red from the force of their pressure on the table, she stared at Falconer as if she were willing him to take back his claim. “No, Felicia wouldn’t do that.”
Went to show how little she knew about her own sister. There were things he could tell her about Felicia Cates that would turn the fire in Rory’s hair to ash. “She was busted for selling meth a month ago.”
Rory’s head snapped toward him, sending her hair whipping like flames in a draft. “No. Not with Hannah—”
“The baby’s what got her the break,” Ace pointed out. “She agreed to wear a wire so she wouldn’t have to spend time in jail.”
Pushing aside the plate of blueberry muffins and the bowl of fresh-cut pineapple, Rory practically crawled across the table and banged her fist in front of him. Her gaze scorched his, and its heat struck all the way to his gut. “I don’t believe it. She’s changed.”
“She was under a lot of pressure—” But even Falconer’s cool words couldn’t douse the anger blazing in her eyes.
“Felicia wouldn’t do anything to put Hannah in danger,” Rory insisted.
“Well, she did.” Ace resisted the urge to look away from her scalding accusation. “And what you’re walking into is a finely tuned drug operation. Mike Fletcher runs the local distribution, but we’re after the guy who feeds him what he sells. There’s a regular alphabet soup of agencies wanting a piece of this.” As Rory slunk back into her chair, he turned to Falconer, focusing on the goal, not on the burn rising too quickly up his neck. “If she starts asking questions, she’ll mess up the groundwork I’ve set.”
“She has a legitimate reason to ask questions,” Falconer countered. “Questions you couldn’t ask without raising suspicions.”
“She’ll blow my cover.”
Her eyes darkened to a molten gold as hot as embers. “As what? A long-haired, Italian pirate?”
The leather jacket, chaps over jeans, engineer boots and bandana were part of what it took to fit in. If he knew nothing else, he knew how to fit in. He would not let her put a match to his emotions. He was better than that. “Fitting in is an art. One you can’t learn in books.”
“I don’t have to fit in. I’m her sister.”
“It’s not going to work.” She was going to fight him every step of the way, and he wouldn’t stand a chance to make his way deeper into the organization.
“She knows how to find information.” The hard set of Falconer’s face told Ace he’d already made up his mind. “I’ve used her skills in the past.”
Fighting this would get him a reassignment—or worse, dismissal. He needed the top-notch salary Falconer was willing to pay for his mastery at fitting in with the biker crowd. Ace swore silently, never letting the mask of control crack. He knew how to play the role. He’d done it all of his life. “This isn’t a book job, Falconer. These people aren’t the ROMEO club.”
“Romeo club?” Rory asked.
“Retired Old Men who Eat Out,” Falconer said. “A bunch of retired guys who formed a motorcycle club and meet at restaurants.”
“The Sons of Steel don’t mess with paper and computers. They’re like old-time gunslingers. They live by the law of the meanest.”
“There