Spies and Prejudice (24 page)

“What about her?” Tanner’s voice is hard. Is he defending me to his mom?

“She can’t see those files. Ever.”

There’s a pause before Tanner answers. “She won’t.”

What? It shouldn’t surprise me that Tanner is going to try to protect what’s in those files. Especially if it involves his dad. But they’re talking like the files need to stay away from me in particular.

The woman’s voice is softer now. “Good. You’ve trained for this all your life. I’m trusting you to do this right. Do not let that girl interfere again.”

I don’t hear Tanner’s response. Ryan walks down the aisle, prompting me to pull the earbuds out of my ears in a hurry. He hands me a watch like the one Tanner wears. “The watch has a shortwave radio that will keep you in radio communication with us.” He fits a new earpiece in my right ear.

I don’t say anything. My mind is still reeling from the conversation I overheard between Tanner and his mother. I know Tanner wants to catch Drew, and I’m happy to help him do it. But he still wants to keep me from the documents? There’s only one thing I can think of that Tanner’s family can’t let me see: proof of my mother’s murder.

Ryan outfits me with a button-cam, explaining again how the watch and earpiece work. He will monitor what we hear, so we’re not distracted while we’re engaged with the mark, shutting off our access to each other whenever he thinks it’s necessary.

I hope Ryan doesn’t notice that I’m shaking.

Tanner knows what happened to my mother.

He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not really even my friend. He’s a spy who tried to get close to me to protect Moss’s secrets. To protect his family’s secrets. What makes me think I can trust him with anything? The fact that he makes my heart race?

I am such an idiot.

It’s not like Tanner gave me any reason to trust him in the first place. But I was suckered in anyway.

That’s the trouble with being damaged. It takes so little to break completely.

Mary Chris rounds the corner with Tanner close behind. Tanner
doesn’t meet my gaze as he unbuttons his shirt to install his own cam. At least he doesn’t try to fake like everything’s okay.

“What about weapons?” I ask, trying again to focus on the mission. Tanner is going to help me get to those files whether he knows it or not.

Tanner answers. “You’re not certified to carry a weapon.”

“Not true. I’m licensed to carry pepper spray. And I’ve got a brown belt in judo.”

“Not black?”

“I might’ve gotten kicked out of the dojo after I beat up Mark Holberg in the sixth grade.”

“I’m sure he deserved it,” Tanner says dryly.

“He made fun of Mare.”

Mary Chris laughs. “I’m pretty sure it was just his way of flirting.”

“Dude, good for you.” Ryan runs a camera through his own shirt. “Deserved. It.”

Mare reaches out and punches Ryan in the shoulder, still smiling.

Ryan sticks a tiny earbud in Mare’s ear before he looks back at me. “You have any training with knives?”

Tanner’s camera is in place and he buttons his shirt back over his abs. Jason will be glad to know that he wasn’t far off in his speculation about Tanner’s physique. Tanner finally looks at me. “No knives. They can be used against you if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

I plead to Ryan with my eyes. I don’t want to face Drew without something to protect myself. A knife is no protection against a gun, but it’s better than nothing. “I can handle it.”

Ryan grins and tilts his head toward the back of the room. I follow
him past a few shelves until we reach a row of knives of every size and shape. He holds up a curved blade with jagged edges. “I trust you’ll know what to do with this.”

“What’s there to know? Point and slash. Got it.” He hands me a holster that straps around my stomach. I strap the blade on and pull my shirt over it.

Ryan points to the camera on the button of my shirt. “Don’t forget. I’ve got your back, but I can only see what’s in the lens, so try not to cover it up.”

“I’ll try.”

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Ryan slips a green-and-white bracelet around my bare wrist. “The fuse is on the clasp. Just unclasp it and light the thick end. You’ll have about twenty seconds from ignition to a small caliber explosion. It’s good for getting through locked doors, that kind of thing.”

“Are you sure you should be giving me this?”

“It’s standard issue. We’ll tell Tanner that’s what we went to get. The knife will be our secret.”

I like having a secret to keep from Tanner. If it doesn’t make us even, it at least makes me feel back in control.

I might be desperate. But I’m going to do this on my terms.

W
e pile into a black minivan that’s outfitted with a mini-communications station, complete with laptops, flat screens, and satellite phones. Tanner and I sit in the back to review a schemata of the hotel where Drew is staying, while Mare and Ryan discuss the software capabilities of the satellite program from the front.

“You don’t have to do this.” I hear Tanner in stereo, here in the car and also in the little speaker in my ear. Like he’s literally inside my head. “Drew’s going to try to get those files tonight with or without your help.”

And if I’m not there, there’s no danger of my seeing those files. Thanks for the concern, buddy. “I need to do this.”

“Okay.” Tanner’s voice is in my head again, a low thrum that travels under my skin. “How long have you been working for your dad?”

I think back to when it started. I went with him on stakeouts from the time he started taking on contract jobs, in the backseat of his car with a blanket and pillow and a DVD. In the daytime, he’d take me
to restaurants, the park, hotels, wherever our mark went. I was great cover, and I loved every minute of it.

“Nine,” I say. “Eleven when Dad first put a camera in my hands. Fourteen before I got my own assignments. How about you? When did you start training to do this?”

“Pretty much since I could walk and talk. Some kids got puzzles as toys, I got codes to break. I’ve been trained in weapons, covert ops, undercover work, and interrogation techniques.”

“But no dancing.”

“And no mini-golf.” Tanner reaches for a monitor above his head and flips a switch, lighting up the west side of the hotel. “Drew’s room will be right here.”

I do my best to memorize the layout of the hotel grounds. “What does your mom do?”

“She’s more of a public relations guru.”

“Tanner.” Ryan’s voice is in my ear, and I almost jump out of the car seat and into Tanner’s lap, but stop myself by grabbing the armrest instead. “You know the rules.”

“Jesus, Ryan.” Tanner smiles at me from across the car. Not his behold-how-gorgeous-I-am smile, but a smaller, more intimate one that makes my heart flip over in my chest. “I always forget he’s there.”

I have to force myself not to smile back. I can’t let myself forget that Tanner and I are not on the same side.

“You already know too much.” Tanner’s eyes meet mine.

He has no idea.

Mary Chris interrupts from the front seat. “We’ve got live satellite
feed of the hotel.” Mare is in her element, surrounded by all this high-tech equipment. “Looks like Drew just left.”

Tanner turns back toward the front of the car. “Maybe I can get a look around his room before he gets back. Find out who he’s working with.”

“I’ll do it,” I say too quickly. I’m not letting Tanner keep any more secrets from me.

Tanner rubs his hand over his eyes. When he finally looks at me, his eyes are pained. “I can’t let you do that.”

The van is silent. The silence stretches, and after a minute, I think no one is going to say anything. Then Tanner’s voice is there, in the car and in my ear, so soft it’s almost an echo. “If anything bad were to happen …”

“I’ve got news for you, Tanner Halston, Preston, whatever your name really is. Something bad already happened. My mom is dead.”

Tanner closes his eyes and leans back in his seat. “Berry,” he starts to say, but Ryan interrupts him.

“Dude.”

Tanner turns to me, his face a mixture of sadness and something else. I can see the internal war he’s fighting right there in his eyes. I want to touch him, this him, and my hand finds his arm and slides from his elbow to his wrist. He breathes a sigh, smothering it on an exhale, but I catch it through my earpiece, his breath igniting a small fire that spreads through me. He takes my hand.

I lace my fingers with his and lean my cheek against the cold leather of the headrest, watching him. I don’t know how long we sit in silence, our eyes saying everything that we cannot.

He is going to betray me, but I won’t let him stop me from finding the truth. We both know that we can never really be together. Yet, we’re here now, our hands linked and our hearts clinging to the fantasy that we are a team. And maybe we are, for a few more hours at least.

Ryan turns the van into the parking lot of the Valle Vista Country Club. “We’re here.”

I practically leap out of the van. What was that? I know better than to hope for impossible things.

I almost jump at Ryan’s voice in my ear. “Berry?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad Tanner found you.”

“Yeah, well don’t give him too much credit. I wasn’t that hard to find. I’ve been living in the same house since I was born.”

“You know what I mean.”

The hotel is right on the golf course and is probably the most expensive one in Valle Vista. Ryan and Mary Chris stay in the van and monitor the perimeter so they can tell us when Drew gets back.

Tanner walks up beside me as we make our way inside.

The lobby is cold, with marble floors and marble walls and marble covering the surface of every table or desk. The patchwork of fresh flowers that adorn every table does little to warm up the room. I rub my arms with my palms until Tanner curls his arm around me and whispers in my ear. “Pretend we’re together.”

Pretend. My life is one giant game of pretend. Pretend you’re not watching people. Pretend you’re not here to sneak into a spy’s hotel room. Pretend you don’t feel anything as you lean into Tanner.

It’s a useless show. The only person in the lobby is a girl behind the check-in counter who doesn’t look up from the book she’s reading. Tanner pushes me down a corridor to an empty hallway. He keeps his arm around me even though there’s no one to see us here, and I do nothing to stop him.

We stop in front of a room near the end. He nods and finally takes his arm away from my waist, ducking back against the wall as I knock on the door.

“Drew?”

I don’t hear any sounds from inside the room, but I knock again. Still nothing. “How do we get in?” The door has one of those electronic locks. “Do you have a master key?”

“Something like that.” Tanner pulls a tennis bracelet from his pocket. “Explosives.”

“That might attract a little more attention than we’re going for.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You have a better idea?”

The door is tucked into the frame, so it’s not the kind of lock I can pick. I’ll have to get us in the old-fashioned way. Manipulation. “Watch me.” I walk past him before he can stop me. He starts to follow, but I hold up my hand. “Stay out of sight.”

I head back into the lobby. The girl at the counter still doesn’t look up from her book. I get closer and study the cover, one of those romance novels with the picture of a girl getting ravished by some guy in a ruffled shirt and ripped chest. What’s with the ruffled shirts? It’s not exactly masculine.

I lean over the counter, and she finally looks up, pushing a strand of black hair behind her eyes. “Can I help you?”

“I’m so sorry to bother you.” I lean forward. “But I was hoping you could help me surprise my boyfriend.” The girl perks up, setting the book on the counter as I talk. “I’m not supposed to be here until tomorrow, but I got in early. Drew is having dinner with his parents tonight, and I thought I’d surprise him by waiting for him in the room.”

The girl smiles and taps at the computer in front of her. “Is your name on the room?”

I shake my head. “I’m not sure. It’s Drew Mattingly, room 139.”

“He’s here, but there’s no one else on the room, hon. I can’t give you a key if you’re not registered. It’s against hotel policy.”

It’s not hard to look crestfallen. Tanner’s voice is in my ear. “Nice try.” But Tanner doesn’t see the disappointment in the girl’s eyes. She wants to help me.

“Oh. I wanted to surprise him. I mean, he’ll be surprised when he sees me in the lobby, but I was hoping when he saw me, it would be more”—I look around the lobby, and even though there’s no one else around, I lower my voice—“romantic.”

“Hello,” Tanner laughs in my head. “I’m sold.”

The girl grins back at me.

“It’s a little crazy, right?”

The girl shakes her head. “Not at all.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’ve always wanted to do something like that.”

“Me too. Oh well.” I start to turn away from the desk, but I don’t take my eyes off the girl, letting the silence stretch between us.

Predictably, the girl fills it. “I can’t give you a key, but maybe I could let you in?”

I can picture Tanner’s smile as he talks in my head. “I had no idea you were such a romantic.” It’s all I can do not to tell him to shut up.

Tanner is smart enough to make himself scarce as the girl leads me down the hall and opens the door with a master key card.

“Have fun,” she smiles as I slip into the room and flip on the light.

But the surprise is on me.

Drew sits up in bed, his eyes blinking. “You’re early.”

D
rew is out of bed and across the room in three smooth strides, his hand on my arm before I can reach for my knife or get out of the room.

I try to focus. My pulse is running the Kentucky Derby, but I need to stay calm on the outside. Not easy when Drew is wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. “Hi Drew.”

It doesn’t help that Mary Chris is my ear, her voice edged with panic. “Tanner, Ryan! You guys need to get in there now!”

Then Tanner’s calmer voice. “Berry, you’re doing fine. He was expecting you anyway. Just go with it.”