afternoon.
It would be more fun to play craps or hang out in one of the casino bars, but from the moment he’d checked in, FBI Special Agent Ryan Vail was locked in a vault for the duration of his stay, replaced by the fictitious Ryan Ebsen. Husband of the equally fictitious Jeannie Ebsen. Son of Felicia and Bob from Reseda, California.
Ryan sifted through the file, studying the cover story he already knew inside and out. But when you pretended to be someone else, there was no such thing as too much prep. Ebsen was a regional manager for a business software firm. His lovely bride of nineteen months didn’t work because she didn’t need to. Not because he brought in enough money to live their extravagant life, but because she had a trust fund. A very hefty trust fund.
But Mrs. Ebsen had been spending a little too much time at the club lately with a very handsome tennis coach, which made Ryan itchy. He doubted they were sleeping together, but there was always a risk that if she started to feel as if the honeymoon was over, she could find solace in the tennis pro’s arms. It had been Ryan Ebsen’s idea to attend this couple’s retreat week, where they would “Learn how to transition to the deeper, more meaningful stage of a committed relationship.”
Mr. Ebsen, the scoundrel, really, really wanted to make the marriage work. He’d grown attached to their Brentwood home, the Manhattan pied-à-terre, his Ferrari, the first-class travel. He’d even decided to break things off with Roxanne, the gorgeous receptionist at his office. He was nothing if not serious about this intimacy crap.
He continued to read the email from his team in White Collar Crimes back in L.A. The first report of blackmail had come shortly after a weekend Intimate At Last retreat in Los Angeles, and since it dealt with some historic artwork and blackmail, the L.A. team had taken point on the investigation and now this sting operation. The Vegas office was up to speed, of course. No one wanted a turf war, but there was a time limit on this gig, because in a matter of weeks, the suspects were moving their base of operation to Cancún, Mexico.
So he was on the clock. Since the missus wasn’t here, he’d unpack, take a swim, order room service, charge his equipment and himself. Far from the carnal night Jeannie imagined, he’d been up till dawn talking the Long Beach P.D. out of putting his old man in jail. The stubborn idiot had been drunk off his ass again, trying to pick a fight with a half-dozen marines. It was like dealing with a rebellious teenager, only his father was in his fifties.
So sleep tonight, and tomorrow, he and Jeannie would be the very picture of a cookie-cutter couple: powdered sugar on the outside, but filled with lots and lots to lose if a certain trust-fund wife found out about her philandering hubby.
After he’d checked out the room service menu, and thank God there was an expense account because, Jesus, the prices, he opened up his suitcase while he found the sports channel on the TV. His thoughts weren’t on the scoreboards, however, but on the reason he needed this operation to succeed beyond all expectations. Deputy Director Leonard was looking to fill a staff position in his Washington, D.C., office. Ryan was a contender in a very narrow pool of candidates. And now that he was in the spotlight, he was going to make damn sure he was a shining star.
ANGIE WOLF SIGHED WHEN SHE heard the voices of the rest of the White Collar Crimes team coming in from their break on the outdoor patio. Damn, it seemed as if they’d left two minutes ago, not nearly enough time for her to breathe let alone hear herself think.
They were a great bunch: competent, dedicated and generally nice people with whom she got along well considering work colleagues were always a crapshoot. But the past two months had been brutal. She’d spent way too many hours in the office and right now she’d give anything to be alone, preferably on a ten-mile run with nothing more to worry about than beating her last record.
Even as she heard them close in on the bullpen, she stayed just as she was, legs stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed, one heel on her desk, leaning back in her chair as far as she could. The fresh air would’ve been nice, but two of the team members smoked and that she could do without.
“Hey, how come you didn’t come out for the lifting of the Red Bulls?”
Angie smiled at Paula, another Special Agent who’d been in charge of the artwork aspect of the operation. The painting in question was a Reubens, stolen during World War II and recovered in the late 1990s. It was worth millions, and had been “gifted” to a New Mexico art gallery, which had then sold it to an anonymous private collector.
The transaction had been legal on the surface, but the granddaughter of the original owner was certain her grandfather had been blackmailed into giving away the family treasure. The Deputy Director of the FBI had been friends with the family since birth.
And now, if Angie’s White Collar Crimes team had done their jobs right, the task force was days away from zeroing in on the blackmailers.
Angie realized Paula was still waiting for an answer. Break time was definitely over. “Haven’t we spent enough quality time together? Two months of eighty- and ninety-hour weeks? I mean, come on.”
Paula flopped into her chair and turned it so she faced Angie. “You can take a break when you’re dead. Or tonight, when we go out for drinks. That one, you’re not getting out of. We’ll use force if necessary.”
“You and what army?”
“Me, for one.” It was Brad Pollinger, Angie’s partner in the field. He was followed into the room by several other members of the group, all of whom cheerfully let her know that they weren’t above using every dirty trick in the book to get her to join them.
“Fine. But I’m having exactly one beer.” The bullpen was pretty full now, with only Fred MIA, but he was perennially late.
“Don’t you have any fun?” Paula eyed Angie’s sturdy low-heeled pumps propped on the desk. Comfort won over fashion every time for Angie. “Ever?”
“I have plenty,” she said, although her definition of fun leaned more heavily toward achievement than clubbing. Whether it was cutting a few seconds off her morning run or working on side projects that could get her to the next stage of her ten-year plan, she wasn’t much of a party gal.
She’d always been a big believer in setting short-term goals that fed directly into long-term strategies. Even though she’d stopped being a competitive runner, she still kept up the discipline and used the skills she’d picked up as a kid to keep herself on task.
From the beginning of this assignment, she’d realized the potential. With her computer programming skills and familiarity with investigation protocols she could make a significant contribution. And she had.
Angie’s new program had led to the revelation about Delilah Bridges’s father, that he’d been arrested under an alias for robbery on four separate occasions. It wasn’t much as far as real leads went, but it was still a piece of an ever-expanding puzzle. The broader the picture, the more likely the pieces that didn’t appear to connect would suddenly come together.
She’d worked damn hard on coding that sucker, a search engine with such a sexy algorithm it had given the guys in Cyber Crimes nerdgasms.
It had also been noteworthy enough to put her in the running for the position with the Deputy Director in Washington D.C. She wanted that job, badly. It would be a huge feather in her cap, the kind of promotion that would set her apart from the crowd. And it would put her squarely in the arena of real power, where she intended to not just stay, but thrive.
“Jeannie’s the one having all the fun,” came a voice from
