backward glance toward Lisette. The atmosphere defused with his departure.
She’d heard Colton was a maverick who often got results by acting and thinking outside the box. She had serious misgivings about working with someone like that. She’d even considered asking her superior to assign another FBI agent when she’d heard who her partner would be. But she couldn’t walk away, not when children were involved. That overrode all misgivings she had about her partner for this case. Which left her working with the type of law enforcement officer she tried to steer clear of. Her mother had been like that, doing whatever it took to get the job done, and she’d ended up discredited. She resigned from the FBI not long after Lisette had graduated from the FBI Academy at Quantico. It was not a stellar way to start her career—the daughter of a disgraced agent who hadn’t backed up her partner and had been suspected of taking money from a crime scene.
She stiffened her spine. She would make the best of a bad situation and rise above any shortcoming Colton Phillips might have. Then she remembered something else she’d heard about the man: he got results so the U.S. Marshals Service tolerated him.
She wanted to be more than just tolerated. She wanted to prove not all Suttons were the same. She wasn’t anything like her mother.
“Agent Sutton, Marshal Phillips is a bit unorthodox, but he does get the job done. After you two get the rest of the information from Saunders, we can then decide the best way to proceed. My children are teenagers, but it wasn’t that long ago they were babies. One crime that bothers me more than anything is one against a child. We need to get the people behind this ring.”
Lisette rose, gripping the straps of her purse. “I totally agree. If Saunders has any info, we’ll get it out of him.”
Marshal Benson pushed to his feet and stretched his arm across the desk. “We don’t have a lot of time to play with here. According to Saunders, something is going down soon.”
Lisette shook his hand. “I understand. Good day.”
She took the stairs to the first floor and exited the building, scanning the cars for Colton. A honk sounded in the early morning, drawing her attention. The man climbed from a black Firebird—obviously not a U.S. Marshals Service’s vehicle. The highly polished car gleamed in the sunlight.
She approached him. “I’m surprised this Firebird isn’t red.”
“I thought about that, but I didn’t want to be too obvious. I’ve got to blend into traffic sometimes.” He started to round the front. “Let’s go.”
She watched him. “You want me to drive?”
A look of horror momentarily graced his face, then his expression evened out. “No way anyone else gets behind the wheel of my car.” He opened the passenger door. “I was being a gentleman.”
A flush seared her cheeks, and she stared at him over the top of the Firebird. “I’ll follow you in my car.”
“What is it?”
“A navy blue Ford SUV.” She gestured toward where it was parked in the lot nearby.
He chuckled. “That screams ‘federal agent.’ No, we’ll use my car.”
For a long moment she drilled her gaze into him. He didn’t waver but returned her stare. Then she heaved a sigh and skirted the rear to the Firebird. “And your car screams ‘I want to drag race.’”
“I haven’t tried that. Maybe I’ll take up that sport someday.”
She slid into the passenger seat, aware of the close interior in the Firebird. She should have insisted on driving them in her SUV, or at the very least following him.
He still held the door. She reached to close it, but he shut it instead. Then he grinned at her and came around to his side, his movements economical and fluid. He caught her staring out the windshield at him and gave her another cocky grin.
She refused to look away.
He settled behind the wheel and started the engine. “I promise you that before this assignment is over, I will show you what this baby can do.”
A male and his car. She rolled her eyes and peered out her side window. She’d been excited about the new assignment. It had the potential to prove to her superiors she wasn’t anything like her mother, but now she was having major doubts about her partner. This was going to be a long assignment.
TWO
Before putting the Firebird into Drive, Colton twisted toward Agent Lisette Sutton. “We need to get a few things straight right from the start.” He waited until she turned her head toward him, not one emotion visible on her face. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, curious to see what she would do. He hadn’t wanted to team up with an FBI agent, especially one he knew nothing about.
One of her eyebrows arched. “We’re in a no-parking zone.”
“I think it would be safer to talk about this without driving. The conversation needs our full attention.”
She released a long breath. “Then tell me before I grow old.”
“You and I may not perform our duties the same way, but in this case I am the lead. I just wanted to make sure you heard fully what my boss said about this being under the U.S. Marshals Service’s jurisdiction.”
“My hearing is perfectly fine.” Lisette Sutton fiddled with her glasses.
“Then I have the final say in how we operate. I have been a marshal for ten years with a high success rate. I know what to do.”
“I heard you the first time in Marshal Benson’s office,” she said with little inflection in her voice, her expression neutral.
“Good, then there should be no problems between us.”
“For your information, I won’t blindly follow anyone’s order.” She looked him squarely in the eye, anger piercing through him. “There are rules and procedures in place for a reason.”
Colton’s gut hardened as though preparing for a punch while his hands balled. “What have you heard about me?”
“I work with an FBI agent who was assigned to Miami at the same time you were. He told me you went into a house without a search warrant, jeopardizing the case.”
“But I saved the witness. There wasn’t any time to get a warrant. When it comes to people I’m protecting, I do what I must to keep them alive. That is my primary duty.” He threw the car into Drive and pulled out into the traffic.
His tight grip around the steering wheel made his hands ache after ten minutes. He loosened his hold. He’d had to grab the witness in the case she’d referred to because of a mess-up with the FBI. The agent for the Bureau had taken an eye off the witness, and he’d escaped because he was scared testifying put him in jeopardy. Colton wondered if she knew the whole story: that the agent responsible had lost his job over the mistake. In Lisette Sutton’s point of view Colton had to prove himself, but as far as Colton was concerned, she had to prove herself to him. He trusted no one, and especially not an officer who was inflexible. He’d learned that inflexibility could get a person killed.
The
