a kid. “What happened with the guy you were following? You got here fast.”
“I lost him.” Chris shook his head, disappointed. “Yeah, I know. I know. Not like me. I swear the guy basically vanished before my eyes.” He held his phone out between them. “Got a photo. Not the best. Sent it to Harper to see if she can work her magic and get us a name.” He tucked his phone back into his pocket and rifled through the bag on the floor. “I got an Uber here and didn’t expect to see some guy at her door when I arrived.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that, either.” Especially not her ex. Was he in town for work? Based on Ana’s file, he was an FBI agent stationed in Hungary for a special assignment cracking down on Russian mobsters. Annnnd shit. He was the special agent the unit was bringing onto the team, wasn’t he?
“Here. Check your fortune,” Chris said in an attempt to distract him. He tossed one of the two fortune cookies that’d been included with the dinner Chris had grabbed during their stakeout of the Hoover Building. “Maybe all the answers are inside that cookie.”
“Are you ever serious?” But A.J. removed the plastic wrapping from the cookie anyway, his nerves more shot than before he’d been assigned to stalk the woman he’d recently drunk dialed.
“Since when are you Mr. Doom and Gloom?” Chris popped the cookie in his mouth and squinted at the small white paper in his hand.
“Wouldn’t you be a bit sour if—”
“The woman you want to have babies with was currently inside her townhouse with her ex-husband and was also a potential traitor to the United States?”
A.J. slapped Chris’s bicep with the hand that clutched the cookie, and he nearly crumbled the thing in his palm.
“What?” Chris shrugged. “I’ve known you a long damn time, and I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Which is why you had me call her in my drunken state Saturday, huh?” A.J. pressed.
“Someone needed to give you a push. I just didn’t expect we’d be seeing her under these circumstances the next day.”
That was a big fat ditto.
“You will chase fortune but win a heart,” Chris read the note from his cookie. “Chasing fortune, huh?” He sat up and stuffed the note in his pocket as if he planned on keeping it. “Yours?”
A.J. cracked the cookie, and Chris swiped the broken parts and tossed the pieces into his mouth. “You’re like a growing boy who never stops eating.” He couldn’t help but laugh at Chris. The man was good at a lot of things—one of them, making him smile even during the shittiest times. Case in point now.
“So, what’s in your future?” Chris asked around a mouthful of cookie, crumbs dropping onto his plain black tee.
A.J. removed his sunglasses since it was after seven, and Ana wasn’t around to spot him in the vehicle. “Trusting a traitor is dangerous, but falling for one is the deadliest sin of all.”
“Noooo, really?” Chris’s eyes stretched in surprise. He snatched the paper and peered at it, then flipped it over. “You got a blank one. You pulled that shit out of your ass? How very Confucius of you.” He threw the paper back at him. “You know what a blank paper means, right?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
Chris pivoted his Red Sox ball cap backward and pressed his shoulder casually to the side door. “You get a fresh start. You get to determine your fate.”
“Oh, and you don’t?” A.J.’s brows rose as he waited for Chris to enlighten him.
Chris flashed his white teeth. “No, it sounds like I’m coming into money. And meeting a woman, too.”
“Lucky you.”
“Or, maybe I already met one.” Chris had to be referring to Rory.
“And if you were to break her heart—”
“Jesse will break my legs? Or would you?” He grinned. Apparently, the threat of bodily harm didn’t offend him in the least. “You know, you could vouch for me, since you’re his friend and all.” He held both palms open as if it were that easy. “And I’m your friend.”
A.J. didn’t want to talk about Chris’s love life right now, not when he was sitting outside Ana’s house, and his prospects with her were dwindling by the second. He set his blank fortune on the console between their seats and closed the file on his lap, unable to look down at Ana’s gorgeous green eyes and not feel like some weird creeper. “You don’t actually believe