“Wait. You’re an FBI agent?” Eric asked. “And you’re working with them? With criminals?”
“It’s a long story,” Leo said. “Complicated.”
“Blackmail,” Breck said succinctly.
Eric’s eyes widened.
There was a knock on the door. “Room service,” a voice called.
Davis stood up. “I got it.” He pulled his wallet out of no-doubt designer jeans that fit as if they’d been tailored for him. Taking out a few bills, he opened the door, blocking the view inside with his body. He handed the person the money and then waited until they had gone to wheel the heavily-laden cart inside.
There were a few minutes of noise and mayhem while the food was distributed and coffee was secured. Wesley had come in with a cardboard take-out cup of coffee and had finished with a second cup before I sat down with my plate.
“Let me get this straight,” Leo said, pointing a forkful of eggs Florentine at me. “You have actually been presenting yourself as Waters in public, and not just as some part of a con.”
“Yes. I am doing it with full permission of Walters senior and junior.”
“I have to know how that came to be,” he said, shaking his head as if the world had once again disappointed him with its fraud and corruption.
“It involves a brief shining moment when I was legally employed by an insurance company as an insurance fraud instigator.” I made a show of pouring syrup onto my pancakes and cutting off a piece while they watched.
“Didn’t you used to commit insurance fraud?” Danny asked.
“Still do, sometimes. That’s why I was so good at my job. It takes a thief, etcetera. Besides, it’s not as if insurance companies can’t spare the money. I like to keep them on their toes.” I did. I hated those bastards and any time I could get money from them without too much work, I did. “Remind me to tell you about the stolen show dogs,” I said to Eric.
Eric looked at me aghast. “You kidnapped dogs?”
“I didn’t kidnap them,” I explained, switching out one of his sausage links for a piece of my bacon. “I just arranged for them to be kidnapped. For the insurance money. The dogs were fine.”
“You’re the one who ran that job?” Ridge asked.
Breck’s eyes bugged out. “Did you kidnap show dogs?” he asked his brother.
“Technically it’s dognapping,” Ridge answered.
“Yeah, but did you do it?” Breck asked.
Ridge shrugged, gazing at his brother over the edge of his coffee mug.
Wesley and Danny appeared to be having a very quiet argument over in their corner, with Danny offering up bites of food from his plate. Wesley shook his head, hands clenched around his coffee mug.
Eric’s head swiveled between the brothers.
“I’m appalled,” Breck said. “Disgusted.”
Ridge scoffed. “All the things you’ve seen. And done,” he emphasized. “And that’s what upsets you?”
“They were fine!” Ridge shouted back, standing up from his chair.
Everyone stopped talking. Well, almost everyone.
Caught mid-sentence, Danny’s voice rang out loud and clear in the sudden silence following the outburst. “—blow job if you eat at least some real food.”
Davis burst out laughing immediately. Steele and Breck close behind.
Danny turned bright red but his expression remained sternly directed at Wesley. Thank goodness someone was looking after the hacker. Wesley looked like he could use some real food.
Leo pinched the bridge of his nose in his usual gesture of exasperation.
“Damn,” Eric said. “If I’d had incentive like that, I would have eaten a lot more of my vegetables.”
“Yes, well,” I said. “To get back to my identity as JB Waters, Jr., Ben to his friends. As I said, for a brief moment I had a legitimate job investigating insurance fraud. I got called to the Waters’ estates. Turns out it wasn’t fraud, they had actually been robbed. That’s how I met young Ridge here.”
“He caught you?” Breck asked wide-eyed
Ridge scowled. “Not in the act. He tracked me down somehow.”
“And you let him go?” Leo asked me.
“I was not then, nor have I ever been, a cop,” I reminded him. “My job was simply to determine which crime had been committed, not to do the police’s job for them. I found Ridge afterward, for a more personal matter.”
“I’m sure the insurance company expected differently,” Davis said. He’d been a law enforcement officer until very recently. It would take him a while to come around to a different way of thinking.
“Then they should have been more specific with their contract,” I said.