Under the Rose - Kathryn Nolan Page 0,15

she said. “Remember about the knee-meeting-balls thing.”

I swallowed a smirk. Instead I stood quickly, yanking her with me.

“Interesting way of saying thanks for catching me, Byrne,” I retorted.

Freya’s hair had fallen from its bun, and her glasses sat askew on her nose. I went to fix them, then dropped my hands.

“What…what are you doing?” she asked, cagey.

“Nothing.” I let my hands land on my tie, absently straightening it. “Dahl’s gone, by the way.”

“Interesting way of saying you lost our suspect, Byrne.”

Tourists were clustered around us, cars speeding by. I took Freya by the elbow and headed toward the closest crosswalk. Like earlier, she shook me off, stalking ahead with her spine straight.

“A garbage truck cut me off,” I hissed, easily matching her pace. “I followed him into an alley, and he disappeared.”

She glanced over her shoulder once, pulling me into a darkened doorway of a hair salon. We were facing the hotel and museum where I’d chased Dahl down.

“That’s the book festival Abe’s been talking about all day,” she said, pointing to the hotel. Now that I was paying attention, I noticed the long white banner stretched across its grandiose entrance: The 60th Annual Antiquarian Book Festival.

“Shit,” I said.

“My thoughts exactly,” she replied. “I ran inside, did a cursory search of the lobby and the first-floor rooms. The convention opens tomorrow morning, so the public spaces were all closed off. He could be in there, checked into a room. Or he could have run to that museum. Or he could have grabbed a cab and sped off to the airport. I couldn’t keep a visual on him.”

“Me neither,” I admitted.

“You know what could have helped the situation? Having your partner there to help you. And not spooking him in the first place.”

I scowled, walking quickly to the alley where we’d dumped my car. “Dahl took off. I followed. There isn’t a law against it.”

“Not a law,” Freya said, tapping her chin. “But we don’t leave partners behind, do we?”

She was absolutely right—but I didn’t reply.

We slid into the car, both of us blowing out twin breaths of irritation. Her phone vibrated with a call from Abe—one glance at her face, and I knew she was as pissed off as I was.

I leaned in to listen, caught her sugar scent. Ignored my body’s physical response to her nearness. Ignored the curve of her neck, the glittering gold studs along the curve of her ear. The studs were shaped like stars and planets. Freya Evandale had a veritable universe pierced in her skin.

“Update, please,” came Abe’s clipped voice as soon as she answered the call.

“Sam and I pursued who we assumed was Dahl all the way from Queen Village to Center City,” she explained. “Unfortunately, we lost our visual.”

Abe’s silence was telling.

“We can’t confirm where he ended up,” I added. “But we believe he ran into The Grand Dame Hotel, sir.”

“The book festival?” came his immediate response. Something electric sparked between Freya and me—brighter than our combined frustration. I knew the unique sensation of this demand.

It was a lead. Abe felt it, too—because his next words were, “Come back to Codex immediately. We need a plan.”

“I’m not usually one for brute force, but why don’t we make it easy on ourselves and have Sam bust into the hotel with his FBI badge?” Freya said, shrugging. “Ask to see the guest list for the hotel?”

“That’s not a good idea,” Abe and I both said. Freya’s eyes narrowed at me—an attempt to decipher what I hoped wasn’t an obvious lie. Except she and I had been trained by the best human lie detectors in the world.

“Why not?” she asked. “Isn’t that why we’re using Byrne as a consultant?”

I was technically an FBI agent on administrative leave under internal investigation. I was denied FBI privileges at every level, had been stripped of my badge and gun. My privately-owned weapon was holstered at my back, but the weight of it felt off.

“Because I’d rather see Codex agents infiltrate undercover,” Abe said. “It’s smarter and raises less of a profile. Remember, Scarlett is paying us to be as discreet as possible. Not run into situations with guns blazing.”

“That makes sense.” Her tone toward her boss was conciliatory.

But the way she was staring at me betrayed her inner desire to call me on my bullshit.

“Let’s regroup in twenty,” he said. “I’ve got a signed contract in my hands. We’ve been hired by a famous Hollywood director for a case with a swift deadline. And the only people I