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 three desks down. “Can you imagine pretending to be Ryan Vail’s wife all week?”
Angie stared at Sally Singer, a normally sedate forensic accountant, checking to see if she was serious.
“Um, yeah, I think Jeannie wins this round,” Paula said, laughing, and God, looking a little envious.
Were they crazy? Ryan Vail was a hell of an agent, but he was a player of epic proportions. Everyone knew about his exploits. And while he kept his personal life separate from his work life, he hadn’t even tried to keep his reputation from spreading. Legend had it that he’d “entertained” four different Victoria’s Secret models, although no one was clear if that had been at the same time or not.
She had to give it to him. His technique was subtle and effective. To her own mortification, his charm had almost worked on her. Admittedly it had been at a party and they’d both had too much to drink, but it still embarrassed her to think about it. Nothing would have come of it, though, because the last thing she wanted was to be another notch on Vail’s belt.
“I think you guys are nuts. This week isn’t going to be easy for either of them,” Brad said as he rolled a quarter over the backs of his fingers in what he called a dexterity exercise, but was in truth his way of coping without cigarettes. “Sharing a bed? Intimacy exercises? I mean, what the hell would intimacy exercises even be?”
“Oh, brother. If you have to ask I feel sorry for your wife,” Angie said, and the rest of the crew laughed.
God, she hoped that cut the conversation short because she knew exactly what the exercises would entail. Lots of touching, kissing, maybe even getting naked and she absolutely could not think about Ryan in that context. At least not at work.
“I should have been the one to go undercover with him,” Paula said. “Seriously. I would’ve appreciated the experience so much more than Jeannie.”
Brad’s laugh was more about disbelief than amusement. “You have a boyfriend.”
Paula gave them an innocent smile. “It’s not cheating if you’re doing it for a case. That’s like vacation sex but you still get paid.”
“Like hell it’s not cheating,” he said to more laughter, which said more about their long hours and how punchy