how things work for you IA agents, but you’re supposed to leave things as you find them when you’re out in the field.”
My mouth gapes when she whacks me in the gut. Melody used to do it all the time, but it seems odd coming from Phillipa. She seems too mature and anal about consequences to respond to a taunt with violence. “I didn’t need to rewire the alarm because I didn’t disarm it.”
I gesture for her to enter the elevator car before me while asking, “Then how did you get in?”
She waits for me to push the button for my floor before disclosing, “I put in the passcode.” When I peer at her in shocked awe, she frees me from being hooked by her awesomeness. “It’s Isabelle’s birthday.”
“That’s not right. I tried that combination when I reset it.”
When the elevator arrives at my floor, Phillipa exits first, smiling. “Not her actual birthday. The day she was reborn.” She pivots around to face me, her smile picking up. “The date referenced on the file that miraculously disappeared from Tobias’s records.”
“Who said there’s a missing file?” I realize I need to up my lying game when her brow arches in suspicion.
Grumbling, I shove my key into the lock and twist. A wolf-whistle vibrates between Phillipa’s O-formed mouth when she takes in the living area of my apartment. “Nice place. Have you lived here long?”
I toss my keys onto the entryway table before making my way to the kitchen. “Are you sure you don’t work for Ravenshoe PD?”
She screws up her nose, my comment lost on her.
“Did you want something to drink?”
I hide my smile into the fridge when she replies, “Are you sure you want to walk down that path again, Agent James? You don’t have a ten-mile safety barrier between us this time around.”
The unconcealed sexual innuendo in her tone has my eyes darting between a bottle of water and an untouched bottle of wine. My deliberation barely lasts two seconds, but it still riddles me with guilt, which in turn, sours my mood. You can’t cheat on someone if you aren’t with them because they cheated on you.
Phillipa’s mood slips as well as mine when she spots the bottle of water in my hand. “It’s barely midday,” I say, issuing her the first excuse that pops into my head. “Have you eaten? I could order in some food?”
“Does pretzels and a teeny tiny, practically-not-worth-swallowing glass of soda the airlines hand out during flights count as eating?”
Her snarky tone tugs a smile onto my face. “I’ll order in. Anything in particular you want to eat?”
“I eat anything.” She stops perusing the picture frames on my entryway table to stray her eyes to mine. “Except snails.”
Her gag face is cute. Actually, she’s cute in general. I’ve just never truly taken the time to look at her. Her hair is almost black and hangs to her petite waist. Her eyes are wide and almond-shaped, and both her name and skin-coloring allude to a Greek origin. She’s tall for a girl, standing at approximately five-foot-nine, and she has a fit, slender frame she showcases with fitted pantsuits and shimmery blouses—a seemingly favorable outfit for female IA agents.
When Phillipa notices my gawk of her body, I drop my eyes to a drawer of pamphlets. If she weren’t as receptive as she is, I would have gotten away with my wandering eyes. Unfortunately, anyone would swear she was put through the same drills as Melody and I when we were kids. “How come you didn’t fight Ophelia’s charges? You clearly didn’t do what she said you did, so why didn’t you deny her claims?”
I ruffle through the pamphlets, pretending I can’t feel my heart rate picking up. “I did fight her claims—”
“No, you didn’t. You allowed them to be pushed down your file when she found another sucker to do her dirty work, but you didn’t have them expunged.”
Part of Phillipa’s comment refers to a file she put together today. It’s a list of wire transfers between the Popovs and the Petrettis the past three decades. Not all of the Petrettis’ transactions were issued from the east side of the country—their home turf. Some came from the west, and they were dated right around the time of a mafia princess’s ‘death,’ and when a rookie FBI agent was assigned to a division far from her hometown.
We don’t know if the transactions stopped because Ophelia’s new marriage got her on the straight and narrow or because