“Doug, are you watching the shop?”
“Uh-yeah.”
“Okay. Can you see Carlisle inside the building?”
“Um… no?”
“Fine. Doug, I want you to take off your jacket and your tie, right now.”
“Why?”
“Hold on. Matt, see if you can find a list of bus stops nearby.”
“Colleen,” Doug pressed, “where the hell are you going?”
“Right now I’m looking for a parking spot. There weren’t any on that street. Doug, take off your jacket and tie. Watch the motorcycle shop to see if Carlisle leaves on his bike or if anyone picks him up. Otherwise you might have to follow him on foot and tell us what bus stop he goes to.”
“…’kay, why am I taking my jacket and tie off?”
“So you can put them back on later if you have to tail him on a bus or on foot. Right now he’ll just see a guy in a blue shirt. This way you can be a guy in a full suit later. And put your sunglasses on.”
“What sunglasses?”
“What kind of FBI guy doesn’t always have sunglasses?” Colleen asked. She saw Matt’s head bowed in his task. Again, she allowed herself a smile.
“What am I supposed to do about my weapon and my holster?”
“Wrap ‘em up in your jacket, silly!”
The phone let out a plaintive tone. “It’s Hauser,” said Matt.
“Speakerphone, conference call it,” Colleen instructed She found a parking spot half a block back from where she’d left Doug.
“Joe, can you hear us?” asked Matt.
“What’s going on?” Hauser asked.
“Carlisle came up on Matt’s radar,” Colleen explained. “I’m teaching the boys how to run a tail.”
“How’s it going?”
She sat up in her seat, looking out over the other cars. Doug held his phone up, pretending to be lost and looking for directions. “They’ve got some promise.”
“Colleen,” Matt murmured, “we can see everything from here, we could pick him up-“
“Ssssshhh,” she replied. “Let him learn.”
“Shit,” Doug grunted, “he’s out of there already, coming my way. He doesn’t have his helmet, so I think he’s-“
“Doug, shut up and play dumb!” Colleen hissed. The line went silent. She watched as Alex jogged across the street, walked straight past Doug and ducked into another storefront. “What is that?”
“It’s a florist shop,” Doug said. He fell silent. One minute stretched into the next. “He’s picking up two bouquets of roses,” Doug observed. “What’s a guy get for buying his girl two bouquets?”
* * *
“Such lovely breasts,” Amber taunted, revealing them with a flirtatious smile. “Firm. Plump. Healthy.” She tossed the package down onto Jason’s kitchen counter. Then she opened his refrigerator and drew forth a small cardboard carton. “Huevos,” she said in her best telenovia pout. “We ladies like a man with huevos.”
“That’s a great accent,” smiled Jason. “You took Spanish?”
“Always wanted to move to California,” Amber smiled, rising again and closing his ‘fridge with her foot. “Had to take one language or another. Seemed like the thing to do.”
“Anything else we need?”
“One thing,” she breathed, then threw herself up against the refrigerator as if she loved it, staring at him, sliding one hand up its smooth, solid front, and grabbed the box of corn flakes sitting at its top. “There’s just no way to make corn flakes sexy,” she cooed, managing to stay in character for roughly two seconds more until she couldn’t help but laugh.
Jason shook his head. “I’m impressed.”
“Me, too. I’ve never seen a casserole dish in a bachelor pad. Pretty fancy for a college boy.”
“It came with the set,” he said. “Not like it’s quality.”
“You’re living on your own. It’s a step up from most guys.” She put the package of chicken on the cutting board, pulled his sole kitchen knife from its holder and slid them over to him, along with a suspicious grin. “Or is this all just more burdensome college debt?”
“No, tuition and books and all that are college debt. I got some scholarships, but nothing like a full ride. The apartment is, uh…” His words faltered. She said nothing in the silence, waiting quietly as she went about her end of preparations for cooking dinner. Eventually her eyebrows rose, wordlessly encouraging him to finish his sentence. “I guess you could call it inheritance money?”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He set to trimming the chicken. “Wasn’t anyone close at all. Kind of a-well. Anyway. Yeah. Less said about it the better.”
“You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about,” Amber assured him with just the right tone.
“Kinda promised I wouldn’t,” Jason said. “I don’t want to give the wrong impression.”
“Don’t trust me, huh?” Amber smirked.
“If you don’t see me keep my word with other people, why would you expect me to keep quiet when you trust me with something?”
She couldn’t fault his logic. “You’ve got me there,” she said. “I mean it, though. I’m not trying to pry. Sorry if it seems that way.” She felt like apologizing for lying about that, too, but that wasn’t exactly in the cards.
Silence crept in between them. Amber ran the chicken through the beaten eggs, then rolled it in crushed cornflakes and set it in the casserole dish.
“Does this feel awkward all of the sudden?” Jason asked after rinsing his hands off.
Yes. Absolutely. You don’t even know. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just…” He waited for her to look up at him again. Then he leaned in, saw her eyes widen as she realized what was about to happen, and continued on until their lips met.
Her eyes closed. He was gentle. Soft. Sweet. His hand on her shoulder didn’t squeeze or hold firm or do anything except offer a reassuring point of reference when every other sound and sight of the world fell away until there was nothing but a first kiss.
He wasn’t her first. She dated in college and afterward. Yet she hadn’t gotten to a point where first kisses were ever casual. She let his lips linger, and kissed back, and if her lips were timid on his they still didn’t pull away.
Amber’s eyes fluttered open only a breath before his. They stared quietly. She saw a confidence in his smile that hadn’t been there before. “I had to clear that up,” he said.
One corner of her mouth spread out away from the other. “Not the moment I thought you’d pick.”
“I didn’t want you to feel cornered or trapped.” His hand slid down her shoulder, then her side, and finally fell away. “Plus if you run away screaming now all I need to do is put the dish in the oven.”
Amber let out a snorting laugh, covered her face in instant embarrassment, peeked at him through her fingers and laughed again. Jason took it upon himself to open the oven and slide the dish inside. “Man, check me out. I’m domestic and suave,” he said.
The stupid, bashful grin on her face wouldn’t go away. Not when she reminded herself that they were five critical years apart instead of the two she claimed as part of her cover. Nor when she reminded herself that she was, indeed, here undercover.
She felt guilty about that, and worried, but it all seemed far away, and none of it diminished her smile.
“How long does this need to go?” he asked.
“About twenty minutes,” she replied. “Maybe twenty-five.”
“What do we do in the meantime, then?”
Amber knew there were a hundred things wrong with this. She couldn’t let this go too far. Whatever the ambiguity in her instructions, there was something very wrong in initiating all this.
A small part of her brain pointed out that she hadn’t initiated it at all. Jason did that. Adrift in a storm of concerns hidden behind a shy smile, Amber said, “I dunno. Got any ideas?”
“I’ve got a pretty comfortable couch,” he suggested, slipping his hand in hers.
She didn’t initiate that. She wouldn’t initiate what she knew would come next, either. “Okay,” she said.
* * *
Unemployment still didn’t sit well with Alex, but he couldn’t claim that having a weekday off from school and work had no advantages. His long and torrid morning at home with Lorelei made for a great start to his day, but eventually he had to come up for air. There were matters to attend to and a world beyond their apartment.