“What does that mean?” he asks.
“I got a different apartment. A whole new wardrobe. They gave me an acting coach to change my voice and the way I walked. Different makeup. A different car. A fake job. I constructed an entirely separate life, so if he looked into me or had his men follow me and try to find out something about me, there wouldn't be anything unusual for him to notice. That meant I did a lot of the case alone. I didn't have the rest of the team around me all the time. That would have stood out too much.”
“You said it was the first case you worked on with Greg,” he says.
“It was. They moved him into the building I was living in. A couple of floors down. That way, he was at least in close proximity. We could communicate without its being detected by any of Darren's people. The information I gathered was transferred to Greg, who took it back to the team.”
“How long did it take you?” he asks.
“Months. At first, it was all about catching his interest. I made it clear that I wasn't interested in him. I didn't fall for his charm or his lines. I had to make him want me. That was the only way I was going to gain his trust or get into his inner circle. It was far too easy for him to get the attention of pretty much any woman he even looked at sideways. They were disposable to him. But if I could make myself desirable and make him interested enough to work to get me, then I was in.”
“And you did,” Sam notes.
I nodded, turning back to look into the flames. “It took me a long time. There were days when I thought I'd lost his interest. When he didn't pursue me and was with other women. But he always came back. And then he tested me.”
“What do you mean, he tested you?” Sam asks.
“He brought me out with him one night. He never told me who he was or what he did. That was part of his game. I was supposed to be impressed by him just because I was impressed by him. Not because I knew he had power or because of his crimes. But he had to make sure I could be trusted. That I wasn't going to panic and run away at the first sign of something shady.”
“What did he do?”
“He brought me along on a drug deal,” I say, my throat tightening as I get deeper into the recollections of that night. “He showed me his product and let me test it so I would know how pure and high-quality it was. Then I watched him murder a man.”
The words tumble out of my mouth without emotion or filter. I can't try to stop them or pretty them up, or they won't come out. It's a cold reality, a dark spot I carry with me in the inner recesses of my being. It will never go away. Nothing I ever do will change it or absolve it. It is done.
“You couldn't do anything?” Sam asks, reaching a hand to squeeze my thigh comfortingly.
“No,” I shake my head. “I had no idea what was coming. I didn't know he was going to try to push me over the edge like that. I was expecting the drug deal. That was a given. One day he was going to show me his business and see how I reacted to it. It would be perfectly easy to just dispose of me if I showed any signs of discomfort or seemed to be a risk. I didn't think he would go as far as murder. It was one of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn.”
“What did you do?” Sam asks.
“I went along with it,” I say. “What else was I supposed to do? I acted as if it didn't bother me, as if it excited me. If I hadn't, I would have been in that alleyway beside the victim. The next morning, the newspaper probably would have had an article about a prostitute and her john getting mowed down because of a drug deal gone bad. I did what I had to do to survive, and to bring back the information the Bureau needed to take him down.”
“What happened to him?”
“The day I met him at the bar, he was planning to take me to the house he bought for us and ask me to marry him. I pulled my gun on him and got him to his knees. The rest of the team came in and arrested him. One of his men had tried to warn him. In the last seconds, his lieutenant had figured out who I was and tried to get him out of there. But Dragon wouldn't go. He chose me over his man. He just wanted to be with me. Or who he thought I was. He was taken to jail, tried, and convicted. Sentenced to multiple life sentences. I had done my job.”
“And then?” Sam asks.
“And then, several years later, he was being transferred to a different prison. There was a horrific crash, and when it was all said and done, a corpse was found in the prison transport vehicle. Crushed and burned beyond recognition. He was the only prisoner being transported that day. He was declared dead, and that part of my life was closed,” I say.
“It wasn't closed before that?” Sam asks.
“It's hard knowing there's somebody in the world who feels about you the way I knew Darren Blackwell felt about me.”
Chapter Eight
“I have to go to work,” Sam whispers in my ear and kisses me on the temple.
Groaning my protest, I roll onto my back, then onto my other side to swing my arm over him.
“No,” I whine. “Not yet.”
“That's what you've been saying for the last hour,” he chuckles. “I really have to go. But I promise
