Under the Surface (Alpha Ops #4)

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s just … complicated.”


Silence reigned for the rest of the trip to Eye Candy. Noonday heat blistered the blacktop parking lot, the smell of fresh asphalt rising in shimmering waves. Eve reached for her small rolling suitcase and hefted it out of the back of the Jeep. Matt grabbed both her bag and his duffle in one hand and said, “Up the stairs. Now,” scanning the parking lot then the rooftops, looking for slow-moving SUVs, hiding places, any threat, letting the sixth sense he’d honed over the years put out feelers into his surroundings.

She hurried up the stairs, him hard on her heels.

“Keys.”

He unlocked her apartment door and entered first; at his okay she stepped inside. First things first. She hurried into the bathroom and turned on her curling iron. Then she looked around. New glass gleamed in her kitchen and bedroom windows. When Matt emerged from looking around her bedroom, she was picking up the pieces of her speakers.

“I’ll play music on my computer for a while,” she said, trying to make the best of it.

“That was a Bose SoundDock,” he said. “You’re going to notice the drop in sound quality.”

She looked at him, eyebrows raised ever so slightly, then swept the fragments into the trash. “It’ll have to do. I can’t afford a new dock.”

Her apartment was a shoebox, but she shoved clothes to one side to make space for his stuff in her crammed closet, and cleared a two-square-inch spot on the sink for his electric razor. While attempting to wedge his toothbrush into the caddy on her sink he burned his hand on her curling iron, and cursed under his breath as he ran cold water over the reddening strip of skin.

She grabbed the curling wand, intending to move it to the back of the toilet, except he’d put his shaving kit on the tank. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, missing the knuckles of his other hand by millimeters as she set the hot iron down in its original position.

“Forget shaving. Women like the scruffy look,” he said, then backed into the door. As the stopper twanged, he said, “Jesus. I’ll be downstairs. I want to check the alley and interior.”

He checked the storeroom and dish room, then opened the door to the alley. All quiet. Nothing suspicious. When he came back through the storeroom, Eve was making her way down the stairs from her office. She wore the black skirt she’d worn the day she interviewed him, a green silk blouse, and her boots.

“I need keys to all the doors and a list of who else has them.”

“I’ve got a spare set locked in my desk. We can make copies while we’re out this afternoon.”

He looked at the rubber pouch on top of a three-inch stack of paperwork. “Deposit?”

“Including Lyle’s first deposit,” she said, wishing she’d worn gloves to handle the dirty money.

He put down the knife and wiped his hands on a wet towel. “I’ll drive. The bathrooms are clean. I checked stock. You’re low on gin and rye whiskey, and you’re really low on vodka. When’s your next liquor delivery?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “You really worked in a bar? You must have … you could mix drinks, or did you practice before applying?”

“My Academy class didn’t start until almost a year after the accident,” he said. “I worked private security, bartended, EMT shifts. Anything I could scrounge together with late afternoon or overnight hours. Doctors and physical therapists work nine to five,” he said and dug his car keys from his front pocket.

She was giving him that look again, the look that looked right through him. Somehow, despite relaying what felt to him like bare-bones details about his life, every time he opened his mouth he gave something else away. But what? Nothing about his life was closed; the background check for the Academy took care of that. So what did Eve see that no one else saw?

They duped her keys at the corner hardware store, then doubled back down Thirteenth Street to get to the bank. “I know her,” Eve said as they walked into the lobby and headed for the only available teller. The sound of her heels, staccato and sharp, rapid-fire against the floor, paused for a second.

“Close friend?” he asked, his hand shifting to the small of her back to urge her forward.

“She thinks so, but for our purposes, she’s actually better than that,” she said, regaining her stride. “She’s the biggest gossip on the East Side.”