Penni didn’t know exactly what she’d expected to happen after the taxi dropped her in front of the mammoth gates of BKI and she told Geralt, who’d been manning the gatehouse, that she needed to talk to Dan “The Man” Currington. But it certainly wasn’t to be led to a backyard barbecue complete with smoking grill and three guys lounging around on mismatched lawn furniture while arguing about the merits and drawbacks of getting jiggy with some nameless newspaperwoman. The third man was wearing a green John Deere baseball cap and strumming an old Martin six-string, looking for all the world like he was completely ignoring the other two.
The smell of cooking meat hung heavy in the cool breeze. It competed with the wet, fishy aroma of the nearby Chicago River and the hoppy deliciousness of the open beer bottles. In fact, if it weren’t for that whole security-camera/razor-wire thing they had going, Penni would have said the air around Black Knights Inc. was less supersecret spy-guy lair and more laid-back, good-ol’-boy hangout.
“Yeah.” Ozzie nodded vaguely, scratching his chin. “The reporter thing is a bit of a drawback.”
“A bit?” Scarface sent Ozzie an incredulous look, prompting the man playing the guitar to finally jump into the fray.
“I don’t know why you’re surprised, mon ami,” he said and Penni instantly identified his smooth-as-silk voice and sweet-as-molasses accent from a phone conversation she’d had with him during The Assignment. His name was Rock. But while the famous Rock was big and bulky, this Rock was lean and wiry…and sporting a pretty spiffy pair of scuffed-up alligator boots. “You know Ozzie can’t see past the upside of a thing, especially when that thing has boobs, until ya point out the downside of a thing.”
Ozzie turned to grin at Rock. And even though he was in profile, Penni noticed the expression looked a little…different from the one she’d seen on his face three months ago. It was duller. Sadder. Harder somehow.
Her mind returned to the hotel bombings in Kuala Lumpur—the ones that had left her colleagues, her friends, dead—and started picking at the memory like a scab. What lay beneath burned and ached, but she’d learned a thing or two over the past few months. One of which was how to take a deep breath and push aside the ugly thoughts so they didn’t rise up and overwhelm her in grief. She wasn’t entirely sure time healed all wounds as much as it simply taught a person ways to stanch the chronic bleeding.
Geralt, heretofore known in her mind as the Carrot-Topped Colossus, must have sensed a lull in the men’s debate. He cleared his throat and said, “Speaking of skirts”—his accent was one hundred percent Windy City, his words running together like cars colliding on the Eisenhower Expressway—“we got one here who says she’s looking for Dan Man.”
Penni was trying to decide whether or not she should take offense at being labeled “a skirt” when Scarface and Rock jumped from their seats. Ozzie craned his head around the side of the Adirondack chair. And suddenly she was…
Not scared, exactly. In her thirty-three years she’d faced down a lot worse than three flag-waving, gun-toting, pretend motorcycle mechanics. But now that she was here at Black Knights Inc., on the brink of telling Dan that she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head since The Assignment, and that she—
“Agent DePaul!” Ozzie crowed, pushing up from the chair and grabbing the crutches leaning against it. He hobbled over and threw an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her tight. The move was made awkward by the crutch shoved in his armpit. “Forget about my fantasy shag-o-rama with ace reporter Samantha Tate,” he told Rock and Scarface. Shag-o-rama? Christ almighty. “Because my future wife has just arrived!”
Uh-huh. Sure. Because while they’d worked together in Kuala Lumpur, Ozzie had gaily—and quite insincerely—asked her to marry him at least a half-dozen times.
She turned to grin at him now, grateful for his exuberant welcome and the balm it was to her frayed nerves. But her smile faltered when she saw his eyes.
He was different.
Gone was the spark, the bright golden glow that seemed to shine from within him. Now there were shadows lurking behind his sapphire irises. Deep shadows. Dark shadows. Shadows that told her all his good-natured joking was a studied act, a slick veneer to cover up what was hurting and broken inside him.
She wasn’t sure if it made her feel better or worse, knowing she wasn’t the only one irrevocably changed by The Assignment. On second thought, she was sure. Worse. It definitely made her feel worse.
But what are you going to do?
Keep on keeping on, that’s what. A phrase her father had taught her to live by.
“Your future wife, huh?” she asked Ozzie, determined to play along. If he insisted on wearing a false happy face, far be it from her to pull off his mask. “What makes you think I’ll take you up on your offer of marriage this time when I’ve turned you down every time before?”
“Well, why else would you be here?” He wiggled his blond eyebrows. “I mean, it’s obvious you’ve come to your senses and decided to make me the happiest man on the pl—”