Fool Me Once (First Wives #1)

“We all trusted him,” Avery said from her kitchen, where she gathered dishes for their lunch/dinner/whatever meal it was when you only ate once in a day and planned to be pissing drunk by rush hour.

“No more sorry, no more self-blame, got it?” Sam used her mom voice.

“Got it.” She’d just have to say all that to herself.

Avery placed the plates on the coffee table and started to open boxes of spicy Thai food.

“What happened?” Sam finally asked.

“He took me to Santa Barbara to break it off.”

“Douche,” Avery muttered.

“He’s not a data processing anything. Unless you call a spy someone who process data.”

“Reed’s a spy?” Avery stopped dishing up the noodles.

“He said he used to be a cop, and now he’s a PI.” Lori watched Sam for her reaction.

“Cooper hinted that he didn’t think Reed was in any field that required hours at a desk,” Sam said.

“We should have listened. He was sent to Barcelona to gain information about me. About us.”

“About Alliance.”

Lori nodded.

Avery started dishing stuff up again. “No wonder he was all serious when Trina was drugged.”

“All an act,” Lori said.

“I don’t know, he was concerned.”

“He told me that someone was following me ever since our stop in France. Probably the entire time we were on the ship.”

“Miguel? Cuz that guy—”

“He said it was a woman,” Lori told her.

“Did he give you a name?” Sam asked.

“No, and he wouldn’t tell me who hired him either, or why.”

“So what did he tell you?” Sam asked.

“Just that he was hired to find information about all of us. And that he thought the woman following us was one of Petrov’s hired hands. That I was still in danger.”

Lori looked across the room to where Cooper attempted to blend with the wall. She knew he was listening. Which was fine. All the information Lori had would get back to the Alliance security team anyway.

“He knows about Alliance, Sam.”

“You told him?” Sam asked.

God, if she could take back the pillow talk after all the sex that night. “I was discussing a new client whose husband is beating her up for sport, and how if we’d done a character profile and background check, we would have caught how screwed up this man is. Next thing I know we’re talking about Trina.”

“It wasn’t like we didn’t all talk a little about our lives when we were in Europe,” Avery reminded her.

“I know. The night he and I were talking about Trina, he had this look on his face . . . like someone watching a movie and finally figuring out all the holes in the story. I should have realized then what he was up to.”

“What did you say about Trina’s marriage?” Sam asked.

“Just that we’d done all the background checks and Fedor slipped through. He figured out the rest. I didn’t confirm or deny any of his conclusions about Shannon or you,” Lori told Avery.

“Hey, I don’t care. Bernie would probably be fine with the world finding out.”

“Paul won’t,” Sam said.

Lori squeezed her eyes shut. “I screwed up.”

“Enough, Lori. He’s the private investigator. He knew enough of the pieces to draw the information from you.” Sam reached over and grabbed an unopened bottle of wine. “Now, let’s start at the beginning, everything you can think of, both of you, about what Reed overheard, and what he knows. I need to know which clients are at risk.”




Instead of some dark corner in a warehouse, Mr. Smiles and Mr. Serious pulled into the driveway of a simple suburban house in Tarzana. They entered the house after driving into the garage. Mr. Smiles disengaged a house alarm and went around the kitchen, turning on lights.

Reed knew heavy surveillance when he saw it. Cameras were in the ceiling, his guess was microphones captured the conversation. It was a kinder version of an interrogation room. He wondered if there was a double mirror somewhere with someone behind it.

Mr. Serious’s phone rang, and he moved into a living room to answer it.

“Sit,” Smiles told him.

Part of the other man’s conversation drifted into the room.

Smiles turned to the refrigerator and removed a soda. “I’d offer you something, but this really isn’t a social call.”

Reed huffed. “I took you as the good cop.”

“Ah, c’mon. We’re both good. It isn’t like we forced you to come with us.”

Mr. Serious returned, leaned against a counter, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Reed Barlow doesn’t exist,” he said.

“Sure he does, he just has a different name.”

Smiles turned a chair around and straddled it. “What’s your name?”

Reed hesitated.

“I’ll make it easy.” Smiles lifted his hand across the table. “I’m Rick, and this charmer is Neil.”

Reed extended his hand, and for a good fifteen seconds he and Rick shook hands in a way that would have broken bones for a mere mortal. The desire to shake out his hand to return the circulation was huge, but he squelched it. He opened his mouth and Neil spoke.

“You have one chance to get the name right.”

Or what?

“Lori deserves to know who screwed her over.”

Rick knew how to punch below the belt.

“Michael Reed Barnum.”

Neil glanced at what Reed assumed was a camera and then back to him.

“Who do you work for?” Rick asked.

“Does Alliance use private investigators?” he asked, knowing full well they did.

“Alliance?” Rick played dumb.

“Fine, but how would you feel if your PIs went around blabbing about you?”

“What were you hired to find out?”

“Everything, anything.”

“About Lori?”

“It started as an investigation on Shannon in an effort to find dirt on her ex.”

“How did Shannon turn into an investigation on Lori?”

Reed didn’t answer . . . wasn’t even sure he could.

Rick looked at Neil. “This isn’t going to get very far.”

“I don’t know either of you. For all I know you work for Petrov.”

Rick lost his smile. “I should hit him just for saying that,” he said to Neil.

Neil shrugged like it wouldn’t matter if Rick made good on that threat or not.




“I fell hard.” Lori heard the slur in her own voice. “I mean, I wasn’t looking at wedding dresses, but I started to draft a prenup.”

“That sounds like love for a lawyer,” Sam said. She was sipping her wine, while Avery had no problem trying to keep up with Lori.

“How could I be so stupid? So many coincidences. So many things that just didn’t measure up.”

“Love is blind,” came from Sam’s logical and sober side of the room.

“Screw love. I’ll just switch teams.”

Avery pulled back. “Don’t look at me, I like guys.”

Lori felt the first real smile of the day. “He screwed me just to get information.”

Avery lifted her glass in the air. “Hey, I got screwed for fifty grand.”

Lori blinked. “Bastards.”




Neil didn’t blink. Reed was convinced the man was half robot.

The only reaction was when his phone went off.

“Yeah,” came one side of the conversation. “Keep looking.”

He hung up, stared at Reed. “Michael Reed Barnum, former decorated police officer. Left his badge when he and his partner, Luke Mallory, were ambushed.”

“We were set up by our own guys. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore, so I left.”