The agent nods. “Give me a few days. I’ll set things in motion on my end, then touch base. We don’t want to spook Lancaster or have him send more cronies to attack Zoe.” He looks at me with those piercing blue eyes and I see the hint of something almost warm in their depths, if only for a sliver of an instant. “Nice meeting you, Clover. You ever change your mind about that job, want to make an actual difference in the world… you give me a call.”
“I’d be more inclined to consider it if you’d stop calling me Clover in the official FBI database.”
His lips twitch. “You don’t like the nickname?”
“Something slightly more badass would be preferable.”
“Sorry.” Conor shrugs. “Too late to change it now. You’re already branded.”
“Don’t worry, darling.” Parker wraps an arm around my waist. “I’ll call you all the badass nicknames you want.” He pauses. “So long as the nickname you want to be called is snookums, of course.”
I elbow him in the side. “Ignore him,” I tell Conor a little desperately.
“Snookums?” Conor smirks. “Definitely badass.”
I glare up at Parker. “See what you did? You’re ruining my street cred.”
He leans down and kisses me. “Uh huh.”
“I’m serious, playboy.”
“I can see that, darling.”
I plant my hands on my hips and glare at every man in the room, my gaze sweeping from Parker to Conor to Nate to Luca to Owen to Theo. Infuriatingly, they’re all grinning at me.
“I hate you all,” I inform them, turning and stomping for the doors. “And I will not be accepting any job offers if it means my bad-assery is called into question on a regular basis.”
The sound of muffled laughter chases me all the way to the doors.
* * *
Parker’s in an annoyingly good mood all the way back to my loft. He gropes me playfully in the elevator, whispering scandalous things in my ear to make me laugh the entire ride up to my floor.
His joking, happy mood disintegrates as soon the doors slide open and we see the disaster site that used to be my apartment.
My laptop is cracked in two, lying in pieces on the cold concrete floor. Someone’s smashed every one of my computer monitors with what looks like a baseball bat — there’s no way they can be salvaged. My coffee table has been flipped on its side, scattering documents everywhere. Even from my spot by the door, I can see the hard copies from the Lancaster investigation are missing. The folders I painstakingly organized with printed copies of all the evidence I’ve spent weeks gathering are gone.
My bed is in tatters, gutted with some kind of sharp blade, as are my sofa cushions. Most disturbingly, though, are the photographs taped my my refrigerator.
Whoever is trailing me has been busy. There are pictures from the day I visited the Lynn factory, from my walk home in the snow, from my lunch with the girls at Crumble. There are even stills from the surveillance tape at Lancaster Consolidated, the night I dressed as Cindy the cater-waiter.
I suppose it was only a matter of time, before they put that together.
Each photo was taken from a careful distance, but it’s clear they’re the work of a professional. Especially given the photoshopping treatment they’ve received: every frame contains the bright red crosshairs of a sniper rifle over my profile.
As threats go, it’s not a subtle one.
Keep this up and we’ll kill you.
Parker shoves me behind him as his eyes move around the space, searching for intruders.
“They’re long gone,” I say quietly.
“Fuck,” he curses lowly, running a hand through his hair. “At least you weren’t here when they did this. If you’d been here…” His eyes move to the monitors, destroyed with brute force by someone with a significant amount of strength. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
I step up to his side and lace my fingers with his. “Don’t think about it.”
His furious hazel eyes lock on the photographs of me taped to the fridge and I see whatever sense of calm he was hanging onto slip from his grasp like a handful of sand.
“I’m going to fucking kill them.”
“Parker.” I squeeze his hand. “They wouldn’t be going through all this trouble to scare us if we hadn’t rattled them. Don’t you see? In a sick, weird, twisted way… this is a good thing. It means we’re getting close to nailing them.”
My words seem to soothe him — fractionally. His jaw unclenches a bit as he surveys the damage, but he still looks about ready to blow a gasket.
“There’s no way they got in through the elevator without a key.” He looks at me. “Who else has access? Your landlord? An ex? A previous tenant?”
I shake my head. “No. Luca has one, I have one. That’s it. Whoever did this must’ve climbed the fire escape.”
Parker strides to the opposite side of the loft, tugging me after him. Sure enough, when we reach the windows by the fire escape we find two of the panes are bashed in. The flimsy brass lock is snapped like plastic.
I suck in a breath.
Abruptly, Parker drops my hand and paces away, leaving me by the window. I don’t follow him. My eyes are stuck on that broken lock, and I can’t seem to look away. All at once, my careful sense of calm evaporates as reality sets in.