His Secret Agenda

“Who was stopping them?” Allie zipped her coat. “You act like I offered counseling sessions as part of a benefits package or something.”

“Pretty close,” Kelsey mumbled.

“Relax. I’m telling you, Dean Garret isn’t right for this job. Trust me on this, I’m doing the right thing here.”

“I hope so,” Kelsey called after her as Allie walked out the door.

She shivered and hurried over to her car. Yeah, she hoped so, too. And Kelsey was way off base about her trying to save people. She was out of that game.

Because the last time she’d played, she’d saved the wrong person.

THE NEXT DAY, Dean held his cell phone between his shoulder and ear as he dropped a cardboard pizza box onto his motel bed. “Hey there, darlin’,” he said when his call was picked up, “it’s me. I need a favor.”

“I’m not that kind of girl,” Detective Katherine Montgomery said in her flat, look-at-me-wrong-and-I’ll-kick-your-sorry-ass New York accent. And people thought he sounded funny. “And don’t call me darlin’.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up. He’d met Katherine over a year ago when he’d worked in Manhattan. The mother of three teenagers, she’d been married for twenty-five years and was built like a rodeo barrel. She was also one of the most savvy cops working in the anticrime computer network in the NYPD, and she didn’t take crap from anyone—least of all him.

Was it any wonder he was half in love with her?

“Now don’t be that way,” he said, flipping the box open and sliding a piece of pepperoni-and-onion pizza onto a paper towel. “I’m betting with the right incentive, you could be talked into being that kind of girl.”

He could almost see her scowling at the phone as she sat behind her very tidy desk. “If you keep up with the sweet talk, my husband’s going to hunt you down,” she warned.

Her husband, a skinny, balding postal worker, wasn’t much of a threat and they both knew it. Unless the guy attempted to whack Dean upside the head with his mailbag. “For you, I’d risk it.”

“Uh-huh.” She made a soft slurping sound—probably sipping her ever-present coffee—before saying, “So you called me two hours before quitting time on a Friday afternoon in another pathetic attempt to sweep me off my feet?”

“Well, that wasn’t the only reason.” Dean bit into his pizza, chewed and swallowed before wiping his hand on his jeans. He slid his notebook toward him and flipped it open. “I need everything you can give me about a Terri—T-e-r-r-i—Long.” He gave her Terri’s social security number, date of birth and last known address. “I need everything you can find, the more personal the better.”

“And you think I’m going to help you why?”

Dean took another bite of pizza and popped the top of a can of soda. “Because it’d take me at least three days to find out even a quarter of what you could discover in a few hours?”

“Yeah. That’d be why.” She repeated back to him the information he’d given her. “Who’s Terri Long?”

He finished his pizza. “At the moment she’s my competition for a bartending job I’m interested in.”

“Do I even want to know why you want a bartending job?”

“Probably not.”

“Uh-huh.” He heard the distinct sound of Katherine tapping at her keyboard. “You’re not doing anything illegal, are you, Dean?”

“Not at the moment.”

Silence filled the line. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” He switched the phone to his other ear. “Nothing you need to know about, anyway.”

Like how he’d broken into The Summit last night and gone through Allison Martin’s office until he’d discovered the name of the person she’d given his job to.

Technically, yes, breaking and entering was illegal. But he hadn’t stolen anything.

Other than information, that is.

And most importantly, he hadn’t been caught. In Dean’s book, that meant he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“If you get hauled off to jail again,” Katherine warned him quietly, “don’t even think about calling me. Especially if you’re more than one hundred miles away from Manhattan.”

“Now, you know how much I appreciated you flying down to Atlanta to bail me out. Didn’t you get the gift basket I sent you?”

Katherine grunted. He would’ve been worried if he hadn’t still heard her typing. “Next time you send me fancy chocolates, send them to the station. By the time I got home, Mickey and the kids had already eaten half the box.”

“You got it.” He lifted his hips, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out his credit card. As soon as he got off the phone with Katherine, he’d call the chocolate shop.

“Want me to e-mail you what I find?”

“That’ll do. And thanks. I owe you one.”

“You owe me at least a dozen. But who’s counting?” Katherine asked with a sigh. “Just promise you’ll be careful.”

“Always.”

He disconnected the phone and tossed it aside. Allison Martin needed his help to realize she’d hired the wrong person. Now all he had to do was sit back and wait for Katherine to work her magic. Then he’d make his next move.

He shot his crumbled paper towel into the garbage can in the corner. Once he had the job, once he had her trust, it was simply a matter of time before everything else fell into place for him.

He’d make damn sure of it.

BEING SURROUNDED BY barely dressed coeds sure made a woman feel every single one of her almost thirty-two years.

Allie drew a beer and handed it to her customer, a fully dressed, beefy kid of twenty-two. “Here ya go,” she told him with a grin.

Hey, she could flirt with younger guys just as easily as men her own age. And if she gave some kid a thrill by smiling at him, who was she hurting? In the dim light of the bar she noticed him blush all the way to the dark blond roots of his crew cut. He stammered a thank-you as he hurried off.

See? She was just doing her best to spread a bit of sunshine wherever she went.

Allie turned her attention back to her lineup of thirsty customers. A brunette in a bright pink tube top sauntered to the horseshoe-shaped bar in her three-inch sandals.

Someone needed to tell these kids that it may be called spring break, but that didn’t mean they should dress as if they were in Florida. For God’s sake, it was ten degrees outside.

Dear Lord, she’d sounded like her mother. And had called her customers—most of whom were barely ten years younger than her—kids.

She might as well start wearing support hose and let her hair go gray.

“Two cosmos and a strawberry margarita,” the brunette said over the blaring jukebox and loud voices.

“Coming up.” Allie poured the margarita ingredients into a clean blender and added a scoop of ice. With the machine whirring, she then worked on the cosmos. After making at least a dozen tonight, she didn’t even have to consult the cocktail book Kelsey had given her.