Re/Bound (Doms of the FBI Book 1) (19 page)

He nodded and didn’t pursue the matter. He unloaded the dishes and stacked them next to the sink. “I’d stay and do them, but I have to head back to my place and get my stuff so I can move it into my buddy’s place. I start at Snyder’s tomorrow.”

Disappointment circled her gut, but it didn’t take hold. While she didn’t want him to leave, she would welcome some time to process the scene they’d shared the night before. She turned on the faucet to warm the flow and reached under the sink for the dish soap. “Okay. Well, if you’re living closer, does this mean I’ll get to see you before next weekend?”

His arms came around her waist, his chest pressed to her back, and he kissed her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow at work, won’t I?”

Darcy shook her head. “You likely won’t see me at Victor’s office until later this week. I have a meeting with him on Thursday to discuss exactly what he wants for this website. I expect you’ll be at it too. Though it would be like Victor to not tell you until the last minute. He thinks it keeps his employees on their toes.”

“Then how about you come to my place for dinner? I can cook for you.”

That sounded nice. She reached up and traced the shell of his ear with her fingertip. He shuddered, and his cock twitched against her lower back. “What are you going to make? I’m a picky eater.”

He growled and scraped his teeth across the skin of her throat. “Keep that up and I’m going to tie you to my table and eat you, sweetheart.”

That idea sounded appealing. “Maybe for dessert.”

__________

The week flew. Malcolm worked with Keith to write the programming that would eventually embed their unique software into Snyder’s system. It would leave behind a telltale signature so they could trace the source of a post no matter how many times it was pinged through different systems. So far they hadn’t caught anything illegal, but they had noticed inconsistencies with no apparent explanation.

Malcolm suspected Snyder and a few CEOs from friendly corporations were working together to inflate certain stock prices. He needed to find out exactly which stocks and when they planned to dump them. The value of those stocks would tank within days afterward, and the ripple effects would be felt throughout the economy.

His relationship with Darcy had exploded. Never in his life had he fallen so fast and hard for anyone. Being with her, even in his undercover persona, was effortless. He had bound her twice more, though he was careful to only restrain part of her body at a time. She tended to fall into blind panic when he attempted to bind both of her wrists in ways that prohibited movement. This last time, he’d wrapped the nylon cording from her wrists to her elbows just to get her used to the sensation.

Training had progressed to the point where just the sight of the rope made her wet. Malcolm loved her responsiveness in and out of the bedroom. Some nights, they didn’t have sex. He found conversation with her stimulating. She had an offbeat sense of humor that either complemented his or missed it completely, and her unique viewpoints led her to make some interesting statements.

And he found her honesty refreshing. After her sister had left last weekend, she had apologized for Amy’s rudeness. Malcolm had been rude to the love interests of both his sister and his brother before. Each time his goal had been to protect his sibling. He understood the instinct and sisterly love that drove Amy to say the things she had.

The better he came to know Darcy, the more he realized everyone underestimated her. She had a rare strength and resilience that made him want to lay down his life to protect her. It only made him wonder what really happened with Yataines. He couldn’t imagine any scenario where she would harm him, but if he and Scott were as alike as Amy seemed to think, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that Yataines had died to protect her from something or someone.

Saturday morning meant a meeting with Keith to debrief on his week. Malcolm wasn’t looking forward to disclosing anything about Darcy. In the agency’s eyes, she was still a suspect.

So he had framed his excuse for not seeing her today in the form of family obligations, and he’d hightailed his ass to the designated meeting area near the Detroit office in the McNamara Building on Michigan Avenue. They met at a little plaza nearby that had a fountain and benches.

Malcolm spotted Keith at the edge of the fountain, throwing pieces of something to the seagulls. His gray suit made him stand out around this Saturday leisure crowd, and his dark sunglasses and military bearing didn’t help. Keith sipped a coffee from a nearby store. Malcolm sat down next to him.

“It’s been over a week.”

In that week, Malcolm had set up a good portion of Snyder’s website. By all outward appearances, it looked like the Snyder Corp had one hell of a philanthropy division. Of course, Malcolm had figured out it was meant to be a front for money laundering.

“What’s Markovich’s part in all this?”

Malcolm snagged Keith’s coffee and sniffed it for something to do. Cinnamon and vanilla pummeled his olfactory senses. “So far she’s just providing the formatting for the charity stuff. I have to digitize all her forms so they process automatically through the site. Not a big deal. Snyder has asked her to hire and train a pair of people to run it, but my understanding is that she’s already done that.”

Pulling the sunglasses from his face, Keith turned and nailed Malcolm with a hard stare. “You’d better not be protecting her. We have an investigation to run, man. Don’t let your dick get in the way of your job.”

Gritting his teeth, Malcolm resisted the urge to defend Darcy. Whenever an agent went undercover, a certain amount of trust and discretion was automatically issued. He wouldn’t have fallen for Darcy if he thought she could be responsible for committing any of these crimes. “I’m not compromising the investigation. I told you there’s no way she’s involved. She doesn’t have it in her to murder anyone.”

“You don’t have evidence putting her in the clear. If she killed Yataines because he got too close to what she was doing for Snyder, you could be next.” Keith’s clipped tone betrayed his impatience with Malcolm’s assumptions.

“She didn’t kill him.”

“Get proof, Malcolm. Don’t fall for this woman. Don’t let her play you. Before you went under, you studied the transcripts. You saw the tapes. You pointed out the holes in her story. If she and Yataines were both working for Snyder, she had to know more about what he was doing than she admitted. Couples talk about work. They tell each other juicy gossip and bitch about the parts that make their jobs harder, but she said nothing about any of that, not even when directly questioned. She was very uncooperative.”

Malcolm shifted, uncomfortable having his observations thrown back at him. Yes, there had been inconsistencies. Now that he knew her better, he could see that she had been both terrified and grief-stricken. Both had likely interfered with her recall. Even if she had remembered more, she could have withheld information out of loyalty to Snyder. She honestly didn’t believe the man guilty of anything beyond wanting her to work for him.

But Keith wasn’t finished. “The police found nothing in the home, no evidence of Yataines’s work for Snyder, and the office had been wiped clean. The custodial staff said she’d been by to collect his things, yet the forensics team found not one fingerprint from either of them. You agreed she knew more than she was saying.”

Keith’s logic ground against Malcolm’s nerves, mostly because he was right. He had no evidence that either cleared Darcy or led to a break on the case. Even the technology he was planting into Snyder’s operating systems wouldn’t yield anything until after the fact.

“I have a new theory. I’m setting up now to work on it.”

Keith snatched his coffee back. “Which is?”

“I think Snyder had Yataines killed because he knew something. Darcy said something about Scott encouraging her to break ties with Snyder Corp. At the two meetings I’ve had with her and Snyder, he came across as uncommonly fond of her, possessive and controlling. It’s plausible Snyder saw Yataines as a barrier.”

For all her talk about how grateful she was to Snyder for helping her with the police, Darcy didn’t seem to want to be around him for too long. At their meeting, she had kept her part brief, going so far as to ask Snyder for detailed outcome descriptions so she could know exactly when her obligation ended. She’d pressed Malcolm for completion dates, almost as if she was counting down the time until she would no longer have to associate with him. Perhaps that was wishful thinking on Malcolm’s part. Darcy had said she wanted to grow her business by exploring options not related to Snyder Corp.

Keith posed the million-dollar question again. “Do you think he has romantic goals in mind? Are you doing this to set yourself up as the next barrier so he can try to kill you?”

“Nope.” Though she had commanded Malcolm’s attention with the soft femininity of her presence, Snyder hadn’t seemed affected by her physical appearance at all. “He wants her for something not sexual.”

Keith pressed his thumb and forefinger into the inside corners of his eyes, a sure sign of frustration. “Then why are you sleeping with her? It’s not required. Flirting with her and charming her are certainly in the game plan, Mal. Sleeping with her will only compromise the investigation.”

“Don’t lecture me.” Malcolm’s temper got the better of him, mostly because he knew Keith was right. Yet the idea of going even a night without seeing her, touching her, or talking to her made him restless and cranky. “I’ll bring down the bad guy.”

Keith studied him for a long while. “I’m leaving this out of the report. We never talked about it. As your friend, I advise you to do the same. Be careful, Malcolm. If you fall for her and she’s guilty, you’re in for a lot of hell. If she’s innocent, you’re in for even more hell when she finds out who you really are. As your partner, I advise you to stop fucking one of our major suspects.”

__________

Malcolm drove to his apartment in Rochester, collected his mail, and threw out his dead plant. Katrina had bought it for him in an attempt to humanize his abode, but Malcolm wasn’t home enough to keep anything alive. He had thanked her for the gift. She was a genuinely nice person, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her it wouldn’t last long. She would notice its absence the next time she came over, but she wouldn’t comment.

Knowing her, she would just bring him a new plant, give him a kiss on the cheek, and dive right into catching up on how their lives had evolved since they last saw one another. She was going to go insane with happiness when she found out about Darcy.

Though he technically should have spent his day taking care of personal business, he couldn’t concentrate enough to remember what he had to do. He paid a few bills and picked up Theo’s cell phone. If he saw her tonight, would that be considered personal time or work time? Did it matter?

He tapped out a text, then deleted it. Too restless to do anything else, he stared at the display and willed it to ring or to show a text from her. If she initiated contact, then he had no choice. He would have to respond. His mother’s promise of pancetta wasn’t nearly as important.

Throwing caution to the wind, he tapped in a question and sent it before he could reconsider the wisdom of his action.

Are you busy right now?

Darcy wasn’t the kind of person who sat next to her phone. Most of the time, she kept it zipped away in her purse with the ringer turned down so low she missed most calls. It didn’t vibrate or chime to indicate she’d received an e-mail or a text. It was stupid to expect an immediate reply.

His heart leaped when his phone trilled to indicate a text message.

I’m getting dressed to go out with Amy and some friends for drinks. Don’t worry. I’m wearing underwear.

Malcolm laughed at her reassurance. He didn’t have a rule about underwear, but when he topped her, he usually instructed her to take them off. The last time, she had giggled and teased him about wanting easy access. He wondered how alluring she dressed to go out with her girlfriends.

What are you wearing?

She must have been waiting for his reply, because her answer came quickly.

Amy is here waiting for me, so I don’t have time to sext with you right now. How about later when they all ditch me for whatever guys they pick up?

He hadn’t meant it that way, but he couldn’t find a flaw with her plan.

Give me the time and place, sweetheart, and I’ll make you come in public.

After that time in the car, Malcolm hadn’t pushed Darcy to do anything in public, not that he considered wearing a butterfly while in the passenger seat of a car to be very public. His phone chimed one last time.

Nectarine Ballroom. Discounted drinks until 8:30. They’ll probably abandon me by about 9.

The Nectarine wasn’t very well lit. The last time he had been there, he’d been in college and Michigan’s smoking ban was an asthmatic’s wet dream. The vague details didn’t help him at all. Were there semiprivate places where he could instruct her to touch herself? They had likely remodeled or changed things around in the last decade. Malcolm toyed with the decision for all of ten seconds. He wasn’t going to sext with Darcy. He was going to surprise her.

Plus all texts would be admissible in court. She would never forgive him if something like that became part of a legal record.

A glance at the clock showed he had plenty of time to partake in his mother’s pancetta before he surprised Darcy. He showered and shaved. The clothes he’d transported to the Ann Arbor apartment supplied by the department were disposable. Made up of khakis and various tee, polo, and button-down shirts, the style fit the computer geek. Malcolm, however, preferred suits and dress pants for work and jeans for play.