Page 17 of Undercover
Gabe couldn’t be involved in the smuggling operation. I didn’t want him to be, which made my conclusions slightly suspect, but I’d spent enough years as an agent to trust myself.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t know about it, or suspect it, or be an accessory in some small way, but a criminal mastermind he was not. And not because he didn’t have themindfor it—no one who got through a master’s degree in physical biochemistry that fast and with grades that spectacular could possibly be stupid. He had me outclassed by a couple dozen IQ points, I had no doubt.
His expulsion from his doctoral program had me more than a little curious, and a chemist tangentially related to a drug case came with a little suspicion attached.
But I had to trust myself, or I couldn’t do my job. And my instincts were screaming at me that Gabe might be the sort of guy to be influenced by others, and he might not have a lot of self-confidence—okay, understatement of the year, there, despite his looks and charm and brains—but he didn’t have either the motivation or the lack of moral judgment to be the kind of criminal I’d been sent here to find.
A few more reports had trickled in as I drank my coffee, showered, shaved, and fucked around in the gloomy motel room. I’d pulled the curtains back to reveal overcast skies, and my quick trip to the coffee shop had been a muggy, damp misery. The room felt close, dim, and confining, but I sat down with my laptop and forced myself to read.
Gabe’s more detailed financials weren’t shocking. Basically, he had tons of money, both liquid and in trust. His father, Mark Middleton, had inherited Middleton Marine from his parents, and Gabe’s mom had come from money and sat on the board of her family’s telecom company. No shortage of funds that would drive Gabe to finding new sources of income.
And no evidence of serious debts, or an addiction to gambling or prostitutes or fast cars or anything else that could soak up a fortune like Gabe’s and leave him scrambling.
My own analysis of the evidence so far—which included a few partial photographs provided by the Canadian authorities, taken of boats they were fairly sure had left Canada with shipments of contraband—suggested Middleton as the likeliest provider of transport. Lake Champlain had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of private docks, suitable for a smaller boat like the ones Middleton Marine operated and manufactured. Middleton employees owned both of the locations where these particular smugglers had been scared off. Of course, those people had all been out of town and, when questioned, convincingly horrified that their property had nearly been used to commit an international crime.
I wasn’t convinced.
Then again, I mistrusted nearly everyone on principle, a trait which had gotten me into my current career and state of perpetual singledom.
I drained the last of my latte and tossed the paper cup into the bin by the desk. I’d finished with my email. I’d read everything that had come in so far.
I had nothing to do, in short, but brood over the Gabe-as-a-person problem, as opposed to the Gabe-as-a-possible-criminal problem—since I could pretty much dismiss the latter.
Christ, I wanted him. And I couldn’t have him. Even though I’d moved on from suspecting him directly, he represented my best possible chance of quietly and obliquely investigating his family’s company. Telling him the truth had crossed my mind, more than once—usually right on the heels of adjusting my erection after another flash-memory of his brilliant smile and the way he’d linked arms with me, a tacit and tactile sign that he’d decided to forgive me for taking him out on what had to be one of his most awkward dates of all time.
But family loyalty tended to outweigh abstract considerations like the law, especially when there wasn’t anything obviously dramatic going on, like a serial killer on the loose. Fentanyl killed more people than serial killers did by orders of magnitude, but that didn’t mean Gabe would be willing to think of someone he knew and liked and trusted as an accessory to murder.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. And as long as I was misrepresenting myself and essentially using him, that put him off-limits.
Completely. Damn it.
Although honestly, his willingness to be talked into taking me home with him made him even more off-limits than my investigation did.
And I could have. I knew it. Gabe was, for lack of a better word, easy. He’d basically admitted it.
Which wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, or wouldn’t have been—ifI’d gotten the feeling that Gabe slept around because he really enjoyed it. I’d met lots of guys who had a different partner nearly every night, and they loved the hell out of it. Betrayed commitments aside, and thank you Kris for giving me that particular complex, I was all for it. Why not have as much fun as you could? Jesus, I only wished I could have that much fun.
Unless it wasn’t fun. Unless you were lonely, and didn’t think much of yourself, and had, say, been recently kicked out of a university where you were building a life and a career and felt like you had nothing going for you but your bank account and your gorgeous body, and lived a life that wassupposedto be fun in the abstract.
Profiling wasn’t my specialty, but it didn’t take an expert, or a genius, to see Gabe’s insecurities, standing out all over him like the neon sign at Vino and Veritas. Especially when I had the benefit of a thorough background check to fill in the gaps.
My phone buzzed, and I picked it up, expecting a message from Jenna, or maybe a grumpy cat meme from my sister. She usually included some kind of super subtle reference to the meme being about me, like,Put ur face on a grmpy cat meme and no one noticed.
Gabe’s name appeared instead.
Hey! I know you said you’d call later, but do you want to come over for lunch? Ordering sushi.
I took a moment to appreciate the fact that Gabe used fully spelled-out words and real punctuation in his texts. Jesus, I’d gotten sick of my sister making fun of me for that. At least I had company.
Before I could reply, another message popped up:
Or not sushi, if you’d rather eat something else! :)
A second later:
That wasn’t meant as innuendo, sorry
And then:
