Page 21 of Deceive Me
“Everything’s in place, sir.” Sheppard switched monitors and clicked through the items like she had a checklist in her head, which he wouldn’t doubt. She might be young, but he’d known her several years, and she never missed anything. The girl’s mind was a steel trap.
“Anything further on Mansa’s movements here in the US?” he asked.
“Nothing.” The tightness in her voice said she didn’t like the answer any more than Deacon did. “He’s totally off grid. Believe me; if there was anything to find, I would’ve found it. Mansa knows how to stay hidden.”
“Maybe because the man barely left his tropical island for twenty past years,” Fionn bitched.
“That we know of, anyway.” Straightening up to stretch his cramped back muscles, he sighed. “So we’re basically still at square one.”
“You’re at the most defensible square,” Sheppard reminded him, her soft voice determined, no longer hesitant. “He has to come to you; that was the plan, and it’s still the best one.”
She wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. “I need you to do some digging on a local named Gary Lawrence.”
Sheppard flipped a switch on a speaker near her keyboard, then said, “Tell me what all you need.”
As he spoke, the device Sheppard had activated dictated his words onto the nearest computer screen. Fionn whistled. “That’s nifty.”
“I do like my toys,” Sheppard said absently, clicking the mouse. And then her words seemed to register in her mind, because a dark red stain worked its way up her neck to her cheeks. Fionn grinned.
“Uh…o-okay.” Another click. “I’ll get this to you in a couple of hours, sir.”
“Deacon, Sheppard. His name is Deacon.” But Fionn was the one insisting; Deacon and Sheppard ignored him. Deacon had given up trying to get the girl to call him by his name a couple of years ago. Come to think of it, he had no idea what her first name was; he’d never heard her referred to as anything but Sheppard.
He gave the desk a light rap and turned to go. “Let me know what you find. And thanks.”
“Anytime.” She was answering him, but Deacon had no doubt the girl’s eyes were on Fionn’s broad back as they walked out of her office.
“When are you going to put her out of her misery, Irish?” Deacon asked as they walked toward the elevator at the end of the hall.
“Who?”
“Duh! Sheppard, maybe? She’s only been drooling over you since you met three years ago.”
Fionn reached for the Down button, a grimace twisting his lips. “I don’t do teenagers.”
That shocked a laugh out of Deacon. “She’s twenty-four, not fourteen.” He remembered because he’d walked into her office a few months ago and found the girl reading one of those musical greeting cards. He’d caught the theme music from Star Wars before she’d slammed the card closed and hidden it, but he’d managed to wrangle the fact that it was her birthday out of her.
Still, he couldn’t deny that no matter how old she was, he’d always thought of her as girl. Maybe Fionn had a point.
“I don’t think I’m the one to be worrying about a wan right now, do you?” Fionn asked.
The elevator doors slid shut. “What are you talking about?”
“Go on outta that,” he said before Deacon could get the words out of his mouth. “Elliot Smith—and don’t bother denying it. I’m seeing the way you two eye each other; everyone is. The anticipation is so thick no one could miss it, bro.”
“We’re on an op, Fionn.”
His friend leaned against the wall. “Let me be telling you something, Deac—that woman is a distraction. You want that distraction gone? Fuck her. Then your brain won’ be fogged by wondering what the sex would be like. Get it out of the way, and everything will go easier.”
“Is that the only way you see sex?” He’d been married to Jules since high school. The whole “sex for sex’s sake” hadn’t been a part of his experience. Now…
Could he do it? His cock screamed yes every time he thought about the petite fighter, but when his brain wasn’t fogged with lust, it sounded a firm no. And then there was Elliot’s team—not one of those men would be okay with sex on an op. Dain might just rip his head off.
Fionn had no such qualms, obviously. “That is how I’m seeing it! Everything else is too much fecking drama.”
Fionn would know; some of the women who’d chased him after a one-night stand had certainly caused drama. Deacon suspected Elliot was exactly the opposite. The expression on her face when he’d confronted her over the surveillance…
Yes, she’d run, and the part of him that was pure predator wanted the chase. He would never admit it to Fionn, but he was beginning to wonder if the man was right. She wouldn’t go down easy, though. And her team…
