Page 16 of A Very Un-Shakespeare Romance
She crossed her arms as she regarded her partner. “You’re seriously sticking with that name?”
Laughing, her partner cocked her hip. “You betcha. Summer Sunshine is the perfect cover name for a girl from Florida who’s a speech and language therapist in Orlando. No one would ever be suspicious of someone with a name as sweet as that. Plus, I call you Sunshine all the time, so I won’t accidentally blow our cover. It’s the perfect backstory to help us establish rapport with our subjects next door so we can ferret out what they know about Tara. We have to find her before the Kellys do, because if you’re right and she wasn’t involved, they’ll likely kill her. She won’t be able to be a material witness against the Kellys if she’s dead.”
There were plenty of other reasons they didn’t want Tara O’Connor to end up dead. Lily’s gaze tracked to the two little girls making sandcastles on the beach. No child should go through that.
“Sitting here and doing remote surveillance until Tara O’Connor maybe shows up isn’t going to break this case open. Didn’t we both go to the FBI undercover school to enhance our careers?”
Her partner’s last question was a little on the cheeky side, but it was undeniably true. Separately, they had both enrolled in the specialized school, which made them eligible for cases where going undercover was deemed necessary to gather more evidence. No one could deny the advantage it provided. When the undercover agent managed to create trust and camaraderie, intimacy even, persons of interest got more comfortable and shared things related to their case.
Having an innocuous given name for this undercover assignment couldn’t be more important. No one in their right mind would suspect Summer Sunshine of being an FBI agent, even Robbie O’Connor, who’d been a cop long enough to be suspicious to his core. Plus, she’d known people who went by some version of that name. Granted, it was only in hippie and New Age circles. Maybe that was why it bothered her, given her background.
“Fine, I’m Summer Sunshine.” She fought a frown.
“It totally suits since you’re so sweet… Now, based on my assessment of our neighbors, I’ve ruled out Tim O’Connor for an approach—too nice and steady, based on his social media, which would need a longer approach. That leaves the other two. You have a better shot cozying up to Lieutenant O’Connor with your bleeding heart background while I’m more Billie O’Connor’s type. Again, his social media tells the story. He seems like aneasy come, easy gokind of guy who likes a voluptuous gal like me. They’ll be putty in our hands.” Sheila had the audacity to make kissing noises.
Lily grabbed her coconut water and drank deeply to disguise the nerves that started jumping when she thought about kissing Robbie O’Connor. So not professional and something that might not even happen. Kissing while undercover was something she’d successfully avoided so far. “Not if one of them realizes you’ve taken your cover name from two very famous movies. What if someone puts two and two together?”
Sheila gave her a gentle punch in the arm. “Oh, please. No one’s going to hear Clarice Malone, snap their fingers, and say, hey, you combined two characters fromSilence of the LambsandThe Untouchables.Not even Jodie Foster or Sean Connery, God bless his soul, would pick up on that.”
“Just don’t do your Sean Connery impression. It’s not the greatest, but everyone in the FBI who hears it knows who you’re doing.”
“You’re just getting the usual undercover heebie jeebies!” Sheila half hugged her. “Come on. We should be enjoying this! It’s not every day we do undercover at the beach. Hell, I’d be enjoying myself more if I looked that good in a bikini.”
Lily suddenly wanted to wrap her blue and white-flowered sarong around herself like a towel. “It’s just a swimsuit, Sheila.” They’d had a little undercover vacation shopping spree the previous evening after their operation had been approved.
“Not on you, Sunshine,” Sheila continued. “God, I envy you. When I wear two scraps of cloth over my unmentionables, I feel like one of those blow-up dolls men buy for—”
“You look great in a bikini, which is why you’ve been undercover as a stripper,” Lily reminded her. “I’d have trouble with that role without a rack.”
“I’d kill for your cup size,” Sheila said with passion, coming to stand next to her, drinking her Starbucks, dressed in yoga pants, looking like the casual city slicker from Washington, DC who was down for a much-needed vacation with her single friend. “Heck, I’d kill for your height too. If I’d wanted to be in the Bureau before 1975, it wouldn’t have even been possible. You had to be at least five foot seven.”
“Sheila, back then your bigger problem would have been that the FBI didn’t allow women until 1972.” Her partner had a good self-esteem, but she was teased mercilessly for being five-four and “rounding out a uniform,” as more than one jerk had said out loud. Not that Lily hadn’t had things said about her, but her height of five-ten was deemed more acceptable in an organization of mostly tall men.
“One of the first female agents had the last name of Malone,” Sheila said, “so maybe I’m honoring her.”
Lily had to think back to her coursework to remember the woman’s full name. “Susan Roley Malone. Nice ploy, but I still think you were going for the Sean Connery feel.”
Her partner gave her a saucy wink. “But you’ll be wondering, which is why I’m such a good undercover agent. I get into your head.”
That made her start laughing.
“All right. I think it’s time for your approach, Miss Sunshine. You finally look less stressed from all the hoops we had to jump through to get here.”
“Nah, this one was easy.”
Normally a field office liked to be in charge of what was going on in its territory, but given that the Kelly investigation was part of a big investigation out of Boston, their office was running it. And with money from their own budget, which the local office in Charlotte loved. Buck hadn’t had to do much convincing to let them run the undercover op independently given the Charlotte office was stretched to the limit with a manhunt for the kidnapper of a six-year-old boy.
Lily prayed they would find the boy soon, because the more time passed, the worse it would be. She’d be working on high-risk cases like that if she got her promotion, and nothing motivated her more than looking for a lost child.
She surveyed the two sweet little girls she was here to protect while conducting the case. Screaming aside, both children seemed fine. Reagan was trying to console Cassidy, who was wailing against Robbie’s shoulder now, pointing at the ocean.
“You look like the kind of sweet little neighbor who would offer assistance to a screaming kid.” Sheila slurped the last of her Starbucks. “No one would know in that getup that you’d been ‘sworn’ in as an officer of the peace today.”
“Stupid to be on an investigation and not be able to exercise our police powers on something other than a straight federal crime due to being in a different state than our HQ,” Lily bandied back. “Let’s hope we don’t have to bust anyone. We just need Tara to meet them here or have them tell us where she is.” Assuming they knew and had a way to communicate. They would be looking for a phone. Likely a burner.
“Or for the Kellys to find them.” Sheila opened the glass patio door. “Not that we want that, but it would help our case. We could bust them for more than money laundering and destruction of property.”
She cracked her neck, hating that the worse this situation got, the better her career prospects would be if she resolved it. “It’s a long way from Boston for the Kellys. All right, I’m going in. Wish me luck.”
