Semua Bab Undercover Hearts: Bab 91 - Bab 100

MarcusThere are two kinds of discoveries. The neat, satisfying kind that makes your spine buzz with the pleasure of solving a puzzle, and the kind that drops like a stone into your gut. The Marrin–Bainbridge overlap is both.I find it in a dusty batch of corporate calendars. An innocuous scan someone misfiled. Marrin met a Bainbridge executive during the exact three-day gap in Pemberton’s financial records. Not before, not after, right in the place we could never account for. It’s the sort of tiny, careful detail that turns coincidence into pattern.I call Gillespie because that’s what you do when you find a hot thread and want to temper the impulse to yank at it until the whole thing unravels. She answers on the second ring, all clipped and efficient.“Goddammit Marcus! How many ways do you need me to tell you to drop this?” she asks furiously before I finish explaining. “Rodriguez doesn’t want heat on Bainbridge yet! You pushing here pulls fire to the whole op.”“Because you think

SophiaThere are small ways the world tells you to be afraid, and then there are Platinum-sized ways. Today’s is the kind that arrives folded into a name card, like a polite weapon slid across a linen tablecloth.I’m at a Platinum “client appreciation” luncheon. One of those events that smells like petit fours and suppressed panic. Elena organized it, which is the reason the whole room is an exercise in polished menace. She throws charm the way other people throw glitter, but the glitter with her always has a weight to it. I tell myself I’m here because it’s research.I’m hovering by the canapé table because the lobster bites are strategically located next to the prawn skewers, and because watching people being casually affluent is fascinating. Preston is here, shaking hands with a man whose smile could fund three start-ups. Marcus is across the room, in his element, talking in low, measured sentences that make the people surrounding him lean in like they are about to receive scrip

ElenaThe secret to lying well is to tell the truth. Or, at least, something that looks close enough to it that no one bothers to question the shine.Which is why I let the words fall the way I do. Not harsh, not cutting. Just casual, like a sigh wrapped in silk.“Marcus?” I say to Yvette, one of our more talkative vendors, while we stand by the refreshment table after a midweek Platinum event. “Oh, he’s brilliant. Smart, steady. But between you and me, he has a temper. You know the type. Fiery, loyal, the kind of man who doesn’t let go of a grudge.”Yvette’s eyebrows lift, intrigued. Exactly the response I wanted. Curiosity is contagious, and gossip spreads faster than champagne at one of these mixers.I add the finishing touch, an artful wince, softened with a quick laugh. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a wonderful partner to have in this business. Just… complicated. But aren’t the best men always the complicated ones?”I watch it land. Not heavy enough to bruise, but sharp enough to lin

MarcusThe first rule they drill into you at Quantico is that paranoia is just pattern recognition with a badge.And I’ve been trying not to see patterns where Sophia’s concerned. Trying not to hover, not to track every shadow that crosses her building’s entrance. But the break-ins, the tampered security system…those weren’t paranoia. Those were facts.Which is why, on a gray Saturday morning, I call in a favor.“You still owe me for getting your nephew off the hook after his shoplifting incident,” I tell Ethan, a buddy from my Bureau days who now freelances in private digital security. For some reason Emerson Wu has stopped taking my calls.So I arranged to meet Ethan at a diner halfway across town, the kind of place that serves burnt coffee in chipped mugs and doesn’t bother with Wi-Fi. “And I’m cashing it.”Ethan leans back, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You want me to look at someone’s system without them knowing?”“I want you to look at the exterior cameras of an

SophiaThe address doesn’t look like much. Half a duplex on a street where paint peels from porch railings and the air smells faintly of mildew. It seems unfathomable that a man like Marrin would have lived hered, but maybe that’s exactly why he did. It’s forgettable. Nondescript.I stand at the door with my heart in my throat, picking the lock like it’s second nature. Years of bad foster homes taught me a thing or two about cheap locks. The deadbolt clicks open with an almost insulting ease.The hallway inside is dark, thick with the smell of dust and stale air. I step over the threshold and the house suddenly seems to come alive.A mechanical groan, followed by a slam. Then another. Metal shutters slide down over the windows with a finality that makes my stomach lurch. The front door seals behind me with a hiss like hydraulics.“What the fuck!” I spin, reaching for my phone. No bars. Nothing. Not even emergency signal. That’s when I hear the sound. Movement. A floorboard creaking d