Taken by the Con. C.J. Miller

said.

      No one in IT had ever given her a device to use in the field, at least, not without her prompting.

      After snapping some pictures, Cash took a seat in a chair outside Young’s office. “Is this what it’s like to be an FBI agent? Running around the city and interviewing people?”

      He made it sound easy. “Sometimes.” The work could be challenging and dangerous. Days like today were among the easier ones.

      “Come on, I’m being friendly.”

      “You’re making me hate that word,” Lucia said.

      “Then give me a chance to get on your good side,” Cash said.

      Everything he said sounded light and good-natured. It was almost harder to keep her dislike of him than to give in to his charm. “You don’t need to be on any of my sides,” Lucia said.

      “There’s one side of you in particular I’ve seen and really like,” Cash said, looking at her mouth.

      Her lips prickled and burned and she remembered how amazing kissing him had been. “You are something else,” Lucia said, trying to diffuse the blistering desire spreading down her body. She would not let down her defenses.

      “I think she would agree with you,” Cash said under his breath, rising to his feet and taking the coffee from Georgiana’s outstretched hands.

      Cash talked with Georgiana, leaning in and laughing at her lame jokes. Lucia pretended not to notice. Georgiana returned to her desk, wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Cash.

      “Call me,” Georgiana said. She ran her hand down his pale green tie, fisting it at the end and pulling him a little closer to her.

      Cash looked at the paper and then slipped it into his suit jacket pocket. He looked pleased and interested in the cute redhead.

      Annoyance burned through Lucia. Why was it so easy for some men to win over a woman?

      Lucia could think of a dozen snappy remarks to make about the exchange, but she kept her mouth shut. Saying anything would make her sound jealous and juvenile.

      “Tell me. I can hear you fuming,” Cash said, taking a seat next to her.

      “I’m not fuming,” Lucia said. “I’m observing.”

      “I’m establishing a rapport,” Cash said, the lightheartedness gone. “If she knows something about Young or the theft, I want to know it, too.”

      They waited in silence for twenty minutes before Leonard Young returned to his office. Twenty minutes of thinking about Cash when she should be thinking about the case. Twenty minutes of replaying that kiss. Twenty minutes of every nerve in her body being aware he was next to her and dancing excitedly about it.

      When Young returned, he had another man in tow.

      “I thought it would be a good idea to have our in-house attorney present for this conversation. He’s worried about lawsuits,” Young said, ushering them into his office. “Nothing’s been finalized with our clients and we have a lot of angry people waiting for a settlement.”

      Lucia’s bull-crap meter went off. A month ago, when the story went public, Holmes and White had publicly asked the FBI to assist and had reassured their team they’d be cooperative and open. A lawyer in attendance seemed like a defensive measure.

      Holmes and White were likely conducting their own internal investigation. If they’d stumbled on a mistake, they’d want to keep that under wraps. It was Lucia’s job to bring everything on the level.

      Young took a seat behind his large desk. His lawyer sat next to him, quiet and with a notepad poised on his lap.

      Sensing this interview would be a waste of time, Lucia introduced herself and Cash and then launched into her questions. She had not conducted the initial interviews with Young, but she had read them. To this point Young had been helpful but cautious. That hadn’t changed.

      Cash said nothing and his face was impossible to read. He appeared both indifferent and slightly amused.

      “How is your investigation progressing?” Young asked.

      Not as well as Lucia would have liked. Their team had tracked two percent of the stolen money to accounts within the United States. Those accounts had been frozen pending the FBI’s investigation. The rest of the money had disappeared. “We’re following every lead we have available.”

      “I’ll tell you whatever I can,” Young said.

      His lawyer shook his head and Young glanced at him. “I will tell you anything I can within reason.”

      Cash didn’t write anything. He didn’t fiddle. He didn’t look around the office or sneak another look at Georgiana. His eyes stayed riveted on Leonard Young and his lawyer.

      As Lucia expected, Young’s answer was “I don’t know” to almost every question. When he did answer, he gave disappointingly little information. For someone who wanted the money found, he was stingy with details. His behavior earned him a slot in Lucia’s “look into this much deeper” folder.

      “Thank you for your time, Mr. Young,” Lucia said after forty-five minutes of questions had yielded nothing new. “We’ll be in touch.”

      Lucia would need to find another way to approach Young or some other angle to use. Maybe she could get in touch with someone else in the company, perhaps someone lower on the food chain. Starting at the top wouldn’t have been her preferred technique, but Benjamin had suggested Young and had warned her to keep things friendly. This case had many victims, and the public and media were watching closely.

      Once they were outside the Holmes and White building, Cash spoke for the first time since before the interview.

      “You know he’s lying, right?” Cash asked.

      “What makes you think that?” Lucia asked. She suspected Young was withholding information, but Cash was along to lend his insights.

      “He has a tell. It took a few questions for me to notice. He looks at his left ring finger and then he lies. Interestingly, his ring finger is bare. Is he married?” Cash asked.

      “According to the file we have on him, yes,” Lucia said.

      “He’s cheating on her,” Cash said.

      “How do you know that?” Lucia asked.

      “Gut feeling. He had this way of answering the questions. He thinks he’s in control and he thinks he can do whatever he wants.”

      Interesting observation. Arrogance and control went with the territory. “We’ll follow up.”

      “Do you want me to call Georgiana? I could take her to dinner and see if I can learn anything from her.”

      Imagining Cash on a dinner date with the beautiful, younger woman annoyed her and Lucia couldn’t answer that question objectively. “Talk to Benjamin about it.”

      “Is that how this partnership will work? You’ll pass me off when you don’t want to discuss something?” Cash asked.

      Lucia continued toward the car. “It’s not a partnership. Benjamin sent us out together to handle these interviews. In future tasks, hopefully you’ll be assigned to work with someone else.”

      “I like working with you,” he said.

      “Why?” Lucia asked, drawing to a stop and looking at him. Few others did. Either she was accused of going by the book or being too impulsive.

      “Why do I like working with you?” he asked.

      At her nod, he rubbed his chin. “You’re smart. You’re strong. You’re spunky.”

      “Spunky?” she asked.

      “Yes,” he said. “You’re making this fun.”

      She