“That tea is important to me,” she said, enunciating each word. “But I wouldn’t lower myself to begging someone like you. If you thought I would, that was an adorable underestimation on your part.”
She could see cogs whirring behind his eyes, feel his breath fanning her forehead. This is what he did for a living; he read people. Since they’d begun working together, she’d seen him in action several times, and it was impressive, but she prided herself on remaining unreadable to him. “Tell me why the tea is important to you and I’ll hand over the whole lot.”
Now that she hadn’t been expecting. His response threw her a little, cutting off the sharp rejoinder she’d had poised for delivery. “Why do you care what matters to me?”
Dammit. There it was again. A shimmer of something else beneath the cocky exterior. A parting of the curtains that allowed blue light to shine through. God, he’s good. As soon as it appeared, though, it vanished without a trace. He cleared his throat and stepped back, running a hand through his GQ cover-model hair. “Do you even have to ask? When I know what makes someone tick, I can manipulate them.” He winked at her. “I thought you knew that about me, Banks.”
She put up her middle finger. “Manipulate this.”
An unfamiliar figure filled the doorway. “I must be in the right place.”
…
Austin didn’t think, he simply lunged forward to shield Polly, wedging her against the wall, her front to his back. A fleeting moment passed where he felt her hand curl in the material of his shirt, and it was a glorious goddamn feeling. Finally, some form of a tell from the mysterious Polly Banks. And it had only been six months in coming. So if presented with an unknown threat, she would consider him the lesser of two evils. Right. He could work with that. Some marriages had been founded on less, and he merely wanted to shag her senseless.
Believing your own lies was another necessary skill when leading the life of a con. A brilliant one, at that.
“Who the hell are you?” Austin asked the man framed in the doorway. “A quick answer, if you please.”
“I don’t,” the figure returned.
“Cop,” Polly whispered against the back of Austin’s neck, warming his scalp and making his pants that much more confining. Fucking hell. She’d picked a rotten time to get grabby and soft-spoken, but he’d take it. “Hundred bucks says he’s a cop.”
Austin tilted his head, studying the man. His clean-shaven head reached the door’s top frame, arms jutting out slightly on either side of him, as if they contained too much muscle to hang at his sides, like a normal bloody human being. It was hard to place his heritage, standing as the man was in the shadows, but Austin judged him to be half African-American with some Scandinavian blood accounting for the rest. He actually found it comforting that the chap looked as suspicious of them as they were of him. Cop suspicious. As always, Austin was amazed by Polly’s astuteness.
“I don’t place losing bets,” Austin murmured, wishing she would twist up his shirt again, maybe do some more whispering. “Bad news,” Austin called to the newcomer. “We only work with one cop, and I’ve only just come ’round to the idea. If you’re here to give us orders, consider this my preemptive fuck-off.”
The man appeared unfazed, swaggering into the room in a way that put Austin’s back up. He knew deception well, and although the man moved with a casual gait, Austin recognized an ability to defend oneself. A fighter’s swagger. “I’m not a cop anymore.” The newcomer leaned against the far wall and crossed his mammoth arms over his chest. “And that’s the last time you tell me to fuck off, English.”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s too early in the morning for a pissing contest.” Polly slipped out from behind his back, leaving him feeling cold. “Although there’ll be no avoiding it when—”
“Who the fuck are you?” Bowen Driscol asked, coming to a stop just inside the door, his wife, Seraphina, close at his side. “I only signed up for one cop. Not including my wife.”
“Good God,” Austin grumbled. “The street tough figured it out quicker than me? All this inactivity is making me rusty.”