Outside the precinct, Ava made it only a block and a half before necessity demanded that she stop.
With a quick glance to make sure he wasn’t following, she ducked off into the alcove of an apartment building entry and made the exchange that nearly every New York career woman was well acquainted with:
The shoe swap.
Out of her roomy I-can-fit-my-whole-life-in-here handbag came the beat-up flip-flops from Target.
Into that same handbag went the black stilettos. Also from Target.
Ava inhaled gratefully as her toes wiggled in happy relief at being freed from the pinching patent leather nightmare.
She’d have happily sent her gritty contacts the same way of the high heels (far, far away), but she’d very deliberately left her glasses at home today to avoid such temptation.
Prime-time news anchors didn’t wear glasses.
Of course, they didn’t wear their hair in messy ponytails either, but that didn’t stop Ava from pulling her hair—in which she’d spent half an hour creating loose, hair-sprayed curls—into a messy pony.
By the time she made it to the van, she looked a lot less This is Ava Sims, reporting for CBC news and a lot more, well, Ava Nobody Sims from Darrington, Oklahoma.
Luckily, the man waiting for her didn’t care.
Mihail Petrov was leaning against the CBC van smoking a cigarette, his severe features schooled into their usual indifference even as sharp blue eyes took in every detail of Ava’s appearance.
He blew out a long stream of smoke, and she stifled the urge to remind him—again—of the hazards of smoking. Mihail didn’t do friendly advice. Unless he was the one giving it. And even then, it was rarely friendly.
But she loved him anyway.
“Knew you wouldn’t make it,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette from her bare toes to messy hair that was completely at odds with her prim pencil skirt and no-nonsense blouse.
“I made it long enough,” she said, elbowing him aside so she could pull a bottled water out of the cooler they kept in the van.
“So they’re going for it?” His slight Bulgarian accent made this sound more like a statement than an actual question.
“They didn’t really have a choice.” Ava tipped the bottle back and took three large gulps. “This meeting was a formality more than anything else. This BS story was handed down from the top on both sides, apparently.”
“Huh,” Mihail grunted. “So they weren’t excited about it?”
“No,” Ava mused, tapping her fingernails against the water bottle. “They weren’t.”
Which she found surprising. Ava had yet to encounter anyone who wasn’t secretly thrilled to be at the center of attention, even when they threw up token protests.
And she would have thought a cop at the bottom of the NYPD food chain should have been a sure bet for delivering an, “aw shucks, I’m just a regular guy, but if you really think it’s a good story…”
But Ava’s reporter instincts told her Luc Moretti’s hesitation had been real. And actually, hesitation was too soft a word. He’d been pissed. And something else too. She tapped her fingernails more slowly as she replayed the encounter.
For a split second Ava could have sworn that Luc Moretti looked…scared.
But of what? The man had gone above the call of duty and was getting recognized for it. She could see him being embarrassed. Maybe annoyed. But scared…
Something was off there.
Ava took another gulp of water.
But on the plus side, his reaction to her had been everything she’d secretly hoped for.
As much as Ava was dreading this bogus, fluff-piece of a story, she had been looking forward to seeing his face when he saw her again. She only wished she would have stayed behind to see his livid reaction to that unpaid parking ticket she’d thrust at him.