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“Detective Jenkins?” she said.
He raised an eyebrow as he shook her hand. “Now that sounds strange. I haven’t been called Detective for years. Walt Jenkins.”
“Hi, Walt. Avery Mason. I read that you’re retired, which is hard to believe. You don’t look old enough. I mean, you don’t come off as a retiree.”
“I’m not a card-carrying member of AARP just yet, but I am most definitely retired from detective work. For many, many years now.”
“With the NYPD?”
“No, I was never with NYPD. Back when I was a cop, I worked for New York State and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
“Yes, your work at the BCI—that’s what I was hoping to pick your brain about.”
“Sure thing. Have a seat. Can I buy you a drink?”
Avery sat on the stool next to him and pointed at his drink. “What is that, bourbon?”
“Rum.”
“Rum?”
“The place is called the Rum House.”
“On the rocks?”
“It’s how good rum is meant to be enjoyed. Not ruined by mixing it with soda or Red Bull or whatever the hell the kids are doing these days. Can I entice you?”
“I’m a Tito’s and soda gal, if they even serve vodka at a rum bar.”
Avery waved down the bartender, who mixed the drink in record time and set it in front of her.
“So what’s your background?” Avery asked. “You made detective at twenty-eight and retired early?”
“Not exactly. After my stint with the BCI I actually moved on to the FBI.”
Avery had lifted her glass to take a sip but paused, with the rim of the glass an inch from her lips, at the mention of the FBI. Finally, she took a long swallow of vodka, shaking her head as she replaced her drink on the bar.
“How did I not know that?”
“You tell me. You’re the investigative journalist.”
Avery tried to process the idea that she was sitting in a bar with a member of the FBI, an agency that had a vested interest in her family.
“In your defense,” Walt said, breaking the silence, “my Bureau career was not what you’d call distinguished. It’s easy to miss. I basically pushed papers for a few years after 9/11 and I’m still not sure any of my efforts advanced the war on terror. Then I transferred to surveillance where I spent the remainder of my career.”
Surveillance, Avery thought. Not white-collar.
“So how did you manage to retire in your forties? Put your twenty in, and live happily ever after?”
“Not quite. I was injured on the job and was politely asked to step aside. I politely did.”
“Really. And now what?”
“I’m renting a house in Jamaica where I’ve spent the last few years. I try to come back to New York only when necessary. This city holds some tough memories and coming back always stirs them up.”
Avery thought of her afternoon, her trip to the marina, and her long walk through the streets of Manhattan where she tried to settle her own troubling memories. She had done her best to distance herself from the Montgomery family wounds, at least to hide from them. Specifically, she had tried to escape her connection to the Thief of Manhattan, as her father was known in the press. Her father’s infamy was why she had an uneasy feeling as she sat next to a former FBI agent, and her torrid past explained why she was thrown off by her attraction to Walt Jenkins. The battle that waged between her former and current selves was all consuming. It dominated both her professional and private life. It had prevented Avery from having a meaningful relationship with a man for the past many years. Her last serious relationship had been with a fellow student during her second year of law school. She ended things when the truth about her father’s firm began to trickle out to the public and the ramifications reared their ugly heads. She knew the years spent learning the law were as wasted as if she had spent them in a crack house. No law firm or municipality would hire Garth Montgomery’s daughter to put criminals behind bars. The irony would be too great for even the dysfunctional political system of the United States to swallow.
Her storied history explained why Avery was thirty-two years old and had never been in love. Relationships were tricky. Real relationships—ones that went further than a couple of months of off-and-on dating. Because beyond that point things became confusing with men. She didn’t quite know where her life as Avery Mason started and that of Claire Montgomery ended. Those dual personalities overlapped in ways that made honesty a monumental challenge. Her mind had attempted many times to navigate the serpentine roads that made up the early conversations at the start of a relationship, when both parties shared stories about their pasts, about their childhoods, about their parents and siblings. For Claire Montgomery, the canvas of her past was splattered with the drippings of a frantic artist gone mad. For Avery Mason, that canvas was blank. That both identities were forever bound by a hatred toward the father who betrayed his family complicated matters. That she couldn’t stop herself from loving the son of a bitch only made things more confusing. Put it all together and it was not hard to see why Avery welcomed men into her life—and specifically into her bed—with great trepidation.
