Page 131 of Fallen Rook

My dick had no fucking business twitching at that joke. I licked my lips to cover my smile. People were watching as we exited the building. “Are you flirting with me, Agent Rothwell?”

“What do you think?” He flicked his sunglasses on. He still hadn’t looked at me. Not even once.

“I’m not sure what to think. My day has been a bit of a mess so far. I’m a little disoriented.”

“Join me in my office, and I’ll untangle you from the mess.” He slipped his hands into his front pockets. We walked side by side, a criminal and a federal agent, toward Civic Center.

He was really, really dry and point-blank, and it annoyed me that he was immune to my charms whenever we were in public. It also made me worried he was a robot—because who the fuck could resist me?

“Where’s your partner?” I asked.

“In the office. Yours?” he asked without missing a beat.

Touché.

“I believe Katya is at Heathrow right now, on her way here.”

“Ah. Engagement shoot tomorrow, I hear.”

His words barraged straight through my breastbone.

I cleared my throat. “How do you know?”

“Yours is not the only Instagram I stalk.”

I said nothing. Suddenly, I got the feeling that the main calamity of today was yet to come, but he was about to deliver it to me soon. Was he breaking us up? Had I extorted too close to the sun, and he’d finally realized how much of a deadweight I was in his life and to his career and decided to cut me loose? If so, releasing me made sense. He wanted to do me a solid, so he could send me off with a clean conscience.

We said nothing for the remainder of the journey. We got into the FBI building, and after he processed me through the system, we went up to his office. It was a nice office, but a glaringly governmental one. Nothing too fancy or glamorous. Practical, clean, and chronically gray.

“Sit.” He gestured to a chair.

I obeyed.

Tom got rid of his coat, rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, then draped himself on the edge of his desk in front of me. He crossed his arms over his chest.

We stared at each other quietly. I couldn’t get a read on him. He looked so collected, so matter-of-fact, that I wondered if our entire affair was nothing more than a figment of my imagination.

“I need you to be Orpheus,” he said eventually. His piercing blues impaled their way into my soul.

“Orpheus?” I smirked nervously. “I always fancied myself more of an Apollo kinda dude.”

“The FBI never dropped the Ferrante case,” he announced plainly, like this wasn’t mind-blowing information. I didn’t even have the chance to hold my head to keep it from exploding before he continued. “It’s still in full swing, and we’re making headway. In fact, we’re very close to wrapping it up. However, I did manage to carve you out of the blowback and get you a plea deal that’ll clean your hands of the mess, spare you from prison time, and release you from any legal issues that may occur. So, yes, I need you to be Orpheus. Take the generous plea deal I stitched for you and never, ever look back.”

My mind was swimming. I clutched the armrests of my chair as if his words could blow me across the fucking office.

He’d lied to me?

He’d kept working on the case the entire time?

Was all of this…what? A joke? A cruel way to punish me? A way to pass his time?

“You…you kept working on the case?”

“I did.”

“Why?” I forced myself to stay calm, and was successful for the most part, but only because the pain hadn’t kicked in fully yet. I was at the fury stage and had to restrain myself. If I ended up bashing his head to the point of decapitation in his own office, I was definitely not making it to the engagement shoot.

“Why what?” he asked coldly.