“Do you think we showered enough?” Khaki asked as they neared the compound.
Xander leaned over and gave her another sniff. While she still smelled as irresistible as ever, there was no scent on her but her own, mixed with the collection of fruity bath soaps she’d washed with.
“No, you’re good. You smell like you were hit with a daisy grenade. How about me?”
She laughed and leaned over to take a sniff. Then she sat back, an amused look on her face. “I definitely can’t pick up my scent on you. Hell, I can barely smell yours. I can’t believe you washed your whole body with a bottle of antibacterial hand soap.”
He shrugged as he pulled into the compound. The parking lot was empty except for Khaki’s Mini. “It all smells like soap to me.”
She shook her head but said nothing as she hopped out of his truck and got in her car to start it. She was smart enough to know that she needed to run the engine to keep the guys from knowing it had been sitting there all night.
While she did that, Xander ran up to the locker room and changed into his spare uniform. He was only half-finished when he heard her on the stairs. He looked up to see her watching him. The hunger in her eyes was unmistakable.
“Is now the best time to be doing that?” he asked.
She smiled. “Doing what? I’m just watching.”
He pulled up his uniform pants, having to work them over his growing hard-on. “Right, just watching. Well, you can watch all you want, but don’t go getting aroused. The scent is hard to miss.”
Khaki put on a fake pout as he pulled on his T-shirt and tucked it in, then started lacing up his boots. “I’ll try, but it’s going to be hard not thinking about what we did last night.”
It took every bit of willpower Xander had to stay where he was. He had to keep a little distance between them because if he got too close, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from kissing her. And if they kissed…
“I know it’s hard,” he said. “It is for me too. But it’s what we’re going to have to do if we want to make this work.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to be with you.”
* * *
Xander and Khaki were at FBI headquarters with a couple of the guys from the squad waiting for the briefing to start when Becker leaned over and asked her what happened last night.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I thought Xander was going to bring you back to the compound to pick up your car, but when we stopped by around three to pick up our vehicles and go home, your Mini was still there.”
Her gaze darted to Xander. “Um…”
Oh,shit.
“We stopped to grab coffee on the way back from the club, and ended up spending the next two hours chatting about department politics, evaluation forms, and promotion criteria,” he said. “By the time we realized how late it was, Khaki was too tired to drive, so I dropped her off at her place, then picked her up this morning.”
Cooper slanted him a strange look. “You brought her into work this morning?”
Xander didn’t think Cooper had the experience necessary to tell when someone was lying, and he knew Becker sure as hell didn’t. He shrugged. “Yeah.”
That must have been good enough for Becker because he changed the subject—something about drinking shots out of syringes last night. Cooper, on the other hand, didn’t look as satisfied, and Xander knew he and Khaki were going to have to watch out for him. Cooper was probably one of the most instinctive werewolves on the team. He might not be able to read all the signs that Xander was lying, but he had a gut that would tell him something was fishy.
Fortunately, their favorite FBI agent chose that moment to make his entrance and walk straight to the whiteboard at the front of the room.
Thompson slapped a picture of a dead woman on the board. About thirty, she had blond hair and a face that had probably been pretty when she was alive.
“Greta Dobson was found in an alley this morning with her throat slit,” Thompson said. “We’ve identified her as the person who called in the tip about the bank robbery on Jackson. We know it’s her because whoever killed her left a hundred-dollar bill stuck to her chest with a knife through it. They figured out she tipped us off and executed her.”
Xander cursed. He’d known this was going to happen.
“The bank the gang hit last night rarely, if ever, has more than a hundred thousand on hand, except for twice a year during regional currency exchanges,” Thompson continued. “Last night the bank was carrying nearly four times that amount, and the gang knew about it. They were in and out of the bank in less than two minutes, including the time it took them to blow through a sixteen-inch-thick vault door. As usual, they left nothing behind that we can use, and without Greta Dobson, we don’t have a clue which bank they’re targeting for hit number three.”
“You really think they’re ballsy enough to hit another bank in this town now that they have everyone’s attention?” a DPD officer in the back of the room asked.
