“Wow. Is that part of the game?” he asks, chuckling adorably and grinning like the dickens.
Gah. Get a grip, Lila. This isn’t the time for a dumb dad crush. It’s a trap!
He’s the flippity flapping FBI.
I bet he works with Reed. And the dirty, dimple-having rat must have sent him over to mess with me.
“Sorry! I don’t know what happened,” I fib. “Brand new cards. Slippery little suckers.”
That’s total BS. All the cards are new here. We get new ones daily and sometimes twice a day.
My floorman notices the chaos that is my life and runs over to assist in cleanup efforts. “You okay, Lila?”
I scramble to pick up the cards as frantically as possible. “Yep. Fine. Um.” The burn in my cheeks quickly spreads down my throat and upper chest. I can’t even finish the sentence, so I don’t bother.
Mortification is my daddy now.
“I’ll get you two new decks,” he tells me once he sees I’ve got it under control.
Although the cards I dropped are about to be sent to the landfill, I keep straightening them and start shuffling again.Anything to avoid making eye contact with the federal freaking agent at my table.
My floorman returns with new cards, and I begin inspecting them, spreading them across the table and dutifully following my procedures.
The agent softly taps his open palm on the table to get my attention. “Sorry if I startled you, Lila.”
I can’t remember his name, so we’re going withAgent Dad.
Pausing my efforts, I force my eyes to meet his. “You didn’t. I was just clumsy.”
He narrows his eyes to slits and grins at me. “We can pretend that’s true if you want. I didn’t come here to upset you.”
My response shoots out of my mouth at the same speed that the cards spring from my hands earlier. “Whydidyou come here?”
“I want to talk to you about Silas Everson and Elliot Riddick.”
Not this again.
“Why?” I chirp.
Don’t judge me for making bird sounds, okay? I’m planning to fly away as soon as I sprout wings.
When he doesn’t answer immediately, I ramble, “Another agent already questioned me. He was here a week or two ago. Hauled me into my manager’s office out of the blue.” My forced smile fades as my ire at Reed bristles against my innards. “Like I said then, I don’t know anyone named Elliot. And Silas is myex-boyfriend. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
There. Good job.And best of all, it’s the truth.
Regrettably, he doesn’t respond to my perfectly reasonable statement by thanking me for my time and leaving. Nor does he promise that I’ll never have to speak to an FBI agent again for as long as I live. Instead, he flashes his phone screen at me. “Do you recognize this man?”
Gulp.
With the reluctance of a husky avoiding bath time, I drift my attention toward the phone. Looks like a grainy picture from a doorbell camera. The edges are curved, as if it were taken with a concave lens, making it harder to decipher.
Fortunately,I don’t recognize him. “No. It’s not that great of a picture, huh?”
Hooray for not perjuring myself.
“Have you talked to Silas recently?”
Come on, Agent Dad. Cut me a break, eh?
