And then it did. I shook my head so forcefully it rocked my whole body. “Absolutely not. He said he never wanted to see me again. Hehatesme.”
Scout glanced at the lawyer, then lowered her voice. “Izzy, you know what’s going to happen once the cops really start digging into my life…”
I did know. It would destroy everything we’d built over the lastdecade. It would mean not just her ruin, but mine, because by now, our fates were tied.
Scout read the understanding in my eyes. “We need to shut this down as quickly as possible, and the only way I can think of to do that is to get him.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Please, Isabel. I’m begging you.”
Once upon atime, I considered Zuma Beach in Malibu my favorite place on earth. Early in the morning, it was so beautiful it felt like a holy land, with its white-gold shore and rugged Santa Monica mountains in the background, the sun gentle and the sand under my bare feet cool and damp. I walked down the dunes with my sandals in my hand, watching the surfers bob in the water, patiently waiting for the right waves. The ocean here was colder than any beach on the East Coast, but they were devout.
After he rode his final wave, he walked down the beach in my direction, board tucked under one arm, kicking up little spurts of sand. His gaze was on the horizon, so I used the moment to study the ways he’d changed.
Boyish Brooks Yardley was gone. That shaggy brown hair, flecked gold from the sun, was dark now, and cut law enforcement-short. There was no more youthful fullness to his face. His wet suit was pulled down to his hips, so I could see that his soft edges had hardened: his stomach muscles carved, biceps taut and defined. Even the cut of his jaw was sharper, his cheekbones more pronounced. He looked like he’d been honed into a weapon.
I guessed that was what happened when you gave your life to the FBI.
Brooks turned his gaze from the water. And then he stopped. There was a flash of something across his face as he registered me: Shock? Disappointment? But then his expression shuttered, all feeling gone, a trick he must’ve learned on the job. He resumed walking, his emotions a glitch, nothing more.
“I’ve had this dream before,” he said, when we were close enough. “It ends with you holding my head underwater.”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” I stopped, but he kept coming. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s funny. Because you look exactly the same.” Up close, Brooks’s ocean eyes were more arresting than I’d remembered. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Is this your interrogation voice?” I couldn’t help picking up where we’d left off after the breakup: trading barbs, performing our disdain. But that wasn’t how you warmed someone up for a favor, and I needed the mother of all favors.
“I called the FBI tip line,” I admitted. “Told them I needed to talk to you about a possible domestic terrorism situation. They gave me your office line. Then I told your assistant I was a long-lost lover desperate to reconnect. She said you came here at dawn every morning before work. I guess some things don’t change, huh?”
He dropped his board onto the sand. Looked up at me from under a dark, arched eyebrow. “You think it’s funny, lying to the FBI?”
“It actually was a little funny how excited your assistant was. She seems pretty invested in your love life. Please don’t fire her.”
“As if I’d fire Susan over you. Why are you here, Isabel?”
I took a breath and met his eyes. “I need your help.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Brooks tipped his head back and laughed.
“I’m serious.”
He kept chuckling, wiping his face to sluice off drops of seawater. “And to think, the last time we talked, you were emphatically opposed to my help. How the tables have turned.”
“I need your expertise as an FBI agent.”
He picked up his board and took off past me, in the direction of the parking lot. “And how exactly did you find out I’m an FBI agent? When we broke up—”
“When I dumped you.” Why, Isabel? I regretted it the instant it came out.
“Right. When you dumped me, I was still in law school.”
Okay, I was really screwing up. Unfortunately, there was just something about Brooks that got under my skin, disrupting the self-control I’d worked hard to cultivate in the years since we’d dated. Maybe he was too tied to my girlhood, the unvarnished, dreamyperson I’d been at nineteen, and he kept tugging her out of me. I scrambled after him. “If you’re going to make me say it, then yes, I’ve kept tabs on you. Happy? It’s not weird to check on an ex. Don’t pretend you’ve never checked on me.”
“No need,” Brooks said dryly. He kept one step ahead. “You and Scout do everything you can to land in the news.”
“Brooks, please. Talk to me.”
He kept walking.
“Brooks, I’m in big trouble.”
