"Because to my knowledge, there's nothing to tell. But Sterling trusts you. Use that."
Juniper closed her eyes and squeezed the pencil. She knew what Bea was leaning into, and she didn't like it.
"I gotta get to work," Juniper said.
"When are you seeing Sterling next?"
"We haven't set up a second date, if that's what you're asking," Juniper said. "But I'm sure I'll see him tonight."
"It's good that you're getting closer. The closer you are to Sterling, the more you can find out about Doyle, his organization and if any of this is connected."
Bea cut the line.
Juniper closed the laptop and locked it in the drawer. She'd spent the first few months of this assignment eavesdropping on everyone's conversations. She made friends faster than rabbits multiplied. She became part of the fabric of this community, and the good citizens trusted her with their secrets.
And Calusa Cove had plenty of those.
Earlier, she couldn't wait for shit to happen.
Now, she wanted it to stop. She wanted front porch sitting, rainbow-colored skies, and gators making noise. It was a nice life. She hated that it was fake, and that surprised her.
She'd been lying for a living for years. She'd worked undercover before she'd met Mark. This wasn't her first rodeo.
But it was the first time she'd held a cover for more than a few months. And she'd never developed feelings for her assignment or attachment to her location.
This was what she'd been trying to pretend hadn't happened. Falling in love with Calusa Cove was one thing. She could say goodbye to a place. That wouldn't be the worst. She'd done it before. But leaving the people would be something entirely different.
And Sterling was more than a file. He'd become the first thought that entered her conscious mind and the last image her brain let go of before she drifted into dreamland.
Admitting that wasn't easy, especially to herself.
Up until this moment, it had been a job.
Now, it felt like a lie, and she wasn't sure if she could look Sterling in the eye now that everything had changed.
Chapter Eight
Sterling stood in front of the whiteboard that had been rolled into the center of the main room. One of the three faces on it was Sterling's. Thinking he had a sense of humor, Cullen had clipped Sterling's employee photo up there like a wanted poster.
With an iced coffee sweating in his hand, Sterling studied himself the way he'd study any other subject. It didn't work. Objectivity was easy when the face on the board belonged to someone else.
A picture of Doyle hung on the left side of the board, and Granger Frost’s image was in the middle, under a Meridian Tactical letterhead Dove had pulled and printed.
"I've never seen a board with one of us on it." Cullen sat backward on a folding chair near the coffeemaker, forearms crossed over the top rail.
"At least it's not a murder board." Dove leaned back in her chair, feet up on the bottom drawer of her desk, both hands resting on the curve of her belly. "I'm going with a worry board."
"Worry implies I've got something solid to be concerned about." Sterling set the coffee down on the edge of his desk."What I've got is a job offer from a guy who always drove me crazy and a gut that won't shut up about it."
Dove gestured at the board with her chin. "You came back from that café looking like you'd bitten down on foil. Tell us why."
He picked up the dry-erase marker and rolled it between his fingers. "The offer, first." Under Frost's photo he wrote PRINCIPAL PROTECTION—FROST. "Meridian wants Aegis to subcontract—specifically—me. Protection and threat verification on Granger Frost, chairman of Ashbourne Holdings." He tapped the letterhead. "Frost came out of the old Colombia–Panama–Miami corridor, paid his way through it back when he had to, got out and rebuilt. Now the survivors from that corridor have supposedly resurfaced and they're hunting the people they think turned on them."
"And you don't buy it?" Cullen asked.
"We only crippled the corridor. We didn't get everyone, and the corruption ran deep." He recapped the marker. "I had Mia dig into everything in preparation to ask Buddy if it's something we want to take on. He’s back in the office tomorrow."
Dove leaned forward and placed her hand on a folder. "And Mia's already sent over a preliminary report." She opened the folder and took out a thick stack of papers.
