Page 28 of Cops and Robbers

He wished those records didn’t exist. But Lewis had wanted to make them legit and forced them to join the Navy SEALs a decade ago. The freezing water and chafing sand had been the worst part of the advanced specialized training.

“You assumed because the Mirage and I served together that I’m part of this Dragon SEALs team?” Raz asked. “And then created this ploy to do what?”

“Ask for your help.” Her tone had dropped to a serious octave.

He came to attention as something dark crossed her features. His instincts had told him she desperately needed something.

“You went through all that to ask for my help?” he asked, disbelief waging war in his mind. “Why didn’t you just come to me in person?”

She sighed, causing the sides of her onesie to slide open. His eyes lowered to follow the path over her pert breasts in a satin black bra. Warmth traveled down to his groin. Following his gaze, she cursed before pulling the zipper up. Her cheeks held a radiating glow.

She answered, “Putting the whole you’re a dragon and I’m a Fallen aside. Because we both didn’t know that aspect until recently. If I came to you as a human, asking for your help with Matsuda, you would have what? Gotten what information you needed from me and tossed me aside, thinking I couldn’t possibly know about your secretive vigilante team.”

She wasn’t wrong. His team was far too cautious when it came to leads. They would have kept her on the radar but wouldn’t have taken her seriously.

“This is too personal for me,” she said. “I needed to get under your skin, learn who you were as a person, and show you what I’m capable of.”

Stealing. Just like Midnight. “You wanted us to think you were Midnight, didn’t you?”

“Did I succeed?” Her voice wavered.

His mouth dried. “Are you?”

“I’m who you need to bring Matsuda down.”

Her evasion of the question streaked fire across his back. “If that’s the case, you’re going to have to be more forthcoming than that.”

Her jaw ticked and her hands dug into the desk. “If I were Midnight, do you seriously believe I wouldn’t have a great fucking reason for doing what I’m doing?”

The woman he was learning about definitely would, but something in him knew she wasn’t defending herself. In the car when she’d been defensive about him calling her a criminal, she’d gone quiet. She wasn’t shutting down now. She was explosive because she was protecting someone else. He had a feeling she wasn’t Midnight, but she knew who was. Also, to defend someone like Midnight took a certain kind of person. Someone who cared deeply. And that meant she was worth listening to.

“What do you need help with?” he asked.

“Matsuda has something of mine, and I want it back.”

“Care to share details?”

“It—“ She stumbled over words, and from her sudden change to her normal nonverbal communication, whatever she would have said would have been a lie. She sighed, as if thinking better of lying. “Listen, we both want to get something back from him. He needs to be stopped.”

Something twisted inside him. She evaded the question as if she didn’t trust him. He’d brought her here because his dragon instincts were never wrong, but his leniency had led her to find out the truth about him and his team. As much as he didn’t care to risk himself, he wouldn’t risk his team. “We don’t work with criminals.”

Ice slid down his spine from the glare she sent him.

With a sharp tone, she ordered, “Follow me.”

She maneuvered around his desk until she plopped down in his office chair and scooted forward. Intrigued, he joined her.

“Put in your password,” Kate said.

Too curious to listen to reason, he grabbed the cordless keyboard, smelling her expensive sweet scent as he whisked by her. After typing in his password, he handed it back. She opened a browser and continued through the FBI secure login with credentials—the identification number she had probably stolen. He would have stopped her, but the computer she was working on was so encrypted that the feds couldn’t trace it back to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She operated the site as if she had been on there more than once, pulling up a list of the tracking devices specific to his field office. Tracker names lined the left side while their availability and location followed in a row.

“Why are those active?” he asked. No one had active missions that he was aware of.

“If you had ever checked your logs, you would have noticed them missing. Each of which I’ve attached to the items I stole, like the Hope Diamond necklace. If you were to track them”—she clicked on a hyperlink to pull up the active GPS feed for a tracker—“you’ll notice that all the items are currently sitting with their owners.”