Flirting with Disaster (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 2)

“I’m impressed you’re still working it so hard.”

“Pozniak killed a fellow cop. You know these cop-killer files are never really closed. Listen...” The guy paused as if he were thinking, but Tom recognized it as a ploy to establish intimacy. “There hasn’t been a blip from Pozniak in over ten years. Like you said, he’s probably dead. Seventy years old, and he ate a typical Chicago cop’s diet for thirty-five of those. Heart attack. Stroke. Something got him.”

Tom nodded and made a noncommittal sound.

“I’d like this off my desk, Marshal. And bringing in a guy like this wouldn’t be bad for you, either.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t object,” Tom said, trying to sound casual instead of tense. “I’m happy to help any way I can.”

“All right. But listen. There’s a flag on the account. The problems with the Chicago PD are obvious, but there were some...let’s just call them internal problems here at the bureau. So if there’s anything going on in Wyoming, anything at all...” He waited again. Tom waited, too.

“I see you’re working this judge’s case,” Gates finally said. “Maybe Pozniak hooked up with that antigovernment outfit. Maybe that’s something you don’t want to share yet. Maybe you haven’t confirmed it. But if you find anything at all, get in touch with me. I’ll check it out personally.”

“I’ll help in any way I can,” Tom repeated before hanging up. He meant it, but Agent Gates wasn’t the one Tom wanted to help.

Beth Pozniak was Isabelle West now, and apparently, Tom was the only person who knew that. He’d just lied to a fellow federal officer, at least by omission, and it didn’t feel right. But Tom was so fucked up about Isabelle that he didn’t know if it was the lying that had felt wrong or something else. He needed time to think, and he didn’t have time right now. Not for this.

But thoughts of Isabelle followed him out of the makeshift marshal’s office and into the entryway of the courthouse. She followed him as he checked in with Hannity and then with Mary and the guards stationed at the front doors. Court was in session, and he wouldn’t disturb it, but Isabelle followed him as he checked that the side doors were still securely bolted.

She’d lied to him about everything. And she needed help. The question was, what would he do to help her?

Things would be simpler if he hadn’t become personally invested. Things would be way simpler if he hadn’t had sex with her. But things weren’t simple now.

He couldn’t do the right thing and inform his chief, put a call in to the FBI and bring her in for questioning. He wasn’t willing to just cross his fingers and let the wheels of justice turn. Isabelle hadn’t been a criminal when she’d run, so he needed to find out what she’d been running from before he threw her back into it.

But it was more than that. Way more than just finding out the truth. He’d started hoping his attraction to her had led his instincts astray. That there was no past, no mystery, no problem to solve. Because he wanted to keep seeing her, damn it. He wanted to accept her invitation to come over again and then persuade her to issue another and another. He liked her. And he wanted her. And that was a rare enough combination that he’d needed there to be no story here.

But now that there was, he had to do more than find out the truth. He had to help her, get her free of this mess and do it with enough skill that she’d forgive his dishonesty.

Tom knew that you had to help people in trouble even if they wound up hating you for it. But Isabelle hating him would be a damn high price to bear.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE HADN’T LOVED a man since Patrick Kerrigan.

She’d loved their bodies. And their laughter. And sometimes their voices or their minds or just the way they moved. At the very least, she’d liked a couple of them very much. But she hadn’t loved them, really, the way you might show all of yourself to someone else and pray it could be enough. She hadn’t been able to.

She didn’t love Tom, either. She hadn’t known him long enough to love him, and it was impossible anyway. But there was something there. Some comfort and maybe even trust.

She’d gone to sleep perfectly happy the night before. More than happy. Deeply satisfied and physically spent and smiling stupidly into the darkness.

But Isabelle’s mind had worked while she’d slept, and she’d awoken feeling as if she weighed a thousand pounds. She was afraid.

There was the easy fear of him being a marshal

, of course, but that wasn’t what was sitting on her chest when she opened her eyes. It was the terrible gravity of realizing that she could love him.

He was smart, and cute, and he laughed at himself and worried about other people and worked hard at his job. He treated women like equals, a rare quality among the law-enforcement men she’d known. He made her laugh. He held his own.

All of those were lovely traits, and all relatively harmless. Until you factored in the way he kissed and fucked and tasted.

She wanted more of that. Much more. And that was what scared her. The deep, greedy joy of that.

If he wasn’t a marshal, it might have been okay. He lived six hours away. They could get close enough to have a relationship, but not so close that he’d start pressing about her past. He could see her when he was in town. She could go to Cheyenne anytime she missed him.

She could have someone. Someone to notice when she was down. Someone to tell her that her new haircut was pretty. Someone to touch her when she felt lonely.

Isabelle rubbed a hand over her face, trying to wipe away the thoughts. She didn’t need any of that. She couldn’t have any of that. Not with Tom Duncan.