Warm moisture trickled between the valley of her breasts,
which were bound tightly by the purple sports bra she'd
found at a little thrift store on Third. Her muscles were
loose and slack from the workout, and she mentally
congratulated herself for managing to convince a class of
twenty upwardly mobile New York executive-types that she'd
been teaching yoga for the past six years when in fact,
she'd only just assumed this identity in the past month. She
dabbed a thin towel at her hairline and slung it around her
neck. This was by far the easiest identity she'd ever taken
on and she actually liked being Trinity Moon, the earthy
yoga instructor who believed in peace and love, vegan food
and karma.
She really liked the karma part. If karma really worked, she
enjoyed imagining that her stepfather was destined to be
reincarnated as a dung beetle. Although, that was probably
unfair to all the industrious dung beetles on the earth who
were not nearly as odious as Lionel Vissher.
Unpleasant memories blotted out her previous feel-good,
exercise-induced endorphins and she exhaled softly. Home was
so far away, not so much geographically but definitely as a
possibility; Lionel had made certain that Cassi could never
go home as long as he was alive.
A bitter draft danced along her spine and she knew someone
had just walked into the yoga studio from outside where the
temperatures were hovering in the forties. Why did people
always pop in for information when the class was clearly
already finished? "Sorry but you missed the class.
Schedule's on the door if you want to—"
"Hello, Cassi."
The breath wilted in her lungs, threatening to wheeze out in
a painful gasp if she wasn't careful. She turned slowly to
face the man whose voice she hadn't heard for years yet
remembered with a ferocity that shocked her.
"Nobody calls me that anymore," she said, her gaze
sliding over him in a quick but wary appraisal. Time had
been good to him. Not that he hadn't started out with an
advantage in that department, but his boyish cuteness in
high school had hardened into the kind of
take-a-girl's-breath-away attractive that often found its
way onto the movie screen. Tommy had that quality in spades.
Except Tommy Bristol had always hated the attention his good
looks had brought his way and never would've tolerated fame
well. Unlike Cassi, who had basked in any light that had
shone her way. She blinked away the unexpected tears, unsure
where they originated from but felt certain they could gain
her no ground with the man assessing her as intently as she
had assessed him.
"How'd you find me?" she asked. No one in her
current circles knew her true name.
He shrugged, but a hard light entered his eyes that she
didn't care for.
"Been a while…" She let the rest of her
sentence trail.
"That it has," he agreed easily. "You've been
busy."
She cut him a short glance. "A girl has to make a
living."
"Not typically on the backs of others," he returned
mildly.
Put that way, it sounded so sordid, so mean. She supposed to
him it probably looked like that. A minor ache bloomed
somewhere in her chest for the dry, dusty remains of
whatever had once softened him toward her. Would it change
things if he knew how her life had spiraled to the place she
was mired in now? Likely not, given the cool chill coming
from those ocean-blue eyes so like her own. In school, kids
had snickered that they were probably related. She cocked
her head and wondered what he saw when he looked at her. A
thief? A liar? Perhaps both. But she was certain when he
looked at her he didn't see a long-lost friend. Yes, there
it was again, that ache, ghosting across her chest,
squeezing painfully. Why did it have to be him? Anyone but him.
"Not everything is as it seems," she said,
surprising herself at the effort. She shouldn't have wasted
her time.
"And most of the time…it is," he countered.
"Not all of it is true," she murmured, glancing away
so as not to see the derision in the cruel twist of his lips.
He sighed and the sound pulled her attention. He almost
looked…regretful. But it was gone in one laborious
heartbeat. "Cassi…you're under arrest. You had to
know this was coming sooner or later."
She refused to answer. It was probably rhetorical, anyway.
"And you're going to be the one to bring me in, huh?"
"That's right."
Keep thinking that, Tommy boy. He was blocking the
front exit. She couldn't count on outrunning him to the back
exit. Besides, the latch sometimes stuck and she figured if
luck had been on her side, she wouldn't be facing down
Thomas Bristol at that moment so she wasn't about to lean on
luck for favors. That left one way out. Not the way she
preferred, but there wasn't much she could do about that.
"What if I'm innocent?" she asked, testing the
waters one last time.
"Then a court of law will decide that. Get your stuff.
We have a hard night of driving ahead of us and I want to
get moving."
She took in his stance, the way it seemed he might know her
next move before she made it, and she knew no matter their
history, he wasn't going to be swayed by the pull of old times.
This man was going to arrest her.
Trinity Moon—aka Cassandra Amelia Nolan— still had
the delicate features of a fallen angel, though where
laughter and mischief had once lit up her face, shadows now
lurked in her eyes. Eyes that had once captivated his soul
and made his world spin out of control with wanting
something so badly. It was hard to believe he was staring at
the woman who had once been his friend, confidante and the
secret love of his life until reality intruded and sent them
running away from one another.
"Are you going to tell me how you found me or should I
guess? As far as I know I didn't leave a trail of bread
crumbs," she quipped, interrupting his thoughts.
"Wasn't easy. You're a slippery one," he said. He
left out the part where he'd been tracking her movements for
about two months. Just as he'd been getting ready to pounce,
she'd gotten squirrelly and taken off again. She never used
the same name twice but she left a path of troubled and
perplexed victims who were lighter in the pocketbook for
making her acquaintance. He still had a hard time believing
the evidence but it was all there in black-and-white. His
childhood friend had become the worst kind of thief—the
kind who wormed her way into the warm, trusting bosom of
strangers and then split with their hard-earned cash.
It was near unfathomable but plain despicable. And he was
going to bring her in.
She must've read it in his eyes for she gestured. "Can I
get a quick shower?" she asked. "It'll just take a
minute. I promise."
The answer should've been a short and succinct no. It was no
worry of his if he hauled her back to West Virginia stinking
of sweat but it seemed a small thing she was asking. The
room was warm even though the thermostat had been turned off
for the night. He knew her routine by now. He knew her
license was fake and that she'd likely never been to India
in spite of her claims that she'd studied under some swami
guru while traveling abroad to find her inner sense of
peace. He had to hand it to her, for a girl who grew up with
a silver spoon in her mouth, she'd become damn resourceful.
In the two weeks since finding her, he'd lurked around the
edges of her life, waiting for the right opportunity to
bring her down.
There was no malice—he was just doing his job.
Therefore, her request for a shower seemed a decent thing to
grant. Perhaps in a slight nod to the time when she'd been
his only friend in a world that had turned against him, he
agreed.
And that was mistake number one.
Cassi smiled with lips gone cold and forced humble gratitude
into her gaze for his small concession. She didn't recognize
the hard man before her even though he wore the face of
someone who had once been very dear to her. She knew he wore
a gun under his jacket, that he carried a badge of some sort
though she didn't know from what agency, and that he was
going to haul her in on charges that she was certainly
guilty of—if you went by the letter of the law—but
could explain with complete sincerity if he'd but give her
the chance.
Only, she knew there would be no chances to explain to this
man. He was hard as granite and functioning as a robotic arm
of the law.
So after she set the water temperature in the shower stall
and made small appropriate shower noises, she quickly jerked
a sweatshirt over her sweaty sports bra and slipped on her
tennis shoes.
She climbed out the bathroom window to the fire escape and
melted into the frigid night.
And if she felt a twinge of guilt for duping him, it was
eclipsed by the knowledge that she was not cut out for
prison life and not even Tommy Bristol was going to make her
test that assumption.
Thomas swore something ugly when he entered the bathroom and
found it empty. She'd given him the slip. Just like that.
Smiled and disappeared like smoke on the wind. He should've
seen it coming, but he hadn't. Was it necessary to log that
in the report? That he'd been momentarily fogged by a sense
of nostalgia and inadvertently let a wanted woman slip
through his fingers like a rookie cop fresh out of the academy?
Hell, he wasn't even a cop. He was an FBI agent. And he
should know better.
The fact was.he did know better. Cassi had always managed to
turn the contents of his brain upside down until all the
smarts just tumbled to the floor, useless. Apparently, not
even the years between them had changed that.
No. He didn't think he'd include this first meeting in the
report.
He knew where she was going. He'd just have to beat her
there before she split again. Knowing her, she already had
another destination in her mind, another identity to assume.
She was becoming damn good at disappearing but he was damn
good at finding those who didn't want to be found.
That was why her dossier had landed in his lap. At first,
he'd been stunned stupid, staring down at the file in his
hands, hardly hearing a word his supervisor was saying about
the case. He caught bits and pieces, none of it good, and by
the time he'd recovered from seeing Cassi staring back at
him from a dated driver's license photo, he'd lost most of
what had been said and had to follow up on his own so as not
to let on that there was a definite conflict of interest for
him on this one.
He should've given the file right back with the admission
that they'd grown up together and he'd once harbored
romantic feelings for her, but his lips sealed shut and the
words died, trapped in his mouth. If anyone should bring
Cassi in, shouldn't it be him? He'd make sure she was
treated with respect and even if he couldn't help, perhaps
having a familiar face might lessen the fear of being taken
into custody.
Then he read her file and he'd been appalled, no, horrified
at how much she'd changed since they saw each other last,
more than a handful of years ago. Actually, it'd been their
freshman year in separate colleges. She went off to Boston
University while he was going to junior college with the
hopes of transferring to a state school or university, but
Cassi had never found education particularly alluring and
never graduated. Instead, she fell into a party crowd that
Thomas gave a wide berth. He had no use for overprivileged
Yanks with inflated egos and ridiculous credit card limits.
It had never mattered much that they came from different
worlds until then. Cassi started to change— or maybe
she would've said that he was the one who changed; it didn't
really matter at this point—and hot, angry words had
been said, mean enough to sever ties and fracture an
enduring friendship. He hated to admit it but he'd never
stopped nursing that particular wound, no matter how hard he
tried.
And now the devious woman had just proven she didn't give a
rip for anything they might've shared when they were young.
So why the hell was he?
He gave the studio one final sweep just in case she'd
doubled back, though he instinctively knew she wouldn't. But
he wasn't about to make another rookie mistake. He left
because he knew Cassi wasn't going to hang around this town
much longer.
And one thing was for sure, he was ending this night with
Cassi in custody.