Beth Ciotta: Everybody Loves Evie

“Help me,” she sang in his ear.

“I’ll save you,” he said.

“My hero.” She flashed her dazzling smile and breasts.

He reached for those perfect 32Bs, but an alarm stopped him cold. No, not an alarm. A phone. What was a phone doing on the beach? “If this is a dream, please don’t let me …”

Milo Beckett woke up reaching for thin air. “Dammit.” He squinted at the digital clock, cursed again. Not bothering to turn on a light, he palmed his cell phone and fell back against his pillows. “Beckett here. What’s up?”

“Are you mental?”

“I’m sleep-deprived. It’s 3:00 a.m., Arch. This better be good.”

“She’s not like us.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Ah.” Evie Parish. The woman of his fractured fantasy.

“Why didnae you tell me you hired her?”

“Figured you had enough on your mind. The shooting. Dodging Scotland Yard.”

“Haven’t given the shooting a second thought, mate.”

“That because it was a straight-up accident? Or because he deserved to die?”

“Let’s just say the world’s better off, yeah?”

“Skirting the issue.”

“Speaking of skirts, what’s the deal with Evie?”

Milo reflected on the half-pint fireball awakening in the island hospital. How she’d asked after everyone’s welfare, never complaining about her own injury. He remembered her passionate argument regarding her qualifications and the spark of desperation in her deep blue eyes. He remembered how she made him feel every time they were in the same room—alive, amused and, dammit, randy. “She wanted to work for Chameleon,” he said. “I agreed to give her a shot. I didn’t specify the job.” Arch didn’t comment, but Milo heard relief in the significant pause. “Unlike you,” he continued, “I wouldn’t put an untrained civilian in the field.”

“Aye, except she’s not a novice anymore.”

“One sting does not make—”

“I taught her a few short cons, yeah?”

Milo pressed a thumb and forefinger to his closed lids. The throbbing behind his eyeballs promised to intensify within the next thirty seconds or however long it took his partner to explain his asinine actions. “Why?”

“Because she’s gullible and someone needed to open her eyes to the real world.”

“Huh.”

“Stop projecting, Jazzman.”

“Who’s projecting? One minute she’s anxious to start her new job, the next she remembers she booked a vacation. To England, no less. I assumed it was your doing, but I didn’t pry. Figured you had unfinished business.”

“Figured I owed her after dragging her into that land-investment mess. So I treated her to a holiday. So what?”

“So is it finished?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Because mixing business with pleasure—”

“Messy. I know.”

“Look what happened with Gina,” Milo said. An ex-cop, Gina Valente was a valuable member of the team, and they’d almost lost her because of Arch’s fickle dick. Thwarting company policy, they’d had a short fling. Shorter than what Gina would’ve liked.

“She still pissed?”

“I think her exact words were I’m over that amoral prick.”

“All’s well that ends wonky. Nice to know.”

Milo rolled to his side and felt his nightstand for the ever-present bottle of pain relievers. “When are you coming back?”

“Depends. We clear with the Agency?”

“Yes and no.”

“Meaning?”

“Chameleon’s on sabbatical until the new director re-evaluates our purpose.”

“You’ve got a new boss?”

“We’ve got a new boss. Vincent Crowe. Company man.”

“Hard-ass?”

“You got it.” He popped two aspirin and swallowed them dry.

“You dinnae sound happy, mate.”

Try miserable. Even before Crowe had been appointed, the Agency had started mangling Milo’s vision for Chameleon by inundating the team with cases pertaining to high-profile scams. Scams that target the select upper crust, as opposed to those that ruin lives of the blue-collar majority. Given his dealings with the new director thus far, he feared his vision was one step closer to history. “Maybe Evie could sing me a song. Cheer me up. Where is she, anyway?”

“Just put her on a plane. She’s on her way home. Be warned, she’s over the moon aboot her job with Chameleon. Has illusions aboot saving the world. Reminds me of you, yeah?”

“I don’t want to save the world, Arch. Just a naive few.”

“People like Evie.”

Milo didn’t comment.

“I’ve seen the way you look at her, mate. Remember what you told me aboot mixing business with pleasure.”

“That a warning?”

“Just an observation.”

The exchange reignited Milo’s previous suspicions that Arch had fallen in love. Dangerous territory for a man who valued emotional detachment. Never attach yourself to anyone you can’t walk away from in a split second. “You sound jealous. Just an observation.”

“Bugger off.”

“Fuck you.”

“Beckett?”

“Yeah?”

“Try a glass of warm milk. And dinnae worry aboot Crowe.”

“Thanks.” Milo disconnected and fell back against his pillows. His relationship with Arch was complicated. Onetime rivals, they now danced the same dance. Partners in anticrime. Arch occasionally slipped into old routines, solo. His last performance had earned Milo an ass chewing from Crowe. It had also pulled Evie Parish, a sexy variety performer, into their lives. As if he needed another complication coming between him and his professional goals.

He massaged his temples, dreaded another bout of insomnia. He swung out of bed and headed for the kitchen, contemplating this new and constant restlessness. He needed to take charge.

First order of business: tackling insomnia. Which meant two things: addressing his discontent with the Agency and getting a grip on his infatuation with Twinkie. In a warped, adversarial way, he considered Arch Duvall a friend. But it was his obsession to learn everything the crafty genius knew about grifting that motivated Milo to keep him close. If he pursued this attraction to Evie, he risked driving a wedge between him and the Scot. Just because Arch claimed the affair was over didn’t mean he was over Evie.

Face it, Beckett. Hiring Twinkie was a mistake. “That’s what you get for thinking with your dick.” He opened the fridge, nabbed the milk. “Just an observation.”

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