“How did the colonoscopy turn out?”
“The colonoscopy was the best thing that happened to me. Not only am I perfect inside, but I haven’t had any xanthan gum in three days and I feel great.”
“How did you find out about the xanthan gum?”
“I was working with an allergist along with a bunch of other doctors and the allergy panel just came back.”
“You’re allergic to xanthan gum.”
Morelli cut into his steak. “Actually it’s a sensitivity, but it acts like an allergy. I can eat meat and drink wine. I just have to read labels and stay away from food additives. And it’s not stress. It’s not my job, and it’s not you.” Morelli sat back and grinned at me. “I’m cured. So do you want to get married?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a ring?”
“No. Do I need a ring?”
“My mom will expect to see a ring.”
“Since I don’t have a ring maybe we can get engaged to get engaged.”
“What would that involve?”
“It would involve getting you out of those Pilates pants. Unless you’d like to stay for dessert.”
“I guess I could skip dessert.”
Morelli looked around and caught the waiter’s eye. “Check!”
1
KATE O’HARE BOUGHT her Ford Crown Vic at a police auction for abused cop cars. The dented, Bondo-patched four-door beast wasn’t the kind of ride that usually appealed to attractive, professional women in their early thirties. Of course, most of those women didn’t accessorize their wardrobe with a Glock, an FBI badge, and a small belly scar from a knife fight with an assassin.
Kate liked used cop cars because they were cheap, low-maintenance, and had options that weren’t available on a Prius. Options like Kevlar-lined doors that were great for cover in a gun battle, monster V-8 engines that were perfect for high-speed chases, and steel ramming bars on the front grill that came in handy for pushing cars out of her way.
She’d been heading north on the 405 freeway through the Sepulveda Pass when her boss, Special Agent in Charge Carl Jessup, called. Nicolas Fox, fugitive number seven on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, was trying to make his way up to number six.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a bright idea for us to help a world-class con man and thief escape from prison,” Jessup said in his amiable Kentucky drawl. “And an even worse idea to give him access to the money we secretly plunder from bad guys and use to pay for our covert ops. Both Nick and a million dollars of our money seem to be unaccounted for.”
“I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation,” Kate said.
“There’s nothing innocent about Nicolas Fox.”
Kate knew that better than anybody. She was the FBI agent who’d chased Nick for five years before she finally put him in prison. Unfortunately, to Kate’s horror, Jessup and Deputy Director Fletcher Bolton had Fox back on the street in record time. They had a plan. Fox would work undercover for the FBI. And Kate would partner up with Fox to keep him honest. Together they were tasked with going after major-league criminals who couldn’t be caught through legal means. So Nick remained a major-league criminal himself, secretly working for the FBI, and Kate remained a top FBI field agent, secretly working with an international fugitive.
And that’s why Kate was currently taking the curves on Sunset like it was the Talladega Superspeedway. She was hoping to catch Nick in his Sunset Strip penthouse. Technically, the penthouse wasn’t Nick’s. The IRS had seized it from a rapper who’d neglected to pay his taxes, and then the IRS had left it unoccupied pending sale. Nick had posed as the listing agent and quietly moved in. Thanks to rich tax cheats, Nick could always find a swanky place to stay that didn’t require him to show a credit card or his face to a desk clerk.
Kate skidded to a stop in front of the fifteen-story building, jumped out of her car, and ran to the locked lobby door. She rang all of the tenants, held her badge up to the security camera, and looked into the lens with as much authority as she could muster.
“FBI! Open up!”
A tenant with a sense of civic duty, and too much trust, kindly buzzed the door open. Kate charged into the lobby only to come face-to-face with an “Out of Order” sign taped to the elevator.
Just her luck. She dashed into the stairwell and sprinted up the stairs. In a training exercise, it had taken her and a dozen other elite military commandos in full assault gear twenty minutes to rush up to the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building. Kate estimated it would take her three minutes to get up to the penthouse in her sensible shoes.