The Grifter
Chapter 25

Frankie woke in slow degrees. Her heart gave a momentary flip at the realization that she was a) very naked, and b) very much not in her own bed, and the night before came back to her in a rush.

Alfie, cold and lifeless at the bottom of that embankment. Beck, who may or may not have had a hand in his cousin’s brutal overdose. The case that she’d worked tirelessly for months, and that also might now be blown to hell. The way Shawn had taken her back here and calmed every last ounce of her unease at all of it. No questions, no hesitation.

The way she felt so good in his arms, even now, that she couldn’t make herself be scared of the fact that what they’d shared had felt anything but casual.

“Morning,” Shawn rumbled, pressing a k!ss to the top of her head, and Frankie’s traitorous heart thumped out the Morse code equivalent of “oh, yes! Hold us tighter, please and thank you!”

Good Christ, she needed to get a grip. “What time is it?” she asked, and her heart got its wish as Shawn’s big, brawny arms didn’t budge.

“Still early. We have a minute.”

Shawn traced lazy circles between her shoulder blades, the move so unassuming and easy that Frankie melted against him. His fingers drifted up, over the top of her shoulder to map the uneven scar tissue there, and her heart caught in her throat.

But he didn’t still. He didn’t even slow—not his touch, not his breathing, not anything—as he held her and rubbed her shoulders and gave her a moment of quiet peace in his arms.

Maybe it could really be this easy.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” she said, the words tumbling out before she could clap them back.

“For what?” Shawn asked, and oh, screw it. He’d always been able to read her like a frigging neon sign, anyway. She might as well come out with what was on her mind.

“For last night.”

His laugh vibrated against her cheek. “You aren’t seriously thanking me for that s3x, are you?”

“Not just the s3x,” she said, then pressed her involuntary smile between her lips. “Okay, maybe a little bit for the s3x. But come on. It was pretty ridiculous.”

“No arguments here,” Shawn said. “But I’m fairly certain that’s not all on me.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Propping herself up on her shoulder, she turned to meet his stare. “You kept me steady when I needed it, and I’m not too proud to say that sometimes that’s a big-as*s job. I really needed you last night, and you were there. You were…perfect.”

The last word came out on a whisper, and Shawn hooked a forefinger under her chin. “You were perfect, too, Frankie.”

Oh, God. Oh, this was going to get giddy and 0rgasmic and so, so complicated. “So, now what?”

“Now you come to breakfast,” Shawn said matter-of-factly.

Frankie blinked. “I…what?”

“You come to breakfast.” He smiled. “You know, coffee, pancakes, bacon. It is the most important meal of the day. Plus, I promised Isla I’d take her before I go in to the precinct. Come with me.”

She tabled the immediate yes that her mouth had wanted to form. “I don’t want to intrude on your time with Isla.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you if you’d be intruding,” Shawn said. “I’ll get one-on-one time with her later tonight when you’re at your NA meeting, and anyway, I know she’d like to see you.”

Frankie’s heart kicked. “I’d like to see her, too,” she said. She’d missed not spending any time with Isla last night, making up new adventures for Mr. Prickles and watching her and Shawn settle in to read bedtime stories together. Frankie was going to need a decent breakfast in order to tackle this case. She might as well start the day with something good to carry her through the harder parts.

“Okay,” Frankie said, the warmth in her chest moving decidedly south as she hooked a leg over Shawn’s h!p and smiled. “But as long as we have a minute, why don’t we spend it wishing each other a proper good morning?”

He rolled her to her back in less than a blink, and yes. This. This was what Frankie needed. With Shawn’s arms around her, she felt right.

“I like how you think,” he murmured. And as he proceeded to show her exactly how good morning could be, Frankie sank further into the notion that maybe this time, it really could be this easy.

Beck sat perfectly stillin the early morning shadows, watching the darkened windows of the apartment flick to life. A person could learn so much simply by watching—a lesson most didn’t have the time or patience for.

But Beck had both. And, more importantly, now he had knowledge.

He was going to wield it like the weapon it was.

Huddling lower in his jacket, he kept his eyes on the glow of the window as he slotted the facts together, all in a row. It had been all too easy to play Alfie—just the right amount of Rohypnol in his drink to get him loose, then some carefully crafted conversation to get him talking. Motherfvcker never had learned when to shut up, and Beck had had to wade through a metric ton of useless bullsh!t in order to get at the information he’d wanted; namely, whether or not Shawn and Frankie were trying to rip Beck off, and if Alfie was in on it.

But Alfie had mostly yammered on about getting sober and Frankie’s tits, neither of which he had a chance in hell of getting near. Even when Beck had added Oxycodone to the mix to open those floodgates good and f*****g wide, Alfie had just rambled on about getting the deal done because he wanted the money. He hadn’t realized that Beck had even slipped him anything until he was already too blazed to regain any sort of control.

Beck had seen people bare their darkest truths on that much Rohypnol alone. By the time he’d thrown the Oxy into the mix, Alfie had been so susceptible, he’d have run into freeway traffic if Beck had told him to—and, yeah, Beck had been sorely tempted. Finally, when Alfie had been one step shy of face planting on the carpet, Beck put the screws to him, asking over and over what Shawn and Frankie were up to.

“They just want the money, man,” Alfie had whined. “We all jusssstttt wanna get paid.”

Alfie had known precisely d**k.

As soon as Beck had been certain that Alfie wasn’t in on whatever Shawn and Frankie were up to, he’d slipped Alfie a little Ketamine just for grins, then pumped him full of enough heroin to kill a guy twice his size. Yeah, it would probably make family gatherings awkward AF. But not only had Alfie failed spectacularly to deliver the right people to move enough prescription drugs to get Beck a decent foothold in Remington’s market, he’d also questioned Beck’s authority and intelligence in front of other people.

There had been zero chance Beck was going to let him live.

At first, he’d intended to leave Alfie’s as*s right there in the kitchen, where he’d passed out in his own puke, then stopped breathing not long after. But Beck had still had the problem of not knowing Shawn and Frankie’s true intentions. He’d needed leverage. Some sort of insurance policy that would give him the upper hand if they tried to rip him off or sell him out. So, he’d dumped Alfie’s body by the pier, then paid a squatter fifty bucks to call in “something suspicious” from a burner phone. Beck had figured that once the cops started digging around, he could pin Alfie’s murder on Shawn and Frankie if the need arose. With their shady past and all the texts and calls between them and Alfie, plus no less than a dozen people who could put them together at Bang? It wouldn’t be hard for Beck to spoon feed incriminating evidence to a couple of homicide detectives who’d be desperate to clear the death of a worthless junkie off their docket in favor of a case that mattered. Of course, he’d been surprised when the Intelligence Unit had shown up at the scene instead of standard-issue homicide detectives.

When he’d realized that Shawn and Frankie were the f*****g undercover cops in charge of the investigation? He’d barely been able to contain the rage roaring through him.

They’d been after him all along. Just not in the way he’d expected.

Beck’s skin prickled with anger, red-hot despite the chill in the air around him now, nearly twelve hours after the fact. He’d ached to end them, to the point that he’d nearly vaulted out of his hiding spot in the shadows of that abandoned warehouse last night to kill them both with his bare f*****g hands. He’d known those two were out to get him. His sixth sense was never goddamn wrong.

But, as appealing as killing them in a quick, murderous rage had been in that moment, it wasn’t enough.

No. Beck was going to make them both hurt in ways they couldn’t imagine. They’d suffer, long and slow, before he made them beg him to put them out of their misery.

And so he’d watched. Waited. And come up with a plan.

Now, it was only a matter of time before Detectives Shawn Maxwell and Frankie Rossi got exactly what they deserved.