LITMIR.BIZ

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room, and more yipping came from the far corner of the bull pen.

      “Shih-Tzu,” corrected Perez. “It’s Vietnamese.”

      “Chinese!” called an agent from across the room.

      Another crescendo of yips rose through the office.

      “Geez,” Lex muttered, shuffling papers off his desk. “Bunch of losers.”

      “Agent Duncan!”

      He glanced up sharply to see Harry Quinn, FBI Special Agent in Charge, standing at the rail up a level at the offices. He was holding a copy of the Las Vegas Sun, the big black headline sticking out over his thumb: “Record Two Million Raised for Nevada Orphans Fund.”

      “Can I see you in my office.” It wasn’t a question.

      “Ooh, he’s in the shih tzu doo-doo now,” someone cooed in a loud stage whisper. More raucous laughter rolled through the bullpen. Lex swore softly as he made his way into Quinn’s office.

      Quinn slapped the paper down on his desk. The photo of Lex, topless, partying down with a person of interest in his homicide investigation mocked him from the polished surface. From the look in his boss’s eyes, Lex was about to hear that he was off the case. Or worse.

      He cleared his throat. “I can explain—”

      Quinn raised his hand. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he snapped. “Jenna Rothchild paid a quarter of a million? To date you for a night?”

      Lex ran his tongue over his teeth. “Yes, sir.”

      His boss suddenly threw back his head and laughed. Hard, really hard. He slumped down into his chair, wiping a tear from his eyes.

      “Geez, Quinn, I’m not that much of a dog,” Lex muttered. “Besides, I told her to forget it. Mistake. Conflict of interest. This—” he wagged his hand at the newspaper on Quinn’s desk “—will all blow over by tomorrow.” Why did he not sound more convincing to himself?

      His boss sat forward suddenly, eyes dead serious again. He had a way of switching back and forth, unnerving people. It kept his agents on their feet. “No.” His black eyes bored into Lex. “No. This is not over. We use this. We use her.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Play along.”

      Surprise rippled through Lex. He had zero intension of messing any further with Jenna for personal, never mind professional, reasons. “That’s…ridiculous. It’s a clear conflict of interest. It could pose a problem for the prosecution if they find a connection between me and Rothchild, especially if a defense attorney gets wind of—”

      “Granted, yes, it’s unorthodox.” Quinn tapped his pen impatiently on his desk. “But nothing about this case to date has been orthodox. Consider it a covert operation, Duncan. A Rothchild infiltration.” He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, and Lex detected a faint smirk of amusement on his superior’s face.

      “There’s no way—”

      “She’s a tool, agent. She handed herself to us on a silver platter. Use that tool, leverage it to get to her father, to dig up information on that little trophy wife of his, on the dead sister, crack anyone or anything open, pry it loose. Play her game. One hundred percent. God knows we need some kind of break on this case.”

      “She set me up.”

      “So? Find out why.”

      “The media will—”

      “I’ll let the media know you’re officially off the case. Unofficially, you’re on it 24/7. We’ll plug it as a covert op, and the legal stuff will be in the clear as long as you keep your hands off her.”

      “Look, I—”

      His boss stood, making up in breadth what he lacked in Lex’s height. “It’s good to have you in the Vegas office, agent. I was more than happy to approve your request for transfer.”

      “Thank you, sir.” That was a veiled threat if he ever saw one. Lex was no idiot. He’d put in for a post at this Las Vegas field office several times over the last couple of years, wanting to get out of Washington and back to the Reno-Vegas area for reasons of his own.

      His application had been approved nine months ago, thanks in major part to Harry Quinn. And Lex had settled in fast, coaching troubled foster kids at football, volunteering for Nevada orphans-related charities. He’d landed himself a nice little house in one of the new subdivisions away from the hubbub of the Las Vegas Strip from where he could see the firered spring mountains. It was his springboard to the desert wilderness he’d always loved as a kid, yet not too far from the sort of pulse he’d grown up with in Reno. In many ways, Lex felt he’d come right home to Sin City. His mother had a past here, and it was here he’d come looking for answers. Lex was finally in a position to put everything into finding the man who had killed his mother.

      He had no intention of being eased out now. If keeping this posting meant tangling with Jenna Rothchild, he’d have to bite the bullet and try to keep his libido in check. In spite of what moves she pulled on him.

      Damn—he was between a rock and a hard place. He could already hear the snickers out in the bullpen.

      He blew out a chestful of air as Quinn showed him out the office door. “And keep me briefed, Duncan. Let me know if you need anything. Perez remains your backup on this.”

       Perez was the one who got me into this.

      He saw her smiling up at him as he neared his desk. “I wanted to kill you last night,” he muttered as he approached.

      She grinned, teeth bright-white against her dusky skin. “And now?”

      “Even more so. You better watch your back, Perez.”

      She chuckled. “I’ll be too busy watching yours. Just make sure you keep your shirt on this time, will you?”

      He grunted as he took a seat at his desk.

      “Did you actually read that article, Duncan?” she called over to him.

      “You got any work to do there, Perez?”

      “No, seriously, did you see who the hot competition was for your bod? Who the mystery bidder was that gave our little it-girl a run for her daddy’s money?”

      “Who?” He fussed with moving papers across his desk, feigning disinterest.

      “Mercedes Epstein.”

      He went stone still then turned slowly to look at Perez.

      “Si, amigo, that’s right,” she said, getting up and sauntering over to his desk to him with that devil-can-do look in her Latina eyes. “Wife of the Frank Epstein, who’s currently under investigation with the FBI financial crimes unit in New York. Some junk bond scam, apparently.”

      Mercedes had bid on him? The wife of the man who had once employed his mother in his Vegas casino as a croupier? The man who’d fired Sara Duncan when she fell pregnant with him, necessitating her move to Reno, to start a new life. Just him and her.

      “Interesting, huh?”

      It was plain freaking weird. “Mmm,” he said, opening a file, but his pulse had quickened.

      “So, what d’you think the grand Vegas matriarch wanted with you? You think she pushed up the bidding just to get up Jenna’s whatoot?”

      He glanced up sharply. “Tell you what, Perez. Why don’t you and me go for a little drive and check out that new shooting range? And while we’re there you can tell me how and why you signed me up for that bachelor auction while I try not to shoot you. Because I’m thinking it was you who set me up, not the Rothchild heiress.”

      “Sure,” she shrugged. “We can go shoot. From that photo it looks like

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