“Color me surprised,” he drawled. “Yet you got the contract. Not me.”
“I’ve done my research on you, Mr. Royal,” I said. “Codex hasn’t been sitting idle.”
He was silent for a moment, turning the whiskey glass around on the table. “We’ve been busy, yes.”
“Louisa contacted me after the Audubon case I solved three months ago,” I explained. “For The Murphy Library in New York.”
Abe looked pleasantly surprised. “That was you?”
“Sure was.”
He cleared his throat, slid his arms back down his side. “My team talked about that case nonstop. We were impressed.”
I fought a smile at the thought of Abe Royal being impressed with me months ago, before we’d known each other, before all of this, before everything.
“Your cover, the Society, the dinners with people…?”
“Research,” I said. “Trying to meet sources that can lead me to where he’s hiding.”
“And you think he’s in London?” he asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Believe me, if I knew where that man was, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” he replied, sardonic. The hunger to catch this criminal was so fucking obvious—it was his body language, his face, the curl of his lip. From the moment I’d said Bernard, he was mere seconds away from snapping.
“Why did you come to London if you don’t think he’s here?”
“I’m here on vacation.” He shrugged.
I leaned across the table, felt that dangerous chemistry stretched taut between us. Abe’s throat worked as his eyes trailed down my throat, my collarbone, my breasts.
“I’ve been given access to his office and all of his papers,” I said. Then watched him almost flip the table over.
“His what?” His tone was sharp enough to cut.
I sat back, crossed my arms. “All of Bernard’s papers, his entire office at the McMaster’s Library, are available for me. There’s interesting stuff in there.”
Abe’s assurance that he was here for leisure was pissing me off. He’d promised me information, yet he kept avoiding his true motivations. He was practically vibrating across from me.
“How nice for you,” he finally said, each word grating through his clenched teeth.
“That afternoon, before we met at Eudora’s talk, I’d been with Louisa, asking her questions about Henry,” I said. “She told me all about you, about Codex, how Henry left his job to go work for you.”
Abe’s inflection held a fair amount of warning. “Henry Finch is innocent and was cleared of all suspicions. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have hired him.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “Seems like he was a private detective in the making.”
“And an ethical and brilliant man,” he said.
My chest tightened at the devotion in his voice—my lonely soul recognized a similar one in Abraham Royal. He appeared to be fiercely independent. But a tiny part of me felt jealous that he had a… a team. A team he clearly admired.
I leaned in, dropped my voice. “You’ve been hot on Bernard’s heels for months now. It’s why you’re here, in London, using a fake name and meeting with Bernard’s closest friends and colleagues. If you’re my competition, I want to know who I’m racing against. And if you’re not, and you have pertinent information I could use, I’d gladly take it, per our deal.”
He picked up the glass of whiskey and took a long, slow sip. His steel gaze remained on my face the entire time until I felt heat in my cheeks. “I abhor loose ends. When I arrived in London and learned about Bernard’s role in the Society, I followed my instincts to that lecture. The auction of the Doyle papers intrigued me, so I used an undercover name.” He set the glass down. “It was a mistake. A minor detour in my vacation plans. That’s the truth, as much as it pains me to admit it. My team could tell you that leisure isn’t my strong suit.”
“I don’t believe it was a mistake or a minor detour,” I shot back.
“Believe what you will, Ms. Argento. I’m not your competition. And you can follow me, tail me, steal from me, stay in the hotel room next to me… I won’t break. Although I’m glad to finally understand why you wouldn’t leave me alone.”
It might have been my imagination, but Abe seemed briefly hurt. Which caused a corresponding sensation in my own body. I just didn’t think it right, in this moment of tense truth-telling, to grab him by the face and admit my all-consuming lust had a fair amount to do with my actions too. This yearning I had to be around him was equal parts exhilarating and baffling. The sheer urgency of this case hovered between us—my timeline, my contract, the stakes, everything. I’d already bared my name and a handful of other secrets. He didn’t need to know about his erotic presence in my dreams or my many, many fantasies.
“I was seeking your sources,” I said. “And I’d like the record to show that you’re full of shit.”
His chuckle was humorless. “That might be true, but you are free to pursue Bernard Allerton at your leisure. I am a private detective, not a vigilante. If I had a case, a contract, a client, this would be different. The books that are stolen are, above all else, my investigative priority. Taking down Bernard is one piece of a system that’s gone rotten. My interest is in the whole system, not just one man.”
My lip curled with a swift anger that shocked me. “Bernard is the system. He’s a psychopath who deserves to be in prison.”
A softness entered his gaze. A pause. Then, “We don’t disagree.”
Abe twisted the glass back and forth, ice hitting the side. “Bernard Allerton is no longer my purview. So you can be happy catching that psychopath.”
“Do you have information that could help me?” I asked, feeling like a buzzard, picking for scraps. Yet the smallest detail could make the difference for me.
“I surely do not,” he said mildly. “You don’t have a team at your firm that could help you?”
“It’s only me. Always has been.” And always would be. “Why?”
He plucked at his cufflinks. “Seems like you were maybe asking to partner up and go after Bernard together.”
I took the glass of whiskey from his fingers. Placed my mouth directly where his had just been and took a satisfying sip. “I’ve never worked with a partner before. Don’t worry, that wasn’t my motivation here, Abraham.”
A sense of loss was already lodging itself in my sternum. I pressed my palm there, attempting to sooth the newness of feeling so raw. Every single second of my time spent with Abe these past thirty-six hours had been like diving through uncharted waters. A tiny voice in my head whispered you’re going to miss him.
“Okay then,” he said. “Now that we’ve fought off an attacker together and I’ve learned your true identity, we can go about our business separately. I’ve got plans the next few days to enjoy all the rich culture that London has to offer. I doubt we’ll see each other again, except coming and going at The Langham.”
This was what I wanted—to clear the air between us, uncover his real purpose, and get back to the hunt. So I wasn’t sure why my emotions felt so out of control as we reached the natural end of our… whatever this was. What was it?