Secret Agent Surrender. Elizabeth Heiter

this was a first meeting. She’d just assumed they’d had others and that this weekend was a final test.

      “Why do you want to know about kids who work for Carlton? And what exactly do you think they do for him?”

      She tried to look nonchalant, even though her blood pressure had to be going crazy right now. “I’m just trying to figure out how his business works, what I’m getting into here.”

      He wasn’t buying it. He didn’t have to say a word for her to know she’d made him suspicious.

      “What are you getting into, Brenna? You never did tell me exactly what kind of access you could offer Carlton.”

      In this moment, all the years they hadn’t seen each other didn’t matter. The fact that he was an aspiring drug lord with mob connections didn’t matter. Because she knew without a doubt that if he figured out what she was pretending to do, he’d hate her. And he’d do whatever he could to stop her from working with Carlton.

      He’d been in the system since he was an infant. And even at twelve years old, he’d talked to her about the plans he and his brothers had—plans to look out for one another when they left the system. He’d known there was no net for foster care kids. And the fact that she was pretending to take advantage of that would be a worse sin than anything he was doing.

      “You work in the foster care system,” he said before she could come up with a believable lie. “You said you wanted to start a program to help kids make the transition to the real world.” He shook his head, looking disgusted. “What does that mean, really? Carlton sets up front businesses and you populate them with foster kids to do his dirty work?”

      “I...” She faltered, trying to figure out how to smooth this over without risking him hearing the truth from Carlton anyway.

      Then his eyes narrowed, and he took a step closer until she was forced to lean back to look at him. “What aren’t you telling me, Brenna? Why are you really here?”

      * * *

      “YOU’RE A COP, aren’t you?”

      It made total sense, Marcos realized, instantly relieved. Except if a police department was running an operation on Carlton, the DEA would know about it. Anything to do with drug operations by any organization went into a system the DEA could access. And they’d made very sure before he came here. There was nothing.