Undercover Heat Read Online Free Page A

the way.
    Quinn climbed out of the driver’s seat and ambled around the truck to where she stood, frozen to the spot. As soon as he was close enough, she lit into him.
    “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “First of all, you’re twenty-five minutes late. And second of all, really? Do you always drive like a freaking manic? This is an average middle-class neighborhood with lots of children. You had to be driving at least ninety when you flew into the driveway.”
    Quinn lifted his hand in the classic stop motion. “Jesus. My mother never bitched at me this much in her entire life, and you managed to get all that in within thirty seconds. You aren’t going to do this the whole time we’re living together, are you?”
    She gripped the house keys she held in her hand. “Maybe I should,” she shot back. “It sounds like somebody needs to.”
    “It’s a fucking assignment, Sanders,” he snapped. “Get over yourself.” He turned toward the house. “So this is it? Huh.”
    She followed his gaze to the quaint bungalow with white siding and dark green trim and shutters. Red and pink tulips filled the flowerbed in front of the wide front porch. She’d been watching the house for months, initially for purely professional reasons, but eventually, she found herself fantasizing about digging in the flowerbed, decorating the living room, placing a teak bench on the front porch, complete with a green and white striped cushion so she could sit in comfort and drink a beer after a hard day’s work, waving at the neighbors as they took their evening strolls.
    “Is that a good huh or a bad huh?” she asked, cutting her gaze to Quinn.
    He shrugged. “It’s an ambivalent huh. Let’s see what we’re working with here.” He waved at the front door, so Kyra thrust the key into the lock, twisted, and then pushed open the door.
    The living room was large and square, with a fireplace built into one wall. It opened into a small dining room and then into a kitchen that had a nearly entirely glass-walled sitting room attached, which led out onto a covered deck that wrapped around two sides of the house.
    “Perfect time of year for this assignment,” Quinn commented as she followed him outside onto the deck. “That the neighbor?” he asked, nodding at the house positioned directly behind this one the FBI was renting for their assignment.
    The yards were separated by a fence, but there was a gate built into it, so friendly neighbors could easily pass back and forth. The neighboring house, with its brown siding and black shingles, was larger and had significantly less yard space.
    “Yes,” she responded. “Did you read the file?”
    “Yep. Tough break.”
    Kyra knew what was in that file by heart—and what wasn’t.
    “I was so close to closing the case.”
    “When I read it, my first thought was that she had inside information. It’s the only thing that would cause her to flee when she did. Is that what you surmised?”
    She sucked in a breath. That was exactly it. “I had my suspicions, but I could never prove anything,” she said carefully.
    “What did your director say?”
    “The evidence was inconclusive.” Her voice was utterly devoid of emotion.
    “Huh.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Quinn shrugged. “Nothing. Oh look, there’s our neighbor. Wave, honey.” He plastered a fake smile on his face and wrapped one arm around her shoulders as he waved with his other hand.
    A woman stood on the deck in the yard directly behind them, holding a glass of red wine in one hand. She had bleached blond hair styled into a sort of bouffant and wore a red suit with a short, tightly fitted skirt and red stiletto heels. She waved back but made no move to walk across the yard to greet them.
    “That the perp who’s been stealing hard-earned dollars from Dallas’s upper echelon? The queen of Ponzi schemes?”
    “Yes. And from Detroit’s elite now, it would seem,” Kyra said. She was distracted by the feel of his arm