Page 1 of Six
Chapter One
“Hello, Rosey, how are you today?”Six asked her paralegal as she stopped by the older woman’s desk on the way to her own office. Located on the fourth floor of the building occupied by the regional US District Attorney staff, the suite of rooms bustled with activity as the workweek kicked off for most employees.
“Sorry to see you in today, Vi,” Rosey responded. Six’s legal name was Violetta Salvitto, and while her friends called her “Six”—a nod to the first two letters of her name—everyone in her professional world called her “Vi.” Only they pronounced it “Vie,” and not “Vee,” which it should be, since the Italian pronunciation of her name was “Vee-oh-letta.” When she’d first moved to the US, she tried to correct people, but she’d long ago given up that fight. Some battles couldn’t be won, and some weren’t worth fighting.
Taking the folder Rosey handed her, Six smiled. “What’s a little murder between friends?” she said with a shrug. “This is all that he wanted me to see?” she added, surprised.
The file, which was the reason she was in the office on her day off, was thin. Thinner than she would have anticipated for the federal murder and drug trafficking charges it covered. Her colleague, Mitch Greene, had called her in as a second set of eyes on the case. The young man involved had made a series of bad decisions that started with transporting eight kilos of heroin from Miami and ended up with him shooting and killing his “partner” as well as an innocent bystander not ten minutes from the federal courthouse in Boston. As an attorney for the DA’s regional office, it wasn’t Six’s usual type of case. But as macabre as it sounded, murder was an interesting change from the financial crimes she usually prosecuted.
“Mitch said he doesn’t want to taint your opinion. Those are the essentials.” Rosey nodded to the file. “He asked that you take a look and form your own opinions. He’ll be back from court in about an hour.”
Six tucked the file under her arm. “Thanks, Rosey. Can you let him know I’m here when he returns?”
“Of course.”
“And—”
“Hold your calls,” Rosey finished.
“You are my very favorite person in Boston,” Six said, grinning at her paralegal, who shook her head and smiled.
“The only people you know who are actuallyfromBoston are in this office,” Rosey shot back.
Tossing Rosey a wink, she started toward her office, acknowledging to herself that as usual, Rosey was right. She had work colleagues in Boston, but her friends—her true friends—all lived in Cos Cob, a small seaside town an hour north of Boston. Her good friend Cyn had been the first to buy a house there, then Six had followed. Shortly after, the other two members of their fearsome foursome—Nora and Devil—moved as well. Other than work, her life was in Cos Cob.
Six had only taken a handful of steps when her attention snagged on Gavin Cooper, a paralegal who’d joined the department nearly five months ago in January. Sitting at his desk, he moved his fingers over the keyboard, but lifted his eyes to meet hers. Gavin was an enigma that she hadn’t quite figured out yet—but only for lack of trying. In fact, she’d been trying—and mostly succeeding—at ignoring him since he’d joined the office. Six knew a mistake when she saw one, and Gavin Cooper was most definitely a mistake that she had no intention of making.
At six foot three with light brown hair, deep brown eyes, and an easy smile—not to mention his more than eye-catching build and demeanor—he’d captured the attention of his fair share of single people in the office. In the first month or so, he’d flirted with and teased men and women alike. But to the best of her knowledge—and the office grapevine—he hadn’t ever followed through on any of those flirtations. About the only thing she could confirm about his personal life without asking—which she wasn’t going to do—was that he was single. Whether he was into men or women or both or neither, she didn’t know, and she didn’t think anyone in the office did, either.
Professionally, Gavin was assigned to Mitch. She’d heard from her colleague more than once about what an exceptional paralegal he was—whip-smart and with an attention to detail that eased cases through the courts. He was also military-sharp on his timing. Not once had Gavin even come close to pushing up against a deadline, let alone missing one. That was to be expected, though. Prior to joining their office, he’d been a paralegal for the British Army and a Special Forces officer before that. Why he hadn’t finished out his career in the military, she didn’t know and, again, had no plans to ask.
Of course, even though he was the mistake she wasn’t going to make that didn’t mean she couldn’t sneak an appreciative look every now and then. Thankfully, because they didn’t work together, she wasn’t presented with the temptation to ogle too often.
Pushing thoughts of Gavin Cooper, Special Forces paralegal, to the side, she closed her office door. After setting Mitch’s file down on her desk, she hung her jacket and purse before taking a seat. Thirteen years earlier—when her placement in the office had been sanctioned by the US State Department—Mitch had been the only one told about her double life as an agent forAgenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna, or AISE, the Italian foreign intelligence agency. As part of the quid pro quo of allowing a foreign asset to work in the office, she often reviewed cases that he suspected might have ties to activities either AISE or another foreign intelligence agency might want to know about.
It was an odd balance to keep—her work as an attorney for the US DA’s Office and her obligations to her home country. But she, Cyn, Nora, and Devil all did it—although Cyn, Nora, and Devil were agents for the United Kingdom, Jordan, and China, respectively. They’d been raised—literally—to do the work they did as embedded agents. Each of them had also managed to create a successful life outside of her agent activities. It was odd, for sure, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Out of habit, Six flicked her computer on before turning to the file. An hour and a half later, she lined the papers into a neat stack and sent Mitch a quick text. Rosey had said he was expected back from court thirty minutes ago, but court didn’t operate like a subway and often ran on its own time.
“Stop by when you’re back,”she typed.
“Walking in. On my way,”he answered.
Setting her phone down, she turned her attention to the big window in her office that looked north and toward the city. From where she sat, she couldn’t see the ocean, but she took in the peekaboo views of the iconic Boston skyline and—at least on this day—a bright blue sky.
Six smiled, she loved this time of year—the three-week stretch that fell sometime between April and June that New Englanders called “spring.” Regardless of how fleeting it was, though, it was her favorite time of year. The weather wasn’t yet humid, the trees and flowers had budded out, and the barren browns of late winter were no more. Life was full of color, and without the humidity, she could be outside to enjoy it.
A knock on her door interrupted her reverie and because no one else would interrupt her when her door was closed, she called for Mitch to enter.
“What do you think?” Mitch asked without preamble as he took a seat across from her. He was nearing his seventieth birthday, and as a tall, gaunt man, he slightly resembled a skeleton. A well-dressed skeleton, in his high-end navy suit, but a skeleton nonetheless.
“Are you ever going to retire?” she asked. Seriously, the man should have retired five years ago. Or even before that given that his wife, a scientist, had sold her company for an astonishing amount of money fourteen years earlier. There was no reason the two of them shouldn’t be boating around the world and sipping cocktails in exotic locations.
“No, I hate golf, and Marcia likes having the house to herself. I figure I’m still useful here. I may as well keep the peace at home and stay out of her way.”
Mitch was only sort of joking. Marcia loved her husband, but she definitely liked having her space.
“So, what do you think?” he repeated.
