Page 3 of Hot Pursuit
What to—
Just Desserts!
The corner of her lip perked.
Now that has a nice ring to it.
Jo finished typing up the recipe and pressed Send, then drummed her fingers against the counter as she waited for a response. Her eyes wandered to the edge of the screen, and she practically fell off her stool when she noticed the time.
It’s almost two!
Shoot!
Her father and Thad, the son of his late partner and one of her best friends, would be back in an hour and she hadn’t done any of the recon she’d promised. The coopie had taken over her entire weekend.
Jo jumped from her seat and raced toward the French doors on the other side of the kitchen. Her gaze flew across the pool deck, down the boardwalk, and along the entire length of the dock, then froze on the empty slip all the way at the end. She breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t here yet. She had time.
Jo glanced over her shoulder to the stack of coopies fresh out of the oven, ripe for the taste testing. Then she reluctantly tore her attention away, shifting it to the second laptop sitting on the kitchen table, the one she used strictly for business. Her father was an artist, and forgery was his greatest skill. But Jo hadn’t inherited any of his craft. No, her specialty was something very different—hacking. She hadn’t even realized it was a skill, or, well, a crime, until she’d been caught breaking into the middle school mainframe to change her schedule around, skipping French and Biology while adding extra sessions of Home Ec and Computer Science. She’d never seen her father so proud…or her mother so pissed.
Now, at twenty-five, she’d graduated to more sophisticated techniques. And ever since that first punishment—a week-long suspension that, truth be told, felt more like a vacation—she’d never been caught red handed again. Pink, maybe. But she didn’t mind living on the edge.
In fact, she thrived on the edge.
Which was why her focus shifted back to the oven, still hot, and the many recipes flitting across her mind. An hour. An hour. Was there time? Did it matter? She just wanted to try one more recipe before her father and Thad got home, and then she’d focus. Then she’d get to work. Just one more…
Jo turned her attention back to the window, to the empty dock. Only, this time, something in the water caught her eye.
A boat.
Not her father’s.
A boat she didn’t recognize. And it could only mean one thing. Well, two. A lost fisherman—a really, really, incredibly lost fisherman.
Or the Feds.
Again.
- 2 -
Nate
“Do you think we’re getting a little close?” Nate called over his shoulder, eyes locked on the shoreline rapidly approaching.
Thump.
“Ow!” A yelp sounded below deck, followed by the rapid slap of feet on steps. Leo, his partner, emerged from the tight staircase rubbing his forehead and wincing. “Shit, man. Sorry.”
He ran back to the wheel and kicked the engine into high gear. The water at the back of the boat bubbled as they fought the current pulling them toward the island.
Nate grinned. “I told you that jerk chicken looked questionable.”
He didn’t have to see his partner’s eye-roll to know it was there. “I was hungry. I grew up on chicken shawarma and tacos from the food trucks down the block. I thought I could survive anything.”
Nate snorted and shook his head.
“We didn’t all grow up in Pleasantville, Parker,” Leo half joked, half groaned.
His partner had a point. Leo had grown up in a crime-riddled area of Houston, the oldest of two boys, raised by a single mom. His only way out had been to enlist in the Army Reserve, using an ROTC scholarship to pay for college. Nate, on the other hand, had been groomed for the FBI since the day he was born. His father had been a high-ranking agent, they’d lived in a cushy suburb outside of Washington, DC, and he’d received the best education the nation had to offer. But that didn’t mean his childhood had been all roses. There’d been hard times too.
