Page 49 of Off the Grid
“Not a chance.”
“Do it.”
“I’m going to need a lot more of these,” he murmured, holding up his whiskey glass, “before I get to that level.”
She stared at him for a moment, making Leo question his choice of words as calculations spun deep in her crystal irises. Then she sat back. “Noted. Tell me something else.”
“You tell me something,” he countered. “Tit for tat.”
“Okay…” McKenzie took another sip of whiskey and pursed her lips. “Oh, I’ve got it. I have webbed toes.”
Leo waited a few seconds for her to continue, but she just took another bite of chili. “That’s it? That’s the whole story?”
“What?” McKenzie shrugged. “They’rereallyembarrassing.”
“Well, now I have to see them.”
“No.”
“Come on, take the sock off, Harper.”
She grinned when he said her last name and glanced up, meeting his gaze. Then she sighed dramatically and tugged her sock off before holding her foot out. He didn’t see anything wrong.
“Wow,” Leo deadpanned. “I don’t know how you can live with that horror you call a foot.”
Her smile shifted to a glare.
“I mean,” he continued, “I don’t know how you found the strength to leave the house, to show your face in public. What do you do when you go to the beach? People must gawk and—”
“Shut it,” she interrupted and stuffed her completely normal toes back into her sock. “I had a complex about wearing flip-flops for years. It’s not funny.”
“I can see why, with toes like—” He broke off when she lifted her hand and something smacked him clean in the middle of the forehead. “What was that?”
McKenzie coughed under her breath. “What was what?”
“That! What was…” He lifted his fingers to his forehead and pulled them back. A little bit of oily red residue covered his skin. “Was that a black bean? Did you just chuck a black bean at me?”
“’Course not.” She took another bite to cover her mischievous smile. “Your turn. Something funny this time.”
You’re one to talk.He silently huffed, shaking his head.Webbed feet.“Okay, I’ve got one I think you’ll like, but it’s not about me. It’s about Jo.”
“Jo?” McKenzie perked.
“Yeah, did she tell you anything about what happened in New York?”
She shook her headno.
“My partner, Nate, and I were in New York, tailing Jo and her partner, Thad, based on intel that they were planning to steal a painting and make an exchange with the mob. Basically, we’re following Jo, and she knows it. All week, she’s been disabling the bugs we plant in her hotel room, and covering her tracks. So our boss suggests Nate try to get a little closer to her, act a little flirtatious, see what he can drum up. If you know anything about my partner, you should know he’s a great guy who happens to have a major stick up his ass. Total square. A stickler for the rules—or he was, until Jo. And she knew it too. So one day, while we’re tailing her, she goes into this shop, and it’s obvious from the window it’s a lingerie shop. We’re in the car, waiting. We have her cell phone feed coming through on a tablet, and we see that she turns her cell phone on and opens her messaging app. She types something. She sends something. We don’t know what yet because it takes a while to load, but Nate recognizes the number. It’s his personal cell phone.”
“Oh no,” McKenzie murmured.
“Oh, yes,” Leo chimed. “Little Jo Hacker managed to somehow steal Nate’s private cell number and use it to send him a photo from the dressing room of her in red lace lingerie.”
“No!”
“Yes! And that’s not even the best part. Nate goes about ten shades of red, and then the photo transfers through the tech team, so everyone in our unit sees, which makes him go more berserk. By the time we got back to the New York office later that night, someone had gone out and bought a red bra and hooked it to Nate’s chair. His face! Oh, man, it was so good.”
McKenzie shook her head. “That sounds like Jo. She doesn’t do anything halfway—it’s full enthusiasm, attacking with the force of a tiger, or nothing.”
