Hooked

he let her out. She heard the latch lock behind her. All in all, a very informative afternoon. She was getting good at this spy stuff, but she also hoped her assignment would soon be over.
    Making her way to the cab stand half a block down, she noticed a tall, muscled black man standing in the doorway of a quick shop, coffee clutched in a hand as big as a baseball mitt. The sun reflected off his shaved head, his cold eyes riveted on her as if she were a space alien. The intensity of his stare burned her back all the way to the cab stand. When she got in the back seat, she turned to see him still staring.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    A Pitiful Subterfuge

    T awny left Martell’s, changed into sweats when she got home, and ran a few miles around Lower Manhattan. She showered, did laundry, cleaned the loft, and made sambar, a thick Indian soup of lentils and vegetables, fragrant with curry. All the activity was supposed to keep her from thinking about Walsh, but he was all she thought of while exhausting herself.
    She’d laid it on the line. Straight, no bullshit. She knew what made men tick better than most women, at least the men who paid for her—ego, money, sex, a combination of two, or more likely, all three.
    Walsh liked nice clothes and had a thing for shoes, but he was rarely the topic of his own conversation. As for money―no, uh-uh. Money was not his driving force, or he wouldn’t be a cop. That left sex. At first she thought that’s what he was about―dangerous for a sex-crime investigator―but he walked out the door when she wa s at her weakest, when they both knew he could have taken her. But he walked. So what was his story?
    Get him out of your mind, Tawny Dell. Nothing good can come of your life with him in it or you in his. The decision made, she ate dinner and went to bed with a book to keep her mind from wandering. That didn’t work either because she thought back to the afternoon and the phone call she received from FBI Special Agent Harry Winokaur inviting her to lunch tomorrow. He introduced himself as Walsh’s friend. Walsh had mentioned him casually, and from those times, she’d guessed they were close. So why would Winokaur want to have lunch with her? Simple. He wanted to warn her off messing up a cop’s career.
    She woke early, languished over coffee with The Times , checked the computer, and faced the fact it was time to get ready for a lunch she didn’t want to go to. She tucked a man-tailored shirt into belted slacks, slipped into a pair of sandals, and she was out the door to meet Winokaur at a Noodle Shop in Lincoln Center .
    Studying the people waiting in line when she arrived, she didn’t see anyone who looked like they were waiting for her. Should she stand in line or wait outside? Then the man at the door asked if she was Miss Tawny. When she nodded, he directed her upstairs. Another man gestured her to a table where a lone man sat drinking hot tea. He stood and offered his hand.
    “Ms. Dell, Harry Winokaur.”
    She had conjured an image of Winokaur, maybe because of the Harrys she’d known over the years, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. Where she had pictured a man of average height, stocky, and balding, Winokaur towered over her by six inches, and she was five-ten. Lean, of medium complexion, with a full head of salt and pepper hair, cut short, he could easily be described as handsome. Hazel eyes, wary at first, warmed when he smiled, returning her gesture. One front tooth had a slight chip, she noticed, robbing him of male-model perfection.
    “I wasn’t sure what dishes you liked, so I just ordered tea,” he said.
    “I eat anything without meat.”
    “That makes two of us.”
    Interesting Walsh never mentioned that, though why should he? He had only referred to Winokaur in a hero-worship way, without defining their relationship.
    Winokaur picked up the menu, perusing the lunch specials with great interest, but Tawny felt he could recite the dishes from column A and column B verbatim. This was breathing time.
    “You’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” he said, still studying the menu.
    “Yes.”
    “You know Mario Russo.”
    It wasn’t a question. “You know I do. What is it you want, Agent Winokaur?”
    “Call me Harry.”
    “At the risk of sounding rude, I don’t want to call you Harry. I’ve entered into a business arrangement with the NYPD and, in turn, the IRS. They have me in a vise. Now I have an ugly feeling the FBI is involved.