Even Villains Have Interns (9 page)

“Will you walk me to my car?” Delilah asked the
police chief.

“Of course!”

Of course.
Alan ground his teeth
together.

Delilah hit him with a dazzling smile. “I did
bring a little something for you, Adale. A get well card from
Subrosa Securities.”

“Trolling for clients?” Wyte teased as Delilah
left a small white envelope on the nightstand beside Alan’s
bed.

Her smile was deceptively calm when she turned
away. “Subrosa has always made the safety of Chicago’s prominent
citizens a top priority. You can’t have your police everywhere, but
I can put a team anywhere in this city in under five minutes.” The
words were innocuous enough, but there was a hard edge to them that
offered the promise of swift retaliation if things didn’t go her
way.

Alan waited until they’d left before he opened
the envelope: a generic get-well card and Delilah’s business card.
On the back, in a careful hand, she’d written, “Do not trust
Wyte.”

That put a slightly sinister spin to Wyte’s
visit. And Delilah’s. Was she tracking him or the police chief?

A nurse came in with a tray of what he was
certain was nourishing but bland food. “How are you feeling
today?”

“Fantastic. I could run a marathon,” Alan said.
“When are they releasing me?”

“After a gunshot?” Her dark eyebrows climbed.
“Honey, you ain’t going nowhere for at least seventy-two hours. Eat
your lunch and get comfy.”

Alan smiled politely and took the food. The
nurse nodded approval and closed the door behind her.

Nine minutes later, he ghosted out of the room
leaving nothing behind but a memory and a plate of rubbery
scrambled eggs.

Daddy,

Thank you for the watch! It’s absolutely
perfect, and it even matched my new necklace. See you next
week.

Lovingly,

Delilah

Delilah checked her watch, then looked up at the
McCormick Tribune YMCA. It wasn’t nearly as dingy as she’d
anticipated. True, the rows of neat two-story houses were all
closing in on their century marks, and the cars parked along the
street were not the newest models by any stretch of the
imagination, but everything seemed well kept. Christmas lights
adorned the trees. Wreaths hung in windows. Wood smoke and snow
filled the air with a wintery perfume. All that was missing was a
wintery soundtrack and some mistletoe, and she’d be in a bad
made-for-TV holiday movie.

“I told you it wasn’t the bad end of town,”
Travys said from the depths of his hoody and jacket. “Perfectly
safe.”

“Remind me again how I got roped into this,” she
said as Travys opened the front doors of the YMCA, hot air and the
smell of sweat swamping her.

Travys smiled. “I have to do community service
as part of my social awareness class. You are here because you need
to leave the office occasionally.”

“I’m work oriented.” There were a million and
one things she needed to do tonight, but the minions were still
trying to trace the late mayor’s last hours. So rather than pacing
the apartment and grinding her teeth, she’d come here. To play
basketball, because Travys told her she had to.

“You’re a workaholic who’s going to die of a
stress-induced heart attack at thirty if you don’t watch it.”

“What are you, my mother?”

“Locker room is over there,” Travys pointed.

“I see the sign.”

He grinned like a shark who’d seen a seal pup.
Poor boy. The chance to school his boss on the court was giving him
delusions of grandeur. She hadn’t played since college, not
competitively, but a girl didn’t grow up with four active siblings
without learning how to play one-on-one everything like a demon
bent on the conquest of hell. Delilah changed, tightened her
shoelaces, and stretched. A little physical activity was good for
the soul. Especially—she snickered—if it left her favorite intern
trembling in terror whenever she mentioned sports.

The YMCA had multiple courts laid out side by
side. Several games of pick up were going on, and in one corner a
middle-aged Hispanic woman was coaching a co-ed little league team
with polite English and a few earthy curse words in Spanish. The
kids were eating it up. One even made a basket.

Very few of the players turned to look at the
new girl. Skinny, white, ponytail... Nothing to see here. If Angela
the Hollywood starlet had walked in, people would have turned. If
it were Maria, with her dark-tan skin and emerald-green eyes,
people would have stopped. If Blessing walked in, pale curls
framing a face with lavender eyes, people would have gathered
around her faster than she could blink. Even Gideon, their baby
brother, would have caught
someone’s
attention. But of all
the Smith children, Delilah had to admit she was the average one.
Average height. Average weight. Average looks. Average everything.
Even her super quirks didn’t do enough to set her apart from every
other brown-haired, brown-eyed human walking the planet—and she
took comfort knowing she was part of a vast majority. Stealth was
far, far easier when you had a forgettable face.

Only one person acknowledged her, a muscular
blond man shooting hoops with some teens on the far side of the
gym. Probably another coach. He nodded to her with a smile, and
then made a three-point basket.

“Hey,” Travys said, dribbling a ball like a
Harlem Globetrotter. “Ready to see my Skillz?”

Delilah snorted. “You did not just put a Z on
the end of that.”

He laughed and tried to run past her for a
lay-up.

Delilah stole the ball, pivoted, and made a
basket. “Oh, wait,” she said, cocking her head. “Who took her
college team to conference championships? Was that me? It was,
wasn’t it?”

Travys looked at her in mock outrage. “Oh, no.
No, this is not happening. I’m young and viral.”

“Virile,” she corrected as he made a shot, and
it bounced off the rim. “Okay, maybe viral.”

They played a quick game that Delilah won by a
point before the group across the gym broke up. “I gotta check in
with my people,” Travys said.

Delilah raised an eyebrow. “You have
people?”

“Quinton. He’s a good kid. I’m sort of mentoring
him. The Y has a tutoring program, and I’m helping him with
math.”

“You dragged me away from work to play
basketball so we could check that this kid is doing his homework?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have minions for chores like that.”

Travys’s wide grin returned. “Yeah, so do I.
You.”

She wagged her finger at him. “You are getting
coal for Christmas!”

Travys laughed at her anger and pointed out a
scrawny kid badly in need of new sneakers and a couple of
2000-calorie cheeseburgers. He was... maybe a size twelve mens?
Maybe thirteen. She’d have to get Travys to steal one of his
sneakers so she could get the size and replace those shoes.

“I need to cut him out of the herd,” Travys
said. “Isolate him.”

“I’m glad you’ve been paying attention in
biology class.”

Travys bumped her with his elbow. “Go be my
distraction.”

“What?”

“Go flirt with his coach or something.”

Delilah widened her eyes and pretended to be
outraged. “Flirt with a random stranger? What are you, my
pimp?”

Travys rolled his eyes. “Just go in and do your
girly thing with his coach, so I can get Quinton alone.
Please?”

Delilah’s eyes narrowed. “What ‘Girly
Thing’?”

“You know, the flippy-hair pretty-girl thing you
do right before you emotionally disembowel people and leave them
socially dead. You do it at parties all the time.”

“I don’t emotionally disembowel people!” Delilah
protested as Travys pushed her toward the other side of the gym. “I
just speak my mind.”

“Trust me, it’s the same thing.”

Delilah stopped walking when the coach turned.
“Alderman Adale.” She looked over her shoulder at Travys who made a
shooing motion and then pretended to ignore her. Some days, the
universe really was against you. She turned back to Adale.
“Hello.”

“Hello.” Adale smiled.

Quinton shuffled at the alderman’s side as
Delilah debated what to do.
Well, what the hell. Why not?
She smiled perkily and tilted her head. “Hi! I’m a distraction!
Want to shoot some hoops?” She grabbed Adale’s arm and led him away
from Quinton so Travys could go in for the kill.

“A distraction?” Adale asked. “What are you
distracting me from?”

She fluttered her eyelashes exaggeratedly. “I’m
supposed to leave Quinton isolated, so his math tutor can talk to
him. I’m not sure if Travys is issuing death threats or trying to
convince Quinton that a higher GPA is the only way to meet the
University of Chicago cheerleaders. We’re supposed to act like
we’re interested in talking to each other,” she added when Adale
turned back to the boys with a frown.

“Right, of course.” His smile was warm. “How are
you?”

“Better than you are, I imagine. How’s your
side?”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ve been
worse. Want to kiss and make it better? Or are you going steady
with Wyte now?”

She laughed. “What is this, high school?” She
bounced the ball a few times before adding more seriously, “I have
reasons to be cautious around Wyte, as do you. Leaving him alone
with you while you were wounded seemed like a bad idea.”

“So you rushed to my rescue?” Alan teased.

It shouldn’t have been funny, but Delilah
laughed at the absurdity of the thought anyway. “I hardly think of
it as rushing to your rescue after you took a bullet for me. How
are you really? Should you be playing basketball a day after being
shot?”

“By the time the hospital triage team got to me
I was only grazed.”

Delilah relaxed. “Here’s to fast healing.”

Alan caught her hands with a gentle touch and
finessed the ball from her grip. “Want to play a quick game of
twenty-one while your intern practices his Spanish Inquisition
routine on my boy? I promised Quinton’s mom he’d be ready to leave
by ten.”

“He’ll survive,” Delilah said as she circled
around, waiting for an opportunity to steal the ball back. Hot or
not, no man who’d just walked out of the hospital was beating her
on the court. She feinted in for the ball but Alan twisted, leaving
her nothing to do but slap his hip.

“Are we playing or not?”

Delilah raised her eyebrows. “Half-court, poison
points at eleven, no tips, no free throws?” They’d shoot only at
one basket, each player trying to make twenty-one points with a
combination of two-point and three-point shots. Eleven was the
poison point; if a player had eleven points and missed their next
shot, they reset to zero.

“And here I thought my math days were over.”

Delilah shrugged. “I’d love to stay longer, but
I have plans tonight and I need to drop Pumpkin back at the dorm
before I hit the club scene.”

Alan dribbled the ball. “I’m telling Travys you
called him a Pumpkin.” He feinted left, pivoted right, and still
came up against Delilah blocking his way to the net.

“Come on, Adale. Aren’t you going to show me
some moves?”

He stepped back, dribbling as he watched
Delilah. This time he drove left; Delilah swiped the ball out of
his hands, pivoted, and made a three-point shot.

“Come on,” she taunted. “You have to want
it.”

He caught the ball as it bounced between the
nets. “What are we playing for?”

Distraction
. “Fun?”

“How about a kiss for the winner?” He shot her
smoldering look that promised hot and dirty things if she wanted
them.

Picturing him naked wasn’t necessary—she’d
gotten a good show the night before. “How ‘bout you buy me
dinner?”

“Winner gets a free dinner?” Alan sounded
doubtful.

“I get a free dinner,” Delilah said, “because
I’m going to win.”

Alan shook his head, turned, and did a lay-up.
“Maybe you’ll have to buy me dinner.”

Delilah took the ball. “Mmm, hmm.” She stepped
closer, invading his personal space, keeping eye contact. Alan’s
eyes widened. She could hear the hitch in his breath as she brushed
against him. She smiled, and shot the ball over his head into the
net.

Alan caught her around the waist, and her heart
raced as her cheeks heated. “That’s cheating!”

“No it’s not.” They were close enough to kiss.
Tempting. So tempting. She tore herself away from his gaze and
stepped back. Shooting him a flirty smile she sent the ball flying
over his head. Nothing but net. “Five to two.”

He shook his head and retrieved the ball. Ten
points flew past for each of them. Alan jumped and grabbed,
pivoted, and scored two more points.

“You’re not going to hit twenty-one like that.”
She shot another two-pointer that sailed over his head. “Oh, wait,
that puts me ahead! Nineteen to fourteen, me.”

Delilah bent over to pick up the ball, making
sure Alan got an eyeful of her hind end while she adjusted her tank
top. A little tug down was all she needed.

His eyes widened when she stood up. “That
is
cheating.”

“What?” She batted her eyelids innocently. “A
little cleavage wouldn’t distract a big, tough, politician like
you, would it?”

“On anyone else? No. On you? Make a couple
baskets already so I can kiss you.”

Delilah took an unopposed shot as Alan devoured
her with his eyes. “Oh, come on. I know you aren’t that tired!”

“I’m recovering from a gunshot!” he protested.
“And that was a free throw. One point for you.”

“What!”

He smirked as he leaned close to steal the ball.
“Twenty to fourteen.” Smiling, he shot a tree-pointer.

Seven sweaty minutes later Delilah scored her
final two points. “I win.”

“Right,” Alan agreed with a cocky smile. The
ball bounced away, forgotten, as he caressed her face. “You win.”
His lips brushed over hers, warm and tempting.