Page 59 of Date With Danger

He reaches for the box, but I tuck it behind my back. “It might be stolen.”

I can’t believe him. “Says the man trying to steal it from me. Sorry Agent Sticky Fingers, but you can’t take pretty things because you like them.”

He grunts, but his hand tries to slip around my back anyway. “Where did you get it?” he asks when he fails the third time to grab it. I wish he was this aggressive about reaching for me.

I was going to tell him, but now I don’t quite feel like sharing. “Neither here nor there.” I shrug.

“What does that mean?”

“The truth is…” I take a deep breath and Caleb tenses, watching me. “I am Iron Man.”

“Amelia, this isn’t a game. Can I please see the box?” He tries to take it again, but I duck under his arm and open the door, holding it open for him. This is my grandmother’s box, the last gift from my parents. I’m not letting anyone else have it.

“Thanks for stopping by but you can take your greedy agent hands elsewhere now.” Well, those are words I never thought I’d say.

Caleb purses his lips but doesn’t move. “I need to see that—”

“Darla?”

Gary! Beautiful, sweet Gary saving me from this jewelry-box-stealing man.

I drop the box onto the couch and step outside, holding Gary’s arm protectively. “No, it’s me, Amelia, remember?”

Poor Gary remains confused so I grab his arm intent on walking him home, but not until a very obnoxious agent leaves the premises.

Caleb’s eyes dart to the couch where the jewelry box is, and his hand twitches. I shoot him a withering look and motion him out with my head. “Come on, son.”

Caleb clenches his jaw and without a word slips out of my apartment.

Chapter 24

Caleb

Amelia has been lying to me. I’m ninety percent sure that jewelry box is stolen. But I can’t place from where. Why didn’t I get a picture? And that old guy called her Darla. Is that an alias?

What else has she been lying about? Is that why she tracked me the other night?

This woman has been conning me from day one. I would never have thought it possible, but it all adds up. Her ridiculous antics, her ‘dates’ with Liam. She was so good at being clueless she had me eating out of the palm of her hand.

My shoulders have been permanently tense since I left her apartment last night and there’s nothing I can do to ease the ache in my chest. I feel like a kid again, falling for one of my dad’s lies.

I need to get back over there and get another look at the box. But what excuse will I use? That I want to follow up on the dog sweaters? That I’ve changed my mind, they might actually be a murder weapon?

That’s the other thing. I’ve talked to everyone trailing Liam, and no one saw him ship a package in the last four days. The return address was a P.O. box registered to Derek Winters. The same kid I met that night at the karaoke bar with Amelia. But when we visited him last night, he claimed he never sent a thing, nor does he know who Liam Hawthorne is. Plus, he’s barely eighteen. Liam was using him as a patsy.

We still haven’t been able to access Liam’s account for the dating app, but we did get into Amelia’s. There’s nothing between the two of them but cheesy flirting. Unless it was a code. It was an utterly indecipherable one if it is.

“We’ve got a problem,” Cruz says, eyes trained on her laptop.

I stop clicking my pen and glance across the minuscule distance from my desk to hers.

“The night crew lost Liam.”

“What?” I’m halfway out of my seat.

“They talked to the hotel manager and apparently he’s gone. They haven’t spotted him anywhere.”

I groan. “He knew we were following him.”