Page 101 of What Started In Deception

He caught a drip on his cone with his lips. “Not really. Not when you understand how it all works.”

She chewed as she looked at him. “I don’t understand how it all works.”

“So I’ll explain.”

She nodded.

“Danny’s our case agent, which means he’s in charge of our leg of the investigation.”

She nodded again. “I got that part.”

“Nick is my contact agent. He looks after me and reports any information that I develop back to Danny.”

Her frown was back. “What does that mean? He looks after you?”

He shrugged. “A contact agent helps an undercover agent stay anchored to the real world—to life outside of the investigation.”

“Huh,” she said with her brow still furrowed.

“When you go under for a while, reality can get a little hazy. That’s not necessarily a problem with this case because I get to be myself for the most part, but it’s protocol to have a contact agent when you’re working undercover, so Nick’s spending some time up here in Massachusetts.”

Lydia licked at a drip before it reached her cone. “Do things get hazy for you when you’re on other assignments?”

He bobbed his head from side to side as he tried to think of how to describe what that meant. “Not hazy per se. I think it’s more that who you are is completely manufactured. Every part of your life is made up. You’re hanging around with scumbags all day, every day, so it’s nice to have a familiar person to talk to. Your contact agent knows you. They’re your co-worker, so you can let your guard down. You know you’re safe in their company. Because when you’re on your own, playing your part, your guard is constantly up—your life is constantly in danger. It can be really exhausting.”

She raised her brow at him. “And you volunteered to be an undercover agent?”

He smiled as he nodded. “It’s exciting work.”

She looked at him with deep skepticism. “If you say so.”

He stroked his thumb along her knuckles, deciding that he didn’t want to talk about his job anymore. He just wanted to focus on Lydia and the life they were sharing together. “So, what do we want to do about dinner tonight?”

She looked toward the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the coastal road. “There’s a good possibility that we might be stuck here till midnight, so we might be eating more ice cream.”

He laughed. “I have faith that someone will let us turn left.”

She smiled. “Uncle James said something about cheeseburgers on the grill, but by the time we get home, we’ll probably have missed it.”

He shrugged, not necessarily hating that they would probably be eating something on their own—that he would have Lydia all to himself for the rest of the evening. “So, we’ll make sandwiches.”

She nodded. “How about sandwiches and a movie on the couch?”

He nodded this time. “It sounds like we have ourselves a date.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ty locked Lydia’s Telluride, then headed down the busy seaside path, looking for Nick, who would be sitting on one of the benches at the public access beach. He shielded his eyes in the late-afternoon sunshine despite the sunglasses he wore, spotting a well-built balding man sipping on an iced tea, figuring that he was most likely his man.

The guy looked up, tossing him a wave as he stood.

Ty closed the distance between them, holding out his hand. “You must be Nick.”

Nick returned his handshake. “That’s me.”

“I’m Ty.”

“It’s nice to finally put a voice with the picture I’ve seen and the stranger I’ve been texting.”