Page 1 of Robb

Prologue

11:43 p.m.

31st of December, 1999

“WHOOOOO! YEAH!!”

Robb did his best not to grimace as an overly enthusiastic reveler slapped him on the back, nearly sending his unnecessarily extravagant – and unnecessarily green – cocktail sloshing all over the floor.

Not that Robb would have minded if he’d lost his drink, given that it was only for show and he needed to keep a clear head, but the floor was already suspiciously sticky and he really didn’t want to add to the mess.

He laughed and said something inane in response, hoping that it would be enough to satisfy the partygoer and send him on his merry way. After all, he was working undercover for the Agency, and that meant acting whatever role was required of him.

Even if it meant wearing sparkly hot pink ‘YEAR 2000!’ glasses and drinking an elaborate melon daiquiri with pineapple chunks and what he hoped was a spiral of soggy cucumber stuck to a tiny paper umbrella, while sailing on a pleasure yacht in the middle of Sydney Harbour.

The reveler staggered off, apparently looking for some new victim to accost, and Robb peered over the rim of his daiquiri glass as he took the tiniest of sips.

His target was here, somewhere on this boat. He knew it. There was no way she was going to miss this party – not when she was the one throwing it, after all.

You got a taste of the high life, he thought as his eyes roamed over the hundreds of happy people crammed on the yacht’s main deck. And now you just can’t help yourself.

His heart beat faster as he scanned the cheerful crowd for that one face in particular. The night was dark, with festive party lights flashing on and off and the yacht bobbing about in the choppy waters, but he knew that he would recognize her the moment he saw her.

They’d been playing this game of cat and mouse for so long that it felt like he knew her, even though she’d always slipped through his fingers like quicksilver at the last moment.

It was the greatest challenge of his career. It was frustrating as hell.

It was almost… fun.

Robb clamped down on that thought fast, even as the shifter dingo inside his head snarled at him. This wasn’t fun – it was his job. And seeing it as fun could turn out to be deadly – both to him, and to any other number of innocent people.

After all, a renegade shifter who could turn anything she touched into gold was dangerous enough. But a renegade shifter who could turn anything into gold, and who had a tendency to give that gold to shifter criminals so that they could use the proceeds to escape justice and take on a new identity elsewhere?

The implications were nothing short of horrifying. Who knew how many dangerous shifters were on the run right now because of her limitless finances? Who knew what else she might get up to, if she put her mind to it? She could quite literally become the richest person in the world if she wanted to, just by touching a few random objects.

Robb was unaware of any other shifter with an ability that could single-handedly influence both the human and shifter worlds so dramatically. Really, they were all incredibly lucky that she’d apparently limited herself to helping criminals and throwing elaborate yacht parties so far – if she decided to help any of the shadier shifter organizations, like Hargreaves, which was clearly starting to make moves in the realm of weaponizing shifter abilities, well, everyone would be in deep shit.

Not that Robb thought she would do that. He couldn’t explain why, beyond that there was just something about her that made him certain that she wouldn’t. Maybe it was her cheeky grin, which just didn’t seem like it would fit in with those bastards at Hargreaves. Maybe it was the fact that she clearly saw herself as some sort of Robin Hood type.

Or maybe, he thought grimly, you’re projecting the things that you want to be true. Don’t let a pretty face fool you.

He took another sip of his drink, annoyed to realize that he’d somehow managed to finish the whole thing. He needed to keep his head clear, dammit, and whoever was mixing the drinks on this boat was being more than generous with the alcohol.

No more poisoning your mind with these so-called ‘drinks’, his dingo snapped. Water is all any human needs. If we want to catch our prey, we must remain sharp.

Robb couldn’t disagree with that… but he also knew that the dingo didn’t have a fantastic grasp on the concept of going undercover.

And, he had to admit, he thought that a stiff drink might help him do what he had to do. He’d never had a case like this before – normally he had zero compunction about arresting suspects, but in this instance he was finding it hard to maintain his usual one hundred percent certainty that he was in the right.

Scanning the crowd, Robb pondered on his next move. He couldn’t just hang around getting drunk all night, but it wasn’t like he was choosing to spend his time partying. All things considered, he would rather be back at headquarters, making sure that all systems were running smoothly when the clock ticked over to midnight.

But he knew that the Agency’s techies had their Y2K prep more in hand than he would ever be able to accomplish, and there was a crack team of agents keeping guard over the cells where shifter criminals were being held, just in case.

Anyway, his manager had just favored him with a knowing look when she’d assigned this job to him over his protests.

This has been your assignment from day one – I’m not about to get someone else to track her for one evening just because you’re a wet blanket who hates socializing, she’d said. And, she’d added with a quirk of her lips, I don’t think you’ll hate it nearly as much as you’re putting on.

Maybe she’d been right. Not about the party itself – he was very happy to be a wet blanket, if the alternative was being a drunken yahoo – but he had to admit that the thrill of the chase was more exciting than any party could be.