“I know. It happens a lot. See it all the time,” he said, shaking his head, while he washed something in a suds-filled sink behind the bar. “You live close?”

I eyed him, wary of anyone who could sniff out an agent and asked too many questions.

“Will you be frequenting here?” he clarified.

Seeing where he was going with his inquisition, I nodded. “Likely.”

“Don’t worry about the tip. Moving is expensive, and so is drinking away what you left behind. You can make it up to me later.”

His words made my lips curve up in a way they hadn’t in months even though it probably wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Anthony.”

“Does anyone call you Tony?”

“Not if they want to drink here.”

“Noted.”

Anthony tended to the only other patron at the bar on this late Monday night—or some might call it an early Tuesday morning. The pudgy middle-aged woman with swollen red eyes wore a black dress. As he did so, the door swung open, and a man around my age breezed in, sitting two stools down. He loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his perfectly pressed white oxford. He glanced in my direction, and in that half second, his hazel-green eyes registered everything about me he wanted to know. Then, he looked away.

My cell phone buzzed in my blazer pocket, and I pulled it out to check the display. It was another text message from Jackson. Beside his name, a small six fit snuggly between parentheses, noting the number of messages he’d sent. That trapped number reminded me of the last time he’d touched me—during a hug I’d had to coax him out of.

I was two thousand one hundred and fifty miles from Jackson, and he was still able to make me feel guilty—but not guilty enough.

I clicked the side button on my cell phone, darkening the screen, without replying to Jackson’s message. Then, I lifted my finger to the bartender while gulping down the remainder of my sixth glass.

I’d found Cutter’s Pub right around the corner from my new condo in Midtown, an area in San Diego nestled between the International Airport and the zoo. My Chicago colleagues were wearing FBI-standard parkas over their bulletproof vests while I was enjoying the warmer than usual San Diego weather in a tube top and blazer with skinny jeans. I felt a little overdressed and a tad sweaty. Granted, that could be from the amount of liquor in my system.

“You’re awfully little to be in a place like this,” the man two stools down said.

“A place like what?” Anthony said, raising a brow while practically fisting a tumbler.

The man ignored him.

“I’m not little,” I said before taking a drink. “I’m petite.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”