Everybody Loves Evie Read Online Free PDF Page A

back?”
    â€œDepends. We clear with the Agency?”
    â€œYes and no.”
    â€œMeaning?”
    â€œChameleon’s on sabbatical until the new director reevaluates our purpose.”
    â€œYou’ve got a new boss?”
    â€œ We’ve got a new boss. Vincent Crowe. Company man.”
    â€œHard-ass?”
    â€œYou got it.” He popped two aspirin and swallowed them dry.
    â€œYou dinnae sound happy, mate.”
    Try miserable. Even before Crowe had been appointed, the Agency had started mangling Milo’s vision for Chameleon by inundating the team with cases pertaining to high-profile scams. Scams that target the select upper crust, as opposed to those that ruin lives of the blue-collar majority. Given his dealings with the new director thus far, he feared his vision was one step closer to history. “Maybe Evie could sing me a song. Cheer me up. Where is she, anyway?”
    â€œJust put her on a plane. She’s on her way home. Be warned, she’s over the moon aboot her job with Chameleon. Has illusions aboot saving the world. Reminds me of you, yeah?”
    â€œI don’t want to save the world, Arch. Just a naive few.”
    â€œPeople like Evie.”
    Milo didn’t comment.
    â€œI’ve seen the way you look at her, mate. Remember what you told me aboot mixing business with pleasure.”
    â€œThat a warning?”
    â€œJust an observation.”
    The exchange reignited Milo’s previous suspicions that Arch had fallen in love. Dangerous territory for a man who valued emotional detachment. Never attach yourself to anyone you can’t walk away from in a split second. “You sound jealous. Just an observation.”
    â€œBugger off.”
    â€œFuck you.”
    â€œBeckett?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œTry a glass of warm milk. And dinnae worry aboot Crowe.”
    â€œThanks.” Milo disconnected and fell back against his pillows. His relationship with Arch was complicated. Onetime rivals, they now danced the same dance. Partners in anticrime. Arch occasionally slipped into old routines, solo. His last performance had earned Milo an ass chewing from Crowe. It had also pulled Evie Parish, a sexy variety performer, into their lives. As if he needed another complication coming between him and his professional goals.
    He massaged his temples, dreaded another bout of insomnia. He swung out of bed and headed for the kitchen, contemplating this new and constant restlessness. He needed to take charge.
    First order of business: tackling insomnia. Which meant two things: addressing his discontent with the Agency and getting a grip on his infatuation with Twinkie. In a warped, adversarial way, he considered Arch Duvall a friend. But it was his obsession to learn everything the crafty genius knew about grifting that motivated Milo to keep him close. If he pursued this attraction to Evie, he risked driving a wedge between him and the Scot. Just because Arch claimed the affair was over didn’t mean he was over Evie.
    Face it, Beckett. Hiring Twinkie was a mistake. “That’s what you get for thinking with your dick.” He opened the fridge, nabbed the milk. “Just an observation.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    J ET LAG . T HE AWFUL zombielike sensation rivaled motion sickness, and I suffered from both.
    Queasy and fog-brained, I dragged my suitcase into my apartment, a one-bedroom rental with minimal furnishings and three weeks of dust. I added depressed to the list. It didn’t just feel empty, it was empty. I wish I could say someone robbed me while I was away. But, no, this was my doing. I’d moved in after the divorce, but I’d never really lived here. I’d purchased essentials—a couch, a television, a bed—and hadn’t bothered decorating. I was too busy wallowing in my postdivorce funk and pitiful work schedule to give two figs about curtains, wall hangings and knickknacks.
    Bleary-eyed, I scanned the living