Free Charity's Secrets by Maya James

are you a one trick pony in the kitchen?"
    More of
his laughter. I could never get enough of that. "I'm not too bad. That was
my fallback," he says.
    "Fallback?"
    "Yeah,"
he replies seriously. "You know, in case the blackmailing and espionage
gig didn't work out."
    There's
my fucking snort!
    Justin
looks at me endearingly, as if he enjoys my terrible laugh, as if he lives to
hear it. Maybe that's all he really needs, my happiness. All I need is for him
to look at me the way he does, the way he is right now, for the rest of my
life.
    "Actually,
it wasn't a fallback. After my rough start as a kid, I joined the CIA to lift
myself out of the hole I'd dug."
    " The CIA?" I breathe, astonished that I didn't know this already.
    "Absolutely. The Culinary Institute of America, right here in New York," he announces
with a wink.
    "The
CIA," I repeat, giggling harshly. "That's clever."
    He
laughs along with me. "It was my one shot at the time, and I was enjoying
it, but I didn't get to finish. My past came back for me and it opened up an
opportunity, a door that I didn't know was there."
    "Panther?"
I ask even though I'm sure of it.
    Justin
nods. "That's when all this began." There's a mix of pride and
disgust in his eyes for a moment.
    I see
there is more behind this story, and I want to know what it is. My curiosity is
taking off on its own. "Tell me," I urge. "I want to know
everything about you, Justin."
    "It's
not pretty. This stuff is never as glamorous as they make it look in the
movies." His eyes tell me to be sure before I ask again.
    "I
don't care—I want to know."
    Justin
shovels some cheesecake into his mouth. "A friend of mine from juvie was
this little computer geek who got in trouble for some computer hacking. I took
him under my wing since I felt bad for him getting beat up all the time; he was
just a little thing, but lots of imagination, always thinking. He'd hacked into
the NYPD's system to change some records for some friends of his. He got
caught, but they weren't able to figure out what changes he made, so he counted
it as a win. From that, he got mixed up with a cop doing some side
investigative work. They stumbled onto a human trafficking ring that was much
bigger than they could handle, than they were prepared for. They kidnapped his
partner without knowing that he was a cop, and let my buddy go, told him he had
two hours to bring a girl to swap for his friend—payment for the trouble they
caused, they told him."
    "He
came to you for help?" I ask, enthralled in his story already.
    Justin
nodded. "I told him it didn't matter whether he brought someone back or
not, they were going to kill them all—especially if they found out one of them
was a police officer."
    Justin
shoveled another huge bite of the cheesecake into his mouth.
    "What
did you do?" I begged.
    He
shrugs his shoulders as if it should be nothing. "I picked up Lena on our
way back to them, told him he was going to have to talk his way into getting me
inside with them. My buddy told them that I could get any girl they wanted; and
the young, hot, black girl was my offering to get in. It worked long enough to
get all three of us in."
    I take
another bite of the cake myself, my eyes fixed on Justin, hanging on every
word. "What happened then? How did you get out of there with Lena?"
    "Not
just Lena, I got out of there with her, my buddy, the cop, and a woman we found
locked in one of the rooms."
    "Holy
shit! How? " I croak.
    "We
were more organized, more prepared for what was about to happen. Like I said,
it's not always like the movies. These guys weren't trained assassins carrying
semi-automatics on their sides. They were drugged up pieces of trash trading
women for money so they could afford their next fix. As soon as we were in,
Lena and I each shot one, and the last one was so scared he forgot his gun and
was begging for his life when I shot him. I put my gun in the hand of the one
Lena shot. She put hers on one of my guys. We took the guns they had