JP, Dominique, Grant, and I are all free.The first thing we do as soon as we step out of FBI headquarters is to look at each other and cheer. Hugs, kisses, and joyous shouts all around.Second is Grant calls his company. They’re a little freaked out to hear from their on-the-lam boss, but after they check with the FBI, they send us a limo – with a laptop.Third thing on the list is I stop the document dump. And backup all the files to a half-dozen other servers… just in case.Fourth is we book the penthouse at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. Actually, Grant’s company books it; we just get smuggled in through the back door. Once we’re up there, Grant orders the entire menu from the nearest pricey restaurant, plus six bottles of Dom Perignon from room service.“To a job well done,” Grant toasts us.“To ten million dollars,” JP adds cheekily.We tell and retell our versions of the rescue over dinner. After all, Grant has no idea what happened on our end after he jumped out of the boat a

Things are mostly wonderful. But I’m starting to miss home.And every so often, I wake up screaming, afraid that someone is breaking into our bedroom, trying to kidnap and kill us.Grant holds me trembling in his arms, whispering soothing words into my ear, until I finally fall asleep again.It happens at first every night, then every other night, then every third and fourth.Part of me wonders if I will ever be rid of the memories.But as long as I can go back to sleep in Grant’s arms, I know I’ll be okay.After three weeks in Majorca, we call Mailin at the FBI.“Can we come home yet?” Grant asks over the speakerphone.“Uh… no, not yet.”“Why not?!”“We’re breaking the news that Dieter Lassenbach was a serial killer.”Grant and I stare at each other.All the fear and anxiety I had started to leave behind comes rushing up out of nowhere and threatens to overpower me again.“Why now?”“Because we’ve identified most of the victims, and we’re notifying the families. We figured they deser

The reception is lovely. We have it in the most luxurious hotel on Majorca, where we feast like kings, dance all night, and drink tons of champagne. By the time I kiss my parents and in-laws goodnight, I’m drunk as hell.Maybe that explains what happens next.We’ve rented the penthouse for the night in order to be closer to our families. We laugh and kiss as he carries me over the threshold, then he kicks the door closed behind us. He throws me on the bed in an alley-ooop! motion. I bounce and giggle amongst the folds of white lace rustling all around me.“Here – let me get this off,” I say drunkenly, and start trying to find the clasps to undo the back.“No,” he says as he locks the door. “I want to make love to you with it on.”“Oh…” I say, surprised.He starts by softly kissing my ankles as he pulls off my heels and massages my aching feet.“Ohhhh…”His kisses travel slowly up my right calf to my knee. He parts my legs, then continues kissing softly up my right thigh until he reach

It was 5:55 PM on Friday when Anh stopped by my desk and put on her sad, hesitant face. Anh (pronounced ‘On’) is this adorable little Vietnamese American girl whom I’ve known since I was a sophomore in college and she was a freshman. At barely five feet in heels and a year younger than me, I feel okay calling her a ‘girl.’ She wouldn’t mind.I envy how thin she is; I like that she’s one of the few people who makes me feel tall; and I love her for getting my sense of humor, for having been my therapist/mom through a couple of wretched breakups, and for generally putting up with me.Plus, she lets me pay less in rent even though our bedrooms are the same size. I think she does that because, even though she got me the job, she feels bad that I wound up working for Herr Klaus.I refer to him as ‘Herr Klaus’ because ‘the Exec Comp Nazi’ might get me fired. Yes, I know, I know, I shouldn’t go around comparing my jerk boss to actual, real-life monsters who destroyed millions upon millions o

The crowd in the marble-floored, exquisitely decorated lobby was thinned out by the time I stepped out of the elevator. In Los Angeles, anybody who has a modicum of power or money jumps ship by 4PM so they can get a head start on traffic. To home, to drinks, to dinner, or maybe out of town to Vegas.Everybody else pretty much calls it quits by 6PM and accepts their lot in life is to suffer on jam-packed freeways.The peons, like me, are stuck watching all the other people get on with their lives.So when I walked out of the elevator, there weren’t that many people to get in the way of my seeing him.Oh.My.God.He was standing at the desk chatting with Stanley. It had to be him. No way that one man that gorgeous, and another guy with the voice on the phone, could simultaneously coexist in the same building and not be the same person. The odds were too high. Even if they were two people, their combined sexiness would pull them together and fuse them into one perfect male, like two sta