“This is a little unusual, Eckhart,” Mercks said. His glasses fogged from the warm air. He took them off and wiped them with the edge of his scarf.

Xander gestured for Mercks to follow him. “This couldn’t wait. Follow me and I’ll explain.” Inside his office, he gestured for the private investigator to have a seat in one of the leather chairs next to the coffee table.

“Parsons said this was some kind of personal matter,” Mercks led in.

“Yes.” Needing to return to the party before he was missed, Xander got straight to the point. “There’s a man here who has become a problem. His name is Nick Stanton.”

“What kind of problem?” Mercks asked.

“He’s with the woman I was supposed to be with tonight.”

Mercks nodded. “Ah. And what can I do to help?”

“I want you to follow him. I want to know everything there is to know about him.”

“Done,” Mercks said without batting an eye. “What do you know so far?”

“Not much. He says he’s in real estate. Rental property. Time is of the essence with this. I need you to dig up whatever dirt you can before he and the woman get too close. That’s why I asked you to come here tonight—I want you to start following him now.”

“I’ve got a guy who can be waiting outside in five minutes,” Mercks said. “Just two things we need to be clear on before we get started: first, this kind of surveillance and background check isn’t going to be cheap.”

Xander waved this off. “Money’s not a problem. Not when it comes to this woman.”

“Second, there’s always a chance I might not find anything on this guy. For all you know, he’s a boy scout.”

Xander thought back to the dark expression on Nick’s face when he’d found him on the terrace with Jordan.

“This guy is no boy scout,” he assured Mercks. “You’ll find something. There’s always something.”

Thirteen

NICK HATED TO admit it, but Huxley had been right.

All evening, people studied him curiously. They went out of their way to engage him in conversation, and—with the exception of Eckhart—made polite inquiries about him and Jordan without crossing the line into being intrusive or rude. Mostly, they wanted to know how they’d met. After all, if she liked him, that was good enough for them.

This philosophy carried over into wine, he noticed. People waited to hear her reaction to a wine before commenting themselves, and then almost always vocalized a similar opinion. Perhaps her palette was simply that good, but he suspected the consensus also had something to do with the fact that others viewed Jordan with no small degree of fascination. She was smart, beautiful, ridiculously wealthy (or at least she would be one day), and her family recently had been plagued with a very public scandal. In any setting, this would make her a person of interest. In the staid circles of the Chicago wine community, it made her a star.

Nick watched as she spoke to a couple in their midthirties, wondering if she realized how much influence she held. If pressed, he would have to admit that she was turning out to be not what he’d expected when they’d first met. He kept waiting for her to display some sign of weirdness and/or snobbery, but so far she seemed relatively, well, normal. A somewhat irritating conclusion to arrive at, given how much he hated to admit that he’d been wrong.

“So how did you and Jordan meet?” the man standing across from Nick asked.

How Nick wished he could shake things up, considering this was the sixth time he had been asked that question in the last half hour. Interesting story, actually. We met in her wine store, when I offered her a deal to get her brother out of prison in exchange for cooperating in a covert FBI investigation. “It was just one of those things,” he began, launching into their now familiar tale of romance. “I’d dropped by Jordan’s store to buy a bottle of wine for my property manager. He’d gotten engaged over the weekend and I thought I should—” He frowned when he felt his cell phone vibrating inside his blazer. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, apologizing. “Sorry. I need to check this for work.”

He looked at the number on the caller ID and instantly knew.

Something was wrong.

He caught Jordan’s curious look. “It’s Ethan. I should grab this.”

She nodded—understanding there obviously was no Ethan—and managed an affectionate smile. “Of course.”

Nick stepped out into the hallway, away from the others. He answered his phone with a casual tone. “Ethan, I’m surprised to hear from you. Don’t you ever take a night off?”

Jack answered, short and to the point. “You’ve picked up a tail. Someone is going to follow you and Jordan home tonight.”

Nick’s jaw tightened. “Any idea how that happened?”

“Eckhart’s making a play for Jordan. He hired a guy to follow you and dig up whatever dirt he can on Nick Stanton.”

Just what they needed. “I’ll have to call you back to discuss this further,” Nick said. “But obviously, this changes our position in the matter.”

“There is some good news,” Jack noted.

“What’s that?” Nick asked.

“At least we know the bugs in Eckhart’s office are working.”

HAVING PICKED UP on the “Ethan” code, Jordan was impatient for answers.

Nick did a great job of maintaining the charade with everyone else, but she noticed a subtle change in his demeanor after the mysterious phone call he’d received.