“Xander Eckhart,” Jordan said.
“Must be nice having customers who buy a quarter million dollars worth of wine.”
For a brief moment, she loosened up a bit. “Unfortunately, that sale went to Sotheby’s,” she said with a smile. “But, yes, Xander is a good customer.”
And therein lay the question, Nick thought. Just how good of a customer? “I take it you know him well?”
“Well enough, I suppose.”
“How well?”
There was a pause, and he saw the stiffening in Jordan’s posture the moment she clued in.
“You want to know about Xander. That’s what this is about?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She appeared genuinely shocked. “Why would you be investigating Xander?”
Nick ignored the question, shifting into interrogation mode. “How would you describe the nature of your relationship with Eckhart?”
She seemed to weigh her options before answering. While sitting in the backseat of an SUV, in the middle of a blizzard, with two armed FBI agents in front, she didn’t have many. “Xander has been a regular customer of my store for a few years. I often handle special orders for him, expensive or rare wines you can’t get through a distributor.”
“Have you had any interactions with him outside the store?” Nick probed.
“Perhaps I really should call my lawyer. I’m suddenly finding myself very uncomfortable with this situation, Agent McCall.”
He caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “Why would talking about Xander Eckhart make you uncomfortable?”
She adjusted her position in the backseat, crossing one leg over the other. “Why don’t you spare me the interrogation and just get to the point?”
“Outside the store, do you see Eckhart socially?”
“Occasionally. We know some of the same people, so from time to time I’ll run into him at a party or at one of his restaurants. And every year I attend a charity fund-raiser that he hosts at Bordeaux. The party is this weekend, as a matter of fact.”
“Is that the full extent of your personal relationship?”
She locked eyes with him in the mirror. “What else would there be to our relationship, Agent McCall?”
“Do you have any sort of intimate connection to Eckhart?”
Her voice was smoky in the darkness of the backseat. “Just a deep appreciation for good wine.”
She turned away from him and stared out the window once again. Nick got the message, loud and clear: Conversation over.
When they arrived at the FBI office, he parked the car in the spot closest to the entrance of the glass and steel midrise building. The parking lot was virtually empty—with the snowstorm, nearly everyone had gone home for the evening. With a nod, he indicated to Huxley that he would get Jordan. He stepped out of the car and opened the back door.
Jordan hesitated before sliding across the seat. She stepped down from the SUV—one high-heeled, leather-booted leg first, then the other. Because Nick held the door open, they stood close to each other.
Thick snowflakes fell around them and tangled in her hair. Her voice was low, her tone as cold as the air. “The next time you want to know something, Agent McCall, don’t bother to sweet-talk me first. Just ask.”
“I assure you, Ms. Rhodes, when I sweet-talk a woman, she knows it.” He held out his hand, being polite. “You’re not going to get far in those boots.”
She ignored his hand. “Watch me.” She turned in her heels and walked away from the car, heading through the semi-plowed, snow- and ice-covered parking lot toward the entrance of division headquarters.
So help him, she didn’t slip once.
Huxley stopped at Nick’s side. “You could’ve given me a sign that you planned to question her in the car. Why not wait to bring up Eckhart at the office?”
“I wanted to catch her off guard. We needed to make sure she wasn’t one of the flavors of the month.”
“You think it’s a good idea to piss her off like this? We’re about to ask her to work with us.”
“She’ll cooperate.” Of that, Nick had no doubt. He’d known it about thirty seconds after walking into her store, when he saw the anxious look on her face when they’d first mentioned her brother.
Has Kyle been hurt?
Jordan Rhodes may not have liked him very much, but she was obviously concerned about her brother. At the end of the day, that was all that mattered.
THE TWO AGENTS led Jordan to a conference room on the eleventh floor and told her to make herself comfortable while they “retrieved a file.” She suspected this was FBI code for something shady, but wasn’t exactly sure what. All she knew was that after Agent McCall’s not-so-innocent questioning during the car ride over, she had her eye on him. Two of them, in fact.
She removed her coat, scarf, and gloves, and brushed the snow off her boots. Yes, fine, as McCall had annoyingly pointed out, her Christian Louboutins weren’t exactly hardy, all-weather footwear. And back at the store, when she’d grabbed her coat from the back room, she had thought momentarily about changing out of them. But the snow boots she’d bought last November—not having any idea she’d be in this predicament—were hardly business appropriate. The way she saw it, there were some matters of style that simply needed to take precedence over practicality, and right at the top had to be the rule that said one did not wear black dress pants and pink Uggs to a meeting with the FBI. Not anyone who didn’t want to look like a jackass, anyway.