Sadie's Secret: 3 (The Secret Lives of Will Tucker) Read Free

numbered. Aaron had already ruined a perfectly good stakeout just last month by walking up to her and identifying her by name. He had refused to say what he was really doing in Denver.
    “Considering an interest in a copper mine my left foot,” she muttered as she pressed past the throng at the sea lion fountain.
    More likely the eldest of the five rowdies she called brothers had drawn the short straw and was sent to find out just what their sister was up to.Her cover had been shredded, and Kyle Russell, the other agent on the case, had to complete the investigation on his own.
    Something Henry had never upbraided her about. But then that was just how he was, kind to a fault when it came to those under his protection. But even Henry’s kindness had it limits, and she suspected she had come close to reaching them.
    Today’s weather was mild for April, a sunny day with a bracing wind that thankfully did not originate off the frigid north of the lake. Though she missed few things about her life back in Louisiana, the mild winters were definitely at the top of the list. The impossibly hot and humid summers went all the way to the bottom of that same list.
    Gathering her valise closer to her side to avoid pickpockets—a habit borne of her Pinkerton training rather than a necessity here—Sadie looked up to see the redbrick building that housed the primates. There she found Uncle Penn waiting.
    Pennsylvania Monroe III rested his bones against the side of the building, not one to sit when standing would do. Though his attention was given over to a newspaper, she suspected he had already spied her and was watching her approach.
    The instinct to courting covert activities had apparently been grafted into the family tree when Aunt Pearl married Uncle Penn with the War Between the States not yet a memory.
    Daddy always said Uncle Penn had come to the South to spy for the Yankees and carried off his sister instead. In his defense, Penn would say nothing beyond the statement that good sense trumped any other business, and marrying Aunt Pearl was both good sense and good for business.
    “What news is so fascinating this day, Uncle?” Sadie asked as she moved into place beside him, linking her arm with his as she offered a bright smile.
    “I could ask the same.” He nodded to the file under her arm. “And yet we both know I will not. So what say I escort a lovely lady on a walk? I know John and Victoria would love to see you again, and I’ve promised to stop in for tea.”
    “I am amenable to a walk, but I must beg off on the visit.” She glanced at the file and then returned her attention to her uncle. “Duty calls.”
    “And not another trip to the Academy of Fine Arts?”
    She thought fondly of the institute that had cultivated the love of arther boarding school education had begun. “I wish I could, Uncle, but not today.”
    “Then I shall enjoy our brief time together, and perhaps I will convince you of the need to leave duty behind in favor of dinner with an ancient relation.”
    Sadie laughed for the first time that day. “Dinner would be wonderful, but should I ever consider you ancient, please shake me back into good sense.”
    He shrugged. “And yet I am. Now, see that you do not lag behind, young lady. I’m keen to get where I’m going without further dawdling.”
    A short while later they walked past Newberry Library at Uncle Penn’s usual rapid pace to pause at the front steps of John Thompson’s lovely home on Dearborn Avenue. Whatever the connection between her uncle and the wealthy lawyer beyond their shared attendance at Amherst College before the war, Penn never elaborated, though he also never failed to pay a visit when he was in Chicago.
    Grasping her hands in his, Uncle Penn indicated neither a willingness to release her nor any hurry in turning to climb the steps and see his old friend. Something in his countenance gave her cause to worry.
    “What is it? You look troubled.”
    “Not nearly as