Delia nodded, but didn’t look up from the customer she was helping. Mindy spun around in her seat and ran back toward the bathrooms near the opposite side of the gift shop from the place where Kevin’s office was located. Unfortunately for her, Detective Lowell had chosen the other side of the gift shop to wait. He was perusing the merchandise on a rack outside the shop.
“Hello, Mindy,” Detective Lowell murmured. “Did you talk to your brother last night?”
“I made a deal with Caprico last night,” Mindy said in a clipped tone. She didn’t have a single second to spare on beating around the bush.
Detective Lowell’s head swung around and he stared at her. “What?”
“It’s a long story. I have the stuff though,” Mindy assured him. “I need to get rid of it.”
“I’ll have Ash meet you at the parking lot of Tablerock Dam. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“Stay to the very back of the lot,” he cautioned. “The cameras don’t reach that far.”
Avoiding cameras. Secret meeting places to do drug hand offs. Mindy swallowed back her fear. “I don’t get off work until six.”
“Then meet him at seven. All right?” Lowell raised an eyebrow. “Good?”
Mindy felt so sick she could have sworn she was going to throw up. “Yes, that’s good.”
Lowell gave her a pleasant nod and a smile. Then he spoke very loudly. “Thanks so much for your help. I think I’ll head on over there right now before it gets crowded.”
Mindy felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up as she realized he was trying to make it seem like he had been asking her a tourism question even though in his black dress slacks, dress shirt, and shiny shoes, he didn’t look anything like a tourist.
Lowell left the building without going through the maze. Mindy actually appreciated that. It meant he was an honest to goodness customer and there was no reason she shouldn’t be willing to help him. If anyone should ask anyway, which hopefully they would not.
“Mindy!”
Kevin’s voice nearly made her jump out of her skin. She spun around and felt as though her stomach was about to cramp so hard she would have to double over with the agony of it. She just barely managed to hang onto her fake work smile.
“Good morning, Kevin.” Mindy figured she would let him take the lead. She was going to pretend that nothing had happened and hoped he would do the same. “Can I help you with something?”
“What are you doing?” Kevin asked in a low, rough voice. His eyes were hard and he looked angry. “Did you just agree to meet that man for sex?”
Mindy drew back. She was feeling more than a little cautious here. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” He reached out and grabbed her arm with such force that she could feel his fingers digging into her muscle. She pressed her lips into a tight line to keep from crying out, but he kept right on squeezing. “I heard you just now, making plans to meet him later. And last night too! You were with that other guy. You’re lying and whoring it up and I want to know why!”
“Kevin,” she said in a low voice. She tried to stay calm even though there were tears stinging her eyes. He was holding onto her arm extremely hard! “I haven’t made any deals like that. The man was asking for directions. That’s it!”
“To the Dam?” Kevin scoffed and nearly threw her arm back at her. “Don’t lie. Why would he need to ask directions to the dam?”
She had to think fast. Kevin had apparently heard too much. “Because he wanted to know what times were most crowded. I just told him the mornings were less so than the afternoons. People are on the lake in the morning. They look for air conditioned museums in the afternoon.”
Kevin’s suspicion did not seem to abate at all. In fact, he looked even more convinced she was hiding something. What was with this guy? He was paranoid. Totally. Paranoid.
“You’re nothing but a lying, cheating, whore,” Kevin whispered angrily. “I don’t know what sort of game you’ve been playing, but it’s going to end here. Do you understand me?”
Mindy managed to yank her arm away from his grasp. She pressed her lips into a line and tried not to freak out. She could lose her job if she wasn’t careful. “Kevin, I promise I’m not—I’m not doing that. I don’t know why you’re convinced that I am. I’m not with anyone. I don’t want to be. I’m single. I’m dealing with my brother and his bad decisions and that it is. I’m sorry if you believe otherwise. But I can’t change what you think when I haven’t done anything to make you suspicious of me. Now,” she paused and swallowed, “I have to go back to the counter so Delia can go to lunch. Thank you.”
Mindy turned and walked away. She was pretty sure things were going downhill fast.
Chapter Thirteen
Seven o’clock came and went and Ash didn’t see a single sign of Mindy Hall in the parking lot of the Tablerock Dam. The little museum and information center was closed, but the observation deck and the dam itself were still accessible via the walking paths. The parking lot wasn’t all that crowded, but there were still tourists wandering about looking at the dam and remarking on the beautiful engineering of the place.
Ash looked at his watch. The minutes were just crawling by and he felt each one of them like a personal jab in the gut. He didn’t give a shit about the dam. He didn’t care what it had taken to build such a thing or why it was considered so vital to the area. That was more Younger’s thing than Ash’s. Right now, the only thing Ash cared about was finding out why Mindy Hall was late for their meeting.
Why was Mindy late? What had happened? Had something bad happened? Had she encountered a person or a situation that had ended her possible involvement in this case? Had she decided to actually sell the drugs and take the cut she’d probably been offered?
Ash frowned. Had she actually been offered a cut? That was the thing Lowell had been unable to say, and Ash had grilled the detective about Mindy’s involvement until Lowell had told him to back off. Nobody knew what Mindy was supposed to be getting out of this, if anything at all. Only Mindy knew that and it seemed completely wrong for Ash to sit there in a gorgeous setting and just hope she was all right.
Ash sat on his tailgate and cracked all of his knuckles. He stared at the beautiful tableau of the lake and wondered how it was that such a beautiful place could be filled with so many ugly people. The birds were singing in the trees as the water moved swiftly below. A slight breeze stirred the otherwise sticky and humid air. The intense green of the trees and brush bordering the lake and surrounding all of the buildings, roads, and even the lake looked lush and welcoming.
He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been focused somewhere across the lake when he heard someone huffing and puffing across the parking lot. When Ash turned, he spotted Mindy Hall with a backpack strapped to her shoulders walking towards him.
“You walked?” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Ash realized how stupid they were.
She gave him an annoyed look and then swung the pack off her back. “Yes. I walked. It’s not like I have another choice. No bus comes out this far. What was I supposed to do, call a taxi?”
Ash was absolutely dumbfounded. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that she didn’t even have access to a car. It was just one of those basic assumptions you made about people—everyone had a car and could somehow magically appear anywhere in town.
“I’m sorry, Mindy.” Ash felt like an absolute ass. “If I’d known, I would have picked you up somewhere in town.”
“That’s all right.” She swung her pack onto the tailgate of his truck. “If you had picked me up, it would have probably raised eyebrows. And let me tell you, right now, I can’t afford any more raised brows. Kevin is all over my ass.”
“Kevin.” The name was familiar. Ash’s mind sorted through his database and came up with an image of the guy he’d sent running last night. The boyfriend. Or was he a boyfriend? Ash frowned. “What is Kevin to you anyway? Why would you
let him treat you that way?”
She backed up to the tailgate of his truck and took a big leap up in order to sit her butt on the makeshift seat. Then she seemed to deflate, as though she was so tired she had no desire to go anywhere or do anything.
“Mindy?” Ash intended her to answer him. He wanted to know what Kevin was to her. He told himself it was purely professional but there was probably a lot more to it than that.
“Don’t bug me about this,” she muttered. “I have to find my words, all right? Kevin is complicated.” She looked disgusted.
Ash forced himself to be patient, which was rather difficult. In most circumstances, he could bide his time, but for some reason it was starting to feel like everything involving Mindy Hall was different. He was impatient to find out what the problem was because he was impatient to come up with a solution. At least that’s what he told himself.
Finally, she heaved a giant sigh. “Kevin and I met years and years ago. I don’t even think I know how long. My mother had just died. My brother and I had moved into the crappy little apartment where we are now. Kevin sort of latched onto me like a project, I think.”
“A project?” Ash felt a nervous laugh coming on and tamped it down. Apparently, he was not the only one to come along and think Mindy needed help.
She was nodding. “Yes. A project. As in he realized he could make me sort of dependent on him. He’d just gotten the manager position at the mirror maze and he got me a job. Then he helped me with a couple of bills. And before long, we were in a this-for-that kind of relationship.”
She stopped talking and Ash frowned. This for that. Surely, she did not mean what he thought that she meant? Ash cleared his throat. “So, he was your boyfriend?”
“Not exactly.” She was now frowning. “I told you last night. Or rather, you guessed it. It’s a friends with benefits kind of situation. I don’t need the complication of a relationship. I don’t even think I could handle one right now. But that doesn’t mean I’m dead.”
Ash blinked. Yes, he’d known this. Sort of. He had somehow fooled himself into thinking this was a boyfriend situation. A boyfriend that she was done with and so they’d just kept sleeping together because that’s what people did in many, many of those situations. Hell. Ash had made that mistake more than once. But this? This was different.
“This man,” Ash said through clenched teeth as he tried his best to be calm and rational. Adult. Yes. He was being an adult. “This man never dated you or took you out or had a real emotional connection with you. It was all just giving him sex because he’d done you some favors?”
Her throat moved. He saw it. For just a moment, Ash realized he had just phrased that question in a way that was highly insulting. She looked so small and helpless sitting on the tailgate of his truck. How was it that everyone seemed okay with the thought of taking advantage of this helpless creature? And was she really that helpless if she was strong enough to withstand the constant battering?
“I’m sorry,” Ash said quickly. “That came out wrong. Please understand I’m not faulting you. I’m really not. I’m sort of disgusted with a man who would so blatantly take advantage of someone’s situation. That’s all.”
She didn’t look at him. She wouldn’t look at him. Ash felt bad, as though he was somehow perpetuating this horrible abuse because he was talking about it and not begging her for forgiveness that he lived in a town, in a place, where this was happening under his nose and nobody had done anything to stop it!
“You make it sound like I didn’t have a choice,” Mindy said stiffly after a moment or two had passed. “It wasn’t like that. I’m not some victim who needs you to feel bad for her, Ash. I knew what I was doing and I did it on purpose because it suited my needs at the time.”
Ash exhaled a sigh. “I’m making a total muck of this, Mindy. I’m sorry. I just can’t stand the thought of that loser making you feel like you owe him something.”
“Did it look like I owed him something last night?” she retorted quickly. “No! I’m not doing that anymore. And believe me, he’s upset about it. That’s why I’m trying to play as nice as possible. I want to make sure the guy doesn’t have any reason to fire me or to take back any of the things I paid for fair and square.”
Ash stared at her for a long moment. There was something else happening. That had not been the real gist of the interaction the night before behind Dino Golf. Not really. Then Ash realized what he’d missed. “That loser thinks you’ve got the same deal with other people.”
After a moment or two, she nodded. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about this. “He’s a loser and he knows it. I think that comes with the territory. The insecurity, I mean. He’s insecure about everything, and why shouldn’t he be? He can’t get a woman without making sure she’s beholden to him in some other way first, even though he pretends he’s the Casanova of Branson.”
“Don’t you think that’s generally how that sort of person behaves?” Ash asked subtly. He’d known several in his lifetime and didn’t miss them at all. “I think it’s safe to say they all act like assholes and push for things that don’t belong to them because they’re worried everyone else is just like them. They’re so convinced nobody in the world is decent, so they follow suit.”
She smiled now. It was a beautiful expression. But her words were wry and filled with the world weariness that made Ash’s heart hurt for her. “That’s because they cannot believe they are the only bad ones in the world. They have to believe everyone else is the same way so their crimes are less heinous. If everyone does it, that makes it okay.”
“Are we going to start talking about cultural mores and values now?” Ash could not help but tease her. “Because I can have that conversation. I might need to brush up on my definitions a moment, but I’ll just Google it and then I’ll be ready to go.”
“Ready to go where?” She shook her head at him. “I’m going home. I’m tired and now I have to lug this money back to Dino Golf.”
“That can wait until dark,” Ash pointed out. “And it should wait. You can’t convince them you’ve sold all of that in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, and the few hours between now and ten o’clock are really going to matter?” she fired back sarcastically. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
“How about you get in and I’ll drive you someplace for dinner,” Ash suggested. He probably shouldn’t have but he could not help himself. “I have to eat. I’ve been waiting here forever because I didn’t want you to have to wait on me. And you have to eat because I’m going to assume you didn’t have time for a decent meal today. So, let’s go grab a bite and then I’ll drive you back to your apartment using the remote, off-the-beaten-path way that will not get you one ounce of notice from the rest of the world.”
She looked a bit overwhelmed. “Again? You bought my dinner last night and I told you that next time I was buying. And since I really don’t think I should fish into that police payment account cash I currently have in a huge duffel bag, I don’t think I can buy you dinner just yet.”
“You don’t need to buy me dinner,” Ash told her firmly. He wondered if he would ever allow her to buy him anything and could not imagine that he would. “I’m on an expense account. Remember? It’s not like I’m paying out of pocket.” This wasn’t necessarily true, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, well in that case,” she teased. “Of course, I haven’t actually met your boss. Maybe he’s a super nice guy who doesn’t need to be buying me dinner for no reason.”
“Titus is a super nice guy and he would be happy to buy you dinner if I told him,” Ash assured her. He thought it was probably even a true statement. Titus was a generous man. An odd man, but a generous one.
“Tell me about your boss.” She went around to the passenger side of his truck and crawled in. “What kind of a man owns a security company anyway? Ex-military?”
“No.” Ash picked up the bags and closed the tailgate with a slam. He then climbed
into the driver’s seat. The money and the pack with the bags of individual packets of pills he stowed safely in the backseat. “Titus isn’t ex-military. He never really talks about it. I believe he was part of a private militia force or something.”
“Whoa!” She looked fascinated. “Like a mercenary?”
“Sure. Something like that.”
Her blue eyes were bright with interest now. “Foreign Legion? Is that a thing?”
“Not so much anymore.” For a girl who claimed to never watch crime television or anything dramatic or non-romantic, she was awfully fascinated with this stuff.
They chatted amicably about Titus and the business and some of the jobs the company had taken for nearly the entire winding trip down the two lane highway, and a considerable distance to a town called Blue Eye.
“Good gracious, we’re practically in Arkansas!” Mindy exclaimed when he pulled into a roadside tavern packed with cars from license plates that hailed from everywhere. “I don’t think I’ve ever been down here.”
Ash couldn’t help it. He winked at her from his seat and gave her a mischievous grin. “They have some of the best fried chicken I have ever tasted.”
“Sign me up!” She was already out the door and on her way to the front entrance of the little tavern.
Ash laughed and got out of his truck. He caught her half way to the entrance and made sure he got there in time to open the door. Unlike in Moe’s Diner, nobody came charging out when the door opened. Both Ash and Mindy exchanged a grin and he realized that in less than seventy-two hours he and this woman had discovered inside jokes, mutual interests, and a whole lot of things they had in common. It was absolutely unreal and yet he would not have changed it for the world.
Chapter Fourteen
Mindy had never expected to become this comfortable with Ash Forbes. It didn’t even make sense. The two of them were barely compatible. Or rather, not at all really. She could not even begin to imagine the difference in their lives. But they were having an absolute blast chowing down on two enormous plates of fried chicken and mashed potatoes slathered in gravy and with roasted corn on a little wood skewer. Mindy had enjoyed the chicken at Moe’s Diner, but this was one step above amazing.
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 81
