“Dunno. They hung up.”
He strolled closer because, sad or wry, she didn’t seem to mind displaying her bounty. Her brief denim shorts and briefer white lace top were the perfect frame for her breasts and curving hips. Even better, the shorts left her long legs bare all the way to her boots. Her hair was a straight fall of dark silk that curled under a stubborn chin on either side, her skin was tanned satin.
Her mouth—well, a guy could take half a day thinking of ways to kiss her mouth. Maybe longer if his big brother didn’t come along and kick his ass back into the real world.
Mert sighed and reached out to smooth some of the hair back from the chin, wishing he could smooth the sad from her eyes with some hot sex. “Some asshole break his promise to call you, girl?”
Phoebe grinned up at Mert, aware of, but unaffected by, his signature Mentel charm. “Like I’d believe any man’s promises. Last time I checked, sucker wasn’t listed on my resume.”
“Think I’ll go kick Jesse’s butt for ruining you. Or you could let me heal your broken heart.” He gave her a hopeful smile.
Like those of all the Mentel boys, Mert’s mouth had been made to smile and placed in a face too pretty for anyone’s good. Even worse, his body was long and taut, with a vaguely designer air despite his country leanings. Blond hair tumbled halfway down his back; wicked, green eyes and too much charm were given dangerous fuel by his honest worship at the shrine of the female body. A religion made easy to practice, since women loved to worship him back. The lacing of Texas in his deep, smooth voice completed a formidable arsenal.
Luckily Phoebe had received an early inoculation against the Mentel charm at the hands of his big brother, Jesse.
“I don’t have a heart,” Phoebe said. She didn’t glory in knowing this. She even missed it, but before becoming “Phoebe,” before this life Phagan had helped her create; she’d placed that heart in her sister’s dead hands. Now it was buried with her six feet under the Georgia soil. And there would be no resurrection until the man now known as Peter Harding paid for his crimes.
What she’d learned as Phoebe, what she’d learned from working with Phagan, made it possible for her to smile at Mert even though her nerves were stretched as tight as the strings on her guitar. Just like her ears told her when her guitar was out of tune, her senses were telling her the game was out of sync.
Where was Phagan? He sometimes dropped off her cyber-map, but never when a game was running. Ollie and Dewey were MIA, too, though that wasn’t so unusual. A lot depended on where Phagan had them deployed.
Too bad her senses hadn’t been online when she placed that phone call. Hadn’t made a mistake like that since she first started playing Phagan’s games. Might as well put a neon arrow in the sky, pointing to the bar. To her.
Mert’s grin turned wry. The change didn’t lessen its impact. “Then why not just use me for sex?”
“Because I respect you.” Phoebe patted his cheek and in doing so caught sight of her watch. She cussed. “Look at the time.”
“Don’t need to with you around. Could take a whiz, though.” He headed toward the john.
Phoebe, heartless but not blind, watched him walk away. He had a great butt, and a girl had to get her pleasure where she could, while she could. He disappeared into the john, leaving her to turn her attention to the upcoming set. She fingered the buttons of her Daisy Mae shirt. It had only four, so she’d done up all of them. Now she wasn’t so sure. The trick was to show just enough cleavage to keep attention off her face. She’d changed what she could, short of plastic surgery, but she knew the wrong people could recognize her if they got a close enough look.
Leg, youngest Mentel and boy behind the keyboards, poked his head in the door that separated the hallway from the bar. From under his mustache he gave her a toothpaste-ad grin.
“Your groupie’s back.”
Phoebe made a face. “Not Earl?”
“The one and only duke of.”
“Great.” She sighed. “Thanks for the heads up, even if you are enjoying it.”
Leg laughed and disappeared. Smart boy.
It was a public bar. Couldn’t kick out her most ardent fan. Maybe if she kept her buttons closed, he’d only drool tonight. She frowned. Who was Earl? He looked harmless, but she couldn’t afford to assume he was harmless. Not when she was a shining example of the hide-in-plain-sight school of thought.
She studied her cleavage. If the doughy and disgusting Earl was other than what he appeared to be, maybe she ought to make sure his blood flow headed south. She undid two buttons. The push-up bra did the rest.
Mert came back from the john still zipping his jeans. His eyebrows shot up when he saw her. “Taking show time to a new low, aren’t you, girl?”
“Earl’s here.”
Mert grinned. “And you’re gonna kill him with kindness.” He studied her “kindness” with a connoisseur’s eye. “What about collateral damage?”
“You’ll heal,” she said.
TWO
Jake stopped the rented truck in front of Bryn and their small pile of luggage and jumped out. He opened the passenger door for her before tossing their luggage into the truck bed.
Bryn put her hands on her hips. “What is this?”
Jake finished stowing her laptop computer in the front on the floor before looking at her. “Transportation?”
She looked at him with one eyebrow arched.
“We’re in cowboy country. What else would we drive?”
She heaved a pointed sigh before approaching the open door, where her short skirt, high heels and the truck’s threshold defeated her before she got started. She gave Jake a now what look. He grinned and stepped behind her. His hands gripped her waist, offering her a brief sensation of flight, then a landing on the seat. She felt color flood in her face, sent there by her pounding heart. She smoothed her skirt and collected her scattered dignity while Jake made the journey around to the driver’s seat.
He slid in beside her and fired the engine, an expression of masculine pleasure lighting his eyes as the truck responded to the pressure of his foot on the gas. Bryn buckled her seat belt, then grabbed on to the armrest as they shot into the flow of traffic. Before she could assimilate the highway signs, Jake had committed them to head south.
Jake handled the truck well. He was a confident, not reckless, driver. She just didn’t like being driven. Which explained her volatile reaction to Phagan, since he was driving her crazy. With an inward shrug, she forced her feelings to the back burner, where she put all the things she couldn’t control.
“Did you get a hold of your brothers?” she asked, looking away from the road.
Jake nodded. “Luke, the one with the Denver PD, is checking out the local angle with a buddy of his in Estes Park. I think I mentioned our family has a cabin near there?”
Bryn nodded, resisting the urge to tense when he changed lanes.
“And Matt, he’s a marshal, too, said he’d have his computer guy check out the address of that MUD. If it is local, we should have an address by tomorrow sometime.”
“Two marshals and a cop in one family?” Odd to learn Jake was a sibling. He seemed such a loner.
“Guess it’s in my genes.” Jake pushed a hand through his hair, rumpling the surface boyishly. “Dad was a cop.”
“Was?”
“Died. Line of duty.” His face closed.
“I’m sorry.” Bryn shifted. Her own parents were hale, hearty, and baffled by their daughter’s law-enforcement inclinations. A regular, though rural, Ozzie and Harriet in a world of disposable marriages.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Phagan?”
Bryn stiffened. “There is no deal.” Not a complete lie, because she didn’t know what was going on or how to explain it to herself, let alone to Jake.
She still remembered the moment she realized Phagan was doing more than feeding her leads to his unsavory targets. That she understood. His jobs were targeted to maim and destroy bad peopl
e, so of course he’d need her to clean up after him. But why would he feed her leads to where he was? It made no sense.
Then he’d started leaving her gifts, both on her desk and inside her apartment, places he shouldn’t have access to. It was infuriating to do her job, to live her life, all the time wondering if he was the repairman who came to fix her television or one of the people cleaning the office. He knew too much about her. He’d invited her to a meeting in virtual reality a few months ago. She’d been hesitant, but determined to try to smoke him out. And she’d found herself, she remembered with guilty amusement, in Ozzie and Harriet’s world. All black and white and her with a fifties hairdo and clothes, down to a white apron tied around her dress. But, no shoes. In the kitchen.
The guy had a dark sense of humor that she was having a hard time not responding to.
How did he know what she had never acknowledged out loud? Terror had faded into laughter she couldn’t hold in check. Phagan was a high-tech criminal whose butt she was determined to toss into jail, but he was also a benign, eager-to-please-without-getting-caught suitor with a sense of humor she secretly enjoyed. She hadn’t lowered her guard, but she had grown bolder about following the clues he sent her. The idiot seemed determined to make sure she stayed on his trail and she was learning from him. She hated to admit it, but it was the truth.
How could she not like the guy a little? Wouldn’t stop her from plotting his downfall, but it helped to like your work. It helped a lot.
“How about we stop to grab some grub?” Jake asked.
Grub? Boy, were they ever in cowboy country.
* * * *
The lights were dim, glowing just enough to add a sheen to black satin sheets on a bed overhung with an ornate mirror. A panel slid back, revealing an expensive entertainment center. Peter scanned a row of unlabeled videos, selected one and shoved it into the machine. Drink and remote in hand, he went to the bed, made a nest with the pillows, then settled himself at its center. Before he could activate the VCR, the phone on the nightstand intruded.
Muttering a curse, Peter grabbed it and took a calming breath. “Harding here.”
“You alone?” Stern asked.
“Why—”
“You need to come back to the office.”
“I was just going to bed.”
“Tough. Get back here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Not on the phone.”
Peter cursed silently. “Fine.”
He banged down the phone and stood up. This had better be worth it. He shed his elegant robe and picked up the pants he’d laid over the suit valet. Before pulling them on, he started the video, putting his clothes on as the young girl on the screen took hers off.
* * * *
The music reached out the wide double doors of the log building. In a swirling haze of smoke and beer it extended a cheerful invitation to come on in and join the party. If the number of trucks crammed into the dirt parking lot was any indication, there were a lot of takers.
Jake pulled the truck into place at the end of one crooked line. He shut off the motor and studied the poorly lit exterior. It hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been here with his big brothers. The day Matt’s divorce was final, Jake remembered, after a little mental time travel. They’d climbed every cliff in sight, then gotten stinking drunk. Brutal, but effective. Matt had felt so bad, it left him one way to go: up.
The people milling in and out the front door looked much the same as the clientele had then. A mix of old and young, a few tourists, some genuine cowboys on a tear ogling clusters of barely clad cowgirls, and several older couples serious about doing some dancing. Jake glanced at Bryn. She didn’t appear to appreciate the bar’s country charm.
“How—” Bryn started, stopped, then settled for gesturing toward the bar.
“We go in. We buy a couple of beers. We nose around. See if we smell anything interesting.”
The bouncer chose that moment to eject two struggling figures. They staggered, took a couple of wild swings at each other, then tripped over the low lodge-pole fence that separated the parking lot from the entrance.
Her eyes widened. “O-kay.”
Jake hid a grin. “But first we do something about you.”
“About me? What do you mean?”
“You’re too buttoned down. Lose the jacket, undo some shirt buttons and mess up your hair a bit,” Jake directed. “And when you walk, do it like that.” He pointed to a sassily twitching female butt in tight jeans passing in front of the truck. “If our guy is in there, we don’t want him thinking too much.”
“No,” Bryn said, “we wouldn’t want that.” With her teeth gritted, she made the necessary adjustments. “Better?”
Jake grinned. “Let’s see that walk.”
He jumped out and trotted around the truck to help her down. Was it her imagination that he’d acquired a slight bowleg? She showed him her walk, ire adding extra oomph to her walk. She turned to face him, letting a raised eyebrow ask the question.
“By George, I think she’s got it.” Jake gestured toward the open doors. “Let’s go.”
Good thing she hadn’t been expecting high praise. She fell into step beside him, stowing female angst in a well-used compartment in her brain. Hot on the outside—despite Jake’s tepid approval, she knew she was—a cold professional on the inside. She was hunting now, and she had a scent.
Her nostrils quivered. Too bad it was beer.
Jake paid their cover, then followed her to the bar that ran the length of one wall, his touch light and impersonal against her back. She pretended to sip the beer he bought her as she studied her surroundings.
The place hadn’t been well designed for acoustics. Canned music blared from somewhere besides the stage, which was empty of people if not instruments. That and the sound of too many loud conversations started an ache behind her eyes as she made mental notes about the layout.
Bar to the right of the entrance. Minute stage opposite. Restroom signs over door on the left. Tables past that. Dance floor dead center and circled by milling groups of people. She noticed a short ladder that lead to a sad little balcony half way up the wall where the haze of smoke and dust was the worst; a sound and light tech hunkered over a control board.
Her survey brought her back face to face with Jake. He wiped a film of moisture off his upper lip with his sleeve, but the level of his beer hadn’t changed.
“I’ve died and gone to hell,” she muttered.
Jake hid his grin behind his beer. “Think you’ll have more success with the guys than I will.”
“Do you?” Bryn managed to hold back a shudder. Despite his doubts about the importance of the bar, Jake’s brother, Matt, a US marshal working out of Denver, had faxed him sketchy bios he’d scraped up on the most likely suspects: the barkeep and the band members. They’d all been around for a couple of years and one of the band members, a woman named Phoebe Mentel, managed the bar. Who owned the bar was under investigation.
Jake had taken particular pleasure in telling her about the men in the band.
“Four guys—Jesse, Mert, Leg, Toes—”
“Leg and Toes?”
“Fraid so.” Jake had grinned. “And the woman. Same last name. Mentel. Three brothers, one cousin and one ex-wife. Bar keep’s name is Chet Jones.”
“Right.” Oh, for the peace and quiet of the Internet. When she caught up with him, Phagan was going to pay for this. “I don’t see any of them yet.”
“There’s one,” Jake muttered, “heading to the stage. Go get ’em, tiger.”
Bryn spotted the guy as he leaped the wooden barrier, picked up a guitar and started adjusting the strings. She gave a soundless sigh. She’d seen his type before. The hard part wouldn’t be getting his attention. It would be losing it.
“You—” she started to say, when someone pushed past her.
“Phoebe!” The nasal voice of the man who bumped her was as grating as chalk on a blackboard. The body
emitting the voice even less appealing.
A woman, apparently the Phoebe he was after, froze, then turned to face him with obvious reluctance.
“Earl.” The name came out a Southern-scented sigh, one edged with irony. It suited her.
She was a bit taller than Bryn and had a flawless complexion and wonderful bones, the kind that aged well. Only a tiny frown marred the skin between her dark eyebrows. Her dark hair swept out from under the edges of her cowboy hat in smooth, dark sweep, then curled under her strong chin. Eyes the color of her hair regarded Earl with something less than enthusiasm.
“I wanted to ask you—” Earl began
“I have to get ready for the set, Earl.” She softened her dismissal with a slight, though charming smile. Her husky voice had been created to stroke the pleasure centers of men, Bryn noted. Add to that her country-fresh vigor and generously curved figure, and it was no wonder Earl looked whipped.
As if she sensed Bryn’s scrutiny, Phoebe’s gaze swept the crowd and found Bryn watching her. She shrugged and gave Bryn a “men!” look, but there was a watchful quality behind her rueful glance. Bryn had no choice but to return her smile.
Phoebe turned to go, just as Jake moved into position behind her. She slammed into him with enough force to take him back a couple of steps and knock off her hat. Like a scene from a movie, her hands spread across his chest as she tried to catch her balance. His hands went to her waist to aid her. Gaze slammed into gaze and just for a moment, Bryn thought she saw…something happen between them. Something electric and elemental. Then the shutters slammed down in eyes blue and brown.
She saw Jake rub the back of his neck. A red flag, to those who knew him, that the US Marshals Service’s best tracker was worried.
* * * *
Peter pushed open the door to his office but stopped when he found it lit only by the glow from his computer screen. “Stern?”
In the darkness Stern lit a cigarette. The red flare of the match helped Peter find Stern in the shadows.
The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy Page 35
