Protected by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  Somehow I managed to return his penetrating stare.

  “I’m always happy to take you shopping. The mall or downtown?”

  “Actually… Do you remember that boutique we visited? Near the bed and breakfast with the tub in the window?”

  “That’s a few hours away,” he said.

  “Is it? I hadn’t realized. They do have some pretty dresses, though.”

  Corbin made a sound, a bit like a laugh, or maybe like he was exhaling smoke. “Sure. My schedule is clear for the next few days.”

  Well, fuck. So much for getting a few hours for work while he was in meetings. “Fantastic,” I said, flipping off the lights in my office. “I want to spend as much time with you as I can before you leave for France.”

  He made that strange laugh again. “I can’t think of anything better,” he said.

  And even though my motivation was hardly innocent, I had to agree with him. Keeping an eye on Corbin promised to be fun, which felt a little bit morbid.

  What I hadn’t anticipated was my phone ringing three hours later. Corbin and I had just finished a very long lunch, one filled with plenty of flirting and innuendo, and were just about to get onto the highway to go shopping, which I was dreading.

  It was Neil calling.

  Back when Neil had first blackmailed me into helping him, he’d driven me crazy by calling nonstop, several times a day. But ever since Massimo’s safe capture, he rarely called.

  Which meant he either needed something or wanted to tell me something.

  Either way, I figured I’d better take it.

  “I’ve got that list you asked for,” he said. No hello or how are you doing today?

  And that was fine by me. “What list?”

  “Of everyone JD sold drugs to.”

  I almost groaned. I’d requested it weeks ago, but Neil hadn’t exactly cooperated, instead telling me that JD wasn’t a big-time drug dealer. The list he’d finally turned over had been vague and lacking names. Utterly useless.

  Of course, Neil didn’t want me poking around in his cousin’s life, so all of a sudden he wanted to be helpful.

  “You can drop it off at the office,” I told him. “Give it to Rob. I’m gone for the day, and possibly tomorrow and the next as well.”

  Corbin threw a glance my way. I shrugged a shoulder and smiled at him. He’d always been after me to work less, and now he had it.

  “I could type it out in a text,” Neil offered. “There aren’t many names, but like you said earlier, there’s no such thing as a useless lead.”

  I was pretty sure I hadn’t said that. “One second.” I muted the phone. “Do you have pen and paper?”

  “Glove box,” Corbin said. “Should I turn around?”

  “Nah.” I found the paper and un-muted the phone, but Corbin was already merging into an exit lane. “You don’t have to,” I whispered.

  He ignored me.

  “I’m ready,” I said into the phone, and Neil began reciting names.

  Slowly.

  He was trying to stretch it out, trying to make it sound more impressive than it was. I wanted to reach through the radio waves and throttle him for wasting my time.

  When he said his own name, I rolled my eyes. Neil hadn’t bothered putting himself on the first list, but I’d assumed if he was hanging out with a guy who had access to drugs, there might have been some sharing going on.

  “Mind you, I didn’t buy from him very often,” Neil said.

  I clicked the pen and dropped it and the small notepad into my lap. “Did you remember anything else?”

  “I haven’t finished giving you my list,” he said. “Sara never bought from him, but her husband did.”

  I sighed. “Is there a reason you said it in that gossipy voice?”

  “Gossipy?” Neil sounded perplexed. “I didn’t mean to… Well, it is a bit of a minor scandal. Sara doesn’t approve of anyone smoking up.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “She strikes me as the prescription pill type.” The type to put them into an empty aspirin bottle like I’d found in her guest bathroom. I’d looked up the pills a few days later. Oxycodone.

  “Sara’s too much of a health nut to mess with drugs,” Neil said. “Oswald’s had a few spins through rehab, though.”

  “Really?”

  Corbin had pulled into a gas station and was stopping beside a pump. I was surprised his luxury vehicles didn’t fuel themselves.

  “Oh, Oswald has his demons,” Neil said, his tone of voice practically begging me to ask more.

  “Who told you this? JD, when the two of you weren’t dating?” I put lots of emphasis on the weren’t. Neil had said they dated, then said they were just hookups. Then I found out they’d traveled to Japan together.

  “You know, Neil, if there was any chance that you could have committed this crime, you’d be the top suspect. What exactly was the deal with you and JD?”

  “We were a couple,” he said, “but we broke up a lot. By my standards of dating back then, he was my boyfriend. But my standards of today?” I could practically hear him shaking his head. “Just a hookup. Friends with benefits. Friends first and foremost, you know? It was confusing to me then, but it wasn’t a relationship.”

  I twisted in my seat to watch Corbin pumping gas. I wondered if he could hear me. I wondered what he thought about the impromptu trip I’d suggested.

  Then I wondered if I was deluding myself to think I could concoct a long-term solution for our Henry problem that didn’t involve bloodshed.

  “Audrey?” Neil said.

  “Still here,” I said, turning back around. “Ok, so tell me about Oswald.”

  “Oswald? I don’t know him well, to be honest.”

  I thought about how Oswald had seemed jealous of Rob. “Do he and the wifey have problems at home?”

  “No idea,” Neil said. “He’s pretentious for a guy who makes his money wholesaling toilet paper, I can tell you that.”

  “Is it possible he had secrets that JD might have discovered and blackmailed him over?”

  “Setting aside the fact that JD would never blackmail anyone?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Setting that aside.”

  Neil blew out a long breath, like he was thinking about the answer. “JD got Oswald what he needed, though not in the last few months.”

  “Oswald’s clean? Or he found a dealer closer to home?”

  “Neither. Around the beginning of the summer, JD started running up to San Francisco to visit Sara and her kids. JD was the one cutting back. He was getting out of the business.”

  “I’m guessing Sara didn’t know what JD was bringing with him?”

  Neil snorted. “She wouldn’t have approved, but I don’t think it was that much toward the end.”

  “Tell me about JD’s boyfriend,” I said. “His neighbors seem to think that’s the reason JD was getting out of the drug business. Because the relationship had gotten serious.”

  “JD didn’t have a boyfriend,” Neil said. “If he had, he would have told me.”

  I made a noncommittal sound. “Maybe not a boyfriend,” I said, backtracking. “Just someone he was fooling around with?”

  “No one special,” Neil said, sounding sure of himself.

  “You know he was moving to San Francisco, right?”

  “JD was too pragmatic to change his life for a man. He wanted to be closer to Sara, to the family.”

  I leaned forward in my seat. “He said that?”

  “He’d been planning it for a couple of months. Why? What did Sara say?” Neil suddenly sounded suspicious.

  “No reason,” I said. “I guess his neighbor had bad information,” I added, wanting to draw attention away from Sara. When she’d first told me about Bowlst, she’d wanted to keep the information secret. I liked Neil, but he wasn’t trustworthy.

  “Oh, that idiot girl with the green hair?” Neil asked.

  “Silver?”

  “Is it silver again? She change
s the color whenever one of her emo boyfriends dumps her. JD was friendly with her, with all his neighbors, but they weren’t friends. There’s a lot about JD she doesn’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” Neil said, sounding flustered. “Personal stuff about his friends, his family, his business. She was nosy, so he fed her enough to keep her from snooping. Add her to the list of people he sold to. But I can promise you that if he’d been dating someone, he wouldn’t have told her.”

  And yet she had known. Maybe she’d snooped out the info. “Ok. Thanks for the list, by the way. What about JD’s other business? Do you have a list of clients for me there?”

  Predictably, Neil went silent. Then he surprised me by saying, “I can make one. I mean, I don’t know who most of those clients were, and a lot of what I do know is outdated. Believe it or not, I didn’t approve of him renting himself out.”

  “You can text those to me. Sooner is better than later.”

  “On it.” He hung up, and I wondered what kind of bullshit he was going to shovel my way next.

  Chapter 16

  I glanced back at the gas pump. No Corbin. I spotted him inside the convenience store, waiting in what seemed to be a slow-moving line.

  Goddamn, he was so distractingly sexy. Tight jeans, clingy tee stretched over hard muscle. The women in the store kept throwing curious glances his way.

  If they only knew.

  Since it seemed like I had a bit of time on my hands, I decided to call Sara.

  To my surprise, she answered, though she didn’t sound happy to get my call. “Do you have any news?” she asked.

  “Massimo is safely back in the country,” I told her.

  “Yes, Neil informed me yesterday. I think…” Her voice cracked a little, and she paused. Across the parking lot, I watched a woman wrangle two adorable toddlers into their car seats.

  “You think what?” I prodded.

  “I think JD would have been happy that Neil and Massimo have each other right now,” she said. She sucked in air. “He wasn’t jealous.” Her voice faltered again.

  “From what I’ve heard, your brother was a very nice guy.” Aside from supplying deadly drugs to people with addictions. “I had an interesting conversation with Neil a few minutes ago. Apparently JD never told him about Congressman Bowlst.”

  “That’s hardly surprising,” she said. “He didn’t tell me much, either. He only mentioned Bowlst a few times.”

  “Yeah, you said that. How can you be so sure they weren’t just friends?”

  “It was the way he talked about him, you know? He did once say he was seeing someone, but that it could never work out. That it was a fling.” She was breathing harder. “And then just when everything was coming together, he died. How is that fair?”

  “Well… It sounds like he was happy at the end.” Man, I really sucked at saying comforting things to people in distress. It wasn’t something I often had to do as a bounty hunter. Sure, I needed to be reassuring, and I had to convince people that their loved ones were better off facing the music than trying to live under the radar, but I never had to handle emotions on the level of what Sara was dealing with.

  But I had a job to do, so I decided to just plow right through. “JD told Neil that he was moving to San Francisco to be closer to you,” I said. “Nothing to do with any guy he was seeing.”

  “What? That’s not accurate.”

  I repeated it. “Are you sure he didn’t mention it at some point, even in passing?”

  “No way,” Sara said. “JD loved living in Los Angeles. He visited often enough, but if he was up here for three days, we’d only see him once or twice. I hadn’t even known he was relocating until the management company called. I suppose he was worried that Neil would be jealous. Or judgmental. Bowlst is a married public figure living a secret double life.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I glanced at the convenience store. The line had barely moved. Corbin caught me looking, and I waved. He nodded, and I realized he was giving me time to conduct my business in peace.

  So I didn’t really have a good excuse not to ask Sara my next question. I knew she wasn’t going to like it, and probably wouldn’t like me, either, but I had to ask.

  I jumped right in. “Oswald’s a recovering addict,” I said. “Your brother sold drugs.”

  Silence.

  “How did you meet, anyway?”

  “Damn Neil,” Sara said, her voice heavy with venom. “Oswald is clean.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “We met at a concert hosted by one of Oswald’s family’s charities. The governor introduced us. We started talking and hit it off.”

  “Did he have a drug problem back then?”

  “Those three years of his life were difficult,” she said, “and they’re behind him. No. Your questions are too personal. I’m not going to answer any more.”

  “Ok,” I said. “I understand.”

  “You know,” Sara said, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was going to return the favor, tell me something painful that I wouldn’t want to hear. “I’m no expert on private investigators, but you’re not a very good one, are you?”

  I considered that before admitting, “Probably not. I didn’t want to take this case, but Massimo begged me, and Neil begged me. Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy probing into other people’s lives.”

  “Then don’t,” she hissed.

  I wondered if she understood what a PI did. “Maybe I’m a shitty PI, but if you want to help Oswald, you might check the pill bottles in the guest bathroom,” I said gently, and I hung up.

  Corbin was almost at the front of the line, but I had to use the bathroom, so I slid out of the truck.

  The air smelled of cow manure and gasoline, and I held my breath as I hurried across the parking lot and into the store. When I came out, Corbin had moved the SUV to the side.

  A bottle of water was sitting in my cup holder, along with a chocolate candy bar. “Thank you,” I said, even though I was full after the long lunch.

  “Everything ok?”

  “Sure. I learned that JD was lying to Neil about his love life, that Oswald is lying to Sara about his drug problem, and probably everyone is lying to me about everything. Who knows how true any of it is. If this is what being a PI is like, it sucks.”

  Corbin laughed. “I think this is what it’s like to be a detective,” he said. “Most PI cases aren’t like this.”

  I wondered if there was any chance Sara would give me Oswald’s number. Rob and I had met him when we were in California, but she’d pretended we were just old friends of JD’s. That was unfortunate because I had a lot of questions to ask him, questions that would be strange coming from former friends.

  I sighed heavily.

  “We don’t have to go shopping,” Corbin said. “We’ll return if you need to work.”

  If we went home, I might as well walk him to prison myself.

  I summoned a smile. “I’m taking the day off to spend time with you. As you always point out, I work too much.”

  Corbin cut a piercing look my way. It was brief, just a glance, but that was all it took to make my guts twist with nervousness.

  He knew why we were out here. Of course he did.

  And now he was irritated because I kept lying about it.

  “What about you?” I asked in an almost unintelligible rush. “Do you have any updates?”

  Corbin made a sharp right turn, onto a wide country road bordered by fields and farmhouses.

  This wasn’t the way back to the highway, though I didn’t waste my breath pointing it out. Corbin knew where we were—there had been plenty of signs indicating the correct direction.

  As the farms became spaced farther apart, my heart beat faster and faster.

  Corbin pulled into a long, narrow driveway leading up to a barn that had once been painted red. Or so the dashes of remaining paint suggested. Despite that, the structure was in good repair.<
br />
  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Looks to be a farm,” Corbin said, infuriatingly unhelpful.

  I folded my arms over my chest. “Why are we here?”

  He cut the engine. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I started to shake my head, but Corbin wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he was coming around to open my door. “Ma’am,” he said, his voice polite but his manner insistent. When Corbin got stubborn like this, there was no arguing with him.

  Sliding my hand into his, I dropped out of the SUV.

  The farm didn’t smell like cows, or like much of anything except freshly cut hay.

  Corbin led me toward the barn, and when he reached it, he released my hand to slide the door back. Thanks to a row of windows near the roof, sunlight cracked into the darkness, illuminating bales of hay stacked from the floor to the rafters.

  Just looking at it made me itch.

  “Unless you own this farm, I don’t think we should go in there,” I said.

  “It’s not mine,” he said. “But if you like it, I’ll make an offer.” He took my hand again and pulled me into the barn after him, then slid the door closed.

  “Why are we here?”

  “So you can scream,” he said.

  That left me momentarily speechless. “What? I don’t want to yell at you.”

  He fixed me with a steely stare. “Who said anything about yelling at me? We’re here because we’ve got communication problems, and lately it seems there’s only one way for us to get through to each other.”

  There was nothing sexual in his words, but my body responded anyway; I knew what he meant.

  “Maybe I’m not interested,” I said despite the warmth flushing my cheeks.

  Corbin leaned in close. “The last time you used the word ‘maybe’ like that, you were saying that maybe you were proposing marriage.”

  He moved in even closer, and my heart beat so loudly that I thought my eardrums would rupture. “It seems to me that you might want to start saying what you mean.”

  Chapter 17

  “I…” It was impossible to think when he was so close, staring so intently at me.