by Dana Marton
Yet if anyone could talk her way out of a situation with smiles and politeness, it was her. He didn’t fully understand how she did what she did, but he had to admit it worked.
That was a whole different approach from how he operated. He’d been trained to identify the enemy, aim, shoot and kill. She needed someone like that to back her up, just in case.
Not that he was volunteering.
He just wanted to make sure her stalker wasn’t connected to her recent cooperation agreement with his team. He hoped she was right. He hoped it was something else, a misguided regular Joe, like she’d said, and not some professional criminal sent to harass her.
He had work to do and she was a distraction. He wanted to figure out what was going on so he could close the door on the whole business and walk away from her. As soon as possible.
Chapter Six
She’d planned on going out and finding Ronny Brown to ask him about the suspicious roll of twenties Josh had seen him receiving, but by the time Bree dropped off Katie at work and got to the office the morning after Jamie’s surprise visit to her house, she had a visitor waiting. The CIA had sent an agent in response to her call about the fake twenties.
He was a full head taller than she, clean shaven, blond hair cropped, black suit crisp. He carried a black leather briefcase and wore the exact kind of CIA sunglasses actors wore on TV. He had a strong jaw, straight nose, good build.
Hot, Lena mouthed from behind him, grinning. Looked like she wouldn’t have been against a full-body search if the opportunity presented itself. Not that she was a lecher or anything, or someone who flitted from guy to guy. She just had a cheerful personality and a zest for life, and she noticed and appreciated pretty things and hot guys and whatever else made life good to live. She fostered rescue puppies and went skydiving on the weekends. Working with her was fun, because she was fun, and because she was also an extremely competent officer.
Sexy, she mouthed next with a wink.
Not as sexy as Jamie Cassidy, Bree thought. Not that she was here to check out men. Or that she was interested in either of them. But she wasn’t blind. Especially to Jamie, whose dark gaze had managed to haunt her dreams all night, damn him.
The visitor nodded at her. “Deputy Sheriff.”
“You must be Agent Herrera.” She shoved Jamie out of her mind and returned the agent’s smile as she showed him into her office. Since he was already holding a disposable cup he’d probably picked up at a drive-through, she didn’t offer him coffee. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
She turned on her computer, then unlocked her top drawer and extracted the three evidence bags that held the three twenty-dollar bills she’d seized so far. “I have time and date, and the circumstances of how and where the bills were obtained, including names and contact information.”
“I appreciate it. It’s always good to work with competent people.” The agent held one of the bags up to the light and examined the banknote.
“Can you tell anything just by looking at it?”
“Just that it’s pretty good quality. We’ll have to run some tests. Could be leftover from an old batch we’ve already seized.”
She thought about Ronny Brown, the clue Josh had given her. What had Josh seen in that kitchen? Somebody handing over a roll of bills. Ronny hadn’t been caught with any fake money, and most vendors in town were checking. She’d put the word out right after the first case.
More likely than not, the money Ronny had received had to do with drugs. That was his usual speed. She would check him out before she said anything to Agent Herrera and look like a small-town rookie, too eager to jump the gun. The agent wouldn’t appreciate having his time wasted.
And she didn’t need to look like a fool just before sheriff elections. Not that she was running. Being sheriff took more time than she could give. First and foremost, she wanted to be there for Katie. But the new sheriff would be her boss, and she didn’t want his first impression to be that she was an imbecile.
“You find a lot of counterfeit money?” she asked the man.
“Not that much. But when we do, we take it seriously. Out of every ten thousand dollars in circulation, about three are fake.”
He glanced through the window of her office at Lena, who caught the look and smiled at him. The agent’s gaze lingered.
Well, what do you know? “Will you be staying?”
“For the rest of the week.” He laid his briefcase on his knees, opened it then carefully placed the three evidence bags on top of some papers before looking across the desk. “If I need a place to interview people?”
“Feel free to use our facilities.” Lena could show him around.
“Thank you, Deputy.” He stood. “I’ll be in touch.” He pulled a card from his suit pocket and set it on her desk. “If you come across any information that might be relevant to this case, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”
“Of course.”
He left with a parting nod.
Okay, definitely handsome, if a little dry for her taste. But Lena was a big girl and had the right to pick her own poison, Bree thought with a smile as she stood to go for coffee.
The corner of a manila envelope in her in-box caught her gaze.
Her stomach clenched.
So stupid. Now she was going to be scared of envelopes? It could be anything.
But she used her shirtsleeve to carefully tug the envelope from the pile. Unmarked, it was the same size and color as the one the photos had come in. Lumpy. Not pictures this time.
She stepped over to close her door, then pulled two rubber gloves from the box in her drawer and put them on before she opened the clasp.
Visual first. She peered inside and could see some kind of fabric. Dark. She carefully tilted the envelope, holding it by the corners until the contents dropped onto her desk.
Black lace panties, she registered a split second before recognizing them as hers.
Jason had been in her house. Anger and concern pulsed through her in alternating bursts, her teeth clenching.
He was getting braver. Of course, he was nine years older now—no longer the adolescent kid she remembered, but a man.
When her phone rang, she picked it up without looking at the display, her attention still on the slip of black cloth in front of her. She eased it back into the envelope in case someone came in, while balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear. “Bree.”
“Just wanted to make sure you got to work fine and everything’s okay,” Jamie said on the other end.
Because an arrogant outsider keeping tabs on her was what she really needed. He was on some superteam. If he thought just because she was a small-town deputy and a woman she was clueless, he had another think coming. She didn’t need his “protection.”
“Thanks for the concern, Mr. Cassidy.” She exaggerated her Texas drawl. “I might have strained my pinky, holding it out while I was sipping tea. Also, my corset pinches a little, but other than that I’m okay.”
A moment of heavy silence passed. “Don’t mock me.” Then another pause. “And don’t talk to me about corsets.”
The deep timbre of his voice as he said that sent a not-altogether-unpleasant tingle down her spine. She was as bad as Lena out there with Agent Hottie. Uh-uh, not going to happen. She didn’t even like Jamie Cassidy. And she had way too much going on to get tangled with a man right now.
She filled her lungs. “Is there a particular reason you’re wasting my time this morning? Did your team find anything you’d like to share with me?”
“Any new contact from the stalker?”
She shoved the envelope into her top drawer. “No.” She didn’t want or need Jamie Cassidy’s help. He was too much of a distraction.
“You hesitated.”
She rolled her eyes, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “My stalker is my problem.”
“Not until I’m sure he’s not coming after you because you got involved with my team.”
He was like a dog with a bone. She closed her eyes for a second. “He’s not. I told you.”
“We’ll see when the envelope comes back from the lab. I’m on border patrol today. I’ll stop by tonight to talk about whatever happened since I last saw you.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Put another beer in the fridge for me,” he said before he hung up on her.
She was an upbeat person normally. She really was. But Jamie Cassidy was getting on her last nerve. If he showed up at her house tonight, they were going to have to have a serious talk about boundaries.
She was not going to let him keep on distracting her. She drew a deep breath and refocused on her work, then walked out of her office to check with Lena about a bail-bond issue they hadn’t yet resolved from the previous week. Then she would track down Ronny Brown.
Lena was just hanging up the phone when Bree exited her office. “Discharge of a firearm at the Yellow Armadillo,” she said in a “what else is new” tone.
“Bail-bond agent come in yet?”
“All taken care of.”
“I’ll see about the Armadillo.” And off Bree went, without her morning coffee.
Traffic was light, the sky a clear blue, yet tension stiffened her shoulders. Jason was going to be trouble. And Jamie Cassidy... Not thinking of him on her drive over to the bar was more difficult than she’d anticipated. Those eyes and that fallen-angel face...
She was normally pretty good at self-control. The fact that he was rapidly getting under her skin aggravated her more than a little. She put all that away when she reached the Yellow Armadillo.
She found about two dozen guys wasting away their lives inside the dingy space when she walked in with her weapon drawn. She focused on Ronny Brown, who was standing in a group of three people in front of the bar. Okay, so maybe her day was turning for the better. Except for the small problem that two of the men had their guns drawn.
“Just the guy I want to see,” she told Ronny in her calmest tone. He was the only one in the group who was unarmed, and he looked less than happy about that, his gaze darting around as he tried to find a way out of his predicament.
She flashed them all her best smile. “Gentlemen, what seems to be the problem here?”
A young Mexican guy with gang tattoos she hadn’t seen before was pointing his gun at Ronny. Both their lips were bleeding. Shorty, the bartender, a grizzly ex-oil-rig worker who stood over six feet tall, was holding the mother of all rifles on them, keeping them in check.
“How about we all put our weapons down? Just as a matter of common courtesy.” She was trying to set a good example by lowering her own.
Tattooed Guy swore and swung his gun to point at her then squeezed off a shot. As she ducked, not shooting back since there were people all over the bar, the bartender squeezed the trigger on his rifle. The boom made glasses rattle all over the tables and her ears ring.
But instead of hitting Tattooed Guy, Shorty somehow ended up shooting Ronny, who must have gotten in the way. Ronny went down screaming. A light hit in the leg, nonfatal, Bree registered, yelling, “Somebody call 911!” as Tattooed Guy ran for the back door.
“Keep Ronny here.” She threw the words at the apologetic-looking bartender, as she took off after the gangbanger. “And, for heaven’s sake, nobody shoot anyone else,” she called back as she ran. “I mean it!”
She burst through the back door into a narrow alley between rows of buildings, into a wall of heat and the stench of garbage. The place hadn’t grown any more pleasant since the last time she’d made a bust back here.
Tattooed Guy was dashing forward a hundred yards ahead of her, somewhat encumbered by pants that had been below his waist earlier but now were slipping lower. Not the first time she was grateful for the stupid pants-on-the-ground fashion. It was definitely a boon for law enforcement.
“Stop! Police! Drop your weapon!”
Instead, he shot back over his shoulder.
The bullet slammed into the wall next to Bree, sending wood slivers spraying. She felt a sharp sting at her neck but didn’t bother to check. Injuries would have to wait until later.
Feet set apart, she braced both hands on her weapon. Aim. Shoot. Bang.
She took the shot without emotion, the only way to do it—no aggravation now, no anger, nothing but the job. The man sprawled onto the gravel face-first, sliding another foot or two, carried by his momentum. He was going to leave some skin behind, she thought as she ran forward.
She’d hit him on the back of his right arm. Blood leaked from the sleeve of his T-shirt. But he pushed himself up, ready to run again.
Too late. She was on top of him by then.
“You have the right to remain silent,” she started, and kept on going with his rights as she tied his hands behind his back, ignoring his moaning and complaining, yanking him up just as he progressed to threats.
Fortunately for him, she was a good enough shot to have caused only a light injury. Unfortunately for her, that meant he was well enough to dish out a heap of verbal abuse.
“Hey! Is that any way to talk to a lady? You kiss your mother with that mouth?” She had a badge and she had a gun. She didn’t need to take sass from anybody.
She got him back to the bar but pretty much had to shove him the whole way. The bartender still had Ronny at gunpoint. Ronny sat on the floor, pale and looking as if he was in shock, holding his bloody thigh with both hands.
She looked around at the patrons, most of whom had gone back to drinking and talking, although they were keeping an eye on her and the proceedings. “Anybody else hurt?” she called out.
“Nah.”
“No, ma’am.”
The replies were all negative.
She shoved Tattooed Guy onto a chair and made sure he wasn’t bleeding heavily enough to bleed out before the ambulance got there. Then she hauled Ronny up and cuffed him before letting him drop back down to the floor.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Dammit, Shorty, put that rifle away. I got this. They’re not going to cause any more trouble.” She searched the men’s pockets and dropped the contents into separate evidence bags: money, bullets, cigarettes. The stranger was Angel Rivera, according to his driver’s license.
She turned back to the rest of the patrons when she was done. “All right, cowboys, start lining up for your witness statements.”
She called Lena, then took statements painstakingly, had each person sign theirs, not that she got much out of them. Ronny and Angel had apparently been sharing a drink in one of the more secluded booths when they’d started arguing. Then Angel had fired a shot at Ronny before Shorty took matters into his own hands and restored the peace.
Lena arrived at about the same time as the ambulance. Bree let her take over Shorty and the witnesses while she went to the hospital with the two men.
She started grilling them while waiting for the E.R. doc. No sense in wasting time. There’d be a dozen new things waiting for her when she got back to the office. Crime didn’t take a break just because she got busy.
She started with Ronny. “Want to tell me what that was about?”
The man shrugged.
“The Angel guy looks like bad news to me. He disliked you enough to take a shot at you. And that was before. Now he’s going to the can for it. How much you think he’s going to like you when he comes out?”
Ronny stayed silent.
“Looks like a gangbanger to me. You know his type. They come with a lot of close friends, and revenge is their middle name.”
Ronny was beginning to look nervous, squirming on the bed—a good start. A little more motivation and he would probably break.
“I don’t like outsiders coming into my town, causing trouble,” she said, hinting that she was willing to take Ronny’s side on this.
That seemed to help.
“He says I owe him money,” Ronny said at last, then swore colorfully and at length. “Lyin’ bastard. I ain’t owe him nuthin’.”
&nb
sp; “Where is he from? I haven’t seen him around here. His tattoos don’t look familiar.” She knew most of the gang tattoos for the groups that were active in her county.
“San Antonio.”
“I don’t like it,” she said, half to herself, half to the man. San Antonio gangs moving down this way was the kind of trouble she didn’t need. “Are you getting into something over your head, Ronny?”
His shoulders sagged, his expression turning miserable. “My leg hurts.”
“I know. They’ll look at you in a minute.” She patted his arm. “Look, I got enough problems already. CIA’s here, pain in the neck. They’re investigating all that counterfeit money business. I got my hands full. How about we clear this up right fast and we all go our own way?”
His gaze cut to hers, panic crossing his face. “CIA’s investigatin’ here? In Pebble Creek, you mean?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “They take counterfeiting seriously. Thing is, you’ve kind of been implicated. I’ve been looking for you, actually.”
He cast a desperate glance around, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I have nothin’ to do with it, I swear.”
She nodded. “Then none of the bills I took off you will have any trouble going through the scanner? You know I’m going to have to check them.”
He froze, panic written all over him. Then Angel cleared his throat on the other side of the green divider and Ronny caught himself, sat up a little straighter in the propped-up bed. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“I have an eyewitness.”
He closed his eyes and grimaced, then, after a moment of hesitation, lifted his hands, palms out. “It was all Angel, I swear,” he said, obviously having come to a decision. He was more scared of the CIA than his gangbanger associates, apparently.
Something rustled on the other side of the green divider hanging from the ceiling. “Shut up,” Angel called over, his tone plenty threatening.
“I’ll get to you, Mr. Rivera. You just hang in there,” she told the man and made sure she didn’t turn her back to him.
He could try to grab her—even with one hand cuffed to the bed—if he was stupid enough to go for it.
