“Well, good night,” she said as she noticed Gina’s blinds shifting.
“Call if you need anything,” Trent told her.
“I will.”
After he left, Kira stood by the door and listened to him back out of the driveway.
By anyone’s standards, Trent was extremely good-looking. He was tall and muscular and had an adorable dimple that showed when he laughed. He was friendly and easygoing, too, so of course, Kira wasn’t attracted to him at all.
She dropped her bag on the sofa and cursed her stupid taste in men. She was drawn to the strong, silent types. The cool and unreadable ones who almost never let their guard down. She had a history with such men, and it wasn’t pretty. The relationships—if you could even call them that—started with a bang and soon flamed out, and she was left wondering why she kept on torturing herself.
Gina said her problem stemmed from a taciturn father who withheld approval. Kira thought it was much simpler. Men who didn’t talk had less chance of pissing her off before she decided to sleep with them, hence, she did. It wasn’t until later that she realized they were either (a) assholes, or (b) emotionally closed off and she was wasting her time.
A knock sounded at the back door, and Kira wasn’t surprised to find Gina there.
“How was Padre Island?” Kira asked.
“Hot.” Gina stepped inside, smelling like coconut oil. With her windblown brown hair and sunburned cheeks, she looked like she’d just come off the beach.
“How are you?” Gina asked, giving her a hug. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you.” Kira’s stomach knotted at the words. She thought of Ollie’s daughter this morning with her puffy pink eyes and the shoe-box of photos in her lap.
“It must have been awful,” Gina said with a look of concern.
“It was.” Kira stepped into the kitchen. “Would you like a muffin? I just made some.”
“No, thanks. And you’re changing the subject.”
“I know.” Kira leaned back against the counter. There was no dodging Gina’s worried look as she pulled out a breakfast chair and sat down. They’d been friends since the day Kira moved in and Gina showed up at her door with a bottle of wine, which they’d shared while they unpacked Kira’s kitchen. Gina was like the sister Kira had never had. They swapped clothes and work troubles and dating nightmares. But this new nightmare was all too real, and Kira wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“So was that your bodyguard I just saw?” Gina asked, kindly shifting to a lighter topic.
“One of them.”
“Wow.”
“They stay out of sight, mostly.”
Gina smiled. “That’s too bad.”
“I meant to tell you,” Kira said, “the security company offered to install an alarm system on your side of the duplex, if you’re interested. You wouldn’t have to pay for it.”
“Don’t tell me Bruce is paying. I asked him about an alarm system before I moved in here, and he wouldn’t even consider it,” Gina said.
“My client is paying.”
“Wow. What did Bruce say?”
“I haven’t mentioned it yet.”
Gina lifted an eyebrow.
“He’ll either bitch about me ‘damaging’ the place and threaten to keep my security deposit, or he’ll say it’s an improvement and try to raise the rent.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “He’s such a weasel. And sure, I’d love to get something if someone else is picking up the tab. I just ran over a damn nail and had to get a tire replaced. I swear, I don’t know what I’d do if my boyfriend wasn’t a mechanic.”
“That reminds me, you think Mike would mind if I asked him to look at my car? It’s making that noise again.”
“Sure, no problem. Just swing by the shop. I’ll tell him you’re coming.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, you want to come out with us tonight?” Gina asked. “We’re meeting Rowan and Luke over at the Tap House.”
“I have to work tonight.”
“You sure? It might do you good to get out.”
“Next time, maybe. I really have to get some stuff done,” Kira said. “And honestly, I’m not up for a crowded bar tonight anyway.”
Gina stood and gave her a sympathetic look. “Well, text me if you change your mind.”
“I will.”
Gina hugged her and left, and Kira locked the door behind her but didn’t set the alarm. With a sigh, she surveyed her house. Her kitchen was still a mess, and her dishes hadn’t managed to wash themselves while she’d been gone. She stepped over to the breakfast table, where she’d spread out her paperwork. She’d spent hours last night combing through Ollie’s notebook and searching for leads.
Ollie’s cryptic scrawl stared up at her. She’d managed to decipher some of it. He’d gone out on a series of surveillance jobs and taken notes each time. Kira had flagged a few items that caught her attention. He’d written “L.H.” and “to L.H.” several times, and there had been three mentions of “XS co.” Was L.H. a person? A place? Was there a company called XS? Or was he running surveillance on an extra-small company? Between Ollie’s odd shorthand and his terrible handwriting, Kira had come up with more questions than answers.
She picked up the fast-food receipt she’d found in his van. The time stamp said he’d been at Whataburger in Channelview at 10:18 last Friday, exactly a week ago. She tried to recall that night. She’d wanted to go jogging after work, but it was raining, so she’d gone to the gym instead. She remembered talking to Ollie on the phone, and he’d vaguely said he was “working” but didn’t mention any details.
Kira checked her watch. It was nine fifteen. She felt a flutter of nerves as she walked into the guest room. The twin bed was piled with surveillance equipment. She unpacked her Canon camera and checked the memory card. Then she went to the window and peered out at the vacant house down the street.
Trent’s black SUV wasn’t in its spot anymore. Instead, it was Jeremy’s gunmetal-gray pickup truck.
Kira took a deep breath. She knew what she needed to do tonight. She’d known since yesterday. The question was, how to do it?
Ultimately, it’s up to you. We work for you, not the other way around.
Had Jeremy meant that, or was that a tactic meant to placate her?
She pulled out her phone and called him.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“I know.” His low, masculine voice put a tingle inside her. She loved the way he sounded.
“I need to ask a favor.”
Silence.
“Jeremy?”
“Where are we going?”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
JEREMY DROVE, and Kira navigated. Aside from giving him directions, she didn’t talk. Her focus was on a spiral notebook in her lap, and she kept flipping through the pages and shaking her head.
“I never should have turned in that damn phone.” She huffed out a breath and shoved the notebook into the cupholder. “It was the best lead I had, and now all I’ve got is a pile of chicken scratch.”
He glanced at her in the seat beside him. She was dressed like a cat burglar again and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“What good would Ollie’s phone do you? You didn’t know the code,” he said.
“At least I’d have his incoming calls, and I could run the numbers. Now I’ve got zip.” She glared at him, as if he were the reason she’d turned the phone over to the police and not her conscience.
“Not zip.”
“Almost zip.”
“You’ve got Shelly Chandler, who pointed you to a court case,” he said. “And you’ve got the location of his last stakeout.”
She darted a glance at him.
“What’s that mean?”
She looked out the window.
“Kira?”
“Probable location.” She wouldn’t make eye contact. “I have reason to believe he was running surveillance in Channelview, but I’m not
a hundred percent.”
Of course, she was mentioning this now, after he’d already driven half an hour across town to help her run down a lead.
“What’s this based on?” he asked.
“A fast-food receipt.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s solid. It lines up with Ollie’s MO. Whenever he went on a stakeout, he would load up on fast food, usually from Whataburger, and then go set up someplace.”
“So you don’t know exactly where we’re going?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Jeremy shook his head.
“He made notes about a company called Ballard Shipping, which just happens to be less than three miles from the Whataburger in Channelview. That’s a solid lead.”
Jeremy didn’t argue with her. Not because he agreed but because he didn’t want to get her all worked up. He liked it too much when she got that way, and he was determined to stay focused on the job tonight.
Kira was getting to him. He wasn’t sure if it was her looks or her words or her step-off attitude that directly contradicted the flirty glances she gave him when she wanted something. Probably, it was all of it, and the fact that he couldn’t pin her down was messing with his head. She wasn’t like any client he’d had before, and he was beginning to wish he’d been assigned to one of the lawyers.
Jeremy looked at her beside him. Her hair was still damp from her shower, and he could smell her shampoo.
He’d never been so distracted on a job before. It was probably a combination of jet lag and the op that had gone sideways, but whatever it was, he needed to get over it and focus on the task at hand.
He trained his gaze on the road.
“I have to tell you, I’m surprised you agreed to this,” she said.
“To what?”
“Coming out here with me.”
With her. Like she’d be out here alone in her piece-of-shit car if he hadn’t agreed.
“You have a job to do. I get that,” he said. “Would I like it better if you holed yourself up in a sixty-story office building and did it from there? Yes, I would.”
“That’s not how investigations go.”
“I know.”
He was resigned to it. Which didn’t mean he had to like it, and it didn’t mean he had to let her do whatever the hell she wanted. They were going to check out this lead, and then he’d get her home so she could spend the rest of the night tucked safely into bed.
“Okay, heads up. This is our exit,” she said.
He coasted off the freeway and spotted the orange-and-white-striped roof of the burger place.
“Turn right at this light.” She consulted her phone, then looked around. “Okay, get in the turn lane and hook a left at the next street. It’s right up here. Slow down.”
Jeremy followed instructions. Her bossy voice turned him on, which was the dead-last thing he ever planned to tell her, but it was true.
“Cross the tracks, and then take a right on Waterfront Road. See it?”
He glanced at her. “We’re headed for the ship channel.”
“I know.”
They bumped over the railroad tracks and picked up a two-lane highway paralleling the shore. The ship channel connected the Gulf of Mexico to the Port of Houston, and traffic up and down it was one of the primary drivers of the city’s economy.
The neighborhood quickly became industrial. Warehouses. Concrete lots filled with heavy equipment. More lots filled with endless rows of shipping containers. All the properties were surrounded by high security fences, some topped with razor wire.
Jeremy glanced to his left, where a wall of trees blocked the view of the businesses located directly on the waterfront. A white glow above the tree line indicated that several of the places were up and running, even this late at night.
“One more mile,” she said.
Through a gap in the trees, he caught a glimpse of the ship channel. Not the water itself but the towering steel cranes that lined the shore.
“Okay, see the sign up here?”
They neared a sign for Ballard Shipping. A chain-link fence surrounded a big lot, five acres at least. But the lot was empty. Not a light anywhere, and stalks of weeds sprouted through cracks in the concrete.
Kira sighed. “Shit.”
Jeremy drove past the lot without stopping.
“We should pull over and look around,” she said.
“Not yet.”
A high pair of headlights moved toward them on the narrow highway, and Jeremy could tell from the silhouette that the vehicle was law enforcement.
Kira seemed to notice them, too. She watched as they passed the SUV that had a fence buster on the grate and a light bar mounted on top.
“ICE,” Jeremy said.
“How can you tell?”
“The crest on the door.”
Jeremy watched in the rearview mirror. When the taillights faded to nothing, he found a side road and turned onto it.
Kira was tapping away at her phone. “I looked up the company. They’re in business still, so they must have moved locations.”
“What kind of business?”
“Industrial shipping.”
“That’s every place out here.”
“No kidding.”
Jeremy turned around and headed back for the empty lot.
“What a waste,” she said. “Why did Ollie write this name down if there’s nothing here? And what are all these notes about? He had to have been staked out here for hours. He must have—wait! Stop!” She smacked the dashboard. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Jeremy halted and backed up, stopping before he reached the gate so they wouldn’t attract attention.
“Xavier Shipping Company.” She whirled to face him. “This is it!”
“What is?”
“Something called ‘XS co.’ from Ollie’s notes. This has to be it.”
Jeremy shifted gears and resumed a normal speed.
“We need to stop and look around,” she told him.
“We need to not draw attention.”
He surveyed the area for a better vantage point. About half a mile ahead, he spotted a long berm that likely served as a dam for storm surges.
At the next juncture, he made a turn. About fifty yards later, he found a gravel road that ran atop the berm. On the downside, it wasn’t a well-traveled road, which meant they might attract suspicion. On the upside, it was an elevated vantage point.
Jeremy turned onto the road. Superior vantage point won every time.
“Where are we going?” Kira asked.
“Getting a better view of the property. I assume you brought binoculars? Or a zoom lens?”
“Both,” Kira said, dragging her bulky duffel into her lap.
The berm traversed an empty field. Beyond it was a stand of trees. Jeremy eased onto the shoulder, then pulled a three-point turn and positioned the truck near a dense thicket. Someone would have to drive right up on them to see them here. The location had flaws, but it was better than being right on top of the surveillance target.
Kira handed him the binoculars case. Then she attached a big lens to her camera and peered through it.
She checked her watch. “It’s ten twenty, which is when Ollie was in Channelview exactly a week ago.”
Her voice was tinged with excitement, and Jeremy watched as she adjusted the lens.
“This is perfect.” Click. Click. Click. “I can see the gate from here.”
Jeremy unsnapped the case and pulled out the binoculars. Leupold BX-4 HDs. He looked at Kira, amazed.
“You bought these?”
“Yeah.”
He examined the high-def lenses, and his respect for her took another leap. “These are military-grade.”
“Yep.” She lowered her camera. “Ollie recommended them. I blew my whole second paycheck on those things. First one went to this.” She lifted her camera and snapped another photo.
“You’ve got some serious cash invested in your equipment.”<
br />
She shrugged. “Tools of the trade.”
Jeremy peered through the binos, and the world became a tunnel. He moved the diopter adjustment dial, and everything came into focus, sharp as a blade. The scene had a hyperreal look to it, from the textured shingles on the gatehouse to the glint of razor wire on top of the security fence.
Jeremy whistled. “Nice.”
“I know.” Kira lowered her camera. “Now comes the fun part.”
He looked at her.
“Waiting.”
Jeremy peered through the binoculars again, zeroing in on the guard inside the gatehouse. The man had a shaved head and a thick neck. The interior of the building was dim, but his face was lit blue from a screen. He was probably watching a game or looking at porn, oblivious to his surroundings. He picked up a fast-food cup and sipped from a straw.
Night watchmen never ceased to disappoint. Working after hours, they seemed to assume they could sit around and jerk off, when the late shift was a peak time for criminal activity.
“How’d you get into this, anyway?”
He looked at Kira.
“Working for Liam Wolfe,” she added.
“He recruited me.”
Kira dug a shiny red apple from her bag and offered it to him. “Want one?”
“No.”
She took a bite, and Jeremy tried not to think about her mouth as she chewed.
“I’d take some water, though, if you have some.”
“Nope. Rule number one for female PIs: water on a stakeout is a bad idea.” She chomped the apple again. “What made you want to join Liam? It’s a pretty big leap from being a Marine, right?”
“True.”
He lifted the binos again, scanning the fence around the property. No security cams visible, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Judging by sheer size, Xavier Shipping seemed to be a small-scale operation compared to some of the others on the waterfront.
“That’s all?”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I’m curious how you got into this.”
She’d been doing her homework. Or else hitting up Trent for info. Jeremy had told her almost nothing about himself, not even his military background—although it didn’t take much to figure that out.
Her Deadly Secrets Page 13
