Dirty (27 page)

I huffed indignantly and stepped back for him to come inside.
 
“You’ll have to make it fast, I have a date.”

He didn’t look surprised, I noticed as I closed the door behind him.
 
For a moment I almost took that as a compliment then I realized he probably knew this because he had my phone tapped or someone watching me.

He set his hands on his hips, forcing the lapels of his pricy suit out of the way.
 
He was nicely built, I couldn’t help noticing, then I mentally kicked myself.

“I know you’re digging around in the Disposable case,” he said frankly.

No surprise there.
 
I’d suspected he was watching me.
 
“So what?
 
I’m a PI.
 
I dig into whatever clients pay me for.”

He inclined that handsome head and eyed me skeptically.
 
“Who’s your client, Mercer?
 
A ghost from the past?”

Apprehension coiled through me before I could stop it.
 
“That’s privileged information,” I said tightly.
 
How the hell did he know this?
 
He couldn’t know about Rayburn and me.
 
Then I knew.
 
Cates.
 
Dammit.
 
Why was he keeping this Fed up to speed on my business?

“I suppose that’s understandable.”
 
Brooks ran a hand over his smooth jaw.
 
A guy with a jaw that smooth at this hour of the evening had to shave twice a day.
 
Maybe it was part of the training at Quantico.
 
“Let me be candid here,” he suggested.

I matched his stance.
 
“Please do.
 
Because, to be honest, your constant interference in my life is confusing the hell out of me.”

That knowing gaze settled heavily onto mine.
 
“I have reason to believe that there was a cover up in the Disposable case and whoever was responsible for it has started up the operation again.”

“Illegals end up dead too often,” I countered.
 
“Some are carrying drugs.
 
That problem has steadily increased in recent years.
 
What makes you think this is anything outside the norm?”
 
I knew he meant the dead guy Sanchez and then the woman from last night, but I wasn’t going to let him think for a minute that I was agreeing with him.

“Sanchez was a blatant warning to someone,” Brooks said.
 
“I think that someone is you.”

His statement set me on the defensive.
 
“You can’t be sure of that anymore than I can.”
 
I didn’t want that to be true, since that would mean the man had died because of me.

He shrugged.
 
“Maybe not, but there seems to be a more blatant spin to this hideous activity since you started nosing around in Disposable.”

Max.
 
Shit.
 
His dipping into the Bureau’s database or his contact there had sold us out.
 
That was the only way Brooks could be so certain of what I was working on.
 
Or maybe Cates had simply told him I’d looked at the case file.
 
Either way, he was on to me.

“What about the woman last night?”
 
I lifted my chin and glared at him.
 
“We don’t know that she’s connected to Sanchez.”
 
As much as I needed this case to make sense, on some level I’d feel a hell of a lot better if she wasn’t.

For several seconds before he responded there was something in the way Brooks looked at me that gave me my answer...an answer I didn’t want.

“She wasn’t actually connected to Sanchez,” he allowed.
 
“But she’d crossed less than twenty-four hours prior to her death and she was carrying several pounds of illegal white powder in the breast implants she’d recently obtained by a butcher south of the border.”

Two murders...two victims.
 
Surely their deaths weren’t because of my investigation...

“Whatever you’re up to, Mercer,” Brooks cautioned, “you need to work with me, not against me.”

The phone and the doorbell rang simultaneously, making me jump.
 
I didn’t have to look to know who each was.
 
Mary Jane calling to relay her advice, and my blind date at the door.

“Think about it,” Brooks urged, taking the interruption as his cue.
 
“You’re in deeper than you know.
 
I could help you.”

With that forbidding statement he left me to enjoy my evening.

Like that was going to happen.

Tony turned out to be a former stripper turned high school math teacher.
 
He still had the Chippendale body (and I’m not talking furniture here) and there was nothing school teacherish about his wardrobe.
 
Tony knew how to dress.
 
Couldn’t have been a day over thirty-five and had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen.
 
My biggest concern about him was his preoccupation with cleanliness.
 
He’d excused himself to wash his hands at least six times.

He had scrutinized the dinnerware to the point of infuriating the waiter.
 
Otherwise he was a decent date.
 
Friendly, good-looking, and not at all shabby in the sex appeal department.

“Dessert?”

The waiter stood by as patiently as a man whose tolerance level had been sorely tested could.

I held up a hand.
 
“I’m good, thanks.”
 
I couldn’t bring myself to look at the waiter.
 
I didn’t want him to remember me from this night in case I came here again anytime soon, which was quite likely since John Paul’s was one of the most popular restaurants on this end of town.

“Coffee perhaps,” the waiter offered, determined to be thorough.

Tony ordered decafs for both of us.
 
Mercifully my cell phone sang out and I used the intrusion to excuse myself.

I couldn’t get to the ladies room fast enough.

“Mercer.”

“Mom, it’s me.”

Steven.

Happiness bloomed in my chest, momentarily taking my mind off another supreme example of why I despised blind dates.
 
“Hey, baby, how ya doing?”
 
He hated when I called him baby but I just couldn’t help it.
 
He would forevermore be my one and only child.

“We need to talk.”

Uh-oh.
 
This didn’t sound good.
 
“What’s up?”
 
I told myself to stay calm.
 
Steven gave his studies his all.
 
Was an honor student.
 
Even worked part time at a law firm close to school.
 
Had never had an automobile accident.
 
Hadn’t gotten anyone pregnant. He was a good kid. A nice young man, I amended.

“Dad and I have been talking,” he began.

My heart did one of those double-whammy flip-flops, the kind associated with extreme fear or trauma.
 
“Oh, really.
 
How’s your father anyway?”

“He’s great.
 
Look, he made me an offer I’m not sure I can turn down.”

Complete neuron freeze kept me paralyzed while I listened to the rest of what he had to say.

“He’s about to start a new clinic in Dallas that caters to the more wealthy residents and he’d like me to run the office.
 
Oversee everything.
 
Isn’t that cool?
 
He trusts me that much.”

I could hear the excitement in my son’s voice and I didn’t want to say anything to ruin that.
 
He’d been so hurt when his father first left...especially when the other child was born—also a boy.

“Wow, that is exciting,” I said with all the enthusiasm I could summon.
 
“Would you be returning to Ole Miss this fall?”
 
I held my breath...knowing the answer even before he spoke.

“Actually, no.
 
But I would take classes two days a week at home.
 
It would take longer to get my law degree but I would be earning a tremendous salary in the meantime as well as building a nice resume of work experience.”

Home
.
 
I wondered, my chest constricting, if he meant Houston or Dallas.
 
“Well.”
 
I swallowed back the tears crowding into my throat.
 
I’d worked so hard to get him into Ole Miss, the Harvard of the south as far as law schools went.
 
“That’s an offer that certainly deserves due consideration.”
 
I lost the battle with the tears.
 
Silently I cursed myself for being such a wimp.

I truly wanted Steven to love his father and enjoy a healthy relationship with him, but I had to be honest, it killed me to hear him talk like this.
 
I was the one who raised him.
 
I was the one who put him through college and then onto law school.
 
My ex hadn’t helped or encouraged him in any way and now he does this?
 
I wanted to scream or kick something.
 
But I had to remember that it didn’t matter how I felt.
 
This had to be about Steven.

“I’ll keep you posted.
 
Thanks, Mom.
 
I knew you’d understand.
 
We’ll talk on Sunday, okay?”

In case you hadn’t noticed, Sunday is the day kin touches base in Texas.
 
You either went to church together, ate together, called or a combination of two or more.
 
Anything less was unacceptable.

I managed to get through the good-byes without breaking down.
 
It took another five minutes for me to pull myself together enough to return to my blind date.

I was surprised to find the coffee hadn’t been delivered yet.
 
I hated to be rude, but I was ready for this night to be over.
 
The sooner the coffee came, the sooner the check would follow and we could be done with this blind date thing.

But nothing in my life was ever that simple.
 
The waiter returned with what I discovered was the third round of coffee and still Tony found fault with it.

When he started to examine the waiter’s hands for cleanliness I was out of there.

The good thing about Houston at night was the always abundant supply of waiting cabs.
 
The moment I walked out the door of the restaurant one was at the curb.

I settled into the back seat and closed my eyes.
 
God, how had I gotten to this place?

Had my need to succeed after the divorce backed me into an emotional corner?
 
All this time I’d thought I was doing the right thing focusing on my son and my career.
 
Admittedly, I’d let my love life flounder amid an endless chain of going nowhere, mini-relationships.
 
Was that a mistake?
 
Had my driven work ethic ensured that I would spend the rest of my days alone?

Memories of the night I spent with Warren Rayburn whirred one after the other through my mind like an old black and white movie.
 
A classic that never went out of vogue.
 
He’d touched something inside me no one else had even come close to since.
 
Was he really dead?
 
Or was he the one playing all these games?

Then there was Willis.
 
Just another cul-de-sac romance–one that never actually went anywhere but deserved a higher rating than dead end.
 
He might not have touched me on the same level as Rayburn, but he’d stirred my blood, there was no denying that.
 
Even after I’d learned of his deception I’d felt a traitorous tingle for him.
 
I felt certain years of counseling would not figure that one out.

Dawson.
 
God, I didn’t even want to think about him.
 
One way or another I had to keep that relationship from wandering back into forbidden territory.
 
Thank God we hadn’t kissed.
 
That would have made last night too intimate to ignore.
 
We hadn’t kissed and we hadn’t actually touched, not skin to skin anyway, I reminded myself.
 
Well, my cheek had touched his jaw, but nothing more.
 
Cheeks grazing cheeks, the ones north of the neck anyway, was accepted as asexual in most civilized societies, so that was okay.

Last night aside, there was just something about him that tugged at my emotions.

My eyes popped open.
 
Maybe I was finally having that midlife crisis I hadn’t had time for in the past decade.