SPY IN THE SADDLE (10 page)

His forehead drew into an annoyed frown. “No,” he admitted.

“I assume you work with outside law enforcement from time to time. How about them?”

He watched her for a few long seconds. “Fine. I get your point.”

“I’m not the same person I was ten years ago.”

“No kidding,” he said miserably.

It nearly made her smile, squashing her anger. “What bothers you more, the fact that the FBI sent someone to keep an eye on you guys, or that you’re attracted to me?”

He shot her a dark look. “They’re both wrong. Neither should be happening.”

“Tough cookies.” He used to tell her that all the time back in the day.

“The team will get the job done. You shouldn’t be here.” He paused. “You shouldn’t look like this,” he said accusingly. “And I shouldn’t have kissed you. Not for show, and most definitely not for real.”

She bit back a smile.

“Quit looking so damn pleased.”

She let the smile bloom. “You don’t get disconcerted every day. You’ll just have to forgive me if I take a moment to enjoy it.”

She took her time. Then shook her head. “Listen, seven years of age difference when I was seventeen and you were twenty-four might have seemed like a lot. It’s not now. I’m not in your charge or under your protection.”

“You’re under my protection,” he said unequivocally and stood there all wide shouldered and tough looking.

He’d tried to protect her back in the day. She couldn’t let him. Too many people had let her down by that point. So she’d left Shep before he could let her down, too. She’d run away.

She glanced at the folder in his hand. “What did you want to show me?”

He followed her gaze, his eyebrows furrowing as if he’d forgotten about his papers. He hesitated for a moment before holding the folder out for her. “Your case file from ten years ago. After you disappeared, I emailed the files to myself so I could work on them at home. I did my best to find you.” He cleared his throat. “I realized the other day that I might still have them in that old email account. I did.”

Her mouth went dry as she took the folder.

She drew a deep breath before opening it, took a look at the document on top, then paged carefully through the others. She scanned the list of foster homes, medical checkups, a list of her bad behaviors, grade cards, a report on the circumstances of how she’d come into foster care—found abandoned at a bus stop.

But what really got to her were the pictures. Her smiling at six or seven. Her looking sullen a few years later, holding a scruffy cat. Her throat tightened. She’d forgotten about the cat.

She closed the file and put it on the desk, needing a moment, then looked up into his dark eyes.

He’d given her back her missing years. Something to fill some of the empty spaces in her life. As if he’d somehow seen into her heart and knew exactly what was missing.

Maybe she could trust him just a little. She swallowed. “I appreciate it. Thanks.”

He nodded and turned to leave.

“Wait.” She stepped closer. She didn’t want him to leave yet, but she wasn’t sure what to say. “We have a complicated relationship.”

He nodded, watching her face.

“I wasn’t sure how it would be. I mean, us meeting again.” The people you cared for, the ones who were supposed to protect you, always let you down. Or sold you for coke. “I don’t do relationships.” But she did want him in the here and now, this edgier Shep who sometimes looked at her as if he could devour her.

His masculine lips twisted into a wry smile. “Me, neither. I want you.” He echoed her thoughts. “Pretty much all the time now. It’s driving me crazy.”

She took another step closer to him.

He held her gaze. “Lilly?”

She watched him and waited.

“Say no,” he said as he reached out and pulled her into his strong arms.

She said nothing.

He lowered his head, fitted his lips to hers. “Tell me to get the hell out of here,” he murmured.

It would have been the smart thing to do, probably. But her lips were tingling. So she pressed them a little closer to his.

He capitulated with a groan and wrapped his arms fully around her, gathered her tightly to his chest and tasted her.

Her knees turned weak. It didn’t matter. He was holding her up. All those muscles came in handy at a time like this.

He licked the seam of her lips then nibbled on the bottom lip again, scraped his teeth against it. And when she opened up for him at last, he didn’t hesitate. He took all that she offered. He took thoroughly.

Since her boots had heels, he was just a few inches taller than her and they fit together perfectly. He was all hard male and she was...a puddle of need, frankly.

He eased his hands down her sides, splayed his fingers over her hips as he held her to him. The tube top left her midriff bare and he took advantage, his thumbs moving in a circular motion on her skin, sending delicious shivers across her abdomen and lower.

His hands soon moved up an inch, then another. They pushed up the lacy material in front of them as they went, baring more and more of her to his seeking fingers. His touch was so featherlight and gentle, it melted the last of her resistance. The twin assault of his tongue and those clever fingers was almost more than she could handle.

She grabbed on to his waist for support. And then somehow his shirt came untucked, and her fingers sneaked under the material, coming into contact with his warm skin. There was nothing soft about the man, she thought as her fingers wandered upward over the muscles of his abdomen, up to his wide chest and tangled in a smattering of hair, her palms covering his impressive pecs.

He shifted them slowly, her back against the door, then took his hands off her, bracing them on either side of her head as he pulled back a few inches. “Tell me to leave.”

If she were half as smart as she’d thought she was, she would have. Instead, she said, “Stay.”

Her tube top was history the next second, his lips back on hers as his hands cupped her breasts through the flimsy silk of her strapless bra. He trailed kisses to her ear, bit then sucked the lobe.

Then she couldn’t think anymore, because one of his clever hands slipped behind her and unclasped the bra. The other tugged the silk at the front and her breasts spilled free.

He pulled his head back from her cheek and kissed a trail of heat along her jaw, then down her neck, then circled her breasts before heading to one nipple first then the other.

His mouth was moist and hot on her, and she could feel more moisture and heat gather between her legs. All her life, she kept people at arm’s length, yet now she couldn’t get close enough to him. Nothing would be close enough until he was inside her.

Because that was where they were heading, she realized. They weren’t at the bar or in the parking lot. Nothing to stop them here from taking this all the way.

The thought scared her and excited her in equal measure.

As if reading her mind, he hooked his hands under her bottom and lifted her off her feet. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, they were lined up perfectly, if not for some inconvenient denim.

She could have sent him away and pretended, for the sake of their jobs, that she didn’t want him, but it would have been a lie. He was a decadelong itch under her skin. He was her first sexual fantasy, and he was a damned good one at that. So she was going to go with the impulses that told her to rip off his shirt.

When she did, he flashed her a dark grin and carried her to the bed to lay her down on top of the covers. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She reached for him.

“Why?” he wanted to know.

The emotions that suddenly bubbled up in her chest she couldn’t admit even to herself, let alone to him. So instead, she said, “Better get it out of our system. Then we can work together without the distraction, without wondering.”

Sounded better than the pathetic
Because I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen.
In any case, that wasn’t true. Was it?

He tossed his shirt on the floor then kicked off his boots and lay down next to her. Since she was naked to the waist, he began working on her tight denim skirt.

She reached for his rodeo belt buckle, nervous suddenly and wondering if it was even possible that this could measure up to her insanely high expectations.

“Nothing is ever as good as we anticipate it,” she said out loud without meaning to.

And when he threw her a questioning look, she added in way of explanation, “It’ll be better once we go for it then accept the disappointment. Then we can concentrate on the tunnel and the smuggling.”

He looked at her as if she was crazy.

The belt gave at last and she tugged down his zipper. His erection sprung free, barely held by his briefs. He was
very
happy to see her, from the looks of it.

He yanked off her skirt then hooked a finger under her lacy G-string. “What the hell is this? You can’t afford proper underwear?” His voice sounded a shade weaker than before.

“I get hot dancing around the stage.” The less clothes the better.

“Hot,” he repeated, looking dazed, his eyes fixed on those few square inches of lace. Then he gave a quick grin. “Everybody gets hot when you dance around the stage.”

With that one hooked finger he drew the material down her legs then let it drop.

She lay naked before him.

He came to his feet next to the bed just long enough to shrug out of his jeans and underwear, never removing his gaze from her body. As he shook his jeans out, a handful of foil packets scattered on the bed by her feet.

“So we give in this once then forget about it?” he asked.

“Just to get it out of the way. Get the distraction over and done with,” she told him. “We—”

But he bent suddenly and lay his index finger over her lips. And then, as he lay down next to her, he replaced the finger with his mouth, his finger slowly moving lower, skating across her skin to her knee, down her winding tattoo, caressing every flower and leaf then back up again to the V of her thighs. And then his long fingers parted her.

Pleasure flashed through her as he found the spot that was throbbing for him, aching with need. His mouth worked on hers while his finger worked down below. And when she was on the brink, he moved over on top and slid into her.

He didn’t take it slow. He didn’t move inch by tantalizing inch. He pushed forward as if he meant it and thrust into her all the way, making her moan his name as pleasure suffused her and dizzied her brain.

He filled her, stretched her, made her bones melt as he thrust in and out and picked up the rhythm. Her knees hooked around his narrow hips and she gave her body up to him completely.

He didn’t take his time with this step, either. He lifted her higher and higher with ruthless efficiency, barely allowing her to catch her breath. Then her body contracted around him and she felt like a fireworks rocket, bursting into a shower of sparkles, flying.

* * *

S
HEP
LAY
NEXT
TO
HER
,
spent and stunned, staring at the ceiling. A part of his world had shattered and he didn’t know how to piece it back together, didn’t know how to process what had just happened between them.

It had seemed so right, so easy. Yet now, as sanity returned, he had to seriously reevaluate his actions. He had to take responsibility for the way he’d lost control.

“I didn’t come up with this in mind, I swear.”

She made some sleepy sounds. “I’m not complaining.”

Yet the fact remained that he
had
come up to her hotel room and made love to her. She’d been tired after work and...confused. He’d taken advantage of her. That was the way Jamie would see it. And Mitch. He winced.

He had no idea how to make this right.

“Marry me,” he blurted as he looked at her and tried hard not to want her again, tried and failed. His body was stirring already. Insanity.

She turned to him, wide-eyed and a lot more awake now, as a succession of emotions crossed her face. “What?”

“Jamie and Mitch are going to kill me for this.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just ask me to marry you because of Jamie and Mitch?”

He looked at her miserably.

She sat up in the bed. “Get out.” She bit out the words. “I want you to leave.”

He sat up, too. “I should have protected you. Even from myself—”

She growled as she punched him.

Chapter Eight

Shep stood in Ryder’s office and watched the interrogation through the two-way mirror, rubbing his jaw where Lilly had socked him the night before. He’d deserved it. He still felt guilty as hell for going up to her room. Shouldn’t have done it. Should have never made love to her.

Last night had been an epic fail as far as getting her out of his system went. He wanted her now more than ever.

Jamie shifted next to him, his attention on the men in the other room. “The National Guard arrived at Fort Sam Houston. Supposedly for a joint exercise.”

But in reality, so they’d be close enough to swoop in at the last minute if his team failed, Shep thought. He should have been thinking about that and the interrogation in the other room, but his thoughts kept skipping back to Lilly.

Jamie looked at him. “You’re quiet today.”

“Didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow.

Shep pretended to be engrossed in Mo and Ryder handling the questioning. Brandon, handcuffed to the chair, was trying to make a deal, giving testimony against his buddy.

Mo stood over him, looking damn impressive when he did his looming thing. “I don’t care who did the shooting last night. We need the big boss down south. The Coyote. Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is, man. He’s at the top of the totem pole. He’s got powerful friends. When he don’t like somebody, they’re dead.” The guy hunched his back. “If he even thinks I’m talking, I’ll be ground to pulp, man.”

Ryder and Keith had followed Brandon and his friend over to Mexico, watched the transaction. Keith had stayed to follow their Mexican link and see where that led. Ryder followed them back and had them apprehended at the border, along with their border-agent friend.

After Mo was done with the interrogation, he escorted Brandon out into the deputy sheriff’s custody, and they switched to the border agent, Ricky Lowell.

“You know what happens to former law-enforcement officers in federal prison?” Mo started, not pulling any punches.

“Nothing worse than a shot in the head, which is what I’ll get in some dark alley if I tell you anything.” The man leaned back in his chair, all cool and playing the tough guy, the opposite of what Brandon had been.

“I heard that. The Coyote doesn’t mess around. He can reach anyone anywhere.”

Ricky shrugged. “I’m not going to give him a reason to want to reach me. You’re wasting your time here.”

Mo played things just as cool. “We put the word out that you talked. When he sends an assassin, we’ll catch that guy and follow him back to the Coyote. I don’t care how we catch the bastard, as long as we catch him. I doubt the death of a corrupt border agent will weigh too heavily on my conscience.”

Ricky shifted in his seat. “You can’t do that.”

“Wanna bet?”

“You’re not going to catch whoever he sends. He’s got men everywhere.”

“A chance I’m willing to take,” Mo promised. “It’ll either work or not. You’re not talking, so half a chance is better than no chance.”

Ricky swore. “I want a lawyer. Where the hell am I, anyway? I want to be transported out of here. You’re consultants for the CBP. You don’t even have jurisdiction over me.”

“You’d be surprised at the kind of leeway I have.” Mo shifted closer. “We need the Coyote. We need him yesterday.”

“I have rights.”

“Rights are flexible in cases like this. We’re talking about border security. You compromise it on a daily basis from what we hear. What if some terrorists were to sneak through?”

“But they didn’t—” Ricky went white, all the coolness sliding right off his face as he understood at last. He swallowed. “You can’t link me to terrorism. It’s not true. You can’t make that up. What the hell? I want an attorney. I want to know what I’m being charged with.”

“You know damn well terror suspects get none of that.” Mo waited, letting the silence grow heavy. “Maybe you understand your situation better now. Why don’t you take a moment to weigh your options?”

Ricky didn’t need long, less than ten seconds, before he blurted out, “I don’t know who he is, all right? Nobody knows. He’s some bigwig over in Mexico.”

“A crime boss?”

“That, but more.”

Mo paused. “Politician?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is he has money and power to make things happen. He leads a double life. That’s why nobody can know who he really is or what his real name is.”

“Who else works for him at CBP?”

His gaze shifted. “I don’t know.”

“The more useful you are, the better things will go for you,” Mo reminded him.

“I don’t know all of them,” Ricky said. “I know a couple.” And then, reluctantly, he named three men.

Out in the other room, Jamie moved toward the door. “I’ll go pick them up.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shep offered.

“I’ll be fine. You stay and handle whatever else actionable intel Mo gets out of the bastard.”

Ricky was begging on the other side of the two-way mirror as Jamie left. “You have to keep me safe.”

Mo didn’t look concerned. “You’ll be safe in prison. You keep talking and I’ll arrange for solitary confinement.”

“Up north.” His eyes hung on Mo. “The Coyote has men down south everywhere.”

“How about Ohio?”

The man nodded.

And Mo said, “But you’ll have to earn it.”

Sweat beaded on Ricky’s forehead. “I know a couple of mules. The regulars that always come through during my shift. They’ve been taking a break lately, but they’ll be back soon. You can catch them in action.”

“All right, we’ll start with that.”

Shep wrote down the names. He was about to leave to pick them up when Ricky volunteered another bit of information.

“All smuggling is on hold until the first.”

“Why is that?” Mo asked. They had their suspicions, but confirmation would have been helpful, knowing that they were on the right path.

“Don’t know that.” Ricky’s expression switched to sly. “But there was a...request. On the first, I’m not to assign Galmer’s Gulley to anyone for patrol. Like an oversight thing. You might catch someone there.”

“Only at Galmer’s Gulley?”

“Solitary up north?”

Mo nodded.

Rickey hesitated, but then spit it out at last. “And I’m supposed to thin the patrol schedule that day as much as I can. Approve more vacation days than usual. But put nobody at Galmer’s Gulley.”

Galmer’s Gulley,
Shep thought as he headed out to pick up the six smugglers on his list. He was smiling. They very likely had the time and place for the terrorists’ transfer. Exactly the breakthrough they needed.

Confirmation would have been nice, though. And he might very well get that from one of the smugglers he was about to grab. He ran their names through the police database, printed the rap sheets, which included current employment and home addresses.

He ran into Lilly in the parking lot.

“Hey.” She was just coming in, dressed like a local in blue jeans, boots, a T-shirt with a lone star over her chest and a cowboy hat shading her head. She’d assimilated pretty darn fast. She shot him a dark look.

He had no idea what to say to her. What did a man say after a night like the one they’d just spent together? He wanted more but, of course, he couldn’t very well tell her that.

She didn’t wait for him to figure out a game plan. Her fine lips pressed together. “Any progress with the op?” She was all cool and professional, as if last night hadn’t happened.

If she could act that way, so could he. He channeled his thoughts away from the tangled sheets. “We got the crossing point. I’m heading out to pick up some smugglers to see if they have any further details or confirmation.”

Relief settled on her face. “Okay. That’s good.” She walked straight to his SUV instead of the stairs. “I’m going with you.”

The word
no
was on his tongue. But he didn’t want her to think that he couldn’t handle what had happened between them the night before. So, instead, he said, “Be my guest.”

And it was the last thing he said to her until they reached the first address, a chicken processing plant. Two men on his list, brothers, worked there.

He picked them up without trouble and dropped them off for holding at the Pebble Creek sheriff’s office, leaving them in Bree’s capable hands until they could be interrogated. He called Mo to let him know he’d have another batch waiting as soon as he was done with the border agent.

The next man on the list didn’t have a permanent address, but did have half a dozen locations where he was known to hang out. The Yellow Armadillo was one of them.

“Know him?” Shep showed the printed mug shot to Lilly.

“I might have seen him at the bar.” She thought for a second. “I’m pretty sure I have. He came in after hours, the first time I was there to see Brian.”

“We’ll catch him at the bar later today, then.” Shep moved on to the next name.

This one lived in Pebble Creek. Nothing listed for employer. He drove to the address listed, a small ranch home on the outskirts of town.

“Why are you looking for Joey?” his mother wanted to know after she’d opened the door to their knock.

“We’d like to ask for his assistance in a police matter. Is he home, ma’am?”

“He’s with his friends. They volunteer cleaning up around the high school. They’re good kids.”

Shep drove off to look for him.

Having Lilly within reach, the light scent of her perfume lingering in the cab, a truckload of unsaid things between them, was messing with his head. He tried to push all that aside and just focus on the job.

Joey’s cleaning up the road by the high school turned out to be selling weed by the high school. He took off running when he spotted Shep heading for him.

But Lilly had already gone around, stepped out from behind a pickup in the parking lot and decked the man.

“Joey Manito, you’re under arrest for possession and distribution.” Shep cuffed him, pulled him up and walked him to his SUV as he read him his rights.

Since there was still room in the back, he didn’t take Joey to jail just yet. He drove off to the next address.

The small house, just a step up from a shack, stood deserted.

“Any other info?” Lilly asked, picking up the guy’s rap sheet. She scanned the paper. There was no employment listed.

“Car?”

She nodded.

“We can call the Pebble Creek deputy sheriff and have an APB put out on the license plate,” he suggested, and that was exactly what Lilly did while he drove to the next address they had.

They didn’t run into any problems there. The man was so stoned he couldn’t have run if he tried. He sang raunchy Mexican folk songs all the way to the Pebble Creek jail.

Shep stepped into the deputy’s office while Lilly dealt with the paperwork.

“Anything on the APB?”

“I’ll let you know the second I have something. Everything okay?”

“The usual nonsense.” He considered Bree for a second. “If a bigwig was running all the smuggling from the other side of the border, who would be your best guess?”

She leaned back in her chair as she tapped her index finger on the desk.

“Politician? Chief of police?” he suggested.

“I don’t think so. They’re on the take, but not running things. What I know of the ones I’m thinking of...can’t see them as a criminal mastermind. Mostly they’re men who got put into positions by their wealthy fathers. They know how to take money, not make it. Top criminals are rarely politicians—too much media scrutiny. They buy politicians for their needs.”

Lilly came looking for him. “Ready?”

“I’ll let you know if I think of anything,” Bree promised him before they left.

“She’s very beautiful,” Lilly remarked on their way to his car.

“She used to be Miss Texas.”

“She was smiling at you.” They got in.

“She’s very smiley.”

“Are you and her...” Lilly’s face was a tight mask, without emotion.

He blinked. “Jealous?” For some reason the thought made him happy.

“Not in the least,” she snapped. “She’s welcome to have you.”

He started the engine. “I don’t think Jamie would agree with that.”

She didn’t say anything, but her shoulders noticeably relaxed.

Had she really been jealous? Did that mean last night hadn’t been just a gigantic spur-of-the moment mistake for her? He wasn’t sure what it’d been for him. He was still evaluating it.

He didn’t say that, however. In fact, they didn’t talk about anything personal for the rest of the day. He’d apologized for making love to her. She hadn’t liked it. He’d asked her to marry him. She hadn’t liked that, either.

He wanted to figure out what she wanted from him so he could avoid her decking him again.

The sixth man on their list gave them the runaround. They’d go to one address, be told he had moved. Go to the next, be told he temporarily lived someplace else. And it kept up like that. The man had disappeared.

“Could be he’s been killed,” Shep said as he dropped Lilly off in front of her hotel at the end of the day. No way was he going up. Ever again.

“Or got tipped off that we’re rounding up smugglers,” she said as she turned from him.

He didn’t stay to watch her walk away. He stepped on the gas and drove off before he could do something stupid.

* * *

L
ILLY
STOOD
BY
the window in her hotel room and looked out into the approaching darkness. Better than looking at the bed. Heat flooded her every time she did that.

Shep seemed determined to ignore their night together. Because he thought it was a mistake. Because he still thought of her as some young idiot under his authority. She could have screamed with frustration.

She’d sung her sets on Saturday night, and he’d shown up, supposedly to protect her, but that was all. Brian had been his slimy self, the crowd as drunk and rowdy as the night before. The band got it into their heads that they wanted to get to know her better, so she hadn’t had a minute alone between sets, hadn’t gotten a chance to investigate any further.

After her last set ended, Shep brought her home again, in silence, let her out in front of the hotel then drove away.