SPY IN THE SADDLE (8 page)

But Tank was already walking away from him. “It’s a onetime deal. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Don’t let me see you down here again.”

* * *

L
ILLY
WAS
WALKING
by the manager’s office, on her way to the stage, psyching herself up for her performance, telling herself she could still do this, when Brian called her in.

He was sprawled in his chair behind the desk as he looked her over. “You dressed like a nun for a reason? Them cowboys like a little skin.”

She wore bloodred, spiked heels, a skintight black leather skirt that barely covered her behind. It showed off the winding tattoo on her inner thigh—something she’d gotten to gain Shep’s attention, back in the day, which she did, but not in a good way. He hadn’t thought it’d made her a woman. He’d been angry about it.

Brian, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate the art, judging by the way his gaze lingered on the spot. Then slowly slid higher, to the glittery shirt that was pretty much molded to her torso.

“No problem.” She smiled, even if she was gritting her teeth, and undid another button on top. The lace edge of her red bra was showing now. That better be enough. She scanned his desk to see if he had any paperwork out that might give a clue to his illegal activities or a possible link to the Coyote, but all she could see were utility bills.

He kept ogling her with a lecherous grin. “A little more skin wouldn’t hurt.”

But breaking your face would.
She kept on smiling as she shoved up the shirt enough so her belly button showed. At the same time, she scanned the windowless office and noted the file cabinets. Would Brian keep anything incriminating here? Probably not. He was slimy, but she didn’t think he was stupid.

He wasn’t subtle, either. “A little more?” He pushed.

“I think I’m okay. Band is waiting.” She walked away before she could have clocked him.

While Brian approved of her way too much, Shep was the opposite. He thoroughly disapproved of her gig here. Thank God he wouldn’t be here tonight to glower at her. As far as she knew, he was on border duty.

She ran up onstage and tore into a song, sang a couple of rock ballads to ease the crowd into the mood, took it easy with the jumping around, since she couldn’t afford to pop a button. Her shirt barely concealed her bra as it was. She picked up volume and energy as she went on, and by the time the first set was finished, people were singing along with her, in a drunken-cowboy choir.

Since the lights were in her eyes, she couldn’t observe the audience as well as she would have liked, except for the first two rows of tables. She would just have to use her breaks and after-hours staff time to do her spying.

By the time she was finished with the first set, she had sweat rolling down her back. The bar had plenty of air-conditioning, but it was still hot under the lights. She grabbed her bag from behind the bar and something to drink then walked back to the bathroom to throw some cold water on her face—reviving herself almost as good as coffee would have.

It’d been a long day. She’d spent the morning and afternoon working at the office before coming here.

She touched up her makeup before squeezing into a stall and switching tops, yanking on a black lace tube top, tight and strapless, she’d brought for her second set. Brian ought to be happy with that.

Except he wasn’t. She ran into him on her way out.

“Overdressed again?” His sticky gaze slid down the length of her body.

She didn’t want to lose the gig so, she kept a smile on. “Can’t go up onstage in just a bra.”

“Why not?” He stepped closer, tilted his head as his gaze settled on her breasts. “Maybe a studded leather one. I guess I could spring for the cost.”

He reached out, dragged a finger up the middle of her belly, between her breasts, to her chin and lifted her head. “You give a good show. No reason why you couldn’t give even better. Maybe I’ll throw in a little bonus.” He winked at her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to deck a guy so badly. But before she could have lost her cool and her undercover position, someone grabbed her hand from behind, spun her around, and the next second she was brought up hard against Shep’s wide chest.

“Babe.” He flashed a sultry grin. “You were hot up there.” And then he claimed her lips.

For about a half a second she tried to figure out what was going on, then gave in to the firm pressure of his mouth.
Oh, man.
So, soooo much better than what she’d imagined back in the day.
Wow.

She couldn’t not notice how perfectly they fit together, how great he smelled, how strong the arms that held her were. He was pretty damn good, playing the sexy cowboy. She so wasn’t going to fall for it.

But as much as she told herself that, she was still a little dizzy by the time he let her go.

Brian cleared his throat. “Boyfriend?” He was watching them tight-lipped, his forehead pulled into a displeased frown.

Shep tipped his hat. “It’s still new, but I tell you, I’m over the moon about this little lady. Luckiest day of my life was when I walked in here.”

He stood a full head taller than Brian, all muscle, while the manager was made up mostly of beer weight as far as she could tell. Brian must have noted the difference between them, too, and correctly assessed his chances if they came to blows over her. He walked away with an aggravated grunt.

She pulled back enough from Shep so she could think again. “Now what?”

“Now we play out what we started.” He dragged her to an empty table, yanked her down onto his lap and put a protective hand on her waist. He didn’t look around, but they both knew people took notice that he’d made his claim on her.

“You’re welcome,” he said under his breath.

He had a smile on his face for whoever was watching, but she could feel the tension in his muscles. More disconcertingly, she could also feel the heat of his palm on the bare skin of her lower back.

“I didn’t need your help,” she let him know in a whisper. “Maybe I was flirting with him as part of my cover.”

The fake smile slid off his face. “Don’t.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” She would have said more, but the band was back onstage waiting on her.

She began to rise, but Shep pulled her back down and kissed her again. It really was a chaste kiss, like the first, just his lips resting against hers, and the slightest pressure. But his masculine scent enveloped her, his muscles flexing under her fingers as she reached up to hold on to his arms, their bodies pressing together.

His lips were warm and firm and they...lingered. It was the lingering that did her in, the wondering whether he would go further, the tension in his body that said he wanted to. Or maybe she was reading things into a theatrical gesture.

That would be pitiful on her part. And she refused to be pitiful about Shep Lewis ever again. She pulled away and looked him in the eye. “What was that for?” she asked to clarify things. “Brian is back in his office.”

“To let these other yahoos know that you’re off-limits.”

Right. He was acting a part. The both of them were. She had to make sure she didn’t forget that. She had no intention of walking down the long road that led to heartache.

“I’m going to make sure you’re safe,” he promised.

“No.”

“I couldn’t keep you safe when I should have. I should have never let you run away.”

“I would have liked to have seen you try to stop me.”

“I didn’t try very hard,” he admitted. “I wasn’t sure if the system was the best place for you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Had to be better than the streets.”

“I made it. Chill.”

“I’m going to have your back this time,” he insisted stubbornly.

That protection wasn’t what she wanted from him—then or now—seemed to completely escape him, she thought, frustration tightening her muscles as she walked away.

Chapter Six

Shep went to get another beer while Lilly did her rock-star act onstage, mesmerizing the audience. He stayed at the bar. It was the easiest way to be close enough to people to overhear conversations, to keep an eye on the staff and who they interacted with and how.

Shorty, the bartender, put a beer in front of him. “Weren’t there two of you yesterday? Where’s your buddy?”

“Twisted an ankle in training.”

“Bulls are more polite in Pennsylvania, eh?” He laughed, cracking himself up.

Shep laughed with him.

An older cowboy next to him was leaning against the bar, facing the stage. He pushed up his cowboy hat with his index finger. “That’s one fine filly up there.”

“All mine,” Shep said and puffed his chest out, acting very pleased with himself.

The cowboy grinned, patting his mustache. “If you can hang on to her.”

Shep flashed him a cocky look, as if he didn’t have a doubt in the world. But the truth was he didn’t want to hang on to Lilly. Hanging on to her was doing things to him. Uncomfortable things.

He’d acted on the spur of the moment when he’d kissed her, because he hadn’t been sure which one of them would knock the manager’s head into the wall first. Seeing the oily bastard’s hands on her snapped something inside him. It was a miracle he’d been able to play it as cool as he had.

The kiss had seemed the perfect way to defuse the situation while allowing both of them to keep their covers. The second time, he did it to make sure all those horny cowhands, too, would know she was spoken for.

He hadn’t meant to enjoy it.

It was wrong to enjoy it.

No way was he going to do it again. Unless he absolutely
had
to kiss her to keep their cover. But he would hate it next time. For sure.

He drew a long swallow as his new undercover girlfriend danced across the stage. No reason why Jamie would have to find out about this latest turn of events. Or Mitch Mendoza for that matter. Thank God Mitch was on an op in South America at the moment.

Shep turned his attention elsewhere and scanned the drooling men. He wasn’t going to discover anything by staring at her like the rest of the idiots.

Brian was nowhere to be seen. Tank, if he was still here, was down in the basement. He would have liked the guy’s full name so he could run him through the system. As it was, he’d have to scan mug shots on the computer at the office in his free time, in the hopes that he’d stumble on the guy by chance.

He drained his beer and got up, walked outside as if for a smoke, leaned against his car in the parking lot and pulled out his phone, set it to the right channel. Out here, he could hear everything the bug was transmitting from the bar’s basement. Inside, it’d been too loud to monitor that, but everything got recorded, so he could go over it later tonight. Right now, all he wanted to do was check in, see if Tank was still down there.

“Is that the last crate?” somebody asked. Enough of the music upstairs filtered down to make the words difficult to make out, let alone identify the speaker.

Still, to Shep, it kind of sounded as if it might have been Tank.

“Yeah” came the response.

“You brought the empty bottles down?”

“Right here.”

“All right, boys, let’s fill ’em up, then.”

Sounded as if they were working with some homemade booze, maybe tequila distilled on the other side of the border, smuggled up here and sold as the real deal. Whenever a genuine bottle of booze ran out, it would be refilled with the cheaper stuff, again and again. But sold at regular prices, it would increase Brian’s profits twofold, at least.

Another thing Tank could be put away for, and hopefully the manager, too. That cheered Shep a little. He’d hated Brian’s hands on Lilly.

He listened some more, hoping either Doug Wagner’s or the Coyote’s name would come up. They didn’t. The good old boys in the basement only talked about booze and women. They had very limited focus as far as that went.

After a few minutes, he turned off the phone and walked inside to check on Lilly.

He wondered what her FBI colleagues would say if they could see her now. The old cowboy had been right. She was plenty hot up on that stage in that lacy black tube top and sky-high heels. She kept the crowd going.

She sang another set, freshened up, then came to have a drink with him. Water for her. He slowly nursed another beer.

“Looks like you’re having fun up there,” he said.

“No point in singing to be miserable.”

She had a point. “Do you have to wear so...little?”

She laughed. “Brian wants me in less.”

One of these days, Brian would get what was coming to him, he thought morosely.

When she stood to go back up onstage, he figured he better not kiss her again, so he just patted her behind playfully. For appearance’s sake.

Another thing he would have to learn not to enjoy, because on the first run he enjoyed it way too much, unfortunately. He wondered if he could convincingly play her boyfriend without touching her.

Not likely. No man could keep his hands off a woman like her if she belonged to him.

Halfway through the set, he got up again. This time he walked out through the back door. If the basement had any windows, he hadn’t seen them from the front. He wanted to check in the back.

Two ranch hands and a tattooed young kid from the basement were leaning against the wall smoking, listening to the music filtering through the door, discussing rodeo horses. Shep stood a distance away from them, turned so he could examine the back side of the building. Old brick, no windows on the main level or the basement. The building was probably built way before there were building codes requiring outside basement exits.

He pulled the pack of smokes he kept as a prop in his shirt pocket, took a cigarette and shoved it between his lips, but didn’t light it.

A couple of other places had back doors to the alley, a pizza shop on one side, dry cleaner’s on the other, a few more down the row. They all had security cameras above their doors, except for The Yellow Armadillo.

With tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of liquor behind the bar, and more in the basement, their lack of concern over security was interesting. Unless they wanted no recording of who came and went through the back.

The light above the door was maybe twenty watts, not illuminating a hell of a lot. He wouldn’t mind coming back here later tonight, after the bar was closed and everyone had left, to gain entry to that basement and see what Tank was hiding in those back rooms. He shifted on his feet.

The tattooed kid looked his way. “You need a light?”

Shep spit the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel. “Trying to quit. Thanks anyway.”

“Good luck with that,” the kid said. “I try at least once a year.”

The ranch hands gave him sympathetic nods.

“You here for the rodeo?” one of them asked.

“You bet. Shep,” he said, introducing himself. “Down from Pennsylvania. You?”

“Brandon here might try.” One of the ranch hands nodded toward the skinny, tattooed guy.

That was good. Shep needed names. “How about you two?”

“Nah, Nick has a bad back. I got a bad horse.” The man gave a sour laugh.

“I hear you.” Shep shook his head. “Some days I think mine is the devil’s spawn.”

Nick gave a rueful laugh. “I had one like that. Almost broke my neck.”

Shep gestured toward the bar’s back door with his head. “So this place okay? My girl is singing.”

“New chick?” Brandon asked. “Best keep an eye on her. Crowd can get rowdy.”

He nodded. “How about the manager? Better pay her. Last gig she had, they stiffed her more weekends than not.”

“Brian’s cool. He don’t mind paying under the table, either. Save some on taxes, if she’s interested.”

The manager sounded as if he didn’t mind breaking any number of laws whatsoever. Could be Tank reported to the Coyote, could be he reported to Brian. What if Brian was the direct link?

Something they had to figure out in a hurry.

* * *

T
HEY
DID
MAKE
some progress with Tank. Shep put a rush order on the prints and they got the results back early the next afternoon.

“Zeb Miller, with a rap sheet as long as the Rio Grande,” the lab tech said on the other end of the line and sent the file over.

Shep took it into Ryder’s office.

“Wish we had time to follow him for a while, see who he meets up with.” Ryder shook his head as he looked over the man’s impressive list of offenses. “But we just don’t. Why don’t you go pick him up? Let’s see if we can crack him.”

They had to try—didn’t really have a choice.

But Tank wasn’t at the address listed as his rental and couldn’t be tracked down, not even with an APB on his vehicle. Worse, that night when Shep went back to The Yellow Armadillo, Tank didn’t seem to be there, either.

Maybe he had some sixth sense and got spooked. Or maybe he was on a run across the border and he’d be back later.

Shep settled in to watch the show. Mostly he watched the audience, keeping an especially close eye on Brian, who seemed to keep to his office tonight. There was no movement in the back hallway, nobody coming and going from the basement.

Lilly put on a hell of a show, once again. And as bad as watching her dance across the stage half-naked was, the breaks were worse. He thought he’d jump out of his skin every time she sat on his lap.

L
ILLY
CHANGED
AGAIN
during her last break and finished her bottle of water as she walked over to Brian’s office, trying to make progress in her investigation. She flashed a smile as if his groping had already been forgotten.

“I hate to ask for favors on my first night, but...” She winced. “I could really use a dressing room. I like changing between sets. Do you think it would be possible to find me a small place that’s private?”

He looked a lot less excited about her now that Shep was in the picture. He barely looked up from his paperwork. “People always used the bathroom before. That’s all we got. This ain’t no fancy place.”

“It doesn’t have to be fancy. Last place I worked at let me use a storage room. How about a quiet corner down in the basement?”

He did look up at that and shook his head. “If you want, you can change in my office.”

With him right there, no doubt. “You got glass in your door,” she pointed out.

“The better to keep an eye on people coming and going.”

She raised a teasing eyebrow. “You don’t trust your staff?”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

His cell phone rang and he picked it up, pointed at the door for her to close it. She did, then meandered toward the basement door, but just as she could have tried the lock, Brandon came down the hall, so she stepped away.

He flashed her an unhappy look, unlocked the door and went through. She could hear him lock it behind him.

Great.

She pulled out her cell phone to check the time. She had five more minutes before her next set. She couldn’t go downstairs now. And she better clear out before Brandon came back. She didn’t want him to think she was loitering for a reason and say something to Brian.

She didn’t want to go sit by the bar. If she stood alone, guys hit on her. If she went to sit with Shep at his table, he’d feel the need to act like her boyfriend and she wasn’t sure how much more of that she could take tonight.

She walked up front, grabbed another bottle of water, then walked outside through the front door for some fresh air. The smokers usually hung out in the back alley, so the front was nice and quiet.

The street was mostly deserted at one in the morning, the row of small shops closed, but not darkened. She glanced down the rainbow of neon lights over the entrances. She was used to big-city lights in D.C., and this was nowhere like that, yet small Texas towns did have their own charm, she thought.

Movement at the car shop on the corner caught her eye. She couldn’t see at first what exactly was going on. The repair shop didn’t have their lights on like the stores. It was almost time for her to go back in, but on an impulse, she stayed and waited another minute.

There was that movement again. And when she looked more carefully, she could see a man coming from the repair shop carrying a box and watched as he put it into the back of a black pickup. A passing car illuminated him for a second.
Brandon.

She pulled into the shadows so she wouldn’t be seen if he looked this way.

It was definitely him—the same height, width, the same lumbering movement. How on earth had he gotten over there?

Only one explanation came to mind. The Yellow Armadillo had a tunnel, some kind of underground connection to the car shop. They definitely needed to find a way down there.

Music filtered through the door as the band inside began to play. She hurried back in.

She didn’t have a chance to catch Shep on her way to the stage. He was talking to some guys up by the bar. But as soon as her last set was done, she searched him out in the dispersing crowd so she could tell him her theory about a tunnel.

“We have to know for sure what’s going on in the basement. I want to go down there. Tonight,” she clarified.

They stopped next to his pickup after walking out together. “Let the team handle it,” he said.

“We’re here right now. The last stragglers will be gone in ten minutes. No better time than the present. There’s a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the other side of the corner, past the mechanic. We could pretend to be heading there to pick up something.”

He looked down the street, then back at her. “Okay.” And then he reached out and wrapped his arm around her.

Oh, man, was that necessary? Him touching her unsettled her every single time. But she supposed they had to stay in character in case anyone saw them—people were still leaving the bar—so she snuggled against him. “Find out anything useful tonight?”

He shrugged. “Nothing spectacular. Got a couple of names to run through the system. If there’s a tunnel, you definitely win.”