SPY IN THE SADDLE (9 page)

Good. She liked winning. She liked the idea of him coming to see her at last as an independent, competent woman, as opposed to Miss Disaster, a total screwup.

They walked and, even as they carefully scanned the few people lurching to their cars, they pretended to be looking at each other. Not really a hardship for her. He was totally hot. He always had been.

She couldn’t see any movement at the car shop now as she gave the place a quick glance. The black pickup was gone. Brandon had probably driven off with whatever he’d been carrying in that box. Considering it was past 2:00 a.m., he might not come back tonight.

That would serve their purposes just fine, she thought. It’d be easier to snoop if nobody was around.

They walked past the car shop then entered the small convenience store. Shep headed to the back. “How about some iced tea?”

But while they were picking through the cooler, Brian walked in.

He nodded at them as he went for smokes, then ended up behind them at the checkout line. He managed a leering look at her legs. “Hey.”

Shep nodded at him and added a handful of condoms to their purchases from the display before wrapping his arm around her waist. “Hey yourself.”

Not too subtle, was he?

She thought about jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow as he paid then stuffed the foil packets into his back pocket, but all she could do was smile as she did her best to act her cover. She pulled him over by the magazine rack on their way out, pretending to be picking through the tabloids, so Brian would leave first. She wanted the manager gone so they could take a better look at the mechanic shop on their way back, unobserved.

His car was parked in front of the store. He got in and drove away.

They walked outside into the balmy night at last, and she looked after the car as it disappeared around the corner.

“Was that necessary?” She hissed the words under her breath. That many condoms? Really?

He flashed her an overly innocent look.

Fine. Whatever. She pushed back the aggravation and focused on the job. “I want to walk down the side street so we can check out the repair shop from the side and back. I want to get a better feel for it.” A better feel for how to get in.

He looped his arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to him as they’d started out.

She would have preferred some space—her brain worked better that way—but to shake off his embrace would have meant admitting that he was affecting her. Instead, she draped her arm around his waist. Two could play this game.

The side street was badly lit and completely deserted. They kept an eye on the houses across the road while checking out the car shop from this angle. The shop didn’t have a single light on in the back, either; it was completely dark. They cut through the parking lot, as if taking a shortcut to the Laundromat behind the mechanic’s.

The shop’s back door looked like a simple deal, with a simple lock, she saw when they got close enough. She stopped and turned into Shep, as if for a kiss, lifting her face to his. “I have a set of lock picks on me,” she said as her body tingled from the contact.

“I’d feel more comfortable if I took you back to your hotel and came back here on my own.”

Did he even realize that he was insulting her? “I’m an FBI agent.”

His lips flattened for a second. “I know.”

“I don’t need your permission to do my job. And I certainly don’t need your protection, although I’d be stupid not to accept backup. I’m going in.”

He held her gaze, a pained look on his face. “When did you become so pushy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A lone cowboy meandered down the side street. They had to wait until he passed out of sight. They kept their hands on each other, playing the part of lovers who’d stopped for a quick kiss and some sweet words.

Shep bent his head a little closer as they gazed at each other. “Why didn’t you stay with music?” he asked out of the blue. “You sure know how to rock a stage.”

Where had that come from? “Are you hoping I’ll give up the FBI and go on tour?” A smile tugged at her lips. “You want me gone that bad?”

“You have no idea,” he said with feeling.

A quick laugh escaped her. “I like the FBI. Not that I want to do it forever.”

“What else?”

“I’d like to work with foster youth someday. I have some ideas about how to help kids who might be going down the wrong path.” She gave a small shrug. “I have some experience there.”

His face turned somber as he watched her. “Seventeen and all alone in the world. You shouldn’t have run away.”

“Stop saying that. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t.” She tilted her head. “I’m good at what I do, too. You don’t have to worry about me.”

But he still hesitated another long minute before he said, “Okay. Let’s see if there’s an easy way into this place.”

The cowboy had long disappeared down the street.

She moved away from Shep. “You carrying?”

He nodded.

He probably had a small weapon in his boot, since she couldn’t see any bulges in his waistband behind his back.

“Me, too.” She’d gotten a dainty little thing for her purse, something any woman would carry. She’d left her government-issue weapon in her hotel room. She kept her bag behind the bar while she sang, where anyone could have gone through it. If anyone snooped, she didn’t want them to see anything that might give her away.

The back door was locked, but she made quick work of it.

He raised a dark eyebrow as they stepped inside. “You have a knack for this.”

“A skill I had before I ever entered law enforcement, to be fair,” she whispered back to him as they moved forward.

Three cars sat in the six-bay garage, no people in sight.

They moved along the wall, looking for a door that might lead down to the basement. Shep was the one to find it. Somebody had taped a piece of paper on the door that said W.C. OUT OF ORDER.

She worked the lock, again, nothing fancy. A super-security lock would have stood out, she supposed. She had it open within a minute. Instead of a bathroom, a staircase stretched down in front of them, dark and not very inviting.

He turned on the small LED light that hung from his keychain and went down first, past the rat droppings, then the mummified rat on the landing. She turned on her own keychain light and followed, closing and locking the door behind her in case they came out somewhere else. She didn’t want anyone to know that somebody had been through here.

The stairs led straight down into a narrow passageway. They followed it and found nothing down there but bare brick walls, no room for anything, really.

There were a couple of turns, two branches that led off to empty storage rooms. They followed the main tunnel.

“Probably built during Prohibition,” Shep said as they moved forward.

That would explain why it led to a bar.

Less than ten minutes passed before they reached another set of stairs, the tunnel still continuing beyond.

They went up, through the door at top, careful not to make any noise. The lights were off, but enough moonlight came through the windows to illuminate the place. They were in a waiting room with old plastic chairs and a scuffed reception desk.

Scribbled-over posters about the food pyramid decorated the walls. To their left a supply closet stood with its door half-open, the shelves stocked with bottles of disinfectant and boxes of bandages. They had reached some kind of a health clinic it seemed.

They hadn’t passed by one when they’d walked. Which meant the place had a different storefront. It was likely an illegal clinic, the cash-only type that asked for no ID and treated gunshot wounds without questions.

“Handy for the steroid pills,” Shep whispered, moving forward.

Right. He’d gotten some of those from Tank. Sounded as if Brian and his crew had a hand in a number of things. They apparently appreciated the efficiency of diversifying.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do criminal organizations,” she said, keeping her voice down. “Do you think Brian is stepping into the gap that was created when your team took out some of the local big dogs?”

She would have said more, but as she stepped after him, voices reached them.

They weren’t alone in the building.

Chapter Seven

Shep froze and held up a hand to alert Lilly, but from the look in her eyes, she’d heard the voices, too. There were at least two people in one of the back offices.

“How long are we supposed to sit around doing nothing?” a man asked in a deep, raspy voice. “I’m losing money every damn day.”

“Lie low is the word,” someone else answered. “You just cool your heels until the first.”

October first, Shep thought. They already knew that the Coyote had put everything on hold until then, probably to lull CBP into thinking smuggling was slowing. Then on the first, when all his minions started up business again, the sheer volume would overwhelm the border agents. In the chaos, the Coyote could slip his special cargo through without being detected.

Not if Shep and his team had anything to do with it.

“I have creditors to pay,” the man with the deeper voice said.

Lilly pulled away from Shep silently and pointed toward the half-open door of the supply closet. He nodded and moved after her, careful not to make any noise. They’d be out of sight in there in case anyone came out of that office, but they could still hear the conversation.

“Tell them to wait,” the other man answered.

The closet was pretty tight, shelves taking up most of the space. While Lilly was looking, trying to figure out how they could both fit, he simply pressed himself into the far corner, where he wouldn’t be seen even if they left the closet door half-open. They had to do that, leave everything the same so if the men came out, they wouldn’t notice anything out of place.

Lilly shot him a dubious look, then wedged herself into the remaining space, her back pressed tightly against him, the only way they’d both remain concealed.

Her soft scent in his nose was bad enough. He could have handled that, but other things... Her bottom was crushed against him, firm and round and everything he shouldn’t be thinking about.

Don’t move,
he said in silent prayer, trying his best to focus on the men who were still talking.

“I need one shipment tonight,” the deeper of the two voices was saying. “I have nothing. If I don’t provide the merchandise, my buyers will go to someone else and I lose them.”

“Put them off for a few days. Jonesing ain’t never killed nobody.”

“I’ve been playing that game for weeks. I need to give them something. I’m going over tonight.”

“The hell you are.” A chair scraped the floor, as though it were being shoved back.

“You gonna stop me?”

“If I have to.”

The sounds of a scuffle filtered from the back office, then suddenly a gunshot rent the night. Then came the sound of a body hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Shep gripped his gun. He could feel Lilly tense, going for her own weapon.

“Are we gonna get in trouble for this with the boss?” a new, younger voice asked inside the office.

“You just keep your mouth shut,” the deep-voiced man answered. “Dumb bastard thought he was gonna tell me what to do. Hell with that.”

“What are we gonna do with him?”

“Leave him. We got a long night ahead of us. Ricky’s on duty tonight at the border crossing. He won’t give us no trouble.”

Footsteps sounded, coming their way, boots scuffing on the tile floor. Shep held his gun ready in his right hand, grabbed Lilly’s hip with the left and pulled her even closer as he flattened himself tightly against the wall so they wouldn’t be discovered.

He couldn’t see anything from where he was. Maybe Lilly would catch a glimpse of the men. They each held their breath as the two walked by the supply closet.

The men didn’t go to the door that led down to the secret tunnel. They went to the clinic’s back exit that opened to the alley.

As soon as the door closed behind the men, Lilly and Shep hurried to the back door, but they didn’t open it until they heard a car start, and even then just enough to catch a glimpse of a black Chevy Blazer and its license plate.

Shep pulled out his phone and called it in. Since his pickup was at The Yellow Armadillo, a full block away, there was no way they could catch up to these two.

He turned back to Lilly, holding the line. “Did you see them?”

“The younger one was Brandon from the bar,” she said as she hurried away from him, back toward the room where the men had been arguing. “The other one I haven’t seen before.”

Shep passed that information on to the office. “They’re heading for the border-crossing station. They have a buddy there called Ricky.”

“We’ll follow them across, see who they make contact with,” Ryder said at the other end. “You go back to your place and take your break. You have a shift in the morning. Those of us who are on duty will handle this.” Ryder paused. “We’re getting close to something. When this goes down, I want everyone in top shape. Keith’s trip to San Antonio panned out. We know the target is one or more government buildings in Washington, D.C.”

“That’s a big step forward.”

“And we’ll take more until we get to the end of this. Now you go and take your break,” Ryder said before the line went dead.

Shep followed Lilly into the office where the men had been talking. She was taking pictures of a dead guy with her phone.

He filled her in on the news from Ryder before asking “Do we know who he is?” as he gestured at the body with his head.

“Jack Alexander. Local guy, according to the address on his driver’s license.” She put her phone away. “Do we call in the cops?”

“That would be the correct procedure,” he agreed.

“But we won’t?”

“You’re learning.” He felt a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Let the staff find him in the morning. We don’t want to call attention to the fact that we were here. Any objections?”

“I’m not here to make your job more difficult. I’m here to help.”

He hesitated a few seconds as he watched the earnest expression on her face. “All right.”

She nodded and gave him a smile, a sincere one, not like the ones she flashed around at the bar. “Thanks for treating me like a real partner. I appreciate it.”

She looked genuinely pleased, as if he’d given her a gift. Her eyes were all lit up and shining at him. Some unnamed emotion stirred inside his chest.

“Let’s go,” he said and turned from her, going back to the basement.

She padded after him, making sure she locked the door behind them.

They followed the tunnel to a sudden stop where iron bars with a massive lock barred their way. Lilly’s picks failed here miserably. One bent nearly in half.

“We need more to get through here.” She stood after twenty minutes of hard trying.

“TNT?” he suggested.

“My kind of guy.” She laughed, but then she shook her head. “Come on, cowboy, we’re not going to reach the bar through here tonight.” She walked back in the direction they’d come from, keeping her LED light in front of her.

He had a hard time directing the light from his. It kept illuminating her long legs in the short skirt she’d worn onstage. He refused to look at the winding flowers of her tattoo as it disappeared under the fabric.

She was talking about the tools she needed and wondering aloud if she could get them tonight so they could come back before the stores opened in the morning. Probably not, she concluded and sounded damned disappointed.

And he realized miserably that he liked this new Lilly Tanner. She was exactly the kind of woman that a man like him could fall in love with.

He couldn’t afford to let his guard down for a minute.

* * *

T
O
L
ILLY
’
S
RELIEF
, they got back to his pickup without trouble and without running into anyone they knew from the bar.

Shep remained silent. Almost brooding, which was kind of strange, since he wasn’t the brooding type. He was the type to take action if something bothered him.

They stopped by the pickup and he looked at her, his gaze searching her face. Was he still upset that she was here, that she’d been inserted into the middle of his op?

“I can just walk back to the hotel,” she offered. If he needed space, she could certainly give him some—at least tonight—even if she couldn’t withdraw from the op. And a brisk walk might help as she processed the latest developments.

“The hotel is on my way.” And then he reached out, took her arm and backed her against the truck in one smooth move, and kissed her.

And it was
not
one of those lips-brushing-against-lips almost-kisses he’d planted on her before for show. This time he kissed her as if he meant it. With the adrenaline of tonight’s work still coursing through her, she responded, her arms going around his neck as his hands grabbed for her hips.

Instant heat.
Or maybe not so “instant,” considering. The moment had years’ worth of teenage fantasies behind it. If the sudden, overwhelming need was more than just a blast from the past, she didn’t want to think about it.

His right hand slid up to her breast and cupped it.
Zing.
She moaned in pleasure and he used the advantage. His tongue swept in to kiss her deeper.

Oh.

All her senses were buzzing, her body screaming that she wanted this. And maybe she somehow telepathically communicated that, because the next thing she knew he was opening the pickup’s door and she was sideways on the passenger seat as he stood in front of her, her legs wrapped around his waist.

Her hands slid up his side, to his back. He had a great body, the kind that made a woman want to run her fingers all over it. Since he didn’t look as if he would protest, she did. The thin shirt he wore didn’t provide much impediment. She could feel every muscle, every hill and valley.

He was hard everywhere, and he ground that hardness against her, against the aching need where her thighs met. Heat rushed to that spot. Another moan escaped her throat.

Which was beyond strange because she normally wasn’t the zero-to-sixty-in-three-seconds kind of girl.

But his hand on her breast was doing amazing things, his clever fingers teasing her nipple into a hard knob. She ached for him there, too. She ached for him everywhere.

In the middle of a stupid parking lot, on the front seat of a pickup. So not her. She might have been acting the tough rock chick onstage, but in the bedroom...she was more the type to turn out the light when it came to intimacy.

And none of this was real, in any case. They’d been pretending to be a couple all night, touching and kissing. Neither of them had significant others. Both could have used some release. But she couldn’t be casual with Shep. The last thing she wanted was to start falling for him again.

She didn’t trust anyone with her heart, and especially not Shep Lewis, who’d already rejected her once.

“This is crazy,” she mumbled against his lips. “We have to stop.” Before it was too late.

He immediately pulled away and stared at her, breathing hard.

She tried to gather some shreds of sanity about her. “We should...” Should what? She couldn’t finish it, because what her body and her mind wanted were two different things.

And after a long moment, he stepped away.

The shock of separation had her body protesting. She pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t beg him to come back to her. She pulled her legs into the car.

His expression darkened as he watched her, his eyes narrowing with suspicion as if he was thinking maybe she’d somehow tricked him into the kiss.

“I—” She closed her mouth, not sure, again, how to proceed.

He walked around to the other side, got into the car and slammed the door behind him. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. It’s not going to happen again, dammit.”

That should have made her feel reassured. Instead, it made her feel disappointed. They drove to the hotel in the most awkward silence she could imagine.

Instead of dropping her off at the front door, he pulled into the parking lot.

“I’m coming up,” he told her as he shut off the engine.

Judging by the dark clouds that sat on his face, his visit wouldn’t be to finish what they’d started.

She got out, more than ready to leave him and have some time to herself to recover. “We don’t have to hash this out tonight.” Or ever.

“We do. And I—” He hesitated, then pulled a folder from the backseat and came after her. “I meant to show you something.”

Did his team find information he hadn’t had a chance to share with her yet?

They went up in the elevator. This time it was just the two of them, nobody out this late, but he didn’t say a word to her until they got up to her floor and they were inside her suite.

“Things can’t go on like this,” he said at last, standing inside the door. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous, and it’s—”

“I can handle it.”

“Well, maybe I can’t,” he snapped, holding her gaze. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

By
this
he meant the attraction between them, she guessed.

“We’ll ignore it.” She wasn’t even sure if it was real. Did she really want him,
this
Shep, or was it something left over from the past?

“Because that’s worked so well until now.” A wry smile tilted up his lips. “The bar is a dangerous place. Brian is up to his neck in smuggling.”

“It’s just one last night. If we find a clue, it’d be worth anything. And you don’t have to worry about me. I’m an FBI agent,” she reminded him.

He shook his head. “I don’t seem to be able to catch up to that.”

Was that it? He came up to talk her into quitting and going home?

Anger lit a small flame inside her. He didn’t think she was good enough. For the job. Or for him. She stiffened her spine. Nobody ever thought she was good enough. Not her parents, who’d sold her for drugs, not the couple who bought her then threw her away, not the system she’d ended up in.

She stepped back. “You should go. It’s late.”

“Are you walking away from the bar?”

“I’ll do the job I came here to do, and I’ll thank you for not interfering.”

“Lilly—”

“Do you ever try to talk your teammates into taking it easy on their job and walking away from danger?”