In It For the Money

by Cathy Perkins

  “Do you trust me?” She leaned forward, her attention completely focused on him.

  He blinked at the tangent. “Trust has nothing to do with this.”

  “But it does.” She drew in a deep breath. “If we were married, would you trust me?”

  “What? Of course, I do. Would.”

  “So, that makes it real?” She flexed her hands. “A priest flips a magic switch with the power invested in him to make everything super rosy—and ka-bam, you start trusting me?”

  A frown pressed JC’s eyebrows into a scowl. “What are you talking about? No. There’s no magic switch.”

  “So, if we were married, you wouldn’t doubt me in what? Our marriage vows? Or would your trust be a bit broader?”

  He opened his mouth, but she rushed ahead. Events the past week—JC—had pushed her to the wall. Emotional filters be damned.

  “Why aren’t you giving me the same level of trust now? What’s the difference? The piece of paper?”

  “You want to throw that card?” His expression and tone grew incredulous. “Let’s turn it around. If we’d gotten together—if we were married—would you trust me to do the right thing?”

  “The right thing, according to your rules. Things are no different now than when we were together in college. You think your way is the only way. You keep defining the rules. What you think is the way things are supposed to be. You keep telling me about the kind of relationship you say you want. One that’s all sparkles and rainbows and we never disagree about anything because we have all this love, trust and respect. But it takes a piece of paper to make that happen? Like that paper makes a difference? Look at Mom and Dad, they had the church wedding, the white dress, the paper, and it still fell apart. And my life is frickin’ falling apart as a result.”

  “People get divorced, Holly. Your dad is having a classic mid-life crisis. It has nothing to do with us. Right here.” Both JC’s forefingers stabbed at the floor. “Right now. And if you think your life is falling apart, why aren’t you talking to me about it?”

  “Because you’re so open to those conversations? Have you heard a word I just said? What you say isn’t what you do. Actions tell me a lot more than words ever do.”

  He reared back, an offended expression marring his face. “How are my actions not the same? I’ve always acted on what I believe.” He tapped his chest, then leaned forward, every muscle in his body tense. “Look, we agree about family and loyalty and trust. It’s only when we get to our jobs that we end up on opposite side of every damn issue.”

  “Because you always put your job first.”

  His hands closed into fists. He hammered one on her desk. “We—law enforcement. And yes, that includes the DEA—”

  “Yet another thing you knew and didn’t tell me,” she interrupted.

  “Like you told me about working with them? They were real impressed with the blond, female forensic accountant, by the way.” He pushed away from her desk. “Your analysis may have focused on one element, but we’re trying to sort through multiple layers.”

  “Oh—”

  His hand rose, a finger pointed at her. “You have to trust me. Right now, you’re just putting yourself at risk. And yeah, that totally pisses me off. If you know, or think you know something, give me the information. Let me do my job. Let me work through the proper channels. I’m trying to do the right thing. If you’d trusted me, and let me handle the investigation, Tate wouldn’t be hurt. You wouldn’t be a target.”

  “I’m a grown woman. I don’t need you telling me what to do.” She clenched hands into fists to stop their shaking. “Why am I even trying? You won’t listen. If you’d trusted me and followed up on the information I did give you—that Tate gave you—I wouldn’t have tried to get that concrete factual evidence you insist you have to have before you’ll do a single damn thing. I asked you about Mazur. You already knew about the sabotaged parts. And since you’re talking to the DEA, you also knew about the drugs and Mazur’s probable connection to them. Thanks for sharing.”

  JC tensed, as if he was going to dispute her assessment.

  She cut him off and kept going. “Those altered truck parts are the key to this mess.”

  “Tate’s parts,” he interrupted. “Parts he was using to bring in drugs.”

  “You don’t know that! The DEA don’t know who the local contact is. But instead of listening to me, instead of following up on who actually tampered with the truck parts, you went chasing after some flimsy evidence you thought implicated Tate. Evidence that’s pure bullshit. If you’d done your job, Tate wouldn’t be hurt. So don’t you dare lay that at my door.”

  JC’s face could’ve been carved from stone. “Let’s set the investigation aside for now. If we don’t have trust as part of our foundation, what do we have?”

  “It’s not just trust. It’s respect. I don’t think you respect me as a woman. As a person. What I do. What I’ve achieved. What I can do. If you can’t do that—respect me—then I’m not sure we have anything other than attraction.”

  He looked at her for a long, long, silent moment. “I can’t do this right now.”

  Tell me I’m wrong. That what we have is more than just attraction.

  Her heart on a platter, she returned his silent gaze.

  Words crowded her throat—When can you discuss it? What are we going to do about it?—but the next move belonged to JC.

  His lips pressed into a thin line. Without saying another word, he rose, left her office and very quietly closed the door behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  She’s Got a Problem (Fountains of Wayne)

  Holly was wading through a refinancing analysis on a series of real estate transactions when her office desk phone rang.

  She held her breath, part of her hoping it might be JC. Was their argument the crash and burn they’d been building up to this week? Or a chance to finally clear the air and start working on their relationship?

  The cops wouldn’t have anything on the rabbit sender yet, and the hospital wouldn’t call her if Tate’s condition changed. They’d call Uncle Mark.

  She sighed. An internal ring, the incoming call had to be work-related.

  Please don’t let it be another problem.

  She picked up the phone.

  “You have a visitor,” Tracey’s tone was neutral. Then the pitch of her voice changed. “It’s that guy who was here earlier. Tall, dark and dangerous.”

  Holly could envision the receptionist turning away from Frank and speaking directly into the headset microphone. Holly wasn’t completely certain how Tracey had perfected the technique, but it effectively kept a visitor from hearing her side of a conversation.

  “Why does he keep coming here? Should I call JC?” Uncertainty and concern threaded Tracey’s voice.

  “No, it’s okay.” As unsettled as things were with JC, his hearing about Frank’s visits would cause another blow up. Not that JC apparently cared about her one way or the other anymore. JC simply couldn’t stand the guy.

  Moments later, Holly ushered Frank into the same conference room they’d used on Friday. Closing the door behind her, she asked, “What’s going on?”

  He turned the cowboy hat in his hands. The thing was becoming part of his identity.

  Weird.

  “I met with the DEA agents this morning.” His tone was neutral, offering no clue as to why he was there.

  “And?” Surely, the agents hadn’t been advised about the rabbit package. Even if they were told, she could envision Penick saying, “Not our problem.”

  “There are three of them now.” A grin lit Frank’s face. “I thought at first they might be bringing in a new face. Usually those guys don’t do long-term undercover. Too many lies to keep straight.” The grin broadened. “Probably be more before it’s all over.”

  “Agents or lies?”

  “Both.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” He definitely liked the DEA more now than he had at the
ir original meeting.

  “The DEA put a guy undercover in the Quality Distributing warehouse. Short-term,” he added with a wink.

  “Super Agent mentioned he could do that.” She crossed her arms and cocked a hip against the conference table.

  “Another truck unloaded at the warehouse yesterday.”

  “I know. George—”

  She stopped short of saying George had quantified the inventory shortfall. Close to eleven percent was missing, according to the weight of the inventory shipped versus what could be located in the warehouse. With that task completed, he’d authorized resuming operations and bringing in the new stock.

  She had a feeling George would hold this incoming shipment in a segregated area until he’d had a chance to inspect every pallet. If the bad guys were bringing in drugs in the car parts, she bet the DEA agents would be super excited to hear about George’s inspection plan.

  Frank widened his stance. “Making sure you and I are on the same page. Last night, the target—”

  She lifted an eyebrow. Aren’t we being all spy-agency? “The target?”

  “I can’t tell you exact who the agents are looking at. So, yeah. The target. Anyway, the target moved part of the new inventory.”

  The target list had to include Mazur. Who else? The DEA better not have Tate on that list. Given that Tate was still in the hospital, he sure wasn’t moving inventory last night. “Wait a minute, the inventory was moved? The new delivery?” She shook her head. “George is gonna be pissed.”

  So much for segregating and inspecting it at the Quality warehouse.

  “I thought it was especially weird, moving it after hours.” Frank tossed a glance at her. “The DEA weren’t interested in the car parts themselves, but I followed the guy moving the parts. He took them to another warehouse outside Pasco. I can’t think of a legitimate reason to move the shipment, since there’s plenty of room at the first warehouse. I talked to Penick and he agrees it’s odd.”

  She folded her arms. “Oh, so my tip yesterday wasn’t as worthless as Super Agent Penick said.”

  Frank spun the cowboy hat, then placed it on the table. “He’d never admit where ‘he’ got the idea to place an agent inside the Quality warehouse.”

  “What a guy.”

  “Now the DEA agents are wondering if maybe the drugs were in that part of the new shipment—the part that was moved. They worked with the local cops to stop a van leaving the Quality warehouse this morning. They could get into the truck for a traffic stop easier than getting probable cause to go into the second warehouse. All they found in the van was what appeared to be legit car parts.”

  “Local delivery?”

  “Looked like it.”

  She paced across the small room. “But if the drugs are hidden inside the car parts, wouldn’t they look legit?”

  “I don’t have all the details on the van search.” Frank scratched his temple, ruffling a bit of hat-hair. “But that late night transfer is raising questions. A judge just signed off on a search warrant for the second warehouse.”

  Multiple thoughts competed for her attention. If the local cops had handled the traffic stop of the van or were being brought in for a raid at the warehouse outside Pasco—the third of the Tri-Cities—then the Franklin County Sheriff’s department—JC’s agency—would have been involved. And if the DEA had been coordinating with the sheriff’s department since they got to town, that was undoubtedly how JC knew about her connection to the DEA.

  And damn them for ratting her out to him.

  On another level she wondered about the second warehouse outside Pasco, and what might be stored there. Then again, what exactly was Frank telling her and why was he at her office?

  She turned and faced him. “Okay. And?”

  “The DEA is serving the search warrant to see if the second warehouse is where they’re offloading the drugs. Since Cascade Precision’s your client and I hear you’re having some trouble with the inventory, I thought you might like to come along.” A smile lit his face. “Who knows, we might find the rest of your car parts.”

  A sparkle of interest spiraled through her chest. She knew she shouldn’t get directly involved with the DEA’s operation. She’d done her bit for their investigation. And JC would kill her—not that he had the right to say anything about what she did or where she went. Especially not right now.

  Curiosity won. “How? We can’t go on the raid with them.”

  She wasn’t being petty or tweaking JC’s nose by going to the warehouse with Frank, of all people. And it wasn’t really blurring the line on her professional responsibility to George. What if the missing inventory was in the second warehouse? Finding it would take at least one problem off her giant stack of issues.

  “We can watch,” Frank said. “Innocent bystanders. They aren’t expecting trouble, just a quick in and out with the drug dog and her handler.” He looked as eager as a kid waiting on summer break to start.

  She bit back a smile. “Let’s do it.”

  She grabbed her jacket and purse and returned to the lobby. She stopped beside the reception desk. Tracey looked up.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Holly told her.

  Tracey’s lips were pinched in a disapproving line, but she didn’t say a word. She might be the office mom, but she wasn’t Holly’s mother.

  Holly followed Frank to his black Jeep.

  Let the games begin.

  Then, please God, let them end.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Watching the Detectives (Elvis Costello)

  A DEA agent stood at the warehouse office door—a second warehouse located outside the Pasco city limits. A Quality Distributing location that Holly was fairly certain George knew nothing about. The agent handed over the search warrant, and men and women, along with a search dog, filtered into the building.

  Holly decided the low-key approach was an attempt to not tip off Tattoo Guy—who might or might not be Mazur—and whoever he worked with. If there was nothing here, the DEA wouldn’t want the bad guys to know they were on to them. Of course, if any of the other people currently in the warehouse were in on the scheme, the undercover agent’s cover was probably blown.

  Holly stood beside Frank’s Jeep and watched. She felt more comfortable in his presence than she ever had, even when she’d known him in Seattle before he got all weird and stalky.

  “Anybody inside that place is going to know exactly what’s going on,” Frank muttered.

  She turned and gave him a questioning glance.

  “The dog. Who brings a dog—or any animal—into a business? Other than the obvious, like a blind person’s service dog.”

  “We had a pig at Desert Accounting once.” She crossed her arms, leaned against the car and waited.

  It took a nanosecond.

  “Why?”

  She gave a quick recap of the high school fundraiser. Desert Accounting had been the lucky recipient of the pig because one of her staff was dating the advisor of the Future Farmers club.

  “What would you do if I sent a pig to the casino?” she asked with a grin.

  He laughed. “Nothing. If you can’t take a joke...”

  She laughed with him. Inside, she wondered, could JC still take a joke? He’d turned the tables on her by sending the pig to a guy she’d causally dated—after she’d forwarded the animal to the sheriff’s department. What JC had done had been clever, but was it funny?

  Back in college, JC used to claim his initials stood for Just Crazy. What had happened to his sense of humor? She’d seen flashes of it that weekend. Anymore, it seemed his name should be Just Cranky or maybe Just Conservative.

  Maybe she should send the llama to the sheriff’s department and find out.

  Assuming she was going to stay in Richland.

  And stay involved with him.

  She watched the agents who were visible through the open bays of the warehouse. “I was thinking…”

  “Yeah?” Frank glanced at her, t
hen returned his attention to the warehouse activity.

  “How big are Fentanyl tablets?”

  He shrugged. “Small.”

  “How many in a pound?”

  “Depends on what they cut it with and what kind of pill press they use.” He rocked his hand. “Maybe a hundred.”

  “The struts have a three-inch diameter.” She stretched her hands to the height of the cylinder. “How many pills do you think they could stuff inside it?”

  His eyes measured the dimensions. “You could easily fit two thousand in there.”

  “So, twenty pounds.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “I think I just found our inventory shrinkage.”

  “The drugs.” He nodded. “Should’ve thought of that sooner.”

  She’d suspected the drugs were moved inside the empty strut cylinders—basically heard the DEA and JC confirm that suspicion—but she hadn’t done the math before.

  “No reason for you to worry about it. The inventory is my—George’s—problem, not yours.”

  The dog trotted out of the building, followed by her handler. “Nothing,” the agent called.

  When Frank picked up some invisible signal it was okay to enter, Holly climbed the stairs beside the loading dock and followed him through the open bay door. A walled-off office space sat immediately to the right of the warehouse man-door. To her surprise, Mikhail stood at the office entrance talking to one of the agents. Frank stepped toward them with her in tow.

  “I told you so,” Mikhail ranted. “There are no drugs in here. All these DEA people swarming through my warehouse. You just screwed up my reputation for nothing. I heard every one of the local stations has a news truck headed over here.”

  “We’ve completed our search.” The female agent kept a neutral, professional tone. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “Cooperation? I’ve cooperated with you people every step.” Two red spots lit Mikhail’s high cheekbones. His hands were clenched at his side. “Was this really necessary? It’ll be all over the news. You said you’d keep me clear if I helped you.”