The Chop Shop. He just had to find it. Find the place, find the evidence, then…well, evidence without a warrant wasn’t going to put Buford in jail. But if Colt played his cards right, he could get his stepfather to talk. If Buford gave over the explosives he’d taken from the back of the stolen mob vehicle, then Raymond Barnetti’s people in Chicago would have no reason to keep after Shelby.
They’d have to call it a loss.
Which is why he spent every day of the rest of his administrative leave on the case. Studying aerial maps. Making lone forays into the woods to explore roads that went no where. Trailing Buford Baker’s enterprises like he was born to do it.
Because he was sure he was.
“Welcome back, Special Agent Marbray,” the chief said, dropping a manilla folder on his desk. Inside were the official papers that cleared Colt of any wrongdoing of the recent shooting of two lowlifes that’d held a gun to his woman’s head.
Not that Shelby was his woman…she’d made that plain.
“Your service weapon,” the chief added, sliding the piece to Colt across the desktop. He was glad to have it back; had felt naked without it these past days, searching around the hills of Boone County for a chop shop he knew was out there, somewhere. “So let me ask you,” the chief said, slipping into a chair by his desk and pulling it close and confidential. “I know I said it wouldn’t do any good to send you to a counselor…but do I need to worry about the fact that you put a shotgun hole the size of Texas in your own bedroom door?”
Goddamn it, Colt thought. “No, but you might have to worry about me if I were to find out that you think I didn’t have just cause for that.”
The chief gave him a long hard look. “Sheriff Roscoe said there weren’t any motorcycle tracks in your drive.”
“It was dark and he didn’t look,” Colt replied, mad enough to spit out the toothpick in his mouth. Didn’t she know how it was in Shiloh? The Sheriff was an incompetent on Buford Baker’s payroll…
The chief sighed, leaned back, scraped at the sensible beige nail polish on her thumbnail. Then she said, “You were born in Boone County.”
Colt stiffened. “Shiloh township, born and raised. What’s your point?”
“You know these people,” she drawled. “You got a history.”
“Again, what’s your point?”
The chief leaned in close and speared him with her eyes. “My point, Marbray, is that I used to be like you. Young. Eager to prove myself. Thinking I was God’s gift to law enforcement…”
“Is this the part where you tell me that I’ve gotta bide my time, keep my head low, respect my elders and wait for the wisdom that experience provides?”
The chief sucked at her teeth. “Wouldn’t do any good to tell you a thing like that. You’re too stubborn to hear it. So instead, I’m going to tell you what we both know. And that is two soldiers from a Chicago mafia outfit don’t randomly turn up dead in a West Virginia bar. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. So if you say you know who lit the match, I’m gonna believe you.”
Colton felt something strange in his chest. Something that kinda squeezed like love, but felt like redemption. Holy shit. Did he just hear the chief right? She was gonna believe him. After being treated like a screw up at the only job he’d ever wanted to do in his life, he had his badge back and his chief’s trust.
And it felt pretty damned good.
But still, he was used to living a life of disappointment, so he asked, “But you’re going to tell me that we need to leave it to the locals?”
“Nah. Out-of-state organized crime, plus one of my own agents involved in a shoot? Oh, I think we’re going to get involved,” she said, rising to her feet. “Sounds like fun. But let’s do this right, okay? I’m going to go down to Shiloh myself with agents Weller and Campos.”
Goddamn it. He knew there was a catch. “You’re giving my case away to those—”
He shut up when he saw the warning in his chief’s eyes.
“Marbray. I’m taking a special interest in your case. I’m putting two agents on it who don’t have a vendetta against Buford Baker. But I’ll make it up to you. I think you’ll like your next assignment.”
Colt glared, sure he wasn’t gonna like it. Sure he wasn’t gonna like it at all.
Then he glared harder when she said, “Turns out, I think your girlfriend really is in some danger. If Raymond Barnetti’s men went after Miss Baker once, they’ll try it again. So I’m putting someone on her. That’s you.”
Colt slammed a hand down on his desk. The idea was to flip Shelby into a government informant so that they could take her into some manner of protective custody. And he was exactly the wrong man for the job. “Jesus H. Christ, she won’t give me the time of day.”
“Not interested in your romantic problems,” the chief said, tapping her nails on his desk in a sign that she was almost through. “Shiloh born and raised, you said. So I’m trusting you. Use what you know and convince Shelby Baker to let you bring her in.”
Before Colt could even muster up a curse word, the chief’s sensible pumps clicked away from his desk as she called back, “You can thank me later!”
Which is how it was that Special Agent Colton Marbray came to be standing on the front porch of his neighbor’s farmhouse, knowing that this was going to be one of the more humiliating moments of his life.
Miss Annabelle came to the screen door wearing a bright pink apron, and a smudge of flour on her nose. “Why Colton Marbray, did you smell my award-winning pie baking all the way from your house and decide to beg an invitation to supper?”
“No, Ma’am,” he said, humorless, standing on her front porch, wishing for all the world he could be anywhere else—even if he could smell her pie in the oven, and it did smell heavenly. “I’m afraid I’m here on official business.”
“Well,” Annabelle said, her eyes glittering with mirth. “That sounds exciting. Did you come to arrest me?”
Sensing a bit more flirtation than humor, Colt cleared his throat. “Not unless you’re going to confess to a crime…”
Miss Annabelle smirked. “I might’ve jay-walked a few times on Main Street and broken a few hearts in my day, but I don’t suppose that rises to the notice of a federale.”
Much as he was coming to like Miss Annabelle, the longer this dragged out, the worse it was gonna be, so he just lowered his tone to all-official-like. “Do you know the whereabouts of Shelby Baker?”
He must not have said it right, because Annabelle laughed. “Since when did your looking after Shelby become the business of the United States Government?”
“Since a mobster put a gun to her head,” Colt said, deadpan. And Annabelle sobered. “We can’t find Shelby at the bar, or the Quick-Shop, or pretty much anywhere else in town where one might expect to find her. I was wondering if she was here.”
Just then, Colt heard Shelby’s laughter up by the stables. And when he looked, he saw her trying to feed a horse an apple while Huey sprayed the creature down from behind, sending a spray into the air that Shelby seemed to find exceedingly funny.
“That answer your question?” Annabelle asked, tilting her head in the direction of the stables, where Shelby tried to grab the hose from Huey and give him a hug.
For the love of God, were they actually dating?
Colt was gonna throw up…
Miss Annabelle unlatched the screen door, stepped onto the porch and hollered, “Shelby! You got a visitor, girl.”
“Be right there!” Shelby called, shaking out her wet hair as she came towards the house.
And for a moment, Colt’s heart seized in his chest.
Goddamn, but she was beautiful. And worse, she looked happy. Except for the times he had her under him, crying out his name, he’d seldom seen Shelby vulnerable or girlish. She was too tough for all that. But somehow, that plodding bastard Huey had not only made her laugh…he’d made her look happy. A realization that cut Colt to the quick when she rounded the corner, saw Colt, and that s
mile of hers turned to a scowl.
Shelby was instantly and powerfully infuriated to see him if those flared nostrils were any indication. “I thought I told you—
“Miss Baker,” Colt said, with as formal a tone as he could manage, half-tempted to pull his badge out just to make the point that he wasn’t here for any of the reasons she might think he was. “I’ve come on orders to take you into protective custody.”
Chapter Four
SHELBY
“Protective custody?” I asked, feeling a shiver go down my spine at the sight of Colt as grim-faced as I’d ever seen him, wearing his badge on his belt where I could see it, and his gun wasn’t far away. “What’s that mean? Am I under arrest?”
“It means that the federal government would like to assure your safety,” Colt said, not quite meeting my eyes. “And that would be best achieved at some distant locale…”
Something was wrong with the slope of his shoulders. The way he gave Huey the side-eye as he came up behind me, both of us dripping from having tried to give a bath to a horse. I’d always wanted a horse of my own when I was a kid, and riding lessons to boot, but my father had always insisted that the only horses worth having were those who pulled stuff, and since he had a tractor, what was the point?
So I’d spent some of my teen years at the Tidwell place, feeding the horses they kept there. It’s how I met Huey in the first place, and I’d tried to convince myself that it was romantic to go riding together now that we were grown up.
But now I felt not so grown up as I looked at Colt and recognized that posture—it was the way he always looked when he was trying to get one over on my father. I didn’t know what he was lying about this time, but he was lying about something. “And you’re the only agent they’ve got up there in Madison?”
“I don’t like it any better than you do Shel—Miss Baker.”
“Hey Colt,” Huey said, putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Something the matter?”
And the two men stared at each other in such a way as to make me feel like they might come to blows.
Fortunately, Miss Annabelle said, “Oh, my pie! Huey, come on in and help me get this out of the oven. It sounds like Colt and Shelby have some official business.”
Huey was usually quick to jump to his mother’s requests. He was sweet that way. But not this time. He stood there, by my side, like a stubborn mule. A wet stubborn mule, until I said, “It’s okay, Huey. Really.”
Reluctantly, Huey let go of my shoulder and walked up the steps. He gave Colt a tiny snarl before stepping inside. Then he stopped at the threshold. “Hey, Colt. Just remember, this time it’s my porch steps.”
Colt’s lips thinned to a flat line, but he nodded, then adjusted his hat.
The screen door banged shut, and we were alone.
“So what are you lying about now?” I asked Colt.
And the questions seemed to startle the truth out of him. “I’m not lying so much as exaggerating. Protective custody is for material witnesses, which you’re not. Yet. But you could be…”
“And you could be hit by a bus. In fact, I’m kinda hoping…”
But that was my own lie. Oh, I wished it were otherwise, but seeing Colton again, even after more than a week apart, still had the same effect on me as ever. He was like some kind of addiction I couldn’t kick and my whole body responded to him. It was all I could do to keep from reaching out and touching the scruff on his chin.
“Listen, I really am here to protect you, Shelby. It’s my job, and I just need you to let me do it. So let’s get your things, and I’ll take you—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, even as I grew more and more alarmed that his bosses, whoever they were, seemed to think I was still in danger. I didn’t think he was lying about that. “Definitely not as a material witness. But, hey, if you wanna protect me, knock yourself out.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, what girl doesn’t want her own big bad bodyguard?” I drawled, delighting a little bit in the way it made him uncomfortable. “You want to protect me? What’s stopping you?”
He reached for me with an easy intimacy that he had no right to. “Shelby—”
“I’m about to go on inside, get cleaned up, and have dinner with the Tidwells.” I moved out of the way of his long reach. “I’m sure they won’t mind you sitting out here on the porch, guarding the front door. Just in case.”
With that, I turned away from him, and slammed into the house, leaving him to stew on the porch. And wow, that felt good. Really good, until I was all cleaned up, and about to sit down to dinner, and Huey was holding out my chair for me like the gentleman that he was.
We’d spent pretty much every day of the past week together, on picnics, riding horses, drinking in the back yard by a camp fire and reminiscing about old times. Huey was self-deprecating and sometimes even a little bit funny. And now we were supposed to have dinner with his Momma. The kind of thing that was a prelude to becoming sweethearts.
I liked Huey. By god, I liked him a lot.
I just didn’t love him.
And I couldn’t keep my mind on him when Colton Marbray was sitting outside.
I guess Miss Annabelle felt the same way, because we only got part way into the meal before she fretted over a bowl of collard greens. “I can’t just leave him sitting out on the porch without anything to eat, Shelby. It ain’t mannerly.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll—I’ll take him a plate.”
And Huey, bless his heart, wiped his face with a napkin so that I wouldn’t see him scowl when I took a glass of iced tea and a plate of Miss Annabelle’s ham and greens out onto the porch where Colton was standing at the rail, staring at the road, looking for all the world like some old-fashioned gunslinger.
“Thought you might be hungry,” I said.
Colt looped his thumbs in his belt, and gave me an exasperated look over his shoulder. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am. Otherwise, do you think I’d let you stay?”
“The last time those mobsters came after you to get to your father, they sent two guys. This time, they’ll send more. And all that’s standing between you and them right now is me and my gun.”
“And Huey,” I said, just to piss him off.
It worked.
“Jesus H. Christ, Shelby. Huey couldn’t take out a three-legged deer with a machine gun!”
I rolled my eyes. “And you took out two men last time, all by yourself, so I feel pretty safe in your care, Special Agent.”
“Do you?” Colt asked, his expression softening. “Because you shouldn’t. And not for the reasons you’re thinking. I can take out some bad guys for you, but as many as I can shoot, the Chicago Mafia has more. You’re not going to be safe so long as your father’s holding onto those stolen explosives.”
“He said he’d take care of it,” I snapped, then realized too late that it sounded like an admission that my father had them in the first place, so I pinched my lips tight.
“Tell me where the chop shop is, Shelby. Or if you won’t tell me, we can play a game of hot and cold until I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Fuck you, Colt,” I said, slamming his ice tea down on the window ledge and shoving the plate toward his chest. “Here’s your goddamned dinner.”
He grabbed me by the wrist. “When are you gonna act smart, Shelby?”
That worked my last nerve. “You don’t think I’m smart?”
“I asked when you’re gonna act smart. I know you’re smart when you want to be. Brilliant with numbers as I recall. But it’s a skill that’s gonna be wasted in jail or in the hereafter, which is the only two places I can see you winding up at this rate.”
Years of resentments came bubbling up to the surface of my skin. “You don’t think I’m smart. You never did. Because you never think past black and white. You think it was stupid to go to work for my daddy?”
Colt’s jaw ticked. �
�You’re damned right!”
“Well, what should I have done, Colt? Go on. Tell me. You think there’s a job for me at the fryer at the Quick-Shop? You see lots of opportunity here in Shiloh?”
“You didn’t have to stay,” he snarled.
My hand shaking on the dinner plate, I replied as coldly as I could, “I guess I didn’t have to stay. You’re right. I guess I coulda been a teenaged runaway. I guess I coulda turned tricks to get the bus fare to take off. And I guess I coulda left your Momma sick and alone like you did, but one of us had to stay and hold her hand when she was dying.”
The way he stopped breathing, my words must’ve hit him like a bullet to the heart. And I wished I could’ve call them back. I was mad at him. Furious, really. But I hadn’t meant to go there. I hadn’t meant to cause him the agony I saw in his eyes now. His expression became an icy wall that I was quite sure would separate us forever.
And I felt so sorry for it I was sick to my stomach.
Chapter Five
COLTON
“First I can’t keep you away from her. Now you want a new assignment?” In the car next to him, the chief let out a long, exasperated breath.
“It’s not working out,” Colt said, chewing on a toothpick between his teeth as he kept his eye on the bar across the street. “Shelby’s not gonna give up information on her father. Not for me. Just like I know all her buttons, she knows mine, and she’s gonna keep pressing them to keep me away from the truth. She’s not gonna flip.”
“Maybe you’re not pressing the right buttons,” the chief said.
No, he guessed not. He’d pressed Shelby’s sexual buttons, that much was clear. But he wasn’t pressing the good buttons that’d make her trust him. And he wasn’t pressing the bad ones that would make her think that the only way to stay out of jail herself was to give up her father.
He could do that. He’d done it to turn informants before. But he couldn’t do it to Shelby. Not even as pissed as he was at her. He’d used her against her father, and she’d turned around and used his mother against him. He guessed maybe turn about was fair play. But it still smarted right down to the depths of his soul.
Stepbrother Breaks Bad: The Complete Series Page 10