When I’d originally met Ryder, he was undercover, using the name Seth Davis. I didn’t take it too well when I learned the truth after I’d already been out on a couple of dates with his alter ego. Darting a glance up at him, I saw him clench his jaw. He clearly didn’t think his fake name was as funny as mine.
However, he recovered quickly and held out his hand to her. “Nice to meet you, Laura,” he said, his voice low and husky.
Laura blushed and pointed to Su-Lin. “That’s Su-Lin.”
Ryder shook her hand. “Su-Lin. What a beautiful name.”
Su-Lin, who was flat-out ogling him, managed a “Hello.”
I’d forgotten what it was like to go places with him and have the other women in the room either drooling over him, staring daggers at me, or both.
Laura snapped out of his spell and said, “Newbies get bathroom duty.” She handed him a bucket of toilet-cleaning supplies.
I tried to keep my face passive as I watched Ryder’s eyes widen. He had no intention of cleaning anything, but even the thought of it seemed to gross him out. His unease wasn’t unwarranted. Those bathrooms were straight-up nasty.
“Brandi, you’re mopping floors tonight.” She rolled the mop bucket my way. “Show the new guy the ropes.”
“Will do,” I said.
Ryder gave the ladies one last dazzling smile before he followed me down the hall. Once we were out of earshot, he said, “You’re not planning on doing any actual cleaning, are you?”
“No, not really. I figured out a way to fake it. It’ll only take us a couple of minutes.”
“That’s what she said.”
I laughed. “I teed that one right up for you, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
In the men’s restroom, I had him splash some bowl cleaner in all the toilets, and I quickly sprayed down the sinks with disinfectant. We did the same thing in the ladies’ and set our cleaning supplies in the corner.
I said, “The smell should keep Laura happy for a while and off our backs. I’d like to take the list of employees from Tuesday morning and use it to look through their HR files. See if any of them had any documented incidents at work.”
“I was about to suggest that, but again, you’re way ahead of me,” he said, the hint of appreciation in his voice giving my investigative confidence a boost. “If you’ll give me the keys, I’ll take a look around the loading and receiving area.”
“I will as soon as I let myself into Gentry’s office. It’s down the hall.”
I opened Gentry’s office and then gave the keys to Ryder. I locked the door behind him, and he went off to snoop around.
I sat down at Gentry’s computer and perused the HR files for each employee on my list, delinquent or not. Several of them had been in trouble for being late. Others for drinking on the job, a big no-no for heavy-equipment workers. One of them had lost a finger, and another had slipped on a supposedly slick floor and broken his leg. After spending an hour dredging through a bunch of boring HR notes, only one employee stood out to me—a man named Ben Florence, who’d been one of those drinking on the job and had also had been reprimanded this spring for “borrowing” a couple of tools without asking. Hmm. Maybe he’d escalated into borrowing items from Wonderlich’s contraband shipments.
I printed out the screenshot of Florence’s transgressions and put it in my pocket, then had a thought—the purchase orders from Tuesday morning’s shipment were probably in the file cabinets. I could get the addresses of every delivery, which we might be able use to track down some contraband. Sneaking out of Gentry’s office and slinking down the hall, I slipped into the metal shop and found the files, then beat it back to Gentry’s office with them. I made a lovely spreadsheet with each “customer” and their address listed, then emailed a copy to myself, Maya, and Ryder. I printed it out as well, then shut down Gentry’s computer, put the purchase order files back where I found them, and went off in search of Ryder. He was in the ladies’ room getting reamed by Laura.
“Seth, you haven’t done a thing in here except slosh some cleaner in the toilets. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she demanded as I came in the door.
Trying his best to win her over, Ryder gave her his megawatt smile and said easily, “Come on, Laura, cut me some slack on my first day. I promise I’ll do better.”
“See that you do, or I’ll have to report you to Mr. Gentry.”
I chimed in, “Yeah, Seth. You’re making our temp agency look bad.”
He cut his eyes at me, and I could tell he was dying to fire something back, but he didn’t. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
Laura wheeled on me. “Brandi! There you are. Aren’t you supposed to be watching him?”
“I was, but he needs a lot of direction. I was hoping maybe you’d be better at keeping your thumb on him.”
Throwing her hands up in the air, she griped, “I don’t have time for this right now. He’s your problem for the next hour while I get the entry hall waxed and buffed, and then I’ll deal with him.” Huffing, she left the bathroom.
Coming close, he crossed his arms and scowled at me. “Really, Brandi? I need a lot of direction? And calling me Seth is just…”
“I think ‘a karmic kick in the nuts’ is the phrase you’re looking for. And you’re welcome for me getting you a private one-on-one with Laura in an hour, where you can interrogate her to your little heart’s content.”
His face brightened. “Oh. I didn’t look at it that way. Good thinking, Scooby.”
“Did you accomplish anything in the last hour besides pissing Laura off?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Lucky for you, I did.” I grabbed the bucket of cleaning supplies and handed him a toilet brush. “We’d better work and talk or Laura isn’t going to give you the time of day later.”
He looked at the brush as if it were a biohazard, which I guessed it kind of was. “I thought we weren’t cleaning.”
“Trust me. Get on her good side, and she’ll tell you anything you want to know. Unfortunately, the one and only way to get on her good side is to show her some old-fashioned hard work.”
Frowning even more, he took the brush from me and started scrubbing toilets while I wiped down the mirrors over the sinks. He said, “I talked to Su-Lin. Well, sort of. She pretends she doesn’t speak any English, but she can get her point across loud and clear.”
“She looked like she wanted to eat you earlier.”
“That was pretty much the vibe I got, too. As a rule, I don’t mind forward women, but that one frightened me.”
I laughed. “Were any of the sweet nothings she whispered in your ear helpful?”
“Not even a little. I say we talk to Laura and then bail. Get some sleep and pick it up again in the morning. You said Wonderlich generally doesn’t come around on cleaning nights, so I don’t think there’s a reason to stay.”
“Works for me.”
“What did you find out from the HR files?”
“A guy named Ben Florence has two black marks on his HR record. One for drinking on the job and another for stealing tools.”
Ryder nodded. “Sounds promising. I’ll put him on my list to interview tomorrow.”
I took the list of addresses for Tuesday’s shipment out of my pocket and wiggled it at him. “I also have a special present for you.”
He grinned at me. “A present? Is it that you’re going to put the blond wig on again later?”
Glaring at him, I crumpled up the paper. “Oops. There goes your present.”
“Oh, take a joke. What is it?”
“It was a list of addresses where a certain ninety-eight boxes were delivered on Tuesday morning.”
His eyes widened. “Now you’re the one who’s joking.”
“I don’t joke about how awesome I am.”
“Where did you get the addresses?”
“From the stack of fake purchase orders in the filing cabinet in the metal shop. I made a neat little list for you, but then you
blew it.”
“What will it take for me to get it back?”
I thought for a moment, then a slow smile spread across my face. “Backing me up when I go to Cromwell and tell him Josie Prescott’s OD is actually a murder.”
“As long as you can present me with compelling evidence, I’ll be happy to.”
“Deal.” I tossed the ball of wadded paper at him, trying not to snicker. “Just so you know, this isn’t the only copy. I emailed it to you before I printed it.”
He nodded. “I figured as much.” After smoothing out the paper and scanning the addresses, he said, “You are going to ruin me for ever having another partner again. This is great work, Juliet.”
Bursting with pride, I bent down and pretended to rummage through the cleaning bucket to hide my flaming cheeks. “Just doing my job. And speaking of that, we’d better get to work here before Laura finds you slacking off again.”
For the next twenty minutes, we continued cleaning until the place was spotless.
Ryder looked around appreciatively as he ripped off his rubber gloves. “You could eat off this floor. Surely this will satisfy Laura.”
“I think it’ll at least get her to talk to you without yelling,” I said, removing my gloves as well and throwing them into the bucket.
“Do you think she’ll be straight with me?”
“Maybe if Seth Davis is straight with her.” I couldn’t resist adding, “I’ve often wondered—is Seth Davis even capable of telling the truth?”
“You really need to let that go. Name one time I’ve lied to you—”
I opened my mouth to rattle off an impressive list of instances, but he put his hand out to stop me.
“You didn’t let me finish. Name one time I’ve lied to you when it didn’t have to do with an active case I was working on. I bet you can’t.”
I took a breath and opened my mouth again, ready to unload on him. But strangely, when I thought back through the times he’d lied to me, damned if it wasn’t true. Every time he lied, it was either because he was trying to keep his undercover status intact or because he couldn’t tell me about confidential police business.
“Uh…” I said, wracking my brain for something to throw back at him.
He smiled. “See? You can’t do it. Told you so.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I’ve never lied to you one time when it wasn’t absolutely necessary for both your safety and the integrity of my investigation. I’m not the bad guy here. You want to talk bad guys? That asshat Stafford parades around cleverly disguised as an overgrown Boy Scout, meanwhile he’s on the take. Your friend Stan is one of the slimiest businessmen in this town. Don’t be surprised if one day I’m arresting him for some white-collar crime that’ll have him locked up for a good while. And Pete—he’s probably the worst of all.”
I gave him a dubious look. “How do you figure that?”
“Because I’ve watched that guy lead you on for the better part of a year.” He raised his deep voice into a girly falsetto. “ ‘Oh, Jules, you mean everything to me, but let’s just be friends.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t talk like that.”
“It’s genius, actually. He leaves you hanging just enough that he can get his jollies by dating someone else and still have you ready and waiting as his backup plan. He’s forcing you to put your life on hold for him. And yet you continue to see him as Saint Pete, and I’m the devil.”
“You are the devil,” I retorted, amazed that we were having a conversation this blunt without either one of us getting angry or yelling. “You think nothing of using me to get what you need.”
“I thought I made it abundantly clear that we’re both using each other to get this case solved. Or did you forget that already?”
“No, I mean before.”
“What, on that case when we first met? When we’d only known each other a week?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “You’re an investigator now. Put yourself in my shoes. You’re deep undercover, and you and I just met. You don’t know if I’m in on the scheme you’re investigating or not. And I might know the one thing that could pull all of your puzzle pieces together. You realize you’re falling for me, but if you tell me the truth, you could ruin a month’s worth of work and your chances for putting some pretty awful people behind bars. What would you do?”
Irritated, and admittedly a little off balance by hearing him say he’d “fallen for me” after only a week, I raked my hands through my hair. I knew exactly what I would do if I were in that situation now—there wouldn’t even be a question.
Sighing, I replied, “I’d do the same thing you did. I wouldn’t give up my cover, and…I’d leverage our relationship to try to get more answers out of you.”
His mouth twisted into a triumphant smirk.
I added, “But I’d feel really bad about it.”
The smirk instantly dropped from his face. “Juliet, don’t you know how much it killed me to keep you in the dark? I felt like I was breaking your trust every time I saw you, but I was stuck. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you.” He reached out and caressed my cheek, leaving his hand there. “But I couldn’t help myself. Hell, I still can’t.”
His intense gaze holding mine, he leaned down toward me. When I touched my slightly shaking fingers to his hand that was cradling my face, it was all the indication he needed from me. Before I knew it, his arms were around me and his lips were on mine. His kisses had always been intoxicating, and this particular one had me especially out of my head. The rest of the world and all of my problems faded away, and we were so deeply connected I could actually feel his desire for me. I didn’t want it to end, but I knew it should. And it did, all too soon.
When he pulled away from me, he seemed stunned. He said breathlessly, “That was…” I was about to say “amazing,” but before I could find my voice, he said, “…so unprofessional. I apologize.” He quickly released me and looked at the floor.
Sensing his inner struggle, I put my hand on his arm. “Yes, it might have been unprofessional. But maybe…we could call it the breakup kiss we never got to have.”
He studied me for a moment, his eyes troubled. “You’re not upset that I muddied the waters when we were doing so well together?”
I smiled. “Did I seem upset when I was kissing you back?”
His face brightening a bit, he said, “No.”
“Then in my mind, we’re good.”
Smiling, he said, “Okay, thanks. You know, you’re a lot more forgiving and even-tempered now. It’s not a bad thing.”
“For all his flaws, Stafford is the one to thank for that.”
“Let’s not get too carried away here,” he said, opening the door for me. “Come on. I want to find Laura so we can ditch this place.”
We went to the lobby, where we found Laura’s buffing machine and supplies but no Laura. Her job seemed only halfway done, which wasn’t like her.
Ryder pointed down the hall to an office with its light on and the door slightly ajar. “Maybe she’s in there.”
“That’s Wonderlich’s office,” I replied, leading the way. “Laura?” I called as we neared the door. “Seth’s done with the restrooms. He did a great—”
My breath caught in my throat as I stepped inside the office and came to an abrupt halt. Ryder bumped into me from behind, placing his hands on my shoulders and cursing under his breath when he saw what had caused me to stop so suddenly. Laura was lying on her back on the floor of the office, eyes wide, mouth open, and dead.
Chapter 27
“Are you okay?” Ryder murmured, his grip tightening on my shoulders.
I nodded shakily. “Yeah. Poor Laura.”
In a flash, he had the handgun out of his ankle holster and had spun around, pointing it toward the open door. He said quietly, “She seemed to be in decent health and not too old. I’m not buying that she walked in here and just dropp
ed dead. Where’s Su-Lin?”
“No idea.”
An icy rush came over my body. Ryder’s first thought immediately went to murder, not that I blamed him around this place. I looked back down at Laura’s body and noticed that there was a red sucker near one of her hands and that her lips were particularly pink and slightly shiny.
“Hey, check it out—she was eating a sucker right before she died.”
Gun still trained on the doorframe, Ryder took a couple of steps back so he could glance down at Laura. His gaze then fell on the desk. “She was in here with her fingers in Wonderlich’s candy bowl. Keep an eye on the door.”
I did as he instructed while he holstered his gun. He took a pair of latex gloves out of his back pocket and put them on, then picked up one of the suckers from the bowl and removed the wrapper. His eyes widened, and he set the wrapper and sucker very carefully on the desk, removed his gloves and set them down as well, then took a big step back.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. We need to get out of here. Don’t touch anything.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just get out of this room. Now.”
He put on a new pair of gloves and ushered me out the door, got the keys out of his pocket, and locked Wonderlich’s office from the outside.
Trying to keep my voice from trembling, I asked, “Ryder, what is going on?”
“I think Laura came in contact with a substance that killed her instantly. We’re going to find Su-Lin and then get the hell out of this building. Keep your hands in your pockets and don’t let any exposed skin touch anything. Stay behind me.”
Now I was really worried. We crept through every hallway, him with his gun drawn and me with my hands stuffed in my pockets, looking in each room, closet, and restroom in the place, but we couldn’t find Su-Lin anywhere.
We exited through the loading dock door, and Ryder shook his head. “This is a damn mess.” He holstered his gun, then removed his gloves and threw them on the ground.
“What about the sucker freaked you out so bad?”
“There was a whitish, powdery substance on it. We were apart from Laura, what, thirty minutes? She used some of that time to do a little work on the entry floor. So whatever she got into only took minutes to kill her. It had to be some serious stuff.”
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