by Mel Sterling
"Gotcha."
The French door opened and Gard came through with a tray. "That Mohawked gal said you like English Breakfast in the mornings. I got another frilly latte for you, JT, and another whatever this is for me. Ma'am, I hope you like sausage with cheese because that's their only choice with protein, and you look a mite peekid to me."
Gard swung by the desk and set down a saucer, with a cup and dangling teabag tag, a tiny steel pitcher of milk, and a plate with a filled croissant. Jack hadn't heard so many "ma'ams" in one morning since he was in grade school. Gard was really pulling out all the stops on his Southern gentleman persona.
He watched to see how Lexie would take Gard's take-no-prisoners mode of operation, regardless of the politeness it was cloaked in. When Gard was on the case, things got done, usually by Gard's rules. Most of the time, people didn't even question why they'd fallen into step with Gard. It was what made him a successful leader. It was why, when the Humvee went over the IED, Jack had been able to do what Gard needed him to do to save his life. Gard had taught him early how to listen and follow orders, and how to use the information and materials at hand to solve a problem. Improvisation had been their squad's credo, because as everyone knew, no plan survived first contact with the enemy. The Southern hospitality just made those bitter pills go down more easily. Gard could charm even a hardheaded accountant-type like Lexie if he put his mind to it. Jack might have been wary if he hadn't already heard from Gard over coffee that he thought Jack had chosen a fine woman for himself—maybe a bit high-strung, but fine nevertheless.
"Gilly." Lexie reached for the tea.
"Ma'am?"
"Her name is Gilly. Not that Mohawked gal. Mine is Lexie."
"Yes ma'am. Lexie. Jack tells me we're putting your store to rights today." Gard stood there, the tray balanced on the flat of his hand.
"We're going to try."
"But first you're going to get some protein in you, ma'am. Lexie. JT, why don't you lock that connecting door for me? My hands are full and we don't want civilians wandering through while we're working."
Jack did as he was told, grinning, noticing that Lexie was wolfing down the croissant, gluey yellow cheese, questionable sausage and all. Gard's honey-thick Georgia boy sweetness was working on her like a soothing balm. Of course, food was probably also helping. She hadn't eaten for many hours.
Suddenly Lexie dropped the croissant and ran for the shop's front door. Gard's head jerked in her direction alertly, but Lexie's body language told the Marine there was no reason for concern. Lexie met Ben at the door, flung it open and hurried him inside, before locking it again behind him.
"What the hell?" Ben asked, standing frozen. "Were we robbed? Is everyone—" Ben looked down at Lexie, dark brows drawn down, full mouth tightening. "Are you all right? Were you here when this happened? Where's Melville? Did they take anything? Have you called the cops?" His gaze took in Gard. "Who are you?"
Gard swung smartly forward, hand out. "Gardner Dawson. Friend of JT's."
Ben shook his hand absently, still struggling to take in the wreckage of the store. "Lexie?"
She burst into scrambled, hasty speech. "It wasn't a robbery. We're all fine. Melville's fine. Nothing was taken, except one book. We were searched, Ben. The FBI and the…the…" A frown creased her brow. "I don't remember what he called himself. He's basically a postal service policeman. I didn't even know there were such things."
"Postal Inspector Hazelton," Jack supplied. "And FBI Agent Kastner."
"Right." Lexie pushed her hair off her brow. "They…" she waved a helpless hand in the general direction of the mess, "They searched us. For what, I don't know, they wouldn't tell us anything except that it was stolen property like a data chip or something, but they had a warrant. They took a book with them."
"Which book?" Ben strode toward the desk, putting down his satchel. "What the hell. What a mess. How hard would it have been to put the books back when they were done searching? Did they have to leave them piled everywhere?" He picked up a stack of soft-cover novels, examining them one by one, finding a bent cover on one and scowling.
"It was a copy of Remembrance of Things Past, one of the nice ones from that press that puts out the books in pretty covers."
Ben's head snapped around. "Beautiful Bindings Press. We sold one of those from our website this week."
Lexie nodded. "I thought that was kind of a weird coincidence. Remember, Gilly borrowed it last week and brought it back after the weekend, but meanwhile I restocked the shelf from the supply we have in back." She put her hand on Ben's arm. "But here's the thing: I wrapped that book the day before yesterday and took it home so I could mail it in the morning. Overnight, someone broke into my house and took it."
Gard stiffened and moved closer to the desk. Jack saw Ben's gaze shift to the Marine, taking in the muscles and the prosthetic leg. Ben blinked a moment, then turned back to Lexie.
"That…what? Someone broke in Horace's—I mean your house, and took a book we sold online?"
Lexie nodded.
"And then the cops came, and took away another copy of the same book?"
"It looks that way."
"The same book Gilly borrowed."
"No…I mean, maybe. Yes. I don't know. I don't know which one I wrapped to sell. We got the order, we had two identical copies, it doesn't matter which one I filled the order with, right?"
"Wrong," said Gard, softly. Jack came and stood next to him. "Someone's been using your store like a mule, to ship stuff. Illegal stuff."
Lexie stared at Gard as if she'd forgotten he was there, and now resented his interruption. "What are you talking about? What does that even mean, mule?"
"We need to talk to Gilly," Jack said. "We need to talk to her now."
"Hold on," Ben interrupted, hotly. "You can't tell me Gilly's involved in—whatever's going on, drugs or—"
"She is," Jack asserted. "She might not know it or maybe she does, but I'd bet money she's involved. This string of coincidences is just a little too neat. Gilly borrows a book, brings it back, it sells on the web right away. It's happened more than once. I've heard you and Lexie talk about her Midas touch. Meantime, that same book gets stolen from Lexie's house, and suddenly the Feds are here searching for contraband."
Gard folded his arms and widened his stance, looking as stern and commanding as Jack had ever seen him in Iraq. "Sounds like mules to me. You do their dirty work for them, mail whatever it is to their buyer. You think you're just sending a book, but it's more than that. It's got something in it. Gilly might just be a go-between, but she might be getting her hands dirty too." He shook his head. "Man, and I was just getting to like that little lady. She slings a mighty fine fluffy coffee."
Lexie shook her head. "These are books I'm wrapping. I'm not…there's nothing in them! How could there be? There's not room! I'd know if there was something in them."
"There's plenty of room." Jack reached for a hardcover that was sitting in one of the piles near the front desk. He opened it wide and showed them all the way the cover of the spine bowed back and left a gap through which the light from the store windows could be seen. "If what you're shipping is small, it'll fit, and no one would be the wiser."
Tears brimmed in Lexie's eyes. Jack closed the book and reached over the counter to take her hand. "Don't. I told you, we'll figure this out. Together." He looked steadily into her eyes, ignoring Ben's startled reaction to this sudden public intimacy. Her hand closed convulsively on his for a moment, then she pulled free, flags of color in her cheeks.
"Ben, I've got a task for you. I need you to go through the online orders file. Come to the back with me, and I'll fill you in. I think there are more clues to be found, but you're the only person who can put it all together. I wasn't here several months ago when Uncle Horace started thinking something was going wrong."
"Horace never mentioned anything to me." Ben frowned. "Except that maybe there was some pilfering in Rare Books."
"I think he
was trying to figure it all out by himself. He was an independent cuss." Lexie led Ben to the back room, and when they were alone, Gard picked up the book Jack had set down.
"Your lady's a hell of a woman, JT."
"She's not my—"
"I'm calling bullshit all over that, soldier." Gard's grin was as startlingly white as it had ever been. Jack flashed to those days in Iraq when Gard had camo'ed his face with charcoal and makeup, when a grin had been so bright Jack had wondered if an enemy sniper would catch the sunflash from those Hollywood-perfect teeth and use it to target Gard. "Sorry I interrupted you this morning." Gard gave him a punch to his upper arm.
"Yeah, well, no harm no foul, I guess." Jack found himself grinning like an idiot.
"Yeah, well, sure took you long enough to come down for coffee, so I'm guessing you worked out some kinks." Then Gard's tone turned serious. "What's going on here, Jack? You told me about the search, but it seems to me like there's a conspiracy. Do we need to worry about this guy Ben? Are there other employees?"
"Leave it to you to cut right to the heart of things and start mobilizing the troops."
"It's what I do, JT. That part of me didn't get shot off when my leg did."
"I'm sorry about that. I wish I'd been able to do more—"
"We've gone around that old barn enough times. What's done is done, you did what you could, now let it go."
"How can you? When every day you wake up and strap on a metal leg?"
"Give it a rest. Who's involved in this, do you think?"
Jack stood, hesitating. He thought over everyone associated with Horace's Books, and couldn't imagine any of them—Lexie, Ben, or even Gilly, no matter what it looked like on the surface—deliberately endangering the store for any reason, or getting mixed up in criminal activity of the sort that attracted the attention of the Feds. "Man, I don't know."
"But not your lady, right, or this guy Ben?"
"I'd stake my life on that. Ben's young and green, but he's a good guy. And Lexie—" Jack found a smile creeping across his face. As inappropriate and unhelpful as it was, he was hearing her sexy whisper in his ear again, and picturing how she'd looked beneath him in the unappealing bed in his room. She'd come completely apart, surrendering herself to a pleasure so intense and sharp that she'd wept. That had never happened to Jack before, and he'd spoken those three little words. He'd become a cliché, a man who'd say anything during sex.
Except Jack wasn't that kind of guy. He'd never uttered those words to a woman before. Now that there was no taking them back, he felt a strange relief, somewhere between the lancing of a boil and the hot excitement of a really great story coming through.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LEXIE CHECKED THE LOCK on the alley door for the second time that morning before turning to the filing cabinet to explain what she wanted from Ben.
He'd been poking around the back room, making small sounds of distress. "What were the Feds looking for? Did they tell you? Did they have a warrant?"
"They had a warrant, all right." She began leafing through the folders, seeking the two orders that were going to the same person in two different states. "Stolen financial information, they said. They fanned the pages of every single book in the store, and shook some books out—"
"I'll bet they held the books by the boards, didn't they, and ruined the hinges and text blocks!" Ben's voice was bitter with fury. "What's that guy—what's his name, Dawson?—doing here?"
"He's a friend of Jack's. Turned up this morning."
Ben put a gentle hand on her arm, and she turned from the files. "I got that. But what's he doing here? Why's Jack here, with the store a churned-up mess? Why didn't you call me last night? There's a ton of work to do to make this place ready to open up again, and customers will get in the way—" Ben stopped. "I'm sorry. I'm just taking over."
Lexie smiled. "You know how much I depend on you to teach me the ropes and help pull all this weight. Jack's here—well, partly because he's Jack, you know, he's like some weird force of nature and—"
"—and because he's got a massive crush on you—"
She felt color heat her cheeks, and Ben's expression softened. For a moment, he looked young, and faintly wistful. "Guess that goes both ways?" he queried, in a low voice.
Lexie pinched the bridge of her nose. "There is so much going on in my life right now. I just can't take it all in. Maybe it does go both ways, I don't know. I don't know what I feel."
"I've been watching him for weeks now. For sure he's got it bad." There was the slightest trace of a grin on Ben's lips, twitching at the corners. "Anyway. Back to business. Dawson?"
"He goes by Gard. Seems to be along for the ride with Jack, I guess. He got into town this morning early and Jack brought him, and clued him in on at least some of the mess. Jack was here yesterday when the FBI came. I don't know what I'd have done without him, probably lost my mind and assault the Feds with my stapler for hurting the books."
"You should've called me."
"You were in class. You know how Horace felt about his student employees getting their educations—that comes first, always. Besides, I can't imagine they would have let another person in. We got to stay only because I own the business. I let them think Jack was an employee. They weren't here to arrest me, at least, not yet."
Ben's face tightened. "Whereas if I'd been here, they'd have probably cuffed me and frog-marched me down to the station just for being black in a place that was getting searched."
Lexie bowed her head. "I didn't even think of that. All I could think—well, I couldn't think. I was so overwhelmed, and then I was so angry…I'd like to think you're wrong about them, but I don't know. I don't know anything anymore, except there's a big fat problem, and I'm going to need your help—and Jack's, and Gard's, maybe, if he'll let us put him to work—to figure out what's wrong and fix it. I can't let Uncle Horace down, I can't let you down."
"You don't really think Gilly's got anything to do with this, do you?" Ben's expression grew anxious.
For a moment Lexie almost said, "Now who's got the massive crush?" but restrained herself. She couldn't throw stones, living in the glass house of her futile passion for Jack.
I love you, Lexie. Love you.
She squared her shoulders. Clearly it was going to take a while to shake the impact of Jack's words, whether he'd meant them or not. "That's what I need you to tell me, Ben." She turned back to the files and located the two orders that had started the cascade of tiny coincidences in her mind. "I need you to do two things. First, make a list of the books you remember that Gilly borrowed in the last…I don't know, as many as you can remember. Then I need you to go through these files and find all the orders that went to a customer named Barczak."
"That guy buys a lot of stuff from us." Ben shrugged. "A couple of books a month. I recognize the name."
Lexie's skin prickled. Two books a month? If she was right, they'd all been books Gilly had borrowed. "So it's a name you recognize," she said slowly. She wouldn't need to tell Ben to compare his two lists and make the connection, if there was one to find. Either answer would tell them plenty, and Lexie knew which one she dreaded to hear. She liked Gilly, capricious and young as the barista seemed.
"Yeah." His gaze met hers, held. "OK. I'm on it. Won't take me long. Then we'll get after that mess in the store."
"Thank you." Her gratitude was heartfelt. If it wasn't for Ben, she'd have a much more difficult job keeping Uncle Horace's store running.
When she walked into the main store, Gard looked up from lettering a piece of plain white paper he'd taken from the printer behind the desk. "This do for the front door, ma'am?" He held up the sheet, which was labeled in supremely masculine, block letters, in the fat black marker she and Ben used for labeling storage boxes, "CLOSED FOR INVENTORY EVENT."
It was unintentionally hilarious. She gazed around at the heaps of books and bit her lips to hide a smile.
"Something funny?"
Jack looked up from wher
e he was kneeling next to a pile of books from the Science aisle, and laughed. "Buddy, a book signing is an event. An open mic is an event. A book club meeting is an event. This is a mess."
"Yeah, but you don't want to give the public the impression that this…mess…is anything but intentional."
"They already know," Lexie said. "The Main Street grapevine activated the minute the FBI pulled up yesterday. The sign's fine. Thank you. I'll tape it up on the front door." She reached for the paper and found the cellophane tape dispenser in the desk drawer. "My name is Lexie. Ma'am is my grandmother." She tried for humor, anything to lighten the mood she felt whenever she looked at the poor books strewn everywhere. How in the world would they ever get them all put back where they belonged?
Gard's amusement reached all the way to his eyes, turning the fine creases in the desert-textured skin into smile lines. His hazel eyes were bright and clear.
Lexie shook her head. Just like men, pushing buttons to get a reaction. She taped up the sign and touched the doorknob to reassure herself it was locked. They didn't need people wandering in wanting to know what had happened. She couldn't take that on top of everything else. Her entire life had been thrown into disarray in a single day, as if someone had taken a dozen eggs and tossed the whole carton up in the air, letting them splatter where they might. At least there had been good mixed in with the awful.
Then she turned, ready to decide where to begin.
Jack and Gard stood by the cash register counter, watching her, for all the world like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Gard was the shorter of the two, more heavily muscled, with a weight-lifter's strong, corded neck, but Jack's shoulders were as broad, his hips as lean and narrow.
Gard had taken off the shoe that he'd been wearing on his artificial leg, and now the curious swoop of anodized metal rested jauntily on the floor as if Gard were about to flick away a hockey puck. She didn't want to stare, but she was curious. The metal leg inserted into a complicated cup of sorts that fit over Gard's own knee. He'd lost his foot and part of his leg, but not as far up as his knee. She wondered for a moment how long it had taken him to get used to the leg, but then she looked up at his face.