“Good.” Yas glanced at Matt and then grimaced. “I mean, not good. Sorry. Just, it’s a complication you can’t afford, Gabe.”
He turned his attention to Matt, who had his eyes down on the glossy wooden tabletop, expression just short of miserable. The guy would have made a terrible agent. His emotions were written all over his face. But it was one of the reasons Gabe was falling for him so hard. He loved that Matt was so open and honest and unsophisticated. Reaching under the table, he settled a hand on Matt’s thigh and gripped gently, trying to reassure him. Even if they couldn’t be together right now—as much as he was pissed about all the amazing, mind-blowing sex he now had to abstain from—he wasn’t going anywhere.
“We’re fully aware of the ramifications,” he finally replied, turning his attention to Yas. “But that doesn’t change the facts. We need to find out who is behind all this, and I think Matt’s cousin might provide us another lead. He showed up this morning with a decent shiner and seemed to know something about what had happened to Matt’s car.”
Yas nodded, taking out a pen and notepad. “Tell me everything.”
Their breakfast arrived, and for the next half an hour, Matt told them everything he’d found out about Tommy’s activities—including hacking his cousin’s social media by guessing the password. Technically and professionally, he had to disapprove of the invasion of privacy, but secretly he was damned proud of Matt’s digging skills.
“I had an analyst go over the pictures the sheriff took of the graffiti sprayed on the fence belonging to the victim we’ve got in the hospital and compared it to the graffiti on Matt’s rental from last night,” Yas said once they were finished. “They were a match. We’re definitely looking at the same perp.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. In fact, it was the complete opposite of what he wanted to hear. It meant the likelihood of Matt being the next victim was that much higher and made the pancakes he’d just eaten sit like stones in his stomach.
“We need to speak with Stanley Ferguson about the pamphlets and then speak to Thomas,” he surmised, glancing between Yas and Matt. “Whether he’ll actually give us anything of use might be a whole other matter.”
Yas gave an unconcerned shrug. “Put him in an interview room at the sheriff’s station and he might sing a different tune.”
Matt shifted next to him, and Gabe stole a glance, catching the worry that crossed his face.
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep your cousin out of this as much as possible,” he said, resisting the urge to wrap his arm around Matt and pull him close.
“He might have made some admittedly poor life choices, but he’s not a criminal,” Matt insisted.
Damn, the fact that Matt could still defend his cousin after what a jerk he’d been was downright remarkable. If it’d been him, Gabe was fairly sure he would have told the guy to go fuck himself long before now.
“In the meantime,” he said, pulling his phone out and sending a quick text, “we need to work out what we’re going to do with you.”
Matt sent him a long-suffering look, as if Gabe’s plan to have him constantly minded until they caught the perp had already been going on for weeks, when it hadn’t even started yet.
His phone buzzed an immediate answer and he glanced down at the reply from Perez, before looking up at Matt with a smile.
“How do you feel about working behind a bar?”
AFTER DEPOSITING Matt at Monroe’s Bar to hang out with Perez’s boyfriend, Danny—and finding it almost impossible to resist the urge to kiss Matt goodbye—Gabe and Yas made their way back to Stanley’s Ferguson’s house, and this time there was a twenty-year-old Buick station wagon sitting in the driveway.
Gabe stood back while Yas stepped up to the stoop and pounded on the door.
Someone was moving behind the gauzy curtains, but no one answered Yas’s insistent knocking.
“Someone’s inside,” he murmured, only loud enough for Yas to hear him.
She pounded again, harder this time. “Mr. Ferguson, this is the FBI. It’d be in your best interest to open up.”
After another drawn-out few moments, the door finally swung inward to reveal a harried-looking man in his early forties.
“Can I help you?” Ferguson’s tone left no doubt as to what he felt about having the FBI on his doorstep.
Not deterred in the least, Yas flashed her badge and then pulled the evidence bag with the pamphlet out of her jacket. “I’m Agent Quinn. We’d like to speak to you about these pamphlets.”
Ferguson’s gaze darted down to the evidence bag, expression tightening even more until he was doing a great impression of a cat’s ass.
“There’s nothing illegal about running off some pamphlets. I have rights. Free speech—”
“Buddy, save us the spiel. We’ve heard it before,” he cut in just as it seemed Ferguson was going to get good and riled up.
“Free speech doesn’t give you the right to commit hate crimes, Mr. Ferguson,” Yas calmly interjected.
“Hate crimes?” For the first time, Ferguson looked more worried than annoyed. He was still pretty damned aggravated, though, as if the FBI visiting him was a personal insult.
“Did you deliver this pamphlet to any guests at the Motel 6?” Yas didn’t even give him a second to regain any footing in the conversation.
“I distribute my pamphlets in many places throughout the county. And I have other volunteers who help. I can’t keep track of where they all end up.”
Gabe clenched his jaw, knowing he was more emotionally involved in this case than he had any right to be, but not caring in that second. How dare this asshole think it was okay to force his own limited opinions onto others? Gabe believed in a lot of things, but he sure as hell didn’t get provoking, borderline-graphic pamphlets made up to scare people into agreeing with him or shaming them if they didn’t.
Plus try as he might, he couldn’t get the image of Matt out of his mind, the way he’d looked when he’d found the flyer stuck under his door. It made him want to grab Ferguson by the collar of his blue-checked shirt sitting under his obnoxious sweater vest and drag him off to the nearest lockup. See how long he lasted in prison before someone made him their bitch.
“Has anyone been helping you distribute pamphlets this week?” Yas tucked the offending item away and settled an expectant look on Ferguson.
“Not this week. I had a couple of respectable young men from the ALP helping me last week, but they were busy with other things the last few days.”
“Respectable young men?” Gabe repeated with a whole lot of wtf in his tone. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
Yas shot him a quelling look over her shoulder, so he clamped his jaw over the probably moronic urge to shoot his mouth any more.
“I’m going to need their names,” Yas said in a no-nonsense tone as she gave her attention back to Ferguson.
The man crossed his arms and didn’t look like he intended on cooperating anytime soon. “I don’t know all their names. Billy Raymond brought them with him, said they were friends of his.”
“Billy Raymond?” Yas repeated, gaze sharpening.
“I met him the other night at Monroe’s,” Gabe put in. “Charming guy.”
Yas nodded and stepped back from the stoop. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Ferguson. I’d advise you not to leave the county for the time being.”
“I have nothing else to say to you. If you want to talk to me again, it’ll have to be through my lawyer.”
His lawyer, huh? Gabe shared a quick look with Yas. Maybe Ferguson was just that big a dick, but in his experience, people usually didn’t get their lawyers involved unless they had something to hide.
Before he or Yas could say anything, however, Ferguson slammed the door in their faces.
“Good talking to you too. Jackass,” he muttered, turning away from the house.
“Looks like we need to add Billy Raymond to our list of people to speak with,” Yas said as they headed for h
er car. They’d left his sedan parked outside Monroe’s after securing Matt into Danny’s care.
“If it means I finally get a look-see inside that compound, then I’m all for it,” he replied, thoughts already speeding ahead to the coming afternoon. “If Thomas is there, we can speak to both of them and get a feel for the dynamics.”
“We definitely need to take another run at Ferguson.” She glanced over her shoulder at the house. He followed her line of sight and saw Ferguson standing with the curtains slightly parted, talking on his cell phone. “I did a little digging last night. He had a string of assault and battery convictions in his early twenties from when he was living in Austin. One of his victims was reportedly gay, but it was kept out of the trial. As for the other victims, one was Jewish and the rest were Mexican.”
“And he was never charged with hate crimes?” he asked as they climbed into the car.
“The last victim tried to file for it, but it didn’t hold up.” A hard note entered Yas’s voice. “After that, he moved to Everness and has apparently been keeping his head down.”
“Not down far enough if you ask me,” he muttered, drumming his fingers on his knee. Ferguson seemed their most likely suspect, but they needed more evidence to tie him to the crimes. “Let’s head back to the station. Billy Raymond is the son of the guy who runs the ALP. I want to go over what information I’ve got on him before we head out there. Maybe he or Thomas can confirm some of Ferguson’s movements over the past few weeks. Put him in the same vicinity as the other vandalism and graffiti that took place, not to mention our assault victim.”
“Good idea.” Yas started the car and pulled quickly onto the road like she was trying to get into Houston traffic, not a completely empty street in the middle of nowhere. “We can work out the best ways to push his buttons.”
He sent Yas a grin. “I like the way you think, Agent Quinn.”
She shot him a return smile but didn’t say anything as they headed to the sheriff’s station where he’d left most of his case notes. They passed down the block from Monroe’s, and he tried not to wonder what Matt was up to and wished for the millionth time they hadn’t been forced to put the brakes on their little fling. He could honestly say he’d never been more motivated to solve a case. Not only so he and Matt could pick up where they’d left off this morning, but mainly because the idea of Matt being in danger was seriously starting to damage his calm when he thought about it too much.
Now he understood why it was a bad idea to mix personal and professional lives. Of course, when he’d seen Matt pulled over on the side of that road almost a week ago, he couldn’t have ever imagined things were going to turn out this way.
Maybe he didn’t like the need for a temporary break from Matt—maybe neither of them liked it—but the best thing he could do was draw the line and stick to it. He had to keep his head in the game, needed to work fast with Yas to catch the perp before Matt or someone else ended up in the ER. Or worse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“SO HE actually saved your life?” Matt demanded incredulously, having just listened to Danny’s rather spectacular account of how he and Deputy Perez—or Jake, as Danny kept calling him—had met a few months ago.
“In so many ways,” Danny answered with the kind of goofy smile that instantly made Matt insanely jealous of the happiness he’d found. “I know it sounds corny, but I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. Maybe literally.”
“Dude, that is so heavy,” he replied, still not able to wrap his head around Danny being kidnapped and almost murdered by someone who’d wanted to get revenge on Jake.
“Yeah, but I’d go through it all again to have Jake.” Danny set aside the vegetables he’d been chopping to prep for the day’s customers. “It’s nearly time to open. You want to help me pull down the stools?”
“Sure thing.” He trailed Danny out of the kitchen into the bar area. After Danny had made him a coffee—the best coffee he’d had since he’d arrived in Everness—Matt had pretty much sat around and watched Danny get ready for the day while chatting about what it was like to live in Everness, since Danny had grown up here. That had moved on to the jaw-dropping story of Jake coming into his life, and despite the easy conversation, Matt felt a little bad about just sitting there while Danny did all the work. Running his own business, he was used to being the one pulled in four different directions and too busy to stop for long. He was glad to have something to do for the time being, even if it was only pulling down a few bar stools.
“You sure you don’t mind me bumming around here all day?” he asked once all the stools and chairs had been taken off the bar and tables, then set in their rightful places.
Danny gave an easy shrug. “It’s good to have some company that isn’t Old Man Murphy. Plus, Jake explained everything and said it was important.”
Matt plonked himself down on a bar stool while Danny opened the industrial dishwasher beneath the counter and pulled out a rack of glasses to put away.
“This is so not how I thought things would end up when I left San Francisco to come down here.”
Matt set his chin in his hand, trying not to be glum about things, but it was hard now that Gabe wasn’t here to distract him and he was left to his own thoughts. He didn’t know what the hell to do about Thomas and dreaded the idea of going back home to tell Aunt Katie her only son was a lost cause. Plus, he was ignoring his very insistent flight instinct telling him to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Life has a way of doing that to you,” Danny replied, toweling off a few stray drops of water on the mostly dry glasses as he put them away one at a time.
“Boy, did I get that memo this week,” he muttered.
“Don’t worry, Jake and Gabe will figure it out. And the sheriff is practically my dad. They’ve got your back. We all do.”
He glanced up at Danny, the calm, unwavering expression going a long way to help his frame of mind. “But you barely know me.”
“Maybe,” Danny conceded. “It’s just kind of what we do around here. With the ALP sitting on our doorstep and all the unpleasantness it can bring, people in this community tend to go the extra mile to look out for each other. Especially a good guy like yourself who doesn’t deserve the crap he’s stepped in.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “That I have.”
“Sometimes you’ve just got to hold your nose and wade through the shit,” Danny replied with a grin. “And hope there’s someone there to hose you down on the other side.”
“That’s certainly one way of putting it. Thanks, buddy.” He sighed, rubbing at the tension in the back of his neck. Today couldn’t go fast enough. He only hoped Gabe and Yas came up with a solid lead and this whole thing got wrapped up sooner rather than later. Not only was it annoying that he couldn’t or shouldn’t go anywhere on his own, but while Danny was being cool about him hanging around like a barfly today, surely that hospitality would wear thin if things dragged out for too long.
“It’s almost eleven,” Danny said, breaking into his thoughts, which were quickly becoming morose again. “You want to open the doors and flip the sign around?”
“Only if you provide me with coffee for the duration of my stay,” he returned over his shoulder, already on his way to do as Danny had asked.
Danny made a comical face. “Yeah, the coffee at the diner leaves something to be desired. Had to get my own machine in here. And you think mine is good? You should try Jake’s. Pretty sure half the town is hoping he’ll quit being a deputy to open a coffee shop.”
“No offense, but if he could wait until after we’ve caught the guy who trashed my rental car, that’d be great.” He unlocked the door and flipped around the sign in the window, surprised to see a handful of people already waiting on the sidewalk.
They came in immediately as Matt returned to sit at the end of the bar while Danny put a baseball game up on the big screen taking up half the back wall. Within minutes, there was the usual ambient bar noise filling the space.<
br />
He didn’t get a chance to speak with Danny again; customers took up all the guy’s attention as it got closer to lunch and Old Man Murphy arrived. After a short conversation with Danny, the elderly man came over and tossed Matt an apron.
“You ever bussed tables before?”
“Um, not really.” Why those words came out sounding more like a question was a mystery to him. Sure, he’d helped out on the coffee shop floor a few times when they got really slammed, but he much preferred staying out back, doing the baking or paperwork. Not so much with the interacting-with-customers thing. That was where Sammie shined with his more buoyant personality. The closest he’d ever gotten on a permanent basis had been when he’d been a teenager and worked the grill at a fast-food burger chain that’d been a total cliché. If he ever heard do you want to supersize that? again, it’d probably send him into some kind of PTSD burger flashbacks.
Old Man Murphy cracked a smile, making his wrinkled face even more lined. He had that old-salt-of-Texas thing going on with his short gray hair and weathered skin.
“Then you’re about to learn real quick, son.”
Murphy produced a large rectangular plastic tub, the kind Matt had seen used at restaurants and bars to clear dishes from tables.
“If you’re taking dishes from a table where people are still sitting, make sure you ask whether they’re finished.” Murphy plonked the plastic tub on the bar in front of him.
“That’s all you’re going to tell me?” Surely there was more to it.
“Kitchen’s that way.” Murphy pointed to the door Matt had come out from earlier. “That’s where the dirty dishes go.”
He only just refrained from rolling his eyes, mostly because he wasn’t sure how Murphy would take it and truthfully, the man was a little intimidating, even though he was wiry and a whole head shorter than Matt himself.
“Yes, sir,” he replied dutifully, which made Murphy grin again.
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