by Dale Mayer
“Look at you, covered in dirt.”
She glanced down and smiled. “But it’s honest dirt. And it will wash off. Just like I will. It’s just jeans and a T-shirt. I can get changed easily enough.” She tried to brush off her clothes, but it was pretty ineffectual. She shrugged. “And it doesn’t matter. Dinners waiting, so let’s go.”
Rhodes stepped toward the main door, then turned and said, “Does that mean you haven’t eaten yet either?”
She glanced down at her watch to see it was seven o’clock. “No, I haven’t. I guess I have been out here for a few hours with Harrison.”
“So, as soon as your brother disappears, you stop taking care of yourself?” he asked.
She gasped. “That’s so unfair.” She fisted her hands on her hips again—which seemed to be the stance she preferred all too often when facing him—and said, “It doesn’t matter if he’s here or not.” She hopped onto the step in front of him so she could meet his glare head-on and said, “Just because my brother is gone doesn’t mean I need another man to step up and take his role.” She turned her back on Rhodes and stormed inside.
She headed into the kitchen to wash up. When she went to the long dining table, the only open space was near Rhodes. Like hell she wanted to sit next to him. But everybody was already in place, so she took the empty spot without being rude or causing a scene, which would draw even more attention to her and Rhodes. She sat down beside him and completely ignored him for the rest of the meal.
*
He hadn’t meant to snap at her. But they’d driven like crazy to get home when they had. And he’d been looking forward to seeing her the whole way. Only to find her with Harrison. But seeing her work herself to the bone drove him crazy. He should’ve realized she needed other interests and had likely been curious about what went on here.
Besides, Harrison would’ve accepted any help coming his way. When he got into a project that had anything to do with electronics, they lost him for hours. That was both good and bad. But Rhodes couldn’t stop wondering if something was going on between Harrison and Sienna. He gripped his fork a little too tightly and stabbed the chunk of roast beef a little too hard. Ease back, buddy. Ease back. Rhodes also really liked that she stood up to him.
Still, he was coming on a bit strong. She was right. She had older brothers, and she didn’t need Rhodes watching over her too. At least not in that role. But the only one left to him was as a friend, and he didn’t want that. He wanted so much more.
He deliberately avoided looking at all the couples at the table. It was increasingly obvious that Levi and Ice’s company had too much in common with Mason’s group. And they’d all be angry if he said something about it, but…it was pretty hard not to think about it.
Because he was one of the men without a partner.
Sighing, he finished off his plate and pushed it back. “Thanks, Alfred. As usual that was fantastic.”
Other voices joined in with their appreciation. Rhodes slipped off the bench, grabbed his plate and carried it into the kitchen. He rinsed it and loaded it in the dishwasher himself, grabbed a cup of coffee, stuck his head into the room where he had been sitting and said, “I’m done for the night. See you in the morning.” And he turned and walked to his suite.
It was early, but that wasn’t the point. He just needed time alone, away from the others. In his suite, he quickly unpacked, had a shower and set up his laptop. He had research to do to see how much the news had come up with on the nameless bodies he and Merk had found. Two dead men had put a huge damper on the trip, because no matter what one thought about criminals, they had been a father, brother, husband, and/or son to somebody. And people somewhere would be in pain right now for the loss of those men.
There was also no proof they were the bad guys either. For all Rhodes knew, they were innocent.
Very strange indeed. Unless the house was being used for drugs versus dynamite, and something went wrong. Maybe the thieves had a falling out, and those two men were left behind. They could be brothers who own the house and were taken out as a point of convenience.
Sometimes life just sucked.
He quickly checked the news media, pulling up the local newspapers, but found no mention of either man.
This was an odd case. They weren’t seeing the whole picture, and he didn’t like that. He wanted to know more, do more. He wanted closure, and how the hell would they get that when it wasn’t their case?
At a knock on the door, he stood up and opened it to find Levi.
He leaned against the doorframe and said, “We got two identifications on the men found.”
Rhodes straightened. “And?”
“They were cousins. Both with ties to the drug trade. Neither seemed to have any connection to the house or to Bullard’s bank fraud case.”
“Odd that they would’ve been found there then.” Rhodes frowned. “Obviously, there is a connection as he gave us the addresses.”
“Not if there was infighting among the thieves, and these two lost the argument.”
“Anything’s possible.” Rhodes added, “What about the raid on the house with the dynamite?”
“The police tracked down the owners, currently living on the West Coast. It was a rental unit. They have no idea what was going on there, and they don’t have any answers.”
“That wouldn’t have been a pleasant surprise for them to hear either. So, no answers there.” He studied Levi and said, “I don’t like only getting bits and pieces about this job. We got a house with explosives, a different residential address a long way away that probably housed drugs but had two dead men. What’s the connection? Is this our job, yours, or Bullard’s? And how does any of this pertain to the code that Sienna was looking at?” He threw up his hands in frustration. “At least in a normal job that’s fully ours, we have all the information. We have the targets. We know what’s going down. In this case, it feels like we’re subcontracting to Bullard.”
“And we are. It’s new. It’s different—and maybe it’s not something we want to do a lot of—but we are closer to the Dallas bank than Bullard. We’re the locals here. The same holds true vice versa. At any future point in time, when we need some information that he can access easier than we can from here, then we’ll subcontract to him.”
“I understand that in theory. It just feels … odd. Make that wrong.” He gave a Levi lopsided grin. “You know how I like to have a target.”
Levi laughed. “Sure you do. Maybe you should go to the fitness room and work out some of that frustration.”
“That’s not a bad idea actually. My own research on the men to see if the media had picked up a trail didn’t find very much on anything.”
“Several jurisdictions I know of were working on this. But nobody has any information to help.”
“What were the names of the cousins?”
“Martin and Jeremy Lewis.” Levi smacked the wall and said, “I’ll be in the office for the next hour if you want to talk.” And he turned and walked away.
Rhodes wasn’t sure what the last line meant, but figured it was probably an open-ended comment. Still, Levi’s suggestion about a workout was a good idea.
They’d put in a large fitness area soon after they got here. He quickly changed into a muscle shirt and shorts, grabbed a towel and water bottle, then headed to the lower floor. The fitness room was across from the medical center. Thankfully, that area was clean and empty. They’d christened that room already many times over.
He walked in, dropped his towel, and headed for the free weights. He did his upper body exercises for a good ten minutes, then had the feeling he wasn’t alone. When he turned, of course, it was Sienna.
She was doing floor exercises, completely ignoring him.
Well, he could do the same. He quickly did another set, put his weights down, stretched out his muscles and caught sight of her in the mirrors. She was now doing push-ups. And man, could she move. He prided himself on a perfect push-up, but when it came to
a woman’s form, she was knocking it to the floor. He wanted to stand here and admire her, but that wouldn’t do his own workout any good. Besides, she was damn prickly, and he was pretty sure she didn’t like anybody watching her.
He returned to his upper body weights. By the time he focused on her again, she’d left. It had been a perfect opportunity to apologize, and he hadn’t taken it. That was the problem with apologies. They really needed to happen on the spot, before it spun into bigger arguments over nothing. Now he was frustrated again.
He walked to the floor area, dropped to the mat and did fifty push-ups. Then he added another twenty-five, just a single left-hand version and then twenty-five more on his right. Still needing more, he flipped onto his back and did one hundred crunches.
By the time he was done, he felt a little on the mellower side again. As he stood and walked back out, towel slung around his neck, he caught sight of Sienna in the medical clinic. She was wandering through the room, studying everything. He watched her for a long minute before stepping through the doorway. “Do you have any medical training?”
She shot him a look, then shook her head. “It’s really not my thing.” She waved her arms at the clean cabinets. “It’s like some kind of big mystery happens here. I’m fascinated and repelled at the same time.”
He grinned. “I don’t think you’re alone in that.”
As she walked toward him, as if intending to step past him to head to her suite, he said abruptly, “I’m sorry.”
She turned and looked at him. “What for?”
Uncomfortable already, he bristled. “For acting like your older brother.”
“Well, that’s one brotherly thing you didn’t get right. Jarrod would never apologize.” She grinned. “However, apology accepted. Just don’t do it again.”
He rolled his eyes. “You don’t make it easy.”
“And I don’t intend to either.” She walked away, then turned and continued walking backward as she asked him, “Any news on the men you found?”
“Cousins. Last name Lewis, first names Martin and Jeremy. Both with connections to the drug trade.”
She froze. Her gaze widened. “Those were two names I connected accounts to.” She frowned. “I forgot to give that to Bullard.”
“What?” He took several steps toward her.
She spun around and raced to the stairs, calling back, “I have to talk to Levi.” Then she was gone from sight.
Like hell she would keep him in the dark. He picked up the pace and raced up the stairs behind her.
Chapter 4
“Levi?” She stood hesitantly at the office door.
Both Ice and Levi had their heads bent over blueprints of some kind. She knew they had plans for an expansion to the compound but didn’t know what that entailed exactly.
Levi looked up and smiled. “What’s up, Sienna?”
She ventured inside a few steps and said, “Rhodes just told me about the cousins found dead in the house. I’m pretty sure those were the two names I deciphered from the code and spreadsheets Bullard sent.”
Levi’s gaze widened. “I wondered why they sounded familiar. I couldn’t find anything that would give me a reason to confirm that though.” He stood up straight, walked to the table where she had placed the codes with her scratch pad of decoded names. He tapped the second line and said, “You’re right. J. Lewis, M. Lewis. Also, the initials R.F.”
“And those names had the lower figures by them,” Sienna said. “It’s potentially a smaller deal. Of course, this is just supposition until we get more answers.”
“But we can also track a lot of information about those cousins now ourselves,” Ice said.
She walked to a desk in the far corner. Sienna recognized it as the one she usually used, but as they all shifted, depending on who was here and who was gone, she didn’t know if anybody had a dedicated computer.
Ice sat down, opened the laptop and said, “I’m not as good as some of the guys, but I’m learning.”
Levi grinned. “We don’t do anything illegal,” he explained to Sienna, “but we do have access to a lot of databases, including police files. And if we can’t get enough information on our own, we have friends in places who can.”
“No arrests on either name,” Ice said. “But we have sealed juvie files for both.”
“I’m not surprised. We won’t get those unsealed.”
“Don’t need to,” Ice said simply. “The fact that they even exist means their teenage years were something of a life of crime.”
“Any other members of the family?” Levi asked.
Sienna waited, wishing she could be more involved. Then realized she had access to some of that information as well. She went to her laptop and turned it on. Within minutes she said, “Martin has a brother. Both parents are still alive. Jeremy has a sister, and his mother is alive. The cousins were raised next door to each other.”
She studied the addresses in front of her. “The families actually own their houses. Maybe they had money or came into some. There are no mortgages on either.”
“So both men were raised with lots of family, good values, and obviously not a poor living area if the parents owned their houses,” Ice theorized.
“I can’t confirm that about the neighborhood,” Sienna said, “but it wouldn’t be too hard to double-check. Not that it helps much.”
“There’s often no reason why some kids go south like that,” Ice said. “Also, maybe they just went into that world to make money, and that’s how the parents paid off their houses.” She looked at Levi. “About time to bring in a few of our connections, pass over some of this information and see what they might have to offer.”
“Or call Bullard first,” Sienna said. Both turned to look at her as she smiled. “Or not.” She raised her hands and shrugged. “Don’t quite know how all this works. But normally we would get as much information on our side before offering any to somebody else.”
Ice laughed. “I like the way you think.”
Levi checked his watch and said, “Perfect. It’s about six in the morning over there. I’ll call Bullard now.” He pulled out his phone, turned to look at Ice and said, “I’ll let you talk to him.”
In a surprise move she reached up and kissed Levi on the cheek. “You can talk to him, sweetie.” She walked from the room. “It’s getting late. I’m headed to our suite.”
Sienna shut down her laptop as she heard Levi talking to Bullard and with a small wave, turned and walked toward the office door. And that’s when she saw Rhodes, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed. She glared at him. “Did you hear the whole thing?”
He raised his eyebrows at her tone and said, “Sure. Why not? I didn’t interrupt or have anything to add.”
His words were correct, and his voice was level, but the glint in his eye made her suspicious.
She brushed past him. “Levi’s talking to Bullard now. So, if you want to talk to him about this, you’ll have to wait.”
“Are you heading to bed now?”
An odd tone was in his voice. She turned to look at him. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Ah.”
She stopped, pivoted to face him fully and glared at him. “What does that mean?”
He raised his eyebrows once again.
She shook her head. “Don’t raise your eyebrows like that. What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I should take a shower too.” He whistled as he walked past her and tossed back, “Too bad we can’t have one together and conserve water.”
And then, just like that, he was gone. She made her way into her suite and slammed the door, locking it behind her. She leaned against it. Then slowly sank to the floor.
Because now the only thought in her head was of the two of them, making passionate love, bodies twisting in hot water, completely into each other.
Damn him. Now she needed a cold shower.
*
That was mean of him. Yet he grinned. Too bad. She was just way-too
-damn distracting. He should have spoken to Jarrod when he was here before he went off on another mission.
Jarrod had to know his sister hooking up with someone here was a possibility. There were several single men. Attraction happened. And way too fast in some cases. He headed to his suite and stripped to get into the shower. He laughed again at his comment and the look of shock on her face. He stepped into the water, then realized though he had said it as a joke, his body was already thinking about the two of them in the damn water. And his body wasn’t taking no for an answer.
He was forced to turn down the temperature to cool himself off in order to get through it. By the time he wrapped himself in a towel, dried off and stepped into the bedroom, he was pissed at himself. By teasing her, he was teasing himself, and that was the last thing he needed. He glanced at the time and realized it was still pretty early. He put on his sweats and a T-shirt and headed downstairs to watch a movie. The living room was empty, and that was the way he liked it. He turned on the monster seventy-two-inch TV. The one thing they all agreed on when they decided they needed a TV was that they would buy the biggest and most badass one they could find.
He grinned as he checked through the movie listings until he found a hard-core action flick. Before pressing Play, he walked to the kitchen to grab some popcorn. He put the bag in the microwave, poured a shot of whiskey and when the microwave finished, carried the drink and popcorn back into the living room and stopped. He was no longer alone.
Sienna had the remote, checking out a chick flick on the screen.
“Ah, hell, no,” he said. He put down the popcorn and his drink and said, “No chick flicks allowed in the house.”
She turned, one eyebrow raised, and said, “As a man you’re afraid of romance. Or maybe it’s sex.”
He glared at her. He remembered all the comments he’d made way back when about her temper. Obviously, he had pricked it well tonight. He decided to change his tactic. He bent in front of her and kissed her. “Anytime you want somebody to warm your bed, you just have to say so,” he said. He snatched the remote from her hand and immediately flicked it back to the movie he had set up.