by Misty Evans
“I do not, but if you’re done being afraid I’ll kill you and want to come inside, we’ll put Grey’s techy bitch on it.”
She eyed him. “I thought you were worried I was wearing a wire?”
That Miracle Mitch grin slid across his face and he waved her off. “Nah. I was just fucking with you. I like getting you riled up, Caroline. It turns me on.”
“Seriously, I could kill you.”
Right this second. Just—boom! The man frustrated the hell out of her. He also made her laugh and that was the thing she couldn’t resist. His caustic, inappropriate humor made a crazy, vicious world tolerable.
He swung sideways and held out his hand to the pukey-colored building. “Come on, Caroline. Take a walk with me.”
Chapter Five
What am I doing? Mitch opened the door and moved to the side to usher Caroline in. She always did that to him…caught him off guard. Just like mentioning the-night-that-never-happened. She was the one who’d insisted they never to speak of it. Yet, invariably she threw it in his face at random times.
She’d never gotten over that night. That intense, holy-fuck night. And what a holy fuck it was. He hadn’t fully recovered from it either. At least, he hoped that was why she’d brought it up again.
A man could dream.
Caroline gave him the hairy eyeball before she carefully stepped across the threshold. As if she were stepping into a criminal’s den. Or maybe hell. “I don’t bite,” he said, laying a charming grin on her once more.
She lifted her lip in a slight sneer. “As I recall, you do bite on occasion.”
There it was again. A reference to the-night-that-never-happened. A reference that brought up a slew of memories. Her soft flesh between his teeth. The taste of her on his tongue.
His pants grew tight. From the memory and from the sarcastic look on her face. She pretended to be straight-laced but he knew better. The woman under the Bureau attire was as hot as they came. And she gave as good as she got.
Mitch adjusted his pants. He turned his attention to the main room and saw Grey frozen in his tracks, a look of utter fear on his face. “What the fuck…?”
“We need to find a blog,” Mitch said, clearing his throat. Teeg had a similar look on his face. Disbelief. “A blogger actually.”
“A blog? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Grey jerked his head to the board with all his classified information that was now, with Caroline’s presence, officially declassified.
Yep, if Caroline didn’t kill him, Grey would.
“Grey,” Caroline said, “nice to see you. Apparently we’re both suckers for Mitch.”
He brushed fake dirt off his shoulder. “I do have a certain charm that’s hard to resist.”
Caroline laughed. “I never said otherwise. Which is my problem.” She turned to Grey. “I won’t look at what’s on that board. Are you up to speed?”
“About Mitch’s batshit idea concerning Tommy and a cover-up?”
“I’m afraid it may not be too crazy. I got my hand slapped this morning by your friend Donaldson for trying to read a protected file.”
Good guy that he was, Grey pretended he hadn’t overheard Mitch and Caroline’s previous conversation. “No shit?”
“Yep. Now Mitch wants me to chase down some ex-ATF guy who runs a blog.”
“Brice Brennan? Mitch already told me about him. Sounds like another dead lead to me, but Teeg here can find anyone.”
Mitch huffed. “Hello? This is my case, everyone, remember?” He glanced at Caroline. “Caroline, meet David Teeg, the techy bitch I was telling you about.”
“Hey,” Teeg said. “I’m nobody’s bitch.”
Grey snickered. “You are, and you might as well face reality. Now help them out.”
Grey headed for his board and Teeg made a nasty face at his back.
“I saw that,” Grey said.
Teeg swore under his breath. “How does he do that?”
“Well,” Caroline said. “I see nothing’s changed with you boys. Still infants.”
Mitch refrained from rolling his eyes. “How do we find Brennan, Teeg?”
Caroline walked over to the computer hub. “Mitch thinks he runs a government watch blog that Tommy told Mitch was highly critical of ATF. My guess is, it will have a lot of posts on gun control. Can we search blogs by subjects?”
Teeg hit a few keys and a second later said, “There are three thousand-plus government watch blogs.”
“Holy shit,” Mitch said.
Caroline’s forehead wrinkled. “How do we narrow it down?”
Teeg hit a few more keys. “Nothing comes up associated with the guy’s name, but we narrow it with keywords.”
“Like what?” Mitch said.
“Gun control, ATF mismanagement or corruption, ATF watchdog,” Caroline answered.
Teeg typed. A second later, a list of the most prominent watch blogs scrolled on the main screen. Caroline and Mitch both leaned forward, scanning their names. Nothing jumped out at Mitch. No “hey, I’m Brice Brennan’s blog” which would have been nice, to be honest.
“This could take a while,” Caroline murmured. “Can you do a search for Congressional cover-ups?”
“Sure.” Teeg worked his keyboard magic again. “Okay, that leaves us with a thousand.”
“Can you narrow them by the most recent posts on ATF specific cover-ups? Starting three weeks ago.”
More keyboard tapping. “We’re down to a few hundred.”
“Hang on,” Caroline said. “Try topics of ATF cover-ups and agents killed in the line. I bet Brennan’s done at least a few posts on both subjects.”
A new entry, a new list, this one much shorter.
A pang of homesickness struck Mitch out of the blue. Like it had with Kemp in Runner’s Paradise. This was how it used to be, him and Caroline working cases together. It was fun to see her so fired up.
Teeg caught Mitch’s eye. “I can get the IP addresses. That will at least tell you if the bloggers are located in the States. But if he doesn’t want to be found, he could be bouncing the signal to other spots in the world.”
“He’s most likely not a supergeek like you.” Mitch stared at the screen, thinking. “See if any of the top five have addresses here in the States.”
“It’ll take a minute.”
Mitch drew Caroline aside. “Can I get you something to drink?”
She checked her phone. “No, thanks. I’ve got a date with a dumpster. Are you around tonight? Whatever Teeg finds, we can check out later.”
She was willing to help him. Willing to go with him to locate Brice. His heart did a little weird thump-thump. “Yeah, I’ll give you my number. We can meet up later.”
“Try not to get arrested before then.”
He snickered. “Try not to crawl too far up Donaldson’s ass before then.”
“Thanks to you, it’s a little late for that.”
He walked her to the door, her sensible shoes squeaking on the cement floor. “You’ll survive.”
She sneered at him again before exiting. He followed her out, watched her drive off. Yep, Caroline Foster would be the death of him. And she’d enjoy every minute of busting his balls.
Truth was, he might enjoy it too.
Caroline parked at the rear of the fast food restaurant’s lot, nudging her car—no sense getting in trouble for using her Bureau car on an assignment she shouldn’t be anywhere near—between a minivan and an ancient sedan. She checked the dashboard clock. 6:20. As usual, she was early and Mitch, bless his rebellious heart, would most likely be late.
Mitch, Mitch, Mitch. The man made her crazy in all the ways he shouldn’t, but in a truly twisted way she loved.
After an afternoon spent dumpster diving, she’d gone home and showered for thirty minutes, scrubbing her skin raw, but somehow still carried the stench of rotting meat. Damned Donaldson. After handling all that bovine nastiness, she might just become a vegetarian. Tragedy that because she loved a good hunk of r
ib-eye.
A knock sounded on the passenger window and she jumped. Mitch’s face appeared—well, how about that—five minutes early. She hit the lock button and he slid in.
Similar to that morning, his jeans rode low on his hips and were blown out at the knees. Under his leather jacket, a T-shirt read, I can give a headache to an aspirin.
How appropriate. And factual, but stupid. He was a fugitive who shouldn’t draw attention to himself. Besides, he was already a bad ass who didn’t need to advertise his attitude. Yet, in good old Mitch Monroe manner, that’s exactly what he was doing. A rebel to the roots of his hair. “I see you’ve dressed for the occasion. And allow me to congratulate you on being five minutes early.”
“Don’t make fun of my clothes, Caroline. I dress for comfort these days. Unlike you in your pseudo-Bureau uniform.”
Caroline glanced down at her slacks. After the marathon shower, she’d considered wearing jeans and the wicked leather boots she’d bought on a whim last month, but opted against it. Boots like that would entice Mr. Sexual Innuendo to make a comment, and they’d fall into old habits of one-upping each other. The last time they’d done that, they wound up in her bed working off major calories.
So, as clothing went, she’d done business casual: slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer. No skin showing. At all. If Mitch didn’t take the hint, he was blind. And dense.
Neither of which could ever be used to describe Mitch Monroe.
Not interested in verbal swordplay, she started the car. “No one followed you, right?”
He snorted. “I’ve been on the lam for a year. I know when I’ve got a tail. Afraid you’ll get caught with a federal fugitive?”
“Bet your ass.”
At some point they’d have to discuss the fact that she hadn’t gotten over the last attempt he’d made to destroy her career. As unintentional as it had been, she’d allowed herself to be talked into things she shouldn’t have been talked into regarding The Lion case. Going behind Donaldson’s back, entering a report for Mitch she shouldn’t have touched, getting herself involved in a hornet’s nest.
Later. “This is your manhunt. Where are we going?”
“Teeg narrowed down the IP addresses to three possible street addresses. I had him run a DMV check of Brice’s vehicle. Guy drives a Ford truck, red, D.C. plates. Teeg found the guy’s Facebook page—his personal one—and printed off a few shots of it. Brice is proud of his wheels. Got rebel shit all over it. Shouldn’t be hard to spot.”
Caroline entered the address he rattled off into her phone and waited for Andre—the name she’d given her GPS narrator—to spit out directions. Seconds later, she had a route mapped. “Twenty-five minutes.”
Twenty-five minutes in a car with Mitch. Plenty of time to lay on his charm. Which, he most certainly would do. And her without ear plugs.
Pulling into rush hour traffic, she merged into the center lane and hit the gas. “When was the last time you talked to Tommy?”
Mitch fiddled with the car’s radio, found a station playing old rock that made her want those ear plugs even more. “Labor Day. We had a standing boys-only trip—Tommy, me, and Kemp—every Labor Day to camp and fish. I picked a different location this year in case anyone knew about our usual spot, but Tommy couldn’t make it anyway. Too deep undercover, he said. He was anxious…about what he wouldn’t say.”
A guitar riff nearly blew her hearing and she pressed a random button on the radio. Classical. She’d take it. Mitch gave her a WTF face.
“My car, my music.”
“Since when do you like classical?”
“It relaxes me, and my ears were bleeding. Did Tommy tell you anything about the taskforce? They found his body in Roswell, in a parking lot near a residential neighborhood. Did you know he was down there?”
“He didn’t share details. All he said was that he was hot and ready to be done with his latest assignment. Although, Tommy being Tommy, he had a lot to say about the women in town. Sounded like things were about to wrap up and he wanted to spend a few hours with a gal he was sweet on before he moved on to his next assignment. Next thing I know, Kemp tells me he’s dead.”
Mitch had his head turned, looking out the window, but the tight set of his jaw told her he was holding back emotions he didn’t know how to deal with.
Caroline couldn’t go there with him. As much as she wanted to, allowing him inside her head again would be torture. She wasn’t sure she could survive another round of Mitch’s brand of torture.
She merged onto the heavy, but moving expressway traffic. “Someone—besides this woman—had to be in contact with him down there. Someone had to know the details about the operation he was working on. We have to find that person. Maybe Brice Brennan might know who it was.”
“Let’s hope. Tommy liked working alone.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. The Bureau rumor is he was on the take. Selling assault weapons on the black market. I know he was your friend—”
“Yours too, Caroline.”
Whatever. “I know he was our friend, but you know as well as I do, none of us were getting rich as FBI agents.”
“He didn’t need money.”
“If he had a girlfriend, maybe he did.”
“Seriously? You believe this crap? Nuh-uh. I know you better. If you believed it, you wouldn’t be driving my ass on this goose chase. If you believed it, you wouldn’t have gone looking for those files.”
She glanced over at him, met his stare for a second, then went back to the road. “I’m not sure what I believe. Money makes people do crazy things. Maybe I’m here to satisfy myself. When we’re through, I’ll know for sure. That’s all I know right now. Now shut up and let me think for the next fifteen minutes.”
He punched the radio back to the rock station. Unbelievable. Most stubborn man ever. Well, guess what? She’d been known to be just as stubborn. Swirling her finger, she tapped the radio button to off. He sighed heavily.
Drama queen.
She waited for a response. Something. Anything. But Mitch only sat there, quietly staring out the window as Andre gave directions and they flew by clumps of trees on the side of the road.
Maybe she’d pushed him too far. Two of his best friends were gone and he was grieving and her only interest was self-protection.
After all they’d shared, how had they gotten to this place?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About Tommy and Kemp. About us. Whatever us is. We were friends and then we weren’t.”
Quite possibly for the first time ever, Mitch appeared speechless. He hemmed and hawed for a second. “We’re more than friends, Caroline, whether you want to admit it or not. And I appreciate what you’re doing here.”
Sharp, ugly pain shot through her ribcage. That ache when thoughts of Mitch distracted her. Made her regret what never was. And here he was, working her over again. All that sincerity and the eyes—puppy dog eyes. He thought he could suck her in with those eyes.
Maybe he could.
She gripped the steering wheel tighter as she curved around the exit ramp. Just a few more minutes and they’d be back to business. “After this, we’ll know what happened with Tommy. Let’s just focus on that for now.”
“If that’s what you want, sure.”
At the stop light, Caroline turned left and sent Andre into a fit. Clearly, she’d missed his command to turn right. Distracted. Thanks, Mitch.
After hooking a U-turn, she cruised down the four-lane road leading to their first address. Three turns later, she drove past their target, a small white cottage with shrubs lining the house. On the porch hung a swing with bright red floral pillows.
In the driveway was a minivan. The ultimate Mom-mobile and about as opposite as one could get from a jacked up truck.
“Not looking too good,” Mitch said.
Caroline laughed. “Excellent observation skills.”
“According to Teeg, the other address is only ten minutes from here. Should we check that
one out, and if it’s a bust come back?”
Resting her forehead against the steering wheel, she mulled it over. If they went to the door and someone other than Brice answered—assuming this was his house—they’d lose all element of surprise. And considering she didn’t see his truck, she wasn’t feeling the love for this location.
Decision made, she sat up. “Yep. Let’s see what the other place looks like. Then we’ll know if we’ve wasted our time.”
And, where Mitch was concerned, every last ounce of her emotional reserves.
Red truck. Lift kit. Kiss my rebel ass bumper sticker. Check, check, and check. “Bingo,” Mitch said. “We found Brennan.”
Caroline parked at the curb behind the truck and they scanned the house. Raised ranch. Dark curtains. Peeling paint. Overgrown bushes lined the steps to the front porch, and the sidewalk was cracked. Real inviting.
“I’ll knock.” Carline shut off her boring POS car. “You stay here.”
“Hell with that. I’ll knock and you stay here.”
“A man wanted for murder showing up on your doorstep tends to freak people out, idiot. He’ll never talk to you. Probably won’t even open the door.”
“He’s ex-ATF. You think a Bureau agent won’t scare him out the back door?”
“He doesn’t know I’m FBI. You, on the other hand, have your mug on every news station and website in the tri-state area.”
“You scream FBI, Caroline. The conservative clothes, the ponytail.” He opened the car door and hauled out. “I’m going in.”
Caroline, of course, jumped out on her side and slammed the door. “I’m going with you. You’re not exactly dressed for it, but we’ll pretend we’re holy rollers. You could use a little of that in your life.”
Just like the old days. She never could sit still. Had to be the one to drive. Had to be the one to call the shots. “Ever get tired of overcompensating?”
She tucked her classic navy blue jacket tighter to her body. A body he had memorized that single night he’d had her all to himself. A body he dreamed about having again. Like that will ever happen. “Overcompensating for what?”