CARA WAS BACK in the small yet prestigious Ranger Corporation local headquarters. Once again she faced Roger Rosales in his own well-appointed office, asking questions.
He still looked like a boy who’d rather pull pranks than run a national company’s local offices, his youthful look emphasized by his attire, more casual than the last time Cara had seen him. Today, he wore a blue buttoned shirt without a tie, and his suit jacket was over the back of his tall leather desk chair.
“What kind of deal do you have in mind, Ms. Hamilton?” Roger sat forward, folding his hands on his pile-laden desk. Interested, but not too interested, his body language said to Cara.
“Have your records been returned to you from Lambert & Church?”
“Our legal files? Could be, but what business is it of yours?” His smile didn’t falter. But was that a tinge of uneasiness Cara detected in his otherwise cheerful brown eyes?
Cara bent forward till she, too, leaned over his desk. She hoped her body language suggested sincerity. “I’m not asking for information that’s strictly between your company’s lawyers and you.”
Not exactly true. She’d love to see it all. Would she be able to tell what documents had passed over Nancy Wilks’s desk? Would she finally learn what Nancy had wanted to show her? Or would she simply be able to rule out that Nancy’s find involved Ranger Corporation?
“I also know that if I dig deeply enough into public records I’ll find what I need, but that could take time.” Mitch was trying to get it for her, too, but she had no guarantees as to if and when he’d succeed. “Here’s what I suggest. I don’t know for sure why Ranger Corporation has a presence in Mustang Valley, though I’ll know eventually, since for any development to be built it’ll need government approvals. That process can be smoothed by good publicity and made bumpy by bad.”
“So if I give you what you need, you can promise your paper will get behind whatever our project is?”
How she despised his smile! It didn’t reveal a thing about what was really on his mind. She had to look away before she gagged. “I didn’t say that.” She again met his stare. “I can’t promise anything, since the Gazette isn’t my paper. I don’t determine editorial policy. But I can make strong suggestions. And if your project will benefit the citizens of Mustang County, bring jobs, that sort of thing, then I’ll urge that the paper run favorable editorials. Maybe charge lower advertising rates.”
“And all that just for letting you in on what’s already public record?”
“Right. Like whether Ranger Corporation is affiliated with Eastern Mustang Property Acquisition or Texas Mustang Valley Sites, the companies that own land in the vicinity of the Rawlins ranchlands that Ranger was trying to buy a month or so ago.”
“And that’s all you want? You’re not here to twist something out of me like you tried last time, when you insinuated Ranger was involved with unsavory things like Mayor Daniels’s or Paul Lambert’s sins?” The gleam in his eye was a penetrating dagger of contained fury.
That didn’t deter Cara. “You mean murder? Including Nancy Wilks’s?”
“Exactly.”
“You brought them up this time, Mr. Rosales, not me. I asked before if Ranger was connected and you neither confirmed nor denied it. I didn’t expect anything different now, unless…” She let her words taper off.
“Of course I’m not going to confirm or deny. That’s too much like asking if I’ve stopped beating my wife. Damned if you say yes, damned if you don’t.” He paused. That despicable grin reappeared, this time with something more behind it. He scanned Cara with glittering eyes that overtly undressed her before rising again to meet her gaze. “I’m not married, by the way.”
“Glad to hear it.” Cara smiled. She knew the value of flirting, but it wasn’t easy with this slick and slimy corporate executive from whom she needed information. His damning question was more like: Did you steal what Nancy Wilks had to show me before or after you killed her?
“So if you confirm a connection,” she said, “you admit the company’s somehow involved with murders, which of course you won’t do. But if you deny it, why does that harm you?”
“It’s gracing a totally inappropriate question with a response.” His words came out one by one, and she had a sudden uncomfortable feeling he’d switched from flirtation to threatening her in a covert manner she didn’t quite get.
“I don’t agree,” she said. “But in any event, do we have a deal?”
“I’ll think about it, Cara. Talk to my superiors. They’ll check with our corporate lawyers.”
In other words, they’d have a deal when hell froze over.
Or when Cara got this too-slick company executive to dance a jig on Nancy Wilks’s grave.
Still, as Cara left the office, wishing she had time to jump into the shower to wash the slime off, she grinned.
Deal or not, she’d gotten more leads from her visit to the Ranger offices.
MITCH CAUGHT UP to Cara at the Main Street curb as she opened her car door.
“Mitch. What are you doing here?” She smiled as if pleased to see him. Damn, but that made him feel good.
But he knew her welcome wouldn’t last. “Why did you call me before? And why didn’t you wait till I got back to you?”
Sure enough, the glow in her joyful hazel eyes flickered into defensiveness. “I had some information to share, per our deal, but you obviously weren’t interested.”
“I obviously couldn’t talk then. You’re smart enough to have realized that.”
“Yeah, I did. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter now.” But her face paled suddenly as she was reminded about whatever it was. And that told Mitch it definitely did matter.
“Tell me anyway,” he said.
“No need. We’ll touch base later.” Cara slid into her car.
Good thing it was one where all the doors opened with a flick of a switch on her key ring, since before she could start the engine Mitch had moved around it, taken off his hat and slipped into the passenger seat.
Cara glared. Her blouse beneath her beige vest that day was rust colored, a few shades darker than her hair. He liked the contrast, even as a clashing pinkness rose up her cheeks. Good. He was glad her color returned, and then some. “What are you doing?”
He countered with a question of his own. “Where are we going?”
“We?”
“Yeah, partner. And by the way, we’re not going anywhere till you tell me what you called about earlier. Your voice then and your reaction now have told me it’s something I want to hear.”
Her shoulders wilted, and the defeat in her eyes made him want to draw her close. Wring it out of her.
Hug it out of her…
“You don’t want to hear.” Her voice cracked. “I sure didn’t.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“It was another phone call. I don’t think it was the same person as last time. But whoever it was knew details about the attack on me yesterday that weren’t in the article. Maybe it was even the attacker. And he—or she—threatened me if I continue to work on the exposé about Nancy’s death.”
“Damn it, Cara, you should have told me right away. Do you have caller ID on your phone?”
She nodded. “It’s a fixture at the Gazette, but it was blocked.”
Mitch knew that even as a peace officer he couldn’t fix everything. Be everywhere at once. Save everyone. He’d told himself so often.
Especially after his dad died.
He didn’t believe it then. He didn’t believe it now.
And he’d failed to be there for Cara when it really mattered at least twice in only the past two days—once in the park and again with this damned phone call.
That was two times too many.
His objectivity in this case was stretching thin. He never let feelings for victims develop, let alone get in his way. But Cara wasn’t an ordinary victim. She refused to be a victim at all. And admiration was leading to other unwelcome feelings.
His training kicked in automatically. He questioned her about the call. But she hadn’t recognized the voice, nor had there been any distinguishing sounds in the background.
“I thought of all that,” she said grumpily. Good. He preferred her spunk to show through instead of fear—even when it was turned on him.
“I’m sure you did. Look, you feel like some coffee at the Lone Star Lodge? We need to talk.”
“Later. I have someplace to go right now.”
“Like?”
“Well, I just visited Roger Rosales in the Ranger Corporation office.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured, since you happened to be right outside his office. But did you clear it with me? Cara, I told you—”
Both her words and her cat-and-canary smile stopped him. “I told him I wanted to make a deal with him. As if I thought I could trust him. What I really went there for was information.”
“And he handed it to you?” Mitch didn’t believe it.
“Not exactly. But journalists learn all sorts of unusual skills.”
“Like?”
“Like reading upside down.”
CARA DROVE IN SILENCE, sneaking looks toward Mitch.
Most of the time he was looking right back.
Darn him. She’d always considered her compact car roomy enough, but Mitch seemed to occupy the entire passenger seat and then some. He’d pushed the seat back as far as it would go, and still his uniform-clad legs seemed cramped.
Not to mention that his presence heated the entire car. Or maybe it was just that she always seemed to warm up when he was around. And not just with body heat. Desire for this man did strange things to her, at all the wrong times.
As if there would ever be a right time. He was her ally in an investigation. That was all. And as with all allies, she could not let her guard down and trust him.
He’d brought back to her mind much too forcefully that damnable threatening telephone call. And her frightened response. She wasn’t a fool, but neither would she let someone scare her off by threats that made it even clearer to her that she was on the right track. If someone wanted to scare her, that meant she was scaring them!
She pressed the button to roll down her window part-way, but that didn’t help. The outside air was hotter still. She put the window back up and turned on the air conditioner.
She didn’t want the stubborn, interfering deputy with her right now, and not just because his sexy presence was a distraction. The person she was going to see would undoubtedly have nothing to say with the law there.
Not that he was likely to say much to the media, anyway.
Especially her.
And she had to admit—but only to herself—that she felt safer with Mitch along.
“Exactly what did you see as you read the papers on Roger Rosales’s desk upside down?” Mitch asked. She’d explained what she meant. While Roger and she played their cat-and-mouse games in which she’d seemed to have gained nothing, she’d taken the opportunity, in a seemingly sincere moment leaning toward him, to scan the pages on top of the stacks on his desk. Most were letters. She’d memorized the addressees.
“I gathered he was interviewing contractors for his mysterious development,” she said. “I saw five names, and most weren’t local.”
“But some were.”
She nodded. “That’s where I was going when you caught up with me, to see one.”
“You made an appointment?”
“No, but he won’t be surprised to see me.” She laughed at Mitch’s puzzled expression. “He owes me a phone call,” she explained. “I tried calling him the other day and left my name, but he never got back to me.”
“And just why did you call him before?”
“Because he’s on that handy-dandy list you told me to make. You know, the people likely to have grudges against me since I exposed their shoddy practices in one of my articles. One of them just happened to be a contractor—Shem O’Hallihan.”
Chapter Eleven
The offices of O’Hallihan Construction, on the outskirts of town, were in a building that resembled a huge garage. Not surprising, Cara thought. It probably housed a lot of machinery. O’Hallihan was the busiest contractor in Mustang County.
If she hadn’t known better, she’d have hoped, for its customers’ sakes, that the company did better with other people’s projects than with maintaining its own premises. The wood frame structure hadn’t been painted in years. Of course, she knew how O’Hallihan treated its customers—and it wasn’t good.
She parked in a visitors’ spot between a red pickup truck on wheels practically as tall as she was and a shiny green SUV.
“You don’t happen to see an old blue truck here, do you?” she said, turning her head as she got out of her car.
“Reading my mind?” Mitch, too, scanned their surroundings. “I don’t see anything matching your description.”
She headed for a door toward the building’s left side marked with a big red sign saying Office. Mitch was beside her. This close, she was very much aware of how much taller he was than her. And how much safer she felt in his presence.
If she weren’t careful, she’d be stupid enough to start liking that feeling. Liking him.
Oh, hell. She already did like him. Too much.
“Let’s discuss strategy,” he said.
She looked sidelong at him, only to find his gaze on her. She appreciated that he actually waited for her input. There was a heat in his eyes—a reminder of last night’s kiss—that suggested he wanted to tear her clothes off. Yet at the same time he respected her for her mind.
Was she reading too much into this look—like her own libidinous reaction to him?
Later, she thought. Now wasn’t the time to think of anything beyond their current mission.
“Not much to strategize about.” She drew her concentration back to the door in front of them. “You’ll listen, I’ll talk and Shem O’Hallihan will scream.”
Mitch’s brief laugh was rich and hearty and curled around her like an appreciative hug. “And you know this because…?”
“I’ve interviewed the man before. I’ve even been one of his employees, or so he thought. I put on a hard hat, a work shirt and jeans and applied for a job as a drywall installer.”
“He took you on?”
“After I proved I could install drywall. That’s one of the ways I learned how he skimped on materials. The drywall he used stank. Literally.”
“No kidding? And of course you know how to install the stuff.” Was he was patronizing her? Instead his expression still seemed amused. “Let’s see if we can find out why Ranger Corporation is thinking of hiring him,” he finished.
Cara recalled these offices—small rooms connected by a narrow hall with gray, stained walls.
“Which is O’Hallihan’s?” Mitch asked. None of the three doors was marked.
“The last one.” Cara also remembered—too well—being in O’Hallihan’s office, especially the last time. It was uncomfortably small, as they all were. But what made the others cramped was that they were always filled with files and tools and people. The dozens of company laborers hung out here between jobs, sometimes in the warehouse, but often in these close rooms that contained uncomfortable benches and coffeepots kept bottomless by constant brewing.
Cara hadn’t gotten to know her temporary co-workers well, despite working with them for several weeks. Employees seemed to change nearly as often as pages on a daily calendar. She’d gathered physical proof of the allegations she later made in her story, but no one had enough knowledge to provide an in-depth interview.
Except, of course, Shem O’Hallihan himself. He hadn’t realized that his flirtation with Cheryl Hazleton, as Cara had called herself, was a dialogue and that most unsavory points would appear in an article that exposed his corrupt business practices.
His obvious lust for her was why his office had seemed the tiniest of all, for she’d wanted to put as much room between them as possible.
&
nbsp; And now? Her skin crawled at the thought of seeing him again, but she wanted to get it over with. Besides, she wasn’t alone.
She was surprised there weren’t as many people around now. Maybe they were all out in the field, at work. Or at lunch. It was just after noon.
Was Shem in? Probably. He usually didn’t grab lunch till late afternoon, when he also visited job sites to check on the progress.
Cara edged around Mitch in the narrow hall. His body heat mingled with hers as she brushed by. Ignoring her too-powerful awareness of the uniformed deputy, she knocked on the door.
“Yeah?” Cara recognized the familiar, gruff voice. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open.
Shem O’Hallihan sat behind his desk, dwarfing his office by his presence, though not by his size. He’d always seemed surprisingly flimsy to Cara for a guy who purported to work with his hands and heavy materials all day.
As in the other times she’d seen him, he wore dark glasses. The puffy style of his light hair seemed to flaunt that his hairline hadn’t begun to recede, despite his being middle-aged. But his body was skinny and his usual white T-shirt didn’t hide that he lacked muscle tone.
He might be great at hiring people to do his company’s work, but Cara hadn’t seen him do an hour’s worth of labor himself.
Shem stood up. The expression on his face suggested he wanted to tear her apart. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She refused to let herself be quailed, but before she responded, Mitch moved around her. “She’s assisting on an official investigation, Mr. O’Hallihan.” His uniform said it all.
“Yeah, officially printed lies,” he spat.
Cara conjured a friendly smile. “Good to see you, too, Shem. And you’re right that I’m here as a reporter, though I’m cooperating with Deputy Steele as he looks into the Nancy Wilks murder. Did you know Nancy?”
She thought Shem’s small eyes would leap from his head the way he glared from behind his glasses. “First you accuse me in print of cheating customers. Now you’re accusing me of murder?” Leaning on his fists on his desk, he turned to Mitch. “Isn’t it a crime to tell lies about a citizen, Deputy? If so, I demand that you arrest her.”
Lawful Engagement - Linda O Johnston Page 14