Double Shot

by Chris Bostic

  DOUBLE SHOT:

  Book 2 of

  The Bourbon Heist Series

  CHRIS BOSTIC

  First printing, April 2020

  Copyright © 2020, Chris Bostic

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9798635706558

  Cover Design by Chris Bostic and Melinda Bostic

  All characters, locations, and events in this book are fictitious products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  DEDICATION

  To anyone who

  enjoys the

  distilled spirits,

  whether nightcaps

  or double shots

  CHAPTER 1

  “Hope, you got a minute?”

  “Anything for the new Director of Security,” I whispered back to Lee, who rather unprofessionally decided to take a seat on my desk. Not that there was much professional about my new employer. In fact, it couldn’t have been farther from it.

  Still I shot a look around the office to make sure Bethany wasn’t listening too closely. She watched us, quite obviously, through her eyelashes as she pretended to type.

  “What’s up?” I asked Lee.

  “Just come with me.”

  “All right.” I closed my laptop to keep prying eyes off my secret ad campaign. I’d been working on that during my free time in the hopes of impressing my new boss. Or more like prove I was capable of more than taking photos, much like how I’d been pigeonholed at my old job.

  “That’s good,” Lee said.

  “What is?” I side-eyed him, wondering if he’d seen my latest work.

  “Closing the laptop.” He smiled approvingly. “Gotta keep our work product secure around here.”

  I followed his glance toward Bethany. The way his eyes narrowed left an untold story there.

  “Wouldn’t want the competition stealing all our secrets,” I guessed with a whisper. His subtle nod let me know I’d hit the mark. We’d both speculated earlier that our temp agency secretary probably shouldn’t be made privy to our corporate secrets. Or pretty much anything in general.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked Lee as I stood.

  “You’ll see.” He threw in a bonus wink but refused to tell me more.

  Typical.

  Seeing how my boss, Clarice, had already stepped out for lunch, always stretching a one hour break into two or more, I didn’t feel too bad about leaving my desk before noon.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” I told Bethany. “You good?”

  “Should be. I’m just running some barrel reports.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “You are?” I asked, seeing how that sounded like work for the bottling department or our Master Distiller. “How come?”

  “The guys just asked me to run some dates and locations for your new OFT.”

  I couldn’t say what surprised me more, the idea that she knew about our upcoming Old Fine Tyler barrel proof release or the fact she’d mentioned guys as a plural.

  It was easy enough to assume that she’d peeked over my shoulder at my ad brochures, and that made me all the happier that I’d closed my laptop.

  On the other point, as far as I knew, Tim was our one and only employee in distillation. I couldn’t figure who else the guys would be, but I wasn’t about to show my ignorance in front of her and ask.

  I’d never even tried to run reports before either. I knew it was possible to access barrel information on our network; I just preferred graphic art over boring databases and spreadsheets. All the more reason why I went into marketing rather than accounting or something equally bland.

  Bethany clicked her mouse a couple times. The old printer whined as it warmed up. “I think I’m about done.”

  I watched the first of four sheets print out a long list of data tables. “So you’re good now, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. You guys can do, uhm…whatever.”

  I couldn’t tell if that was a dig or not. Likely not, seeing how she seemed more aloof than anything. So I said, “Sure. I’ll catch you later.”

  Bethany nodded and probably went back to playing solitaire on her computer. That’s about all we really expected out of a short-term temp.

  “This way, Miss Fields,” Lee said with a sweeping hand gesture.

  “You’re such a charmer.” I stepped into the hallway, but had to wait for him to take the lead—always a dangerous thing.

  “Nothing but the utmost respect for Old Tyler’s newest Marketing Specialist,” he said, mimicking my earlier praise. “It’s so great having you here with me.”

  “That’s about the only good thing,” I mumbled under my breath.

  Lee missed that. He also didn’t question me about the Old Fine Tyler release or make mention of Bethany printing out barrel data, both of which surprised me a bit.

  Instead, he gave me a big smile, so I made an effort to perk up—and threw in a little sass for good measure. “I s’pose it’s good having you here too. You know I got the job first.”

  “And I couldn’t be happier about that. Who better for a reference?”

  “Not Alyssa.” I scowled at the thought of our former boss, the internet famous diva who’d made our lives hell.

  “Don’t frown. I hate to see you at anything less than your prettiest.”

  I smirked at that too. “You’re really laying it on thick, Leland.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  “Something’s up. You’re being awful suspicious.”

  Lee didn’t answer. He guided me down the back hallway, away from the offices. At the exterior door, he pulled it open to reveal the gravel path that made a loop between the buildings on the distillery property.

  Following a quick look over his shoulder toward the front of the building, where the Old Tyler offices transitioned into a gift shop, he hopped out the door and picked up the pace, pulling on my wrist to keep me up with him.

  “In a hurry?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Off to the left, all the fermenting and distilling was done in a single, large building situated diagonally behind the gift shop. That metal clad structure stood in the opposite direction of wherever he was taking me.

  “So where are we going?” I asked when he led me along the gravel path between two similarly metal-clad buildings, only those stood exactly four stories tall and were covered with the black ethanol fungus typical of distilling and aging bourbon.

  In contrast, the production building, now behind us, was not fungus covered—the result of a cleaning crew, and management’s decision to keep only certain parts of the property pristine by washing them monthly.

  It constituted another nonsensical decision in my opinion. It was like the owners reveled in conflict. Old versus new. Dirty and clean. History versus modernization. It seemed a chaotic way of running a business, but they weren’t around much anyway, contributing to the confusion.

  The management void left different people in charge of different things, but no one knowing what the other groups were up to. Hence my ability to walk out of the office at a whim. Still, it felt strange to abandon my desk like that.

  Lee was not to be deterred when I told him as much.

  “You’re with me,” he said, as if that really explained things. “Anyway, I really want you to see this.”

  He directed us toward Rack House B off to our left. Then on a beeline to the nearest door.

  There was nothing special about that warehouse, at least as far as I knew. Clarice had mentioned that each type of Old Tyler product aged together in certain buildings as Bethany’s spreadsheets showed, but I understood that was done only for keeping each of the specific products in one place rather than for any particular type of maturation process.

  Every ware
house on the property had been built exactly the same. Buildings A through H each held twenty thousand barrels of variously branded liquors.

  Lee took out a wad of keys and flipped through them to find the right one. With a quick twist, we were inside what I always thought had to be heaven on earth.

  I still didn’t completely love bourbon, though Lee had helped me appreciate the spirit: the flavors, the smells, the distillation process.

  As far as I was concerned, the smell of a rack house was almost orgasmic. I don’t know that I necessarily supported the idea of a lavish home bar, but I sure wouldn’t have been opposed to a home rack house. Or bourbon-scented candles, though it would have taken a thousand to replicate the overwhelming aroma.

  “They’re gonna smell this on me back at the office.”

  “Who will? Clarice is gone.” Lee latched the door behind us. “Besides, I want to smell it on you now.”

  “Oh brother.”

  He just laughed. “You don’t know what today is, do you?”

  I wracked my mind but couldn’t come up with anything other than, “Wednesday?”

  “Ah, yes. Good ole hump day. One of my favorites.” When I groaned, he added, “I’m disappointed in you.”

  “Because I don’t like hump day?” I added air quotes at the end for effect.

  “No. ‘Cause of your bad memory.”

  “Sorry, man, but I really have no idea.”

  Lee led me partway around the perimeter before cutting toward the middle at the center aisle.

  “You really don’t know?”

  “June? The twenty-third? I don’t know, except it’s really hot in here.” I wiped at my brow. “The sun’s blazing today.”

  “It’s a hot one alright.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the office all sweaty.”

  “We’ll see about that.” At the center aisle, Lee turned to the right and bowed like a waiter. Then he gave another flourish with his hand. “Happy anniversary, Hope.”

  “Anniver-” I looked up and choked on my words. Down the aisle, at the edge of a partially empty rick, I saw the most beautiful bouquet of roses.

  “I’ve got all your favorite stuff,” he said, hurrying over to take a plate out from behind the flowers. “Fruit, cheese, barrel-aged wine.”

  “Let me see that wine,” I said, while still trying to figure out what anniversary he was possibly talking about it.

  “Can you believe it’s been three months already?” he said as he handed me the bottle.

  “No,” I said with all honesty. “Not at all. But I’m even more surprised that you can be so romantic. That’s a new one.”

  “You always say I should try…new things.” He winked at that, provoking another groan from me. My guy could be such a big talking pervert at times too.

  “Pretty crude,” I said as I held the bottle.

  “Who? Me?”

  “Well, yeah, but I meant this homemade-looking bottle label.”

  “That’s the graphic designer in you coming out. Just read it.”

  “Alright.” I turned it to where I could see the label. “Cabernet Sauvignon, aged in Old Tyler barrels. Huh. I didn’t even know we carried this product.”

  “We don’t…yet,” Lee said. “I talked to the guys on the bottling line when they were dumping a while back and had them save me a barrel.” He smiled. “Try it. I know how you like wine.”

  “I can’t drink on the job,” I answered, though I was sorely tempted to do so. “I’m not one of those master distiller types that get to taste the stuff all day.”

  “Just pretend for a day.”

  “How about you? You drinking on the job again?”

  I already thought that might have been the case, but I couldn’t tell over the heavy scent of the angel’s share filling the building.

  “Didn’t stop me before,” he replied, reading my question as a reference to our previous adventure. That one had ended up with him and me sharing a several thousand dollar bottle of bourbon after some thieves tried to steal it and hundreds more like it out of the Bison Fork Distillery.

  He pulled two glasses off the shelf he’d placed within the rick. One was a classic rocks-style glass already filled with two fingers of whiskey.

  “I haven’t had any…yet.” Lee took a quick sip and set his back inside, then took the wine bottle from me.

  “Just a little. You deserve a nice lunch…like a tasty little wine and cheese break.”

  “In a distillery? Doesn’t really go together, does it?”

  “I think so. It’s barrel-aged,” he said. “Besides, whatever makes you happy works for me.”

  “That’s very sweet.” I looked at the set-up one more time and couldn’t help but smile. “I really shouldn’t, but it sure makes a long week a whole lot better.”

  “This should help too.”

  He poured the wine into a fancy tapered martini glass rather than the typical goblet and handed it to me.

  “You know that’s not a wine glass?”

  “It’s way prettier than normal, just like you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I wiped the smirk off my face and gave the wine a smell. The professional way, with mouth slightly open to let the scent work its way to the back of my tongue.

  “Exceptional,” I said and took a drink. “Ooh. Really exceptional.”

  I swirled the wine gently, careful not to spill any over the side of the shallow, wide-rimmed glass. The aroma rose to my nose, giving decent competition to the sweet smell of well-aged whiskey all around us.

  After another sniff, I took a bigger swallow.

  “Oh, yeah. You’ve got a winner here. We should seriously market this stuff.”

  “Tell me all about it,” he said as he refilled my glass.

  A couple glasses later and we were working on a marketing plan to pitch to the owners. I knew I was definitely going to be late getting back to the office, but I didn’t care nearly as much anymore.

  CHAPTER 2

  “This is really amazing,” I told Lee, while glancing at my watch, “but I’ve got to get back.”

  He looked at his phone and said, “Just a little while longer. You know Clarice is still gone.”

  “Hell yeah, she is. Probably a three hour lunch today.” When he held out the wine bottle so I could finish it off, I caved. “Guess I could say I was out getting more promo photos.” Seeing how that’s all I ever do.

  “I’d totally buy that excuse. Any special products to feature?”

  “Besides this amazing wine?” I swirled my glass. “Not yet, but I guess I haven’t posted anything about the Drummer Boy series in a while.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Pun intended,” I said, laughing at my stupid joke.

  Lee poured the wine, put the bottle aside, and proceeded to flip through this phone, going through black and white photos.

  “Historic shots?” I asked. “Those are always good for posting.”

  “No, my new security system.” He turned the phone to show me a grainy image. “I’ve started putting cameras in all the buildings so we can keep a better eye on the inventory.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” I looked around us at all the ancient wood timbers and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was just dust and fungus and barrels as far as the eye could see.

  “There is one in here.” Lee pointed over my shoulder. “It’s over there. I haven’t turned it on yet.”

  “Interesting.” I swirled the last of my drink. “So you had a plan all along?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Lee still showed signs of being his normal, tentative self. For whatever reason, when it came time to show his affection for me, he always seemed to pause. It seemed odd given his normally confident persona. I liked it though—usually.

  In a way, it was really special the way he took his time with me. However, in that moment, I had a strong feeling where it was all headed, but without someone pushing it along.


  I wouldn’t do it.

  I shouldn’t do it. Not on the job.

  Then again….

  “So?” I paused to see if he’d take the hint. “Guess I should get back, ya think?”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Let’s not.”

  “Then what-”

  Thankfully, his sips of whiskey had loosened him up enough. He finally leaned over to kiss my neck. My skin prickled instantly. That was definitely what my body wanted even if my mind knew better.

  A warmth, not just from the wine or the weather, raced down my spine all the way to my toes. I nuzzled against him, getting his lips off my neck so I could kiss him properly.

  The taste of bourbon on his lips was heavenly. While I didn’t like to drink whiskey very much, I sure couldn’t get enough of it on him.

  Lee shifted his body to press my back up against the nearest rick. He wrapped his hands in my hair.

  Our lips locked together. Heat soared. Fighting shortness of breath, I pushed him back a little, and whispered. “You sure there’s no one in here?”

  “No one.” He leaned in to kiss my neck again. That always got me, but I couldn’t be so unbridled.

  “You checked your phone?”

  Lee looked up long enough to say, “Yeah. There’s no one around. I’m sure of it.”

  “How sure?” I shook my head and straightened up. “Forget I even asked that. This is not gonna happen.”

  “Mmhmm,” Lee murmured against my neck, his warm breath heating me to a fever pitch.

  “I can’t possibly do this here.” I bit my lower lip. “But, oh man, I sure want to.”

  “There’s no one over here today,” he whispered in my ear. “All day. They’re working in Rack House D.”

  “So you’re telling me there’s a chance,” I quoted one of his favorite dumb movies, then quickly came to my senses and pushed him back again. “Damn. I just can’t.”

  “I know we shouldn’t but….”

  “You are the rational one in this relationship.”

  “You had to remind me.” His sexy pout made another appearance. “Still, you can’t do this to me.”