Page 28 of Shadow of the Moon

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Amberly took the chance to go pee and scrub her hands. It was hard to tell what kind of germs she was touching in here. The front of the house wasn’t bad, but this bathroom hadn’t seen a good cleaning in ever, maybe. Glancing at the mirror, she grimaced and ran her fingers through her hair, tucking it back, then ran a hand down her nape. It was getting longer here, too. Maybe someday she could think about a haircut…

If she wobbled her way back, maybe she could bump into Zed again. Who the hell was he waiting on?

The CIA had files on Regent back to the early nineties, when he was a troubled kid in an abusive household and all the guns he wanted to play with. His father had been a part of the Militia of Montana, a group built on conspiracy theories and manipulated truths. They wanted to fight the perceived governmental attempt to seize their firearms. They also wanted to stop the country from interfering with their freedoms. Regent’s father had eventually gone to prison for a multitude of firearms violations, and had died there of cancer.

Regent had continued on with his father’s teachings, landing himself in hot water many times. His vision had been larger than his father’s, though, and he’d started building explosive devices, which culminated in his attack on a group protesting automatic rifle sales.

For the most part, that growth and movement of Regent’s group was covered by the FBI and later, Homeland Security. The CIA got involved when large transactions of money supporting Regent had been traced out of country, specifically to Russia, then had solidified their involvement when Regent retweeted a Russian Politician’s tweet about being in bed with the National Rifle Association, an association Regent had both criticized and praised throughout the years. The NRA had publicly disavowed Regent and his ‘radicalized’ actions, though the FBI had found connections between the two groups.

The CIA had tried to track Regent down through his tweets, but it was like nailing jello to a wall.

When Regent had blown himself up the first time and gotten caught before he could take out his target, many of the components of the bomb itself had been Russian made. Was he still using the same parts, she wondered.

Stepping out of the bathroom, she put a sway in her hips and a smile on her face. She waved at the bartender for another beer, leaning in to grab it between a couple of men. They glanced at her and smiled, and she sauntered away, back to the table, beer in hand. Zed was in the same position, hunched over his whiskey Coke. She brushed his chair, but didn’t try to find the note or anything. Running her hand along Devlin’s broad shoulders, she sank into her chair and clunked the beer down. “Hey, baby,” she said, grinning at him.

Devlin grinned back at her. And it was a fun moment. Staking out a current bad guy with a former bad guy. Tipping the beer back, she took a healthy swallow, then grabbed a cold fry, dragging it through a puddle of ketchup. “So, what did you do for three years,” she murmured.

Devlin’s whiskey-colored eyes flicked to Zed, then back to her. “Well, I took some time off to wrap my head around what had happened, then I started looking for a job. I got on with a contractor who took a chance on me and sent me to school. Then, a few months ago, I broke away from him to create my own company.”

Her brows lifted in surprise. “That’s incredible. I wondered.” She paused. “Did you ever… meet anyone?” she asked, voice hesitant.

Amberly was as surprised as he was that the question had popped out of her mouth. A slow smile crept over his lips. “I did. She’s… younger, and blond. Not my normal type at all. She’s very obedient.”

Her mouth dropped open at him, referring to his girlfriend as obedient. “What the hell?”

Then she saw the glint of laughter in his whiskey eyes and she knew he was messing with her. Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through the pictures. “This is Tink.”

She stared at the picture of the running dog incredulously. “Golden retriever?”

Devlin nodded, grinning like a proud papa, and her heart clutched in her chest. He would have been a fantastic dad. “No real girlfriends?” she persisted.

Dev gave her an odd look before finally shaking his head.

She clamped her mouth shut before she asked him about his sexual partners, a little hurt that he would be with anyone, either short or long-term. In her mind, she knew he had probably been with someone. Three years was a long time for a man to go without sex, and Devlin had a very high sex drive. At the very least, he had to have an out-of-town hookup, or something.

Why was she thinking about his sex life? It was already hard enough to be with him. Thoughts of how happy they had been before were crowding into her brain, taking her focus from what they needed to be doing, which was catching a killer.

Theyhad wanted a Golden.

A man and a woman walked in. Amberly glanced up, then couldn’t seem to glance away. The man was huge, well over six feet tall, dark-haired and square jawed. The guy would be a killer to fight. The woman walking at his side was striking, with long auburn red hair, pale skin and night-dark eyes. She strode into the room as if she could kill, too, lithe and collected even in four-inch heels. They both seemed to focus on Zed at the same time, and Amberly turned around. Her gaze hit Devlin’s, and he gave her a cock-eyed smile, then a subtle wink.

At first glance, Zed seemed to be a little out of his depth with the two people that walked in. Amberly would take bets on them being Russian. The male, especially, looked over everything, chin up, like he owned it. And if anyone argued, he would be more than happy to beat them into submission.

The woman chose a stool a little way away from Zed, perching on it carefully. She ran a hand down her thigh, smoothing the fabric of her pants. “I’ll have a Cosmopolitan, please,” the woman said to the bartender in heavily accented English.

“Beer,” the big man said. “The biggest you have.”

The bartender, a guy in his thirties, tipped an imaginary cap at them. “Coming right up.”

“I guess we have stereotypes for a reason,” Devlin murmured, and Amberly laughed.

It was so hard to look at Devlin and talk about innocuous things, when ninety percent of her focus was on the Russian couple. She no longer felt the pain in her arm or the tiredness in her bones. All the worry about the corrupt agents faded away as she did her best not to just turn around and watch the newcomers, because she knew some kind of deal was about to go down.

Through the speakers positioned around the bar, a slow dance began to play, and in one corner of her brain she recognized it as one that she and Devlin had danced to the night they got married. Before she could decline, Devlin pulled her to her feet and onto the dance floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, truly angry but really trying not to show it on her face.

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