Page 68 of His Deadly Lies

He breaks away, swiping a hand across the front of his mouth and grinning before he walks to the car. “Never again. That was a parting gift.”

“A parting gift, like I’m sort of a charity case,” I mutter.

As if to really hammer his earlier point home, he drives slower than his normal speed. A consistent kind of slow but worse than a grandmother any day of the week. Especially mine, who used to have a lead foot and weave dangerously in and out of traffic.

Whatever he’s thinking remains inside the thick-skulled confines of his head, and he must see no reason to share with me.

This is my game, though, I think as I tap my fingernails against my knee. I’m the one with real skin in it, which makes me the one who has to figure out a way to navigate and plug the leak in our operations.

I gnaw on my lower lip through the last fifteen minutes of the drive and stare out the window. A second away from starting to count trees.

Someone has been working overtime to undermine us, and they’ve gotten away with it, as well. I think that rankles me the most. Carter pulls silently up to the front of the first warehouse with broken panels of glass gleaming like empty eye sockets. A shitty part of town and one that is just off the route usually taken by our trucks.

I stare hard at the crumbling facade.

“This is the address,” he mutters.

It doesn’t look like anything special. Which is probably why someone chose it.

“What do we do now?” I reach for the door handle only to have Carter click the locks.

“Now I welcome you to the bullshit, and you pull on your waders.” He draws away from the warehouse and several streets over. There’s a patchy area of semi-dead grass and a handful of spindly limbed trees. Nature finding a way to carve out a path in this urban sprawl.

We’re far enough away from any sort of action, the sort of forgotten place where no one goes. There’s no reason. Whatever business used to be here took off and drew the lifeblood of this section of town along with it.

Carter parks the car in the shade of the trees and stretches his arm out along the seat behind me.

“We stake out the building, and you keep quiet—” he begins.

“You keep trying to tell me what to do like I’m green,” I reply with a sniff. “I understand the procedure as well as you do.” I stare him up and down and hide the way my tongue wants to dart out to lick my lips. Has there ever been a man with such broad shoulders? Jesus Christ on a cracker.

“We wait for a bit. See what or who shows up, what we can catch. Whatever is between the lines.”

“You sound serious about catching this culprit. I’m shocked.” I slide my hands beneath my legs to keep from reaching out to touch him. To see how he will react if I slide my fingers along the planes of his muscular thighs and higher.

“Or maybe I’ve planned a stakeout to spend more time with you,” he grumbles.

Laughter bubbles up and his eyes narrow at the sound. “As though spending time with me is a pleasure?”

Carter doesn’t look amused. Ouch.

I clear my throat and say, “While you were showering, I had Rafel pull up whatever info he could regarding extra goods flooding the streets.”

Stamps keep our products safe, tying each delivery to the source so that the buyers know the quality. There are no mistakes on that end.

“Oh?” Carter’s forearm flexes and the movement has my attention.

“So far, there hasn’t been any one dealer inundated with stock without stamps. Which makes no sense. If someone is purposely stealing from us, then the idea would be to sell the stock for their own.” I glance at Carter for affirmation.

“So what did your man ferret out?” Carter wants to know.

“Not enough,” I answer under my breath.

“Then he clearly didn’t dig deep enough because I found a few middle-of-the-road dealers on the outskirts of town with extra stock. Word of mouth, at this point.” Carter yawns, stretching his arms out. “I haven't had time to check the truth of those claims.”

“You really think your lines of communication on the street are better than mine?” Different, maybe, and separate from the ones the Balestras use.

His eyes light. “Yes, Princess, I absolutely do. It helps that I’m a mean son of a bitch.”

---