Alex had to work really hard to keep the goofy-ass grin off his face. As far as he was concerned, last night’s date had gone perfect…awesome…amazing…pick the adjective. He was trying not to get too carried away by refusing to allow himself to think that she might be…well, someone special. But he could honestly say that he’d never met anyone like Lacey Barton. She was about as perfect as he could imagine a woman being.
He’d been so buzzed after their date that the idea of sleeping had seemed ludicrous. Instead, he’d simply lain in bed and replayed every minute of the evening. He was tempted to explain away his sleeplessness with his crazy work schedule, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was Lacey. She had his head spinning. And it wasn’t just the kissing at the end of the date, though that had been pretty frigging amazing. No, it was the way he felt when he was with her, like he was alive for the first time. It was scary how fantastic the feeling was.
“I’m guessing by the way your heart rate just skyrocketed that last night went very well,” Remy surmised.
Alex grinned. “Yeah, it did. We had a really great time.”
His friend regarded him thoughtfully. “Then why am I sensing a but coming?”
“No buts,” Alex said. “It’s just that I think I’m going to have to take it slow with her. She seems hesitant about jumping into anything. I’m just guessing, but I think some stuff in her past has soured her on relationships.”
“You don’t think it’s anything that would keep the two of you from getting together, do you?”
Alex shrugged. “I definitely hope not.”
Remy shook his head. “I always thought the hard part of finding The One was finding her. I never considered that you might luck onto your one-in-a-billion soul mate and discover she’s not interested in a relationship because some other guy was an asshole to her.”
There wasn’t much Alex could add to that. Not only was Remy right, but at that moment, Sergeant Rodriguez walked in. Giving everyone a nod, the wiry, dark-haired cop signaled to a fellow narcotics officer to turn off the lights, then picked up the remote on the podium and turned on the ceiling-mounted projector. A moment later, a photo of a man appeared on the screen.
Alex did a double take—along with everyone else in the room. The guy had skin so pale, it was almost ghostly, along with white-blond hair and eyes so blue, Alex was sure they had to be contacts. But the thing that was most unsettling about the man were his pupils. Surrounded by the lightness in the rest of the man’s features, those small points of pitch black were freaky to look at. They made him seem like a demon from a sci-fi movie.
As if all that didn’t make him look disturbing enough, scars from old claw marks tugged up one side of the man’s upper lip, adding a touch of menace to his expression. If the four claw marks hadn’t been so close together, Alex would have thought the man had tangled with a werewolf.
“When the assistant district attorney told the dealers we picked up the other night that she intended to connect them to the deaths related to fireball, one of them cracked and identified the person who’d provided them their drug stash,” Rodriguez said. “He didn’t know the man’s name, but once he described the guy, we didn’t have too much problem tracking him down, as you can imagine.”
No kidding.
Rodriguez gestured to the screen. “This is Michael Pendergraff. He’s prior military, was a cop in Washington DC for a while, then a private investigator. For the past five years, he’s worked security for this man.” Another picture took the place of the albino, this one of an older man with gray hair and weathered skin. “Alfred Bensen, as in Bensen Automotive. He started out about thirty years ago with a single junkyard down in Houston, but since then, his business has grown considerably. He now owns nearly twenty junkyards, multiple car dealerships, and even runs a few manufacturing companies that make small parts for new cars.”
“And we think this is the guy making fireball?” Vaughn asked. “Or are we thinking it’s just Pendergraff?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “The truth is, we don’t know. There’s nothing in Pendergraff’s background to indicate that he possesses the chemical expertise to make the drug himself. And while there do seem to be a few curious growth spurts in Bensen’s business endeavors in the last few years, there’s nothing to pin him to the drug.”
“Other than our dealer saying he got his stash from Bensen’s private bodyguard,” Alex pointed out.
“Pretty much,” Rodriguez said. “While we might be able to get a search warrant for Pendergraff’s residence, we really doubt he’s cooking up these new heroin blends in his kitchen. Everyone at the DEA assures us that this crap is coming out of a high-tech lab facility.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Remy asked.
Rodriguez moved to the next slide. This one had names, addresses, and times. Everyone in the room groaned, including Alex.
“That’s right, people.” Rodriguez pinned them all with a look. “Around-the-clock surveillance at six of Bensen’s junkyards that the DPD Criminal Intel Unit thinks are the ones most likely to be involved in the drug-making and distribution activities. DEA has agreed to step in and help us cover the overtime, so no bitching. The sooner we get some actionable evidence proving Bensen is involved in either the making or distribution of fireball, the sooner we can get back to normal life.”
Even with the promise of overtime pay, there was still a lot of complaining…and not just from the narcotics folks. After weeks of hiding on rooftops and behind Dumpsters looking for drug dealers, none of Alex’s SWAT teammates were thrilled at the idea of spending a few more weeks sitting in surveillance vans staring at junkyards. They preferred operations that involved more action.
As Alex looked over the schedule projected up on the screen, he was thrilled to see that most of his evenings were free, including Wednesday. That’s when Cooper and Everly were having their engagement party, and he’d been thinking about asking Lacey to go with him—assuming she’d actually want to go out with him again.
* * *
“It’s beautiful,” Lacey said, admiring the diamond engagement ring on Everly’s hand. “You must be so excited about the wedding.”
The ring really was gorgeous, and Landry Cooper, the SWAT officer who’d put it on her finger, was definitely a hunk. Lacey didn’t doubt that Everly was giddy at the prospect of marrying the man. Lacey was also pretty sure the woman was insane. How else would you describe a woman who was getting married to a man she’d only known for two months?
Not that Lacey had a lot of room to judge, considering how fast she’d jumped at the chance to go out with Alex again when he asked if she’d like to go to an engagement party for one of his coworkers. But jumping at a chance for a second date with a guy—no matter how undignified that jump might be—was completely different from leaping into marriage with a man you barely knew.
Lacey and Alex had been hanging out in the big party tent set up at the SWAT compound for the last two hours, talking to the newly engaged couple and with Alex’s other friends and coworkers. While Lacey already felt a growing kinship with several of the women at the party, she especially hit it off with Everly, even if she found it hard to believe that any rational woman would throw herself into marriage so quickly.
“All I can tell you is that when it’s right, it’s right,” Everly told her when Lacey had subtly asked why they were moving so quickly with the wedding. “Once you find the person you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with, doing anything other than being with them feels like you’re wasting time.”
