“You’re a real estate agent but you don’t have a car.”
“I had one. I totaled it,” she said stubbornly. “Raines drives me where I need to go.”
“Our sheriff is suspicious of you,” he shot back.
Thank you, Sheriff Marlowe, for having my back, she thoughtwith fervent gratitude. He was making sure John didn’t blow her cover or discover her real identity. Undercover agents had been killed for one slip of the tongue.
“How kind of him,” she said with a vacant smile. “I’m suspicious of him, too.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, he carries a gun,” she said with a straight face.
“He’s in law enforcement. Of course he goes armed!”
She just stared at him. The news that Raines was trying to buy the Big Spur was concerning. She didn’t dare tell John that Raines had given her a job trying to find out about certain areas on the ranch that weren’t used during winter. He was already suspicious of her.
“And so are you. Armed, that is,” John added coldly. “I love my family,” he said very quietly. “I’ll do whatever I have to in order to protect them.”
“Of course you will,” she replied, her mind busy on Raines and Velasquez and Vega and this new attempt to buy the Big Spur ranch. Which drug lord would be this insistent?
“The man making Dad the offer for the ranch made certain veiled threats,” he added abruptly.
“What kind of threats?” she asked at once.
“That accidents could happen. Unfortunate accidents.” He glared at her. “Just mention to your associate that we know how to handle people who cause unfortunate accidents. And we have people in our circle of acquaintances who know how to create really nasty ones.”
She knew he meant Tony Garza.
“Your dad should have mentioned that,” she said.
“He doesn’t have to,” he replied. “At the first hint of trouble, we’ll have half a dozen government agents and some guys from New Jersey down here.” He smiled. “They won’t be on vacation, either.”
She cleared her throat. “I could, uh, mention that.”
“Why don’t you do that?”
She just nodded, distracted. Things were heating up faster than she’d anticipated, and at the worst possible time. Velasquez was just buying a huge amount of fentanyl and bringing it into the country. It was up to her to find out where it was and when it was being brought in, and how. And now this complication. She hadn’t dreamed that Velasquez would try to threaten the Everetts to get their ranch. She’d thought, honestly, that he was just looking for places to stash drugs on an out-of-the-way place.
He glanced at her worried expression and smiled inwardly. Was she afraid? Good. Maybe she could convince her associates that trying to force their way onto the Big Spur would be a very bad idea.
She had to be in on it. It disturbed him. Against his own instincts, he found things about her that he liked. The thought of seeing her behind bars was distasteful. She’d been so kind to JJ in his time of grief. He could still see her in the emergency room, on her knees, embracing the child with tears in her eyes while she tried to console him.
He forced that picture out of his mind. She was on the wrong side of the law by choice, wasn’t she? It wasn’t his place to try to reform her.
“Can we go?” she asked after a minute.
“Sure.”
He turned the truck around and deposited her back at her motel room. He didn’t even say goodbye.
The next day, she heard from Raines on her cell. “We’re moving the stuff out tomorrow,” he told her.
“I thought you said it would be weeks,” she stammered.
“Timetable got moved up. And we’re only moving one small shipment first, just to make sure we haven’t been rumbled. You’re coming with me.”
“Okay,” she said. Well, what else could she have said? “Do we fly down to the border to get it?”
