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More important, if the answer to either or both of the latter questions was yes, who had given Rex the information?

Hank had loose lips, for certain, but he had no connections outside of his narrow world at Frisky and working for Rex. Add in the fact that Hank was a greedy enough bastard that he’d risked getting sold downriver by Dylan’s three stooges to make even more money. Dylan didn’t think the rat was Hank. Which left one of a dozen or so nightclub employees, most of them either servers or dancers. Except, as Veronica had stated, they all kept to themselves, wanting zero ties to what they had to know was a money laundering operation. Their paychecks were all they lived for.

He shook the thermos of pour-over coffee he’d made at the start of his shift, finding it empty. His watch indicated he had fifteen minutes left until 4:00 a.m., when Veronica would take over. A quarter of an hour to remind himself that she’d laid down the law as far as their relationship went: colleagues only. Simple enough, wise enough.

But all the intellectual knowledge in the world wasn’t enough to keep his pulse from fluctuating in her presence, nor enough to keep him from noticing how her keen gaze missed no detail, be it at a crime scene or while in the midst of fleeing a lethal adversary.

Tough.

He chuckled to himself. Yeah, tough beans. He’d lived five years without Veronica’s friendship and often vocal support of his actions. He could forget about the kisses they’d recently shared. He’d get through this assignment and go on to accomplish many more clandestine operations, and she’d go back to RGPD. Case closed, so to speak.

You sure about that?

No, he wasn’t sure about anything these days. Not since returning to Red Grove.

The soft pling of her smartwatch haptic against her wrist woke Veronica from a deep sleep, the kind where only the oldest dreams resided. She’d been falling from the Ferris wheel attraction at the Stark County fair, her seat bench tipped by an unknown figure. Her body had felt weightless but her mind knew that hitting the ground would end the dream and she’d never figure out who the shadowy figure was. But then she’d been caught, saved. By a figure far more welcoming and downright erotic—

Sitting up in the cab’s back seat, she rubbed her eyes, sent the image of Dylan smiling down at her to the back recesses of her mind.

She had ten minutes until she relieved Dylan. She looked out the window. His profile appeared annoyingly alert and unchanged since the time he’d taken over at midnight. The waxing moon was still above the horizon, its ghostly silver light reflecting off the lake and illuminating the pebbled beach. A large bird—a great horned owl—perched at the edge of the water, its large eyes staring at a small animal—probably a rodent—making its way across the uneven surface. It’d be easy to convince herself that life could always be this stark, simple. Beautiful, even.

Except for the fact that Rex wanted her dead, and while he might not be willing to part with Bulldog to carry out his wish, he had plenty of dealers under his thrall who’d do whatever it took to move up the ranks of the trafficking organization. There could be any number of assassins on the prowl, looking for her.

“Come after me, you losers,” she muttered to herself as she switched the heavy down blanket for the down jacket Dylan had given her. She and Dylan were prepared to shake down North Dakota to find Rex, and then Slim. All they needed was a location from either the sheriff’s task force or the FBI.

Veronica had never been a gambler, but she’d bet on her and Dylan’s combined skills against anyone, hands down. If only she could only trust herself to resist the pull he had on her.

Chapter 17

She heard the truck door open behind her and turned to verify it was Dylan opening the door from the inside before she shoved the NVGs atop her head. He stepped onto the ground and shut the door, walked over to where she sat. She stood, facing him. It was impossible to make out his expression without the NVGs in this darkness.

“What’s wrong? You’ve got another almost another hour of sleep if you want it.” Dawn hadn’t broken yet and the moon had set, making it literally the darkest it had been all night, right before dawn.

“Nothing’s wrong, promise.” He tilted his head back, looking at the sky. “I forgot how late the sunrise is here.”

“And I’ve never known anything but longer nights once fall sets in.” Thoughts of having Dylan next to her to pass the winter nights intruded and she grasped for a change of topic, fast.

“That reminds me, do you happen to have a full-spectrum light on you? I like to have my coffee in front of mine in the mornings, starting in September.” Gawd. Where had that come from? She sound punch-drunk from exhaustion, which she probably was.

He snorted. “Yeah, I’ve got three of them in the cargo bay. I’d say you’re a good month, almost two, late for that. Seriously, though, the long dark winters seem foreign to me now, after living in and around LA all these years. Are you feeling the side effects of not using it?”

“No, I’ve been too busy. And to be honest, I’ve never been diagnosed with SAD—it’s just a smart thing to do, I figure. It can’t hurt, at any rate. A lot of us in the department use them.” She’d begun using the tool against seasonal affective disorder from the lack of direct sunshine a few years ago, after several colleagues mentioned that they used one. Not using it this year might explain why she’d not been sleeping so well lately, now that she thought about it, but the stress of this case definitely was enough to warrant sleepless nights, too.

Dylan was silent and she rushed to fill the space, unable to face what she was really feeling, standing this close to him in the dark.

“I’m probably not supposed to ask, but have you worked anywhere besides Los Angeles since you joined the FBI?”

His low chuckle warmed the chill morning. Veronica took a step backward, turned toward the east as if observing where the sun would come up over the lake. Mindless chatter wasn’t the answer to how her insides reacted to his nearness, the very sexy roll of his laughter.

“You can ask me whatever you want. It’s not secret where I’ve worked, but which cases I’ve worked on, and once the bad guys are behind bars, most of the information becomes public knowledge anyway.” He stepped next to her, unaware of why she’d tried to put space between them. “I’m headquartered in the LA office, and that means I usually work cases based in the Southwest US. I never expected to be this far north again, frankly, but after my last undercover assignment, it was clear that I had to come up here and knock out the cartel at its root.”

“Your last case was the one in Arizona that took out the trafficking route that crossed the Mexican border, wasn’t it?” She referred to a law enforcement operation that had been so large in scope that it garnered a documentary on a major news network. Of course, no specifics regarding special agents or any of the undercover officers had been made public.

He nodded. “It was. I was so sure we’d caught them all earlier this year, but I was so wrong. It’s the Hydra example over and over again, but exponentially worse. Slicing off one head to only have a dozen more emerge.”

“I know. I’m not involved in such large-scale operations as you are, but it seems we clean up one part of Red Grove only to have the snake head show up in a new place. It used to be that there was a ‘bad part of town,’ but now, the bad stuff happens everywhere.”

He took a step back, reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen lit up his face, all angles and shadows. The high level of functioning that undercover work required took its toll on everyone, she knew, and it appeared Dylan wasn’t an exception. Had he awoken early because of the constant mental chatter from the case? Or was he fighting the attraction between them, too?