CHAPTER ELEVEN
All the seats at the breakfast table the next morning were full, even though Alby and Santos had left early that morning to check out a cattle auction near Laramie.
The conversation limited itself to the important things like “pass the salt.” There were a bunch of chores to do, and Pepita to ship off to school, so everyone was too busy eating to talk.
In the near-silence, they heard a truck pull up, and Dale leaned back from the table and peeked around the curtain. “Sheriff’s here.”
Catherine pushed her plate away. “I hope he’s found something. Would he be here this early if he hadn’t?”
Lottie got up and met St. John with a cup of coffee as he let himself into the kitchen with a perfunctory knock.
He accepted the mug with a nod of thanks. “Morning,” he said to everyone.
“Morning,” everyone chorused.
Pepita grinned. “That sounded like school when the teacher comes in.”
“I’ve got news.” The sheriff scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “It’s not good.”
“El Verdugo?” Pepita asked, her tone so flat and lifeless the buzzards might start circling.
Sidney stood. “Come on, sweetheart, why don’t I drive you to school.”
“I want to hear.”
“You go to school.” Boomer reached into his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and gave it to her. “We’ll tell you about it later.”
She took the money. The kid wasn’t stupid. “What’s this for?”
“The cuss jar. By the look on the sheriff’s face, I think I’ll owe you.”
Pepita hugged him around the neck. “Promise you’ll tell me?”
“No.” Boomer glanced at his wife and added, “But I promise to tell you what I can.”
“Okay,” she said, finally.
After they’d left, the sheriff leaned against the kitchen bar and set his coffee down without taking a sip. “The ME’s report was on my desk this morning. The official cause of death was ruled a heroin overdose, the manner labeled ‘undetermined’.”
“What does that mean?” Catherine asked.
“It means that the ME couldn’t tell whether it was suicide, homicide, or accidental.”
“Where do we go from here?” Hank asked. He glanced over at Mac, who was pushing her food around on her plate, and frowned.
“We’re continuing the investigation. But it means we can release the body for cremation.”
“Oh Lord, thank you,” Catherine said.
Lottie patted Catherine’s hand. “That sounds like good news.”
“What’s the bad?” Quinn asked.
The sheriff took a careful sip of his coffee. “I sent a few deputies to the AA and NA meetings in the area. Asked a couple of neighboring jurisdictions to do the same. Bottom line, there could be ten or more women missing, and that’s only in a few counties. Difficult to extrapolate real numbers on that, though. Many of those women have been marginalized. They could show up today, tomorrow, or—”
“Never,” Jenna said.
“Or never,” St. John agreed.
Dale blew out a breath. “Jesus.”
“Hard to believe we have to worry about human trafficking in the middle of the goddamn United States,” Hank said.
“It’s more widespread than you’d think.” St. John took another sip. “Big business at the larger conventions, sporting events. Draws pimps and traffickers from all over the world.”
Catherine’s face went the color of Lottie’s bleached cloth napkins. “So, you think my Kurt was involved in this? In human trafficking?”
“Possibly,” the sheriff allowed. “But the phone texts he had with Crystal make me wonder if he’d found out about it, and that someone else didn’t like that.”
They all sat there, a little stunned. Plates were pushed away and no one nibbled. Everyone had lost their appetite. Except for Mac, Quinn noticed. She hadn’t had an appetite to begin with.
But the sheriff had listened to them and was taking the investigation seriously, and for the first time since Jenna had called and told him Kurt was dead, some of the tension eased from around Quinn’s chest, and he was finally able to take a full breath.
Now all Quinn had to do was hang around for Kurt’s cremation and beat his ass back to California. Back to his workouts. Back to getting up in the air.
“That’s not the bad news.” The sheriff dropped that bomb, and the reverberations hit Quinn in the chest. Adrenaline seeped into his system, cautiously, sparingly, as if his body knew it might need to conserve the precious commodity for the near future.
“Spit it out.” Mac didn’t like suspense. She wanted everyone’s fingers off the triggers and hands where she could see them.
“We have no way into the organization. The drug task force has tried to find snitches. But no one’s talking. We’ve tried getting a guy on the inside for months before they abandoned that idea. Too dangerous.”
“So, how are you going to get these guys?” Lottie asked.
“That’s why I’m here.” St. John crossed his arms over his chest and glanced around the room from one person to the next until he landed on Quinn. “The task force wanted to ask if you would go undercover for us. As a confidential informant.”
“Oh dear,” Lottie said.
“What the fuck?” Mac managed.
Dale slammed his coffee cup down. “Not gonna happen.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Boomer shook his head in utter disbelief. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.” Boomer got in St. John’s face. “I can’t believe you have the goddamn nerve to come to this family after what we’ve—”
Quinn’s chair barked as he stood. “Doesn’t anyone want to know what I think?”
Boomer’s face flushed red, and he bit back what he’d been about to say. Quinn suspected it was a loud “no.” Quinn didn’t wait for Boomer or anyone else to answer. “I think it’s a fantastic idea.”
“No. No, no, no.” Catherine’s voice wavered, and they’d only heard her because Quinn’s answer had stunned everyone into total and complete silence. From the corner of the room, Dink whined, “Quinn, your safety isn’t worth the risk. Kurt wouldn’t want that.”
Quinn turned to Catherine. “I have to do this. Kurt may have been on to something. Maybe that’s what got him killed. I don’t want his death to have been in vain.” Like your crew on a training mission? Quinn’s throat knotted up. If he’d been a navy man, he couldn’t have tied a more constricting knot. “I need to do this—for him. For those women.”
“This isn’t your fight,” Hank said.
“Kurt made it my fight.”
“And Quinn’s the one with the connection to the cartel,” the sheriff said. “Through Moose. They’ve established trust. Quinn can get in where we’ve been unable to.” St. John’s even tone hid a fire Quinn hadn’t noticed before. The sheriff really wanted these guys. That made two of them.
“I’m going with him.” Jenna made three.
Boomer shook his head. “You’re all fucking crazy. Hank, talk some sense into your daughter.”
“It’s not up to him.” Then to Quinn, Jenna said, “Take me with you. I can help. Moose liked me.”
Quinn’s heart dropped out of his chest. A cold lump of dread curled up and took its place, leaving Quinn’s hand shaking. “That’s not the kind of guy you want liking you. That’s the kind of guy you run from.”
“He protected me.”
“He protected himself.”
Jenna’s chin went up, all forward gear and no reverse. “What do you say, Sheriff?”
“He says no.” Boomer glared at St. John, a vein pounding at his temple, daring the sheriff to disagree.
St. John ran his hands down his face, looked from Jenna to Quinn and back again, ignoring the wall of muscle and fury standing the perfect punching distance away. The lawman had bigger cojones than Quinn had given him credit.
“It could work. Work well.”
“Wait a goddamn minute,” Hank cut in. “It’s too dangerous to send in undercover cops, but not too dangerous to send in civilians? What you’re saying is their lives are expendable, and your men’s are not.”
“Quinn has military training,” St. John qualified.
“Jenna doesn’t.”
“I’ve had defensive training from Mac and Boomer.”
“I think she’d be a valuable asset to the team,” the sheriff said.
“Yeah.” The redder Hank’s face got, the more even his tone became. “Right up to the point where she gets herself killed.”
“Jenna.” In this instance, Quinn wasn’t ashamed to plead.
“There’s nothing you can say”—Jenna turned away from Quinn and glanced around at the rest of her family—“nothing any of you can say will make me change my mind. You only have to accept it, not like it. And we have a lot better chance of pulling this operation off with you all behind us, not against us.”
“She’s right.” The words burned and cut Quinn’s tongue like acid-laced barbed wire.
No one looked happy.
No one agreed.
No one argued.
Catherine pulled a mangled wad of tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes, leaving her mascara streaked beneath her eyes.
“When do we start?” Quinn asked.
“I need to contact the task force. They’ll plan and mobilize. We’ll meet at the sheriff’s office once we have a solid plan. Stay by the phone.”
* * * *
Three days. Three days had come and gone, and the phone hadn’t rung. At least not with the sheriff on the other end. Time enough to cremate Kurt. Turns out there weren’t a lot of people dying this time of year, so they’d lucked out, if you could call it that, and were able to cremate Kurt’s body and finish that ordeal.
It would take a while before the ashes were returned, so Catherine had headed back home to Iowa to be with the rest of her family until it was time to spread the ashes.
Quinn helped on the ranch where he could. Worked with Vader, who was coming along nicely for an aggressive, scared, wild mustang.
Too bad Jenna wasn’t coming along as well.
She’d accepted his apology for his asshole-ishness. Her lips had moved, and the words of acceptance had been uttered.
But that didn’t mean she’d meant them.
She hadn’t been avoiding him, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to speak to him, either. No idle chitchat. No flirting. No touching. No kissing.
Not that he’d expected any.
Quinn slammed the ax down on the log, his aim off. The blade glanced off the back edge, and the handle hit the tree stump, shattering it in his hand. The reverberation shot up his arm, exploding in his shoulder.
“Sonovabitch!” Quinn hollered, though no one was around to hear him, except Dink, and even he wasn’t that close.
Dink whined and shifted his position in the dirt, somewhere between where Quinn was and the barn, where Jenna was working on some paperwork for the program.
The state had showered her with conditions and additional qualifications. Huge fiery hoops to jump through if she ever wanted the chance to help another veteran.
His shoulder throbbed, and sweat dripped down his arms and onto his hand, where the shattered handle had sliced through the glove and into his palm. He yanked the glove off. The cut was relatively superficial. Nothing that would prevent him from chopping more wood. Or flying. That was the important thing.
He picked up the shattered ax and carried it back to the barn. Somewhere in the tool room, he’d seen another ax. Dink trotted ahead into Jenna’s office.
“Who’s my handsome boy?” Jenna murmured. Quinn leaned against the open office door as she ruffled her fingers through Dink’s scruff.
“You talking to me, babe?”
She glanced up, a smirk landing on her face. By the flash of amusement in her eyes, she was about to give him a rash of shit. He’d take smart-ass Jenna over pissed-off Jenna any day. Smart-ass Jenna he’d love to take over his knee and—
“What happened to your hand?”
He glanced down. Blood dripped down his palm and off the tip of his middle finger, leaving bright red splotches on the concrete aisle. Dink trotted over and got in a quick lick before Quinn could nudge his nose away with his boot.
She came out from around her desk, and he raised the splintered ax handle. “I was coming in to grab that other ax. It’s nothing major.”
She took his hand and ran a finger around the edges of the wound. “You should clean this up.”
His heart kicked at her touch, felt the resulting throb in his palm, even though the contact wasn’t remotely sexual. “It can wait until I’m done. It looks worse than it is.”
Grabbing his wrist, she led him down the aisle to the feed prep area and the oversized utility sink. “Have a seat,” she ordered.
He laid down the ax, pulled over a square bale of hay, and plopped down, his right arm resting on the edge of the sink, the occasional drop of blood swirling and mixing with the little bit of water near the drain. From the cabinets above the sink, she pulled out the horsey first-aid kit.
Betadine solution and gauze pads. Antibiotic ointment with a little fly repellent mixed in. On a ranch, you used what you had on hand. She ran the water and shoved his hand under it.
Wyoming well water was freezing. He sucked in a breath. How could something that cold not be frozen solid? She mashed and pressed on his hand, squeezing more blood out. Wetting the gauze, she dabbed on some of the Betadine and scrubbed. She wasn’t gentle, but he was nearly convinced she wasn’t trying to hurt him, either.
Her thumb brushed across something on his palm. “Ouch! What the hell was that?” He snatched his hand back, probed the wound, and hit the end of a splinter, the tip barely sticking out.
She grabbed his hand and trapped it under her arm to steady it. “Hold still.”
“What are you going to do?” His pitch crept higher until it hit on mild panic.
“Pull out the splinter, you big baby.”
“Do it fast.”
She dinked around with his hand as if test-driving a Ginsu knife.
“Pull the damn thing out already.”
“I would if you’d stop squirming.”
“I’m not.”
“You are!” She shifted, tucking his arm tighter against her body, her breast mashed into his forearm.
He got still. She yanked. He hollered.
She held up the wood stake she’d removed from his palm.
“Jesus,” he said. “Save that puppy. We can use it if the ranch ever gets overrun with vampires.”
“It’s not even an inch long.”
“Why are women so bad at estimating length?”
“Why do men always exaggerate it? Splinters, fish, and um…” She raised her brows and bobbed her chin toward his crotch. “Other things.”
He gave her his cheesiest, cockiest grin. “Hey, darlin’, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but there’s no exaggeration where little Quinn is concerned.”
“Isn’t that nice. Not embarrassed to have a tiny winky.” She rolled her eyes, her words sticky-sweet with sarcasm.
Quinn barked out a laugh. “Winky? Seriously?”
Her face burned as red as an engine fresh out of oil. And her smile…his stomach dropped. What he wouldn’t give to be the man who brought that smile to her face every day. “I really am sorry,” he said, in all seriousness.
The smile dropped from her face, her eyes. “I know. And I know you’re going through a lot with Kurt’s death. I get that, we all are. But you said those words with this…this anger, this festering vitriol that had nothing to do with Kurt.”
He stood, linked his fingers with hers, and kissed the back of her hand. “I don’t know about the vitriol part, but the anger. Yeah. I’ve been angry. More than I’d realized.”
“We didn’t have any closure.” She was talking about their failed relationship, not the fight from the other night.
“No. I threw myself into my flying and tried to forget the rest.”
“Easier said than done.”
Which would account for his mini–nuclear meltdown. “Apparently.”
“So, is that what this is?” She waggled their joined hands. “Closure?”
His brain wanted to slam that door. Put an end to their relationship once and for all.
What they’d had, had been good. But they’d been little more than kids. Full of wide-open futures and full-on hormones. What had those stupid kids known, anyway? But his heart answered. “Doesn’t feel like it. Not to me.” He stepped closer. “Does it feel like that to you?”
“No,” she whispered, as if afraid that if she said it any louder, she’d come to her senses. If he hadn’t been focused on the perfect bend in the bow of her lip, he would have missed her answer.
“Can I kiss you?”
Her lips curved and the nagging tightness in his chest eased. “I think you should.”
She raised up on her tiptoes. He wasn’t more than half a head taller, so she didn’t have far to go. Holding on to his shoulders, she pressed her lips to his. Light.
Not tentative.
Savoring.
A noise sounding in the back of his throat had that grin spreading across her lips again. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, nipping at her bottom lip, her chin, her throat.
There was a clank of metal on metal, then the unmistakable sound of a stall door opening. Quinn pulled back. “Someone’s coming.”
The clomp of horse hooves came down the aisle, and Eli sauntered past them, turning his big, blocky head toward them before heading out the front of the barn. Jenna didn’t grab a lead rope or go after him or bother saying whoa.
“Uh, shouldn’t someone stop him?”
“He’s the Houdini of the Lazy S. There hasn’t been a stall built that he hasn’t figured out how to open, so Eli does what he wants, which is to be wherever Sidney is.” At the moment, that was the round pen with one of the mustangs she was in the middle of training.
Quinn shrugged. Whatever. He had more important things to do.
Like Jenna.
But whatever moment they’d shared was gone. Damn horse. Jenna slathered the ointment onto his hand and rummaged through the kit until she came up with an adhesive bandage large enough to cover his cut. She put it on slow and deliberate, and frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“Aren’t you scared? Nervous?”
She wasn’t talking about his hand. He searched her face. Saw the tightness, the faint bruising under her eyes, as if she hadn’t been getting any sleep. The semi-permanent crease that had taken up residence between her brows. Could he talk her out of helping with the investigation? “You don’t have to do this.”
She smiled, but that made the furrow deepen. “St. John only wants information. We get in. We get out. The good guys save the day. Easy peasy, right?”
“If it all goes according to plan.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“That’s why you should sit this out. In case it doesn’t. I’m much better trained for this.”
“Mac taught me to shoot. Boomer’s taught me some self-defense—”
“You’re still no match for a bunch of drug runners.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What? Am I scared? Would it make you feel better if I denied it, or acknowledged it?”
“It would make me feel better if you told me the truth.”
He inventoried his body. The knotted muscles at the base of his neck, the taut nerves, the low, steady drip-drop of adrenaline buzzing through his system. “Yeah,” he said. “Scares the hell out of me. And it should you, too. This isn’t a game. This isn’t your chance to play cops and robbers.”
“I’m the one who found Kurt. I know what this is.”
“Hey, you two,” Mac said. She looked a bit perkier today. Had a little more color, was a little less green. “Sheriff’s on the phone.”
* * * *
Jenna hadn’t known what to expect from her first meeting with the drug task force. They all met up in a conference room stuffed with a six-seater table at the sheriff’s office. Quinn, St. John, an FBI agent named Finn, and Soto, the DEA agent, and Jenna were there. St. John had told them that Agent Soto would be their sole point of contact out in the field.
Finn’s hair was cut high and tight like the military boys. His mannerisms, stiff and straight. Jenna doubted the suit had been bought off the rack—or on a federal agent’s salary. Maybe the silk tie. Not the shoes. Finn had family money somewhere.
Soto was Finn’s complete opposite and had more Latina curves than Lombard Street. By the way she was dressed, in the scuffed high heels, the mid-thigh mini, and a top that stretched the spandex way past manufacturer recommendations, she and Quinn would most likely be contacting her on a street corner than in a corner office.
The woman stuck her hand out and introduced herself. “Maria Soto, DEA.”
“Hope no one saw you come in here dressed like that.” Finn flushed that funny shade of red that fathers get when they march their daughters back up to their rooms to change before their proms.
Soto pushed her boobs up, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “You don’t like the way I dress, handsome?” She seemed to enjoy pushing Finn’s buttons. And Jenna suspected that Agent Finn had many from which to choose.
Finn frowned down at Soto. At around six-foot-two, he had nearly a foot of height on her. “I don’t want you blowing your cover.” He passed her his black Windbreaker with FBI printed in bold letters on the back.
“You’re the one who dragged my ass in here. I can’t be ditching the hair, the makeup, the clothes, and throw them all back on again on a whim. I have a meet with a dealer two counties over in an hour. Next time, you sell yourself on a street corner, and I’ll sip Starbucks in an Armani suit.”
“It’s not men they’re looking for.”
Jenna watched as Soto selected, with care and precision, which of Finn’s many buttons to push. Soto leaned back and took a lengthy gander at his backside. “With an ass like that, you’d just need to find the right corner.”
St. John coughed to cover his laugh, but he put no effort into hiding the smile. “You done busting his balls? Or can we start?”
Soto turned her attention back to Jenna and Quinn. “So, you’re the guy that saved Moose’s bacon?”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It was more of a mutual bacon saving, the way I remember it.”
St. John sat at one end of the table, Finn on the other. Soto pulled the jacket on and took a seat across from Jenna. “That’s not the word out on the street.”
Drug runners must be bigger gossips than Pearl, down at the diner.
“What are they saying?” Quinn asked.
“Talking about the fight. How you had a couple of opportunities in which you could have run, but you didn’t.” Finn didn’t look happy about that. In fact, he didn’t look happy about anything. “That’s why we think we have a good shot at getting you on the inside. These boys are all about loyalty.”
Quinn nodded. “I understand loyalty.”
“This loyalty is different,” Finn put in. “It’s a one-way street that runs downhill.”
Jenna sat back. “What does that mean?”
“The little dogs are loyal to the big dogs. Not so much the other way around,” Soto said.
Quinn glanced at Soto. “So, basically, trust no one and watch our backs.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Soto said, “we have a winner. What does our contestant win, Bob?” Soto said, in what was an impressive game-show-host voice. She must binge-watch The Price Is Right.
“Can you be serious for five minutes?” Finn had that sour look on his face, like his kid had just embarrassed him in front of the entire PTA.
“Ever think about asking for a little less starch on those collars?”
Finn tossed his pen on the table and leaned back. If this wasn’t so serious, Jenna would ask when intermission was so she could grab popcorn for the second act.
“If nothing else,” St. John said, “you got instant street cred. The fact that you got arrested with the rest of them kind of sealed it.”
“What am I supposed to do with this street cred?”
“We,” Jenna said. “What do we do with this street cred?”
“Exploit the hell out of it.” Soto rubbed her hands together as if anxious to start.
St. John said, “Starting out, we don’t want anything else but to make contact. Show interest in getting some drugs. Get those samples Moose promised you.”
“Those samples were dependent on a pool game. Which we never got to finish,” Quinn said.
The answer was obvious to Jenna. “Then we finish it.”
“No.” His tone left no room for argument, but that only made Soto smile like a kid who thrived on confrontation instead of sugar.
“Why not?” Finn said.
“Because the other part of that bet was if she lost, Moose got to buy her a drink. Alone. That’s not going to happen.”
“That’s only if I lose.”
Quinn ducked his head and closed his eyes. He must have started counting down from a high number because it took him a long time to say, “I beat you. What makes you think you can beat him?”
“You didn’t beat me, Quinn. I let you win.”
Jenna let that sink in a moment. Not the part about he’d only won because she let him. He wasn’t the kind of guy who cared whether a girl beat him at a game.
What she let sink in was the fact that she’d let him win, because his winning meant he’d won a night with her. Quinn was a smart man. Quick on the uptake. He shook his head, a smile ghosting across his lips.
“Moose is all brute strength and no talent,” Jenna said. “It won’t take much to beat him.”
“Quinn, I like your girl.” Soto slapped the table and stood. “Sounds like we have a plan.” To Finn and St. John she said, “You guys deal with the wires and procedures and catch me up later. I got a date with a three-toothed drug dealer.”
She strode to the door, but before she left, she stripped off Finn’s jacket, much slower than necessary. The flush that ran up Finn’s face put the devil’s smile on hers.
Finn caught the door and called someone else into the room. A middle-aged woman stepped in with a hard-sided case in her hand.
“This is Ms. Burnett,” St. John said. “She’ll be the one fitting you two with the wires.”
“No wires,” Quinn said. “Moose is jumpy enough about them.”
“But he trusts you,” Finn said.
“It’s not like we slashed our palms and become blood brothers or anything. He may trust me more than Joe Blow off the street, but we’d be stupid to assume he won’t check.”
Burnett glanced at St. John. St. John eyed Finn. Apparently, the fed had the final say.
“We’ll forego it this time. But next—”
“No. No wires. Not this time. Not next time. Not ever.”
“We need proof.”
“I—” Quinn glanced to Jenna. “We’ll come up with something.”
“Fine,” Finn ground out, waving a dismissing hand at Burnett. He dug around in his briefcase and came up with two sets of papers. “These are the liability release forms, a list of rules that govern confidential informants, as well as your limited permission to accept drugs for the sole purpose of giving them to Agent Soto for testing.”
The documents were several pages long, and Jenna settled in to read. Quinn breezed through it. Finn passed out a pen each, and Jenna turned to the back page to sign and date.
“Don’t sign it,” Quinn said.
“Why the hell not?” If St. John’s patience wore any thinner, it would be transparent.
“It says we can’t be armed.”
“No guns, no knives. No weapons of any kind. It’s for your own safety.”
“Our safety? I may not be in law enforcement, but it doesn’t take police training to know that we’ll most likely be the only ones not armed. How does that make us safer?”
“Those are the rules.” Finn likely had them tattooed all over his body. Unless tattoos were against the rules.
“Wouldn’t the bad guys know the ‘rules’?” Jenna asked. Quinn’s double-dimple smile flashed at her. “If we show up without weapons, won’t it scream ‘snitch’?”
“They’d probably shoot us on the spot.”
“No. Weapons.” Finn’s left eyelid started twitching.
Quinn shoved the papers back at Finn and they stood. “Then no deal.”
Jenna heard a muffled snap. It might have been the pen breaking in Finn’s fist, or Finn’s will to live starting to crack.
“Sit down,” Finn ordered.
Jenna sat. Quinn did, too, but he wasn’t in any hurry. Finn took each set of papers, scribbled out the no weapons clauses, initialed, and signed. Then passed them over. His willingness to forego the requirements showed how desperate they were to infiltrate the cartel.
Finn stood to leave. To St. John, he said, “I trust you can take it from here. Make sure they have Soto’s contact number.”
He graced Jenna and Quinn with a curt nod and left. St. John tossed the broken pen in the trash and slid the other one over for them to sign. “Moose said he’d find you. Tonight, your job is to make that easy for him.”
Quinn passed Jenna his packet, and she stacked it on top of hers and handed them over to the sheriff.
The sheriff’s face was grim. “Let’s all hope this decision doesn’t get you killed.”