Kiss of a Stranger (Lost Coast Harbor #1) (12 page)

Gabe pointedly took a small sip. He’d nurse that beer all night if he had to. “It would be nice if you talked to me while we drank. I want to explain, as best I can.”

Her lips tightened, and she hurried to change the subject. “I’ve gone through all the files in Oliver’s office. There’s nothing there.” She blurted it out, then snapped her mouth shut.

Gabe understood. He leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “It’s okay. The music’s loud enough. You haven’t told anyone else?”

“Tell someone I’m betraying Oliver? Sure, I’ve shouted it to the town.”

He ignored her sarcasm and bent his head even closer. “Good. This one is our secret. Just ours.”

For a moment, Maddie leaned toward him, her lips soft, then she recalled herself. Sitting upright, she pushed herself as far into the padded back as possible. With a little more force, she’d be sitting in the booth behind her.

“I’ve ordered archived files,” she said. “They’ll arrive in a couple days.”

“Hmmm. And what will we do in that time, Maddie?”

Under the table, Gabe’s toe nudged hers. She stomped on his foot.

“I didn’t sit down to discuss the files.” It was true. He should have been obsessed with what she’d found, but it hadn’t occurred to him until she brought it up. He wanted to talk to her. To convince her she didn’t need to hate him—even if she had every reason to do so. “About the other night…”

Maddie sucked down the last of her drink. “There. We had a drink together. Will you leave now?”

Gabe held up his bottle, showing her how much beer remained. “Is it so bad if I stay?” He stretched one leg and rubbed it against hers.

Maddie used her other leg to kick him.

Gabe caught her calf between both of his.

“You don’t seem all that indifferent to me, Maddie.” He squeezed her leg.

“I never claimed to be. Loathing isn’t indifference.”

“I can’t change what I did, Maddie, but can you give me a chance to fix it?” He kept his voice level. He wouldn’t beg, damn it.

So why did his breathing stop while he waited for her answer?

“It’s too big a risk.” Her words were so soft, he barely heard them.

Fine. If she wouldn’t listen to him, he’d use the only other weapon he possessed. Gabe had no problem fighting dirty. The connection between them was real, and they both knew it.

“Tell me about the night of the party. Tell me what you wanted when we were behind the curtain.”

She swallowed, and her cheeks grew even more flushed. “That was before I knew you were using me.”

“But you knew I was up to something, and still you wrapped yourself around me. You wanted me to touch you, to slide my fingers inside your sweet pussy.”

She stared at him, eyes wide. Her tongue darted out to lick her lips. He didn’t think she even knew she was doing it.

Gabe pressed his advantage. “I lied, and I’m so fucking sorry. It was all I knew to do. I told you I wasn’t okay. I’m still figuring out how to be a part of this world, and I know you understand that. You’re not pulling away this hard because I told a lie. You’re using that lie as a reason to pull away. To pretend you don’t want me as much as I want you.” It was a shot in the dark, but the storm clouds that filled her eyes told him he’d hit a target.

“You have no idea what I want.” How could she sound so calm when just the reminder of that night had him hard as a rock?

“Your face is flushed,” he told her.

“It’s the alcohol.” Maddie raised a hand to her cheek.

“And you haven’t tried to free your leg from mine.”

“Were you touching me? I didn’t notice.”

Gabe leaned as far as he could across the table. “Are you wet for me right now, Maddie? Because I’m as hard as I’ve ever been. I want to touch every inch of your body. I want to taste you, slide inside you, feel you underneath me. I want you to come with your pussy clenched around my cock instead of my fingers. Can you honestly tell me you don’t want that, too?”

Gabe swallowed the last of his beer and stood. Maddie’s eyes dropped to his jeans, stretched tight against his straining erection. He bent to whisper in her ear.

“I know you’re angry that I used you. So I’ll make a deal with you. If you want, you can use me, too.”

Use him, too. It was a preposterous suggestion, and the fact that he delivered it in a low voice, with his warm breath caressing her skin, didn’t change that.

Use him. Like he was nothing but a toy she could ride to slake her lusts. Had she really been celibate this long to break it with something cheap and meaningless?

She’d been waiting for someone like Declan, who would be tender and respectful, who’d call the next day and maybe even send flowers.

Okay, he hadn’t called after the party. Probably because, like everyone else in town, he’d seen her dance with Gabe, her body plastered against his. But it wasn’t too late. She could still fix it.

Except…she didn’t want tender and respectful. Not between the sheets, at least. Gabe would talk to her the whole time, the words dirty and primal. It would be rough and fast and hard.

And she’d love it.

Bree’s fingers snapped in front of her face. “Right here, Maddie. I’m supposed to be the drunk one.”

Once Gabe left her table, Maddie was too unsettled to remain angry at her friends, and they’d quickly made up with booze. Bree wasn’t drunk, not really, but they’d both had a second drink before walking home.

Now they sat on Maddie’s couch while Bree sobered enough to drive back to her cabin. Erin lived in town, so they’d parted ways at midnight.

“I’m here. Kind of.” Maddie hesitated. “Have you ever hate fucked someone?” she asked in a rush.

Bree perked up. “It doesn’t matter if I have. You definitely should. Tattooed god?”

“You can call him Gabe, you know.”

Bree shook her head. “My name is more accurate. Why wouldn’t you?”

Maddie gave her friend the best “oh, come
on
” expression she could manage. “You know what he did. I’m not going to reward him for being an asshole. ‘Hi, you treated me like crap, here’s your orgasm!’”

“Whatever.” Bree waved it off. “You’re not really mad about that.”

“Am too.” It was the alcohol that made her sound like a petulant child. She was sure of it.

“Really? So you, an innocent woman who almost went to prison because of someone else, can’t imagine what an innocent man who
did
go to prison would do?”

Maddie plucked at a loose thread on a throw pillow. Bree was making a little too much sense. “You’re that sure he’s innocent?”

“Yeah. And not just because he’s hot. I think he’s a good guy. I like him.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because he looks at you like you’re bacon.”

Maddie laughed at the image. “I look like fried pig meat? That’s a good thing?”

“Hell yeah. Bacon makes everything better, and that’s how he looks at you. Like just being around you makes everything better. It means he’s smart enough to recognize a good thing when it’s right in front of him. So I like him, and I wouldn’t like a guilty man.”

Maddie chucked the pillow at her friend. “We don’t have enough time for me to point out all the flaws in that argument.”

Bree shrugged, unconcerned. “All that aside, why would he be here if he wasn’t innocent?”

“Maybe someone promised him money and never paid, and now he’s trying to get what he’s owed?” Maddie knew she was clutching at straws.

Bree snorted. “And he planned to get to that money by sleeping with you? Spreadsheets, yes. Hidden caches of diamonds, probably not. You watch too many movies.”

“Says the woman who watches
Die Hard
every Christmas.”

Bree grinned, the smile Maddie had dubbed the Evil Genius Grin back in high school. “There’s a way everyone wins. Keep trying to figure out who set him up. Once you know, you’ve got the power. Make him beg for the info. Like, really grovel. On his hands and knees, with lengthy apologies for his betrayal, written in verse. When you feel like the score has been settled and the power balance is where it should be, have guilt-free wild monkey sex.”

There were as many flaws in that argument as in Bree’s previous one, but Maddie had no interest in picking them out. All her brain heard was “guilt-free wild monkey sex,” and that was good enough.

Besides, even a flawed plan was better than no plan at all.

Chapter Twelve

S
aturday afternoon, Gabe made his way to Rogers Trucking. It was located several miles east of town.

The yard held seven fifteen-foot trucks. They’d been white once but were now a dingy gray, and the red lettering on the side was faded. There wasn’t much call for eighteen-wheelers to travel to Lost Coast Harbor, so small trucks like Adam’s made regular runs to the larger towns.

A chain-link fence ran around the property, though it wouldn’t be hard to jump it. The company was closed for the day, but Adam had left the gate open.

The office was a small trailer that held a desk, a couple of chairs, and a couch, all of which looked second-hand. It sure as hell didn’t look like the office of a man getting regular payouts for his role in running guns. The more Gabe learned about Adam Rogers, the more he was convinced the man wasn’t involved in his arrest.

He should have visited Adam days ago, but he kept getting distracted. Part of it was long days at work and too many nights trying to get information out of drunk dockworkers, but that was only part of it. The rest of the time, he waited in places he thought Maddie might visit. He figured it wasn’t stalking if he was there first. Pathetic, sure, but not stalking.

Even now, a large part of him wanted to knock on her door and find out if she was willing to give him another chance. He hated how much much he wanted that. Six years of planning, and he kept forgetting why he was really in town.

Gabe sat across from Adam in one of the straight-backed chairs. He kept both feet planted on the floor. “What did you learn?”

Adam stared him down. “That you didn’t tell me as much as you could have. You’ve got your eyes on Hastings, don’t you?”

Gabe didn’t deny it. “I didn’t know if I could trust you, and I needed to see if you’d get to Hastings on your own. If you pointed me in another direction, I’d know you were in on it.”

The other man took the time to consider his words. “I don’t appreciate the test, but I understand your reasoning. As for what I learned…not enough. There should be records of each shipment. The last guy to check the inventory fills out a form, and it’s signed again by the receiver. No truck leaves the Hastings’ depots without being thoroughly examined.”

“Let me guess,” Gabe said. “That record’s gone missing.”

“Not just on your job, either.” Adam slid a piece of paper across the desk. It held a list of dates and times, all written in Adam’s neat hand. “There’s no inventory list for any of these trips. Whoever it was, they couldn’t delete the shipments altogether. We track gas, mileage, and driver time, stuff that’s harder to erase. But someone was covering their tracks, and we have no idea who it was. The same crew was used for most of these, so we can’t even go with process of elimination. It could have been any one of those guys.”

“Was it always your trucks?”

Adam nodded. “Hastings trucks don’t run on weekends. They contract those runs to me. It makes sense. It gives them plausible deniability if my trucks are pulled over instead of theirs. I spent a lot more time answering questions than they did, that’s for sure.”

Gabe had long wondered about that. “Why didn’t they charge you or Hastings?”

“I guess they didn’t have enough proof, and you were caught red-handed. It doesn’t make sense, though. There’s no way you could have worked alone, but no one looked into other options. You pled guilty, they took my truck, and that was the end of it. Except those Friday night shipments stopped completely.”

Gabe had been so fixed on Oliver Hastings he’d forgotten how many other hands touched those damned crates. “Who else could be involved in this?”

“One person loaded the truck and lost the inventory forms. Someone else looked the other way when those forms never appeared.” Adam ticked them off on his fingers. “We’ve got at least two people involved, and probably more. Someone had to get the guns to the depot, and someone had to carry them to their destination. Probably international waters. Safer than carrying them to another US harbor. Those might be the same people, but I doubt it.”

“On the docks, it would be Oliver. It’s his office, his job to keep track of shipments.”

“It would cut out other witnesses, so it’s a good option,” Adam agreed. “Plus, Oliver runs the company. But I’m supposed to be in charge of this trucking outfit, and I had no idea. I wasn’t following up when I should have, because I trusted Hastings Shipping to keep records. Maybe Oliver was trusting the wrong people, too.”

Gabe raised his eyebrows. Everyone was so determined to believe Oliver was innocent, no matter what evidence they found.

Adam ignored his doubting expression. “There’s another discrepancy. Those shipments, the last five of them had an additional twenty miles on the odometer.”

Gabe leaned forward, eyes sharp. “They took the back route. The one I was supposed to take.”

“Exactly. But the back road is a mess for trucks. Even the fifteen-footers need to inch along it. No one would take it unless they absolutely had to. I think they knew the feds were watching the main road.”

Gabe spoke slowly, not liking the answer. “The only way they’d know that is if they had someone on the inside.”

“It would explain why everyone local only got a cursory look from the feds. Why they were happy to pin it all on an outsider. Whoever did this, they’ve got some serious protection. No matter what proof we get, we might find that no one else gives a damn.”

Gabe stalked toward town, his fingers curling into fists. He wanted to punch someone, but he didn’t know who. Oliver would be a good place to start—unless he really was as ignorant as he and Adam had been. He could pummel the faceless fed who protected Hastings. Hell, he kind of wanted to hit Adam, just for being the one to deliver the news.