Authors: Cheryl Ann Smith

The Sweetheart Racket (12 page)

BOOK: The Sweetheart Racket

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Chapter 13

T
hey drove slowly past the storage facility. Taryn wanted to get another look at the place. She just couldn't shake the feeling that getting shot at hadn't been random.

“It's unlikely that Affordable U-Store employs armed guards to protect a bunch of junk that will end up in garage sales when clients tire of paying rent,” she said.

“True. This isn't Fort Knox.”

She turned around and drove by again. The white car was back and the gate open for clients. It was as if the shooting had never happened.

“If we're correct, this comes back to how Brinkman knew we'd be here at the right moment discovering his car,” Rick said when she clued him in to her thoughts on the matter. “Besides, there were two men. I don't think either of them was Brinkman.”

“Perhaps he's moved up to having accomplices?” Right now, she was working in the dark. She could tell by his expression that he didn't agree. “Well, whoever did the shooting wanted us away from the storage locker.”

Rick nodded. “They won. But what did they get out of it?”

“That remains a mystery.”

The police were long gone and the facility back to business. There would be no more jumping the fence today.

Taryn drove on. It was hard to imagine a man on the verge of collecting Social Security hiding himself so well in this age of everyone living online. Yes, he'd had a Match-Mate profile. But the rest of Brinkman's life was conducted offline. He couldn't hide forever. Could he?

Jane Clark had PIs on his trail. She and Rick were hunting him. And Summer was ready to pounce if he showed up on the web. Yet he was still a ghost.

“Where can he be?” She didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until Rick responded.

He stared out the window as Briarwood Mall came into view. “I doubt we'll find him here.”

She drove onto the mall property and down an aisle to an open parking spot. “I need a couple of things for my dates. Most of my dressy clothes are too âgoing clubbing' for a forty-year-old widow.”

“You do realize that the dates won't believe you're forty.”

“I know.” She grabbed her bag and exited the car. “But I'm still playing the part.”

She dragged him from store to store until he started to grumble under his breath. “Quiet down or I'll make you hold my purse.” She found a pair of blue slacks and a white blouse with embroidered flowers on the collar.

“That looks like something a retiree would wear.” He took the hangers out of her hands and returned the items to the racks.

Taryn crinkled her nose. “Too old?”

“A little.” He walked to a selection of dresses and dug around. He pulled out a red halter dress with a flirty skirt. “I like this one. Classy but sexy.”

“I thought I was supposed to be a mark, not a real date.”

He handed over the dress. “Men will be open to grilling if they have a beautiful woman seated across the table.”

“You think I'm beautiful?” She twirled her hair. He frowned. She laughed. It was fun to mess with him, too.

Digging back in the racks, she pulled out three more dresses and went into the fitting room. Five minutes later, she hung one dress up on the discard rack and led Rick to the checkout.

“That was quick,” Rick said.

“I like to be efficient.” She handed the three dresses to the clerk and pulled out her company credit card. “So what's next?”

“I assume your dates are already lining up. We'll need to get you wired up.” He waited until the transaction was complete and took the bag from the clerk. He just couldn't shake his caveman DNA. She let him carry the bag. “Will the agency have what we need for surveillance?”

They left the store. “Who knows what Irving hides in that basement of his,” she said. “He never lets us down there, though he always has excellent surveillance equipment when we need it. Let's go wrestle the key from him.”

Fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot.

Gretchen waved as they passed her desk. They found Jess coming down the hallway as they headed for Irving's office.

“Hey, kids, what's up?” she said.

Taryn told her.

“Cool. Unfortunately, Irving is off getting a facial at the Fountain of Youth Spa. He won't be back for a couple of hours.”

“Drat,” Taryn said. “We'll have to get the spare key from Gretchen.”

“She won't give it to you,” Jess said. “She guards Irving's secrets like a bulldog.”

A bulldog wearing ugly sweaters.

“What do you think is down there, anyway?” Taryn said. Her curiosity ramped up. “Dead bodies?”

“Maybe.”

Rick snorted. “Speculation isn't getting us closer to discovery.” Despite his casual posture, Taryn could see that he was curious, too. “We need a plan.”

“I have an idea.” Taryn sized Rick up. “Rick will distract her with his manly muscles and I'll steal the key.”

“Right,” Jess agreed and turned to Rick. “Flex something.”

* * *

In the end, it was the scorpion tattoo and bandage on his arm that got them the key. He asked Gretchen about her disturbing turkeys-mating sweater, which somehow, in Gretchen land, led to a discussion about the tattoo and the injury, and that allowed Taryn to access her desk and a key ring. Given five more minutes, the assistant would have had his life story.

He never could figure out how women worked. One minute you ask a woman to point out the men's room, and the next, she's patting your hand and commiserating with you about your crappy childhood and absentee father. And you have no idea how you got to that subject.

Now he was following two giddy women down into the dungeon of the office building like they'd just discovered Ryan Gosling was living down there wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a smile.

“Do you think Irving will fire us?” Jess said.

“Yes.” Taryn rattled the keys. “But it'll be worth it.” They came to a door marked S
TORAGE
. “This has to be it. The other businesses don't have space down here.” She tried four keys before she found the right one. As Taryn slowly pulled open the door, she and Jess huddled together like they expected a starving zombie to jump out and chew on their faces.

The block-and-tile room was empty.

Jess frowned and released Taryn. “Well, that's a disappointment.”

“Wait, there's another door,” Rick said in a whisper. “I bet there's something on the other side.”

“Are you mocking us?” Taryn said.

He grinned. “Who, me?”

Earning a pair of narrowed eyes, Rick just kept smiling. Taryn went to work on that door. He liked how she bit her bottom lip when she concentrated. Inside was nothing but another door.

“Visions of Al Capone's vault,” Rick joked.

“Not funny.” Taryn walked to that door. “There has to be something down here. Irving is too secretive about this place for it to be empty.”

“Or he's playing you ladies for his own amusement?”

The two women looked at each other. “Why did we invite him along?” Jess said. She ruffled her spiky hair.

“I've been asking myself the same thing,” Taryn replied. She opened that door and again . . . nothing. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I think we're going around in circles.”

“Yet we can't stop with an unopened door. Damn our curiosity.” Jess pointed to the next one. And the next.

Taryn was ready to concede defeat when she spotted a sign on door seven that had a big red X on a white background and small lettering beneath it that said:

I
KNEW YOU'D GET PAST
G
RETCHEN EVENTUALLY
. I
DIDN'T HIRE YOU THREE FOR YOUR LOOKS.
C
ONGRATS!
I
RVING
.

“He
was
playing us,” Jess said, smiling. “The old bugger.”

“He could have just given us the key,” Taryn said. She searched the ring for the right key. “The man clearly doesn't have enough to do. We should sign him up for bingo and shuffleboard at the senior center.”

“Or put him up on Match-Mate,” Rick offered. “Women will come running, once they see him rocking out with those orange plaid pants and alligator shoes.”

Taryn rolled her eyes and pushed open the door.

Inside the sizeable room were several rows of gray metal shelves weighted with all sorts of gadgets, from cameras to body armor to stuff she'd have to Google later to find out what it was. The place was an electronics playground.

“The only thing missing is a tricked-out car with bulletproof glass and machine guns built into the bumpers,” Taryn said, awed.

Rick let out a low whistle. “Irving is so cool.”

“I'm going to start calling him Q.” Taryn loved James Bond movies. She'd even cried a little when Desmond Llewelyn passed. To her he was the only real Q. “Where do we start?”

While Jess wandered off to explore, Taryn and Rick looked for audio wires. “If we do find a tricked-out car in here, I'm driving,” he said and lifted up what resembled a thick cell phone. “You'd probably shoot yourself with the bumper guns.”

“What is that?” she asked, ignoring the jab. Like a little kid who told the same joke fifty times because he got a laugh the first time, if she rose to the bait about her driving, he'd never stop.

“No idea.” He turned the phone-thing over in his hands. “There must be an owner's manual somewhere.”

They moved on. Jess went back upstairs. They found the listening devices at the end of the first shelf.

“I could spend all day down here,” Rick said. He pulled out a device still in its original box. He held it up for her. “The A3000 audio and video package. It says it can pick up the sound of two gnats flying from a hundred yards away.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep.” He pointed to the small print on the bottom of the box. “Right here.”

She leaned to look. Her breasts brushed his arm. He moved the item out of reach and glanced down to where their bodies made contact. A tremor zipped through him.

“Don't you trust me?” he said, low and deep.

Her eyes went soft. “No, I don't.”

Were they still talking about the A3000?

As he handed her the box, their fingers touched, paused, then Taryn pulled back. Slowly. There was nothing about bugs written on the A3000, but it did guarantee excellent sound quality. However, it wasn't the audio and video devices causing his brain to misfire. The body-to-body contact made his hands itch to explore every inch of her and bury his face against her sweet-smelling neck.

All too damn aware that they were alone and she remained pressed against him, he struggled with whether he should go for it and the promise he'd made to keep his hands to himself.

“Maybe Irving will authorize a playdate for us in here,” she said in a husky voice, and returned her eyes to his. “I'll bring the animal crackers and you can bring the juice boxes.”

He wondered if she realized the signals she was giving off. Then her lips parted, her breathing turned uneven, and she swayed against him.

Whether her response was voluntary or some sort of primal instinct, the invitation was there. He'd throw a match on the fuel to see if Taryn combusted. “Honey, feed me animal crackers and I'll let you play with all my toys.”

The charge snapping around the two of them should have sent Taryn fleeing for the door. Instead, she dropped the box on the shelf, grabbed his shirt with both fists, and kissed him.

Oh, hell. Maybe it was possible to work the case and kiss Taryn all he wanted in the process. She wasn't just any other woman or a casual conquest. She was so much more. And a damned good kisser.

Rick considered himself tough, but the softness of her mouth, the press of her curves against him, and the sweep of her tongue against his nearly brought him to his knees.

His hands went down to her butt and held her locked in place, as his tongue explored her mouth. There was something dark and reckless about kissingâdeep, passionately kissingâthis strong, muscled, tattooed man that made her feel alive!

Rick ran one hand from her butt up her back to her neck and deepened the kiss. He was all in. She was on fire.

If not for the unfortunate arrival of Jess, leading Summer, Taryn would have welcomed Rick to play in her sandbox with his monster truck. But their laughter as they approached was like jumping into frigid Lake Michigan, well, anytime.

She unwrapped her leg from behind his calf, not remembering how it got there, and tried to step back.

“We're not finished here,” he said as she gulped for air.

She wanted to contradict the statement but knew anything she said would be a lie. If not for her friends, she'd be, in no time, splayed out on the bare white-speckled tile floor galloping headlong toward a screaming orgasm with Rick holding the reins.

That he could make her scream was not in doubt.

“This is so fun,” Summer said, as she rounded the corner into their aisle. “Irving is the coolest boss ever.”

If either woman noticed the tug that pulled her shirt back into place, or that Rick's tee had finger dents in it, they said nothing. Summer was too distracted by a disguise kit and Jess only shot her a quick questioning glance before turning away.

Taryn bent over and cleared her throat, reclaimed the box, and clutched it to her chest. “Audio. Video. I think this listening thing should be fine.”

“Umm-hmm,” Rick said. “Just fine.”

BOOK: The Sweetheart Racket

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