Chapter 10
Someone banged through the door of the cottage and Dane jumped from his bed where he’d been lying staring at the ceiling with his bottle of tequila. The seal of the bottle hadn’t been broken. It was only eleven a.m., but it wouldn’t have taken him until noon to open the bottle.
This was test number…he’d lost count. But he’d passed. Shana was home.
Leaving the bottle on the night stand, he walked toward the kitchen and voices. Acer was talking to her. He’d returned from exile to get supplies and Dane had talked his paranoid butt into staying. And he heard Penny’s voice.
He hadn’t talked to Shana about the details of their plan to have Penny help them get to Del. But she figured it out. She was smart, honing her intuition, her creativity, and adding it to her fast mind. And the rest of her.
He stood on the line between the hall and the kitchen, where the floor changed, dressed in jeans and nothing else. He felt sweaty and gritty as she turned to lay her eyes on him.
“Dane, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Penny rushed over to him. “I’m glad you’re not in jail.”
He stopped her with a look and a nod of his head. Then drew his eyes back to Shana’s. Acer stepped back out of the way and she came to him.
Dane felt the universe warm and the stars brighten as her arms went around him. Her crisp cotton shirt felt clean against his chest, her hands soothing against his back, her hair soft pressed against his cheek. He breathed deep, gathering her essence, replenishing his starved soul.
Acer interrupted them with a brisk cough. “Looks like agent Delbert pulling into your driveway at high speed.” He was standing at an angle to the front window.
“What do I do? What do I say to him?” Penny turned to them and then to the door.
“Tell him the truth, Penny,” Shana said. “That we went to the vault you have at the bank to look for clues.”
Penny looked at Dane and he nodded. He noticed the wry lift of Shana’s mouth, amused instead of exasperated. A sure sign his girl was softening to pronounce his worthiness, to confirm that he’d passed all her damn tests.
Del stormed the door. There was nothing they could do about it now. This would make their plan to have Penny help them much harder. Once he found her here in their kitchen, Del might be wary that Penny’d been corrupted by them. Especially if he knew about Penny taking Shana to the bank vault.
Dane winced internally at the thought that they’d need to enlist Gable’s help. The man was shaky. Half the time enthusiastic and half the time scared out of his skin.
This time Dane let Shana open the door. Not that he had a choice. She strode over and flung open the back door and then stood in her Wonder Woman pose waiting for the intruder.
She didn’t need to wait more than a beat, during which time Dane tensed and stole closer so that he was within protection distance. Close enough to feel the outraged energy shooting from his girl.
Del pulled open the screen door and stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. His fury was contained like a pot rattling with the boiling water inside, not yet ready to whistle. His dark eyes scanned the room, but Shana put herself in front of Penny where he couldn’t ignore her.
“Where the hell have you been and what have you been up to?” His words rattled the air in the small kitchen.
“I don’t work for you, so it’s none of your business.” Shana stood her ground.
“Del,” Penny said. She took a step to the side to talk to Del, causing Dane to go on alert. He wasn’t going to let Del drag her off. They needed her to stay with them.
“I told you to fire these two so-called private investigators, Pen. We don’t need them. Never have. You’ve got me on the case.”
“I know, Del, but you didn’t have to drag Dane into the police station and have him arrested. That was uncalled for. You’re letting yourself get all sidetracked. Shana wanted to check on our vault.”
“I’ll just bet she did.” Del reached around Shana to take Penny by the arm—or he tried to. Shana stopped him. She slid a step to the side like she was doing the two-step, perfectly executing the dance move and causing Del to put his hand on her shoulder.
All the professional training and years of cool couldn’t stop the visceral explosion from happening inside Dane, from making him rumble like a dam after a flood.
The moment Del’s hand touched Shana, his hand darted up and out, catching Del’s arm and dislodging it with a bone-jarring whack as if he were the Karate Kid and Del’s arm was a block of wood.
Shana spun into control then, pulling Penny back. Acer ignored his aversion for ATF and moved in to hold onto Del.
“Shit, that hurt like a bitch,” Del said. He pulled his arm into himself.
“Not as much as it could have if I weren’t holding back.” Dane resisted shaking the sharp sting loose from his hand at his side.
“You two are ridiculous,” Penny said. “Del, you don’t own me. I’m an independent woman now and if I want to hire Dane and Shana to work for me, I will. In the meantime, you do your job and they’ll do theirs.”
“Whatever they find has to get turned over to me. You understand that, right?”
“We found nothing,” Shana said with enough disappointment to convince them all.
“That’s because you’re ten steps behind me.” He turned to Penny. “I wanted to tell you I have this investigation well in hand. We have a lead on a suspect.”
That revelation sunk through Dane, leaving a pall of unease.
“Let’s go.” This time Del didn’t grab Penny’s arm. Instead, he lifted his arm towards the door presenting it like a prize. “We have a dinner party to go to tonight.”
“That’s right. I almost forgot about that.” Penny took up her purse from the counter and turned to them. “You are all invited. I’ll see you at seven-ish at the Gables’.”
Del crammed his lips together, knowing he couldn’t prevent them from attending.
“Look at it this way, Del–” Dane began.
“Agent Parrish to you.”
“—this way you’ll be able to keep an eye on us tonight. Help you sleep better.” Dane didn’t mind being a jerk. No one else seemed to mind except Del. He left with his sister. Before Penny went through the door she turned and winked at him.
Shana must have done her magic overnight, giving them a shot at winning Penny’s cooperation against her brother. It was still a long shot.
The house phone rang and startled them all.
The energy in the house sagged once Del was gone.
Shana collapsed into his arms as if she needed him to stand.
“Were you followed?”
She lifted her head from his chest.
“No.”
“Then how is it that he knew you were back at the beach shack within minutes of your arrival?” It was a half rhetorical question since there were a limited number of answers.
“Either he’s damn lucky or he’s watching the house,” Acer said. “I have a gadget that can help us with finding surveillance.” He turned and went to his newly reclaimed room.
“Thanks for returning to the scene, Acerman.” He heard Acer grunt before he left.
“Del’s having us watched. Pratt wasn’t with him when he barged in this time because he’s on surveillance duty.”
Shana nodded. Her brows compressed together into a scowl. On someone else, anyone else, the look would have been mean. On her, it was tempting.
“If you had more self-control, we might have been able to keep Penny here, away from Del. We’ve still got to recruit her.”
He sighed. Whether he almost broke Del’s arm—and his own hand—or not, there was no way Del was leaving without Penny. “Del knows what we’re up to. He’s very…”
“Canny. Like you.”
That comment stirred a poisonous swirl in his gut. He didn’t bother arguing the point.
“No matter. You can do it. You can convince Penny that we need her help tonight at the party. Convince her to talk to her brother and ask him a few questions for us.”
“You want me to lie to her, not tell her we’re after him.”
He didn’t want to answer the question. The call would be Shana’s.
“You know best which way to play it. Either convince her Del is dirty and we need her help to get him to admit his role. Or lie to her. Tell her we need her help to get some intel from him so we can do our job.”
“If she thinks Del is onto the killer, why would she need us to do our job?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe because she doesn’t trust Del any more than we do. You need to find out.”
*****
Shana stepped back from Dane. Excitement effervesced through her, evaporating and leaving her with the residue of trepidation. She needed to get herself on sure footing, needed to make him proud. It was a new need, an uncomfortable one.
“Tell me what happened at the police station.”
“Cap negotiated terms. One of which was that you and I would no longer interfere.”
“So going to the vault with Penny was the wrong move.”
“No. It was the right one. We decided we wanted you to influence Penny and figured if you had gotten her to trust you enough to leave town without telling Del that you might have a shot at setting up a sting.”
“You’re right. I laid some groundwork.” It was a big fat lie. Penny was still a loyal sister.
“A big fat lie,” Dane said. “I doubt Penny would believe her brother to be stupid enough to admit to anything—not even to her. She must know he’s a brilliant man, even if she doesn’t realize he’s devious as hell.”
“Sounds like he still has a thing or two to learn from the ultimate mastermind of deviousness,” Shana said.
Acer emerged from his room with a black box that had a USB cable attached and went to the computer on the dining table. He attached the box. Shana figured it was some kind of device to detect surveillance in the area.
“You want me to go to this party too?” Acer asked.
“You’re the star of the show. We’ll need wireless surveillance.” Dane turned to Shana and said, “You’ll need to convince Penny to talk to Del about Harvey’s murder and get him to confess his role.”
She drilled Dane with her eyes and didn’t laugh out loud.
“Why would he do that? He’s kept up the facade of hero with her, legitimate ATF agent. Why would he suddenly confess to her?” Shana asked.
“Because we’re going to tell her we have incontrovertible evidence. Something she has of Harvey’s that Del doesn’t know about,” Dane said.
“Del doesn’t know about it because it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s the beauty of it.” Dane nodded. He seemed sure, but Shana wondered.
“What do we have to convince Penny of Del’s involvement?”
“We have what we found and where we found it, and the fact that there was no woman, and that Harvey was likely calling Del out and hoping to get him to come clean before he went to the authorities.”
“What makes you think Harvey was going to the authorities? I figured him for blackmail.”
“I did a check of his phone records,” Acer said, “and he’d made some calls to the FBI. Apparently anonymous, but I talked to the agent that Harvey spoke with. He’d taken Harvey seriously until he heard nothing. Then he figured it must not have been legitimate.”
“It never occurred to this FBI agent that Harvey might have gotten himself into trouble?” Shana’s discomfort kicked up in earnest now.
She didn’t like thinking of Harvey as a victim.
Someone they were supposed to be watching, if not protecting.
Same thing in her book. The inevitable feeling of responsibility welled up in her.
“I asked him that,” Acer said, “and he said there was nothing he could do about that because the FBI hadn’t established an official informant relationship with Harvey yet. The FBI never got the information promised.”
“This FBI connection is legit. Can’t we use it—?” Dane cut her off
“No. It’s not enough. Harvey could have been talking about giving the Beaumont in the picture and not Del.”
Acer rubbed his chin. “So what makes us think that it was Del and not Beaumont who killed Harvey?”
“Because Del got himself on the case and Del got to the safety deposit box and the vault and took whatever was inside. Both of them.”
“That sounds thin.”
“Then there’s my gut,” Dane said.
“Your gut factors heavily with me, Blaise-man, but I’m not so sure about Penny.”
“Cap is looking into Del’s convenient assignment to this case to see how that happened. He knows someone. I’ll see if we can get that intel before tonight’s party.”
“So,” Shana said, “We have a whole lot of coincidental facts and some gut feelings.”
“That sums it up.” Dane shored her up with his confidence. He had enough for an army.
Luckily for Dane, she was a sucker for wild goose chases in the name of righting wrongs. Now she was working for Harvey and Penny both. And dead-set against Delbert Parrish.
“Time to dress for the party,” she said.
Dane followed her to their bedroom, but she turned and put a hand on his solid chest to stop him. Then she went inside and closed the door with him standing on the other side of the threshold. She was in mama bear mode now, the need to avenge spinning determination through her.
Dane’s carnal needs would have to wait. The small pang vanished in the flurry of getting ready for the party, ready to do her job.