Chapter 20
20
FIONA
I snuck out of my own place. Why? Because I’d let a magical dick make me lose my mind. Six, no seven times. I should have thrown Dax out when he told Dottie he was my boyfriend. No, I should have thrown him out when he started to eat my cheesy rice as if it was a right, not a privilege. But no. No. I’d lost my mind when he’d slipped his hand into his jeans and started to stroke himself.
Men didn’t do that. At least weak ones with untalented dicks who fucked without foreplay didn’t.
Dax was different. Cocky as hell. He knew what to do with his dick. He knew I liked it. He didn’t come across as a pervert stroking himself in my kitchen. Why?
Because his dick was magical!
I should have been turned off. Kicked him in the nuts. I should have told him it was a health code violation. Something.
Instead, I’d dropped to my knees like the fucking good girl I was.
“Ugh,” I groaned, starting to run down the sidewalk.
The sun was just starting to pinken the sky. All was quiet.
Dax was in my bed. IN MY BED. Naked. And he was a spooner, his front pressed to my back, his arm flung over my waist.
After a little dick licking in the kitchen, he’d tossed me over his shoulder–you read that right–and carried me into the bedroom. We didn’t come up for air to eat Dottie’s burritos until after ten.
No, Dax had gotten his fill from eating something else.
Yeah, my pussy, and boy had he been hungry.
I groaned again.
What was wrong with me? It was reasonable to ask because I’d had a fucking brain tumor. But this wasn’t because of that. This was because I was a slut for Dax’s dick. It made me lose my mind.
Why him? Why a guy who was all the things I hated?
Yet, against any and all reasonable judgment, I somehow wanted to be his good girl. What was that all about? Since when did I care what people thought? Since when did I do what people said?
I’d blackmailed my boss into framing my partner. I put my father in prison for life .
Why was I letting Dax get away with being my supposed boyfriend, especially when he told Dottie—Grand Central Station of gossip in Coal Springs. I rarely dated. Besides the dating pool being slim and very shady, men were risky. I didn’t trust any of them because of growing up with a cruel father. By working with a slacker and asshole partner like Neidermeyer. By having a boss who would rather see me framed and fired.
Why did they all have to bend the rules, break the flipping law without remorse? Why did they have to hurt me, whether it be physically, emotionally, professionally, or any other -ally there was? It only made my need for control and boundaries even greater. To rely only on myself because I couldn’t trust anyone else.
Even Dax. We had a good sex thing going. Really good. Amazing.
But more than that? I was a bad choice.
He was good for sex and that was why I wasn’t kicking his bare ass to the curb. He was good for looking at. Nothing more.
As soon as the birds started chirping–Coal Springs was like a Disney movie–I stopped staring at the ceiling and slipped out from under Dax’s arm, grabbed my running clothes on top of my duffel, and escaped.
I’d returned to town to look into the pickle people, not have sex. That was a surprising bonus. I could do both. This morning, I couldn’t spend any longer in Dax’s arms. I needed to know what was going on at the Pickle Hole. They’d delivered pickles at this time the day before, then dumped them later in the afternoon. Why? It was time to find out.
If this was their process, then they’d be dropping off pickles again this morning.
Or so I hoped. I had two weeks before Hannah returned without much to do besides eat Dottie’s delicious food and have sex. I could figure this out. It was what I’d been trained to do.
My feet slapped against the sidewalk as I turned toward Main, veering around a lamppost decorated with dried corn stalks and a fall leaf banner. It was downright chilly out, colder than the previous morning, my breath coming out in little white clouds.
As I approached the block with the pickle store, I didn’t slow. I ran down the opposite sidewalk, pretending to be just another early-morning runner. A burst of excitement flared when I saw the store’s interior lights on. It was hard to miss when all the other shops were dark.
The same van with the pickle logo on the side was out front. As I ran by, I saw two men in the store. A small tower of white, five-gallon barrels were stacked by the counter.
At the end of the block, I cut left, then cut left again down the alley behind the store, running past the back of the shops on the block. All was quiet and dark, so I circled back to the front and dropped behind a car parked across the street. Leaning against the back quarter panel, I could look directly into the store and stay hidden.
Surveillance was rarely exciting, and this was no exception. Two men. White. One wore a heavy, dark puffy coat. The other had on a neon orange hat that hunters wore not to get mistaken for wildlife and shot by mistake. Thirties and forties. Strong enough to lift five-gallon containers. One by one, they moved the barrels to the back of the store.
Nothing illegal or dangerous.
I slowed my breathing and listened. More birds. A car starting. Nearby, someone opening a door that had a bell over it. Probably the coffee shop a block down. No voices. Wait–
“The last shipment made it to Mexico.” The man’s deep voice sounded strained, probably from lugging filled five-gallon containers. “Not sure where this one’s headed.”
“There’s talk about doubling the order.”
“I’m not sure if my back can handle more of these fucking pickles.”
“Tying your shoe?”
At the question, that was asked a foot from my ear, I jumped a foot, spun, and punched.
“What the hell?” Dax said, hands over his nose where I’d decked him.
I shook out my hand, my knuckles screaming at me more than Dax. “Jesus Christ, why did you sneak up on me?”
I hadn’t heard him because he had been surprisingly, and ridiculously quiet, which made no sense since I could hear another–surprise–toilet flushing somewhere. I’d been so focused on the pickle people’s conversation that I’d been able to block out other sounds. Including two hundred plus pounds of Dax sneaking up on me .
“I thought you were sleeping,” I added, trying to get my heartrate to calm.
“I thought you’d be up for another round, but here we are.” He was in his jeans and white shirt from yesterday. At least he wore sneakers. “Why are you down here on the ground?” he wondered, sniffing and messing with his nose. I didn’t break it.
“Because… because–”
Did I want to tell him? Would he think I was crazy?
He gave me a trying look. “Out with it, sweetheart. I already know you’re a badass crazy woman with a lethal right hook. Good thing, too, because there’s no way to hide a gun with that outfit.” He ran a finger under his nose, looked to see if there was any blood. There was. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“Thanks?” If that was a compliment, it was an odd one.
“What’s going on?” He popped up, looked around the car for a few seconds, then dropped back down. “Why are you hiding and watching the pickle place?”
“How do you know I’m doing that?”
“When you ask something like that it insults your intelligence, not mine.”
He was right. I sounded like a moron.
“Are you here in Coal Springs on a case?” he asked.
I frowned. “What? No. I’m on vacation.”
He gave me a bland look. “You spend your vacation watching a pickle store at five-thirty in the morning? Haven’t you heard of a beach and margaritas? ”
“Why are they bringing pickles in at this hour?” I asked him, ignoring his dig at what I considered vacation fun.
“Because they sell pickles.”
I raised my hand and waved it back and forth. “No other store is restocking. The openers at the coffee shop down the block only just arrived.”
“Maybe they have a route and have to get here early.”
“ The Pickle Hole is not a chain.”
He shrugged. “Early risers? Maybe they like to get out of bed super early in the morning and tiptoe out of the house.”
He was on point with his passive aggressiveness. “I wouldn’t tiptoe if you weren’t so nosy.”
“I wouldn’t be so nosy if you didn’t keep sneaking out on me.”
“I left my own place!”
He sat there quiet, wiggling his fingers on his nose some more.
I sighed, not used to having to explain myself. “After I left you at the bookstore yesterday, I started to head back to Denver. I came to meet Hannah and found out she was on vacation. So, I left.”
“Then you missed me and had to turn around?” he asked.
He wished.
“Then I saw that van on the side of the road halfway down a mountain dumping pickles out of the buckets right over the edge. ”
His eyes widened. He seemed alarmed more than surprised.
“Where was this? Which mountain?”
I shrugged. “Some pull-out.”
“Maybe they were bad and couldn’t be sold. They weren’t littering since pickles are compostable.”
“You seem to be an expert in what’s biodegradable.”
“I like to garden,” he muttered. “I even have lucky shears.”
I gave him a fake smile. “That’s nice. Why would a business deliver goods in the morning then dump them over a cliff in the afternoon?”
His eyebrow went up, but didn’t seem to have an easy answer. “You’re the FBI agent. What do you think?”
“I think this store is a front.”
He laughed. “In Coal Springs?”
“I know, right?”
“A front for what? Embezzlement?”
My bat ears snagged on a man speaking. “—the next shipment is tomorrow so?—”
I stilled, stared at a crack in the sidewalk as I focused.
“–the handoff–”
“Sweetheart–” Dax began when I didn’t answer his question, but I shut him up with a hand in his face.
“Shh!” I said, trying to listen back in on the men at the pickle shop.
“–a half a mil–”
He swatted my hand away. “Did you just shush me? ”
I concentrated intently as I continued to stare at the sidewalk. I waved him off again. Sighed.
Shipment of what? Handoff of pickles? No way pickles cost a half a million.
“Are you having a heart attack? Stroke? Is it another tumor?” he asked, waving a hand in front of my face.
All was suddenly quiet-ish. A baby was crying somewhere, and a car was heading this way. I couldn’t tell him the truth. He knew about my brain tumor. Knew I was an FBI agent. I wasn’t telling him about my hearing.
So I glared. “No, it’s not any of those things. Jesus.”
“Why did you–”
I cut him off. “I thought I heard something. This is what I’m staying in Coal Springs to find out.”
“This?” he asked, clearly confused. It was like he never hid behind a parked car before.
He lifted up, peeked at the store. “Pickles?”
“Not pickles . The pickle people. ” There was a big difference.
“What does it matter? They’re not bothering anyone.”
“How do you know? They could be smuggling money or guns or drugs.” A shipment could be any of those things.
“So?”
“So? If they’re breaking the law, then they need to be stopped.”
He cocked his head, studied me in the dark. “This really bothers you, doesn’t it? Like the guy at the convenience store.”
I nodded. “Yes. ”
“Justice isn’t always black and white, you know.”
He was so wrong. Bad people did bad things and hurt good people. They had to be stopped. My father had tried to drill into me how to be strong and ruthless like him. To know your enemies, or to assume everyone was a threat. Weakness was a, well, weakness. I learned all that, plus the fact that I wasn’t like him. That everything he taught me only clarified what I didn’t want to be. He did bad shit to me and to others and I put him away.
It was black and white. I lived it firsthand.
“To me it is,” I replied finally.
“Fine. I’ll help.” He stood, brushed off his jeans, then held out his hand. I took it and he tugged me to my feet.
I was confused. “Help?”
“You need help figuring out this pickle puzzle.” He took my hand in his and started walking down the sidewalk. He wasn’t hiding or skulking like I’d been. We looked like two perfectly normal, not remotely interesting people taking a walk before dawn.
“No, I don’t.”
“It just so happens that I’ve got some free time.”
Him? Help me? “You’re running a bookstore. Or trying.”
“Which is right over there.” He pointed down the block. “With a view of the pickle shop.”
He had a very good point. From the bookstore’s front window, the pickle shop was going to be easily visible across the street.
Still…
“I don’t like having a partner,” I said, bristling at the idea of working with Dax on this. Sex was one thing, but this was my pseudo-investigation.
“Why is that not a surprise?” he muttered.
“I don’t like you,” I snapped when we got to a street corner.
He cocked his head, set his free hand over his dick. “Sweet nothings like that make me hard, sweetheart. You can ride my dick when we get back to your place.”
I growled. “Want me to punch you in the face again?”
He laughed. I punched him in the nose, and he was offering up sex and laughing. Who was this guy?
Why did he drive me crazy and ruin my panties? Because they were ruined. Again.