Chapter 3
Dale held her hand as they entered the restaurant. Taking her coat, he pulled out her chair when they reached their table. He was the epitome of a devoted future spouse.
He thought he might choke on it.
Not because it was such a hardship. Heather was lovely, despite that open, fresh approach that was so different from other women he’d dated. While the ease of playing this role bothered him more than a little, it was the natural way she responded to him that made things particularly difficult.
He wondered at her ability to smile constantly. Who did that? People with mental issues or people too na?ve to know better. Heather was mentally sound, so he had to pin this weird habit on her youth and sheltered upbringing.
The smile she wore from the moment they left the car was dreamy. Lovestruck. And it bothered him more than it should. This was an act and it had been his idea.
She changed up her expression once in a while, letting it lean toward giddy when the waitress complimented her sparkling diamond. It looked good on her finger, better than the last finger he’d put it on. With a ruthless mental shake, he pulled himself back to the situation, only half-listening to Heather’s constant chatter about wedding ideas. She worked her way from potential guest lists over appetizers and was entertaining some wild reception ideas by the time dessert arrived.
He kept up his end of the conversation, naming off fictional aunts and cousins who would need an invitation but likely wouldn’t travel. He held Heather’s warm hand between courses, stunned when his body responded to those lingering, enamored looks she gave him. Did other men have this much trouble focusing when women were around?
He’d worked with trained agents who couldn’t have pulled this off better.
Her eyes really were a marvel. Her driver’s license surely stated they were brown, but sitting so close, hanging on every word, he saw the depth of emotion no simple definition of ‘brown’ could convey.
What the hell was wrong with him? For the second time in a week, he decided he’d miscalculated on this case.
He’d known working with her would be different, but he hadn’t expected this. It was all he could do to remember he was supposed to be watching for Anthony Lester, owner of the hottest new restaurant in Columbia.
After going through the intel Heather had dumped in his lap, he knew an operation this sophisticated needed a serious bankroll. Lester, with his rumored connections to drug money and crime syndicates out of Florida, was a prime candidate.
Even if the slippery bastard wasn’t directly involved, it was more than likely he knew who was.
Over some stunning chocolate confection served with two forks, Dale spotted Lester as he emerged from the kitchen and joined Columbia’s popular mayor, who’d been seated near the front window.
Bold move on the mayor’s part.
Dale would’ve believed it was a simple friendly exchange if not for the mayor’s mistake of looking a bit too long at Dale and Heather. Lester strolled toward another table, then left the dining room altogether. The mayor resumed his meal and Dale filed it away for further analysis.
He was reaching for his wallet when two flutes of champagne arrived. “What’s this?”
The waitress grinned. “The owner heard about your happy news,” she said. “Congratulations from all of us.”
“Oh, Dale! Isn’t that nice?” Heather gushed. “Shouldn’t we thank him personally?”
Dale stifled a groan. “We’d like that,” he lied. The last thing he wanted was a face to face with Lester before he had all the evidence together.
“He’s busy in the back right now,” the waitress replied. “But I’ll let him know you appreciate the gesture.”
“Thanks.” The extra attention only served to confirm Dale’s original suspicions. Lester was all too aware of Dale and Heather’s potential interference in his latest cash cow.
Dale raised his champagne to Heather, but took only one small sip and set his glass aside, urging Heather to enjoy hers. “I’m driving,” he explained. He didn’t want to be in the restaurant any longer than necessary and he didn’t want to leave himself open to a potential drunk driving check-point.
With no more than a raised eyebrow that seemed to imply a sensual promise he couldn’t afford to think about, she made quick work of the champagne and they left the restaurant.
He did his best not to breathe when they returned to the close, safe confines of his car. He should’ve brought the official sedan rather than the more intimate Camaro. Whatever Heather used on her hair teased his senses, leading his thoughts away from the case and into dangerous territory. She was barely out of college and he… well, he hadn’t thought of college in a long time.
He could deal with this, he coached himself, knowing her scent would linger for days. He could have the Camaro detailed once Lester was in custody.
This wasn’t a big deal. He’d been in tighter spaces, though none of them had been quite like this. Besides, forward was the only option. It was too late to turn back and not just because he’d proposed they spend the next forty-eight hours together to trap the leader of the dogfighting ring.
He went over it one more time, even though they’d already made their decision. Lester was dangerous, but Dale didn’t see a way to leave Heather out of this.
Her brother would kill him if—when—he figured out what Dale had done. Brothers didn’t usually see things clearly when sisters were involved.
Dale slid a glance her way as they merged with interstate traffic, searching for a safe topic of conversation. Everything that popped into his head was a minefield.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said politely.
Courteous. Good. He could do courteous. “You’re welcome. I enjoyed it.” He hadn’t meant to add his sincere addition to the polite response. He caught the turn of her head in his peripheral vision, but refused to look her way.
“Me too,” she said at last. “But you aren’t selling it.”
Now he took his eyes off the road long enough to see her grin was genuinely amused. “What do you mean?”
“The lie. You sold it at the Rooster this morning. Really well.” She sighed, but he couldn’t decipher the meaning behind it. He blamed it on the champagne. “This morning everyone believed you’re interested in me. Romantically.”
“Which is what we want,” he pointed out.
“Exactly. You did the same tonight,” she said, holding up her hand and wiggling her ring finger. “The operation’s banker can’t possibly have any doubts about our mutual devotion. So either you didn’t really enjoy it, or your mind is elsewhere right now.”
“How can you tell?”
She shrugged and just shifted deeper into the passenger seat, drawing her coat closer around her. The move blocked his view of the tempting cleavage the dress revealed. He’d been through her closets, and hadn’t noticed anything particularly outstanding on the hangers. When she’d answered the door, he’d expected slacks and a nice top. Frankly he’d been more than a little concerned that she could pull off the right look for tonight’s dinner and had bought her a dress and built time in for her to change at his place.
That probably made him a jerk, but he’d never seen her in anything but jeans and the t-shirts of her various jobs. In Haleswood, he couldn’t imagine a need for much beyond that. That she’d managed to look so feminine and outright pretty, when he’d expected something simple and unsophisticated, irritated him. Irrational but true.
“I’m not the only one who can act,” he said.
“Isn’t acting what you wanted me to do tonight?”
“That smile.” He took his eyes off of the road for a heartbeat, then two. “Yeah, that one right there. It’s fake.”
“How would you know?”
“Because it’s the same smile you use at the Rooster when you’d rather tell people to mind their own business.”
She made a skeptical sound.
“It’s true.” His temper spiked, fueled by the pain of another ninety minutes in this damned car. “I don’t need generations of history to see it. Maybe I can see you better than they do because I wasn’t a founding family of the Haleswood utopia.”
“Wow. Do you hate all small towns or just mine?”
“What?” This wasn’t about him. It was about her and that fake smile.
“I’m guessing you were raised in a place like Haleswood. With all this pent-up hostility,” she waved her left hand and the ring caught the light of a street light, “I’m surprised you aren’t in a city bigger than Columbia.”
“I’m getting there.”
“Just taking the scenic route?” She shook her head and another wave of the soft lemon scent in her hair hit him like a two-by-four. “Not when I checked. Columbia was after your post in D.C.”
He didn’t like the idea of her looking into his past. “That was different. There were other circumstances that brought me to Columbia.”
She laughed, the soft sound worse than the scent of her hair. “You don’t have to believe me,” he insisted.
“Wrong again. You said it earlier, if this is going to work, we have to make every step of this process believable.”
“Stop twisting my words.”
“What twist? ‘Stay in character’ you said. You claim you enjoyed the evening, but it’s the one time tonight I could tell you were lying. I thought you should know. Call it constructive criticism.”
“I wasn’t lying,” he argued. “I was distracted.”
“Whatever.”
Dale wasn’t sure which end was up at this point. She was too young for this, too close to the operation, though she didn’t know it. But he didn’t have an agent in the office he could count on to pull this off.
Heather had the best access to the DNR database. She’d seen hidden patterns no one else had bothered to look for. Her volunteer work with the county animal shelter meant she could mine those records for names, dates, and dogs unfortunate enough to get adopted by people with a nasty addiction or an unbreakable connection to the fighting.
She was an unknown in Columbia and Lester wouldn’t be able to disprove the time or depth of their relationship.
“The right people saw us tonight,” he said at last, not wanting to give her the whole picture just yet. “I was distracted thinking about how they might react.”
“I knew you didn’t really enjoy our time at dinner.”
She said it with enough enthusiasm he thought she’d start a victory dance in her seat. While she had it wrong, he wasn’t going down that rabbit hole again. “Will you tell me now what this,” she flashed the ring again, “was all about?”
He took a deep breath and flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “I screwed up.” Better to just get it out there, no excuses. “When I was going through the information you delivered, I didn’t realize how shallow the DNR pool was.”
“Shallow? What does that mean? We have all sorts of resources.”
“It means I underestimated you and what you do for them. I’m sorry.”
He heard the soft gasp, waited for the outraged reaction, but she surprised him.
“Go on.”
He cleared his throat. “I contacted one of the people you identified as likely second or third tier involvement.”
“Lawrence Zelnick,” she whispered. “Aw, hell. That would do it.”
“I rushed it,” he admitted. “I really thought there were more possible sources for the information you gave me.”
“I see.”
That’s what terrified him. The evidence she’d given him, the logical way she’d laid it out proved her IQ and analytical skills were far above the average diner waitress. Not that smart people didn’t work in odd careers or frequently find themselves under-employed, but her resume showed a scattered and often eclectic assortment of jobs. He’d seen the pattern in drifters and young people struggling to find their place. And with every word, Heather was proving she didn’t fit either category. “You know, Sheriff Cochran is right to want you in law enforcement.”
“Flattery isn’t necessary here.” She sighed. “Did you find a connection to Lester? Is that what tonight was about?”
“That wasn’t flattery.”
She dismissed that with a flick of her hand. “If I wanted to be a part of the legal system I am more than capable of taking the appropriate steps.”
“True. That’s not—”
“Being undercover with you on this is as close as I intend to get,” she said. “End of discussion.”
He wanted to know why she let people get away with underestimating her. Not only did it annoy him that he’d been one of those people, but he’d compounded that error and put her in harm’s way.
“Why?” she asked quietly.
“Why what?” He’d lost the thread of the pertinent conversation.
“Why did you rush it?”
In the Army when you screwed up you owned it. Part of it was accountability, the other was self-preservation: nothing diffused a tirade like admitting the error.
“A couple of reasons,” he began. “I have a full case load and this looked simple.” It was the only reason he wanted to share tonight.
“Where to now?”
It took him a second to catch up with the latest conversational shift. He didn’t believe she’d really accepted the truth so graciously, but he wasn’t about to dwell on his mistake if she was willing to let it go. “My place. Tomorrow morning we’ll make it look like we’re headed for somewhere decadent to celebrate.”
“But we’re really headed into the woods, right?”
He nodded. In more ways than one.