3. Holly
HOLLY
Iwoke to the smell of coffee and the unfamiliar weight of a heavy blanket tangled around my legs. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was, then I saw the the spare gun belt and battered boots near the door, and the night before came rushing back.
The warehouse, the men going through Dad’s records and Preacher putting one of them through a workbench were bad enough.
Less helpfully, my brain supplied the memory of his mouth on mine and the way he’d stopped when neither of us wanted him to.
He’d put me in his bedroom and slept elsewhere, leaving me alone with far too much time to think about it.
I got dressed, ran my fingers through my hair and followed the smell of coffee down the hallway.
Preacher stood at the kitchen counter in jeans and a black T-shirt, one hand wrapped around a mug while the other held his phone to his ear.
His cut lay over a chair beside a holstered pistol, and his keys sat next to a half-open box of ammunition.
Domestic, apparently, meant something different in Preacher’s house.
“No. Keep digging. I want whoever sits behind it, not just the name on the paperwork.” He looked over when I entered, and his gaze stayed on me a fraction too long before he finished the call. “Call me when you’ve got something.”
“Morning.”
“Coffee’s fresh.”
I poured myself a mug and leaned against the opposite counter. “Gage find anything?”
“The vehicle had stolen plates. Deacon is working the buyer.”
“I called the Sheriff by the way. He’s meeting me at the freight yard.”
Preacher nodded and I knew from that tiny movement exactly what he thought about it before replying.
“As I said, your property, your call. Doesn’t mean I’m waiting on him to do anything useful.”
There was something almost refreshing about the complete lack of apology.
Salvation had never been crawling with law enforcement, but when I was growing up there had at least been deputies around.
Those men were gone now, leaving Warren White to cover an entire town with little more than a badge and one aging cruiser.
“You and White still hate each other?”
“Never hated him. But he’d arrest me tomorrow if he could make enough stick.”
“And you’d make his life difficult whether he arrested you or not.”
That earned me the faintest hint of a smile. “Of course.”
I smiled into my coffee, but when I looked up again, Preacher’s attention had dropped to my mouth. Neither of us needed to mention the warehouse kiss to know it was still there.
At eighteen, I’d had a ridiculous crush on a thirty-six-year-old biker who belonged entirely to my father’s world. Nine years later, the difference between us hadn’t disappeared, but I wasn’t eighteen anymore, and the way Preacher looked at me made it very clear that he knew it too.
His gaze moved away first. “We should go.”
“You’re very romantic in the morning.”
“Holly, not now.”
I laughed under my breath and went to get my shoes before he could answer.
Curtis Freight looked less alarming in daylight, which didn’t make the intrusion feel any less real.
Sheriff White’s cruiser was already parked outside when we arrived, and he stood near the warehouse with a notebook in one hand, alone.
Just Warren White in the New Mexico heat, trying to cover the entire scene himself.
That’s what the law looked like in this town now.
“Holly,” he said when I got near him.
“Sheriff.”
His attention moved past me to Preacher approaching, and White let out a tired breath. “Figured you’d be around. Whatever you’ve already got your people doing,” White said, tucking his notebook beneath one arm, “don’t make my job harder than it already is.”
“Do it fast enough and maybe I won’t have to.”
White’s jaw tightened. “You know damn well I don’t have the manpower to sit on this property.”
“Yeah,” Preacher said. “I do.”
There was no satisfaction in Preacher’s voice. Both men knew White was outmanned by the problem, and neither liked what that meant.
“That doesn’t give your club a badge,” White said.
“Never wanted one.”
“No, you just like deciding the law doesn’t apply to you.”
Preacher’s expression cooled another degree. “You want to argue about me, or deal with the men who broke in here?”
I stepped between them before they could settle into what was clearly a well-practiced sparring routine. “Could we perhaps focus on the strangers going through my father’s business records before one of you gets your dick out and starts measuring?”
White stared at me for a second while a low sound suspiciously close to a laugh came from behind me. “Your father used to say pretty much the same thing, only less politely.”
That defused things enough for White to walk me through what he’d found, which was not a whole lot. Whoever had come inside wanted information, not valuables.
“They were looking for information,” I said.
“It sure looks that way.”
White photographed the open cabinets and took my descriptions. He was competent, but watching him work alone made Salvation feel more vulnerable than the boarded storefronts had.
When he finished, White closed his notebook. “I’ll run what I can. If either of you sees those men again, you call me.”
His attention stayed on Preacher for the second half of the sentence. Preacher folded his arms, and White sighed. “Yeah. Waste of breath.”
“Probably.”
“You start dropping bodies over a warehouse break-in, I’m still coming through your gate.”
“You find probable cause, knock yourself out.”
The look White gave him could have stripped paint. He wasn’t giving Preacher permission to do anything; he simply knew permission had never been part of the arrangement.
White turned to me instead. “You call me, Holly.”
“I will.”
He started toward his cruiser before Preacher called his name. “Warren.”
The sheriff looked back, and Preacher said, “You hear about other businesses getting leaned on, you might want to pay attention.”
White’s expression sharpened the second he heard that. “You know something?”
“Not enough.”
“Then when you do, you tell me.”
Preacher said nothing, and White gave a humorless laugh before getting into his cruiser and driving away. I watched the dust settle behind him.
“He really is doing this alone. Nobody sends help?”
“From where?”
I didn’t have an answer, and judging by Preacher’s expression, he hadn’t expected one.
Preacher looked toward the road White had taken. “Warren still believes the law ought to be enough because it’s the law. I don’t care what ought to be enough.” It was probably the most Preacher answer possible.
We went inside, where the warehouse still bore the marks of the intrusion. Drawers hanging open, papers disturbed and a chair knocked onto its side. I started sorting through the material they’d touched while Preacher moved around the room behind me, saying little and noticing everything.
Most of it was routine stuff. Old driver schedules, maintenance records and delivery paperwork. Then I found a stack of receipts pulled from one of Dad’s private files.
“Preacher, these shouldn’t have been out.”
He came over and looked down at them. “Southbound.”
I checked again and realized he was right. The receipts followed routes heading toward the border, along with fuel stops, driver names and delivery times. A cold feeling moved through my stomach.
“They weren’t just randomly searching. The buyer appears, pushes for a fast sale, knows things they shouldn’t know, then somebody breaks in and goes straight for route information.”
Preacher’s expression hardened. “That’s what it looks like.”
I looked at him and caught the faint satisfaction he was trying to hide. “Okay. Don’t enjoy being right.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“That’s worse,” I said, and his mouth twitched.
I sat in Dad’s old chair. I’d driven into Salvation intending to sell this place, sign and leave; now somebody wanted the business badly enough to break into it.
“I didn’t leave because I hated this place.”
Preacher leaned one hip against the desk. “Never thought you did.”
“Dad did sometimes.”
“He knew better. He just missed you. That isn’t the same thing.”
The words caught beneath my ribs. Dad and I had spent years disagreeing about Salvation, and he’d always assumed eventually I would get the need to leave out of my system and come home, but I never had.
“I didn’t want this to be the only life I ever knew.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“He built Curtis Freight from nothing.”
“Almost nothing. Rowan stole his first forklift.”
I stared at him, suddenly suspicious of how much history I’d missed. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.”
A laugh escaped me before I looked around the office again. “Selling it feels a little like getting rid of him.”
“You don’t owe a dead man a business you don’t want.”
The bluntness should have hurt, but instead it loosened something in my chest.
“He was your best friend, so shouldn’t you be telling me to keep his legacy alive?”
“No.” Preacher straightened and came away from the desk. “If you want to sell, sell. If you decide you want to stay and run it, do that. Just don’t hand it to somebody who’s clearly lying to you and has motives.”
“That sounds almost sensible.”
“I have my moments.”
He stopped beside me, close enough that the memory of his mouth came back immediately.
Neither of us said anything before I stood up and kissed him.
For half a second Preacher didn’t move. Then his hand caught the back of my neck, and the kiss turned hard and hungry so quickly that I barely had time to breathe before I was grabbing the front of his cut and dragging him closer.
His hands moved over my waist and hips, pulling me against him until the office narrowed to the heat of his body. I pushed the leather from his shoulders, dragged his shirt upward and felt his breathing change under the first sweep of my palms.