“There’s the City Diner.”
“So basically it’s a choice of the same or the same?”
She laughed. “Pretty much. Unless you want to get a sandwich or some fried chicken at one of the bars.”
“Still more of the same.”
They found parking near enough to the diner. As it was Saturday, the streets were fairly busy with pedestrians, most of them people Haley knew by sight and often by name. They smiled and nodded as they passed, and only a few looked askance at Buck.
Maude, the diner’s owner, was nowhere in sight, and they were served by her daughter, who might have been a clone, every bit as stocky and graceless as her mother.
“Don’t see you here much,” she remarked to Haley as she slapped menus on the table.
“Hasty feeds me at work. Is Maude okay?”
The woman nodded. “Just claimed she needed a day off. After all these years, she wanted a day off. Imagine that.”
Buck was clearly fighting to hide a smile as the woman stomped to the next table. “Service with grace?” he said quietly.
“Not here.” Haley battled her own twitching lips. “The food makes up for it, though.”
Because the place was packed for lunch, they were treated to only the minimum of service and no conversation. Voices around them created a buzz just loud enough to have a private conversation, a rarity in here.
Haley ordered a chef’s salad that proved to be big enough for three, and Buck took her recommendation on the steak sandwich.
“So what now?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “I’m thinking. So tell me more about yourself. You mentioned your mother, but what about your dad?”
“He died in a hunting accident when I was sixteen.”
He faced softened. “I’m sorry. So that leaves just you?”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her salad. “It’s something I try not to think about too often.”
“Understandably. So now you’re in college.”
“I want to be a nurse. I figure I’ll start with my LPN, save some money and then go for my RN eventually.”
“That’s a long-term plan.”
She looked curiously at him. “Don’t you have one?”
“Not right now. I’ve been running in the short term. I look a day or two down the road and no further.”
“Why?” she asked baldly.
He set his sandwich down, reached for his napkin and wiped his mouth. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then he said something so painfully honest it tore at her heart.
“Have you ever been so disturbed by something that you felt everything you thought you were, everything you ever believed in, had just been thrown into a shredder and you had to figure out how to put it back together again?”
She caught her breath. “What happened, Buck?”
He just shook his head. “Maybe another time. Certainly not here.”
She had to respect that, but the ache that filled her at his description was hard to ignore. It also worried her. There was sympathy and then there was sympathy. Was she feeling more for Buck than she should?
Then she wondered how she would know. For five of the past six years, she’d thought of little but her mother. For the past year, she’d refused to deal with anything except her grief and school. She certainly didn’t have some kind of emotional barometer built from experience to gauge what she should be feeling and what was a little too much.
Buck had come from a darker world. Intellectually she recognized that, but having watched him in operation, she almost felt sorry for him. Suspicious of the Listons, who had never done a single thing wrong? And now, she gathered, suspicious of Claire as well, a woman whose only crime had been to question a truck driver.
But the more she thought about Claire asking that driver, the more anxious she got herself. Why in the world would Claire have done that, especially when the police had considered it unimportant and Haley hadn’t mentioned it again?
Then there was Jim Liston showing up in that ridiculously expensive car. She had to agree with Buck that it was unlikely he would have been permitted to drive a demo like that all the way up here. But if he made that kind of money, why wasn’t he helping his family? Why had the Listons stood there at a fancy wake wearing threadbare Sunday clothes?
Nothing was adding up, she realized. According to Buck, something had to be going on that wasn’t aboveboard.
But what?
After lunch he took her directly home, remarking that she needed to get some rest before the play. He did ask where in town he could find a warmer jacket, and that put her on alert.
“Buck?”
“Yes?”
“You’re not going to prowl on any of those ranches, are you?”
“Why would I do that?”
He had just pulled up in front of her complex and was reaching to take the key out of the ignition.
“Just don’t,” she said. “Don’t even think of it. Out there it takes as long as a half hour for a deputy to respond to a call, so people pretty much look after themselves. A prowler could get shot.”
He gave her a half smile. “I have no intention of getting shot. Been there, done that. No desire to repeat the experience.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “You’ve been shot?” she whispered. “When? How?”
“Again, a story for another time. No, I’m just going to wander around town a bit today, get some clothes.”
“Go to Freitag’s,” she said automatically. Why didn’t she believe him?
He came around to help her from the car, and this time she let him. Once again he walked her to her apartment, but he didn’t come in. He leaned forward and brushed the lightest of kisses on her cheek. Then he followed the touch with his fingertips, heightening her awareness of him instantly to an almost painful longing.
“I’ll see you later,” he said. “
Before
the play.”
She watched him disappear down the stairs, then closed the door. “He wouldn’t go out there in broad daylight,” she said to the empty room. “He’s not crazy.”
At least she hoped he wasn’t. Because right now it occurred to her she didn’t know a damn thing about Buck Devlin, except Gage said he checked out, and that he was a former MP.
That wasn’t a whole lot of information, and he seemed determined to avoid any subject that could really reveal anything about him. Although, in all fairness, he didn’t exactly know much about her, either.
What’s more, he’d been quite blunt about using her for cover. She needed to keep that in mind before she wasted any more worry on Buck Devlin.
If only his lightest touch didn’t make her body sing.
Chapter 6
A
trip to the local gun shop proved illuminating to Buck. He’d had no idea how easy it would be to buy a piece, even though he was just passing through. Apart from the requisite shotguns and hunting rifles, there were plenty of semiautomatic jobs, both pistols and long guns.
“People around here like shooting for fun?” he asked the proprietor, who had introduced himself as Rick. “Hobbyists?”
“Some. Mostly there’s a lot of varmints. Wolves, bears, coyotes, cougars. A man’s got to protect his livestock.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” And if a man wanted to, apparently he could have an arsenal to rival an army’s.
Rick pressed him to take a look at some, but Buck already knew them all intimately. Their look, their feel, their reliability, even how to strip them down and put them back together. Knowing weapons had once been part of his job. “Sorry, I can’t,” he told Rick. “Not allowed to have a firearm in a truck.”
“Really? That’s purely stupid.”
Buck nodded agreement, moving down to a case of knives. “Now these I can have.”
There was the usual assortment of what Buck thought of as vanity knives—they looked mean but weren’t all that useful if really needed. Then there was an assortment of hunting knives. He hovered over them for a while, then moved on to find what he really wanted: a modified Filipino barong by a manufacturer he trusted. Hefting it, he felt it settle into his hand like an old friend. “I’ll take this.”
“Anything else?”
“I’d like to look at a folding knife. Some of the places I spend the night are pretty dark and deserted. I’d feel better with something in my pocket.”
He departed a short while later with the knives and sheaths in a bag, but he was far from done. Next he headed to the hardware store. Obvious weapons could be a liability. But other things...
He pulled out his cell and called Gage Dalton. Ten minutes later, Gage called back and agreed to do him a favor.
Too bad, he thought, that it felt so good to be back in the saddle.
* * *
Buck piled the last of his purchases into the trunk of the rental. Freitag’s even had a whole section devoted to the kind of clothing he wanted: heavy-duty and dark.
They also had plenty of camo, which amused him, because the animals these folks would be hunting wouldn’t be fooled by it. They depended on their sense of smell more than their eyes, unlike human predators.
Nor did he want any of it himself. When you infiltrated at night, you went dark. He needed to start keeping a closer eye on that parking lot in case another exchange was made. The question was when. Did he want to risk missing a cargo exchange? They’d been getting closer together, to judge by the information he’d gotten from Bill, but it wasn’t anything like regular. The shortest time frame so far had been ten days, and that had been the last one. Would they speed up their business or slow it down until they were sure the heat over Ray was off?
Good question, and he couldn’t answer it.
Whoever they were, they seemed to be an interesting mix. Some elements of caution mixed with others of confidence, like exchanging crates in the truck-stop parking lot. He had a mental map of the road going in both directions, though, and he figured he could understand why they would have chosen to make a switch in the parking lot.
How many people would readily recognize that was wrong? Only truckers. So wait until you were the only two trucks around, and most casual observers would think it was normal. Do it out somewhere on the road, like a deserted turnout or a rest stop, and then it would look squirrelly to almost anyone.
So it made sense to choose the truck stop. However, since Claire had asked the other driver about it, the people involved might now be on high alert. Or they could have believed the explanation had satisfied Claire. Damned if he knew which way they’d flop. The important thing was that they didn’t guess why
he
was hanging around.
Which he supposed meant he should take Haley to the truck stop for a late dinner after her play, making it look like he was pursuing her. In a way he hated to do that to her, because he was sure a lot of looks, winks and nudges might happen.
Usually he didn’t have a Haley to consider when he was doing something like this. Often in his career he’d been a solo missile, and those times when he hadn’t been alone he’d worked with people who had the same training and experience. Haley was a whole different matter.
He was honestly worried about her.
Damn, he had to figure this out before Gage started looking into it. Because sure as hell, that toxicology was going to come back positive for something. He hadn’t been certain until he looked at the wreck site earlier, but he was convinced now. And Haley was about the only person who could testify that Ray hadn’t been under the influence at the truck stop. A dangerous witness.
At this point Buck would be willing to bet a month’s pay that whatever had been running through Ray’s blood was enough to kill him, because nobody with half a brain would trust an accident to do that.
It was pure luck that Ray had hit his head hard enough to be fatal. If that word went out, maybe these guys would relax.
This group was no bunch of masterminds. They’d had an idea that could work for a while, but sooner or later someone was going to put two and two together. So all along, they’d been racing against a clock they couldn’t see: the clock of when the cargo switches would add up enough to get attention. That was actually stupid, unless they honestly believed that the Seattle terminal would hold such a noisy investigation that they’d get warned.
Or unless they had eyes and ears in the terminal.
He pulled in to park next to Haley’s car and sat drumming his fingers on the wheel. At some point, he thought, an operation became so big it would fail through its own weight—too many people knew, and thus too many people could make a mistake.
So assume he was shipping contraband. He wouldn’t want to use the same shipper every time because that would become too obvious when the shipments were switched. Would he really want to be paying someone at the terminal to keep an eye on these random shipments? No. It would have meant trusting yet another person and leaving another money trail.
It was possible, of course, but given what Bill had told him, Buck figured the likeliest way this was playing out was the simplest: offer someone at the shipper’s warehouse a bit of money to stick something small in a crate. No questions, no explanations, just shove it in along with the packing material on a certain date and send us the shipping info.
Then came the question of how you could ensure the shipment would go out on the right truck for the exchange.
The lightbulb went on then. Those trucks didn’t depart at random. He needed to get back and take a look at the list of trucks and drivers Bill had emailed him. Somewhere in there would have to be a clue. He must have just missed it on his first time through, when he’d been so busy looking at dates.
All of a sudden he was impatient to get back to the motel. But he’d promised Haley he’d see her before her play.
Well, he’d already parked at her place, and if he wanted to keep up the appearance of being interested in her, nothing would look stupider than leaving before he’d even gone inside.
Sighing at his own impatience, because patience was essential and impatience could be deadly, he climbed out and headed inside.
* * *
Haley had just finished blow-drying her hair but had not put it up yet when Buck arrived. He took one look at her and smiled.
“You should wear your hair down more often. It suits you.”
“It also gets in the way,” she said lightly, flipping it back over her shoulders.
She felt awkward, though, as she invited him in. Was she wrong to trust Buck just because Gage Dalton said he checked out?
Because, really, how much could Gage actually know about Buck, other than whether he had a police record? Certainly nothing about the kind of man he was. Not even whether Buck was involved in these cargo switches he was supposedly investigating.
Where had that thought come from?
Troubled, she turned away as Buck entered and closed the door behind him. She wasn’t a suspicious person by nature and now she was suspicious of everyone.
“Did I come at a bad time?” Buck asked quietly.
She rounded on him, disturbed by the changes in herself, but having no one else to share them with.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she demanded. “I saw one little thing in a parking lot. Barely. Yet the next thing I know you’re telling me to keep quiet. That I might be in danger. And like some naive kid, I’m taking it all at your word. You haven’t given me one scintilla of proof that I could be in danger! What if you’re the one who is up to no good?”
He stood by the door, expressionless, hands at his sides. When at last he decided she was finished, he spoke. “You’re right. I’m asking a whole lot of you. And I haven’t told you enough.”
“What more is there?”
“Ray was murdered.”
She gasped. “You can’t know that.”
“But I do. I talked to the sheriff yesterday. Ray was killed by a severe blow to his head when that truck went off the road. But the only way he could have driven that truck off the road the way he did was if he was unconscious. How did that happen? The sheriff is waiting for the toxicology, but he suspects Ray was drugged. Ask him. In the meantime, I can only offer my experience for it. Ray would not have driven off the road in that way if he’d been awake. If he’d taken evasive action of some kind, there’d have been skid marks from the brakes. He’d probably have jerked the wheel and jackknifed. He did neither.”
She stood there feeling oddly numb and sorely troubled, as if the burst of anger and suspicion had fled, leaving near emptiness in its wake.
“As for you,” he continued, “when I started, my primary focus was on using you as an excuse for me to be here. That’s changed, because it’s inescapable that you are the one person who was a witness.”
“What did I witness? Some boxes being moved between trucks? That’s nothing, especially when I can’t really be sure.”
“And it would have remained nothing except for Ray. You are the only person who can testify that Ray was alert just a few minutes before. If drugs of some kind turn up in the toxicology, you’re going to be the one person who can say they were introduced
after
he left the restaurant. You and you alone.”
“I’m not proof!”
“Your word that he was fine when he talked to you is enough. It raises the question of what could have happened to him so fast. And it leaves only one likely answer. Without you to say he was fine, lots of explanations could occur and the whole time frame changes.”
The words fell into her heart like stones, because they made sense. Just as it had made sense to her when he had said that people wouldn’t be going to all the trouble to switch cargo unless big money was involved. And big money, even she knew, probably meant something criminal. Probably drugs.
“But why should I trust you and not people I’ve known for years? Like Claire and the Listons.”
“They might not be involved in anything at all. I just need to check them out, because the Listons came into some money, because their son drove up here in a car only millionaires own. That’s enough reason to check. And it’s likely enough I won’t find anything.”
“But Claire? You’re suspicious of her, too.”
He shrugged. “Not exactly. I just find it odd that she questioned that driver. Why would she do that?”
“To put my mind at rest.”
“Did she think you were worrying about that cargo being switched? Did you give her any reason to think you believed it to be a big deal?”
Her heart sank even more. “No,” she said finally. “I mentioned it to Micah and Sarah, and then you. Nobody else.”
He shrugged. “Maybe she was just curious after you mentioned it. But part of investigating is removing possibilities from the table. It’s what I do.”
“Which brings me back to you,” she pointed out. “What do I know about you, really? Not much.”
“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “The best thing I can offer is to talk to your sheriff. He checked me out, and he even talked to my boss.”
After a moment, another question burst out of her. “Who do
you
trust?”
“Right now I can’t trust anyone even remotely associated with this mess. Not even the guy who sent me out to investigate.”
“Lovely world you live in.”
And yet it amazed her just how much she didn’t want him to leave, this stranger who had turned her world on end, changing it from a friendly place to one that held shadowy threats.
She dropped into her desk chair and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Her stomach churned on the edge of nausea as she tried once again to battle her way through a familiar world that had turned into dangerous quicksand.
“Claire called little while ago,” she said finally, hearing an odd dullness in her voice. “She seems awfully worried about me.”
“So I’m a potential threat?”
“In her mind.” She hesitated. “She also seems certain you must have an ulterior motive for staying here, and it’s not me. Or at least she kept asking.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw him stiffen. Then he said, almost lightly, “That’s not very flattering to you.”
That penetrated her muddled state enough to draw a small laugh from her. “Maybe not. But maybe her concern is genuine. If you were any other trucker, she’d be right. But you’re not just any other trucker.”
“According to me, at any rate.”
“There is that. There’s also the fact that Gage called me to tell me I didn’t need to worry about you. So either you’re the best con artist this side of D.C. or he thinks you’re exactly what you say you are.”
“You trust Gage?”
“Of course I do. You don’t know him, but I’ve known him most of my life. He’s kept this county clean. Everyone has great respect for him.”
He came closer, finally sitting on the armchair she should have offered and hadn’t.
She continued, sensing he was listening intently. “What’s bothering me is that now I don’t entirely trust Claire. In fact, I don’t really trust anybody. I’ve never felt this way before.”