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Dawg turned back to him, his brow lifting in question as Natches smirked behind him.
“Don’t you two get on my nerves. ” He pointed his finger back at them demandingly. “I won’t be nice. ”
Bald and portly he might be, but he could put a hurtin’ on the ego if a man wasn’t careful.
“Go over that information, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow afternoon,” Timothy finally ordered with an edge of frustration. “Keep your eyes and ears open and hope we get something before the week is out, or my boss is going to rip all our asses. Boys, we don’t want that. ”
Dawg flipped open the file, his gaze running over the pages in a slow scan. He was more concerned about finding any incriminating evidence that could have come up against Crista than he was information he had already read. If she was guilty, now was the best time to know. If she wasn’t, then she would gain the benefit of the doubt until he saw otherwise. But not a lack of suspicion.
They were lucky. Crista had been in the shadows the entire time she had been there when the agents moving into the warehouse had assumed she was with the buyers. They had swarmed the back end of the cavernous building and worked their way forward.
Dawg had gone after Grael when the other man had sprinted for the shadowed, crated area in the front of the warehouse. Grael had gone after the woman he believed had betrayed him. If Dawg had been a second later, Crista would have died.
No one could possibly know Dawg was involved in this investigation. Other than the task force members, no one else could have known. And they were die-hard agents. It would shock him to his back teeth to find out one of them was a traitor.
But hell, he had been wrong before. And as he said, trust wasn’t one of his virtues. If he even had a virtue. He was a vices type of guy, virtues weren’t his strong point.
The file was empty of any incriminating evidence against Crista, which meant he didn’t have to tell Cranston she was involved. At least, not just yet.
Slapping the file closed on the desk, Dawg rose to his feet and glanced at Natches. His cousin was rising from his own chair and snagged the dark glasses he had left lying on the table.
“Ready to roll?” Natches smirked, his dark, forest green eyes gleaming with amusement.
He knew Crista was waiting for them at the lumber store, safely ensconced in Dawg’s office and going over his paperwork. Her eyes had gleamed in joy the minute she saw the mess his personal office had become over the past year. A man would think she was staring at diamonds rather than the paperwork from hell.
And Natches, being Natches, had found no end of amusement in the sight of Crista’s curvy little ass plopping in Dawg’s oversized chair as she told him, none too politely, to just get the hell out of her way while she organized his mess.
“Do you think I have an office to return to?” Dawg sighed the question in resignation.
“Think smelly candles and vases of flowers. ” Natches lifted his head, his nostrils flaring as though testing the air for a sweet scent. “I’m betting vanilla and roses,” he said then, looking back at Dawg.
Hell, if all it took was the scent of vanilla and roses to keep her tight ass out of trouble, then he was all for it. He was to the point that he was ready to pull his hair out. He hadn’t had her in his life forty-eight hours yet, and she already had him on such a tight edge that explosion was imminent.
Explosion of the sexual sort. He was so damned hard he was about to rupture his jeans with his erection. Or choke said erection with the confinement.
He hadn’t had enough of her that morning. Hell, he had a feeling he could take her for hours and still not have enough of her.
As they left the small downstairs office Cranston had taken in the London, Kentucky, courthouse, Dawg stayed carefully on guard for watching eyes. Exiting the lower level, they were able to stay out of the main portion of the courthouse. The other agents used other exits, other hallways.
Paranoia. It had been bred into him by his coldly suspicious parents long before he ever joined the Marines and then the ATF. Even as a kid, too damned young to know what the word meant, he had begun to develop a suspicious nature.
Of course, with two cold, selfish egomaniacs as parents, how could he help it? His mother saw shadows in shadows, and everyone was out to get her. Emotions were her worst enemy, and she had fought against them tirelessly. And his father. Hell, his father had been as much a bastard as Natches’s father was. Sometimes Dawg wondered how Rowdy had hit it so lucky. His father, Ray, had been tough but caring. And Rowdy had never suffered a beating in his life.
Until Dawg was old enough and big enough to fight back, his father had taken great delight in making his son cower.
Dawg hadn’t inherited his father’s habit of striking first, but his mother’s insidious paranoia was a part of him.
So much so that he couldn’t get out of his head the look in Crista’s eyes when he asked her about a pregnancy. For a second, pain and fear and sorrow had flashed in the chocolate orbs. It had been so quick he couldn’t even be certain it had been there. Paranoia or fact?
He shook his head as he and Natches moved toward their Harleys. Dawg pulled his dark glasses from his shirt pocket and placed them on his nose as he stared around the sunlit courthouse parking lot.
“Stop worrying so much,” Natches murmured as they straddled the bikes. “We have any number of reasons for being here. ”
Dawg glanced over at him before turning the key and starting the cycle. The rough, dangerous rumble of the motor ignited beneath him. The relaxing sense of freedom it normally gave him was absent now.
He had found a new freedom. A new peace. That of being buried so deep inside Crista that he could feel her heartbeat.
Agonizing arousal clenched his cock and balls at the thought of taking her. The shock and surprise that had at first filled her eyes had been followed closely by desperation, desire, and emotions he didn’t want to even think about. But she had burned him alive.
