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Glancing toward the phone, he resisted the need to call Tessa to talk to her about it. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that urge today. Ridiculous to think he could miss somebody he’d only known for a week.
Shaking it off, Luke told himself he was only horny and got back to studying, but just as he turned another page, a shadow fell over him. Luke jumped and looked up into the face of his boss. Sergeant Pallin looked shaken by the sight of the book, and Luke fought the urge to shove it under his papers and wipe his hands on his pants.
He knew the sergeant had heard the same stories as everyone else. The book probably just confirmed the rumors, but Pallin pulled his eyes from it and inclined his head toward Luke’s monitor. “Still reviewing tape?”
“Yeah. No hits yet, but it’s there somewhere.”
“Good. And the Denver files?”
“Still slogging through those, too. There are a couple of things missing from some of them. I’ll need to check with Denver again.”
“All right. Let me know what you find.” His eyes flicked to the book again, but he put his hands in his pockets and walked back to his office. Apparently he didn’t want to open up a can of sticky personnel issues.
“Fine with me,” Luke muttered. He rolled his shoulders one last time, slipped the book back into his desk and went to go harass the tech department. He’d already got word that there were no usable fingerprints on the keg. It had been wiped clean. So he really, really needed a break on the video. An hour later, he got it. A white car inched through the frame of the surveillance camera from a bookstore. He wasn’t sure it was the exact white bumper they’d spotted in the alley, but he jotted down the license plate and immediately ran a check.
“Bingo,” he said when the owner’s name showed up in their system. This guy had been arrested four times and convicted twice. A meth head by all accounts. Not the kind of guy Luke would’ve pegged for a sophisticated robbery, but maybe he’d had a successful life before he’d discovered drugs.
The
last address in the system was over a year old. Luke didn’t have much confidence the guy had stayed in one place for so long, and it was already six-thirty. He and Simone could bring him in for questioning in the morning if they tracked him down.
He printed out the list of arrests and the accompanying photos, shoved them into a file and looked at the phone again. Good news, bad news…it didn’t matter what it was. Everything made him want to call Tessa.
Luke sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He should apologize. He should call and tell her he’d been an ass and she wasn’t to blame. But what if she forgave him? Then he’d have to think about how much he’d miss her when it ended for good.
But when he thought about heading home to his empty condo for another night, Luke decided maybe it’d be worth the risk.
“BALLS,” TESSA GROANED as she collapsed onto her couch. “Worst Tuesday ever. No doubt.” Whatever plans she’d had to seduce Luke had vanished when her afternoon had turned into a jumble of arguing brothers, screwy paychecks and a ridiculously enormous quote from Graham Kendall detailing what sponsorship of the golf tournament would cost. She dropped her White Orchid bag on the coffee table and slumped into the cushions.
There wasn’t an inch of seduction in her tonight. At best, she could manage a bath and a drink and a microwave meal. Her pretty lingerie would have to wait.
It turned out that Roland Kendall wouldn’t be back in the office until tomorrow afternoon, which felt like a reprieve for Tessa, but Eric had nearly been frothing at the mouth in outrage. Unfortunately, his outlet had been yelling at Jamie for a defective tap that had nearly flooded out the floor behind the bar.
Poor Jamie had been upset enough about the mess before having to deal with Eric’s temper, and he’d ended up throwing down his mop and stalking out of the bar. Jamie’s walk hadn’t lasted long, though. His shoulders had probably itched with the need to get back and get the floor sparkling again. But Tessa couldn’t help but take Jamie’s brief disappearance as foreshadowing.
Her brothers had gotten along well once upon a time. Jamie had looked up to his big brother as a hero. Eric had played the part of role model to perfection, willingly toting his little brother along to movies and pickup basketball games.
Then their parents had died, and everything had changed.
Eric had become the staid, responsible father figure.
And Jamie had turned into a wild, rebellious teenager who resented being told what to do.
For a while, after Jamie had graduated from college, the relationship had gotten better. They’d almost been friends again. But now… “Oh, God,” Tessa groaned, hiding her face behind her hands. The tension hung between them like a permanent cloud, sometimes cracking with lightning and rage. She didn’t know what to do anymore.
She let her body slide slowly down until she was lying on the couch, then she closed her eyes and tried to plan her next step. The numbers Graham Kendall had sent were impossible. She couldn’t spend that kind of money on her own, and Eric would never make a decision like that so quickly, even if she brought him in on it tonight.
He hadn’t yet sent the numbers on beverage sales for the private jet charters. Hopefully they would look good. If they didn’t, all her eggs would be in the High West basket, and both Monica and Graham thought that was an impossible dream.
And now…Jesus, now she wasn’t even sure they should be in business with the Kendall Group. The family freaked her out. But Eric didn’t care about the Kendall family, just the opportunity.
Hopelessness had begun to seep into her cells. It was a foreign, unwelcome feeling. She wasn’t normally subject to dark moods, and when they did sneak in, she tried to move too fast to feel them. That was how she dealt with life. She schemed. She acted. She organized. She rushed. But now she was sinking into the couch with exhaustion and there was no hiding from her fear.
Tears were just starting to tingle behind her eyelids when her cell phone rang. She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling fan. Whoever it was, it was surely trouble. Eric or Jamie or one of those weird-ass Kendalls. For a moment, she thought of ignoring it, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She reached blindly over and grabbed her phone from her purse.
“Luke,” she gasped when she saw the screen.
She hit the button and, holding her breath, raised the phone to her ear.
