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"Your mom doesn't complain," Isaac quipped.
Lash gave him a shove toward the door before Marko could deliver a harder one of his own. For such a bear of a man, Marko was a total softie when it came to his mom, which meant Isaac could never resist a good Yo Mama barb.
The perfectly delivered insult evened his nerves out and Isaac pushed his way through the front door and out into the bright Texas sunshine. It only took him a second to identify Wolczyk's car. In the land of pickup trucks, the bounty hunter drove a Prius. It was enough to make the great state of Texas weep. He hustled across the street and tapped on the driver's side window.
The other man didn't bother to glance his way as he rolled down the window. The smell of patchouli and sound of New Age music wafted out of the car.
"Camacho."
"Heard you're looking for Taz's ex-wife."
"Yeah." His gaze bounced from the gym's front door to Isaac.
"What makes you think she's in Fort Worth?"
The bounty hunter shrugged. "I don't."
"Why not?" Isaac played along. He may not be Elisa, but he knew how to run a simple con. "Who wouldn't want to be in Texas?"
"This chick. She's all high-maintenance and gold digging. She's probably on the hunt for her next marital conquest, poor rich bastard."
Isaac let Wolczyk's last words hang in the air between them. The man was a talker. He'd break down. His type always did.
He didn't have to wait long.
"So this guy in Idaho who employ
ed me has hired investigators all over the country—anywhere this Tamara woman had ties. There's no rhyme or reason to it beyond that if you ask me. The guy is grasping at straws. In the meantime my ass is growing an ass while I keep surveillance on this place."
"I can help there. While I was inside, Taz got a call from someone named Tamara in Connecticut."
"Really? Why share that with me?"
"Because it's no skin off my nose and Taz doesn't give two shits about his ex. But if you'd rather spend the next few days watching the Devil's Dip Gym building in hopes of seeing someone who's not there, be my guest."
"Fuck that." Wolczyk turned the key in the ignition that didn't even make a single purr. "I owe you one, Camacho."
He tapped the roof of the Prius and took a step away before it silently drove down the block and turned at the corner. Wolczyk was gone—for the moment. The guy wasn't a great investigator, but he was just good enough to be a pain in the ass. Good thing Isaac excelled at distraction and protection—along with general badassery.
He pulled out his phone and hit the first contact on his list.
"What? Do you want me to massage your massive ego now?" Lash asked.
"Meet me at Tamara's." He crossed the street to his truck parked on the street. "Her security is about to get an upgrade."
The mother of all upgrades, to be more specific. No one was going to get within a block of Tamara's house without him knowing about it.
Chapter 4
Tamara
Two days later and all Tamara had to show for her amateur sleuthing debut was a permanent crick in her neck from her lumpy office couch and a whole lotta nothing on how Archie Wolczyk had stumbled upon her. After her research into the myriad of complaints against the bounty hunter at the Better Business Bureau, she was beyond convinced that that would be the only way he'd found her. The man bumbled more than a fat bee high on pollen.
Still, she wasn't doing much better, which was why she was pacing the main hallway of B-Squad HQ. Her office was awesome, but it was definitely getting that whole lived-in vibe and the walls were starting to close in on her. Playing it safe was starting to make her nuts. Well, that and the fact that Isaac Camacho kept popping up in her thoughts and in real life enough that everyone on the B-Squad was starting to make comments. The reminder of the evil that people could do was enough to drag her back to what mattered; not the pain in her neck or the cabin fever, but keeping Jarrod away from Essie. For that, she could endure whatever it took. Tolerating the danger wasn't enough though. She had to make sure that the bounty hunter was really as out of her life as it seemed before she could go home again and figure out whether Essie was safe in Colorado or if it was time to relocate.
Stopping in front of the wall of video screens in the hall outside her office, she scanned the twenty-three different views of the Devil's Dip Gym building, both inside and out. No Prius matching the one registered to Archie Wolczyk on the street. No bounty hunter hanging around. He'd driven off forty-eight hours ago after a car-side conference with Isaac—wouldn't she just love to know what that little tit for tat had been about—and hadn't been seen since.
"Isn't that sweet, you just couldn't wait for me to get here today could you?" Isaac's voice boomed across the empty space between the elevator and the monitors that she knew was anything but unobserved.
