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He dressed again, zipped up his jeans. He was tired and needed a drink and some sleep, in that order. So he headed out of the bedroom after shooting her a winning smile. In her kitchen, he stood over the table. She had a small stack of books—college textbooks. The corner of his mouth quirked up. It had taken him almost a year to cotton on to the fact that the books never changed. Nor did they move from their spots on the small table. He shrugged it off as he reached behind himself. He supposed a lot of people were pretending to be something they weren’t. Hell, he was pretending to be a cop but the shiny badge might as well have come from a dime store. Caleb was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a cop—not really.
He opened his wallet, fished out a stack of bills, and tucked them underneath a book on microbiology before heading out the front door.
Chapter 7
Izzy neared the city limits and slowed a bit for her next turn. Rapid City was quite a bit smaller than Denver, and though there were hills, they were nothing like Denver’s soaring Rocky Mountains. She supposed she should eat and find some temporary digs, but she was here for a job. Plus, after she got the lay of the land, she’d have a better idea of where to drop anchor. She continued on to the home address of Jason Paul, that Jeter’s mother had given her. Izzy had requested that the woman not call ahead and give a warning to anyone in South Dakota that she was on the hunt. Under normal circumstances, Izzy wouldn’t hold out much hope that her request would be granted, but then again, Mrs. Paul seemed desperate to get her son back alive, so maybe she saw the wisdom of not alerting him and causing him to go to ground again- if he was here at all.
She turned into yet another shitty neighborhood. Izzy had seen many over the course of her life. Hell, she and Pop had even lived in a few while she was growing up and money was tight. She rolled past the tiny houses with postage-stamp yards and bars on the windows and came to a stop at the end of the street. Her Charger was a bit nicer than the rusted pickups and assorted junkers that lined the street. It was late afternoon, and she was unlikely to have any run-ins, but she kept the windows rolled up just to be safe. She frowned at the house that Mrs. Paul had sent her to. It was tiny, missing a shutter on the front. A pickup truck took up most of the driveway and obscured the view of a motorcycle parked on the other side of it.
There were a lot of ways to play this, none of which had any long-lasting appeal to her. To identify herself was to send Jeter running for the hills, most likely. And if he wasn’t already paranoid enough, the idea of a bounty hunter coming after him might cause him to panic and kill the girl—if she was still alive at this point. Izzy had to hold out hope that she was. Either way, Jeter needed to be collared. She yanked the rubber band off the end of her long braid and fanned out her long, dark hair. She reached into her glove compartment, passed her hand over the Glock, and instead went for the only tube of lipstick she owned. It was bright red. Probably a bit of overkill, but she wasn’t used to wearing a lot of makeup, and usually the only time she did it was because she was on the hunt—either for a skip or a quickie. She checked her lips in the mirror and tugged down the front of her red, fitted T-shirt, just to the line of her black bra.
She fobbed the Charger’s alarm and shoved the keys into her jacket pocket. Her boots were a bit too practical for the job, but she hoped whoever answered the door wouldn’t really notice them. She headed up the front steps and rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, a grizzled older man, shirtless, opened it. Izzy fought the urge to gag. It was probably best that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, she decided as she smiled at him. She wasn’t sure his enormous beer belly would fit in anything but a circus tent. His frown immediately faded as he took in the sight of her. His gaze finally settled onto her tits and he wiped his mouth.
“Well, hello there, little lady,” he drawled. He had an open beer can in one hand and a TV remote in the other.
“Hi,” Izzy schmoozed. “I’m looking for Jase.”
“Jase?” he asked, mouthing the word at though it were foreign. Izzy had chosen it because it had an air of familiarity to it, like a pet name.
