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“It’s that bad, huh?” Adriel leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. He gave a weary yawn.
“The Paddocks are laundering money.” Shep spoke into his coffee mug, not sure if Adriel was going to believe him. Maybe he’d write him off as crazy and drop the whole idea of hiring him at the rez.
“Keep going.” Adriel’s voice was noncommittal.
“Literally. Laundering. Money.” Shep raised his gaze to the sheriff. “As in washing the denominations off smaller bills and reprinting them with larger denominations.”
“And you know this how?” Adriel abruptly sat forward, tucking his long legs back beneath his chair.
“It’s, uh…not a short answer.”
Adriel gestured impatiently for him to get on with it.
“Believe it or not, I first saw it in a movie. It sounded so crazy that I read up on the process and found out that laundering money in the literal sense is actually not that uncommon.” He set his mug down, warming to the topic. “Apparently, the hardest thing to counterfeit is the paper itself. Everything else can be reverse engineered with enough effort. The ink. The security threads. You name it. But the paper.” He drummed a finger on the table. “It’s extra special. The U.S. Government purposely limits its production, making it so proprietary that it can’t be reproduced.”
Adriel snorted. “So, you have a theory with no evidence, based on something you saw in a movie?”
“Well, when you put it like that? Yes.”
“Man, Shep! No judge is gonna grant us a search warrant based on that.”
“I am aware.”
Adriel spread his hands. “You got another plan?”
It wasn’t much of one, but it was a place to start. “Any chance you’d be willing to incorporate scent dogs in your random vehicle searches at the gate?”
Adriel’s inky eyebrows rose. “Look at you. Acting like you’re already on my force, Deputy.”
“That was a question, sheriff.” Shep knew he sounded like he was grasping at straws. “With the Paddocks most likely being set up as the fall guys for this operation, I can see why you might be tempted to turn the other way.”
Adriel stood so quickly that he knocked his chair over backward. “Take that back!”
Shep rose and went toe-to-toe with him. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. Not the personal accusation part, at any rate.”
“Really?” Adriel spoke through his teeth. “Because it sounded to me like you might be willing to go to bat for some poor Comanches that a lot of folks won’t miss, their Comanche neighbors included.”
“They don’t deserve to go six feet under for this.” Shep gnashed his teeth. “I agree they deserve to get pulled over for speeding. There might even be some fine you can give them for noise pollution. But you and I both know they’re not the brains behind some bazillion dollar counterfeiting scheme. No, I can’t prove it yet, but I will if you’ll just give me the chance to.”
Adriel’s hard expression relaxed a few degrees. “Are you asking me for a job, Deputy?”
In for a penny.Shep certainly hadn’t planned for their conversation to take such a turn. “What if I am, sheriff?”
“Then you’re hired.” Adriel removed a rolled up wad of paper from his back pocket and slapped it on the table beside them. Then he leaned over to set his chair upright. He twirled it around and straddled it.
“What’s that?” Shep eyed the roll of papers.
“My authorization to hire another deputy. The tribal council signed off on it a few hours ago.”
Shep was so full of questions that he hardly knew where to begin. He dropped back into his seat. “I’ll need to speak with Gil Remington about it.” The sheriff of Heart Lake had been too good to him to simply walk away without giving proper notice.
“He knows.” Adriel sounded matter-of-fact. “I’ve been hinting for years about wanting to recruit you off his force. Made me sick to my stomach when they promoted Luke Hawling to police sergeant, then named him acting sheriff. Wasn’t sure ifall my talking smack about you coming to work for me had hurt your chances of moving up the ranks there.”
Shep was stunned. “You’ve wanted this for years? You?” The guy he’d convinced himself could barely stand him?
“Yep,” Adriel affirmed. “I doubt Gil took me seriously, since he knew I didn’t have the budget to put legs on that wish. Bringing Marco on was a special situation…” He let the sentence hang unfinished between them.
“Because he used to be a Fed?” Marco Perez had been working undercover as a federal field agent when he’d started dating Adriel’s sister.
