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I lifted her chin so that she was looking at me. My eyes studied hers.
“Why do you doubt that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I didn’t hear much from you. I figured it was out of sight, out of mind.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “I know I need to get with the program, babe. I’m new to this boyfriend stuff.”
“That’s okay,” she said, smiling impishly at me. “You’ll learn.”
Lindsey and I spent another hour in bed, making up for our lost foreplay. Afterwards, we showered together. I cooked breakfast for her and she cleaned up the kitchen afterwards.
I had questioned her during breakfast as to whether she had heard from Kyzer lately. She said she had not.
It was odd that he had slipped beneath the radar just around the time we had made the bust in Philly. I made a note to check his whereabouts on the GPS. I hadn’t thought to do that since Lindsey had moved back home. I hadn’t felt the need.
The bust in Philly had gone down beautifully. Some major players were popped, and the district agents in Philly were taking over with the federal prosecutor to see if plea bargains were an option for names of others, higher up.
Unfortunately, Calvin had “lawyered-up” immediately. That had actually surprised both Slate and I since he was relatively new at criminal activities and fairly small-time.
I figured he had watched a lot of television and knew to clam up and ask for a lawyer.
Now that he was dead, we had no means of getting a plea deal with him, meaning we didn’t know the identity of the dirty CBP agent that was clearing the illegal substance coming in with the green coffee beans.
Slate had ordered U.S. Customs to release the details on every manifest coming into the Port of Baltimore with cargo coded as “coffee beans” for the past three months, plus those coming in for the next two weeks. He was hoping to find a match.
I don’t think he knew just how much coffee is imported into the U.S., not to mention that “green” coffee beans aren’t assigned a separate Harmonized Tariff Code than any other type of coffee bean.
We had been swamped with copies of commercial invoices and import declarations to sort through, recording information as to the shipper and consignee or importer of record.
We scanned all the docs, including those shipments currently on the water, and uploaded them to Kim at headquarters for analysis. This was her expertise. She could pull, scrub and analyze data better than anyone I had ever known. She was also a great hacker, but that was just a sideline usually requested by me.
Lindsey interrupted my thoughts as I was checking my email on my laptop.
“You aren’t going to be working all day, are you?”
“Slate asked me to hang tight until he gets back from Deep Meadows prison. He wants to fill me in on what he finds out from Davey, and then compare it to what our lab came up with on their interpretation of that formula that was in the metal lockbox.”
“Hmmph,” she mumbled, “so I guess you are working all day.”
“It comes with the territory, Lindsey. Sorry babe.”
“Well, I had plans to meet Darcy for lunch later this afternoon. I was fully willing to blow her off for you, though.”
I pulled her onto my lap, giving her wet, sloppy kisses on her neck.
“Why don’t you go ahead and meet her? You guys don’t see each other that much anymore. I’ll take care of business here and wait for Slate to fill me in when he gets back. How about I make dinner for us tonight here?”
“Well, I do have to eat, I guess. Is there a sleep-over involved?”
“As long as you don’t have to be anywhere else,” I said. “Clear it with the folks.”
She gave me a hard smack on my shoulder.
“My mom knows about us and she isn’t pleased.”
I could tell she regretted saying it the minute it left her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It isn’t that she doesn’t like you, Taz.”
