Beneath the Secrets: Part One(24)

Blake returned and set her case on the bed between them. “Show me what you’ve found.”

Seizing the chance to shift the topic from Richter, she quickly removed her MacBook Air and powered it up. “When I first told Mendez about the discrepancies,” she explained, settling against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her, “I hadn’t put two and two together. The data showed random places where the restaurant data and the pier ‘special product’ shipment numbers didn’t match. But since then, I’ve found four more cities with those kinds of discrepancies, and…” She clicked on a collage of photos, showing two men exchanging envelopes and turned the screen for him to see more clearly. Blake moved to sit next to her, their bodies aligned from hip to foot. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, and continued. “That’s Ignacio, the nephew,” she said, pointing out the man on the left with a scar down his cheek and long black hair. “The one on the right is Alex Gomez. He’s the regional manager for the restaurants here locally.”

Blake stared at the photo and then glared at Kara. “You took these shots?”

“Yes.”

He rotated to stare at her. “Are you flipping nuts, Kara? If you would have been caught—”

“I used a long-range zoom lens. I wasn’t even close to them. The fact that was able to, though, tells you how poorly they’re running the operation.” Kara pulled up another picture, this one of a small boat floating next to a larger one, and men loading it with boxes. “It looks like they skim the product right here on the pier. Once it leaves though, I’m clueless. I don’t know where it’s going or who might be involved. I just know Ignacio is where it starts.”

He cut her a sideways look. “You’re just a secretary, my ass.”

She bristled. “I’m offended by that statement for every secretary that saves her boss’s ass about ten times a day.”

His lips twisted wryly. “When’s the next shipment out?”

“Midnight tonight.” She glanced at the clock. It was already ten. “In two hours.”

“Then I think tonight is the night Ignacio meets the new head of security.”

Kara shut her computer. “I want to go.”

“No.”

“I can point out things you wouldn’t see right away.”

“I’m not putting you in danger.”

Kara felt like she was in the Twilight Zone. A few hours ago, she was worried he’d want to kill her. Now, she was convincing him she didn’t need to be protected. This was just…odd. “I thought you weren’t letting me out of your sight? I could still run.”

“You won’t.”

“Are you 100% sure?”

His lips thinned. “Fine, you can ride along, but you’re staying in the truck.”

“Fine, but that won’t keep me from running. You’ll need me by your side.”

“I’ll cuff you to the wheel.”

Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.” He didn’t give her time to ask if he even had a set of cuffs, before he ordered, “Get dressed. We have a stop before we go to the pier.”

“What stop?”

“Your place.”

Kara blanched. “My place?”

“That’s right. I’m moving in. That way you are in my sights all the time.”

“No. You can’t.” He couldn’t. This was bad.

“I am.” He rounded the corner to the hallway, disappearing out of her view, and she could hear him doing something with his bag.

Kara’s mind raced for a way out of this, but she was coming up blank. Blake had already seen beneath her story and while she was smart enough to have nothing damaging lying around her place—she was too well trained for that—it didn’t matter. Blake would see the facade of a real life in her fluffy decor and use it to unwrap the truth. He’d confirm what he suspected, that her life as she’d put it on paper was fiction.

“Hop to it,” he said, reappearing and tugging a shirt the rest of the way down his chest, and over his rippling, spectacular abs. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I live in a tiny studio. You won’t like it.”

His eyes danced with mischief and heat. “All the better to get to know you in.”

“What if I don’t want you to stay with me?”

“Sorry, darlin’.” He scooped up his socks. “This time if you drug me and I pass out it’s going to be in your bed.”

***

Blake pulled up to a parking meter behind Kara’s car as she parked, and glanced at her apartment directly to his left, which was more a wooden house broken into small units and framed by two more just like it. Kara killed her lights and he quickly dialed Kyle for the second time since leaving the hotel ten minutes before.

The instant Kyle answered, he said, “You had to park in front and under a streetlight? Thanks for making it impossible for me not to be seen.”

“If your job was easy,” Blake said, unzipping his bag to remove the plastic bag holding a glass Kara had used in the hotel, “you wouldn’t like it.”

Kyle started to grumble and Kara got out of her car. Blake hung up on him, setting the bag with the glass on the seat and hoping they’d get a match on her identity. He snatched up his duffle and the pizza boxes, then climbed out of the truck, feeling tension coil in his gut. Not only did he have Kara to figure out—and yes, protect because he couldn’t fight the feeling he needed to—he was damn worried about this drug. A substance like that could be a terrorist weapon, and Blake couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist just to achieve his own agenda. He had to find the source of that drug and destroy it. If he couldn’t, no matter how much he didn’t want to get his old club involved, he was going to have to bring in the ATF.