Ree had tried to rest after her conversation with Quint in order to be ready for her shift. Her mind kept churning over the new information instead. She dressed, ate a quick dinner salad with Quint, and was out the door and to work fifteen minutes early for her shift.
Lola was correct. Tuesdays were slow. There wasn’t a whole lot to learn about being a barback. She worked for Annie, who was a popular bartender, but one who kept to herself on breaks. Glasses needed to be clean and at the ready at all times for the bar area Ree was responsible for. Garnishes needed to be chopped and ready to go. Basically, it was her job to make sure her bartenders had everything they needed, when they needed it. HNC didn’t like its selective clientele standing around waiting for a drink a second longer than necessary.
Not having a whole lot to keep her busy made time tick by at the slowest possible pace. Midnight couldn’t get there fast enough. Not five minutes after, Ree walked out the front door to a waiting partner.
“How was it?” he asked when he got a good look at her face.
“Don’t ask,” she responded, linking their arms as they walked the couple of blocks back to the apartment.
“Hungry?” he asked after they got through the door.
“Very.” She toed off her shoes and loosened her bow tie. “Just let me change into something more comfortable.”
He nodded before ducking into the kitchen as she made a beeline for the bathroom. Her robe hung on the back of the door, so she slipped out of her clothes and into the thick terry cloth. She secured the tie around her waist before joining him at the counter. “What is this amazing smell?”
“The best Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston if you can believe a ‘rate my food’ app.” He nudged a plate of the best-looking enchiladas toward her.
“Sour cream chicken?” she asked, taking a deep breath and inhaling the scent of great food.
“For you,” he said, “and a beef chimichanga for me.”
Ree wasted no time eating her food. “I can’t imagine better Tex-Mex than that.”
“I forgot to get the drinks,” he said.
“Who could care about drinks with food this amazing?” she teased.
He brought over a Coke for her and black coffee for himself.
“Excellent choices,” she said.
“I aim to please,” he said before asking if she learned anything tonight.
“Nothing new and very little in the way of tips. Note to self, ask off Tuesdays,” she said with a snort. “Did we get anything from our surveillance equipment?”
“The sound is terrible,” he said, referring to last night’s adventure. “We won’t get anything useful from the listening device.”
“Not a complete surprise,” she said. “I couldn’t really get close enough.”
“The lab might be able to do more with it,” he said. “Maybe not a total loss there.”
“And the camera?” she asked, hoping the truck tires weren’t slashed for no reason. The whole incident did get them in hot water with Bjorn.
“That one is better.” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he pulled up footage. “The agents in Analysis will watch round the clock so we don’t have to, but I did manage to record suspicious activity.”
A pair of men walked to the opposite side of the truck in the middle of the day, making seeing what they were exchanging impossible. But they were trading something.
“Drugs?” she asked, figuring the warehouse district was a good place for narcotic sales. It was on the outskirts of town, and most of the business running out of there seemed legit.
“Could be,” he said. “But watch as this guy walks around.”
The camera homed in on a face.
“Esteban?” she asked.
“Looks like Lola, doesn’t he?” he asked.
“It’s a little grainy when it’s blown up, but I can see the resemblance,” she said. “Does that mean he works for Constantin?”
“It could explain being paid under the table,” he stated.
She nodded. A piece of her wished Lola weren’t involved with sketchy people, but signs pointed elsewhere.
“I can’t get over the fact that someone like Lola would attach herself to a guy dealing drugs in her homeland and then come here and get mixed up with someone who ran weapons,” Ree said, thinking out loud.
“You like her, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But how could both of our intuitions about her be wrong? Gut instinct accounts for some, but we have training and experience to back it up.”
“Have you ever been wrong? Misjudged someone?” he asked. “Because I have.”
“You’re right,” she reasoned, trying to quash the niggling feeling struggling to convince her otherwise. “I’ve made a few mistakes.”
“The really good ones can trick even a seasoned agent,” he said. “Not a whole lot gets past my radar, and that used to make me cocky.”
“What happened to change your mind?” she asked. He was right. She’d learned never to trust her instincts and to follow the evidence, but there was something about Lola—an innocence?—that had Ree second-guessing herself. The evidence so far pointed to Lola knowing exactly what she was getting into.
“There was a case in Dallas where I was one hundred percent certain a kid was innocent. He played the victim role with an abusive stepdad. His mother was a drunk and used to pass out at like eight o’clock every night on the couch. The stepdad was a class A jerk, doing everything from laundering money to running bootleg,” he said. “Looking back, evidence pointed to the kid being involved. But I made excuses for that kid every step of the way. I bought the story that he was seventeen and stuck in a bad situation. Turned out he just looked young. He wasn’t related to the woman passing out on the couch every night. Her son lived with his father in Oklahoma. This guy altered the kid’s ID and was living on-site helping run the small-time business.”
Ree wrinkled her nose. “Stinks to be wrong.”
“Stinks to high heaven,” he retorted. “The thing is, I kept catching him in lies but chalked it up to the abuse. There were no physical altercations. The guy was getting into bar fights and coming back cut up. The so-called stepdad had no idea this guy was telling on him, and I swore to my boss this kid wasn’t involved and needed counseling services and a safe place to live.”
“Why do you think he fooled you?” she asked.
“He came up with a story that had a few parallels to my own background. I guess I saw myself in that kid.” He shrugged. “Some people are just evil manipulators.”
“How did you figure it all out?” Ree asked, figuring every agent had a story about being snowed when they should know better.
“The real kid showed up to check on his mother when she didn’t respond to his texts for a couple of days. He got worried and had his real father drive him down from Oklahoma to see if she was okay,” he said. “We got her to sober up for a bit, and she cried pretty much nonstop. She was clueless about what was going on under her own roof because they plied her with alcohol every night and made sure she was passed out by a certain time. She had no idea one of the people under her roof was using her son’s identity.”
“Those are terrible people, taking advantage of someone with a disease like that,” she said with disdain.
“There has to be a special place in hell for folks like them,” he stated with enough heat to melt an ice cube in the dead of winter in Siberia.
“Agreed. And in our line of work, we get to be the ones to make sure they’re locked up until they get there,” she said. It was the main perk and something she needed to remind herself of almost daily, especially during a case. It could be a little too easy to focus on the bad side of their line of work and lose sight of the whole reason they did it.
Quint nodded.
“Did you ever follow up to find out what happened with the mom and son?” she asked.
“She got clean and stayed sober,” he said. “Last I checked, which was almost a decade ago, she’d moved to Oklahoma to be closer to her son.”
“That’s a sweet ending,” she said as warmth filled her. She also noted that the mistake he brought up was from more than a decade ago. “Quick question.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“Are you telling me you haven’t pegged someone wrong in more than ten years?” she asked, figuring there was no way.
“A hair more than fourteen to be exact,” he said. “But Lola could prove me wrong on that point at any time.”
Ree hoped she wouldn’t.
QUINT CLEANED UP the dishes, figuring Ree needed to get sleep after last night and then working a shift. “Speaking of Lola, does she work Wednesdays?”
“I think so,” Ree said. “I’m pretty sure I saw her name on the schedule.”
“Good. I should probably figure out the vehicle situation so I can head down to Galveston tomorrow night while you’re working and see what I can dig up on Constantin and his brother. There’s a restaurant down the street from their place that I hope to dig around in,” he said.
“Wish I could be there with you instead of at the bar,” Ree said, sounding like a kid who’d just been told the candy ran out.
“You’ll be busy with Lola, getting information,” he said.
“That’s the hope,” she stated, rubbing the soles of her feet. He shifted his gaze away from the terry cloth robe and how it parted just above her knee, revealing the silky skin of her thigh. She pushed up to standing. “I’ll grab a shower and hit the sheets.”
He didn’t want to think about how nice it would feel to be in bed beside her, or how easy it would be to get used to waking up next to her.
“I’ll clean up in here and upload a report to the shared folder. The other couple in the building needs to know we’ve already been to Constantin’s warehouse and that we’ve dropped comms devices. The analysts will share any data relevant to their case,” he said, deciding he needed to refocus on something besides bed and Ree.
“Thank you,” she said, “for taking care of all these details and, again, for keeping the good food rolling. I don’t ever want to be on an assignment with anyone else but you. I’m used to fast-food tacos and burgers with maybe an occasional shake thrown in. You keep me fed with the most amazing food and even remembered my favorite drink is Coke.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Besides, I’d throw on that uniform in a heartbeat and work as a barback if I could.”
Ree laughed out loud, and it was the most musical sound. She really seemed to have no idea the effect she had on men, or more specifically on him. The last part was for the best, because there was no way a relationship between the two of them could go anywhere, he thought as she disappeared into the bathroom. He wasn’t thinking right if he was even considering the consequences the two of them dating might have.
On a sharp sigh, he loaded the dishwasher and uploaded the info to the shared folder before closing down his laptop. Both of them could use a good night of sleep. He’d mapped out his Galveston trip earlier while Ree was at work, so there wasn’t much more that could be done tonight anyway. It was a shame that she couldn’t go with him, but the two of them together would be more easily recognizable now that Constantin had seen them when he’d picked Lola up from work. Going alone, Quint could throw on a ball cap and keep most of his face hidden.
By the time he shut everything down, Ree was out of the bathroom. He expected her to be asleep when he finished his turn. Instead, she was sitting on the bed under the covers, staring.
“Everything okay?” he asked as he climbed in bed.
“Yes, I’m just taking a few minutes to process,” she said, patting her side of the bed.
He met her in the middle and she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder after he looped his arm around her shoulders.
“Do you ever think about leaving all this behind and having a family someday?” she asked. The question came out of left field.
“To be honest, not before Tessa was killed. I thought having a family was the worst thing a parent could do to a kid,” he said.
“You do realize what you just said there,” she said.
“I’m mostly referring to my father,” he pointed out. “I’ve already told you my mother should have been nominated for sainthood.”
“I don’t even have time for a puppy,” she said in a sleepy voice that tugged at his heartstrings.
“No. Not with a job like ours,” he said.
“Have you ever considered how awful that is?” she asked.
“Not really,” he admitted, thinking she was sleep-deprived and probably barely awake at this point. “I wouldn’t mind getting a dog someday, but now is definitely not the right time.”
“I don’t even have time to foster a puppy for Zoey,” she said, and now her words were a little slurred. She was definitely only barely awake.
“Not right now, you don’t,” he said. “But things could change.”
“What things?” she asked. “Did you know that I’m thirty-six years old and still not married?”
“You don’t look your age, and I mean that as a compliment,” he stated before she could get defensive.
Ree yawned.
“I should have a puppy someday,” she said.
“Yes, you should,” he agreed, figuring she wouldn’t remember this conversation in the morning.
“Do you want to have a puppy together?” she asked. “We could take turns taking care of it.”
“That would make it hard to work on cases together, wouldn’t it?” he asked, thinking how much he would hate to lose her as a partner even if that meant raising a puppy together.
“You would make beautiful puppies,” she said through another yawn.
Quint couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
“What did I say?” she asked.
“Nothing you’ll remember in the morning,” he said.
“We would have beautiful children,” she said, curling up against his side.
Quint froze. For a split second, he could envision their child. He’d want a little girl who looked exactly like her mother. Fatherhood? He shook off the reverie, thinking he would never be that cruel to a kid.