“When I got to work, Lola was behind the bar crying,” Ree informed Quint as she took the glass of wine from him. Their fingers brushed, and she was comforted by the familiar jolt of electricity.
“Did she say why?” he asked as the sofa dipped underneath his weight.
She tucked her feet underneath her bottom as she turned toward him. “She told me that she got in a fight with Lili’s father.”
“Mystery Guy?” he asked.
“He now has a name, too,” she confirmed with a nod. “Matias Gimenez.”
“Does he live here in the States?” he asked.
“He followed her and is demanding custody of Lili,” Ree said.
“That wouldn’t fly over here, but it could happen in Argentina,” Quint stated. And then it seemed to dawn on him. “That’s the reason she came here two years ago, isn’t it?”
“We didn’t get that far in our conversation with Julian around, but that’s my guess as well,” she confirmed.
“I need to send Grappell the name and get a background check on Gimenez,” Quint said before retrieving his laptop. He sent the note while she enjoyed the click-click-clack of the keyboard and the wine.
“There,” he said before closing the laptop.
“Lola seems like a decent person. I’m not sure why she would let herself get mixed up with someone like Constantin. Matias doesn’t exactly give me good vibes, either,” she said.
“Women are attracted to powerful men. It’s biology,” he said.
“I’d like to think we’ve evolved from the caveman days,” she said with a grunt of disapproval.
“No doubt we have. But biology takes a while to catch up,” he said before taking a sip of beer. “What about Nick Driver?” Quint’s jaw muscle ticked when he mentioned the DEA agent’s name.
“No one mentioned him and, after our exchange, I didn’t ask about him,” she said. “He’s supposed to work in the office, so I’m guessing that means only during the day.” She drew her eyebrows together and frowned. “Right?”
“I believe so, unless there’s an event at night. You’ll have to attempt contact again if you want to find out. Hopefully, he’ll start to upload his notes to the file we are supposed to make important case notes in,” he said. “So far, it’s empty in there.”
“I’m not giving him my information on Lola,” she argued.
“No one in this room would ask you to,” Quint said without hesitation. His response came so fast she didn’t have a ready comeback. “Meetings with him are too risky with a nosy neighbor and these paper-thin walls.”
“I agree.” Ree sent a text to Driver, asking if he found out anything he’d like to share, and waited for a response. None came.
“Should I be surprised by this at this point?” she asked, holding up the cell.
“Probably not, but we have to keep trying if only to appease Bjorn,” Quint stated. “I’m not sure where she got her intel about him, but he doesn’t strike me as cooperative so far.”
“What about the laptop?” she asked after agreeing.
“I didn’t find anything we can use. She seems on the straight and narrow,” he said.
“Which makes even less sense why she would get herself involved with Constantin,” she repeated. “I sound like a broken record, don’t I?”
“You’re just reasoning through it. I agree with you, by the way,” he said. “Especially after peeking into her laptop. It was nothing but check-ins with her mother from what Google Translate could tell. I really should have paid more attention in high school Spanish class.”
“Same.” Ree broke into a smile. “I did find out why Matias was at the taco place last night. Lola asked him to stop by there on his way to the bar and bring her a couple of number twos. She said her boyfriend hadn’t left the bar yet and she didn’t want a scene. The delay tactic almost didn’t work since he bolted.”
“Constantin knows Matias is in town?” Quint asked.
“It surprised me, too, but Lola’s worlds were colliding so she asked Constantin to give her a chance to work things out with Matias about Lili,” Ree said.
“Did she say how long Matias has been in town?” Quint asked.
Ree shook her head. And then it dawned on her why he would ask in the first place. “That’s the reason Constantin installed spyware on her computer, isn’t it?”
“Jealousy can make a man do stupid things,” Quint said. “Someone like Constantin wouldn’t know what it is to trust another person’s word.”
Ree nodded agreement there. Boundaries and trust weren’t exactly in the vernacular of most criminals. Those who’d made it to the top built their empires on power, greed and fear, using fear to breed loyalty.
“You already heard Lola is off tomorrow,” Ree said.
“Are you guys planning to meet up for Pilates class in the morning?” he asked.
“No. I don’t want to seem too eager to hang out,” she said. “Angie has been great for forging a relationship with Lola. But classes every morning might make me seem too available. Plus, I need to personalize the apartment if we’re going to have guests over again.”
“And we are newlyweds. We wouldn’t want to be away from each other too often,” he pointed out.
“Exactly,” she said as she looked around. “I have to say, we’ve moved up compared to the cabin.”
“I would agree with you there,” he said.
“Which also reminds me of Zoey,” she said. “I wonder how she’s doing in Austin.”
“Better than she was in Cricket Creek, no doubt,” he said. “I can ask Grappell to check up on her while we’re undercover if it would make you feel better.”
“That would be great,” she said.
“He can check on your grandfather as well,” he continued.
“If he digs around in my personal life, he might not be well received,” she reasoned. “As much as I want to confirm my grandfather is fine, I have to trust someone would have gotten word to me if anything had happened.”
She also didn’t need the distraction of thinking of home while on a case. Why the same logic didn’t apply to Zoey was a puzzle, but it didn’t, and Ree wanted to know how the young woman from their last case was doing. Ree had convinced the eighteen-year-old to go to a battered women’s shelter when her no-good boyfriend was arrested. Zoey was a sweet young woman who needed a hand up to thrive. At least, Ree prayed Zoey hadn’t checked herself out and gotten into trouble again. She really was a good person who’d landed in a bad situation.
Ree thought about the puppy she’d planned to foster to give Zoey something to look forward to when she was able to stand on her own two feet again.
“Everything okay?” Quint asked. She looked up at him only to realize he’d been studying her.
“Yes,” she responded, shaking off her reaction to his concern. “Of course. It’s just thinking about a sweet young person being manipulated by a boyfriend, or anyone for that matter, makes me sad.”
“Thanks to you, Zoey is getting the help she needs,” Quint said, and there was so much compassion in his voice.
She blinked a few times trying to stem hot tears that were threatening to flow, and focused on the rim of her wineglass.
“You should be smiling and celebrating,” he said comfortingly, bringing his hand up to her chin before lifting it until her eyes met his. “Without you, that young woman would be out on the streets right now. I doubt she would have listened to reason. The fact that you cared about her showed her there are good people in the world who want the best for her. I seriously doubt she’s ever experienced that kind of unconditional care in her life.”
If she didn’t want to cry before, she really had to work not to now. “Thank you, Quint. Thank you for saying those sweet words. They mean more to me than you could possibly know.”
This time, she leaned forward and kissed him. Not for show. Not to sell the cover story. Not to convince someone the two of them were in love. But because she wanted to.
QUINT PULLED BACK from the kiss first, pressing his forehead to Ree’s, thinking how easy it would be to get caught up in the moment, lost in her, and then what? Ruin a great working relationship? There hadn’t been anyone since Tessa he wanted to be alone in a room with, let alone trusted enough to work beside.
His feelings for Ree were inconvenient. And they had to stop. She was emotional, seeking comfort. That was the only reason for the kiss. Period. His heart tried to mount a defense, but he couldn’t lead with something he didn’t trust. His heart had kept him from pushing Tessa to tell Bjorn about the pregnancy. Tessa had done such a great job of pleading and convincing him to go against his better judgment.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Ree asked quietly. “You’re thinking about her right now, aren’t you?”
“How could you tell?” He truly wanted to know. He’d been a master at hiding his true feelings and making everyone believe he was all right. Not much got past Ree. She seemed to catch on every time he fell into the sinkhole that was thinking about Tessa and her baby.
“The way you get quiet. It’s like someone sucked all the air from the room and you have to slow down so you can breathe again,” she said. “Are you sure the two of you never dated?”
The question was the equivalent of a knife in the chest. It took a long moment for him to catch his breath and respond.
“If we had, I would have told you up front,” he said, and he could hear the coldness creeping into his own voice. “I barely knew you before and had no reason to lie.”
“It’s just that you get so intense when you’re thinking about her,” she said quietly. “It stands to reason that your feelings might have gone deeper than you are willing to admit.”
He shook his head.
“I know exactly where I stand on my and Tessa’s friendship. We couldn’t have been closer if we’d been blood related. Others in the department couldn’t believe we weren’t a couple, but I thought maybe you knew me a little better than that by now,” he said, stopping before he blurted out what he really wanted to tell Ree. The truth was that he never felt toward Tessa the way he felt every time he was around Ree. How was that for messed up?
Ree pulled away from him and took a sip of her wine. The air was cold where she’d been a few seconds ago. He followed her lead and took a swig of beer, sitting back, rubbing the scruff on his chin.
“We need to come up with a plan to meet Constantin,” he said, redirecting the conversation. They’d talked about him enough for one night. He knew where this was coming from. The past had been dredged up ever since the phone call with Bjorn. Hell, he’d been dealing with his frustration all day as a result.
Ree was observant, insightful. She would have read him earlier and known exactly why he hated the idea of cooperating with another agency. She deserved a lot of credit for not calling him out on it or requesting he remove himself from the case.
“I have an idea about that,” Ree said. “But I’m guessing Lola will be in Galveston tomorrow with him, and I’ll be at work tomorrow night. Plus, she’s met both of us, so if we turn up in Galveston unexpectedly it’ll raise a red flag.”
“Not a good idea, especially this early in the case,” he said.
“Which is why I think we should set the alarm, grab a couple hours of sleep and check up on his warehouse operation. It would probably be best to follow up under the cover of night when it’s too dark to recognize anyone,” she said.
“True, but you have to get through a shift tomorrow night. Won’t that be hard to do without enough sleep?” He didn’t want to be the one to push her past a breaking point. As for Quint, he could get by on forty-five-minute naps throughout the day just fine. Most people weren’t in the same boat.
“Since I’m not going downstairs to work out in the morning, I can sleep in,” she said. “Didn’t Agent Grappell give us an address nearby for the warehouse?”
“It’s not too far, on the outskirts of the south side of the city,” he said. “I can show you on the map if you’d like.” He’d already mapped out the route from the docks in Galveston to the warehouses.
“I’ll see it for myself in a few short hours.” She shook her head. “I should probably get ready for bed and try to grab as much sleep as possible before we head out.”
“What time should I set the alarm for?” he asked.
“How about four a.m.? That should give me time to brush my teeth and throw on a jogging suit,” she said.
“Just shy of three hours away,” he said, taking a sip of beer and settling into the sofa.
“This should help.” Ree pushed up to standing and then drained her glass. She returned it to the kitchen before disappearing into the bathroom.
Quint grabbed the laptop and pulled up Google Maps. He plotted the most direct course to the warehouse. There would be no weapons out in the open. Constantin was smarter than that. The legitimate shipping business had to operate as a front for his criminal activity. Who would really notice if a shipment disappeared off the books every once in a while? In a big shipping operation like this one, paperwork could “disappear,” giving Constantin the opportunity to load up the occasional semi. A vehicle that large could carry an unimaginable amount of firepower. A shipment every few weeks or months could slip under the radar. The other possibility, of course, was breaking up a large shipment of weapons into smaller ones and loading them onto multiple trucks either with a false bottom or using a cargo net to hold cases underneath the trailer. In these cases, the required pit stops to check weight might be just a little off the manifest. Since scales weren’t exact, a lot of illegal cargo and drugs made it across the US border using this method.
While he was online, he checked the case file to see if Driver had uploaded a report. There was nothing. So far, all he and Ree had been told about the other team was they were DEA, which meant drugs were involved. A shipping operation could move drugs in the ways Quint had already considered. The twist with narcotics of any kind was finding a way to throw off drug-sniffing dogs, difficult but not impossible. Getting away with illegal activity meant always staying one step ahead of law enforcement.
There were two facts that when put together didn’t give the impression Driver was going to play fair on this case. First, the unannounced visit that could have put the whole investigation in jeopardy. Second, the lack of an update.
Quint’s hands involuntarily fisted. He took in a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. As it was, he had an urge to find Driver and tell him what he thought about his secrecy and sterling record.
Driver wasn’t the only reason Quint was frustrated tonight. He’d blown an opportunity to tell Ree how he really felt about her, to let her know how special she was to him. Little did she realize his friendship with Tessa was no threat to how he felt about Ree. He and Tessa had been more brother and sister than anything else, and that was exactly how they’d kept it. The kicker with Tessa came in the form of not being able to protect her, and in not being able to keep her baby safe.
Both should be alive. Tessa had been due last month. Tessa had been afraid she wouldn’t get the “mom” gene. She’d feared the baby would grow up and hate her. Quint had calmly reassured Tessa none of those fears were going to come to fruition because she had him to help keep her on track as a parent. She wasn’t alone in this. And the fact that she was this concerned before the baby was even born meant she was most likely going to be an amazing parent.
As far as Ree was concerned, he also realized anything beyond a working relationship would be out of the question. The quickest way to kill a good partnership was to date.
No matter how strong his feelings were or how much they seemed to grow as he got to know her, it was probably for the best for him to leave the topic alone. Muddying the waters in their work relationship was the surest way to lose her. He couldn’t take another hit like that.
“Your turn,” Ree said as she exited the bathroom.
“I’m good,” he responded.
“Okay, you’ll wake me up in a couple of hours, then?” She stood at the doorway to the bathroom, looking like she was resisting the urge to speak up about whatever was on her mind. The way she looked at him convinced him the questionable subject was him.
“With a bucket of ice water,” he said, smiling, trying to break up some of the sudden tension in the room.
“This seems like a good time to remind you that I sleep with my gun next to the bed,” she teased back.
“Gentle shaking it is,” he reassured. “And make sure the safety is on on that weapon.”
“Always,” she shot back before crossing over to the bed.
He refocused on the screen, ignoring the urge to join her.