Chapter 4

“I believe somewhere in those vows we took,” Dante guffawed, yanking the gray seatbelt over his large muscular half naked frame over his chest, “we said something about in ‘flat tires and not’.”

“Did we?”

“Where are our suspects going?”

Harley gripped the steering wheel and inhaled the mango scent of her shampoo in his hair. Did he seriously use her hair care products? Harley cut eyes over at him. Wet locks curled around his ear and nape of his neck.

“Suspect,” she corrected. “My niece is innocent in this.”

“She is aiding and abetting my suspect,” said Dante, trying to balance himself using the console and the door handle when she took a sharp turn. Muscles flexed. “Slow down.”

“I wouldn’t need to slow down if you didn’t hold me up back there.”

“I needed a ride.”

“You carjacked me,” she countered.

“You shot my car,” he re-countered.

A dimple appeared in her left cheek when she bit the side of her mouth to keep from laughing. “Relax, I did not shoot your car,” she clarified, “I shot your tire.”

“Plural, you shot my tires with a gun. And what’s up with the muscle car? Did I marry G.I. Jane?”

“This old thing?” Every time Harley took her car someone offered to buy it. The ’67 Mustang GT Fastback caught the attention of all types of people: roadsters, businessmen, and even drug lords. Driving her car emphasized her badass-ness in the eyes of men.

“Whatever,” Dante rested his elbow on the window. The wind blew one half of his hair dry. “Where are we headed?”

“I’m guessing Little Mexico, where Javier is from,” she purposely left out Three Points because before she arrived there, she planned on ditching Dante.

“Guessing?”

“I’m sorry my brain isn’t as advanced as your facial recognition scan,” Harley’s sarcasm dripped snarkiness.

Dante sighed, “Oh boy, here we go.”

“I’m sorry,” she continued with a dramatic hand touch to her heart, “am I hurting your little, um, what unit are you from, FBI? What does that stand for? Female body inspector?” Harley cackled out loud at her own joke.

“I was about twenty minutes ago,” Dante wagged two fingers in the air.

The laughter ceased. “Jerk.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

Harley and Dante settled in for silence for about a block until he reached for the knob of her radio. Not only did he turn on the radio, one of the devices she rarely used since she valued her CD collection, he changed the channels. The red bar channel indicator stopped on a rock station and an eighties hair band assaulted them.

“What is wrong with you?” Harley jerked the car sharp to the right, rocking him from touching the channel, but he was too fast. Guitar blasted through the car.

“You don’t like the eighties hair bands?”

She waited patiently for the song to register in her mind. The melody took her back to her youth, to the summer hanging under the pier, hoping to catch the attention of the most popular boys on the beach. She clicked the radio off and the CD player on with a flip to her finger. The Pitbull duet with some hot singer filtered through. Dante’s head bounced up and down in approval.

Harley’s mind wandered, worried about the trouble her niece could be in. Who was this guy on Dante’s list and where in the hell did Hannah think she was going? The fact Christopher Alfaro was photographed already meant trouble.

“Where’s your niece think she’s going?” Dante asked, penetrating her brain.

She sighed in irritation. “I told you, Little Mexico.”

“Yes, but where? Do you know Javier’s family?”

“No.”

“So what’s the game plan? Are we going to just drive through the neighborhood and shout out her name?”

Okay, she hadn’t planned her trip in detail. “I’m sure with graduation yesterday there are tons of homes with parties going on.”

“Who holds graduation at the end of June? Upstate we’re out of school before June.”

The left side of her upper lip curled not appreciating the backwoods dig at her hometown. The presidential election scandal back in the nineties, informants being killed on cases, and of course, the horrendous jury decisions, the press made a mockery of Florida. “Have you ever heard of a hurricane?”

Obnoxiously Dante belted out the chorus of the Scorpion’s early hit. Harley rolled her eyes to hide the laughter threatening when his hands started banging on her dashboard to the beat of the horrible rendition. Her husband was some sort of eighties head banger.

“So the plan is to hit every party?”

“I’ll hit the ones with the matching car.”

Dante turned in the passenger’s seat. “You know what car they’re driving? I thought Hannah didn’t own a car.”

“Wait a minute,” Harley wagged her index finger at him. “You found out about this yesterday yet you already know Hannah doesn’t have a car?”

“I move fast.”

“Hmm, don’t remind me,” she half laughed to cover her lie, and when the back of her head hit the headrest, a whiplash of desire whipped across her neck from the marathon sex. Two showers later and his fingers still stained her skin.

“Are you challenging me, Mrs. Rossi?”

“Not my name,” she sung, gripping the wheel. “You move fast on this case, what’s the ETA on our annulment?”

From the way his jaw gaped open, she had her answer. Dante’s laugh filled the front seat of the car. Harley liked the sound of it, though she’d never tell him. She had to be tired or something.

“Well in my defense, I’ve been busy.”

“Yet you managed to pull up Intel on Hannah?”

Dante stretched his long legs. Harley watched his lean boxers fill the front seat. His meaty fingers pressed the buttons on his phone. She listened to the series of beeps and tried to remember them, but he was too fast and turned the phone toward the light, out of her prying eyes.

“I need you to pull into the shopping center coming up.”

“I highly doubt they’re shopping,” Harley sighed.

“Not for them,” he swiped his hand down his naked torso, “but in my haste to catch a ride with you, I did not have a chance to put on the appropriate attire.”

A shiver of embarrassment rolled down her spine. In the short span in the car with him, Harley grew accustomed to his bare chest. Given his gorgeous sculpture, Harley figured Dante should be used to being naked. If the traffic held, they would arrive in Little Mexico in thirty minutes. She still planned on dumping him off somewhere. Now seemed to be the perfect time.

Without warning she made a sharp left into the parking lot of a strip mall. Dante gripped the armrest to brace himself as she whipped into a parking space in the lot between a gym and a popular discount clothing store. The shopping center sat catty-corner to the main road. Harley pointed the nose of the mustang toward the road for her easy exit, once Dante slipped inside the store.

“Glad you’re being such a dutiful wife,” Dante unsnapped his seatbelt with a laugh.

“Bite me,” Harley offered a sweet smile and her middle finger. “Take your time.”

Dante stepped out of the car and leaned across the seat. He had the darkest pair of eyes she’d ever seen on a man. The closer he got, the more she lost herself in them. The hair of his goatee surrounded his luscious mouth. She focused on the bit of gray peeking through his chin and wondered if she kissed him, would it tickle? Harley inhaled deeply in preparation of his kiss when his glance dropped to her mouth. Through half closed lids, she parted her lips.

Suddenly the car went silent. Dante yanked back and dangled her keys in front of her face before fumbling them into his waistband. “This is just in case you decide to leave while I’m inside.”

“I’d never,” she lied with a toothy smile.

“Whatever, now I’m just guaranteeing.”

Women flat out gawked at Dante standing outside of the car. Harley overheard a few snide remarks from some of the ladies offering to take him home or questioning the sanity of Harley for kicking a man, especially a handsome one, out of her car. Some of them walked toward the store with Dante, offering him a ride.

She ignored the ladies and stretched her arms toward the backseat to find the yearbook. No such luck without getting out of the car. Her feet sizzled against the black pavement of the parking lot. Fortunately for her, the black and white beach bag Hannah packed to entice her for a trip to the shore weeks ago still sat behind her seat. She slid out a pair of bright yellow flip-flops and relieved her feet from the heat.

Hannah’s yearbook was wedged somewhere in her backseat from the last time she picked her up from school. Harley guessed she could thumb though the pages while Dante found some clothes. Of course, she could always leave him.

Before cramming herself into the backseat, Harley punched in Makana’s office line, as protocol, she left her agent number with the answering service and disconnected the line. While she waited for her handler to call, she searched for Hannah’s book. The heavy yearbook was behind the passenger’s seat. If the schools still did the same thing when she was in school, she’d find groups of kids posing and representing their neighborhoods. With any luck she could narrow down Javier’s neighborhood, only the southeast side school zone attended.

The cell in her hand buzzed, Tai’s face popped onto the caller ID. “If I weren’t busy I’d clobber you right now, Ta-here-ree,” Harley dragged out every syllable in Tai’s first name.

“You sound like my mama. What’d I do this time?” asked Tai. Harley imagined Tai batting her false lashes innocently, something she definitely was not.

“You let me get married to that guy last night!”

“I tried to object.”

Harley rolled her eyes. “Clearly not hard enough.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m still with him.”

“Oh?” Tai’s voice went up an octave.

With the phone away from her ear, Harley watched Dante through the storefront window. The sales clerk was all too eager to get his inseam measurements. Since when did women measure with their hands instead of a measuring tape? Dante stood with his arms and legs spread apart; the jerk enjoyed the attention. “Don’t read too much into it, he had me pegged the minute he walked into Chet’s. Oh and he’s also related to Chet. A cousin or something.”

Even over a passing car’s loud engine, Harley still heard Tai’s weapon cock. “I’m coming to you. Where are you?”

“I’m heading toward Three Points, in Little Mexico, as soon as I get rid of the old ball and chain.”

“You need backup? Who is this guy?”

Through the large glass window Dante waved at her just before he walked into the dressing room, her car keys dangling in his hand. Harley turned her back on him. “I left info with Makana to do a background. This guy’s with the FBI but something is off.”

“Has he made you?”

Harley shook her head and switched ears, “No, he still thinks I’m a photographer for the CSU.”

“You are.”

“Only because missions are so few and far in between,” Harley watched the traffic come to a stop at the red light. While most agents took on odd jobs, Tai preferred to sail around the world between cases.

Tai chuckled, “You can come on board with me and the crew.”

“No thanks,” Harley frowned. Tai took to the seas like a fish took to water. She ran a small team, protected the state’s shore lines, and for entertainment, foiled a lot of modern day pirate’s plans. Harley did not care for long stretches of time on the open water. Her phone beeped. A silhouette of a woman’s body appeared, “Hey, let me get back with you later, Tai. Makana’s calling in.”

Harley said goodbye and disconnected the call. She answered the other call and waited a second as Makana’s assistant connected the two of them. In the meantime, Harley flipped to the dedication page of the book and found Javier’s street. She grinned to herself at how easy this was going to be.

“Harley?”

“Hey, Mak, did you understand my message? I mean this guy is too advanced for FBI.”

“That’s because he’s not,” Makana said. “How do you know him?”

Harley debated sharing her midnight nuptials. The last thing Makana wanted on her team was a ditzy agent. “We met last night.”

“I see,” Makana paused for a moment. “Well, I suggest if you don’t have any ties with him, get far away from him as soon as possible.”

“What do you know? Is he a rogue FBI?” He looked the type. The beard was not standard issue.

“He’s not a rogue FBI agent. He doesn’t work for them.”

“You’re killing me, Mak,” Harley turned around, resting her arms on the hood of the car. The afternoon heat scorched her forearms. “What’s up?”

Makana hesitated. Whatever she had to say clearly bothered her. “Harley, he’s Special Tasks Bureau, International Homeland Safety Terrorist Unit.”

“What?”

“He’s one of us.”

Through the glass window Harley watched Dante emerge from the dressing room and made his way through the crowd of sales women waiting for him. “Really?”

“I promise you he’s an agent, I’ve worked with him. He’s good at what he does but he’ll do anything and say anything to make a case.”

Harley’s eyes glanced down at the empty spot on her ring finger. Her thumb rubbed against the smooth skin between her ring and middle finger. The gold band burned in her back pocket. “Tell me about it? What is he doing in Tallahassee?”

“It could be anything. Two of his team members have ties in Tallahassee and the last I heard, most of the department was calling them the Undesirables on account they keep taking the craziest assignments.”

The last adjective Harley would ever use to describe Dante would be undesirable. The man’s presence screamed walking-sex louder than a neon billboard sign over the interstate. “He claims he’s on the hunt for someone named Leonardo.”

For a moment Mak stayed quiet on the phone. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady, deadly. “Whatever Dante is doing with Leonardo, stay the hell away from it. Those two have a long history and you don’t want to get in the crossfire.”

Five years working with Mak and she’d never been steered wrong. Harley took her handler’s advice and thanked her. Dante stood at the counter paying for the outfit he already had on, a fitted black t-shirt and a better fitting pair of jeans. His thick muscular legs were made for denim. A car alarm sounded off, causing Harley to blink back to the present. She reached behind the wheel of her front tire for the spare key and extracted it from the box. A slight ding of the bell over the shop jingled as her engine came to life. Like a child, she couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of Dante with his bags getting smaller and smaller the further she left him in the dust.