One Hit Wonderful (28 page)

“Well, nuts,” she muttered when she saw the empty bay where his SUV should be. “He’s not even home.”

She chewed her lip, torn between just going out to the storage unit on her own and tracking him down. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and punched in his number, frowning when it went right to voicemail. She clicked off before the beep, not sure what she’d say if she were to leave a message.

The dog was continuing to bark, getting more and more agitated, so she walked back around to the kitchen door and dug out her key.

“Oof.” She staggered under Beau’s weight, struggling to close the door at her back as he tried to claw his way up to her face. She managed to get the door closed and punch the code into the alarm panel so the cops wouldn’t come with sirens wailing.

“Nate,” she called out, but she didn’t really expect him to answer. “Probably went out so he wouldn’t have to deal with me,” she muttered, scratching Beau’s ears when he settled at her feet. “So immature.”

Beau moaned his agreement and nudged her hand. She kept scratching absently as she tried to decide what to do. She could go to the storage unit anyway, and see if she could find the smoking gun that would settle this whole thing once and for all. Or she could wait for him to come home, and ask him to go with her.

“What do you think, Beau?” she asked, stroking his big head as he stared up at her with liquid eyes. “Should we wait for him, or go on our own?”

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea, she mused, and worried her lower lip as she thought about it. She could take the dog with her, so she wouldn’t have to go by herself. That would show Nate she was thinking about her safety, right?

“Nobody’s going to mess with you, are they, big guy?” she asked Beau, and as if on cue he shook his massive head. “No, they sure aren’t. Let’s just leave your papa a note here,” she muttered, and rummaged in the junk drawer for a pen and a slip of paper. She jotted a quick note, propping it up against the canister of kitchen utensils that sat next to the stove.

“There,” she said, and grinned down at the dog. “Now, let’s get your leash! Where’s your leash, Beau?”

It took her twice as long to find the leash than it should have because Beau kept leaping around and knocking into her in his excitement at being included in the adventure. By the time she finally unearthed it from the hall closet and had it clipped to his collar, he was practically twirling in circles.

“Okay, we’re going. You want to go? You want to go?” she asked, and opened the door. He shot past her, practically yanking her arm out of its socket. She barely managed to set the alarm and drag the door shut behind her before he dragged her across the lawn.

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later she dragged Beau to a halt in front of Bridget’s storage unit. “Where do you get your energy?” she gasped, hooking the leash over her wrist to free both hands to deal with the combination lock. She fumbled with it a bit but finally got it open and swung the door open.

She sighed when she saw the chaos of the space, the mad jumble of belongings piled hither and yon in typical Bridget fashion. She tugged on the leash, dragging Beau away from where he was trying to gnaw a wad of dried chewing gum off the floor, and shut the door behind them.

She kept the lead clipped to the dog’s leash but let it drop, giving Beau free rein to wander all over the unit. He had his nose to the ground, sniffing madly as he raced around. “Let me know if you smell any money, Beau,” she said, chuckling.

She dug her cell phone out of her bag, dialing Nate’s number again and biting back a curse of frustration when it went straight to voicemail again. This time, she waited for the beep. “Nate,” she said when it sounded, “it’s Lily. Listen, I wanted to let you know I’m down at Mile High Storage on Fifth Street. Bridget rented a storage unit here before she left town, so all of her stuff is here, and I think whatever Max is looking for might be somewhere in all of this. I left you a note at the house, and I brought Beau with me for company. But I’d like your company too, so if you get this message…I’ll probably be here for a while.”

She clicked off, feeling tense and uncertain and not liking it one bit. She’d never been in a fight like this before, something that was more than just a disagreement over where to have Thanksgiving dinner or what movie to see on date night. This was a big issue of trust and acceptance, and the idea that they might not be able to move past it had her belly clutching with panic.

She sighed, rubbing a hand at the tension that had settled in the base of her neck. She could only hope he was willing to listen, and meet her halfway. And it would definitely help if she could figure out this mess with Max.

She grimaced as she surveyed the haphazard piles of belongings. “Why couldn’t I have had a neatnik best friend?” she bemoaned, and not knowing exactly where to begin, simply sat down and began where she was.

* * * * *

Nate brooded into his beer. The bar was crowded, most of the patrons focused on the huge television showing the Rockies game, so everyone pretty much left him alone. Which was perfect, as he was hardly in the mood for company.

He’d been angry for about five minutes, and now he was just despondent. She didn’t trust him, didn’t want to let him into her life, and he didn’t know what to do about that.

And okay, if he was honest with himself, he’d admit that part of the problem was that instead of confronting her, making her understand that he wanted to be a part of her life not just in bed but out of it as well, he resorted to sneaking and lying.

It was hard to blame her for being pissed about the sneaking and lying.

“Buy you a drink?”

Nate looked up to see Jonah slide onto the barstool next to his. “What are you doing here, Keller?”

Jonah nodded at the television. “I wanted to catch the end of the game. My sister is invading my apartment with her study group tonight. Contemporary women’s studies.”

Nate grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like fun at all.”

Jonah shrugged. “She seems to like it, but they frown on organized sports.” He pulled his eyes away from the television and raised an eyebrow. “Still fighting with your lady, I take it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re nursing a lousy domestic beer in a smoky bar instead of having make-up sex with her.”

“Good point,” Nate conceded, and took a sip of his lousy domestic beer. “She’s pissed, I’m pissed, so I figured it was better all around if we spent some time apart.”

“Probably won’t hurt,” Jonah agreed, and scooped a handful of peanuts out of the bowl on the bar. “I was actually going to call you in the morning, let you know about my conversation with the cops.”

Nate set down his beer. “What’d they say?”

“Apparently their fraud division already has some idea of what’s going on—they’ve been secretly keeping tabs on Max for a couple of months.”

Nate frowned. “And they didn’t let anyone know?”

Jonah shrugged, eyes on the Rockies pitcher as he worked the batter to a full count. “Cops are good at keeping secrets, especially when it involves an investigation that could make or break half a dozen careers. Outside corner,” he said with satisfaction as the batter watched strike number three blow by.

“So what happens now?” Nate asked.

Jonah scooped up another handful of nuts. “Fraud doesn’t have enough to make the money laundering charges stick, though they did have him in the station for several hours today. Sweated him pretty good, from what I understand. He’s definitely dirty, it’s just a matter of proving it. The lead detective over there thinks his client is a small but very well-connected and lucrative conglomerate out of East Asia. Heroin,” he explained.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jonah advised. “They’re pretty well insulated, with a lot of layers between them and Max, and they’re not about to stick their necks out for him. He’s on his own with the cops here, and they’ll have someone new to handle their cash for them inside a week.”

“Which is only going to make Max more desperate,” Nate pointed out. He shook his head and pulled out his phone.

Jonah watched with a sort of lazy interest. “Who’re you calling?”

“Lily,” he answered. “She needs to know this.” He flipped open his phone, frowning when he saw the display showing two missed calls. He’d forgotten to take his phone off ignore, he realized, and hit the keys to check his messages.

The sudden stream of curses spilling out of his mouth had Jonah’s eyebrows shooting up. “What’s wrong?”

“Lily,” he said, and his eyes when he looked up were dark with fear. “She thinks whatever Max might be looking for is in the storage unit Bridget rented before going to Hawaii. She’s there now, looking through everything. Is Max still at the precinct?”

Jonah shook his head. “They didn’t have enough to hold him. Let him go a couple of hours ago.”

“If he knows about the storage unit, it’s the first place he’d go.”

Jonah sighed. “I’m just not destined to see the end of this game. Come on, I’ll drive.”

* * * * *

Lily was going to go cross-eyed. She’d been through every scrap of paper, every receipt, credit card and bank statement from the last four years, and so far she hadn’t seen anything that looked as though it would be a reason for Max to break into her apartment.

She rubbed a hand over her tired eyes, wanting nothing more than to go home, crawl into a hot tub and a large glass of wine and deal with it all tomorrow. But she had her teeth in it now, and she couldn’t let it go.

She heard a snuffling whimper and looked over at Beau with a grin. After pacing the entire unit at least ten times, he’d found one of Bridget’s many stuffed animals, a large replica of a white tiger that was almost as big as he was. He was currently curled up on it, his face snuggled into the white fur like a child curled into his mother’s arms, sleeping like a baby.

Lily shook her head. “Some watch dog you are,” she said, but she said it softly so she wouldn’t disturb him, and reached for a box.

Like so many of the boxes she’d already been through it was full of a variety of things—CDs, old floppy discs, a blue ribbon from a swim meet in 1988 and a stack of notebooks.

Lily grinned at the ribbon—trust Bridget to hang on to something like that—and scooped the discs out for later examination. She doubted with the new technology available that anything more important than Bridget’s old term papers would be on them, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

She added them to the stack she’d already accumulated and started to set the box aside when something on the cover of one of the notebooks caught her eye. She brushed aside the tail of the ribbon and frowned at the initials embossed on the corner of the notebook.

“M.C.” she muttered, and snagged the book on the top of the stack. She flipped open the cover and realized that what she’d taken for a notebook was actually a ledger, with neat entries of dollars and cents.

Lots of dollars and cents, she realized, her eyes almost popping out as she realized just how much. She grabbed the four other books out of the box, and a quick glance confirmed they were more of the same.

She was reaching for her phone to call Nate, to tell him she’d hit the jackpot, when a voice from the door stopped her cold.

“I’ll take those,” Max Carelli said, and stepped into the room.

Chapter Nineteen

“Max.”

He sent her a smarmy smile. “Lily. How…unfortunate to see you here.”

Her eyes narrowed on him, her lip curling in distaste. “Same goes,” she said sweetly.

The veneer of charm slid off his chiseled features, leaving only the greed behind. “This doesn’t have to be difficult,” he told her, “but I’m more than happy to make it so, if you push me.”

“I’ve no intention of getting close enough to you to share the same air, much less push you,” she told him, and got to her feet. “Why don’t you tell me what you want so you can get out of here?”

He nodded at her hands. “I want my notebooks.”

“You mean these ledgers?” she asked, holding them up. “The ones that detail your money laundering side business?”

Shock and anger sped over his features, telling her the blindly aimed dagger had hit its mark. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he growled, and took a step forward.

Though she wanted to step back, she held her ground. “This is my business. After all, you broke into my house looking for these, didn’t you?”

The smarmy grin was back. “You’ll never prove I had anything to do with that.”

“Probably not,” she agreed, “but I know you were there. So what now, Max?”

“Now? Now I take my ledgers and disappear.” He stepped forward, his hand sliding toward his pocket. “And you’re not going to get in my way.”

“Or what?” she asked, and this time when he moved forward she did step back, and slightly to her left. Behind her Beau slept on, snuggled into and partly hidden by the giant stuffed tiger.

“Or I’m going to use this,” he told her, and pulled a snub-nosed revolver out of his pocket.

Well, fuck
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