Their Ex's Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha) (Texas Alpha Series Book 4) (15 page)

But the laundry room looked straightened up, and that was Finn’s first clue. Both he and Justice tensed and looked at the closed garage door. Someone had been there after the mob guys had ransacked the place and they’d straightened up the laundry room, so they were either gone or inside the garage they were drilling with their gazes.

There were several bad guys that hadn’t been caught in the sting. Creed would be number one on that list, and whom Finn hoped was behind that door.

Finn said lowly, “Doing this fast.”

Justice nodded with his weapon raised as he glanced at him. That meant go.

In the next second, Finn shouted, “ATF, don’t move! Raise your hands, Torenni!”

Finn couldn’t be more blown away that it was Victor Torenni, Coronado’s right-hand man, looking like a homeless rat who had burrowed into a less-than-ideal hiding place.

Torenni was a big man. His normal suit was gone and he wore a ripped black shirt and jeans as he slowly stood with his arms raised. It looked as if Torenni had been in a fight. He was favoring his right side, his arm was bleeding, and his face was a mess.

Still, he sneered. “Fucking knew you were legit, O’Neil. I
told
him.”

“Yeah, you’re the brilliant one,” Finn snapped, as he reached behind his waist for his handcuffs.

Once they’d gotten Torenni sorted and cuffed, they took him back to the living room and righted a dining room chair to sit him in.

When Finn had been undercover, he’d known the mob was doing unsavory things around town, or trying to; he’d even poked around in their world a bit to see what he could come up with. It had been unavoidable, because everywhere he turned in the town’s sleazy underworld, he’d come across another mob bad guy.

What he hadn’t known until after the bust was how linked the three major factions of bad guys in town were. He also hadn’t known who was at the top of the heap, pretty much directing them all. And that was the damn mob, with their highest boss Coronado as the leader over it all.

Whose right-hand man he now held handcuffed on nothing but air.

To say he was winging it with Torenni was an understatement, as he walked to the fireplace while Torenni glared at him. Gordon Maxwell’s books could nail Coronado and his entire operation under the RICO law, but Coronado’s second in command could nail the mothereffer for life.

If he talked.

Justice kept silent with his gun on Torenni, because he had also figured out what they had at stake in finding Torenni, looking as if he was on the run and maybe not number two any longer.

Finn eyed the bricks on the fireplace, while silently counting ten across and then ten down. He could see the brick looked untouched, so he was pretty certain Coronado’s men, Torenni included, hadn’t found the jump drive with all the local mob’s books on it.

That meant Torenni wasn’t there for that, and had obviously been beat up for other reasons.

“Are you having a little rift with your boss, Victor?” Finn asked, with his back still turned to Torenni.

He heard Torenni’s non-answering grunt behind him, and when he turned to look at the man, Torenni’s gaze was blazing.

“So Coronado isn’t too happy he couldn’t find your bookkeeper’s books, huh?” Finn asked.

Torenni looked instantly surprised, but then settled into a typical scowl.

So Finn continued, “You know I got him, Victor. Your boss is going down. It is just a matter of whether you go down with him or not.”

“Damn it,” Victor said, and then he winced as if the beating he’d received had caused him pain somewhere on his beaten body. “They’ll fucking kill me,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. “Like they already tried to. You want to tell me why?”

Victor hung his head, looking at the floor. “Find the books or it’s your fucking ass,” he muttered, what had to have been Coronado’s command. But then Victor told Finn something he didn’t know. “I was the one found Maxwell and convinced him to work for us. In my fucking world, that made that idiot
my
man.”

Finn just held back his chuckle at pegging Gordon so right, and then he turned and lifted his hands to pry a certain brick out of the fireplace. Finn heard Victor’s sound of disbelieving frustration behind him as he pulled two jump drives out of the hole where the loose brick had been.

“Righteous,” Justice said, as Finn turned and gave him a hard grin.

“I’ll talk,
damn
it,” Victor exclaimed. “Just let me go under afterward.”

That meant both he and Gordon would soon disappear. But it also meant Coco would be safe, and it meant Finn had damn well gotten them all.

All the way to the top.

After they’d called a black and white to pick up Torenni, Finn and Justice leaned against Justice’s SUV outside the condo.

“Besides Creed and a couple others, did we get them all?” Justice asked.

Finn shrugged.

“The mob’s fingers are long,” Finn said. “They had their thumb on the bikers and the reservation rats just here in town. Making them work, drugs, guns, human trafficking, and prostitution, that we know of. For their profit. They could just as easily have some other damn lowlife faction we don’t know about around, under their thumb.”

Justice leaned against the SUV and crossed his arms. “The human trafficking, all Indian women, sits bad with me.”

“It’s a big land out there,” Finn muttered. “Who the hell is buying them?”

Justice straightened from the SUV. “It’s time we talk to the council. It’s time we get the word out and let the people know their women aren’t safe.”

“You got it, brother,” Finn agreed with him.

Unfortunately, it would be a little longer before that came to pass.

––––––––

F
inn was sipping a whiskey when he heard the bartender in front of him making an interested male sound. It was the sound of a dude who had just seen something hot and most likely female, Finn thought.

Finn turned his gaze, instinctively knowing it was Coco. Then he probably made the same kind of sound the bartender had just made, because his woman was fucking smoking, as in sizzling his male libido all to hell.

He didn’t even care that she was blond any longer, because that wealth of silky hair flowed around her, and all he saw was her gorgeous face and her sexy curves in some kind of tight leather pants. Damn, it was as if the black leather was painted over her hips, which swung like sex, as she clicked her four-inch heeled boots toward him.

She fucking rocked being feminine to the max. He was slightly sorry he’d asked her to come meet him in a public place to celebrate his victory, because looking at her decked out, to make him pant, instantly had him ready to fuck her.

But he wasn’t a kid. He’d live through it. Instead, he enjoyed the buzz of knowing she was his. And wasn’t that the best damn thing in everything that had happened. There were times when he thought he might be alone for the rest of his life, because he’d been beaten down and pretty alone.

But there was something about Coco that made him certain he was never going to be alone again.

“I’m so proud of you, Finn!” she exclaimed, and then she was in his arms, smelling amazing and feeling better, all tied up with that sexy Southern drawl of hers.

He’d never admit that his eyes could have gotten a bit misty over a woman he cared so much about being proud of him.

It felt good ...

Deep.

“Thank you, baby,” he murmured, against the side of her mouth where he kissed her.

She leaned back to look up at him with her gorgeous brown eyes. “You didn’t even need stupid Gordon to do it,” she said, smiling up at him.

She was one of the few people he’d explained the whole thing to. His superiors wouldn’t be too happy to know a civilian knew all of it, but he really didn’t give a damn. She was in his life now and she was going to know everything about him, and besides, she was involved in the thing too.

He felt her up in a few excellently curved places, which were not too immodest for being in public, and he agreed, “No, I don’t have to use him. He’s just a backup now.”

She hugged him and threw her arms over his neck, with her purse settling against his back as she rolled up on the toes of her heeled boots for a slow, meaningful kiss. A kiss that lingered, and made every male in the room immediately jealous of him. Which he dug.

When she finished kissing him, like she couldn’t stop, he growled at the bartender, “I’ll take that champagne now.”

Then he pulled Coco over to a more secluded spot in the bar, where they could celebrate privately, while the bartender brought them over a bucket of ice, champagne, and two crystal flutes.

He was usually a whiskey and beer drinker, but he was fucking celebrating, and he wasn’t certain things had ever been looking so good in his life.

Coco couldn’t take her eyes off Finn. He was so gorgeous in such a masculine way, and the way his green eyes popped with electricity from his darker features was so brilliant, it made her burn.

For him.

Always for him.

Finn made her believe she could do anything, in a way that no one had ever made her feel before. Finn’s gaze and his gestures—everything about him showed how much he was into her. They toasted with champagne and sipped the bubbly liquid, while Finn held her hand on the table, and then under the table, his other hand dipped deep between her thighs to settle warmly.

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him again, lingering against his warm lips and knowing how damn lucky she was for her life to have turned out as it had. What had happened between her and Finn was pretty quick, but it was also
so
right.

“Sugar, I toast to the best ATF agent this town ever saw.”

Finn’s goatee lifted, showing a glimpse of his white teeth as his fingers squeezed between her thighs.

“I’m glad you know it,” he said. “I’m going to toast to this whole damn undercover thing, because without it, I wouldn’t have met you.”

“Oh, Deek,” she whispered.

Then they were kissing again, each of them tasting like champagne.

Next, they toasted to Justice, and then Finn’s ATF partner Ty Booth.

“Ty really kept me sane,” Finn explained. “He was the only contact I had for a long time. The only one that knew anything about what I was doing.” Finn rubbed her fingers, looking at her black-tipped nails. “He can be a smartass, but he had my back.”

Coco had been thinking about and then beginning to understand how hard it must’ve been for Finn to go undercover as he had, and in the town where he lived. First, if anything on TV shows about cops and being undercover were even close to reality, it had to have been hard to keep his wits while rubbing up against such nastiness. Secondly, it had to be awful having the people in his town think so badly of him.

She rubbed his back where she sat next to him. “I’m glad he was there for you, baby. You think you’ll ever do anything like undercover again?”

Immediately, Finn shook his head, and she was very glad that he seemed to be so decisive about it.

“No, no more. I just had to straighten out my uncle’s town.”

Coco leaned in tight against Finn. “Uncle?”

“Yeah, baby, U.S. Marshal Jacob O’Neil. That’s his place you’re sleeping in.” When she looked up at him in surprise, he kissed the tip of her nose. “He left it to me when he passed away a couple years ago. He pretty much raised me.”

“I think I’m seeing why you’re in law enforcement,” she said.

One of Finn’s panting-melting smiles made an appearance, and then he leaned down and kissed her. After that hot exchange, she was looking over his shoulder and happened to notice—

“Finn, is that Caval’s daughter?”

Finn had been drinking champagne, and he stopped to look, then he said, “Yeah—how do you know her?”

Coco smiled at the back of Finn’s head from where she leaned against him. “Because that’s Jagger pulling out the chair for her, so I figured it had to be her, because he said he was dating her.”

They both looked into the dining room, which was quite a ways from where they sat, and they saw part of Jagger as he bent over and quickly kissed Blue, before he went to sit down across from her. Then he was out of their line of sight.

Coco sighed. “You have such a nice small town here.”

That brought Finn’s amazing green eyes back to her. “Eighty percent of it is the best; we just had this bad element creeping in,” he said.

“But you took care of that, baby,” she said, while putting everything she had on her face, about how proud she was of him. She got rewarded, because he looked pleased.

And then he asked, “But what about your small town—don’t you like it?”

Coco frowned slightly as she took her glass of champagne and sipped it, and then she set her glass down on the table. She turned more to Finn, leaning up against him; she wanted him to hear her.

“I don’t care if I ever go back there, Finn.”

He raised an eyebrow as he bent closer. “What about your house, baby?”

“Finn, there are only a few mementos I want from that place. The rest can burn for all I care. I don’t even want to step back inside that house.”

He leaned back, but it was so he could look at her very closely. “What about your friends, bella?”

She studied his amazing lips. “Well, I’ll miss some of them. But my best friend Patty Ann, you’re going to get to meet at the charity ball for the orphanage. She said she’d come.”

But Coco had already noticed that Finn was shaking his head, and his amazing lips had flattened between his dark mustache and the lower part of his goatee.

Was he trying to say he wasn’t going to the ball?

Then he did it. “No way,” he said. “I don’t do bashes like that.”

She was stunned and a little deflated, because she loved that sort of thing—getting all dressed up to the max and thinking about how heart-stopping Finn was going to look dressed up to the max, and then there was the part where she would get to meet all his friends, which she was looking forward to.

But luckily she’d been around the block a few times, and she could hold back her expectations for a few moments to think about why in the world Finn wouldn’t want to go to such an event.