Beachcomber Investigations: A Romantic Detective Series Novel - Book 1 Page 4

  He got no further before Dane clutched a hunk of his short hair and jerked him up and spun him around. David stood back and watched with the same stalwart look he’d held the entire time. Shana aspired to the same stalwartness, but she had a ways to go—at least when she was watching Dane in action. She had a hard time keeping the awe from popping through.

  Dane shoved him against the wall with his elbow across the man’s neck and a grip on his belt buckle as if he were ready to give him the most dangerous and hurtful wedgie of his life. She’d bet the guy had suffered a few of those with his pencil-neck attitude.

  “My name is Dane Blaise. This is my home. I’m working on a case for the governor. You are nothing to me. Let’s try this again.” His words were low and raspy. Shana was not surprised to see the spark of fear flash in the man’s eyes.

  “We suspected you may be looking into the shooting when we found out who the victim was and—”

  “And you decided to interfere.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Not your jurisdiction. I will escort you to the edge of my property now and you are not to return. You are uninvited. Don’t come back without a warrant.” Dane removed his elbow and pulled the man from against the wall by his belt and shirt front and shoved him back toward David and Shana.

  “Do me a favor and escort the man out, darlin’.” He tossed her a smile. She pulled cuffs from the nearby kitchen drawer while David held Peck’s arms in place and she cuffed him.

  “What the hell—”

  “Your own fault for being so unruly,” she told the idiot. Then she shoved him toward the door as she removed the gun from his holster.

  “You are in so much trouble.”

  “So you said.”

  David opened the back door for them and she shoved him through, escorting Peck from behind, holding onto his handcuffs and pushing on his shoulders simultaneously, with his gun stuck in the back waist of her pants. He strained to turn his head to see her. She pushed forward so that he stumbled down the back step.

  “Watch where you’re going, Mr. FBI Man.” Once they were outside, she was surprised that Dane left her alone with him and felt like it was some kind of test—for both of them. He never left her in any situation where there was the slightest possibility of danger, as if she were a helpless girl. It annoyed the hell out of her. On another noncop, strictly female level, it melted her heart.

  She saw him watching out the back door. Of course. She took the opportunity to talk to Peck and see if they could get anymore from him.

  “I don’t know why you felt it necessary to treat us as if we were criminals. Based on the information you were given, it seems to me and my inferior non-FBI brain—I’m only Scotland Yard you see—that you may have used excessive force pulling a gun on Dane like that—in his own front yard no less.”

  “Don’t let him fool you, Shana. He’s as dangerous as they come and he’s a nut case. I don’t know why the governor bothers with him. This case is going to end up ours—and every other case you two are handling—so you may as well close up shop and head elsewhere. Far away.”

  They were at the edge of the driveway. She pondered what he said. The ASAC had a grudge of some kind and wanted Dane gone. Dane probably knew the backstory. She’d talk to him about it shortly. At that moment, she released the cuffs from his wrists in a quick smooth move and then shoved him into the street off the property with her booted foot in his back. He stumbled forward and fell onto his hands and knees, but quickly got up. He turned, but before he could yell at her to demand his gun back, she slipped it from her waistband at her back, checked to see the safety was on, and then flung it as far as she could down the street. She got it nearly thirty yards out. Not bad. She hadn’t lost her touch since her shot-put days in seventh grade—the last time she’d thrown a heavy object like that. From eight grade on she’d dedicated her attention solely to surfing—and shooting. But she didn’t consider shooting a sport.

  She watched Peck jog toward his gun and saw what was likely his car parked not much further up the road. Then she jogged back into the house, going through the nearby front door. Once inside, the three men surrounded her. They clapped and whistled and hooted. Acer slapped her on the back. David shook her hand, the food delivery boy grinned and gave her a high-five. And then Dane drew her into a hug.

  It was not the kind of hug a guy gave a partner. He enveloped her, nuzzled her hair and stroked her back and whispered in her ear, giving instant rise to all kinds of goose bumps and fine hairs. He said, “Well done, girlie. We’ll celebrate later.”

  She tried to maintain a sense of decorum in front of David, but the elemental need to melt in his arms after the tension of the altercation overwhelmed her. She’d hate to see what she might do if there were any real danger.

  “This was nothing,” she said after a moment. She separated herself and he let her.

  “We’re writing him up for sexual harassment—we talked it over,” Dane said in a louder voice.

  “What—”

  David piped in. “It’s more a matter of a good offense being the best defense. I’ll hold off until I get back and talk it over with the governor. Perhaps dangle it as a potential claim before making it official. Unless the notion makes you feel uncomfortable.”

  “No. I wouldn’t want to interfere with good strategy.”

  “The only problem is,” Dane said, moving closer again, “that you’ll need to stay on the books with the Scotland Yard—at the Boston exchange program office—so it’ll carry weight.”

  She looked at him, studied his face to see what he was thinking. It was his game face. The mask of no emotion, the one where everything was cool. He was cool. She was cool.

  “That’s cool,” she said.

  “I’m glad that’s settled. I’m starved,” David said, leading them back into the dining room to where they’d left the congealed boxes of gourmet take-out from the Shark’s Table restaurant. “Want me to go back and bring more food?” the young man from the Shark’s Table said. He wore the slick gray-green jacket and pants all the employees wore which surprised her since he was only delivering food.

  “You stay. I’ll need to debrief you,” Dane said. Acer laughed. David raised a brow.

  Shana put her arm around the young man’s shoulder because he looked like he’d been sentenced to water boarding at Guantanamo.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll help with the debriefing.”

  “We’ll all help,” David said. “While we eat. But first this needs reheating.”

  Dane looked like he was going to open his mouth—she had no trouble reading his mind at this moment—he was going to volunteer her domestic services. She elbowed his ribs as he was about to speak. He grunted a laugh.

  They sat the boy at the table between them while David got the food and Acer slid the computer back in front of him and resumed his keyboard tapping.

  “Your name?” Dane asked.

  “Ronnie Ryan”

  “It’s like this, Ronnie, this never happened. You don’t know me. Never met me. Never met any of us.” Dane swept his hand around the room.

  The boy nodded like a bobblehead on speed.

  “If you mention any of us by name or refer to this house or this incident—ever—I will find out. And will find you—”

  “No sir. I would never. I’m cool with it.”

  “Of course you are,” Shana said. “So tomorrow, when Special Agent Peck comes around to your home or workplace and asks to speak with you, what are you going to tell him?”

  The boy’s jaw dropped and his face turned white. Acer watched her with something like admiration in his eyes.

  “I… I won’t—”

  “You will not remember a goddamn thing,” Dane said. “Nothing.”

  “No matter what they do to you,” Shana added. Sometimes she enjoyed playing bad cop. Dane gave her a scowl. He didn’t like her usurping his role. It meant he had to be nice to the kid now.

  “Of course they won’t do
anything to you. But if and when they contact you, you need to call me.” Dane flipped him a card.

  Shana said, “What are you going to do with that card?”

  Ronnie spun his head back around and looked at her, his eyes were wide and he whispered his next words. “I’m going to memorize the number and then I’m going to eat the card.” He looked determined and white faced. She noticed one of his hands shaking and she sighed. Maybe being bad cop wasn’t so much fun. She covered his hand.

  “You don’t have to eat the card. But do memorize the number—make sure you have it memorized and then give it back to Dane.”

  He nodded his head and he breathed heavily and slumped back in his chair, staring at the card.

  “Who are you people? Really? And what’s this all about?” Brave kid. Shana wanted to smile, but raised a brow at Dane to deal with this.

  “Did you not hear anything we just said? You know nothing. For real. We’re going to keep it that way. We’re not answering any of your questions and if you keep asking questions we’re not going to trust you—”

  The kid stuck his hands up and said, “Okay, okay—never mind. I get it.” He slumped back down, more sullen than relaxed, then spoke again in a quieter, less brave voice.

  “It’s just that, well maybe I think you guys are cool. Maybe I want to work with you. Maybe—”

  “I’ll keep you in mind if we’re ever recruiting a kid with no skills,” Dane said.

  “I got lots of skills.” The kid brightened.

  “Are you a marksman with a Glock or a Heckler & Koch HK M27? Can you take a man with fifty pounds on you down without a weapon? How are you with knives? Could you defend yourself in a street fight with a guy? With two guys? How about up against three or four guys?”

  The kid stared at him. He didn’t speak. He returned his stare to the card.

  David returned to the table with a platter of food. The kid gave the card back to Dane. “I’m done. I couldn’t even defend myself in a fight against a girl if she was like her.” The kid pointed to Shana. “Can I go home now?”

  “Sure kid. How are you with the job? You think you’re in trouble?”

  “I’m fired for sure. I had two more orders in the back of the van that still need to be delivered.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it. Tell them you had engine trouble and call Triple A.” Dane pulled out a wad of money from his pocket and counted off a bunch of hundreds. Shana watched, but didn’t bother counting after he got to the seventh bill.

  “I’ll walk out to you and disable your van. You take it from there. Shana will call your boss and let him know we held you up while I tried to fix your van. You give them the money. Keep a hundred for yourself. Let me know if they fire you anyway. I’ll fix it.”

  “So that’s what you do—you fix things.”

  “If we’re lucky, kid.”

  Dane went out with the kid, playing Mr. Rogers nice guy, and left Shana sitting at the table with the food and her boss—still her boss now. And their new roommate, Acer. Everything spun around in her head. She didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know which change of scenario to deal with first. She kept coming back to Dane being nice to the kid, going out of his way to help him out with his job. But then he was the reason the poor kid was in trouble in the first place. She wouldn’t have started by pointing the gun at the kid. A frown filled her mind and probably her face because she knew she was probably wrong. She needed to clear her head and decided to eat.

  “Pass me some of that beef stroganoff,” she said.

  David slid the container toward her plate and said, “I understand your official status with the program is temporary. I appreciate your cooperation to keep us out of trouble with the FBI.”

  “You mean to keep Dane out of trouble,” she said. She forked some noodles and saucy beef onto her plate and caught a whiff of the delicious scent. In spite of her empty stomach and the enticing food, it wasn’t enough to keep her distracted. She put her fork down.

  “What if I change my mind?”

  David raised a brow. Acer’s clacking keyboard fell silent and he looked up at her. They waited in silence as if she hadn’t asked a question, as if she owed them an explanation. She decided to wait them out and folded her arms across her chest.

  David sighed and said, “I can keep the job open for you until the end of this mission. Then you’ll need to make a choice.”

  She nodded. That was fair. She flicked a glance at Acer. He watched her with a mask, not exactly ill-humored, but not exactly friendly. She bit her tongue, tempted to throw her schoolyard line out again, the one where she asked him what he was staring at. But then she realized he was Dane’s friend and he’d probably tell Dane that she was prevaricating again, so she had to say something.

  “Don’t worry about Dane. He’ll be the first to know if I change my mind.”

  Acer had returned his attention to the computer screen and keyboard, but he said without looking at her, “I ain’t worried about Dane. He’ll know all about your change of mind before you do.” Then he stopped and looked at her. “And it won’t be because I tell him either.”

  She sighed and sat back. She knew he was right. Dane was all knowing. At least when it came to people. He had some magical soothsaying, mind-reading, sixteenth sense going on when it came to knowing what people were thinking and what motivated them. And he had her absolutely pegged.

  She shook her head and felt warmth spread through her. In more ways than one.

  Chapter 5

  Dane went inside the shack through the back door into the kitchen and grabbed a towel to wipe the grease off his hands. It had been a simple matter to sabotage the van and an even simpler matter for the kid to get out of trouble with his boss. Money talked. It was a matter of how much. At least with most people. He’d sworn Ronnie Ryan to secrecy one last time after extracting the kid’s driver’s license from his pocket and reading his home address out loud. He’d handed the license back to the kid with one of his mysterious smiles guaranteed to instill discomfort. Ronnie had stuttered a little and promised up and down he wouldn’t breathe a word.

  Dane’s last comment to him was, “Don’t worry, kid. I’m not a bad guy. I fix things.”

  Now it was time to make a plan to fix this thing. Or two things.

  First, he needed to fix Acer’s problem with the sniper and whoever was paying the sniper.

  And second—but it was hard for Dane to really think of the second thing as less important since it seeped into every cell and thought and action, making him feel perpetually on edge and disturbing the peace he was seeking at his beach shack sanctuary. The second thing he needed to fix was his relationship with Shana. He didn’t have any idea what that meant, what ‘fixed’ would look like or how to do it, except that for a start, he had to convince her to stay and partner with him. He knew he still had some work to do in convincing her. He didn’t trust her snap decision for David, especially not now that she had to stay officially on the payroll with Scotland Yard until the FBI got off their backs.

  That meant there was technically a third matter that needed fixing—his problem with the FBI. They’d been here for a reason and he still didn’t know what it was. He knew it had to do with Acer’s sniper but Peck had held something back. Some important detail. Dane knew it like he knew his mother’s name.

  He tossed the greasy towel in the sink and walked into the dining room.

  “What do you have?” he said to Acer.

  Acer stopped typing into his computer, pushed it around and looked at him with a grin. Dane felt Shana’s eyes on him, but didn’t look her way. There would be time to deal with her later—after David was gone. Before Cap came by in the morning. Even with his friend Acer crowding their space, Dane would find a way to at least do a Band-Aid fix with Shana.

  “We have a breakthrough, boss.” Acer pointed to the screen which he angled for all to see. “This man was a key witness in a big embezzlement case. I persuaded him to roll on th
e man who hired him to hack the system of Bryant Enterprises, one of my first consulting jobs back a number of years ago. Harold Small, aka Harry the Hacker, is now deceased.”

  “Let me guess,” Dane said, “He was shot by a sniper.” He knew the answer. Acer nodded. David gave him a speculative look. Shana huffed and he could tell she wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn’t. She hated when he grandstanded. Dane smiled at her.

  “What’s the next question we should be asking, girlie?”

  “What are you—Grasshopper Mentor Man?” She pushed her mostly full plate of food away, sighed, and said in an I’m-not-an-imbecile tone of voice, “Who did the hacker roll on?”

  Dane suppressed his laugh. He enjoyed watching her color rise, watching her get agitated and pissed at him. She knew he knew it was beneath her to be treated like a novice. She also knew he respected her with absolute certainty. He suspected she loved his game-playing underneath her annoyed exterior.

  “The mastermind was Sebastian Whitaker. Son-in-law of the owner of one of the largest privately owned telecom companies in the country, Fred Bryant of Bryant Enterprises. I was hired when he discovered twenty million dollars was missing. There was even more missing than that but the accountants never figured out how much. It was my first big gig as a cyber security consultant and I knocked it out of the park.”

  “So Whitaker is our man. Do you have his whereabouts?” Shana asked.

  “First,” Dane interrupted, “Let’s have David confirm with the governor who it was that called him to set up the appointment with Acer. If it was Acer’s old client, Fred Bryant, then Whitaker is our man.”

  Shana rolled her eyes at him.

  “Want to place money on it, girlie?”

  Shana gave him a death-stare scowl. It was going to be either that or the haughty chin-lift depending on how pissed she was at him at the moment. He was pleased with the scowl. She was extremely hot under the collar.

  “Last known for Sebastian Whitaker was outside the front gate of the federal pen,” Acer said, “where he spent the last ten years. He was released last month. I got an address for his wife though.”