As light as a feather, she laid her palm against his jaw.
“I do worry about you, Sean. I worry that you don’t see the good in yourself. I worry that you take on far too much responsibility for someone who says he doesn’t want any at all. I worry that you mistake safe choices for good ones.”
Safe choices. Yeah, that was what he’d been making all these years, and where had it gotten him? He couldn’t help but think that taking a few risks couldn’t have landed him in any more trouble than he was already in and might have been a hell of a lot more fun, too.
But he didn’t want to think about any of that. Time was limited, and he had a beautiful, sexy woman waiting to be kissed in a way he hadn’t kissed a woman in a long time. She smelled of tequila, Mexican food and something delicate and expensive, and her shoulders were slender beneath his hands as he leaned closer.
Undercover in Copper Lake
Marilyn Pappano
MARILYN PAPPANO has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.
For the kids in my life, some grown, some still working on it, who gave life to Daisy and Dahlia: Brandon, Lauren, Kate and Kevin Kadon, Cameron, Gavin and Declan
Contents
A stiff breeze blew in off the harbor, carrying with it the smells of salt and fish and pollution, along with a chilly hint of fall on its way. Sean Holigan stood in the shadows of two buildings, face to the water, and toyed with the cigarette he held. Though he hadn’t had a smoke in six and a half months, the temptation to light it was there, the desire no less than it had been 195 days before.
But the flare of the lighter, the glowing end of the cigarette and the acrid blue-gray smoke would be like a neon sign pointing straight at him. Not the best idea, since the last place anyone expected him to be at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday was on the docks. If his boss or their buddies found him there, it was a sure bet he would pay the price for it. He just didn’t know how big a price that would be.
Maybe, probably, death.
Fog swirled around the two massive warehouses that shielded him and turned the cargo containers stacked between them and the water into islands of dull metal. The damp seeped into his jacket and misted across his skin. It darkened the thin paper of the cigarette wrapper and increased the stiffness in the middle three fingers of his left hand. Ever since he’d gotten them caught between an engine and a car frame three years ago, those fingers had developed an aversion to cold and damp.
He’d been waiting more than ten minutes without bothering to check his watch when he sensed rather than heard someone approaching. Like him, Alexandra Baker was always early to these meetings. Unlike him, she completed a thorough check of the area before appearing before him, tonight from around a corner, like a magician’s illusion.
She wore dark clothing, dark shoes, a dark hood covering her white-blond hair and casting her pale face in darkness. She could stand absolutely still on a night like this and blend completely into the background. The way she moved and walked and talked was unnaturally quiet, still. Illusion was a good description of her. Since she’d first approached him three months ago, she seemed about as real as a dream.
A bad dream.
“Why do you tempt yourself?” she asked, her voice quiet but not soft, her question personal but lacking curiosity.
He glanced at the cigarette, shrugged and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Why do you get me up in the middle of the night?”
“Because I know Kolinski’s tucked safely in bed.”
Craig Kolinski. His boss. His best bud for thirteen years. The man responsible for Sean’s relatively comfortable life. The man he was betraying every time he spoke to Baker.
“He’s going to ask you to look into something for him tomorrow,” she went on. “It’ll mean going out of town for a while. You’ll agree.”
Sean didn’t ask how she knew Craig’s plans. He figured his boss had more bugs than a Volkswagen plant, thanks to the Drug Enforcement Administration: his house, his cars, his office above the garage, probably even the garage bays themselves. Sean hoped whoever listened to all those hours of tapes got a headache from the constant whine of pneumatic tools.
“Where out of town?”
If it were anyone else, he would have said Baker hesitated, but since she was the calm, collected ice queen, he would call it a pause instead. “Georgia.”
A chill passed through him that had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d grown up in Georgia and had left the first chance he’d gotten, swearing he would never return.