He slung the drying cloth over his shoulder, shelved the clean glass behind him, before leaning across the bar toward her. “What is your business with Mr. Sloan?” he inquired quietly, as if it was not safe to speak of the subject in public. The suspicion in his eyes had evolved into something along the lines of anger.
Gabrielle wasn’t intimidated. She inclined her head and met that lethal glare head-on. “It’s personal.”
His gaze narrowed. “Personal can be dangerous, señorita.”
She smiled; the reflection captured in the mirror behind the bar wasn’t pleasant, she noted in her peripheral vision. Good. She wanted him to know she didn’t like his games. “You’ll either tell me where I can find him, or you won’t. But don’t waste my time, señor.” She said the last with a warning tone of her own.
Sloan had obviously made himself a few friends in town. Or, maybe, they were all afraid of him. She didn’t really care which it was, she simply wanted an answer to her question.
How the hell did she find him if she couldn’t get anyone to talk?
The file she’d taken from the Colby Agency hadn’t given his specific address, just the general vicinity. She’d spent twenty-four hours checking out the surrounding area with no luck at all. Flat-out asking about his whereabouts carried a significant risk, but she was tired of wasting her time. She needed a location. Now. Today. No more playing hide-and-seek. Not to mention someone at the Colby Agency would likely warn Sloan the moment her breach was discovered. Time was not on her side.
The bartender turned his back on her and went about the business of checking his stock of liquors.
Gabrielle swore under her breath. Another dead end. There had to be someone around here willing to give her a location.
“What do I owe you?” No point hanging around in this seedy joint and killing more time. He’d made his decision and she wasn’t going to change his mind.
The bartender shifted slightly, just far enough to make eye contact with her. “You owe me nothing.”
Nothing? What was the deal with this guy? She reached into the pocket of her jeans and dragged out an adequate number of pesos. Whatever this guy’s problem, she wasn’t about to leave owing him a damned thing. She slapped the money on the bar. “That should do it.”
He glanced at the payment then at her. “Your money is no good here, señorita.”
Now she was plain old ticked off. “Why the hell not?”
He faced her squarely, braced his hands on the counter and looked deeply into her eyes, his intent unreadable. “I do not accept payment from the dead.”
Never one to squander her hard-earned cash, Gabrielle snatched up the money and walked out. She didn’t spare a glance for any of the scumbags staring after her. To hell with all of them. She wasn’t beaten yet.
All she had to do was to stick with it. In her experience, patience and persistence paid off. She would find Sloan. Maybe not today. But soon.
And then she would kill him.
Just like she’d dreamed of for three long years.
Some girls fantasized about their first date or their first kiss, maybe the first prom. Not Gabrielle. Ever since she’d been old enough to understand what betrayal and murder really meant, she’d dreamed of finding her father’s killer and having her revenge.
She’d survived a childhood in pure hell, with a drunken mother who had given her just one thing: the understanding of why her life had stunk from the moment she’d been born.
Gabrielle’s father had been a special investigator for the State Department. He’d traveled extensively, hadn’t even been there when his only daughter was born. His work had turned particularly ugly, forcing him to, in effect, abandon his only child, to protect her. But he’d called, her mother had insisted, once in a great while when it was safe. If he’d ever sent money, Gabrielle’s mother had blown it on booze.
And then, just before Gabrielle’s eighteenth birthday, the calls had stopped, according to her mother. It wasn’t until she’d graduated high school a few months later and was poised to enter college on an academic scholarship that Gabrielle had learned the truth of what happened. An old enemy had murdered her father. The State Department had disowned him. The newspapers had called him an assassin, a cold-blooded killer. Gabrielle hadn’t needed her mother’s pathetic ramblings to know what that meant. She remembered watching a television interview once about a man who had given his all to his country and then been abandoned to cover their involvement in certain activities. Her father had deserved better. So had she.
Her mother had fallen even more deeply into her depressive state and then promptly proceeded to drink herself to death, literally. Gabrielle had buried her the day before she’d been supposed to head for college. She’d realized something painful as shovel full after shovel full of dirt had been tossed atop her mother’s cheap coffin. She was alone. Completely alone. That was when the need for vengeance had begun to eat at her like a rapidly spreading disease.
She’d gone off to college as planned, but sticking to that hard-earned and long-awaited agenda for her future had fallen by the wayside as she’d formed a new goal. Obsessed about it really.
Find her father’s killer and make him pay.
Her new goal hadn’t actually formulated so clearly or easily…at least not at first. She’d tried to put the past behind her. She’d truly attempted to focus on her studies but luck had, apparently, been against her all along. She hadn’t made encouraging friends. The only acceptance she had found was with those who’d grown up much as she had, with absent or pathetic excuses for parents and a lack of funds. Maybe that was the reason her bitterness had taken such deep roots. Her mother’s words had haunted her and her new friends’ cynicism had nurtured her growing hatred for the raw deal life had dealt her.
Thus her new determination had been born. Make the man responsible for her final kick in the teeth pay.
As far as Gabrielle was concerned, the man, Sloan, was responsible not only for her father’s death, but for her mother’s, as well. Not that her mother had ever been much of a parent, but she’d been all Gabrielle had in the world. Sloan had taken that away from her.
Gabrielle doubted she would survive the coming face-off to get on with her life, but maybe that was her true destiny. This business would have been finished two years ago if she hadn’t been framed by a so-called friend. She’d spent eighteen months doing time for someone else’s stupidity. She’d tried to fight it at first, but with no money and her only legal counsel having been assigned by the court, she’d pretty much been screwed from the outset. So, she’d sucked it up and done the time. Used it as a learning experience, a chance to hone her focus. If she could survive prison, she could do this. No problema.
All she had to do was find the bastard known as Sloan.
Someone around here would slip up and give her the information she needed. She wouldn’t give up until she had the information she needed.
Both her mother and her father had allowed life to get in the way of a decent relationship with their daughter. Their combined shortfalls had forged a strength in her that was relentless. One she hadn’t recognized herself until a few months ago. She would not allow anything to get in her way. She wanted to do something right just once. And this would be it.
Sloan was dead already.
He just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter Two
A.J. Braddock had worked at the Colby Agency a short time, but during that brief stint he had learned many things. For one, Victoria Colby-Camp never misread a client. She hired only the very best in the business of private investigations and her ability to make things happen was uncanny.
But in the