Trouble (B-Squad 2.75)

"That's what I thought too," she whispered. "Until the assholes in the truck showed up at The Hamburger Shack, but who leaves a million-dollar diamond in a glove box?"

Someone cleared their throat. Hand going to his gun, Drew whipped around to face the threat. Two men in matching dark suits stood with their hands clasped in front of them. Everything from their close-cropped hair to the way they held themselves screamed Feds. As if they had it choreographed, they flipped open their wallet badges.

"It's one point six million, actually," the guy on the right said. "I'm Agent Curtis. This is Agent Ritter. FBI. Is there somewhere we can talk?"

Great. Drew swallowed a groan. His life had just gotten a lot more complicated. Why did that always seem to happen when he was around Leah? Still on guard, he stalked over to the men and inspected their badges. They were legit. The Feds had come to Catfish Creek. Lucky him. His last week on the job was supposed to be boring, filled with dumb shit like dealing with Beauford Lynch's eternal war against Maisy Aucoin's cat. Then Leah Camacho had come squealing into town with what was probably a stolen diamond and what was definitely bad news in the form of two paid thugs on her ass. He let out a sigh and surrendered to the inevitable.

He nodded at Curtis and handed him back his badge. "We can use my office."

"This doesn't involve you," Leah said, stubborn right down to the freckles on her toes.

Ignoring Ritter's arched eyebrow and the smile Curtis was failing to smother, Drew turned his attention to the woman who always seemed to disrupt everything about his orderly world. In her tight jeans, T-shirt and Doc Martens, with her long hair streaming down her back like an invitation to wrap around his fist and hold tight, she was nothing but trouble. And he wasn't about to let her out of his sight anytime soon.

"Sweets," he said, his voice dropping to a lower register that he usually didn't use outside the bedroom. "Don't even try to fool yourself on that one."

3

Leah

If he didn't stop calling her Sweets she was going to...she didn't know what but it would probably involve the hard toe of her Doc Martens. She'd given him the cold shoulder on the ride over to the sheriff's office, only to have him ignore it completely. The man was an ass. And now she had the Feds on her ass. Just wait until her brother Isaac found out—and he would. With his connections as part of the B-Squad Investigations and Security in Fort Worth, there was no way he wouldn't.

Keeping that little tidbit to herself, she followed Drew into his office, taking the time to admire the way his ass made well-worn blue jeans look even better. Yeah, it seemed kind of crazy to be mentally drooling over his butt under the circumstances, but ‘roided up assholes in big trucks who were obviously compensating for something didn't shake her up. It just pissed her off. And when it came to her and Drew, anger and sex went together like toasted PB and J.

Drew's office could have been a picture in Texas Sheriff's Monthly. There wasn't a single item out of place and absolutely nothing—with the exception of one family photo featuring his parents and bitch queen of a sister, Jessica—personal about the place.

"Have a seat," Drew said, gesturing to the three chairs facing his desk as he sat down behind it. "Why don't you guys bring me up to speed."

Nope. That wasn't going to fly. The Rhinestone Cowboys had come to her. She wasn't sitting by the sidelines now while the menfolk discussed serious things. This was her life and she wasn't about to be shut out of it—especially not by someone who'd taken her sense of trust and shredded it completely.

"Us," she said, dragging one of the chairs around so it was next to Drew's and facing the agents.

Drew arched an eyebrow. "Us?"

"Yeah, bring us up to speed," she said, sitting down and giving him her best don't-fuck-with-me-fella look. "I'm not just here because I'm cute."

"No, you're not," Agent Curtis said right before the tips of his ears turned cherry red. "What I mean to say is that we've been tracking you since you left the car rental place in Fort Worth."

She froze in her seat. "Why?"

"The fifteen-carat diamond," Agent Ritter said.

Her stomach sank. Part of her—that idiot part that believed things would always work out in the end, even when she knew they wouldn’t—had held out hope that the whole thing was just a bizarre misunderstanding.

"It's really real?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

Ritter nodded. "It's the last piece from a massive jewelry heist in Antwerp. We'd been following Ricky Jessup—that’s the guy who'd been behind the rental desk. He'd been in on the heist but double-crossed the rest of his crew and walked away with the best diamond in the lot. His fellow thieves weren't particularly happy with him, as you can imagine, and decided to get it back. When he spotted the guys in the truck tailing him, he ditched them long enough to swap your compact rental with the Aston Martin rental he'd been driving. According to what he said before he lawyered up, he figured he'd track you down later using the rental company's LoJack system."

The agent's words swirled around in her head. "So it wasn't the boobs."

Ritter blinked twice. "I don't know what that means."

"Never mind." She wasn't about to explain that she'd figured the rental agent had gone boob-blind when he'd upgraded her. With the explanation for what really happened—and why—taking hold, some of the confused fog lifted, leaving two very important unanswered questions. "Why are you telling me this? You have the diamond now. Why didn't you just arrest the Rhinestone Cowboys?"

"We need you," Curtis answered.

Drew stiffened beside her, his brown eyes narrowing as he stared down the two agents. "Why?"

"The guys in the truck are low-level," Curtis said. "We want the man who organized the job. And if they think the diamond is in federal custody and they have no chance of getting it back, we have a much harder job at tracking them back to the head of the snake. But if they think you still have it..."