“Can I take you out to dinner?”
Shelly wasn’t sure what she expected from their proclamations, but a date was not one of them. “Like a date?” she asked. And he nodded, a sly smile growing on his face.
“And dessert,” he added, raising his hand and stroking a path down the center of her chest between her breasts.
“I need to get back to Abel,” she said breathily. “But I’m free tomorrow night. He’ll be with the Connelly’s.”
“Pick you up at six?”
“Sounds good. Be careful, Sheriff,” she called out as she began her trek back to her house.
“I will, sweetheart. I’m going to let Alexis know so we can take a more thorough look,” he said with that bit of Southern twang that she was growing to love.
Now she had to wait patiently for their date the next night.
Shelly twisted and turned in front of her mirror as she watched the red dress skirt around her knees. She felt delicate and beautiful in the dress Cassidy had gifted to her years ago, but she had never worn. Abel had even commented on the material as she hung the dress in her room earlier that day before taking him to the park.
A knock on the door sounded and Shelly was surprised that Preston had arrived right on time. She placed her feet into a pair of gold strappy sandals then went to greet him. She had to bite her tongue when she opened the door and found him standing on the other side wearing a navy striped dress shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and a pair of black slacks that hugged his legs in all of the right areas. Her body was melting in a puddle beneath his stare as she took in her own fill of him.
“Are you sure you want to go out tonight?” he murmured. “We could just stay in.”
As much as she wanted to peel his clothes away from his body, she wanted to go out on a date more. It wasn’t something she had done frequently enough in her life. From what Shelly could remember, she had only been on a handful of dates ever.
“I’d rather go out and spend some time with you, then if the date is everything I imagine it will be, we can come back and I’ll show you what I’m wearing under my dress.”
Slipping an arm around her waist as she shut the door to her house, Preston asked, “Can you give me a hint?”
“I’m not wearing anything at all,” she said, her voice sounding husky and seductive to her own ears.
He drove her to a winery about half an hour from Carson and took in the incredible sunset behind the mountain as they ate dinner. They talked about where they grew up and how they both had tremendous respect for their single mothers. Finally, she asked if he found anything from the night before and he explained that he hadn't found much other than a few footprints. His security camera had been triggered offline, so he didn’t even have a visual of the car.
Shelly began to wonder if she had imagined the entire thing, but he assured her that he believed her completely. He had noticed one of the windows to his mudroom had been opened, but he couldn’t say that it hadn’t been his own doing since he left in a hurry.
Worry filled her, not only that a stranger had been on the property that she shared with him, but that the sheriff of the town couldn’t figure out what had happened.
“Don’t worry. I installed a secondary set of cameras on an entirely different network. But I’m pretty confident it was a couple of teenagers trying to pull one over on the sheriff. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Preston tried to put Shelly at ease, but the situation still didn’t sit right with her even as he drove them home and stripped the fragile material from her body, leaving her bare before him. He took his sweet time making love to her through the night, but as they drifted off to sleep, Shelly couldn’t help but think that Preston had something else on his mind.
Chapter Ten
The town was gearing up for the Fourth of July celebration at the end of the week; decorations and flags lined the downtown streets. Preston had already been called out on seven homes setting off illegal fireworks. He didn’t really care, but the mayor was worried one of the sparks would catch the surrounding forests on fire. Preston admitted that it was a valid concern.
“Sheriff,” Jackie beckoned as she hobbled into his office on a pair of crutches. He wasn’t sure what had happened while he was out, but Alexis said Jackie had twisted her ankle hiking. He wasn’t aware that his assistant liked the hike. “There is a file for you on my desk from Georgia.”
Realizing that the file was related to the Harposia case, he stepped around her and grabbed the large folder from her desk. “Thanks. Is there anything I can do for you? “
“Unless you can have me healed before the parade on Friday, I don’t think so. I’m not sure how I’m going to walk with the knitting club when I can barely go from my car to my house without falling.”
“Well . . .let me know if you need my help after all,” he said as he quietly shut the door.
He didn’t want Jackie privy to the sealed document's information. They had their own file for the Harposia case, but this one came directly from the FBI dated for the last ten years. Preston flipped through the pages of statements quickly and then changed his focus to the cartel members that had already been arrested. One of these men had a tie to the recent report of human trafficking in Georgia. He just had to figure out who.
Sorting through the stack, he tossed out the images of members arrested five years or later, knowing that they would be the least likely to have contact with someone in Georgia. The early dealings of the Harposia cartel happened in the New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania areas. The cartel didn’t begin moving south until four years or so.
By coincidence, Preston landed on the arrest record and image of DeShaun Taylor. The man had been high as a kite when he was arrested after being caught trying to sell an automatic rifle and a twelve-year-old girl. Preston and his crew had been tracking the online listing for weeks until they made a false inquiry. DeShaun had stumbled into the alleyway with the young girl that had been injected with enough drugs to kill her or keep her compliant. Preston had immediately paid for the girl and ushered her off to safety. The team had recognized the insignia all of the Harposia cartel associates wore on their wrists, which linked him to one of the worst alliances in the area. It took only one more day to track down where the lowlife lived and Preston’s team took him down. It was only a misunderstanding that Shelly had been involved at all. The agent
in charge of following DeShaun had forgotten to disclose her relationship with the suspect.