“Fuck,” I whispered, pushing the confrontation away. I’d been in tenser scenes than that. I needed to get a grip. And an orgasm. I groaned at myself.
I still needed to clean out the drawers in the dresser to make room for my things… clothes and not just my small sex toy collection. I was a loner and a woman has needs. As for the rest of the place, I would’ve liked to clean out the whole house, but I didn’t want to overstep. This place wasn’t mine. I wasn’t Natalie Shefield. I was Willow Johnson, DEA agent.
The real homeowner would arrive when the case was over, and I couldn’t very well tell her I’d donated her uncle’s things, even though that’s exactly what should be done for most of it. The house hadn’t been updated since the sixties, and I had to be thankful it was too damned warm to need hot water. The place needed work—a gross understatement—and I’d have to tackle some of it while I was here or else it would seem strange.
I pulled my damp hair up into a ponytail and slipped on a pair of cowgirl boots to go with my jeans and tank top. It was time to meet the neighbor, and not the sexy one. I was cranky because while Rob Wolf was a tall drink of water—as they said in Montana—I hadn’t gotten off. He’d interrupted me right before the big finish, and now, I was not only hot but horny too.
Not wanting to go to Markle’s place completely unarmed, I slid a small pocket knife into my back pocket. I’d rather take my Glock, but that wasn’t an option. A knife I could explain away but not a pistol.
I picked up my cell about to text my boss an update, when he called. Speak of the devil… which made me an employee of the devil.
“Johnson here,” I answered.
“Yeah, what’s your status?” No hello, no how’s it going in Montana?
“I’ve arrived on location and, ah, settled in.” Of course, I didn’t quite get to finish that settling in, thanks to Rob Wolf. “I’m about to go to Markle’s for a friendly introduction.”
“I still don’t like it,” he grumbled.
It worked out perfectly that Natalie Shefield had inherited the property next door to Jett Markle but had yet to move in, meaning no one in the area had met her. We couldn’t have asked for a better setup. Finding someone to replace Natalie, a twenty-six-year-old woman with ties to the state, had been narrowed down to me. Only me. I’d lived in Montana until the day after high school graduation, knew how people rolled around here. Regardless, Vaughn thought sending a female agent alone on a job was a disaster waiting to happen. He didn’t have another agent to spare to play house in Cooper Valley, Montana. Honestly, I didn’t want anyone cramping my style.
There was one advantage to being female in the DEA. It was, well, being female. I knew from my research that Markle was registered on several dating sites and cut a swath through the eligible women in town. He wasn’t going to pass on his pretty new neighbor. A single one, which was the nail in the coffin for me having a partner on this undercover job. It wasn’t as if any one of my male colleagues could show a little cleavage and sweet talk his way into Markle’s house to look for evidence of drug running.
Getting friendly with him was going to be the easiest and most efficient way to get up in his business. While he checked out my boobs in this snug tank top, I’d check out his place. I didn’t want to sleep with the guy—I definitely drew a line there, but I had to keep tabs on him, search his property, and figure out exactly what his connection was with the Columbian drug czar Carlos Murrieta. Getting him to think he had a shot of getting in my pants, that was something else entirely.
I rubbed some lip gloss on and applied a little mascara. Watch out, Markle. Here I come.
I headed out the back door, noticing the screen door needed the hinges oiled, and followed the path along the telephone line toward Markle’s ranch. The hedge fund tycoon-turned-rancher had bought the huge property next door. To the world, he’d retired a billionaire to the quiet life of Big Sky Country. The DEA knew he’d left because he’d lost a billion in clients’ money and been fired. Digging had discovered that one of his clients was a shell company for Murrieta. We had to assume he was either hiding in plain sight or a cog in the drug running to Canada.
The county records indicated his property was over a thousand acres, half of it open grazing land with a huge farmhouse, the other half rugged terrain with pine and aspen trees. Plenty of space for bad shit to go down.