Their Ex's Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha) (Texas Alpha Series Book 4) (10 page)

“That’s the question, right, baby?” Finn sank his fingers in her silky hair and he stroked her scalp. “Why would a businessman up and disappear, without a word, for over six weeks, then be found in another town altogether?”

“He must be doing something he shouldn’t,” Coco muttered.

“Yeah, babe,” he said. “I’m glad you came to see that yourself. I get all that time you were looking for him must have given you lots of time to think.”

“That call too,” she whispered, looking worried.

Finn silently vowed he was going to fix it, until she never worried over it or was scared about it again, and all she was left thinking about was him.

“Yeah, I got a feeling all this shit is the same shit, we just have to connect the dots.”

Coco’s hand rubbed against his stomach. “All of it?” she asked.

“Even my bust,” he muttered, and then she really looked surprised.

“Even men hiring PIs to find me?” she asked.

He rubbed her scalp. “Even that, babe.”

“Oh Lord,” she exclaimed. “What will we do?”

He hauled her against him.

“What I’m going to do is untangle this mess.” Then he kissed her temple. “What you’re going to do is, for once, doing what I tell you.”

––––––––

C
oco really tried to do what Finn wanted her to do, and that was stay at his house the next few days. But once again, she failed. Then again, what else could she do after nights of hot sex and submission, but go out and get a complete makeover?

It was simply as necessary as breathing, because she was starting a new life.

Leaping into it.

She didn’t go stupidly, though; instead she called Caval and asked him how she could go to a local beauty salon, be safe, and not bother Finn. Because Finn was busy with very important work, being a hot and sexy special agent. Well, she hadn’t really called Finn that to Caval, she’d just thought it.

Caval wasn’t too pleased with her plan, and he said he was busy, but he sensed he wasn’t going to stop her, so he was sending over one of his men.

What showed up at her door was more than a man; he was a mountain with charged blue eyes and a serious frown. He said his name was Link, and he said he didn’t fucking babysit chicks.

Coco looked him up and down. Jesus, he was a huge hunk, and then she brought a nail, which seriously needed a manicurist’s attention, to her lips.

“What if I pay you to be my bodyguard for the day?”

“I don’t take ten-dollar gigs,” he growled back, crossing his massive arms over his massive chest.

Coco sighed, and then tried for Southern sweet. “Well then, humor me—what is your going rate, Link?”

“A thousand,” he snapped.

Coco thought that he seriously needed people lessons along with some de-stressing therapy.

“All right, sweetie,” she replied airily. “I’ll give you a thousand for the day and the promise you will tell Finn, when he asks, that you were by my side all the time I was out.”

“Damn, lady.” Then he looked at her with curiosity in his eyes. “You really got that kind of cash?”

She did, and Coco told him how she had that much money on the ride to Beauty World Cuts and Nails in Link’s SUV, which had bulletproof windows.

How cool was that!

“Home beauty products,” Link muttered, as they pulled up to the salon. “You made millions with that?”

Coco nodded. “I was their highest seller seven years in a row, before I retired.”

Link shook his head, giving her a side-glance. “That’s actually impressive,” he said.

Coco smiled, and added a flip of her hair. “Thank you, sugar. Now come inside and I will treat you to a pedicure.”

“Hell no,” Link growled, and he made her stay inside the SUV for a few minutes as he “reconned” the area, as he called it.

It gave Coco the shivers. But she wasn’t stalling her brand-new life for anything. Especially not after she’d wasted weeks of it looking for Gordon, while he’d been in that town having an affair. Just the thought of it made her see red, but it also made her feel very stupid.

She didn’t like that.

When Link arrived back at her door to open it, he muttered, “Getting me inside this damn place is worth a thousand dollars, lady.”

Well, Coco thought so too, because if there was anywhere the bodybuilder hunk Link did not belong, it was Beauty World. But the ladies inside Beauty World really liked it.

There was some giggling, some hot looks Link’s way, and there was even one customer that knew both her and Link.

“Coco!” Carly exclaimed, as she hopped off her salon chair with foils for the highlights in her hair and she came over to hug Coco. “Link, I haven’t seen you since the party,” Carly said.

Link looked down on her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “It was a great party.”

Carly looked bemused, looking between Link and Coco.

“Well,” Coco said, patting Carly’s arm, “um, Link is my bodyguard,” she said finally, having not come up with a better answer.

Link offered a lethal grin, and then he went to check the back door, while dozens of female eyes followed his tight backside through the salon.

“What’s going on?” Carly asked with concern.

Coco patted her shoulder. “It’s a long story, honey.”

That was how Coco ended up telling Carly everything that had been happening since she’d first met Special Agent Finn, while they sat in side-by-side salon chairs.

The story had Carly exclaiming, “That rotten, two-timing bastard. That’s lower than low.”

Coco actually felt tears in her eyes, because she had a friend who could understand the devastation she felt. She had always taken her wedding vows seriously, and for Gordon to treat them so callously had actually stunned her.

Coco tried to hold back the emotion in her voice, as if it hadn’t affected her as hard as it had, by airily saying, “Well, honey, you can see why it’s so necessary for me to have a total makeover this second.”

Carly nodded and smiled. “Finn is going to take you straight to bed once he sees that amazing new hairstyle, babe.”

Coco offered Carly a wobbly smile back. Link looked her way from where he sat at the front of the store, and nodded with his eyes. Together they made her feel much better.

Going blond and adding extensions
was
drastic, but she had to have drastic. She needed an entire life makeover, because she was actually living in the middle of that life makeover, and now she had to look the part.

She turned to Carly. “We have to have some very tricked-out nails, honey. Then you want to go shopping with me? I need clothes, stat. Clothes that don’t make me look like a suburban wife.”

Link growled from his seat, obviously not into going shopping, but she shushed him, and Carly nodded.

“Let me call Tess and Rusty to come along and we’ll make it a blowout,” Carly said.

Coco knew her eyes sparkled. “Definitely.”

***

F
inn got the call before his first cup of coffee in the office the multiple agencies had set up inside the police station. He stepped away to take the call, from talking to Ty about how they were going to break down Gordon further and get more information out of him.

Seeing who the call was from, and without a hello, Finn snapped into his cell phone, “Rome, I want to know who the fuck paid you to find Coco Maxwell.”

“Well, good morning, sunshine,” Caval rasped back at him.

“Cut the shit, Rome, and tell me what I need to know,” Finn demanded.

Finn could hear Caval sigh on the other end of the line. “As much as it pains me, I can’t tell you who the scumbag is. I’ve got a business to run, and me telling you things like that will ruin it.”

Finn growled as if he could tear it out of Caval. Then he paced along the windows at the front of the police house. Finally, he said, “Well, give me something.”

“That’s why I called.” There was a pause, then Caval’s rough voice continued, “And to tell you that your pretty lady is out on the town. But my man Link has her back.” He chuckled.

Finn took the phone away from his ear and swore. Then he slammed it back to his ear. “Link better be damn good,” he muttered.

“He is,” Caval assured him. “I’d bet my life on him.”

Finn ground his teeth, thinking at least he had another good reason to spank Coco’s fine ass that evening, when he got a hold of it.

Finally, Finn asked, “What’s she doing?”

“Hair and nails, and Link just called and told me she has hooked up with her posse. They’re going clothes shopping.”

Finn groaned. “Jesus.”

“The only advice I can give you, buddy,” Caval said. “You’re going to get to appreciate the results.”

The thought hit Finn that his babe wasn’t boring. But he was beginning to wonder about the way she’d tell him she was going to do one thing, then she’d fucking not do it. It was dangerous ... it was lying to him, and it was driving him crazy.

“Thanks for the advice,” Finn said.

“I’m also going to do you a solid, brother, because we men need to stick together,” Caval said, bizarrely. But Finn got it a second later. “Don’t blow it when you see your babe went long and blond.”

“Hell,” Finn said. Then he added another: “Hell.”

“Blonds have more fun,” Caval drawled.

“Damn,” Finn muttered—not her gorgeous, beautiful, and dick-hardening dark hair.

“So looking into this to keep my client happy, my rep dirty and dangerous, and still not giving him what he asked for, I can tell you my thing is tangled in your recent big bust,” Caval said.

Finn forced his mind from silky black strands sliding over his bare chest and back to the revelations Caval was imparting ... at great risk to his business, Finn imagined.

“Someone paid to have Coco picked up,” Finn repeated. “And it has to do with this corruption ring, which is getting fucking deeper and deeper the more I go.”

“Exactly,” Caval replied.

Finn looked out the windows with his eyes narrowing. “Only thing I have that connects all of them is Gordon damn Maxwell.”

“Fucking-A, I knew you were a golden agent,” Caval rasped.

Finn’s features tightened. “Thanks for not telling me, brother,” he said lowly. “Your name, from my lips around here, will never happen.”

“Appreciate it,” Caval said. “But I believe favors are what make the world go around, and I will be calling yours in one day. But only for this ... everything Coco is on me, buddy.”

Finn raised an eyebrow. It sounded as if Caval had some of Coco’s Southern charm working on him. But he didn’t get jealous, because he was the man who had fucked her sweet pussy just hours ago, and it was his name she’d screamed in pleasure. A man liked other men to admire their women, just as long as they didn’t touch.

They said their goodbyes, and then Finn went to confront Gordon Maxwell, who was becoming the dot in the center of all the bad elements in his county.

Bookkeeper ... fuck, it was always the bookkeeper.

On the way to interrogate Maxwell, he grabbed Justice, because the man had as much stake in that area as he had. Besides, Justice could look like he was going to scalp a man if he wanted to. Finn decided he needed that because he was getting to the bottom of the whole mess, which he was just starting to line up.

Finn hauled Justice into the room on the other side of the one-sided mirror from where Maxwell sat cuffed to an interrogation table.

Finn shut the door and he told Justice, “You don’t know this, but that lowlife’s soon-to-be ex-wife is now my woman.” Finn walked over to where Justice stood looking at Maxwell, who looked pasty. Finn nodded toward Maxwell. “He cheated on her.”

“Damn,” Justice said, with his black eyes narrowing. “I knew she was in town desperately looking for him. But I didn’t know that was him.”

“She was, while he was doing my nearly ex Katie, and his wife Coco was SOS-ing missing reports all over town.”

“Low,” Justice growled.

“But the thing I’ve been picking up, is why does a very married man leave his wife with no word for weeks, and then end up in our town? To do what?”

Justice went on alert. “There are never damn coincidences in this line of work.”

Finn scratched his goatee. “I agree. You see something that looks like one, you’re not looking at it right.” He leaned closer to Justice. “The prick is a bookkeeper.”

Justice’s firm lips flat-lined. “Bad guys with as big an operation as we are seeing need a money man. They always damn well have one.”

Finn straightened and then he glared at Maxwell, who could not see or hear them on the other side of the one-way glass. “Caval got a contract to pick up Coco Maxwell, my new lady and that asshole’s soon-to-be ex. That sounds like another peg in the big damn board, which is building against that prick in there.”

Justice got a mean look. “I don’t like the bad guys messing with innocent women.”

Finn gripped Justice’s shoulder once with a squeeze, and then let his hand drop. “I don’t either, buddy. We need to get this asshole to spill and I’ma thinking he’s going to give us the fucking head of all this shit. Because I see a bigger bad guy working the gangs
and
the Indians.”

“You and I both see it, brother,” Justice said. Then he asked, “How you do you want to go at Maxwell?”

“I need you to do that badass thing you do with just a look, where you make a man believe you’ll scalp him at any second,” Finn said.

Justice’s eyes glittered. “You got it,” he said with a deep edge to his voice.

Finn was still plotting his first moves on breaking Maxwell when he opened the door to the interrogation room, and he followed a stoic Justice inside. But before Finn could say a word, Maxwell looked at Justice, blanched whiter than he already was, and then started wailing.

“Witness protection!” Maxwell cried, and he scooted his chair back with high-pitched squeaks until it hit the wall. Then he wailed something that seriously pissed Finn off and put a big dent in his elation about how he was going to take a big-ass bad guy down.

“For me
and
my wife!” Maxwell cried. “We need witness protection!”

––––––––