Page 37 of Westin

“He’s a member of the Southern Bloods. This particular group specializes in drugs and weapons, mostly crystal meth, but some cocaine and heroin. Fang is one of the lieutenants under a guy they call Razor. We’ve been trying to identify this guy for…” She stopped, finding herself unable to recall when they first started work on this case. It seemed kind of insane that she couldn’t remember, but the answer didn’t come right away. She must have been tired. She ran a hand over her forehead, shaking her head slightly. “A couple of years, I guess.”

“We?” Clint asked patiently.

She cleared her throat, her eyes jumping back to the computer screen. Who could she trust? Could she tell this man, who was basically a stranger to her, what her true identity was? It’d been so long since she’d last told someone the truth, she couldn’t even remember the truth herself sometimes. It was a pitfall of being undercover for such long stretches at a time. But it was also about safety. If he knew too much, not only could he put her at risk; it could put him at risk, too.

“I don’t know how he found me. He must have realized what he was looking for wasn’t in my things.”

“What was he looking for?”

Again, she hesitated. How much could she really tell him? Clint, to his credit, was patient, just waited until she finally reached under the sweater she wore—his wife’s sweater—and pulled out a slender pendant that was shaped like a sunflower. Carefully, she pulled the edges of the flower apart and it revealed a memory card stuck inside.

“What is it?”

“Evidence. Names, locations, money. It’s business records that never should have been kept, evidence that can be used to find this Razor.” She put it back inside the pendant and dropped the necklace down her shirt again. “I was working in a nightclub they owned, a front for some of their other business interests—illegal gambling, prostitution—and I got close to Fang’s girl. She let it slip that he kept some of this information on his private laptop. I found an excuse to get into his office, and he caught me downloading the information. I managed to get out of there, but he must have followed me.”

Clint sat back and rested his hands across his belly, clearly digesting everything she’d just told him. She ran her hands over her face, her exhausted mind trying to figure things out. She knew there was something wrong here, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. How had Fang found her? Again? She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t feel right.

“I caught the first plane that left Phoenix International,” she said more to herself than to him. “I used a credit card to rent the car out of New Orleans, so maybe that’s how he found me. But I drove for hours. I stopped in a motel in Dallas, but that was it. I was on the road nearly a full fourteen hours before he caught up with me. I don’t know how he found me, or how he knew I was here. How could he have found me here? No one knew I was here.”

“Did you tell the man you called?”

“Will?” Lea shook her head, frowning as she did. “No. I told him I was somewhere safe, but that’s all.”

“You didn’t say you were on a ranch?”

“You can ask Westin. He heard the call.”

“What about the second call? The one you made today?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Are you sure you guys aren’t a real security firm?” She scratched her cheek as she recalled the phone call. “No. I told him about the box Westin and I found in the paddock, but nothing else.”

“Why did you tell him about the box?”

“It was part of a case we worked once. Some really bad people.” She was babbling a little now, the day catching up to her. “We were working a case out of California where they used the boxes to make dead drops. Half-buried them on a stranger’s property so that if they were discovered, someone else would be blamed. They’d put drugs in them, and their dealers would come and take them, leaving money in their place.” She rubbed a spot on her shoulder, recalling an altercation she’d gotten into during that case that had left her pretty bruised afterward. “We took out the guy running it, though. That’s why I told him—because we thought that was done. That box shouldn’t have been there.”

“How do you know it’s the same sort of thing?”

Her eyebrows rose slightly. “The writing on the top. It’s a code that took us like a week to figure out. It denotes the dealer who’s supposed to use the dead drop.”

“It’s someone’s name?”

She nodded. “Petey J.”

Clint grunted. “You should have told us that part.”

She shook her head. “Didn’t think it was relevant.”

“Who do you work for, Lea? Is Fang going to bring more people to the ranch to find that little memory card?”

“No.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, surprised to find them covered in slimy sweat. She was freezing, but the room was warm, and her body was reacting to it. “He’s not going to tell anyone what happened. It’ll get him in trouble with his bosses. He’s not supposed to keep that information just lying around where someone can find it. That’s how this Razor has managed to stay off our radar for so long: he’s too smart to make mistakes.”

Clint’s eyes moved compassionately over her. “You’re exhausted,” he commented.

She laughed a little. “I guess all this horseback riding is more of a workout than it looks.”

“Come on.” He held out a hand to her. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Gratefully, she took his hand and let him lead her out of the barn. The burst of cold air that greeted them as they slipped through the door took her breath away. Clint took her arm, guiding her like the gentleman she could see he was. But instead of taking her back across the ranch to the guest bunkhouse, he led her to another building that was some three or four hundred yards from the barn, a building that looked more like a log cabin than something that belonged on a modern ranch. A welcoming burst of heat enveloped them as they stepped through the door.

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