Page 79 of Risky Passion

He took a sharp curve in the road way too fast. “You could say that.”

The wind slipped through the bullet hole, tossing my hair into my eyes. Pushing the unruly waves behind my ears, I asked, “Have you identified who the body is?”

He shook his head, and his gaze flicked between me and the car’s high beams lighting up the dark road ahead. “That’s Whitney’s job to figure out. But the body was a woman, and Whitney reckons she’d only been buried for a couple of weeks.”

“Jesus.” I sat forward, bracing myself against the dashboard as we veered around another sharp turn. Onyx whined softly in the back, and as her large head rested on the edge of the seat, her eyes closed.How on earth can she sleep with the way Jaxson was driving?

I returned my attention to Jaxson, and his lovely lips were drawn into a tight line, like he’d determined not to tell me anymore.

Too bad.I don’t give up that easily. “Why would someone bury a body there?” I asked.

“Because they have connections to the place.” His voice was tight, calculated, like he was trying to figure things out as he spoke. “Whitney guessed the woman was about fifty or sixty years old.”

“Could she have been an orphan there?” I adjusted the seatbelt over my arm, trying to stop the throbbing.

“That’s what I was thinking. But we don’t know for sure yet.”

The moonlight spilled through the windshield, illuminating the handsome lines of his face.Wow, his lashes are so long.

Jesus, Tory. Focus. I cleared my throat. “But why would the person bury her there when the grounds are still being searched?”

Conflict burned in his eyes for a beat, but it quickly vanished as he sighed. “They couldn’t have known I was going to the orphanage.” His jaw tightened. “Only my family does. I go there in my own time. Off the clock.”

I frowned, trying to follow the tangled thread of logic. “Okay, so why do you think Whitney is in trouble?”

“Because,” he said, his tone dropping lower, “when I found out your plane had been shot down, I told my other brother, Parker, about the fresh grave.”

“But you said you could trust him.”

He shot me a warning glare. “I do trust him. With my life.”

His certainty was unshakable, and it made me ache a little, thinking about the bond he and his brothers shared; something I have missed terribly since my sister gave up trusting me.

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my uninjured hand. “But if you only told Parker, how did anyone else find out?”

“Because,” he glared at me so fiercely my stomach dropped, “he had to tell the chief about the body.”

“Whoa, wait. What?” My heart hammered as the car swerved slightly on the uneven road. “You don’t think Captain Watts is corrupt, do you?”

His jaw clenched so hard that the muscle in his cheek bulged. “All I know is that Eddie didn’t seem surprised to see me with you. And that means whoever Parker told, they told someone else, who put Eddie into action.”

“But who?”

The car skidded slightly on the loose gravel before he corrected it, bumping the tires back onto the pockmarked bitumen. Onyx let out another whine.

When Jaxson didn’t respond, I started working through the details I already knew. My Border Force crew had been coordinating with Rosebud and Risky Shores police, along with the Alpha Tactical Opsteam, ever since we recovered that shipping container from the ocean that was filled with bodies.

And just like when we found the trafficking victims on that abandoned boat, and the others at Cody’s corn farm, it was always the same: every time we thought we were closing in on the bastards behind the Scorpion Industries crime syndicate, something would happen. They’d slip through our fingers, and the clues would vanish like smoke.

The last big fish we’d landed was Grant Hughes.

I nodded slowly, fitting another jagged piece of the puzzle into place. “You think it’s B, don’t you?”

He sucked in a sharp breath, his shoulders rising as he exhaled slowly, like he was trying to calm a storm brewing inside him. Finally, he gave a reluctant nod.

“B,” I repeated, my mind racing. “She’s the woman that accountant Grant Hughes wanted protection from, isn’t she?”

Jaxson seized me with his eyes, and the flicker of surprise in his gaze was unmistakable.

---