“Need some help?” he asked.
“It’s just a slow leak, but it’s driving me crazy.” Her voice was strained, like she was trying to work a wrench. “I’ve got this.”
In direct opposition to the words, the sink began to drip faster.
“You’re making it worse,” he said, and bit back his grin when she swore beneath her breath and climbed out from beneath the sink, her face and hair wet.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing.” He grinned. “I have a question.”
She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze warily. “What?”
“Do I get a key?”
She seemed to relax marginally and moved to a drawer so full of junk he had no idea how she found anything, but she pulled out a key and slapped it into his palm.
He closed his fingers around hers. He waited until she met his gaze to ask the question he knew she’d been expecting before. “Do you greet all of your tenants with a kiss?”
“No.” She looked away. “And you’re my first tenant.”
“Setting a new policy, then,” he said with a nod. “My lucky day. So who’s the dentist?”
She stared at him as if just realizing something and whirled, eyeing the clock on the wall next to the fridge. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“He never showed!” she said.
“Your dentist?”
“No call, nothing.” She snatched a cookie from the plate and shoved it in her mouth. She chewed once, grimaced, muttered “Dammit!” and then spit it out into the sink.
He grinned, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you laughing at me?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She pointed at him. “Now that was a big, fat lie.”
“Never said that I couldn’t lie,” he said, “only that I choose not to.” Mostly. “So the dentist . . . he was a blind date?”
She blew out a sigh. “Yes. I’ve been stood up by a guy who hasn’t even met me yet.” She looked down at herself. “Which means it isn’t the dress’s fault. Ha!”
When he didn’t respond, she lifted her head, eyes narrowed. “You think there’s something wrong with this dress, too? My sister, Darcy, said it was a granny dress.”
Parker fought a smile. “I was thinking bingo night. But it wouldn’t have stopped me from taking you out.”
They stared at each other until his phone buzzed. Pulling it from his pocket, he looked at the screen. Oh shit, not good—a FaceTime call from his boss. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to take this,” he said, and walked from the room and into the living room before hitting answer.
“’Bout time,” Sharon Morton said. “Where the hell are you?”
He’d purposely answered with his back to the living room wall, a blank off-white color that could be anywhere in the world. “On leave,” he said. “As you well know.”
She gave him a steady look. “You can’t blame me for checking in on my most prized special agent.”
Uh-huh. Granted, there were only two hundred USFW special agents nationwide, and maybe he’d been touted as cream of the crop, but he knew damn well there were others every bit as good as him. “We both know you say that to all your men.”
Her mouth curved. Sharon, the SAC, special agent in charge, reported directly to the chief officer in Washington on each of the eight field regions of the United States. Most hated her because she ruled with an iron fist, but Parker had never had a problem with her. She was direct and tough as nails and knew how to let her team do what they did best: catch criminals.
She was also a curvy bombshell who, if you didn’t know her, looked like an actress playing the part. If you did know her, you knew better than to dismiss her as only a hot chick because she’d put your balls in a vise for even thinking it.
“I’m going to assume you’re at home,” she said. “And not directly disobeying orders not to follow the leads from your informant on the Carver case.”
Since that wasn’t a question, Parker said nothing.
“Because,” she went on in that same I-eat-puppies-for-breakfast voice, “if I thought you were in Idaho after all that happened—”
“You mean after the case was dropped?”
She gave him a long look. “That, too.”
The case was the bane of Parker’s existence. Tripp Carver was still on the loose, left free to continue his reign of terror on endangered big game. He was out there right now, bringing illegal gains into the country, things like rhino and elephant tusks, and tiger parts, among other things—all highly valued by antique dealers. These goods were then distributed and sold at high dollars.
As in millions of dollars, annually.
Last year alone thirty thousand elephants had been slaughtered for their ivory, which sold for $1,500 a pound. Illegal rhino horns commanded prices as high as $45,000 a pound, roughly equivalent to the price of gold.
They’d knocked out the dealers directly beneath Carver, but that wouldn’t slow the asshole down for long.
Parker and his team had been closing in on him, and in fact had located him at one of his storage warehouses in Oregon three weeks ago, when in the ensuing scuffle one agent had been killed and another injured.
Parker rubbed his ribs. A major setback, yeah, but he and the team had laid out a new sting—only to be one hundred percent shut down by Sharon. She’d pulled the plug on the entire operation, saying that they’d spent enough money on this case, that they had what they needed for now—twelve dealers in jail—and that there were other open cases that needed their attention, newer and shinier cases.
Parker disagreed with the stand-down order. His informant, Mick Diablo, an ex-smuggler for Carver—furs, skins, anything that commanded money—had heard a rumor that there was currently $4.5 million worth of rhino horns and elephant ivory sitting in storage that would soon be sold off—if the cache wasn’t located first.
Parker intended to locate it. And Carver while he was at it.
One week ago, Mick had slipped Parker a solid tip, a sighting of Carver in Rocky Falls, an isolated, out-of-the-way county in northern Idaho, some town named Cat’s Paw.
Parker hadn’t been able to locate Cat’s Paw on any map, but he’d found Rocky Falls. When he’d pushed back on their stand-down order, thinking he had a real shot at finding the Butcher once and for all, he’d been told in no uncertain terms to drop it.
Parker had said that he could do a lot of things pretty damn well, but dropping it wasn’t one of them.
In return, the powers that be had suggested that since he was so recently injured and all, not to mention grieving the loss of fellow agent Ned Force, now would be a great time to take some of his thirty-two saved vacation days. Or all of them. Maybe in the South Pacific.
Parker had thought Idaho a better fit. He wasn’t exactly sure what outcome he was hoping for, but he just had a feeling that somehow Carver would screw them and vanish. He couldn’t let that happen. “We are an inch away from nailing Carver,” he said to Sharon, watching her face carefully. “Why not go after him with all we’ve got?”
“You realize no one else in the entire office questioned me on this,” Sharon said.