Their Ex's Redrock Twilight (Texas Alpha) (Texas Alpha Series Book 4) Page 12

  Once they’d gotten Torenni sorted and cuffed, they took him back to the living room and righted a dining room chair to sit him in.

  When Finn had been undercover, he’d known the mob was doing unsavory things around town, or trying to; he’d even poked around in their world a bit to see what he could come up with. It had been unavoidable, because everywhere he turned in the town’s sleazy underworld, he’d come across another mob bad guy.

  What he hadn’t known until after the bust was how linked the three major factions of bad guys in town were. He also hadn’t known who was at the top of the heap, pretty much directing them all. And that was the damn mob, with their highest boss Coronado as the leader over it all.

  Whose right-hand man he now held handcuffed on nothing but air.

  To say he was winging it with Torenni was an understatement, as he walked to the fireplace while Torenni glared at him. Gordon Maxwell’s books could nail Coronado and his entire operation under the RICO law, but Coronado’s second in command could nail the mothereffer for life.

  If he talked.

  Justice kept silent with his gun on Torenni, because he had also figured out what they had at stake in finding Torenni, looking as if he was on the run and maybe not number two any longer.

  Finn eyed the bricks on the fireplace, while silently counting ten across and then ten down. He could see the brick looked untouched, so he was pretty certain Coronado’s men, Torenni included, hadn’t found the jump drive with all the local mob’s books on it.

  That meant Torenni wasn’t there for that, and had obviously been beat up for other reasons.

  “Are you having a little rift with your boss, Victor?” Finn asked, with his back still turned to Torenni.

  He heard Torenni’s non-answering grunt behind him, and when he turned to look at the man, Torenni’s gaze was blazing.

  “So Coronado isn’t too happy he couldn’t find your bookkeeper’s books, huh?” Finn asked.

  Torenni looked instantly surprised, but then settled into a typical scowl.

  So Finn continued, “You know I got him, Victor. Your boss is going down. It is just a matter of whether you go down with him or not.”

  “Damn it,” Victor said, and then he winced as if the beating he’d received had caused him pain somewhere on his beaten body. “They’ll fucking kill me,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” Finn agreed. “Like they already tried to. You want to tell me why?”

  Victor hung his head, looking at the floor. “Find the books or it’s your fucking ass,” he muttered, what had to have been Coronado’s command. But then Victor told Finn something he didn’t know. “I was the one found Maxwell and convinced him to work for us. In my fucking world, that made that idiot my man.”

  Finn just held back his chuckle at pegging Gordon so right, and then he turned and lifted his hands to pry a certain brick out of the fireplace. Finn heard Victor’s sound of disbelieving frustration behind him as he pulled two jump drives out of the hole where the loose brick had been.

  “Righteous,” Justice said, as Finn turned and gave him a hard grin.

  “I’ll talk, damn it,” Victor exclaimed. “Just let me go under afterward.”

  That meant both he and Gordon would soon disappear. But it also meant Coco would be safe, and it meant Finn had damn well gotten them all.

  All the way to the top.

  After they’d called a black and white to pick up Torenni, Finn and Justice leaned against Justice’s SUV outside the condo.

  “Besides Creed and a couple others, did we get them all?” Justice asked.

  Finn shrugged.

  “The mob’s fingers are long,” Finn said. “They had their thumb on the bikers and the reservation rats just here in town. Making them work, drugs, guns, human trafficking, and prostitution, that we know of. For their profit. They could just as easily have some other damn lowlife faction we don’t know about around, under their thumb.”

  Justice leaned against the SUV and crossed his arms. “The human trafficking, all Indian women, sits bad with me.”

  “It’s a big land out there,” Finn muttered. “Who the hell is buying them?”

  Justice straightened from the SUV. “It’s time we talk to the council. It’s time we get the word out and let the people know their women aren’t safe.”

  “You got it, brother,” Finn agreed with him.

  Unfortunately, it would be a little longer before that came to pass.

  Fifteen] Just Played Bad For So Long

  Finn was sipping a whiskey when he heard the bartender in front of him making an interested male sound. It was the sound of a dude who had just seen something hot and most likely female, Finn thought.

  Finn turned his gaze, instinctively knowing it was Coco. Then he probably made the same kind of sound the bartender had just made, because his woman was fucking smoking, as in sizzling his male libido all to hell.

  He didn’t even care that she was blond any longer, because that wealth of silky hair flowed around her, and all he saw was her gorgeous face and her sexy curves in some kind of tight leather pants. Damn, it was as if the black leather was painted over her hips, which swung like sex, as she clicked her four-inch heeled boots toward him.

  She fucking rocked being feminine to the max. He was slightly sorry he’d asked her to come meet him in a public place to celebrate his victory, because looking at her decked out, to make him pant, instantly had him ready to fuck her.

  But he wasn’t a kid. He’d live through it. Instead, he enjoyed the buzz of knowing she was his. And wasn’t that the best damn thing in everything that had happened. There were times when he thought he might be alone for the rest of his life, because he’d been beaten down and pretty alone.

  But there was something about Coco that made him certain he was never going to be alone again.

  “I’m so proud of you, Finn!” she exclaimed, and then she was in his arms, smelling amazing and feeling better, all tied up with that sexy Southern drawl of hers.

  He’d never admit that his eyes could have gotten a bit misty over a woman he cared so much about being proud of him.

  It felt good ...

  Deep.

  “Thank you, baby,” he murmured, against the side of her mouth where he kissed her.

  She leaned back to look up at him with her gorgeous brown eyes. “You didn’t even need stupid Gordon to do it,” she said, smiling up at him.

  She was one of the few people he’d explained the whole thing to. His superiors wouldn’t be too happy to know a civilian knew all of it, but he really didn’t give a damn. She was in his life now and she was going to know everything about him, and besides, she was involved in the thing too.

  He felt her up in a few excellently curved places, which were not too immodest for being in public, and he agreed, “No, I don’t have to use him. He’s just a backup now.”

  She hugged him and threw her arms over his neck, with her purse settling against his back as she rolled up on the toes of her heeled boots for a slow, meaningful kiss. A kiss that lingered, and made every male in the room immediately jealous of him. Which he dug.

  When she finished kissing him, like she couldn’t stop, he growled at the bartender, “I’ll take that champagne now.”

  Then he pulled Coco over to a more secluded spot in the bar, where they could celebrate privately, while the bartender brought them over a bucket of ice, champagne, and two crystal flutes.

  He was usually a whiskey and beer drinker, but he was fucking celebrating, and he wasn’t certain things had ever been looking so good in his life.

  Coco couldn’t take her eyes off Finn. He was so gorgeous in such a masculine way, and the way his green eyes popped with electricity from his darker features was so brilliant, it made her burn.

  For him.

  Always for him.

  Finn made her believe she could do anything, in a way that no one had ever made her feel before. Finn’s gaze and his gestures—everything about him showed how much
he was into her. They toasted with champagne and sipped the bubbly liquid, while Finn held her hand on the table, and then under the table, his other hand dipped deep between her thighs to settle warmly.

  She smiled and leaned in to kiss him again, lingering against his warm lips and knowing how damn lucky she was for her life to have turned out as it had. What had happened between her and Finn was pretty quick, but it was also so right.

  “Sugar, I toast to the best ATF agent this town ever saw.”

  Finn’s goatee lifted, showing a glimpse of his white teeth as his fingers squeezed between her thighs.

  “I’m glad you know it,” he said. “I’m going to toast to this whole damn undercover thing, because without it, I wouldn’t have met you.”

  “Oh, Deek,” she whispered.

  Then they were kissing again, each of them tasting like champagne.

  Next, they toasted to Justice, and then Finn’s ATF partner Ty Booth.

  “Ty really kept me sane,” Finn explained. “He was the only contact I had for a long time. The only one that knew anything about what I was doing.” Finn rubbed her fingers, looking at her black-tipped nails. “He can be a smartass, but he had my back.”

  Coco had been thinking about and then beginning to understand how hard it must’ve been for Finn to go undercover as he had, and in the town where he lived. First, if anything on TV shows about cops and being undercover were even close to reality, it had to have been hard to keep his wits while rubbing up against such nastiness. Secondly, it had to be awful having the people in his town think so badly of him.

  She rubbed his back where she sat next to him. “I’m glad he was there for you, baby. You think you’ll ever do anything like undercover again?”

  Immediately, Finn shook his head, and she was very glad that he seemed to be so decisive about it.

  “No, no more. I just had to straighten out my uncle’s town.”

  Coco leaned in tight against Finn. “Uncle?”

  “Yeah, baby, U.S. Marshal Jacob O’Neil. That’s his place you’re sleeping in.” When she looked up at him in surprise, he kissed the tip of her nose. “He left it to me when he passed away a couple years ago. He pretty much raised me.”

  “I think I’m seeing why you’re in law enforcement,” she said.

  One of Finn’s panting-melting smiles made an appearance, and then he leaned down and kissed her. After that hot exchange, she was looking over his shoulder and happened to notice—

  “Finn, is that Caval’s daughter?”

  Finn had been drinking champagne, and he stopped to look, then he said, “Yeah—how do you know her?”

  Coco smiled at the back of Finn’s head from where she leaned against him. “Because that’s Jagger pulling out the chair for her, so I figured it had to be her, because he said he was dating her.”

  They both looked into the dining room, which was quite a ways from where they sat, and they saw part of Jagger as he bent over and quickly kissed Blue, before he went to sit down across from her. Then he was out of their line of sight.

  Coco sighed. “You have such a nice small town here.”

  That brought Finn’s amazing green eyes back to her. “Eighty percent of it is the best; we just had this bad element creeping in,” he said.

  “But you took care of that, baby,” she said, while putting everything she had on her face, about how proud she was of him. She got rewarded, because he looked pleased.

  And then he asked, “But what about your small town—don’t you like it?”

  Coco frowned slightly as she took her glass of champagne and sipped it, and then she set her glass down on the table. She turned more to Finn, leaning up against him; she wanted him to hear her.

  “I don’t care if I ever go back there, Finn.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he bent closer. “What about your house, baby?”

  “Finn, there are only a few mementos I want from that place. The rest can burn for all I care. I don’t even want to step back inside that house.”

  He leaned back, but it was so he could look at her very closely. “What about your friends, bella?”

  She studied his amazing lips. “Well, I’ll miss some of them. But my best friend Patty Ann, you’re going to get to meet at the charity ball for the orphanage. She said she’d come.”

  But Coco had already noticed that Finn was shaking his head, and his amazing lips had flattened between his dark mustache and the lower part of his goatee.

  Was he trying to say he wasn’t going to the ball?

  Then he did it. “No way,” he said. “I don’t do bashes like that.”

  She was stunned and a little deflated, because she loved that sort of thing—getting all dressed up to the max and thinking about how heart-stopping Finn was going to look dressed up to the max, and then there was the part where she would get to meet all his friends, which she was looking forward to.

  But luckily she’d been around the block a few times, and she could hold back her expectations for a few moments to think about why in the world Finn wouldn’t want to go to such an event.

  Her gaze searched his.

  “Baby,” she said, and she cupped the side of his face. “Honey, the only people in this town that matter are the people that want you there.”

  She thought his green eyes looked liquid, right before he kissed her, and when he pulled back, he said, “Maybe you’re right. I just played bad for so long.”

  She rubbed his chest and then grabbed the front strap of his shoulder holster for a second, using it to tug on for emphasis. “I know Vincent doesn’t think you’re bad, or Tess, or Carly and Zeb, and I know Justice doesn’t.” Then she thought to add, “If you’re bad, then I know Caval shouldn’t be there at all, and I know for a fact he’s coming, and so is Link.” She pulled on his shoulder holster, jostling him a little. “So there.”

  His smile wasn’t big, but it was there. “I might have to reconsider,” he muttered.

  So after a full bottle of champagne, some slow dancing, and some even slower kissing, they finally wandered out of the bar and restaurant, where they saw Special Agent Rand sitting against the hood of the black pickup he had brought her there in.

  “Oh, I didn’t know he’d wait,” Coco said, as she leaned into where Finn held her tight against his side. “We should have had him come in or brought him some food.”

  Finn guided her up to Special Agent Rand, who straightened, and then Finn tapped him on the chest.

  “Thanks, man,” Finn said.

  Special Agent Rand didn’t smile, but he did say, “Anytime.” Then he pushed off his pickup to go around it and get in.

  “He is a man of few words,” Coco said.

  “Yeah,” Finn agreed. Then he said, “Baby, before we go home, there’s one stop I want to make. Something I heard about today.”

  A few minutes later, as Finn drove them through town, going toward what Finn said she had to wait to see, Coco looked around more closely. Before this she’d just been flying around town trying to find stupid Gordon, but now she was looking at the place with different eyes. A place where she was quite possibly going to live.

  She glanced at Finn.

  She sure hoped so.

  Then she looked out at a Mexican restaurant called Los Toros, where they would have to eat, right next to an Italian restaurant they were also going to have to try. Finn drove by the Senta River hotel, which looked nice and had a steakhouse. A definite must. Then there was a bar called Rodeo Lulu’s that sounded like a lot of fun. It was blocks down the street from a bar called Big Mama’s. She turned her neck looking at Big Mama’s, thinking that was the first place Finn had taken her to. But she’d been a little tipsy, so maybe it was another place.

  Then they went by Kickin Rodeo, where she had to go back to, when she found the appropriate clothes. Maybe she could learn to line dance. That was when she saw Cha-Cha’s Fashions and Lingerie. She was certain she could find the right thing to wear in that store.

  Glory’
s Nursery was a must, because Finn’s house needed some plants, so she wondered if they delivered as they drove by the place. But then she remembered she was probably off probation and could go out now.

  Next, she saw Yvonne’s Beauty World. She’d been there and that was going to be a place she frequented, she thought, as they passed a place called the Sugar Shack, which sounded interesting. Oh, and look, it was right next to a fabulous-looking gift shop called Harper’s Bazaar, and then at the end of the block was a place called Joe’s Auto Repair.

  Next, there was an amazing multicolored sign that caught her eye, right past Joe’s, as she was thinking that it was a cute town. And she read the sign out loud: “Badass Custom Chopper Skins.”

  Finn surprised her a moment later by pulling his Jeep into the parking lot of whatever a custom chopper skin shop was, which by the look of it had something to do with motorcycles. Because there were at least five of them parked in a line outside of the obviously new building.

  Finn parked, and she looked at him questioningly.

  “Zeb’s new shop,” he said.

  “Zeb!” she exclaimed.

  He nodded. “Grand opening.”

  She grabbed his arm. “What is it?”

  Finn laughed, and then he pulled her out of the Jeep. He swung his arm over her shoulder and pulled her toward the front door.

  “They put custom graphics on motorcycles. Call them skins.”

  “Oh,” she drawled, finally getting it. “So this is the grand opening? How amazing.”

  “Yeah, thought you’d like it,” he said, just as he was guiding her through the front door he’d opened.

  Her first quick glance inside had her immediately impressed by the serious coolness as a small girlfriend squeal sounded off to her right. Turning her gaze, she heard Carly just before she saw her.

  “Those lambskin jeans look so hot with those killer boots, babe!”

  Coco felt as good as she always felt around the Redrock girls, and she disengaged from Finn so she could catch Carly’s hug and enthusiastic air kisses. However, not all that motion dislodged her gaze from the massively important and huge glare of a—