Want him.
“Is this the first e-mail since the last one you showed me?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
His gaze scanned her face. Looking for honesty, no doubt, but then he let out a breath. “Either you’re getting better at lying, or I’m going soft on you, but I actually believe you.”
“You’re…going soft on me?”
“Jesus, Mel, you can’t tell?”
“I like words,” she said carefully. “There’s less misunderstanding with words.”
He opened his mouth, but before her eyes, his own shuttered, and his smile was strained and humorless. “You’re trying to distract me from your incoming mail.”
“I’m not.”
“Prove it. Show it to me.”
“I will. But you should know, Matt just called me. He unearthed four more aliases for Sally. The last one, the most recent…She was married, but her husband died. Suspiciously.”
They looked at each other. “Now Sally’s wanted for questioning,” she added softly, and clicked on the new e-mail, gasping at who it was from: Tara Louise.
“Let me guess,” Bo said grimly. “One of those aliases is Tara Louise. Probably the one with the dead husband.”
“Bingo, you win the prize,” Mel murmured, still in shock.
“If it’s you on a platter, count me in.”
“This is serious, Bo.”
“Yes, I’m serious as a heart attack. Mel, look at me.”
She lifted her head. He was close enough to kiss. Close enough to look into his eyes and see the utter honesty there for her to take. He wanted her. But she already knew that much, he’d made it abundantly clear. Her body mesmerized him.
Well, they were even there.
The problem? More than just his body mesmerized her. Yeah, don’t go there. She leaned in to read the e-mail, but cupped her face and held her gaze.
“We’re scaring her. You know that.”
“She can join the club, then.”
He slid his fingers into the hair at her temple, his eyes unusually solemn. “She’s on the run, she’s scared and she’s pissed. She’s going to blame us. Me, I’m more than ready for the face-off. You-”
“She won’t hurt me.”
“Mel, she’s threatening you. She’s threatening you because of me, because I came back and dug all this up. I’m the catalyst, not you.”
“No-”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said fiercely.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, she’s long gone now.” With that, Mel clicked open the e-mail.
Dear Mel,
I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry for every-fucking-thing. But please, if you ever cared about me at all, even a fraction of what I feel for you, please stop trying to trace me. Please, Mel. Save my life. Stop trying to find me.
Love,
Me
Bo leaned in farther, his jaw actually brushing her as his fingers pushed hers aside and started clicking on the keyboard.
“What are you doing?” she asked, watching as he opened her browser, and pasted something from the e-mail on to the page. Then his fingers were clicking over the keys, far faster than she could type, and she couldn’t follow what he was doing.
“Fuck,” he said softly, and straightened away from her.
“What?” she asked, but he was already running. Leaping up, she grabbed ahold of his shirt at the door. “Bo.”
“That e-mail,” he grated out. “It came from within the airport. It came from one of your computers right here on the premises.”
Chapter 27
With Mel on his heels, Bo went running through the lobby, skidding to a stop at the front desk’s computer so fast that she plowed into the back of him, hard.
He could smell her shampoo as her hair slapped him. And if he closed his eyes, he could still feel the way it’d stroked his throat and chest when she’d straddled him, when she slid down his body, her silky hair and mouth driving him to the edge of sanity.
Focus, mate.
Dimi sat behind the front desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose, legs crossed, holding a ledger, which she dropped at the sight of them.
Leaving in her hands a paperback novel that she shoved behind her back. Bo didn’t care what she was reading, it was her computer he wanted to see, and he moved around the desk, turning her screen to face him.
“Hey,” she protested. “Paws off.”
Ignoring her, Bo clicked on a few keys, then looked up at Mel and shook his head.
“Of course not,” Mel said in quick defense of Dimi.
“Do we have any customers onsite?” Bo asked.
Dimi shook her head. “No. But what-”
“I’ll be back to tell you,” Mel promised. “Hurry,” she said unnecessarily to Bo, then pushed ahead of him to run out of the lobby, along the tarmac toward the maintenance hangar.
And the computer there.
Danny was at that desk, leaning back, feet up, flipping through a manual while sipping a Big Gulp soda. “Hey, guys, I found a new distributor, with cheaper-What are you doing?”
Bo had leaned right over him to hit a few keys.
The computer stayed dark.
“It’s not on.” Danny eyed them both with a growing frown. “It froze up a few hours ago and I shut it off. I didn’t need it right now so I never turned it back on. What’s happening?”
“Someone just e-mailed me,” Mel said. “From inside North Beach.”
“Must have been one hell of an e-mail,” Danny said quietly, taking in their tension.
Mel looked at Bo. “Yeah, a hell of an e-mail. That’s it, Bo, except for Ernest’s old laptop that we use as a backup, but-”
“Wait.” Bo stared at her, it was all sinking in. The only common denominator and they hadn’t seen it. Christ, they’d been stupid. “Ernest.”
Again they went running, this time with Danny on their heels.
Ernest wasn’t in his office.
And neither was the laptop.
“What does it mean?” Mel gasped, trying to catch her breath. “What does it all mean?”
Bo looked at her, and he saw the instant she got it. “Sally was here,” she breathed. “But why now, why after all this time?”
“Because she needs us to shut the hell up. She’s facing some unpleasant jail time with me showing up and stirring the old news. She can’t risk us finding out exactly what we did-that she’s a career con.”
“Where’s Ernest?” Danny asked. “What’s his part in this?”
“That’s a bit complicated, actually.”
They all whirled to face Ernest in the doorway. He looked grim. That is, grimmer than usual. In his hands he held the big ring of keys that would open any door within North Beach.
Shit, Bo thought.
“Ernest,” Mel said softly. “What’s going on?”
“You already know.” He looked pale. Very pale. “You know everything, you just didn’t put it all together in time.”
“Sally sent me an e-mail from your computer,” Mel said.
Ernest shook his head. “I sent the e-mails.”
They all stared at him as if he’d grown another head, and he sighed. “Sally came to me weeks ago and asked me for help.”
Weeks, Bo thought. Right around the time he’d first shown up.
“I tried to scare you off,” Ernest said to Mel. “You began digging, and Sally got nervous. She asked me to make sure you didn’t find…”
“Find what?” Bo glanced at the keys in Ernest’s hand. “Something that would implicate her,” he guessed. “Something she needed to stay hidden.”
Ernest nodded.
“You two go way back, don’t you Ernest?” Bo asked. “She knew you were someone she could trust.”
Ernest looked at Mel. “Yes. We go way back. All the way back.”
“You’ve been in contact with her all along?” Mel asked, shocked. “All this time? Years? When I needed her, you were talking with her and didn’t tell me?”