Ah, the marijuana. Delilah knew she recognized that smell when she was standing out on the porch. And it hadn’t been the dried-out, skunky aroma like the kind emanating from the bong—the odor of used Mary Jane. It’d been the earthier, almost sweet smell of freshly growing weed. Not that Delilah was an expert or anything. But her roommate in college, Sarah Moore, had been a philosophy major and had kept a couple of pot plants flourishing under a UV light in her closet for…wait for it…strictly “medicinal/experimental purposes.” Feel free to insert eye-roll here.
Of course, the presence of the jolly green downstairs could also account for the discrepancies she’d seen in Charlie’s financial records. So then the question became, was it possible his disappearance, as well as her uncle’s, was some sort of drug deal gone terribly wrong? As her stomach took a nosedive into her biker boots, she posed her theory aloud.
“Are all the plants still there?” Mac asked Steady, continuing to stare at that stupid chair until Delilah was forced to glance down at the thing. What in the world is so mesmerizing about it? But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t discern anything exceptional about the standard wooden ladder-back.
“Sí, hermano,” Steady replied, his Puerto Rican accent lilting in the stale air of the house. “Everything appears to be in order. Nothing missing that I can tell. Nothing moved.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Mac shook his head, blue gaze narrowed, the too-sexy dimple twitching in his chin as his substantial jaw sawed back and forth.
“What doesn’t?” she asked.
“If Sander was attacked and taken because of some sort of dust-up between pot growers,” Mac explained, “if it was a turf war gone bad or something, then whoever eighty-sixed him would’ve grabbed his plants. They’re too valuable to leave here to rot.”
Attacked and taken. Eighty-sixed… None of those words were ones Delilah wanted to hear.
“What makes you so sure he was attacked and taken?” Zoelner asked, still eyeing Mac curiously. And when Mac reached up and rubbed a wide palm over the back of his neck, Zoelner lifted a brow. “Is that Spidey sense of yours acting up again?”
Okay, and that was the second time Zoelner had used that term. “What in the world are you guys talking about?” she demanded. “What is Spidey sense?”
“Spidey sense is Spider-Man’s sixth sense about danger,” Ozzie supplied. “Except Mac’s superpower comes more in the form of an uncanny ability to piece together subtle clues.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, not one to believe in the black arts of extrasensory perception. “You’re kidding, right?”
First aliens, now this? Maybe she’d been wrong to enlist the help of the Black Knights for this particular undertaking. Because, apparently, they were all batshit crazy. Who knew?
“It’s not a sixth sense or a superpower,” Mac assured her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s just good, ol’-fashioned FBI training.”
“Okay, good.” She nodded. “So then to reiterate and rephrase Zoelner’s question, why does your good ol’-fashioned FBI training tell you that Charlie was attacked and taken?”
“For the record,” Ozzie interjected before Mac could speak, “I’m still leaning toward alien abduction.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake…
Delilah, along with the rest of the group, watched as Mac walked over to the coffee cup. Using the steel-toe of his biker boot, he flipped the mug over. Beneath it was a small brown puddle of dried coffee.
“At first I thought Fido here,” the dog’s tail went from a side-to-side wag to a full-on circle at the mention of his name, “knocked the chair over in an attempt to get at the mug on the table,” Mac explained. And, yup. That gelled with Delilah’s take on events. “But then I saw there was a ring of coffee surrounding the lip of the cup. No way the Lab would’ve left that if he was after its contents. He’d have pushed the mug around until he lapped up every last drop. So, then if Fido wasn’t after the coffee, I asked myself, why is the cup on the floor?”
Delilah lifted a brow, glancing from the coffee mug to Mac.
“No one?” Mac’s eyes sparkled in the lamplight as his gaze swung around the group. “Okay, then. Let me demonstrate.”
He bent to pick up the tin mug and the newspaper. Then, he righted the kitchen chair before settling himself in it. Holding the paper in his left hand, the coffee cup in his right, he called to Zoelner. “Come up behind me. Grab me and drag me backward like you’re tryin’ to wrestle me out of the house.”
Dumbfounded, Delilah watched Zoelner crouch down and sneak slowly forward. Then the former CIA agent reached out and struck, quicker than—as she’d once heard Mac put it—greased lightning. One of Zoelner’s arms wrapped around Mac’s throat. His other arm clamped tight around Mac’s broad shoulders. A second later, Mac was yanked out of the chair.
The cup went flying. The newspaper fluttered to the ground. The chair tipped, and only after Zoelner dragged Mac halfway across the living room floor, Mac’s boots scrabbling for purchase, did Mac reach up and tap the guy’s forearm, saying, “Okay, that’ll do.”
He stood to his impressive height, adjusted his biker jacket, winced and touched his side like his stitches hurt—yeah, she still felt guilty about that—and gestured toward the kitchen. As a group, Delilah and the rest of the Knights turned to look. And, sure as shit, the chair was lying on its back. The paper had settled beside the table leg. And the coffee mug, though not quite where it’d been before, was still pretty darn close.
“Jesus,” Ozzie muttered, his face void of its usual grin.
Okay, and now Delilah was a convert, a wholehearted believer in Mac’s Spidey sense. We’re talking ready to prostrate herself in front of the altar of his Spidey sense because…damn…
A fresh wave of cold fear crashed over her, chilling her to the bone. Charlie Sander had been attacked and abducted from his own house. And her uncle, who’d come here to meet him, was missing now, too. It was one thing to suspect foul play, but another thing entirely to know something dark and treacherous had happened here.
She rolled in her lips as all manner of violent scenarios flicked through her head, as every ax-murderer horror movie she’d ever seen scrolled through her mind’s eye on fast-forward. And she must’ve made a noise, or else what she was feeling was radiating around the room, because Fido—finished with his kibble—bumped her limp, dangling hand with his head and stared up at her, whining in doggy concern.
Grateful for his presence—for one, he was warm and wiggly and alive, which was comforting, and two, he gave her an excuse to bend down and bury her face in the scruff of his neck, thereby hiding the tears that threatened at the back of her eyeballs—she hugged him and kissed him and told him he was a good boy before getting control of herself enough to lift her gaze to Mac.
“What’s going on here?” she asked, not surprised her voice came out sounding like she’d been choking down broken martini glasses. “I mean, seriously, what’s going on here?”
Mac leveled a look on her. And not a dismissive look, or a disapproving look, or his standard inscrutable look. No. This one was a look of one hundred percent pure confidence. “I don’t know, darlin’. But I sure as hell aim to find out.”