“Why?” Crista could feel the dread rising inside her now.
“Layla, does anyone know you check the offices at night?” Dawg asked then.
“I don’t know, Dawg.” There was an edge of fear in her voice. “Jamie and the boys always go through the store with me at night when they pick me up, just to make sure everything is okay. I check all the office doors then.”
“Get out front and call Natches, Crista.” Dawg turned back to her, his expression closed, dangerous. “Now.”
“Not without you.” Her hands gripped his arm, tugging at him. “You can call him yourself. He’ll come faster if you call him.”
Surprise tightened his features. “I know what I’m doing, Crista.”
“I don’t care.” She wasn’t leaving him here alone. Only God knew what was behind that door.
“You can come with us.”
“Mr. Mackay, we should all go out front. What if whoever was in the store, if anyone was, is waiting outside?”
That had murderous fury lighting in his eyes. Dawg’s gaze sliced to the tall, wide windows of the front of the store as his expression became cold, dangerous.
“Come on.” Thankfully, he turned, moving them down the metal steps and headed for the entrance as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Punching in Natches’s number, Dawg stalked away from the women.
“It’s early, Dawg,” Natches mumbled into the line.
“Get to the store. Someone was in the office last night. I’m calling the sheriff to dust for prints, but I need someone to watch Crista while I’m taking care of Mayes’s questions. After last night, this could get ugly.”
“Shit!” He could hear Natches moving. “Bastards moved fast.”
“Makes me wonder if the car going up in flames wasn’t more of a distraction than an attempt. Just hurry. I’m calling Sheriff Mayes now. And you know Layla, her husband and sons are going to come down here like a pack of ravening wolves intent on protecting her. I’m going to need help here.”
Natches snickered.
Jamie Matcher and his brood of overgrown sons had come to the store and stayed with Layla every day for the first damned year she had worked for Dawg. And Jamie, all six feet five inches of him, had towered over Dawg and warned him what would happen if his little Layla got smeared with gossip because of games Dawg might want to play in the privacy of his office.
As if he played games in his office. Damnit, he liked a bed for games. The office was work.
Paperwork. Something he didn’t handle well, despite Crista’s certainty.
“Just get your ass down here.” Dawg closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead, anticipating the headache he knew was well on its way.
As he flipped the phone closed and turned back to the two women, he sighed again. Layla was looking decidedly nervous. Crista was defiant and suspicious.
“Layla, call Jamie and the boys,” he told her. “I have to call Sheriff Mayes, and once the call goes out on the radio, Jamie will blow a fuse.”
“He worries, Dawg.” But she was pulling the phone from the case she wore on the slim leather belt that cinched her crisp tan slacks.
“He worries,” Dawg muttered. “I worry.” Then he turned to Crista.
She was leaning against the block wall like she didn’t have a damned care in the world.
Concerned but amused. She was amused at him, and that one was biting his ass. He was blackmailing her, but damned if he didn’t suddenly feel like she had the upper hand.
“Layla, why don’t you and Crista go to the lounge and get some coffee on. The employees will be showing up about the same time the sheriff and the state boys do. If they have their coffee, they might not make too much of a mess investigating this.”
He could hope. But he wasn’t betting the houseboat on it. By the time he got off the phone with Sheriff Mayes, he could feel the headache beginning in his temples.
Good old Ezekiel Mayes. The son of a bitch. Dawg swore he was going to vote against him each election, but he always managed to vote for him. Better the devil you knew…
He stood and stared around the store. It was just as huge now as it was each time he found himself doing this. The first year out of the Marines he had nearly gutted the place. His knee had ached like a son of a bitch that year, but he had nearly tripled the size and added to the layout. Not that he cared one way or the other about the business, he reminded himself. He had been bored.
Fuck that. Even Crista knew better. And he was kidding himself. He had been kidding himself for eight years. The estate his parents had left him was riddled with so much guilt, resentment, and bitterness that sometimes he wished he’d sold it all that first year after their death, while he was in the Marines and worrying his ass off over it.
The house especially. Where he had never lived. His father had finished it after Dawg had bought the Nauti Dawg from an inheritance left to him by his mother’s mother. He had never spent a night in that house until after their deaths.
His father had hated the lumber store, too. But he had kept it anyway. He had always said it was the only thing Dawg was smart enough to actually make a living with. And maybe the old bastard had been right.
He had a knack for it, unlike his knack for warfare. He tended to get his knees blown off there.
The ATF assignment wasn’t a bad one, but the restrictions pissed him off. Answering to other people wasn’t his strong suit.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Mayes liked a lot of answers to his questions.
“What the hell are you involved in, Dawg?” Zeke kept his voice low as they stood back from the state police unit now inspecting his office.
There were no prints, no hint of anything disturbed, though it was impossible for Dawg to tell if anything was missing. He glared at Crista where she stood in the open door of the lounge beneath the office. He hadn’t even recognized his damned office.
And she smiled.
That smile lit a fire inside him he didn’t even want to understand. A fire-charged electrical arousal and a brooding anger, in equal intensity through his body.
Because he knew she was holding back. Some part of her didn’t yet belong to him, whether it was her honesty or something deeper, he didn’t want to delve into at the moment. But she was holding back.
And that just flat pissed him off.
“What the hell is she involved in, then?” Zeke asked.