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“He’s our brother, Tessa, not our dad. I don’t answer to him.”
“No, but you owe him. We both do.”
While Jamie’s sigh was still echoing through the phone, Tessa hung up on him and rushed up her front walk. She’d done all she could for now. She couldn’t call Roland Kendall for several hours at least. If he hadn’t placed Jamie’s face yet, her phone call might trigger the connection. She’d have to be patient, and plan this deception with ruthless care.
It shouldn’t be that hard. She’d been managing her brothers’ relationship since the day her parents had died. She played referee, defused fights and forced them to spend time together over Sunday dinners and holiday feasts. They were the only family she had left and she wasn’t going to lose that, certainly not over a business deal.
“I can handle this,” she insisted to herself as she turned onto her street and rushed toward home. “It’ll be okay.”
So why did she feel so sick inside?
DETECTIVE LUKE ASHER whipped the latex gloves off and tossed them into the alley Dumpster before turning to shake hands with Eric Donovan. “Eric, it’s good to see you again, though not under these circumstances.”
“Well, Jamie was just telling me that not much was taken. In fact, I was surprised to see you here.”
“I’m sure you won’t be out more than your insurance deductible on the computer equipment. But we’re more concerned with the information on the computers. Social Security numbers, credit card information. There’s been a rash of these types of break-ins at local businesses. Patrol called me when they realized the alarm had been circumvented somehow. That makes it less likely to be a casual robbery.”
Eric’s eyes slid toward his brother. “Are you sure the alarm was circumvented? Maybe it was never set.”
Luke was sure he’d never seen someone snap from relaxed to furious as quickly as Jamie pulled it off. “I told you I set the damn alarm, Eric.”
“I know you think you did,” Eric said.
Jamie’s mouth twisted and his hands balled to fists. “Screw you.”
Hoping to restore peace, Luke raised his hands. “There’s no doubt about this. Jamie definitely set the alarm. The alarm company shows it was armed at 9:30 p.m. and turned off at 1:00 a.m.”
Jamie shot a look of pure fire at his brother, but he didn’t seem satisfied with the vindication. His tension held tight when he paced over to a patrol car, his arms crossed as if he wanted to keep his hands still. Strange. Luke had known Jamie for ten years, and his demeanor had always registered on a scale that started with sleepy and topped out at laid-back.
Luke cleared his throat. “Do you know what payroll information was kept on the computers?”
Jamie glanced over his shoulder. “Tessa will know more. She takes care of all that stuff. She should be here any—”
“We outsource payroll,” Eric interrupted. “So the information is limited. And I don’t think there’s any credit card information on the PCs these days. Hopefully the damage will be minimal.”
“Good,” Luke said. “We’re almost finished in there. We’re just dusting for a few prints and then we’ll get out of your way. I hope this’ll be nothing more than an inconvenience for you. They hit a temp agency a couple of weeks ago. That place had thousands of Social Security numbers on file.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to take a look around out here.” Luke walked to the back of the building, hoping to note anything out of place, but the exterior seemed fine. Wooden pallets were stacked in neat columns. A ten-foot-long carbon dioxide tank sat next to the building on clean concrete, untouched by weeds or debris. The same applied to the big stainless-steel grain silo.
He knew from the layout inside that the padlocked corrugated door rolled up to reveal the bottling area and a small loading dock. If he’d been thinking of the brewery as a bar, he would’ve changed his mind back here. Not one bar in the world had a back lot this clean.
When he didn’t find even a hint of something suspicious, Luke circled the front of the building. Sunlight deteriorated beer, Jamie had explained earlier, so the few windows in the place were high up and always locked.
Luke was just rejoining Jamie and Eric when he noticed a woman approaching across the parking lot. Her blond ponytail bounced as she rushed closer. Luke found his eyes dipping down, taking note of the tight jeans and gorgeous thighs. Aside from a killer body, she looked perfectly innocent, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed.
“Hey, guys,” she said breathlessly. “What’s going on? Do you know anything more?”
Eric reached for the woman to give her a hug, so Luke used his detective skills to determine that this was the sister. They didn’t pay him the big bucks for nothing. Also, she looked a lot like Jamie Donovan, though smaller and way prettier.
She shot Jamie a tense look. Jamie’s gaze fell to the ground, his mouth tightening. Whatever passed between them seemed set aside when she looked at Luke and smiled. “Hi,” she said, offering a hand. “I’m Tessa Donovan.”
“Detective Asher,” he said. When he took her hand, he felt the fine bones of her fingers and smelled a faint flowery scent that made him clear his throat in defense. His life was way too complicated to leave room for noticing how a pretty woman smelled.
Luckily, she followed Eric Donovan through the door to see the damage. Luke was left alone with Jamie. “So how’ve you been, man?” he asked. They’d been a year apart at the University of Colorado, but they’d attended a lot of the same parties. Emphasis on a lot. “Jamie?” Luke prompted.
“What? Oh, sorry. Yeah, everything’s good, aside from this. How are you doing? I hear—” Jamie seemed to catch himself at the last moment, clueing Luke into the fact that Boulder might have a population of one hundred thousand souls, but it was still a small town. The rumors about Luke hadn’t stayed confined to the police department.
“Everything’s good,” Luke said, answering the unfinished question.
“Oh, great!” Jamie slapped him on the shoulder, but when Luke’s partner emerged from the brewery, tucking a notebook into the pocket of her jacket, Jamie’s eyes went right to her belly. It was getting hard to miss.
“Did you meet Detective Parker?” Luke asked as if things hadn’t turned awkward. “Jamie this is Simone Parker. Simone, this is Jamie Donovan. We went to the U together.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, her voice sweet and soft as ever. People were always surprised by her femininity, despite that her flawless brown skin and dark, wide-set eyes left men a bit starry-eyed. They thought female police detectives had to be tough and hard-nosed. But Simone was simply the sharpest cop he’d ever met, and she’d made the rank of detective by outsmarting everyone around her.
Simone excused herself while Luke handed Jamie a business card. “All right. Call me if you think of anything else. I’ll be in touch.”
“Great. Hey, she’s beautiful, man.”
Luke paused in the act of turning away and winced at the implication. He wanted to clarify that Simone was his partner and not his girlfriend, but that would lead to questions he didn’t want to answer. Couldn’t answer. So he forced himself to finish the step he’d been about to take, and he headed for the car he shared with Simone.
Up until a few months ago, it had been an easy place to occupy. Now her pregnant belly took up all the space in the damn car and pushed out the breathable air. Despite his years as a detective, Luke couldn’t figure out what the hell had gone wrong. And Simone wasn’t talking to anyone.
CHAPTER TWO
TESSA KEPT HER EYE on the clock as she prepped the barroom for the evening rush. It was four forty-five and Roland Kendall hadn’t returned her call.
She hadn’t meant to leave him a message at all. After carefully calculating the absolutely perfect time to contact him: after lunch when the morning was far from his mind, but before five, just in case he was heading out for drinks before hitting his box at the Rockies game. She didn’t have his cell phone number and she couldn’t think of a good reason to ask Eric for it.
So she’d called Kendall’s office at two-thirty, and when his secretary had said he wasn’t available, Tessa had hung up. But when she’d called again at three, the secretary had pointedly asked, “May I take a message, Ms. Donovan?” Damn caller ID.
Now Tessa was stuck waiting for a return phone call. She hated waiting. Thank goodness she was working the bar this afternoon. Her office had become a suffocating box and her new computer wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. But the bar work was soothing, especially at this quiet hour. They didn’t serve lunch, so their only customers were the regulars who wandered in from the sandwich shops across the street. Though there were often brewery tours during the week, none were scheduled today, so Tessa was free to sweep and wipe down tables and chairs, and even give a nice spring cleaning to the laminated beer menus. All without once taking her mind off the clock. Five o’clock loomed on the horizon and there was still no word from Roland Kendall.
Jamie wasn’t there to bitch at, so Tessa called up the Twitter application on her phone and began typing. She was the only one interested in social media as a marketing tool, so she was in charge of their Twitter account, but Jamie … Jamie was the face of the company. And the voice.
She smiled as she finished up her message from Jamie Donovan.
My sister won an argument & made me admit I was an idiot. Drop in tonight & tell me you lost an argument too & get half off your 1st pint.
There. She felt a little better, but as if warning against relief, Eric’s voice drifted in from the back room as he placed another furious call to their alarm company. Actually, if his voice was any indication, they were now the brewery’s former alarm company. Any lightness she’d felt was immediately swept away.
She was straining so hard to listen to Eric’s conversation that she jumped like a startled cat when the front door opened. Before she could summon up a smile of invitation, she recognized Jamie’s sun-rimmed silhouette.
“Jamie!” She rushed forward so she could whisper her question. “Did you call Monica?”
“No.” He looked even more miserable than Tessa felt.
“Why not? I left you a message. I can’t get ahold of her father and—”
“Because it was a meaningless night, Tessa. For both of us. If I call her today, she might think I’m interested in something serious and that is not going to help the situation.”
Tessa reconsidered. “Oh. You may be right. If she decides she wants to see you again, that’d be disastrous.”
“Exactly. As it stands, we left on neutral terms.”
“Wow, you’ve got a whole language for this.”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “I’m not some kind of man-slut.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. That was below the belt. So to speak.” When he only scowled harder, Tessa stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Don’t be mad.”
“Whatever. Did you talk to Roland Kendall?”
Tessa shook her head as Jamie took the rag from her hand and began polishing the bar. It looked just fine, but it was never quite shiny enough for Jamie, as far as she could tell. “I left him a message, but I haven’t heard back.”
“He knows it was me, Tessa. We’ve got to tell Eric before he hears it from Kendall.”
“Not yet. If there’s even the slightest chance Kendall didn’t recognize you, then we are not telling Eric. Do you know what he’d do to you?”
“He’d never trust me with anything but the bar and act like I was born with half a brain? Yeah, I’m familiar with his opinion of me.”
Tessa kept her mouth shut as she stacked glasses. Strangely enough, even though the place was called Donovan Brothers, Tessa seemed the only one at ease with her role at the brewery. Eric held on to the brewery with both hands, loath to let his siblings take on new responsibilities, and Jamie struggled against his brother’s iron grip. Tessa was trying to help Jamie without upsetting Eric, but good Lord, Jamie seemed to trip over his own feet every time.
Tessa headed for the back to slice lemons for the hefeweizen, but when she walked through the double doors, she was nearly trampled by their brewmaster, Wallace Hood.
He didn’t glance in her direction as he stalked past, rushing from the office area back to his glassed-in paradise of beer tanks and tubing. Eric stepped out of his office.
“What’s wrong with Wallace?” Tessa asked.
“He’s convinced his tanks were violated. I’ve told him that nothing in there was touched.”
Tessa watched as Wallace ran a gentle hand over one of the steel behemoths, his brow furrowed in furious worry. She understood that. If circumstances were different, she’d want to clutch her computers in her arms, too. But they were long gone, and she had bigger worries to hug to her chest.
One of those worries shook his head and sighed. “The alarm company should be out in an hour to check the wiring and box, but our contract is up next month. I’m not renewing.”
Just as she’d suspected. Eric was not the forgiving sort. The reminder made her avoid his eyes as she turned and headed for the kitchen area. The brewery didn’t serve food beyond peanuts and pretzels, but they did host occasional catered events, so the kitchen was fully outfitted. Still, it had none of the homey friendliness of the front room, so Tessa never lingered. Plus, she really had to get out of here. The sight of Eric only reinforced her sense of urgency. She cut the lemons into wedges with the ease of someone who’d done it thousands of times. Prepping the bar had been her first job when she’d turned twenty-one.
Wallace’s voice was muted by the floor-to-ceiling glass, but every time she looked up, his jaw was moving in furious conversation with his equipment. His lips were probably moving, too, but she couldn’t see them past his full, dark beard. She had no idea how old he was. Somewhere between thirty-one and forty-nine was her best guess. He was six-five, he had the body of a professional linebacker and he wore mountain-man-style plaid shirts every day. Despite the fact that he’d worked at the brewery for ten years, the only other thing she knew about Wallace Hood was that his alternative lifestyle did not match his appearance in the least. In fact, his personal life was so complex that she’d never quite figured it out. He was neither gay nor straight, but refused to classify himself as bisexual. He was both intensely private and mysteriously social. Men and women moved through his life as if he’d installed a revolving door in his bedroom.
Usually, watching him in his giant glassed-in room was like watching an interesting movie, but today his silent diatribe only increased her tension. The whole damn building was bubbling with stress, so she piled her two dozen sliced lemons into a plastic container and hurried toward the front room.
Jamie took the bowl from her and popped the top to be sure the lemons were good. He was strangely perfectionist about some things, so she’d learned not to take offense and merely washed her hands and tipped her head toward the empty seating area. “It’s been slow. The warm weather has kept everyone outside, but I expect you’ll get a lot of thirsty people in soon. I’m running a special for half off the first pint tonight, so if anyone mentions Twitter, that’s the offer.”
“Got it.”
“The signage for the new golden wheat is almost ready. Eric tapped it this morning.”
Tessa was drawing him a sample of the new brew when the front door opened. At first, all she saw past the sunlight was a jacket and a tie. Then she recognized the man wearing them. Detective Asher, he’d said. “Hi, Detective!” she called.
“Good afternoon, Miss Donovan,” he said with a smile that disappeared as quickly as it flashed over his face.
“Just Tessa,” she replied, feeling her smile widen. He was cute. Really cute, in a jaded, hard-jawed way. Like he’d stepped out of some noir detective novel, muttering about having seen too much life already.
“Then call me Luke.”
“Luke Asher …” She frowned and cocked her head, taking in his brown eyes and nearly black hair. She looked him up and down suspiciously. His eyebrows rose. “You’ve been to my house,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“You were friends with Jamie in college.”
“Oh, right.” His brown eyes crinkled. “I stopped by with him a couple of times. I’m sorry. I don’t remember meeting you.”
Jamie snorted. “I doubt I introduced you to my teenage sister.”
“Ah,” he said, and Tessa thought she saw his eyes flicker down.
She let her gaze wander, too. Yeah, she remembered him now. He’d been a slim guy who’d waited quietly for Jamie the couple of times that her brother had stopped home to grab something from his room on his way out for fun. Tessa had watched him from the dining room table as she’d done homework. He’d been cute then, but now …
Luke Asher seemed to have grown into his lanky frame. He was still about six-two, but now his body looked powerfully lean. His skin was tan, and creases around his eyes made it look like he often squinted thoughtfully into the distance while puzzling out an investigation.
He was talking to Jamie about an old classmate when he glanced over and saw her staring. One eyebrow quirked in question.
“Oh, um … Do you have any news about the investigation?”
“Nothing yet. We’ve only found one print we can’t identify, but there are still a few employees we haven’t printed yet. I’m sure it belongs to one of your people. None of the robberies have turned up any useful prints.”
“You’re sure it’s connected?” Jamie asked.
“I’m not ruling anything out yet, but that’s what my gut says.”
Oooh, gut instincts and fingerprints. And she could just make out the edge of his shoulder holster when he put his hands in his pockets.
Despite all her worries, Tessa felt a sudden and startling jolt of attraction.
Jamie interrupted her ogling. “Did you get anything from the security cameras?”
“Nothing,” Luke said. “Your cameras are focused on the parking lot and loading dock. I’d recommend two more cameras pointing at the doors.”
“Yeah. Got it. I’ll let Eric know.”
Luke Asher’s eyes slid to her, and the hair on her arms stood on end. “Did you speak to your payroll company yet?”
“I did. It’s all good news. The program on the PC is encrypted, and data protection is part of our plan. They’ve already started contacting the employees, even the old ones. They’ve also alerted the credit agencies. So far it looks good. As for the credit card information, that’s uploaded live with every transaction. Nothing stored in the computers.”
“Great,” Luke said. “They might not bother trying to crack the encryption. It’ll probably be easier to just break into another place. And even if they crack the program, the credit alerts should help. Keep your fingers crossed.”
