He inserted himself between her legs, pressing his heavy cock against her mound, and moved, rubbing her, getting her all hot and bothered. They were both still wearing their underwear, and she was eager to rectify that. She grabbed his waistband and slowly peeled it down his toned butt while he was kissing her mouth. But she couldn’t get his boxer briefs any lower than just below his buttocks. He smiled and hurried to pull them off and toss them.

  Then he was sliding his finger between her feminine lips again, her silk panties not much of a barrier, and he stroked her like that for a few seconds. He slid the fabric aside and began to stroke her nub in earnest.

  There was something erotic about being partially clothed while making love. She slid her sock-covered foot up the back of his leg. Their pheromones were driving them insane, inciting them to finish this now!

  He pulled her panties down only low enough so that he could stroke her good. She was already feeling the rising climax calling to her, and she was anticipating the cataclysmic conclusion. Then he finally pulled her panties off the rest of the way. He continued to ply his wonderfully skillful strokes to her clit, bringing her to a crescendo of pleasure, and she was in heaven.

  Before he entered her, he kissed her mouth hard and long, his cock pressed against her entrance, wet with readiness. He pressed his cock into her, deep, deeper still, and then he pulled very nearly out. She wanted to grab him and hold him in place, needing him inside her. But then he pushed into her again and began to thrust.

  His biceps bunched as he held himself above her, driving deeper before he consumed her mouth with his. Delicious butterscotch and chocolate kisses. She was still in a state of bliss when she felt a second climax building. She put her hand in between them and began to stroke herself while he thrust into her. He quickly took over the role and stroked her nub again until he groaned out loud at the end and she cried out in sheer pleasure.

  For a long moment, he remained inside her, just breathing her in, and she was doing the same with him. Then Adam pulled out of her and she settled against his chest.

  She ran her fingers over his shoulder. “I can’t believe I waited so long to see the light and didn’t jump at the chance to be with you like this much sooner after I arrived.” She sighed, still reveling in the ripples of orgasm flowing through her. “What about you?”

  “Oh, hell, I was ready from the first time I saw you. To date, anyway. I had to get to know you first. But I knew I really liked you, even from the beginning. We complement each other. Brad kept telling me you needed me to change your mind about going back to Texas. But that had to be something that you were ready for.”

  “Well, I was definitely ready.” She sighed and nestled her head against Adam’s chest. “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”

  He chuckled and kissed her head. “Usually, I’m ready to go back in and catch the next bad guy on the list. I’m usually thinking about the cases I need to solve. This time? I would much rather take a couple of weeks off and enjoy being a newly mated couple.”

  “A honeymoon. We definitely need it.”

  Chapter 29

  A week later, Adam got a call from Tori early in the morning, and he groaned and hurried to answer it. Mornings and work always came too early now that he was mated to Sierra.

  Sierra yawned and waited to hear what it was all about.

  “Yeah, Tori? What’s up?”

  “Phyllis wants to make a deal. She insists she wasn’t involved in trying to sell the boat illegally and she didn’t have anything to do with carjacking Kinney’s car or Ollie trying to kill him. She said the other person in Victor’s car was Lonnie. And she said she’ll give up Victor’s hiding place for a deal. And when I questioned her about the postcard sent to Sierra, she said that none of them did it. But we found Phyllis’s fingerprint on the front of the card.”

  “Hot damn! Great. I’m coming in.” Adam kissed Sierra’s smiling mouth, her beautiful blue eyes half-lidded. “Sleep. Chet Crawford said he would handle everything and not to worry until you’re ready to come in.” Adam really liked the new full-time sketch artist. He was always there to cover for Sierra when she had art classes to teach or was trying to handle the sale of both houses because Adam was working full-time.

  Though no matter what, getting up in the morning had become a chore for both of them, their fault, of course. Either one or the other was always waking up in the middle of the night and wanting to make love.

  As to the sketch-artist job, Sierra always made up the time at work later, but he was glad Chet was accommodating. Chet was so grateful to Sierra for giving up the job to him so he could relocate to join his girlfriend. Not once had he given her a dead-body sketch to do.

  “I have to get up anyway,” Sierra groaned, running her hands through her red curls. “I have an appointment with the Realtor in an hour. I think my house might have sold. And you know what that means.”

  “We have to find a new house to move into so we can move both our households at the same time.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good luck on the house deal.”

  “Thanks and hopefully we’ll sell yours soon too.”

  Then they were both hurrying to dress and grabbed a quick breakfast of eggs and toast. They kissed and hugged, and she was off to see the Realtor and he was off to speak with Phyllis and her lawyer.

  “Okay,” Tori said in the interrogation room at the bureau, Adam giving her the floor again with Phyllis and planning to stay out of it unless she needed him to back her up on something. “The prosecution has agreed to the plea bargaining, if Victor is where you say he is and you testify against him and against Dover about ordering the kidnapping of the girl.”

  “Unless Victor believes I’ll turn on him and he’s taken off, he should be in either one of two different locations. He’s stayed at Lonnie Hicks’s place. I know Lonnie is in jail, but Victor’s got a key to the house. The other location is a room above the Fast Time Bar and Grill. He rents it under the name of Vlad Romansky.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” Adam called it in to the judge, and they got search warrants for both places.

  Tori smiled at Adam as they headed out in his vehicle.

  “What? You did all the talking, and when we wrapped it up, it was time to go.”

  She laughed. “I love working with you. When I worked with the FBI, I didn’t have a wolf partner, and this is so much better.”

  “I’m glad you’re my partner too.”

  “So which place do we go to?” she asked.

  “We’ll send a unit to Lonnie’s house, and you and I will go to the bar and grill. We don’t want to spook him if he has an informant tell him we’re searching one of his places and he runs from the other.”

  “Good idea.”

  When they reached the bar and grill, they found stairs to an upper apartment, and with backup, they headed up the stairs. One of the police officers knocked on the door, but no one answered. Then they heard someone inside and the officer kicked the door in.

  “This is the police!”

  They heard a window opening in a back room, and Adam and an officer raced to intercept the person. As soon as they reached the window, they found Victor on the fire escape. Adam radioed to the other police that Victor was on his fire escape out back while he headed down after him.

  Suddenly, Victor turned and looked up at Adam, drawing a gun at the same time. Adam knew that look. Victor wasn’t going to give up without a shoot-out.

  “Drop the weapon!” Adam yelled, his heart pounding.

  Victor fired at him, but the round ricocheted off the metal ladder as Adam ducked. Adam fired his gun and the round hit Victor in the hand, and he dropped his gun.

  Adam continued to race down the steps while Victor reached the bottom of the ladder and landed in the alley. Adam caught up to him as other police officers surrounded them with guns drawn. Adam took Victor down to the pavement, and one of the officers called for an ambulance.

  Tori retrieved Victor’s gun and made sure Adam wasn’t the one injured, then returned to the apartment. Once they had read Victor his rights and treated him for the gunshot wound, he was taken to the hospital. Adam knew he would have to do a bunch of paperwork and wished he hadn’t needed to shoot Victor, but he hadn’t had any choice.

  Adam soon returned to the apartment to help with the investigation to find any other criminal evidence against Victor, while Tori called the other officers who were checking out Lonnie’s place to let them know Victor was in custody.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t get shot,” Tori said to Adam.

  “I know. Sierra probably would have been upset with me.” He opened a drawer and smiled. “More guns, more stolen credit cards.”

  Tori waved a piece of paper at Adam. “A rental receipt for a boat storage unit fourteen by forty-four feet and the key to it.” She held up the key with a tag on it.

  “Since they were involved in the theft of boats, I think we should check it out,” Adam said and gave a call to the judge, who okayed the order for a search warrant. “Let’s go.”

  They had two officers come with them, and when they arrived at the boat storage unit, they unlocked and opened the door and found a 2019 SeaArk EasyCat. Adam checked the list price. “Going rate on one of these is around $54,000. I suspect this wasn’t the boat they were in when they stole the other.”

  “Nope, unless it was stolen too. This for sure is,” Tori said, checking the serial number on the engine with a list of stolen boats she had on her phone.

  When they finally finished processing both crime scenes and the boat was hauled off as evidence, they returned to the office and found Sierra at the bureau, sketching a witness’s account of a man who had stolen the witness’s purse at the grocery store. Unfortunately, the place where he stole it wasn’t in view of a camera.

  Sierra smiled at Adam, and he hoped she had good news about her house. As soon as she was done with the lady, she came over and gave Adam a hug. “I sold my house, and your house has an offer.”

  “All right. We’ve got good news too. We caught Victor.”

  “Yes! That’s the last of them, isn’t it?” She frowned as she saw a small amount of blood on Adam’s sleeve.

  “It’s not my blood. It’s Victor’s. I had to shoot him in the hand so he wouldn’t shoot at me again.” Adam let out his breath in exasperation. “Which means tons of paperwork. But we need to go out and celebrate the sale of your house tonight.”

  “And the capture of Victor without you getting shot.”

  “Absolutely.” He began to do the paperwork and Tori was checking into a couple of cases at the same time.

  Roland came to him with a bit of good news. “Ballistics came back on those shell casings and bullets found at Victor’s old farmhouse, and we had a match on a couple of the rifles used in the shooting incident in Forest Park.”

  Adam smiled. “That’s great news!”

  “Yeah, I thought you would want to know right away.” Roland left to do some other work.

  A police officer motioned two men to speak with Adam and Tori, and they learned the men had witnessed the boat accident where the three men had drowned on the Willamette River.

  Adam and Tori sure hoped they could have confirmation one way or another about what Kinney’s former cohorts had witnessed concerning the men’s drownings.

  “We saw the driver of the boat make a turn and cross its own wake,” the older gray-haired man said, his face weathered and tan. “During the maneuver, the two men seated near the transom of the boat fell overboard. The captain of the boat turned it around and motored over to the men, then he dove into the water.”

  The other man said, “Yeah and by the time we reached the location, the boat was gone, and so were the men. We figured the men who had left the boat returned to it and were fine. Later, we saw three men on the boat and figured our assumption was true. The men were okay. We’ve been out of the country and didn’t see the description of the boat or about the three drowned men until this morning and realized their boat had been stolen. We immediately canceled our fishing plans and came into the bureau to see you.”

  “Okay, thanks for the information. We’re grateful you came in and told us what happened.” Adam was glad that the men they had up on charges of theft of the boat hadn’t murdered the three men to steal their boat. It was just accidental, as the coroner had thought.

  “The currents are strong and the water was cold. None of the men must have been wearing life jackets or were strong enough to withstand the cold,” the one man who had witnessed it said.

  Adam shook his head. “They weren’t.”

  When the men left, Tori said, “Hey, Kinney’s going in to see Dover at the jail today”—she glanced at the clock—“in half an hour.”

  “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  They drove over to the jail in the van they used for surveillance with a couple of officers who did regular surveillance.

  They were all talking about summer plans, boating, camping out, when Kinney began to talk to Dover and the officers got quiet to hear what was being said. “Hey, Dover, I guess you know Phyllis got caught.”

  “Yeah. What are you doing here?”

  “You know Ollie tried to kill me, only he ended up killing himself after stealing my car.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Ollie didn’t do anything without someone ordering him to do it.”

  “So what are you saying?” Dover asked.

  “You wanted me to do the job of kidnapping the girl and frame Ms. Redding for it. I said I couldn’t. I have to stay clean. The next thing I know, Ollie is trying to kill me.”

  Dover didn’t say anything. Hell, they weren’t going to get anything out of him, Adam was afraid.

  “Things really fell apart once you were no longer in charge,” Kinney said, changing tactics.

  “I’m still in charge.”

  “That’s not what Phyllis and Victor say. First, they hooked up as soon as you lost your case and you weren’t getting out of jail. Then they started stealing and selling boats because they said they can make more money at it than from stealing from hotel rooms. When I told them that you didn’t want them doing that, Victor said you weren’t in charge any longer. Then Burt tried to do what you taught him to do, but he got caught at the hotel room. And Lonnie got caught trying to sell the stolen boat. Of course, Victor and Burt were there also. Phyllis was driving the other boat, so she was involved too. That was some of the reason I quit. Victor had taken charge and I can’t stand him. He’s all in it for himself.”

  “Is Victor still on the loose?”

  “I heard on the news he got caught. A police officer shot him, and Victor is at the hospital now.”

  As soon as Victor was out of surgery, Adam and Sierra would have to question him.

  “Nothing fatal, I hope.” Dover sounded sarcastic when he said it.

  “No. He was shot in the hand.”

  “So why are you here?” Dover asked again.

  “I wanted you to know that if you told the others to kill me, I wasn’t the one who was being disloyal to you. Victor and Phyllis have been.”

  “I wouldn’t have ordered anyone to kill you, Kinney. I like you too much.” Again, the sarcasm in Dover’s tone of voice was evident.

  Adam figured Dover knew Kinney was wired, and that was why he wasn’t incriminating himself.

  “You want to know if I ordered the hit on you? I didn’t,” Dover finally said. “I didn’t tell Phyllis to kidnap the kid either. You either. That’s all on her and Burt. I’m sure Victor had a hand in it. Yeah, I knew she was screwing around with Victor. I suspected it when she wouldn’t visit or call me or take my calls. If she had gotten in touch with me, I could have seen right through her.”

  “Burt said the kidnapping of the girl was your idea,” Kinney said.

  “Burt said that? He’s a fool.”

  “He said Phyllis said so too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me in the beginning what was going on between Phyllis and Victor?”

  “I wasn’t sure about it right away. I just figured they were getting together to make plans. But Burt knew right away. I figured he would have told you. I never heard what other plans anyone had because I’d said no to doing the kidnapping job, except that Burt told me about the theft of the boat. I don’t blame you if you had hoped Victor and Phyllis would blow the kidnapping case and get caught. But why involve me?”

  “I didn’t involve you. I told you already. That had to have been Victor or Phyllis’s idea. And when you said no, they did the job with Burt.”

  Kinney laughed out loud and nearly broke Adam’s eardrums. Tori immediately glanced at him and he knew it had hurt her ears too. “So you told Phyllis to do it and she tried to make me do it with Burt, betcha. But I wouldn’t, so she had to do it.”

  “If you see her before she gets out of the slammer, tell her I’ll be seeing her. And Victor. Gotta go.”

  Kinney let out his breath and must have turned the mike off after that.

  As soon as he left the building, Adam called him. “This is Detective Holmes. Meet us at the bureau.”

  “He didn’t say anything,” Kinney said.

  “I know. But we’ll talk.”

  When they all arrived at the bureau, Adam and Tori waved at Sierra and then headed into the interrogation room to speak with Kinney.

  And then they listened to the recording. “So what do you think about Dover ordering the hit on you?” Adam asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’m thinking it might have been Victor and Phyllis because they had to do the kidnapping bit with Burt instead of me. That made them more of a target for the police.”

  “What about Dover ordering the kidnapping of the girl?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah. No way would Victor and Phyllis have tried to incriminate Ms. Redding for the kidnapping if Dover hadn’t told them to do it. Dover wanted revenge. Pure and simple. Victor and Phyllis had no reason to do it otherwise. And they figured he would learn about it if they didn’t do it, so they tried to con me into doing it.”