“No.” Cruz put his arm around Mia’s shoulders, tucking her against his side. “We had dinner in New Orleans after spending a couple of hours with Charlie. We went to bed pretty much right after returning.”
We went to bed was a little more information than Mia was willing to share, and her cheeks felt hot.
“Well, if you remember anything, give me a call. Gotta go tell Sandy. That should be a noisy conversation,” the detective said dryly. “Hate to talk ill of the dead. But he was a mean, drunken rattlesnake. Other than his sister, no one will miss him. Solves Daisy and little Charlie’s issues effectively.”
“Yes,” Mia agreed. “It does.” She was relieved that Latour was permanently out of Daisy’s and Charlie’s lives. “Let us know if you need anything,” she told the detective. She didn’t want to be there when they brought Latour’s body around to the front of the house. “We’ll be inside.”
After Cruz made a pot of coffee, they sat at the center island as Mia gave him the list of names she’d compiled on her computer. People she worked with, people she did business with, personal, professional—the list went on for pages and pages.
“This is long, but I can’t imagine my nail girl or the pool guy wants to overthrow me,” she told Cruz. “Besides, I don’t pay or tip them that well.”
Of course, he didn’t smile. “I’m not ruling anyone out. Even the manicurist or pool guy could’ve been brought into the forum if they provided insider info instead of cash.” He slid off the stool. “I’m going to go get my computer. We’re doing a background check on all of these people. See if we can find any kind of pattern to all this—”
“I have Black Raven doing background checks. You can’t find out as much as they can.”
“I have resources they might not have. My military contacts can help me get into files they might not have access to. If we double up on info, no loss. I’m not sitting around waiting. Once we do that, we can eliminate some of them.”
Mia took a sip of now cold coffee and pulled a face. “Most, I imagine.” She got up for a refill, holding the pot aloft. “I feel the same way. I’d rather duplicate our efforts than sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for something to happen. Coffee?”
Cruz shook his head, so Mia returned to the island with her coffee. He came up behind her, swept her hair off her neck to press a lingering kiss to her nape. “God, I love the smell of your skin.” With a hand under her chin, he turned her head to face him. “It smells like sex on crisp, clean sheets or on fresh spring flowers.”
She smiled, looking into his darkening eyes. That was the sweetest thing he had ever said to her. It was raw and real and unguarded. She lifted her lips to his and kissed him.
Straightening, he brushed her cheek with his thumb, eyes holding hers, dark and filled with promise. “That’ll hold me until I get back.”
Mia watched him exit the kitchen with his long, loose-limbed stride and go out to his truck to retrieve his computer. “Who are you, Cruz Barcelona?” she murmured under her breath.
She’d asked Todd to have Black Raven do a search on Cruz the minute she’d regained her senses enough to decide to hire him. She was stringent with security and with knowing everything she could about the people around her. Even, or especially, a new lover. Had all the changes she made in her world here along Bayou Cheniere resulted in that or was it her odd sensual relationship with Cruz that changed that about her?
She picked up his phone, tempted to see whether his cell had any revealing activity, but she controlled the urge. While she felt sanctimonious for not doing so, it was really because she had only minutes to complete the call to Black Raven. She had to call information for their office number in Denver, then hung on impatiently until Somerville answered.
“Anything else on Barcelona?” Mia asked the second the agent came on the phone. Her eyes were fixed on the door, waiting for Cruz’s return, and her heart pounded as if she was doing something illicit.
“Nothing of note,” he told her, cutting to the chase. “No arrest warrants. Idaho driver’s license. That’s about it.”
“Employment history?” she asked as she heard the back door open, then close.
The report on Cruz had come back clean. No arrests. No prison records. No parking tickets, for pity’s sake. He’d gone to high school. Done a stint in the military and been working on his own as a handyman since he got out. The guy looked like a freakin’ saint on paper.
The problem was that his background was too clean. In her lengthy experience in the business world, no one was that good. Everyone had secrets or had done things they weren’t proud of. And, given his strength and skill set, and the way she’d seen him handle Latour the other night, she had a niggling feeling that perhaps Cruz Barcelona wasn’t his real name at all. Maybe he was in the witness protection program.