“What?” Leila asked, anxiety in her voice that told him she’d recognized he was about to say something serious.
“What I was going to say is that the defective armor isn’t the only problem right now. Even when your dad was CEO, there was something illegal happening.”
“What?” Leila’s voice dropped to a whisper. She shifted her feet, widening her stance like she was preparing for a physical blow.
“Someone at Petrov Armor has been selling guns to criminals for a long time.”
Chapter Ten
The old construction site where Dougie’s BECA connection had wanted to meet was the kind of place where you shot someone and left their body to be found weeks or months later.
Adding to the ominous vibe was the sun setting, casting eerie shadows everywhere. Kane leaned casually against a half-standing wall, not putting any real weight on it in case only gravity was keeping it upright. Dougie’s connection was picking his way through the abandoned pieces of building, thinking he was being stealthy. Playing along as if he hadn’t spotted the guy—or his armed backup—Kane made a show of checking his watch and frowning.
It was almost twenty minutes past the scheduled meet time. Kane had been watched from the moment he’d parked his car off the side of the road and picked his way by foot down to the construction site. It was a smart spot for a meet, deserted and easy to watch all possible access points. It was the kind of place a smart agent wouldn’t come alone.
As his contact finally showed himself, Kane offered a cocky grin. He’d been in worse spots dozens of times. If he had to rely on his own ability to spin a good story or someone else to keep him safe and stay out of trouble themselves, he’d choose to go in alone every time. It was probably why he was still alive.
“Guess you’re Kane Bullet, huh?” the guy asked, looking him over. “What kind of name is that?”
Kane kept his irreverent grin in place, didn’t step forward to greet the guy. “The kind I gave myself.”
The man laughed. He was blond and blue-eyed, wearing tattered jeans and a T-shirt that read Armed and Dangerous on the front. With his overmuscular build, the guy’s loose clothes still didn’t hide that at least the first part of that statement was true. The bulge of a holster was clearly visible at his hip.
“So, Dougie says you had some trouble in Vegas, wanted to start over in Tennessee?”
“Yeah.” Kane shrugged, stepped slightly away from the half-standing wall. He kept his hands loose at his sides, not wanting to give the guy—or his backup—any reason to get twitchy.
“I looked up those fires. Nasty business.”
Kane spewed the kind of offhand hate he knew the BECA member would eat up. “If they didn’t want to get burned out, they should have left on their own.”
The guy laughed again, a grating sound that would have made Kane grit his teeth hard if he weren’t in character. Right now, he wasn’t Kane Bradshaw. That person was buried deep, beneath a layer of filth he called Kane Bullet.
So, instead he let his grin shift into something nastier, filled with determination and fury. “There was more I wanted to do in Vegas, but you know, I can’t be useful if I’m locked up. So, I skipped town before they got too close.”
The guy’s humor dried up. “Your friend said it was a close call.” His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to read from Kane’s expression whether the cops were tracking him down as they spoke.
Kane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. The way those pigs like to brag, don’t you think it would have been all over the papers if they had a real lead? Instead, nothing but ‘we’re still investigating’ and ‘we won’t stop looking’ BS. I knew it was time to get out, but I did it before they could get a lead on me. Don’t worry, man. I wouldn’t bring my heat on you. I’m looking to make friends, not enemies.”
The man visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s good, because we deal with betrayal real quick.”
“Not a problem. What do I have to betray, anyway? All I’m looking for is a hookup. Maybe Dougie told you, but I’d gotten a gun connection out here and it dried up.” He scowled again, then took a risk. “Had myself a potential in with Petrov Armor, but ever since that idiot CEO shut down the legal side of their gun business, apparently things have been a little dry on the not-so-legal side of it, too.”
The guy stiffened fast, then seemed to forcibly pull his shoulders away from his ears. He cracked his neck in both directions, then gave a tight smile. “Really?”
The hairs on the back of Kane’s neck popped up, telling him he’d made a mistake. But what? Had they been wrong and Leila was actually involved? Even though Davis’s judgment was clearly trashed when it came to her, Kane didn’t think he was wrong about this. Had the intel about the BECA connection been bad? If so, this was a waste of time. Maybe not for the FBI, for future information, but for him with this case.
The guy reached into his pocket and Kane tensed, but when he pulled his hand out, he was holding a phone. He typed something, then tucked it away again. “Who was that contact?”
Kane tried to backtrack without raising suspicion. “Look, maybe my contact was screwing with me from the start. But I’m no rat. I can’t give up his name, you know? But it sounds like he was more talk than action. I just don’t know people in Tennessee the way I did in Vegas. That’s why I looked up Dougie.”
The guy nodded, but his eyes were still narrowed, his tone slightly off. “Hard to trust people
