“Yeah, I think I have bigger problems with this truck than a little sand on the floor.” Sam beeped the horn at a car coming at them in the other lane. The car honked back and flicked his lights on and off. “If the developers are the ones with the drones, their guys overreacted.”
“Unless they weren’t shooting to kill. Maybe they were just shooting to scare us off.”
“Every time you have a gun in your hand, there’s a chance someone’s going to end up dead, so that’s a stupid plan if that’s the case.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, but he’d need to rinse with some water if he hoped to get the sand out of his teeth. “Or these shooters are not connected to the developer—and they’re watching that land for another reason.”
“You mean like there’s something buried there they don’t want anyone to find?”
“Maybe.” Sam screwed up his mouth and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “There was something about that terrain.”
Jolene slapped his arm. “Don’t do that with your mouth. It’s a bad habit.”
“One of many.” He banged his fist on the horn again as another car approached. “I’m going to have to take the back way into town to avoid rolling down Main Street with two busted headlights on my Border Patrol truck.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“A half-truth.” He lifted one shoulder. He hated admitting to Jolene that he planned to tell a lie, even half of a lie. “I’ll tell them someone shot out the headlights, but I won’t tell them the circumstances. Because once I tell them the circumstances, my interest in that property is going to be common knowledge.”
“Don’t tell them...if you can get away with it, and you won’t get into any trouble.”
“Lies always cause trouble, don’t they?” He ran a hand down the thigh of her dirty jeans. “Scared the hell out me when I realized someone was taking potshots at us. All I could think of was that I couldn’t lose you after I’d...we’d, after I’d seen you again.”
He snuck a peek at her profile, stony and mute, her lips pressed together.
He blew out a breath. “Anyway, I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
“Me, too. I mean, I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
He’d take that. He swallowed, the grains of sand scratching his throat.
When he finally turned onto Jolene’s street, his shoulders dropped and he tried to roll out the tightness. They could’ve been killed out there.
He parked the truck behind her rental, and they dragged their stuff out, shaking the sand off in her driveway. The wind had settled, but a fat raindrop hit the back of his hand.
“Looks like the wind brought in another storm.”
Jolene folded her arms across her zipped-up hoodie and tilted her head back. “It’s a good thing we got here before the rain started. Driving with no headlights was bad enough but doing it on slick roads would’ve made it ten times worse.”
He followed her to the garage door, and she opened it using the keypad on the side. As it creaked open, Sam ducked under and returned her shovel to the corner.
Jolene jingled her keys as she walked up to the door that connected the garage to the house, Chip scratching and whining all the way. She unlocked the door and pressed her thumb against the control to close the garage.
“God, what a night.” Sam tossed his backpack onto the floor. “All that shooting made me crave Chinese. Do you want some leftovers?”
“Yeah, but I refuse to eat it cold, like you usually do.” She drew up close to him, practically touching her nose to his and his pulse jumped. She dabbed at his cheek with her fingertip. “You have a little dried blood there. Did the glass hit you?”
“Probably.” He scraped at the spot and winced at the stinging sensation.
“You just made it bleed.” She yanked a piece of paper towel from the holder and ran some water over it.
Closing his eyes, he held still as she pressed it gently against his face. He wanted to take her in his arms right now and lose himself in her kisses. Revel in her warm body when he could’ve lost her out there.
She took his hand and replaced her fingers with his on the paper towel. “Hold it there for a few seconds. It’ll stop bleeding. It’s just a little ding on that otherwise perfect face.”
His eyelids flew open. Was that a come-on?
“Ugh, I have sand everywhere from crawling on the ground.” She grabbed the zipper on her hoodie and yanked it down. The hoodie crackled as she peeled it from her body. She hung it over the back of a chair as she smacked some kind of plastic wrapper on the kitchen table.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “What is that?”
“It blew across the ground and got stuck on that cactus. I grabbed it right before the shooting started and stuffed it inside my sweatshirt. I don’t know why. It was just the biggest piece of trash out there.”
“Let me see that.” He tossed the wet paper towel sporting his blood into the trash, and smoothed his hand across the heavy plastic. “There’s a label on this.”
Jolene sidled up next to him and peered over his shoulder. “What’s it say?”
Sam swiped away some of the dirt, careful not to smear the letters, which were neatly typed out like a label printed from a computer. The black lettering jumped out at him, and a spike of adrenaline jacked him up.
Jolene ran a finger beneath the words. “There’s a date, and the words say...Pink Lady. There’s a drink called Pink Lady. What is this, packaging for some booze?”
She flicked the edge of the plastic wrapping and turned away.
“Jolene, this is the type of label the cartels use to wrap and
