Free Nothing Sweeter (Sweet on a Cowboy) by Laura Drake

of the truck, worry plain on his face, a sheet of paper fluttering in his hand.
    Max shut down the engine, opened the door, grabbed his hat, and stepped out. He wanted to be standing to face what was clearly bad news. “What is it, Wyatt?” He slapped his hat on as Bree jogged around the front of the truck.
    “It’s from the IRS. They’re auditing the High Heather.”
    Max’s sphincter tightened.
How much bad can one day hold?
He knew he should reach for the paper, but he couldn’t seem to uncurl his fists.
    “Let me see that.” Bree reached around him to take the letter from Wyatt’s fingers. She scanned the sheet. “They’re questioning your 940 Form, Section 179, for the past two years. Providing you have receipts and adequate backup, this shouldn’t be too bad.” She squinted at the small print at the bottom of the letter. “I’d need to look up Publication 225 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. I’m not familiar—”
    Max snatched the paper back.
    Bree looked up at him, then at Wyatt. “What?”
    Max tipped his hat back. “Where the hell did you come from, lady?”
    “Who cares?” Wyatt jabbed an elbow in his ribs. “If she can help, I don’t care if she’s Al Capone. Do you?”

CHAPTER
    7
    Y ou’re as good a liar as you were a detective.
    After Wyatt’s unwitting comment, Bree put her anger and nervous energy to good use. Grunting, she lifted the hay bale a few inches. In spite of the canvas gloves, the twine bit her fingers. Sweat tickled down her back as she shuffled the bale to the trapdoor of the loft, set it down, and with a kick, pushed it through the opening. It hit the ground with a satisfying
thump
.
    Her hands were busy, but her mind wasn’t. She couldn’t help but think back to that day. The windowless interrogation room at the Century City Jail had been tiny, and they’d kept her there for hours.
    The Federal agents only sat and looked at her.
    So she started talking.
    About the call from a customer, who got knockoff gaming boards instead of his ordered computer boards. Boards that would sell for eight hundred dollars a pop on the open market.
    About her warehouse reconnaissance: the Taiwanshipment of knockoff game boards she’d found in boxes labeled with the cheaper item’s barcode.
    About her tracking the illegal boards to an account on eBay. This wasn’t her first brush with Vic’s schemes. It hadn’t occurred to her that the seller name, Madison Avenue Distribution, had anything to do with her.
    She revealed the rest of the story: her resignation and the hushed conversation she’d overheard on the other side of Vic’s closed office door. So much for amateur sleuthing. What she’d uncovered those past months was just the tip of an iceberg.
    And she was the
Titanic
.
    They had questions then, all right. Where was the money? Was she paying off someone in Customs to look the other way? How long had she been doing this? Where was the money?
    Horror mixed with her gut load of worry and panic.
    After three hours of interrogation, the investigators gave up in disgust. They turned her over to the deputies, along with a plastic bag of her possessions, and told her she’d better spend some time working on her story.
    Then the nightmare began in earnest. The drunk tank. The fingerprinting. The
cavity search
.
    Spit out at the end of the booking gauntlet, she was allowed a phone call. Stabbing the keys, Aubrey imagined the phone ringing in Phoenix. Her mother, stirring a pot on the stove, would put the spoon down and cross the room to answer. But she didn’t. The phone rang and rang.
    What now? She shuddered, thinking of calling any of her “friends.” She’d be the joke of the postwork happy hour. Ignoring the shouts behind her to “Hurry her honky ass up,” she scanned the smudged business cards thumbtackedto the wall. Her lifestyle left her with enough money for bail or an attorney, but not both. Wagering an attorney would help more in the long run, she dialed the number