Free A THIEF OF ANY MAN (Food Truck Mysteries Book 6) by Chloe Kendrick

turning on the oven. My knees went weak as I closed my eyes. He stepped back and looked at me. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “That means more than you can know.”
    Who knew that killing curiosity could lead to a passionate embrace? I wondered what I would get if I gave up on investigating altogether. “Happy to help,” I said with a slight smirk on my lips. I wasn’t sure why the secrecy meant that much to him, but apparently it meant a lot – enough to stoke passion in him. I knew that I wouldn’t cross Land’s personal barriers until he was ready to let me in.
    “We can talk more later, but just know, it’s them, not you. They’re a lot to handle individually. In a group, it’s like a tsunami. I was trying to spare you.”
    I nodded in understanding. I wasn’t in a rush to be swamped with family. “So besides solving the case of the coffee thief, what do we have here? Is the murder of Big Tony related to the woman in the food truck?” I asked.
    Land shook his head and looked at me. “I don’t see how the two crimes can be related. Strangulation is a passionate crime. It indicates that the two are involved in a personal relationship of some sort, and the personal aspects to choking someone are what make it so intense. It would be an odd murderer who liked to strangle strangers.” I shivered as Land spoke. His voice was quiet, but the emotions he was evoking gave me the chills.
    “So one is a mob hit, and the other is a personal crime. I haven’t had any chance to look into Emma Creech. I stopped by her house, but no one was home. I don’t have any idea about her personal life.” I gathered the cups and packets for the coffee as he worked.
    “I’m not thinking that he’s a mob hit,” Land said after a moment.
    I started to ask why, but stopped. “Are you going to gross me out with details about the crime if I ask why?”
    He gave me a grin. “Maybe. I thought that’s what you liked about me.”
    “It’s not in the top ten,” I answered honestly.
    “Let’s just say that I would have expected a mob hit to be an execution-style shooting, behind the ear, which usually means that the victim was on his knees. This shooting was a mess from a blood and guts perspective. Shot in the side of the head, and the bullet went right through. Too much splatter and mess for a professional. The last thing a professional killer wants is to wear the DNA of the victim.”
    I grimaced. “That’s not good for us, since we’re not professionals.”
    Land shrugged. “Unless you do something rash, we’re not involved in this murder case. We just found a dead body. The corpse was stinking up the place. It was only a few more days at most before someone would have reported it, and the body would have been found. We expedited that process only by a matter of hours.”
    The coffee was done, and I poured three cups. “I have no desire to get involved with that case. It could prove too dangerous.”
    Land kissed the top of my head. “When has that stopped you before?” he said with a smile.
    We took the cups up to the guard shack, where Sabine sat filling in a crossword puzzle. “This is the closest thing to Heaven. I wanted to tell you that I took some of the ground beans, but I wasn’t supposed to bother Maeve with details – like my existence.” She took a long sip of her coffee, and I watched her as she did. She was beautiful in the same way that Land was attractive. The full lip, the dark hair, the perfect nose. I could easily have picked her for his family member.
    “So what do you know about the car that the body was in?” I asked, trying to fill the silence with something other than talk about her brother.
    “The Corolla? It’s been here for months. I checked the records when you started making a fuss here. The owner has one space, and the Corolla seems to have been here the whole time. No in or out notifications for it. If I remember correctly, the guy has been in the Caribbean for the last few