Free Run the Risk by Lori Foster Page B

up the steps, considered breaking into her apartment
to snoop around, but if Rowdy had any booby traps set, he could end up blowing
his cover.
    Best not to push it.
    Tromping back up to his own apartment, he got his shoes and a
shirt, and headed out to the grocery. His culinary skills were limited. He knew
only how to cook what he liked best, which meant meat and potatoes. He’d pick up
the barbecue, and maybe grab a cake or something from the bakery.
    He made a point of driving around the block so that Pepper
wouldn’t think he followed her. They could still run into each other, but it
wouldn’t be on purpose—not on his part, anyway. Along the way he thought about
Morton Andrews. So far, Andrews had gotten away with a lot, including murder. So
many times, in so many ways, the trail led to him.
    Unfortunately, Andrews had connections everywhere, which meant
he always had an alias.
    Logan needed Rowdy Yates’s eyewitness account to nail the
bastard for good. The facts bolstered his belief that he’d eventually be
successful.
    Yates had worked at Andrews’s club, Checkers, a few years ago.
For all Logan knew, Yates had been legitimate muscle for the club, but either
way, he’d been in the right place at the right time to have the inside
scoop.
    A reporter had claimed to have a breaking story about Jack’s
murder—thanks to confidential info from Yates.
    That story had died with the reporter, but Yates was still
around, and soon, Logan would be able to question him.
    He could hardly wait.
    Thoughts of Morton Andrews continued to plague him even as he
parked and did his shopping. He could still see the smug prick: fifty years old,
tall, trim, and as dirty as they came. Women seemed to find him handsome with
his dyed white-blond hair, near-black eyes and slick wardrobe.
    As one of the wealthier club owners in the state, he always had
a babe on his arm. The women either didn’t know, or didn’t care, that Andrews
dealt drugs and was suspected of forced labor trade and everything from theft to
murder.
    What would Pepper think if she knew of her brother’s
association with Morton Andrews? Did she even know her brother had worked at
Checkers?
    As Logan grabbed the few things he needed off the shelves, he
could have sworn he felt someone watching him. Not casual curiosity but intense
observation. He paid for his groceries and walked out to the parking lot.
    The sense of being watched sharpened. After slipping on
mirrored sunglasses, he looked around, nonchalantly checking parked cars,
customers and shadows.
    Though he saw no one in particular, he’d been on the job long
enough to know he hadn’t imagined it. Only Reese and the lieutenant knew he was
currently undercover, but Andrews was always a threat. For that reason, Logan
remained cautious. But he was damn good at his job, and he doubted Andrews could
have had him followed, not without Logan knowing it before now.
    So who then? Possibly Rowdy Yates?
    He stowed the groceries in the rear of his pickup and opened
the driver’s door. The fine hairs on the nape of his neck prickled; would he end
up with a bullet in his back? Anyone with a rifle could pick him off with ease.
Was Rowdy corrupt enough for cold-blooded murder?
    “What are you doing here?”
    Logan jerked around and found Pepper standing there, a hand
shading her eyes from the sun, a soft breeze playing with a few loose tendrils
of her dark blond hair.
    When he pulled off his sunglasses to greet her, he noted her
look of unease.
    Logan knew her damn brother was the most likely threat to
him…but was he also a threat to her? “I had to get stuff for dinner.” To make it
more difficult for anyone with a rifle scope, he maneuvered her between his body
and the grocery store entrance. He had his own truck at his back. “What are you
doing here?”
    “I needed some groceries myself.” Looking beyond him,
expression wary and anxious, she scrunched her face against the glare off the
blacktop parking lot. “I