Free Outsider by Diana Palmer Page B

that badly. His face hardened. “Know what the psychologist said? She said that Maureen wasn’t my problem…my problem was you. What I did to you drove me right into a downward spin. I thought you were experienced. I do have some memory of the things I said to you when I left you.”
    So did she. She couldn’t manage to meet his eyes when she recalled them.
    â€œMaureen was just an excuse I gave myself for drinking,” he said heavily, “because it hurt too much to dig deeper into my past.”
    She wanted to believe him. She couldn’t. His passion for Maureen had been too much a part of their lives. And apparently he still didn’t know what Maureen had done to get Colby. She turned away.
    â€œYou don’t believe it.”
    She shook her head. “I was never more than a footnote in your life. We both know that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Move on, Colby,” she said with a trace of humor in her voice. “I have.”
    He actually winced as she walked away from him.
    Â 
    T HE QUESTION OF HOW Bernadette knew about his arm haunted him. His behavior toward the child did, too. She had spirit. He couldn’t forget those black eyes spitting fire when she called him a man-killer. She was no coward. She was back in the canteen the next day, but Colby was careful not to go near it. He didn’t want to upset her again. It had hurt him that she cried. She seemed to be a tough, intelligent child. It wouldn’t do to hurt her proud spirit. He’d been very much like her at her age.
    Things had progressed in the drug smuggling case. Colby and Hunter were privy to a piece of tape on which Cara Dominguez met with an associate in a retro coffeehouse called The Beat, courtesy of DEA agent Alexander Cobb’s friend, Jodie Clayburn. It turned out that Cara did know something about the missing shipment of drugs, but she was careful not to tell her associate very much. Perhaps she suspected that Jodie’s presence in the coffeehouse wasn’t totally innocent. She’d been out of jail on bail on drug smuggling charges, but she suddenly skipped town and vanished. Cobb subsequently fired one of his agents, a man named Kennedy, for passing information to the smugglers. Kennedy had been arrested, along with the warehouse security guard. Cobb knew that was one of the leaks he’d been searching for. But Cy Parks had said that there were a couple of leaks among government sources. Colby knew that Cobb wasn’t dead certain that Cara didn’t have any more “moles” in his office, so he kept a lot of information from Colby and even from Hunter.
    Colby and Hunter were still looking for that shipment of drugs, certain that they were somewhere in Ritter’s warehouse. But they couldn’t find them, not even when they had drug-sniffing dogs brought in covertly by a member of Cobb’s drug task force. The dogs walked around the rows and rows of boxes on pallets, but they didn’t give any signal at all. One of them nosed the wall a time or two, but Colby figured out why easily—some male dog had managed to get into the place and hiked his leg on it. If one dog left a urine trail, every other male dog who came along would add his scent to it. The drugs had to be in one of the higher boxes, but it would require a lot of lifting and a lot of examination to find anything at all. Considering the size of the warehouse, it would have given several employees job security for half a year. Ritter couldn’t spare the manpower or the time to go through every box on the place.
    â€œI know the drugs are here, damn it!” Hunter muttered late Friday.
    â€œWe’ll find them,” Colby assured him.
    â€œThink so?” He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “I’ve got to leave.”
    â€œIt’s half an hour until quitting time,” Colby pointed out.
    â€œNikki’s in a play tonight at her school,” the other man