Free DeliciousDanger by Desiree Holt

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me.”
    “All you had to tell him was you were substituting for a
friend and Latrobe would have to talk to him.” There was a pause. “But you
didn’t do that, did you? You did something very stupid. I can tell.”
    Malik’s hands were sweating so badly they were slipping on the
steering wheel. “I told him I couldn’t take on any more work and then I left.”
    “Left?” The word was a roar across the connection. “You just
left? How stupid can you possibly be?”
    “But—”
    “But nothing. Now you’ve gotten their attention because you
did something out of the ordinary. Shit. This means a change in plans. We’ll
have to find some other way to set him up and we won’t be able to watch him as
carefully while we make plans. Get back here at once. If you pray hard enough
to Allah perhaps I won’t kill you.”
    * * * * *
    “There’s definitely something up with that gardener,” Mike
said, closing the front door and rearming the security system. “If he’s even a
gardener at all.” He gave Rick a brief recap of what happened. “I’d say he was
there to keep an eye on you. But wouldn’t your neighbors have wondered when a
strange man showed up to clip their hedges.”
    Rick frowned. “Maybe not. All he had to do was tell them he
was a new man on the crew, or substituting for the regular.”
    “Someone’s painting a target on you and you know it has to
do with what’s going on in Iraq. Weapons missing, all that.” He gave Rick a
careful look. “I keep coming back to Greg Jordan, although I really don’t want
to.”
    Rick sat up, stifling a moan as his muscles and ribs
protested. “Me too. I could have sworn he was clean as far as dirty contacts
over there. But now I’m willing to look at anybody and everybody. Any word yet
on the van from the so-called accident?”
    “Not a thing. I talked to Jennings this morning. Someone’s
made it just disappear.”
    “Great.” Rick ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw.
“That definitely means we’re not playing with amateurs here.”
    “We’ll need to go over the plans for delivery in the
minutest detail before we ever lift off,” Mike pointed out. “There’s no margin
for error here.”
    “Don’t I know it. I just—”
    Whatever else he might have said was cut off by the ringing
of his cell phone. He dug it out of his shirt pocket where he’d stuck it in the
hospital.
    “Latrobe.”
    “Rick? It’s Harry.”
    “Hey, Harry, thanks for the call.”
    “You doing okay?”
    “Yeah, it’ll take a lot more than a little wreck to knock me
out of commission.”
    “Listen.”There was the sound of discomfort in Harry’s
voice.“I’m not sure I should even be making this call.”
    There was such a long pause Rick frowned. “Is everything
okay? Trouble at the field? Do you have a problem?”
    “No, no, nothing like that. It’s my granddaughter.”
    Instantly the image of the striking redhead popped into his
mind and the memory of how her body had felt against his. “Does she have
a problem? Something we can help with?”
    “That’s not it. I just…”
    “Harry, maybe you just better spit it out.”
    “It’s just that it sounds so crazy. And I don’t want you to
think she’s nuts.”
    Rick chuckled. “There are too many people standing in line
ahead of her for that. Lay it out.”
    “Well, see, you met her dog, right? Xena?”
    “Yes. I seem to remember her being startled that she jumped
out of the truck and sat down by me. I guess she doesn’t take to strangers.
Harry, you’re not calling about that, are you? It’s okay. Dogs sometimes do
funny things.”
    “That’s not even the half of it.” As briefly as he could,
Harry explained to him about Xena, the relationship between woman and dog and
repeated the gist of Kelly’s phone call. “So you see, it’s just nuts, right? I
try to tell her that all the time but—”
    Rick shifted the phone to his other ear. “Now you’ll think I’m crazy but I don’t think