Deep Breath by Alison Kent

toward Finn. “Her old man took down with the Alzheimer’s. And her no-account husband up and left.”
    “Freddy is not no-account,” Tracy shot back before bursting into sobs.
    The light-haired thug stepped up to the counter and slid his gun along the surface toward her. Finn reached over, slapped his hand down on the barrel. “Hey, dude. Knock it off with the arsenal. The lady’s going through a rough time.”
    “Yeah, ain’t we all,” he scoffed, turning to Tracy. “One more peep and you’ll be waiting out the rest of the weekend in the cooler.”
    “We don’t have a cooler,” she said, staring down at her bowl and causing Finn to smile. “Just a fridge.”
    “In the toilet then, smart mouth.” The thug dropped the gun’s grip against the counter with a bang. “Now shut it.”
    Tracy shrugged and got back to eating. Phil did the same. Finn had to force himself not to yank the shotgun out of the thug’s hand and turn the barrel around on the son of a bitch. He wouldn’t hesitate to fire. And that was the problem with being a crabby, worried, bored-to-the-bone bastard.
    He couldn’t put Tracy and Phil in jeopardy because he wanted payback for what this bunch was putting his sister through. And doing something that stupid would only bring Georgia more grief.
    So he tucked away his temper and dug into his cereal, deciding he wasn’t so much of a kid after all, because this candy store business sucked.

 
     
     
    10:00 P.M.
     
    Dazed, Georgia leaned into the curve of Harry’s body for the ride back to the hotel. She didn’t care whether or not the body contact was appropriate. And really, after that kiss? Was there anything that wouldn’t be? Could she have possibly tried any harder to crawl into his skin?
    She pushed the thought aside. She didn’t have time to think about kissing Harry. They had to regroup. She had to regroup. Could one person regroup?
    The dossier had to be at the general’s estate. The ranch had been closed up, all items of value sent to Dallas for the auction…unless the dossier had been mislabeled and included in the documents awaiting shipment to the university libraries.
    No. It was in the document lockbox listed in the brochure, the one that hadn’t reached the gallery prior to the reception. It had to be. She didn’t know how the slipup had occurred, but if the dossier had made it out of Waco but not to the auction, logic told her that’s where it was.
    If that wasn’t the case, then after the auction she’d have to find out who had purchased the general’s desk and where it had been shipped. Because if the file had been misrouted, lost in transit, or, God help her, for some reason destroyed, she didn’t want to consider how screwed she was—and how screwed that left Finn.
    But the biggest question niggling at her now was who in the world was Paul Valoren and why had her father never mentioned him to her? Valoren had acted like he and her father were the best and closest of old friends.
    She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it. Refused to believe it. Her father would have mentioned the other man. He wouldn’t have kept their relationship secret. He wouldn’t have had any need if there was nothing suspect in their relationship, nothing fishy, nothing odd…She groaned.
    “You okay?” Harry leaned close to ask.
    “Right now? I’d have to say no. You can ask me again in the morning.”
    “Is this about finding the dossier? Or about meeting Valoren?”
    She shook her head. She had no answer. She wasn’t even sure she could separate the two. The night had been a blur of disappointment and confusion, with an unexpected wrench thrown into the middle of things.
    And, horrible, horrible sister that she was, she’d hardly thought of Finn all evening, ugh. She’d been so self-involved, so outwardly focused. Except for the intimate tryst with Harry. And hadn’t that just been the epitome of narcissism?
    Yet here she was leaning into him again, looking for