Стальные небеса. Ирина Котова

Instead, she’d done her best to help him. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t deserve the rude distrust he’d just dished out.

      “I owe you an apology, Ms. Mann,” he said. “A big one. I was out of line.”

      That jolted Maggie out of her thoughts. She glanced at him, surprised.

      “Way out of line,” she agreed dryly.

      It was weariness that put the roughness in his voice, she realized. Weariness and worry. If she’d been in his place, looking for a sister who’d been missing for over two weeks, she would have been a whole lot more obnoxious.

      She would like to think she would have been as good at putting two and two together and coming up with five as Rick Dornier, but she wouldn’t like to bet on it.

      Whether he really believed what he’d said or not, Rick had nailed her. The question was, what was she going to do about it?

      Nothing, she decided. For now.

      Still, if her boss found out that Rick had pegged her as undercover DEA within hours of meeting her, Garrity would pull her off the job. She couldn’t let that happen. She was too close to finding out who was behind the sudden influx of high-quality Asian White heroin that was flowing into Colorado and the neighboring states to let anyone stop her now.

      Her instincts told her Tina was involved in it somehow. Probably not as a dealer, but she knew something. Maggie was sure of it. But what? And why had she disappeared?

      Or been made to disappear?

      The thought made Maggie shiver.

      Whatever Tina was up to, she was at risk. The sooner they found her, the better.

      If she’d found Greg sooner—

      Angrily, Maggie shoved the thought aside.

      She liked Tina. A lot. But she couldn’t afford to let her liking a person get in the way of doing her job. And she wouldn’t let her own emotions get in the way of working with a man who might prove useful.

      One thing, she was not going to let him get under her skin like he had. This was business, not personal. She needed to remember that.

      Maggie relaxed her grip on the wheel, forced herself to relax.

      “Apology accepted,” she said lightly. “Actually, I suppose I should be flattered. No one’s ever accused me of being a DEA agent before.”

      Not while she was undercover, anyway.

      “And you won’t need to call a cab,” she added. “This time of night, it can take forever to get one. I won’t be five minutes, tops.”

      Five minutes turned into thirty. There’d been a rush in the last hour so Steve and Sharon were tired and running very late.

      To Maggie’s surprise, Rick pitched in to help clean up. The man was clearly exhausted, but too darned nice to sit when others were overworked and eager to get home.

      Maggie tucked the evening’s take into the small office safe, shoved the stack of paperwork she’d meant to get to tonight to one side—working undercover like this meant she ended up doing two jobs, not one—and locked the office behind her. Dora, the morning manager, would have too much to do getting the shop ready to open at six to worry about whatever Maggie had left undone.

      She emerged to find Sharon shrugging into her coat while Steve turned out the lights. Rick was standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, wearily staring at nothing.

      Maggie squelched a sudden urge to wrap her arms around him and tell him not to worry, that it was all going to work out somehow.

      Helping Rick Dornier was part of her job, she sternly reminded herself. She wanted to find Tina and so did he. It was as simple as that. She was not getting emotionally involved here.

      The sound of her footsteps on the old wood floor evidently roused him from his thoughts, for he blinked and gave himself a little shake. And then he smiled at her, a tired, intimate little smile that made something tighten in her chest.

      She saved her smile for the two college kids. “Thanks, guys. I sure appreciate your staying late to finish up. I’ll lock up behind you.”

      “We’ve still gotta take out the trash,” Sharon protested, pointing to two well-filled plastic bags that had been set by the back door.

      “I’m parked out back,” Maggie assured her. “I’ll get them. You two go on home. See you tomorrow.”

      The click of the lock as she closed the door behind them sounded unusually loud. She paused a moment in the entry. To make sure her employees were all right, she told herself. Her hesitation had nothing to do with the man still in the shop, waiting for her.

      At this hour of the night, the pedestrian mall was quiet, the restaurants and upscale bars the only places still open, and even they would be closing soon. She flicked off the lights, plunging the shop into shadow. Behind her, Rick Dornier stirred. “That’s it?”

      “That’s it.” Maggie jiggled the doorknob to make sure. The low-wattage security light over the bar and the dull-gold light slipping in from the streetlights outside only made the shadows seem darker and bigger.

      Rick Dornier loomed in the darkness, solid, human, inescapably male. Maggie’s nerve endings pricked into life.

      “I’m sorry it took so long. We don’t usually get so many customers so late on a weeknight.”

      “No problem.”

      The only illumination in the back hallway was the emergency exit sign, but Maggie didn’t need to look to know where he was. She could feel him there, right behind her, close enough to touch if she wanted.

      Instead, she opened the back door, then grabbed the overstuffed trash bags Sharon had left there. “Get the locks, will you?”

      The cold night air hit her like a slap in the face.

      The man who lunged out of the inky shadows by the door was swinging something that would do a lot more damage when it landed.