the front windows. I was on the phone with Ginny and had her call Quinn.”
Brand nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Why Quinn and not the police?”
Yeah, Anson thought, suddenly feeling stupid. Why Quinn and not the police, again? Oh, yeah, because you dumped several ounces of illegal coke down the toilet and didn’t want the cops to find out.
“I didn’t want the local yokels to mistake me for one of the intruders,” he answered, hoping that would be answer enough.
“My wife is one of the local yokels,” Brand said bluntly.
Well, hell. So she is. “Not her jurisdiction, though.”
“I wouldn’t use that excuse with Dennison,” Brand warned, motioning for Anson to follow him deeper into the woods. “This is his fiancée’s jurisdiction.”
“Right.” What was it about The Gates agents and their fetish for women in uniform, anyway? “Is there a team going into the house?”
“Not my assignment,” Brand said, starting to pull ahead. Grimacing against the lingering ache in his battered limbs, Anson hurried to catch up.
* * *
“YOU’LL HAVE TO take stock to tell us if anything is missing.” Alexander Quinn’s voice was a reassuring rumble on the other end of the call. “The intruders were gone when the team I sent entered the house. I guess Daughtry spooked them and they left.”
Ginny leaned her head back against the recliner, the adrenaline that had kept her going for the past few hours starting to drain, leaving only bone-deep weariness in its wake. “And Anson’s okay?”
“He says he’s fine.” Quinn’s voice dipped lower. “He looks like hell, though. I understand he took a beating tonight?”
She closed her eyes, remembering the sight of Anson’s battered face. “He took a beating for my brother and me.”
“He also tried to hide evidence for you,” Quinn said flatly.
“It was my idea,” she said. “I asked him to do it.”
“I’m not judging,” Quinn said in a tone that suggested otherwise. “I didn’t realize you and Daughtry were close.”
Whoa, she thought. Quinn made it sound like— “We’re not really close. He was just kind enough to help me out tonight.”
“Took a beating, hid evidence, dodged bullets—”
She sat up straight. “Bullets? He dodged bullets?”
“Did you think you were dealing with jaywalkers?”
“I don’t know who I’m dealing with,” she admitted, feeling sick. “Or why I’m dealing with them.”
“You’re a smart woman. Hazard a guess.” Quinn hung up before she could respond.
She hung up the phone and turned to look at Danny sleeping soundly in the hospital bed beside her. She’d thought things were bad enough when all she was dealing with was alcohol. At least alcohol was legal.
But drugs, too?
There was a light knock on the door. She looked up, expecting the night nurse. Instead, it was Anson who entered the room, carrying Danny’s gym bag.
“What are you doing back here?” she asked. “You should be home in bed.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He picked up the extra chair and set it down next to the recliner. Dropping into the seat, he turned to look at her. “Brought y’all a change of clothes. And I figured while I was here, I’d spell you so you could get some rest.”
“Like I could sleep.”
“You should try. The next three days are going to be long.”
She knew he was right, but Quinn’s call had reignited her adrenaline flow. “Quinn said the intruders shot at you.”
“They missed me,” he said lightly, but he couldn’t hide the tense set of his broad shoulders or the knotting muscles in his jaw.
“You should never have been a target. Not for Danny and me.” She shook her head, guilt swamping her. “Go home. This isn’t your problem.”
“They beat me up and shot at me. It’s my problem now.”
“Not if you go home and forget about it. You have enough to worry about, with the suspension and trying to clear your name.”
Anson’s facial expression shifted a little, though she couldn’t quite make out what emotion passed across his features before he lifted his calm gaze to meet hers. His dark eyes were mirrors, reflecting back only her own taut expression of worry. “I’ve just about exhausted all the ideas I had for proving I’m not leaking agency secrets. I could use the distraction.”
“Dodging bullets isn’t a distraction.”
“Dodging is overstating things. The guy was a lousy shot.”
“Don’t joke about it! Do you know how horrible I would feel if something happened to you because you were trying to help me?”
He covered her hand with his, his fingers warm and strong. “It didn’t. I’m fine.”
She couldn’t stop herself from turning her palm up to clasp his hand. “Quinn knows you were trying to destroy the drugs.”
“Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to flush before he and the others got to the house.” He looked down at their clasped hands, his expression softening. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize. I should never have put you in that position.”
“It got flushed, in the end. And Quinn took the bag with him. I think he’s planning to have the lab at The Gates test it so you’ll know what you’re dealing with.”
She let go of his hand, wrapping her arms around her aching stomach. “There’s no way he’s going to want me to come back to The Gates after this.”
“Of course he will.”
He sounded awfully confident for someone who was on administrative leave himself, she thought. “I don’t even know how to deal with Danny’s drinking. If he’s doing drugs now, too—”
“Yeah, about that.” Anson leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the hospital room’s drab tile floor, his jaw muscles working for a few seconds before he spoke again. “I talked to our drug-interdiction expert at The Gates, Caleb Cooper.”
She tried to match the name to a face. Cooper was a relatively new hire, wasn’t he? Rusty-haired, freckled, laughed a lot. “I didn’t realize we had a drug-interdiction expert.”
“Quinn thought it would be prudent to have someone on staff who had some experience with the drug trade. Cooper worked at the Birmingham Police Department on their drug-interdiction
