Deep Cover Detective

“Yeah. I noticed.” Her voice sounded grumpy. “I’ll have to return the favor if he ever wants to stay at the inn.”

Colton grinned. And, surprisingly, Silver smiled back. For a moment, they were simply a man and a woman enjoying each other’s company, sharing their amusement at Buddy Johnson’s tunnel-vision focus on making a buck, even at a friend’s expense—quite literally. But then Buddy’s voice boomed through the room, telling the tour group it was time to go. Silver’s smile faded and she looked away. The magic of the moment was lost.

“Let’s go, let’s go, ladies and gents,” Buddy called out. “We need to get going before the skeeters and no-see-ums start biting.”

Chairs scraped across the wooden floor and the buzz of voices echoed through the room. The tourists headed toward the front door like a herd of elephants, waved on by three men dressed in khaki shorts and brown T-shirts the same color as Buddy’s, but instead of their names across the front, there were logos of airboats with the company name, Buddy’s Boats.

The last of the tourists headed out. Silver mumbled something and hurried after them. She and Buddy were out the swinging doors before Colton could stop her. He had to wait for the waitress, who was heading his way with his credit card and one of those ridiculous carbon papers for him to sign. This place really was stuck in a different decade.

After taking care of the bill and thanking J.J., he hurried outside. The tourists were already halfway down the street. Buddy had Silver by the arm and was talking animatedly about something while she nodded.

Good, she hadn’t managed to escape.

Chapter Four (#uba82c4ec-07f5-528b-9bc6-226d426de609)

In spite of Buddy’s promise to ensure that Silver and Colton could sit together on one of the three boats, Silver did her best to thwart that plan. Since the boat that Danny Thompson was captaining was the most full, she hopped on it and almost squealed with triumph when she got a seat without any empty ones close by. But, at the last minute, the man beside her got up and hurried to a different boat. And who should plop down in his place but Colton Graham.

As he settled beside her, his broad shoulders rubbing against hers, she glanced toward the man who’d just left and saw him shoving one of his hands into his pocket. The flash of green paper left no question as to what had just happened.

“You bribed that man to let you sit here,” she accused.

His very blue eyes widened innocently. “Why would I do something like that?”

Since she couldn’t answer that without voicing her suspicions about the vase and Eddie, she didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she looked out over the glades as the boat pushed away from the dock, and she did her best to ignore her unwanted neighbor.

Once out in the middle of the waterway, the giant fan on the back of the boat kicked on. Any questions Colton might have planned on asking her would be difficult at best to ask now. She gave him a smug smile before turning away.

When they reached an intersection of canals, the boats split up, each going down a different waterway. Buddy grinned and waved at her from one of the other boats and she returned his wave, unable to fault or even resent him for pressuring her into this trip.

He’d been asking her all summer to take one of the tours so she could recommend them when her B and B guests asked about the airboat rides. Today really was the last realistic chance this season for her to take the tour. And without him bringing a boat of B and B guests every morning as agreed, the chance of her inn flourishing, or even surviving, was practically zero. She owed Buddy a debt of gratitude that he’d come up with the idea once she mentioned her desire to start the B and B.

She glanced at Colton, who was studying the passengers rather than the twisted, knobby-kneed cypress trees they were passing. Everything about him seemed...off. He wasn’t acting like a tourist. A feeling of alarm spread through her every time he looked at another one of the handful of men and women on their boat, as if he was memorizing their faces or looking for something. Or someone.

Who was he? An insurance investigator trying to save his company money by finding that vase? A family friend of the vase’s rightful owner? Or, worse, one of Eddie’s so-called friends who was looking to settle some kind of debt? Her fingers curled around the edge of the seat cushion beneath her as her mind swirled with even worse possibilities, including the very worst—that he might be a cop.

That would ruin everything.

He turned and caught her staring at him. And just then, Danny cut the engine, dramatically dropping the decibel level as the loud fan sputtered and slowed and then fell silent. Great. Just great.

“We’ll drift here for a few minutes so you can catch some gator action or maybe see some cranes fishing for an early lunch,” Danny announced. “We’ll tour the salt marsh after that.”

A low buzz of excited conversation started up around them as the others took out their cameras and phones and began pointing and clicking.

“About that vase—” Colton began.

“Don’t you want to take some pictures?” she interrupted. “There’s a gator sunning himself on the bank over there. You’ll probably never get another chance to take a picture this close without getting your arm bitten off.”

“Seen one gator, you’ve seen them all.”

“I thought you’ve never been to the Everglades before.”

“There’s this thing called a zoo,” he said drily.

“Don’t you live in Georgia?”

“I do.”

“Atlanta, right? Like your sister?”

He frowned at her. “I’m pretty sure that I already told you that. Why?”

“I’ve been to Zoo Atlanta. They don’t have gators.”

He gave her a smug smile. “Then you haven’t been there lately. They brought in four from Saint Augustine this past year.”

She had no clue whether he’d made that up or not. But she had a feeling he was telling the truth. Which meant...what? That he really was from Atlanta?

“About the vase—”

“Where in Atlanta? I have friends there. Which subdivision?”

He let out an impatient breath. “No subdivision, just some land outside town.”

“Where?”

One of his eyelids drooped. “Where what?”

“Where’s your land?”

He cleared his throat. “Peachtree. Can we get back to my question about—”

“Peachtree.” She laughed. “Seriously? Everything in Atlanta is on Peachtree. Which Peachtree?”

He stared at her, his dark, brooding eyes and serious expression making no secret that he was frustrated with her evasion of his questions. Finally, he let out a deep breath and opened his mouth to say something else.

Silver quickly turned to the woman sitting on the other side of her and tapped her shoulder. “Look.” She pointed toward the bank. “There’s a snowy egret. Ever seen one of those before?”

The woman’s eyes widened and she grabbed her camera. “It’s so pretty!”

As the woman snapped pictures, Silver told her everything she knew about egrets, which turned out to be a lot, since she’d grown up in the area. On her other side, she heard another one of Colton’s deep sighs, and when she carefully turned ever so slightly a few minutes later to see what he was doing, he was staring out at the bank on his side of the boat. Good, maybe he’d finally give up trying to ask her questions. She could keep up her conversation with the other woman and maybe even some of the other tourists if she had to in order to survive the boat ride. But what was she going to do once they got back to the inn?

She’d figure something out.

Maybe she should invent some kind of disaster—like a burst pipe in a wall—to get him to leave. No, that would cause real harm to the inn and she couldn’t afford that. The air conditioner? She could take a fuse out or something to get it to quit cooling. That would make the place miserably hot as the sun got higher in the sky this afternoon. Yes, maybe that would work.

Danny used a long paddle to edge them closer to the bank on Colton’s side and pointed out several different species of plants to his picture-snapping audience.

“What the...” Suddenly Colton raised his left arm in front of her and angled his body so that his back was to her.