Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria Read online

  “We’re from the IRS,” I said. “Criminal Investigations Division.”

  Now her expression was only surprised. The confusion was gone. She knew exactly why we were here. But that knowledge wasn’t going to prevent her from feigning innocence.

  “What do you want with me?” She put one hand to her chest, pointing to herself. The other hand went for her bulky electric stapler.

  At point-blank proximity, I wasn’t able to fully avoid the stapler she hurled at me. I only had time to duck. The device bounced off my back and onto the floor. Thanks to the padded Kevlar vest under my Mavericks tee, I hardly felt the impact.

  She flung a box of paper clips at Eddie. He batted them away with both hands.

  I reached down my leg and pulled my gun from my ankle holster. I really didn’t want to draw on the woman, but the way she was acting left me no choice. “Put your hands up!”

  She yanked open her desk drawer and pulled out a metal letter opener, clutching it in a loose fist, her long fingernails preventing her from fully closing her hand.

  I aimed my gun at her. “Drop it, Diva!”

  “No!” She swung the blade around as if she were a Jet and Eddie and I were Sharks. But this was East Dallas, not West Side Story. And I certainly hoped none of us would end up dead like Riff, Bernardo, or Tony. I preferred happy endings.

  In a move that would make Chuck Norris proud, Eddie stepped forward and brought up his right arm, knocking the letter opener out of the Diva’s hand. The blade sailed through the air, bouncing off the wall and falling back to the fluffy rug. Before she could retrieve it, Eddie ran around one side of the desk, I ran around the other, and together we tackled the Diva to the floor.

  On her back now, she kicked and rolled side to side, trying to loosen our hold on her. Her boobs swung side to side, too, though they followed a second or two after the rest of her body. Eddie slapped them away just as he’d done with the paper clips.

  “You touched my breasts!” she shrieked at Eddie.

  It was kind of hard not to touch them given that there was so much fur-trimmed cleavage heaving to and fro. She raised a knee and rammed it into Eddie’s groin. He rolled aside, retching and grabbing his crotch in agony.

  Poor guy. Looked like his wife wouldn’t be getting any for a while. It also looked like I’d have to handle the Diva by myself now.

  The woman spun away from Eddie. Once she’d gotten herself up on all fours, I grabbed her right wrist from the back and yanked it out from under her. Ha! Roughhousing with my two older brothers as a kid had taught me some good moves.

  The Diva fell onto her face on the rug, sputtering and spitting fuzz out of her mouth. I climbed onto her back, straddling her as I grabbed her arms and pulled them up behind her.

  “Let me go!” she yelled, squirming under me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s not gonna happen.” Two clicks later, I had her hands cuffed.

  The Diva’s four employees stood in the open doorway, mouths hanging open.

  “OMG,” one of them said.

  “Totally,” said another.

  The third nodded her head in agreement. “Totally OMG.”

  “Does this mean we won’t get our paychecks?” asked the receptionist.

  The Diva had ripped off the IRS, but I didn’t want these hardworking college kids to get ripped off, too. It hadn’t been all that long ago that I’d been a starving student, eating ramen noodles for dinner three times a week. “I’ll let her make out your checks before we go. But cash them immediately. We’ll be freezing her accounts later today.”

  Realizing she was now in deep doo-doo, the Diva switched tactics, boo-hooing and promising to be a good little girl from now on if we’d only let her go. “I’ll pay back every penny!” she cried. “I swear!”

  Eddie shot her a pointed look from where he stood, hunched over, hands on his knees. “You should’ve thought about that before you busted my balls.”

  Was it just my imagination or was his voice an octave higher?

  I removed the right handcuff so the Diva could make out her employees’ paychecks, clicking the cuff onto the arm of her chair lest she attempt a last-ditch effort to escape.

  While the Diva made out the payroll, my phone beeped, indicating an incoming text. I checked the screen. The message was from Nick, a coworker on whom I had a hopeless crush. The text included a discreetly snapped photo of a man dressed in an Elvis costume wearing handcuffs. The man was being led out to a marshal’s car. A sign on the office building behind him read: “REFUND-A-RAMA.”

  Can u believe this shit? the text read. One more idiot and I will lose it.

  Nick wasn’t exactly known for his tact. What he was known for were his spectacular pecs, whiskey-colored eyes, and take-charge style. I texted him back: Eddie took a knee to the nuts.

  The reply came back in seconds. I’ll count my blessings.

  Once the Diva finished, I cuffed her wrists back together and handed out the paychecks.

  “Sorry about this, girls,” I said. “But let this be a lesson to you. Keep your noses clean.”

  chapter two

  If You Cast a Wide Net, You’re Bound to Catch a Fish or Two

  Once the Diva had been hauled off to jail for processing, Eddie and I headed to the downtown medical clinic. Normally I was the one with injuries, so it was no surprise that Dr. Ajay Maju focused on me when he entered the examination room.

  The doc was an attractive Indian-American guy, only a year or two older than my twenty-seven years. His white lab coat was unbuttoned, the gap revealing a printed tee underneath. Open wide and say aah.

  “What is it this time?” he asked, looking me up and down, searching for evidence of injury.

  “Eddie’s nuts,” I said, hiking a thumb at my partner. “He took a knee to the family jewels.”

  “Dude.” He turned to my partner and shook his head in sympathy. “Ouch.” He pushed a button on the wall-mounted intercom. “I need an ice pack in room three. Stat.”

  The nurse arrived seconds later with a plastic-wrapped blue ice pack. Eddie promptly dropped it down the front of his pants, carefully moving it into place.

  Eddie’s balls now mercifully frozen, we drove back to the federal building, sidetracking through a Chinese drive-through and picking up lunch on the way. I suggested he order a pair of egg dumplings to replace his damaged set of huevos, but he didn’t think it was funny.

  “Too soon, huh, buddy?”

  His only response was a scowl.

  We climbed off the elevator with our take-out bags. Our boss stood by her secretary’s desk at the end of the hall. Lu sported a pinkish-orange beehive, false eyelashes, and bright orange lipstick, a look she’d perfected back in the sixties and stuck with ever since. She’d recently undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer and temporarily lost weight. Once she’d completed her treatments she’d rebounded quickly, packing on all the weight she’d lost and then some. The neon-pink pantsuit she wore looked as if it might burst at the seams at any moment.

  Lu used a Slim Jim to stir the can of strawberry-flavored Slim-Fast! in her hand and looked up at me and Eddie. “Did you get the Diva?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Just three more to go.”

  One of our remaining targets was an older man, a former IRS auditor no less. He’d started his own tax practice years ago after electing early retirement in lieu of being fired from the Service for excessive absences, incompetency, and, according to the handwritten note in his personnel file, being a “weird-ass crackpot.” He called himself the Tax Wizard and claimed he could make taxes magically disappear. As if.

  The remaining abusive preparers on our list were both men in their early forties. The first, Richard Wallace Beauregard III, operated an insurance, investment, and tax business called Beauregard Financial Services. The other was a man named Jimmy John McClure, who ran an outfit called Bulls-Eye Taxidermy and Tax Processing. Apparently he processed both deer and tax returns.

  “We’ll have the
m rounded up by the October fifteenth deadline,” I assured Lu.

  “See to it,” she said. “I want those frauds taken down ASAP.” She pulled the meat stick out of the shake and stuck it in her mouth, licking off the strawberry liquid. Urk. How she could find that combination appetizing was beyond me. But I supposed it was a fairly balanced meal. Three of the four food groups were represented.

  Eddie and I parted in the hall. He limped back to his office. Why any woman had penis envy I’d never know. Guy nards were way too vulnerable.

  I entered my office, pushed aside the files on the terrorist case, and set my lunch bag on my desk. As I sat down in my rolling chair, I couldn’t help myself. I glanced across the hall at my coworker, Senior Special Agent Nick Pratt, a bad-ass bad boy if ever there was one. He was the kind of guy your mother warned you about, but also the kind she’d happily hop into bed with if she were in your shoes. She wouldn’t regret it, either. Mothers can be such hypocrites, can’t they?

  Nick had dark hair, currently cut short. His eyes were the color of Jack Daniel’s whiskey and caused the same slow burn in a woman’s gut, or perhaps an inch or two lower. He leaned back in his chair, his brown cowboy boots propped on his desk, a silver belt buckle in the shape of a coiled diamondback rattler gleaming from the waist of his navy-blue Dockers. His strong hand worked his ever-present blue stress ball.

  Sitting next to Nick, wearing his standard khakis and blue button-down, was Josh, another special agent, one whom I had mixed feelings about. Josh could be whiny, competitive, and arrogant, but he’d saved my ass on a couple of cases when his superior high-tech skills were needed. Gotta take the good with the bad, huh?

  The two had been assigned to work together on the sweep. While Josh could put the fear of God in a computer, with his short stature, cherubic blond curls, and baby-blue eyes he failed to intimidate tax cheats. Nick, on the other hand, stood an easy six feet, two inches, with the broad shoulders and don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor of a former high-school linebacker. He was clearly a force to be reckoned with. With their complementary skills, Nick and Josh made a good team.

  They stared at the screen of Josh’s laptop while Josh pecked at the keyboard and maneuvered the mouse. Probably reviewing files downloaded from one of the preparers’ offices.

  After scarfing down an egg roll and a paper container of Buddha’s delight, I cracked open my fortune cookie, shoved the dry, sugary fragments in my mouth, and smoothed out the white paper slip.

  Live a life of wonder.

  Hmm. Not bad advice, I supposed. Then again, whenever I’d wondered about something I’d always sought an answer. I’d never been left to wonder long.

  But there was something—or should I say someone—I found myself constantly wondering about these days. And that someone sat across the hall wearing boots and a snake-shaped belt buckle.

  Nick returned the sentiment, too. He’d let me know he was interested, that he’d like to see if the two of us might make a good couple, that all I had to do was just say the word. After much debate, not only with myself but with two close friends as well, I decided not to risk my relationship with my boyfriend, Brett, by pursuing things with Nick. Brett was a great guy and things between us were going well. Taking a chance with Nick had seemed like too big a gamble.

  Unfortunately, while my mind had made that logical decision, my heart still couldn’t be convinced to let Nick go. Certain other parts of me refused to give up on him, too.

  Nick pulled his legs off his desk and leaned in to look more closely at the computer screen. “I don’t know,” he said to Josh. “You think that’ll get a woman’s attention?”

  He had a woman’s attention right now.

  Mine.

  Nick looked up from across the hall, caught me watching him—damn!—and waved me over. “Come here, Tara. We need a female perspective.”

  Men asking a woman’s opinion? That was a rare thing indeed. “Okay,” I said as I stood. “But if you don’t like my opinion just remember you asked for it.” I made my way to Nick’s office and stepped behind them, turning my attention to the computer screen.

  The two were logged on to the Internet. They’d pulled up a Web site for Big D Dating Service, a business that, according to the information in the sidebar, was dedicated to helping residents of the Dallas area find true love, or at least a reasonably acceptable substitute.

  “What are y’all doing on this site?” I asked.

  “Trying to get Josh laid.” Nick clapped a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “We’ll make a man of him yet.”

  When Nick, Josh, and I had recently worked a case together, Josh had downed a few too many drinks at a strip club while spying on a target. When he’d returned to the car afterward, he’d metaphorically spilled his guts, revealing to me and Nick that he was a virgin. He’d then spilled his guts literally, filling the parking lot with ninety-proof puke.

  Oh, such sweet memories.

  Though I didn’t find Josh attractive in the least, there’s someone for everyone, right? Dallas was a heavily populated city. Lots of fish in the sea. Surely Josh could catch one using the Net.

  Josh pointed to a section of the screen in which he’d inputted a short bio. “How does that sound?”

  I read the entry.

  I am a government technology specialist who enjoys video games, science-fiction novels, and spy movies. I am seeking a woman who likes those things, too, and who will want to spend time with me.

  Josh looked up at me, a slight blush on his cheeks, a hopeful look in his baby blue eyes. “What do you think? Would it make a girl want to date me?”

  Honestly? The bio made him sound like a desperate geek. But I couldn’t very well say that, could I? “Let’s tweak it just a little.”

  I pulled over one of the wing chairs and took a seat, glancing at Josh. How could I make the nerdy twerp sound interesting? I thought back to the marketing class I’d taken in college. According to the professor, advertising was all about spin.

  Time to turn Josh into a human dreidel.

  I swiveled his laptop my way and, after a few minutes of typing, deleting, revising, and retyping, came up with what I felt was a fairly good sales job.

  Federal agent specializing in high-tech espionage seeks an adventurous woman who shares an interest in traveling together to other worlds via video games, sci-fi books, and spy movies.

  “How’s that?” I asked, turning the computer so Josh and Nick could read the screen.

  Nick nodded. “Better.”

  Josh turned to Nick. “You should sign up, too. Maybe we could double-date.”

  “No!” The word shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. The mere thought of Nick dating someone else filled me with pure jealousy.

  I felt sick. Terrified. Frantic.

  Nick eyed me intently as I sputtered, trying to cover for myself.

  I turned to Josh to avoid Nick’s gaze. “Um … I mean Nick doesn’t need to join a dating service to meet someone. He could meet someone the traditional way. You know, at a bar or something.”

  Fat chance. We put in a lot of overtime and Nick had little free time to go searching for his soul mate.

  “I’m not into the bar scene,” Nick said. “Burned myself out on that years ago. Maybe I should try this online thing. Seems to work for a lot of people.” He stared at me, one brow raised, a challenge in his eyes. He was sending me a message loud and clear. This is your last chance, Tara. Stop wondering what we might be like together and find out for yourself.

  My stomach felt hollow and queasy. But Nick’s implied ultimatum had me feeling angry, too. Not that I had any right whatsoever to be angry, but that wasn’t going to stop me.

  Josh turned the computer toward himself again and began pecking at his keyboard, setting up an account for Nick. “What kind of woman are you looking for?”

  Nick looked up in thought. “Well, she needs to be reasonably pretty, of course.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Wow. You’re deep.”

&
nbsp; He ignored my jibe, looking directly at me again. “I want a woman with brains and gumption. One who’s independent and speaks her mind. One who won’t get all girlie and upset when I occasionally act like an asshole.”

  Josh chuckled. “You just described Tara.”

  Nick raised the second brow. I mean it, Tara, said the brow. This is your last chance.

  I stared back at him for a moment.

  And in that instant I knew.

  Nick is a chance I have to take.

  I’d been miserable and heartbroken since that day, weeks ago, when I’d told Nick that I’d chosen to stay with Brett. I had made the wrong choice. I should’ve taken the gamble. I knew that now with absolute certainty.

  But the thought of losing Brett made me feel sick, terrified, and frantic, too. He was a great catch. Sweet, smart, and successful, too. He was not only an up-and-coming landscape architect at the prestigious firm of Wakefield Designs, but he’d also recently started a nursery business. I admired his work ethic, respected his entrepreneurial spirit. We shared many common interests, like watching goofy British comedies on television and sampling diverse ethnic cuisine at area restaurants.

  But was Brett The One?

  Early on, he’d seemed like a good candidate, more so than any other guy I’d ever dated. But lately? I’d begun to have some doubts. Still, I wasn’t sure whether those doubts were real or I was merely confused by my intense, almost desperate, attraction to Nick.

  A life of wonder sounded great, but not if I spent the rest of my life wondering whether I’d chosen the right mate, whether I might have been happier with another man, whether the man I was with might have been better suited for a different woman. A life of these wonders would be no life at all. I wouldn’t be doing Brett any favors by living a lie, either. He deserved a woman who would give herself to him wholeheartedly. Until I was convinced Nick wasn’t the better choice for me, I’d never be able to give myself entirely to Brett.

  I’d spent weeks slogging through this emotional wet cement. Frankly, I’d grown damn tired of it. Yep, it was high time to pull myself out of the muck and take action.