Chapter 1

"…poison is always an option, and easy to get."

The end of the damning sentence caught Joelle's ear as she picked up the empty beer bottles on a table next to the couple speaking. They had their heads together, conversing in low tones. But not too low. Joe feigned nonchalance as she extracted a bar rag from her back pocket and wiped the table top she'd just bussed, listening unabashedly.

Nobody ever gave a thought to a waitress having inquisitive ears, which was why she was here. She just hadn't expected something like this.

"He's certainly not suspecting anything, but I don't think poison's the way. We need to make it look like an accident."

Cripes on a cracker, Joelle groaned to herself. Now what? She couldn't just let the conversation go and walk away, but she wasn't here to gain info on a possible murder, if that's what this was. The DEA had sent her in—undercover—as a server in this shitty, backwoods Maine bar, uninspiringly called the Local Moose, to gather intel regarding the large fentanyl ring they'd learned was operating out of the area.

Joelle had been scrubbing tables and delivering alcohol to the locals for over a month at the hole-in-the-wall bar just west of Orono, hoping to hear something…anything. So far, she hadn't been privy to a single peep on the drug front. But now…this?

What the flippin' flack was she supposed to do with what she'd just heard?

Joe bent down to retrieve some napkins off the floor, continuing her vigilance.

"We can always mess with his power tools, his hunting equipment, or his stupid old truck." The female, a nondescript brunette, made the statement without any emotion. That was all kinds of fucked up. Who talked about murder like it was a grocery list?

"His truck." The man snapped his fingers. "I could slice the break lines, or screw with the steering column." The woman's companion, a bearded, rough around the edges looking guy stated as he fondled her inner thigh beneath the table.

"Yeah," she preened, clearly enjoying the five-finger grope. "Maybe that."

Was she talking about the diddling, or the truck?

"But only if the tampering can't be detected when someone looks closely," the dark-haired woman purred.

She was talking about the truck, then, Joelle noted, not her hoo-haw.

"It should be easy to do," she continued. "Maybe at the house. He doesn't have cameras or anything around. Not even one of those doorbell ones. I guess he thinks he's tough enough to take on anybody who wants to break in." She shook her head. "But remember. He has connections, so whatever you do to his truck, it can't seem suspicious."

Dang,the woman was cold.

"I'll look on the internet and find out the best way to fuck with his ride," the man responded. "I bet I can loosen a few bolts and make something happen, especially since his truck is like, forty years old."

Great.The only loose bolts Joe was aware of were clearly in the two heads that had suddenly moved even closer together.

Joelle slowly sashayed to another table that needed to be cleared, hoping to gain a little more info, but the pair had gotten too cozy with their whispering. Shlitz. Now she needed to decide if their boldness was the alcohol talking, or if the pair were actually plotting to bump someone off.

Just as Joelle determined she might have been overreacting to what she'd heard and needed to move on, the brunette snorted.

"Can you believe the idiot hasn't changed his will or his life insurance policy yet?"

Well, hello.

There was the motive to make Joelle think that the couple's plotting wasn't just drunk-chat.

She moved slowly toward the table again to get a good look at their faces, putting on a cheerful but vapid look as she addressed them. "Y'all need anything else?" she asked, using a southern drawl she'd perfected for her undercover work. For some reason it worked every time to charm these Down-Mainers. "Bar's closing soon."

They looked up and, yup, they hadn't noticed her presence until she spoke, and now that they had, they didn't perceive any threat.

"Nothing else for us," the woman said, and fished out a credit card, handing it to Joelle. "Just the check."

"Of course, sugar," Joelle smiled. "I'll have this back to you in a pig's wink."

Was that even a thing? Joe didn't care. The woman had just handed Joelle the key to her identity, and as soon as Joe skinned out of her cigarette-smoke-infused waitress clothes later, she'd do a deep dive into the woman, right down to her panty size. She'd have intel in that very same pig's wink she'd just mentioned.

Heading to the bar, she gave the bartender the table's tab and the woman's credit card. Joe noted the name on the plastic. Melanie Carlese. And just in case there were a bunch of women in the system with the same moniker, Joelle chatted up the ever-present Wendel behind the bar to see if there was anything about the pair's identities that he could add.

"Are these folks regulars?" Joelle asked with just the right amount of casualness.

The barkeep grunted. He was a surly sort these days, especially since Joe had turned him down her first day on the job when he'd angled for a tryst in the back storeroom. Not that Wendel hadn't kept trying after she'd said no, because he thought he was God's gift to women. Joelle sighed. She'd run across his type hundreds of times in her thirty-six years on earth and her eleven years on the job as an operative for the DEA. He was handsome enough and clearly worked out to gain the muscles he loved to flex, but there was not enough going on between his ears to entice Joe, and he clearly felt that women were to be kept beneath him, literally and figuratively.

For those reasons, there was no way he was getting his skanky wood anywhere near her.

She watched as he ran the credit card and shook her head pragmatically. Eventually, she'd have to hurt the man, because he was becoming damned persistent. His palm had brushed over her bottom one too many times this week when she'd had cause to go behind the bar. When this job was in the wrapping up stages, Joe wouldn't lament if the jerk found himself missing a finger or two.

"Locals. Seen ‘em in here together a time or two," the bartender finally replied when he handed her back the card and a slip to be signed.

"The guy seems a lot younger than her, don't you think?" she asked, fishing.

"I think she's his meal-ticket," Wendel smirked, and his eyes traveled to Joe's chest. "Nothin' wrong with letting someone who's older and wiser, take care of you."

Seriously?Joelle rolled her eyes as she turned around. Dream on, buddy.

She filed away the information on the couple, as thin as it was, and without responding to Wendel's undisguised come-on, Joe walked back to the table in question.

"Here you go, sugar." She handed Melanie the card and slip. The woman signed the receipt and handed it back without putting in a tip.

Chunt, Joelle huffed.

"Ya'll have a nice night," Joe clipped, purposely picking up the two drinks on the table that were still half full. Let them complain and see where it got them. Joelle brightened. Maybe if they did make waves, she could get the guy's name, too, which would make her background search that much easier.

The two patrons, however, didn't even notice she'd cleared away their alcohol. Their focus was on each other.

Too bad.

Fifteen minutes later the doors finally closed behind the last patron, and Joe lamented that she hadn't been able to overhear another thing that was helpful; with the drug op or with the murder-planning. On the plus side, she'd managed to avoid Mr. Handsy while she cleaned up, and before he could make any additional overtures, she slipped out the door into the humid, August night, breathing in the stifling air while heading toward her car.

Crap, she hated this gig. Not because she hated Maine. No. She'd found the area very appealing; so much different than where she lived in Nevada. She really just disliked having to play the part of a waitress in this sleezy bar where the agency had placed her. The drinking establishment left a nasty smell on her clothes and in her nostrils every single freakin' night, and so far, frustratingly, she had yet to hear any conversations amongst its patrons that would shed light on her mission.

Joelle took a good look around the night sky as she hit her door's key fob to unlock her vehicle, and sighed. If she were in Maine to hike, or sightsee, or even ski if it were winter, she could definitely see the appeal of the area. The trees were magnificent, the stars brighter than any she'd ever seen, and the air—at least when the humidity wasn't hovering around sixty-five percent—had a fresh smell that made her think of lumberjacks and campfires.

But she was here to work, and fun wasn't on her agenda. Too bad.

Opening the door of her nondescript, white Kia, Joelle stripped off the apron she wore and tossed it into the backseat. At least the car wasn't hers, so when she was finished with it, she wouldn't be the one getting the bar-smells professionally scrubbed out of the upholstery.

Driving the ten-minute trip to the small cabin nearby that the agency had rented for her, she jogged inside, closed and locked the door, then began stripping as she walked across the room. Straight to the shower she pranced, once she was down to just her skin. She dumped the night's black jeans and white shirt into the washer as she passed by. Now to scrub off as much of the smell as possible.

Thirty minutes later she was comfortably wrapped in her robe on the couch, eating a steaming bowl of microwaved ramen while she pulled her computer onto her lap and started her search on Melanie Carlese.

An hour later, Joe was yawning but satisfied. There had been nothing on Melanie Carlese in the government systems to which she had access, so she'd turned to Facebook instead. There, she'd found out everything she'd ever want to know about the woman and her companion of the night, Cameron Doolie.

Joe thought it odd that a couple planning murder on, ostensibly, Melanie's ex-husband, wouldn't keep a low profile and at least delete themselves from social media. Far from it. The woman's entire life was laid out on a number of sites for the entire world to see.

Melanie was thirty-nine, a teacher at a local elementary school, living in town with her younger lover. The pair had hooked up, it seemed, about a year ago, after—or maybe during—Melanie's marriage. Who knew? But one way or another, she'd left her childhood sweetheart and husband of eighteen years, Michael Carlese.

Mellie and Mike—as the pair were known to friends—had two high school aged offspring together who still resided with their father. The group had certainly looked like the perfect little family, until Mellie had clearly experienced some kind of mid-life crisis and flown the coop with a man younger than her by twelve years.

It had to have been a heckova crisis.

Looking at Mike, she marveled that anyone in their right mind would leave such a good-looking man for the guy she'd seen tonight. Yeah, Cameron wasn't bad, but he was…squishy and pimply faced when compared to Mike's hardened and honed, mature presence.

Joe tapped her upper lip with one finger, pondering the man's picture, which she found fascinating. She couldn't, of course, be certain it was Mike the couple planned on murdering, but who else could it be? Mellie had mentioned that the "someone" they were targeting hadn't changed their will or their life insurance beneficiary, which would point to Mike as the likely victim. But if that were the case, why hadn't the man amended his policy yet? Had he been so depressed; despondent over the breakup, that he was unable to rouse himself to take care of important legal matters?

Joe sighed and stroked her fingers over the picture of Mike.

To make matters even more complicated, when Joelle had gone on to uncover what she could about the man, she'd discovered he was a lieutenant on the Bangor Police Department, a town just thirty-five minutes south of here. He was also second in command of the newly formed Downeast SWAT team. Impressive as hell. The man had mad credentials, going back to being a national champion at Jiu Jitsu, in college.

Looking at the stained, drop-ceiling and cringing, Joe was at a loss. She really didn't know what to do. The easiest thing would be to call this Mike guy, anonymously, and let him know of the threat against him. But having seen firsthand how law enforcement individuals operated, the man most likely wouldn't take the warning seriously, if he gave it any credence at all. Officers were pranked and threatened all the time as a rule, and Mike would drop Joelle's shout-out straight into his mental circular-file as soon as she gave it.

On the other hand, if she confronted this Mike fellow as a waitress by the name of Elle Picket who'd overheard the possibility of his ex coming after him, he might be inclined to listen. But more than likely he'd also run a background check on Elle Picket. Joe sure as shmuck would if the tables were turned, and… Heck's bells, what would his search show? That there was no such person as the one he'd be IDing.

He"d go ballistic, wonder at her game, then hold her in the local pokey with trumped up charges until she caved and told him who she really was. Which she never would. If she wanted to keep her job.

Finding herself on the wrong side of the local law, her bosses would step back and let her deal with that cluster-flock of her own making so as not to put their drug-finding operation in jeopardy. They'd simply leave her to hang while sending someone else out to take her place, not caring how long she was out of commission if, in the end, it didn't reflect on the agency.

Her third option was to swear the officer to secrecy, reveal who she was, and hope he didn't raise the roof and derail many months' worth of painstaking investigation that the DEA had undertaken. Joe had her doubts on that one. Most cops would want all the deets on a drug ring operating within their jurisdiction, and she had to assume Mike would be the same; needing to be in the know.

There was one other possibility, and this one seemed more…doable.

Since Joe only worked four nights at the bar, she could spend a portion of her off hours surveilling both Cameron and Melanie, making sure they didn't do anything stupid.

Joelle glanced down at the picture on her computer and grinned.

Screw the idiot couple. Maybe she'd follow Mike.