Page 12 of Earning Her Trust

She almost smiled.

Ghost slid a mug of coffee onto the table next to her elbow. She took a sip, not thinking much of it, until the sweetness hit her tongue.

No cream, three sugars. Just the way she liked it. She looked up at him in surprise. “How did you know?”

His expression remained impassive. “I make it my business to know everything.”

“That’s not creepy at all.”

A faint scowl pulled at the corners of his lips. “I was trying to be considerate. If you don’t want?—”

She snatched the mug away before he could reach for it. “Don’t you dare.” She wrapped both hands around the mug and drank, the caffeine and sugar hitting her system like jumper cables to a dead battery.

Oh God, she’d needed that.

When she glanced at Ghost again, his eyes had gone stormy and a muscle ticked in his jaw like he was clenching his teeth.

She set down the mug. “What’s wrong?”

The muscle in Ghost’s jaw ticked again. “Nothing.” But the flatness of his tone said different.

She narrowed her eyes, held his stare and, out of pure stubbornness, picked the mug back up and took another big swallow.

Oh, hell. It was perfect. Hot, sweet, exactly right. She couldn’t stop the ragged sound that slipped out, a low, throaty moan that belonged in a bedroom and not at a battered kitchen table surrounded by missing persons files.

Ghost’s eyebrows jerked up. Fast. His gaze went straight to her mouth, and this time he didn’t bother pretending not to notice. If anything, he leaned in, like he was cataloguing the exact shade her cheeks went when she realized what she’d done.

“Sorry,” she muttered, fighting the flush. “That’s just… really good coffee.”

He didn’t answer, just stared at her like she’d sprouted a horn in the middle of her forehead. The dog at his feet matched his glare, ears slicked back and tail curled tight, as if she might lunge across the table and bite.

Naomi set the mug down, squared her shoulders, and reached for the first folder. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”

She flipped open the first folder and found a hand-labeled tab: Padilla, Leila. Leelee stared up at her, the color photo printed off social media, bright and grainy. It hurt every time.

Ghost still didn’t speak. Just watched, arms folded, the dog’s chin resting on his boot.

Naomi rifled through the pages. Timeline. Witness reports. Surveillance logs from the casino, painstakingly annotated. A hand-drawn map with four X’s along a stretch of Route 12, all clustered within a five-mile radius.

Her pulse sped up.

“You mapped their last known locations,” she said, flipping to the next page.

He nodded. “And cross-referenced sightings of that black truck. No plates anyone could ID, not even a partial.”

She scanned his notes. His handwriting was sharp, no-nonsense, but the margins were filled with code: initials, dates, GPS coordinates. He’d built a case stronger than any she’d seen from the sheriff.

“You got all this on your own?” she asked.

He shrugged, like it was nothing. “I had time.”

She highly doubted that. She knew Walker Nash kept his men busy, so he was squeezing all this in between his ranch duties.

Question was, why?

But she doubted she’d get a clear answer if she asked him, so she didn’t bother. She dragged the folders closer, stacking them by date. “You ever show this to Goodwin?”

At that, Ghost’s mouth twisted. “He’s not interested in hearing from me.”