Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  To hell with all the scars. What scars? There was absolutely nothing wrong with this man!

  Chapter 12

  Cheryl

  “Morning, Garth,” I said, smiling a little as I waited for his response, imagining this tall, geeky sort of guy sitting in front of a computer not much different from my own. “How’s it going?”

  “Cheryl. Can a morning go by without you calling to check in?”

  “It’s called business, darlin’.”

  “Is that what this is? I thought you were just calling because you love to hear the sound of my voice.”

  I laughed, not because he was totally wrong, but because he was right on the money. I did get a kick out of the deep, rich tones of his voice. But I wouldn’t admit it to him for all the money in the world.

  “I’m calling to find out if you have the results of that analysis I asked you to run.”

  “Aw, are we jumping to the mundane already? I was just beginning to have fun.”

  “You’re such a flirt.”

  “It takes one to know one.”

  “And childish. Who says things like that anymore?”

  “The nerd that sits behind the computer all day talking to no one but a disembodied voice on the phone.”

  I smiled. “What about all those people who come and interrupt our conversations? Somehow I think your office is bigger than just you.”

  “Maybe slightly. But what about you and all those sexy security guards coming and going from your office all the time? I have to say, I’m a little jealous.”

  “Why would you be jealous?”

  “Because they get to talk to you in person every day while I still haven’t met you.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. It was flattering.

  “How can you be jealous? You don’t know anything about me except for the sound of my voice.”

  “I know you like Sam Smith and you cry at chick flicks. I know you like to blare Aerosmith when you’re struggling with an investigation, but you listen to Bruno Mars when things are going well. And on a really good day, you listen to Blurryface by Twenty One Pilots.”

  I blushed. “How do you know all that? I don’t even know all that!”

  “Because I pay attention.”

  “Well, Mr. Details Guy, tell me what you found on the analysis I asked you to do.”

  He groaned. “If we must be all business… I was able to verify everything you already knew. The box was mailed from the Hotel Verona in Paris to the restaurant, delivered by special instruction through a private mailing service there.”

  “And the other thing?”

  “I ran cross references with the names you gave me and the high school yearbook from Spring Branch High. There were three names on the list that corresponded.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Jenny Thomas—now Jenny Samuels. Anthony Greene. And Angela Powers.”

  I scribbled the names down quickly. “Thanks, Garth.”

  “That was an easy task. Send me something harder next time.”

  “Next time my people are too busy with something more important, I’ll let you know.”

  He groaned. “That hurts. Right in the heart, Cheryl. Right in the heart!”

  I laughed as I disconnected the call. I didn’t see Akker come into the room until he touched me on the shoulder. I jumped, twisting in my chair with my hand pressed to my chest.

  “Hey! You scared me!”

  “Sorry. I thought you heard me.”

  “I was just… I was on a business call.”

  Akker smiled, that charming smile that always made my heart flutter just a little bit. Akker had to be one of the best-looking men I’d ever known, what with his hazel eyes and dark hair. He looked like Sebastian Stan, only better. A lot better! If he hadn’t hooked up with Eva, I might have made a move myself.

  The regrets we carry all our lives.

  “Do you have any information on that Paris thing? Brock’s going to call in in an hour or so and I’d like to have some good news for him.”

  “Oh, yeah—but I’m not sure it’s good news. I had the team in Dallas verify what we’d already found out: the package was picked up at the same hotel where Ms. Walsh is staying and delivered to the restaurant by a private messenger service that routinely encodes their records, so there’s no way of finding out who sent it.”

  “But the location has to narrow things a little.”

  “Unless the sender did it intentionally to throw us off the scent.” I sighed. “And we did a check to find out if any of Ms. Walsh’s former high school classmates might be in her inner circle now. Three names checked out: Jenny Samuels, an artist; Anthony Greene; and her assistant, Angela Powers.”

  “I’ll have Brock check with Ms. Walsh, but I’m sure she must be aware of that fact. It hasn’t been that long since she went to high school.”

  “I’m sure she knows, too. But Skylar said something that made me wonder. She said Ms. Walsh was harassed in high school by a specific group of kids. So I had my team look up those people, to see which ones are still in town, or in Paris. Two names came up there, too.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy named Jonathon Andrews. He works for Cole Oil at their offices here in San Antonio. And Sara Toulouse. She works for a company that sells precious stones throughout the southwest.”

  “Then she might have come into contact with Ms. Walsh?”

  “It’s possible. And if she had issue with her from high school, maybe she still hasn’t gotten over it.”

  “I’ll let Brock know.” Akker patted my shoulder. “Thanks, Cheryl. Great work as always.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  I watched Akker go, the sight of him leaving almost better than the sight of him arriving. God, he was a handsome man!

  I turned back to my computer, and discovered that Garth had sent me a link. When I pressed on it, I found myself watching someone’s pet cat dancing to Sam Smith’s version of “Fast Car.”

  All I could do was laugh.

  Chapter 13

  Brock

  Her body melted into mine, her curves fitting into the puzzle of my angles like they were meant to fit together. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensory overload that was rushing through me, the smells and the touch, the taste and the sounds. I buried my fingers in her hair, loving everything that was so soft about her perfect body, from the sleek strands of hair to the silk of her skin. Moving into her, filling her, was like diving into the most blissful dream and just getting lost.

  “We should probably get out of bed at some point,” I suggested reluctantly. “I’m sure people are waiting for you.”

  “Let them wait.”

  I sighed, pressing my lips against her throat. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  She pulled back and looked into my eyes, a slow smile lighting them with a jeweled spark. “I kind of like that. Not many men can admit the woman is the boss in bed.”

  “I didn’t really say—”

  “Sure, you did. You can’t take it back now.”

  I buried my fingers in her hair and tugged her head back, faking an angry look. “You really think I’m going to just let you ride roughshod over me in bed?”

  “I do.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  She laughed, moving in to kiss me. The kiss started off as just a peck, but it turned into something more. I rolled her over and pinned her to the mattress, my hands exploring areas that were slowly becoming familiar, but were still new enough to be fresh and so exciting.

  I didn’t hear the door open. I don’t think Luna did, either.

  “Luna, we have a ten o’clock—”

  I looked over my shoulder into the surprised gaze of Luna’s assistant, the very frazzled Angela. She stared at us for a long moment, then quickly turned, mumbling some sort of apology under her breath.

  Luna laughed when the door closed, burying her face against my shoulder.

  “I think we might have given her a stroke,
” I said.

  “No—she always looks that way.”

  I smacked her bottom, punishing her for the pettiness in that statement. She purred, moving her hips against mine.

  “Do it again,” she said.

  It was my turn to laugh. “You are something else, you know that?”

  “Something good, I hope.”

  “Something beautiful and damn amazing!”

  We fell back into each other’s arms, kissing again as we curled up against each other. We were moving close to that moment, our bodies enveloping one another, our breathing growing harsh, when my phone buzzed.

  Luna groaned, burying her face against my shoulder. “The world is trying to tear us apart.”

  “Go get in the shower. I’ll join you in a moment.”

  She smiled a smile that made me forget briefly why I was sending her away. And then she crawled out of bed, swinging her hips a little as she made her way to the bathroom, pausing at the door to look back at me.

  “Don’t take too long!”

  I groaned as I reached over the side of the bed and grabbed my pants, checking the missed call that had just stopped ringing. Akker. Of course it was Akker.

  I lay back and closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Then I called him back, waiting for the distant sound of his voice to fill my ear.

  “We have information on your case,” Akker said rather than any form of greeting. “The package came from the hotel where your target is staying.”

  “Is that right? And who of the thousands of guests and restaurant patrons and show guests mailed it?”

  “We couldn’t nail that down.”

  “Great. Anything else?”

  “We matched three names from her high school yearbook with her staff. One is her assistant, Angela.”

  I frowned. “Angela?”

  “Yeah. And there’s two others—apparently there was some harassment that went on when she was in school?—who are still in the San Antonio area. One works for a gemologist so might have come into contact with her.”

  “I’ll talk to her; see if she can shed some light on any of this.”

  “Great. When do you head back to the States?”

  “We have two more full days here.”

  “Josie mentioned that she talked to you.”

  “I talk to Josie most days. She’s struggling a little, what with all the changes going on.”

  “I’m aware.” Akker cleared his throat. “I appreciate you talking to her. But I hope if there was something I should know, you’d let me in on the secret.”

  “You know just about everything. She lost her mother and she’s just moved in with her father who happens to have a new girlfriend who comes and goes as regularly as a cat cleans his paws. You know that.”

  “Obviously. She’s talking to you about it?”

  I sighed. “She’s struggling with Eva, Akker. I think maybe she’s feeling a little pushed out. You just have to make more time for her, is all.”

  “I’m trying, but she’s fifteen.”

  “Keep trying. She needs to know you aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Just keep being there, keep doing what you’re doing. She’ll get it eventually.” I kicked my legs over the side of the bed. “I have to go. Duty calls. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I disconnected the call and grabbed my pants off the floor, shrugging into them. I was still buttoning my shirt as I walked out of the bedroom. Angela, trying not to look at me, was sitting on the edge of the couch, looking through the iPad that she used to keep track of Luna’s schedule.

  “She has a meeting in less than an hour.”

  “She knows. She’ll be out soon.”

  “I didn’t realize…” She cleared her throat. “I apologize. I just assumed you hadn’t come back last night.”

  “Not a problem.”

  I poured myself some orange juice from the room-service tray that had arrived some hours before, picking through the cold bacon and congealing eggs. I finally picked up a piece of toast and decided it was fine to eat cold.

  “I actually wanted to talk to you,” I said, taking a big gulp of orange juice between words, “about your relationship with Luna. The two of you went to high school together?”

  Angela nodded. “We did. She was in my art class all four years.”

  “Were you good friends?”

  “No. Luna didn’t have a lot of close friends in high school. I mean, she had a few, but then her senior year… most of her friends kind of abandoned her when Heather Masters decided Luna was moving in on her boyfriend. Heather was the most popular girl in the school, so when she said no one could be friends with Luna, everyone listened, even the losers.”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  “Luna told her boyfriend she had a crush on him. Or let someone tell him. I never got the full story, but he found out and thought it would be fun to laugh about it with Heather. I don’t think even he thought Heather would be as jealous as she was. It turned into an absolute nightmare for Luna.”

  “You saw it all?”

  “Everyone did. They filled her car with fish heads and other nasty things. It was something of a joke among the popular kids, but the rest of us saw it for what it was: petty jealousy.”

  I dropped my glass back onto the cart and popped the last of the toast into my mouth as I mulled over my next set of questions. I could feel Angela staring at me, forcing me to the realization that for the first time in nearly eight years I hadn’t immediately put my mask on over my scars, or slid my gloves back on my hands. I looked down at my hands, at the puffy scars that left them looking like an animal’s paws or something. And then I looked closer, realizing they really didn’t look as bad as I always thought they did. They were a little puffy, yeah, but the scarring was minimal along the backs of my hands and between my fingers, almost nonexistent on my palms.

  The physical therapist all those years ago had kept telling me that sometimes things are only as bad as our minds make them out to be. Maybe he was more right than I’d ever given him credit for. Perception—especially self-perception—could be a difficult thing sometimes.

  “Why would Luna hire you to work for her if you went to high school with her? If she had such a hard time back then?”

  “I think she blocked a lot of that time out. I don’t think she even remembers me from high school.”

  “But she hired you.”

  “Because I was qualified.”

  “Maybe…” I looked over at her, caught her staring. She quickly turned her head away, but it didn’t change the fact that she’d been staring hard at me. “Why do you stick it out with her? She doesn’t exactly treat you well.”

  “Because she’s brilliant!” Angela’s eyes lit up. “Have you ever really looked at her stuff? Have you ever seen some of her pieces? She’s the most original designer out there! She can take a piece of metal that has been worked and reworked a million times and she can see something inside of it that no one else has ever seen. She is the most original artist in the business right now, which is why she’s so in demand. No one else is doing anything near what she’s doing.”

  There was real, honest awe in Angela’s eyes as she continued. “Jenny and most of the artists feel the same way. We’re all riding the coattails of a true genius. Someday, if we’re lucky, we might benefit from her talents, learn a few things by sitting at her feet. We’re just lucky to be working for her.”

  “Jenny? The artist who was on the plane?”

  Angela nodded. “Luna brought her along in case we needed to fashion something up in an emergency, but she hasn’t needed her. I think she might have forgotten she’s here, to be honest.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Staying in this hotel, right downstairs. I got her into a couple of fashion shows, but she’s mostly been sightseeing with Anthony, the other artist who came along.”

  “Anthony Greene? Didn’t he go to school with Luna, too?”

&n
bsp; “Sure. All three of us did. I hired Jenny and Anthony as soon as Luna hired me.”

  “You stayed friends?”

  “We were in the art club together back in high school, and Jenny and I went to college together. I kind of owed her.”

  “For what?”

  Angela shrugged. “I had this terrible boyfriend in college and she let me stay with her when I broke up with him. So I got her a job when she was struggling.”

  “You’re a good friend.”

  Angela shook her head. “If I was a good friend, I would have reached out to Luna when all that was happening our senior year. Instead, I walked the other way when I saw her coming down the hall. I still regret it.” She stood up and gathered her things in her arms. “Tell Luna I’ll be waiting downstairs with the car. We need to leave in half an hour.”

  I watched her go, my opinion of Angela forever altered. I’d seen her as weak and subservient, but now I could see that was just respect disguising awe.

  Luna was still in the shower when I walked into the bathroom, so I stripped and moved in behind her.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about me.”

  “Sorry. I was talking to my brother.”

  “How is your brother?”

  “Does it matter?” I moved close behind her and buried my face against her shoulder. “He had information for me.”

  “About what?”

  “Did you know that everyone you brought with you on this trip went to high school with you?”

  She dropped little kisses all along my chest, pulling back slightly to run her fingers around one small nipple. “They made up the art club the whole four years I went there.”

  “You did know?”

  Her eyes sparkled when she glanced at me. “I know everything that goes on around me, lover. It’s my job.”

  “She thinks you didn’t know.”

  “She? Angela? Oh, I know. It just doesn’t make much of a difference to me.”