by Lisa Childs
Her hair was pale blond. Her skin was pale, as well. She didn’t look like Hart Fisher’s kid, either. She was tiny and delicate-looking, despite her fierce grasp on the rag doll clasped against her side.
Sharon had opened up the nursery for any of the bodyguards to use for their children. She loved kids so much that the former nanny would willingly care for any and all. And this little girl, already abandoned by her mother, needed extra care.
She needed her father.
Maybe Parker shouldn’t have sent Hart off on this assignment. Sure, Hart had chosen to become a bodyguard and it was probably safer, as well as more flexible, than being on the River City Police Department.
Except for this assignment.
From his years working in the RCPD’s vice unit, Parker personally knew how dangerous Luther Mills could be. The infamous drug dealer was determined not to go to trial, and he would kill anyone and everyone who got in his way. By protecting the evidence tech, Hart was definitely getting in his way. Again.
It wasn’t the first time Hart had made life more difficult for Luther. Like Parker, he’d tried for years to shut down Mills’s illegal business and send the ruthless criminal to prison. Right now Luther was only going after those associated with his trial. But what if he went after anyone who’d ever tried to take him down?
Then Parker was in danger, too, and so was every member of his franchise of the Payne Protection Agency. He’d hired all former vice cops for his team.
Parker pulled his cell from his pocket and glanced at the time on the screen.
Hart should have been back, with Wendy Thompson, by now. Her parents’ house, where she’d told the chief she was staying, wasn’t that far from the agency’s office.
Where were they? If they were running late, Hart would have called to let him know. The only reason he would not have called was that he was not able to.
Maybe Luther had already made good on his threat against Wendy. But if he’d taken her out, he would have had to take out her bodyguard along with her.
Chapter 2
Fear shot through Wendy. But she wasn’t afraid of the man who’d entered her bedroom with his gun drawn. She was afraid that the two men in her room would kill each other. Hart was already reaching for his weapon as he tried shoving Wendy behind him for her protection.
But who would protect him?
“Daddy!” she yelled as she jumped between the men and their guns. “Don’t shoot!” She held a hand out to each of them, pushing Hart back as she held off her father. “Either of you! Don’t shoot each other!”
Her father blinked dark eyes that were still bleary with sleep as he focused on her and the stranger in her bedroom. “What’s going on, Wendy? Who the hell is he?”
“He’s my...my...” She couldn’t say “bodyguard” because her father’s next question would be why she needed one. And she didn’t want to tell her father about Luther Mills and the threats. Not yet. She trusted the police department to keep them safe. But if Hart was telling the truth and someone within the department couldn’t be trusted...then she might have to tell her father, to implore him and her mother to leave town until after the trial. As long as she didn’t have to worry about them, she would be fine.
Despite Luther Mills and those threats, she didn’t need a bodyguard. She didn’t need Hart Fisher. But since he was there, in her bedroom, in the middle of the night, she needed to explain his presence.
“Wendy?” her father prodded.
She felt like a teenager who’d been caught necking on the living room couch with her boyfriend. Except her father had never caught her with anyone when she was a teenager. She’d been too busy studying back then.
“Boyfriend,” she blurted out. “He’s my boyfriend.” Mortified, her face flushed with heat, especially when she felt Hart staring at her in astonishment. She turned to him and silently implored him to play along with her.
She didn’t want her parents to learn about the threats because they wouldn’t be worried about themselves. They would be worried about her, and they already worried too much about her, about if she was taking care of herself, if she was working too much, if she was eating right...
Her father’s brow creased with more lines than he already had. Her parents had been well into their forties when they’d finally had the baby they’d wanted for so long. It didn’t matter that she was twenty-seven now; Wendy would always be their baby.
Her father had kept the gun grasped in his hand. But with her standing between him and Hart, he’d lowered the barrel. “You were arguing,” he said, suspicion in his voice. He wasn’t readily accepting her explanation, but then, it was no wonder since Wendy could not even remember the last time she’d had a boyfriend. “I heard raised voices.”
“He, uh, surprised me,” Wendy said. “Scared me...” That was no lie.
“Of course he did, breaking into our damn house like this!” her father angrily exclaimed. Then he turned his focus on Hart and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”
“Shh, Daddy,” Wendy implored him. “You’re going to wake up Mom.”
And if the police noticed all the lights coming on inside the house, they would probably storm in with more guns drawn.
She glanced down as she realized she wore only that big T-shirt. If the officers saw her like this, she would never hear the end of it around the station. Wendy grabbed a pair of yoga pants and quickly pulled them on.
“Your mother’s knee was bothering her, so she took some pain pills,” Dad said. “She won’t wake up for another six hours.”
That was good. At least, if the police stormed inside, her mother wouldn’t wake up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Hart said. “I hadn’t wanted to disturb either you or your wife.”
That much Wendy believed was definitely true. Could she believe the rest of what he’d told her, though? That the chief had hired the Payne Protection to guard the principals in Luther Mills’s trial?
It made more sense than his working for Luther. Part of the reason she’d had a crush on him, besides his movie star good looks, was that he’d been such a good cop. He’d made so many arrests.
“I just really needed to see Wendy,” he continued. Then he holstered his weapon and held out his hand. “I’m Hart Fisher.”
Her father stared at his hand for a long moment. “And how do you know my daughter?”
“We used to work together,” Hart replied. “I was a River City detective.”
“Oh.” Her father nodded. “Of course...”
Had she mentioned Hart to him? She might as well have. She’d told her mother about her crush, and her parents told each other everything. Her face heated even more as her discomfort increased. She tended to share too much with her mother.
Her father extended his hand and heartily shook Hart’s. Maybe a little too heartily. Even though he was pushing seventy, her father was a big man, and the former football coach still worked out regularly.
“I’m Ben Thompson.” He greeted Hart, but he wasn’t smiling.
“I am really sorry,” Hart said again. “I just need to speak with Wendy for a few moments, if that’s all right with you, sir?”
Her father grunted. “That’s not up to me.” He looked at Wendy, really looked at her in that way fathers had that made their children squirm. Or in the way that coaches made their players squirm. “Do you want him to stay, Wendy?”
Now she felt compelled to apologize. “I’m sorry, Dad...”
“You’re an adult,” her father said.
Sometimes she wondered if he really believed that, though. But he must have been trying to prove that he did because he stepped into the hall and pulled her bedroom door shut—leaving her alone with Hart Fisher. Her bodyguard.
That was what he was. Not her boyfriend.
She didn’t want him as either. Not anymore. Now was not the
time for her to start dating anyone, not when everyone and everything she cared about had been threatened.
Her face was still so hot that she probably could have melted an ice cube on her forehead.
“I don’t want my parents to know about the threats,” she explained. “That’s why I told my dad that you’re my boyfriend.” She didn’t want Hart to think she wanted that—that she wanted him. Just a short time ago, when he’d been lying on top of her, she’d thought he might have wanted her, too.
But that wasn’t possible. He still wouldn’t have noticed her if he hadn’t been assigned to protect her.
Hart nodded. “I get it,” he assured her. “And now I need to get you to that meeting.”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Do you still not trust me, even after I covered for you with your dad?”
If he was working for Luther, he probably would have shot her father instead of apologizing to him. But just because Hart wasn’t working for Luther didn’t mean she should trust him.
He groaned at her hesitation and reached for his cell. “I’ll call the chief—”
“That’s not it,” she said with a glance at the closed door. “I can’t just walk out of here with you in the middle of the night.”
Her father was bound to have questions if they left the house now. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised to open her door and find him waiting in the hall outside. She had never been a very good liar, so she was already pushing her luck with all the lies she’d already told.
“We’ll go out the way I came in,” Hart told her as he headed toward her open window. After slinging one leg over the sill, he held out his hand to her.
Wendy was scared. Not of falling out the window. She’d climbed out that window a time or two in her youth, but not with a boyfriend. Not even to meet a boyfriend. She’d just climbed out to go to movies that had opened after her midnight curfew. She knew it was a short drop from the window to the porch roof below. Then it was an easy climb down the trestle at the end of the porch to the ground.
No. She wasn’t scared of falling.
She was scared—of spending too much time with Hart Fisher. She suspected she was in almost as much danger from him as she was from Luther Mills.
* * *
“You’ve definitely got a problem,” Hart told Chief Lynch as he and Wendy joined him in the conference room at the Payne Protection Agency.
The chief arched a gray brow over blue eyes that were bright and alert despite the late hour. “Did something happen at Ms. Thompson’s home?”
Besides her not waiting outside for him like he’d thought she would be? Besides his making the risky move of breaking in and nearly getting shot?
Hart shook his head. “But that’s the problem. Nobody noticed me sneaking in and out of that house.”
“My father did,” Wendy chimed in with a slight smile.
Hart shuddered as he remembered the older man throwing open the door and training that gun barrel on him. “It’s good that he can protect himself and your mother.” He turned back to the chief, who stood at the end of a long conference table. “Because I don’t trust that unit you have stationed outside their house to protect them.”
The chief flinched.
Hart felt a twinge of regret that he had offended the older man even though Woodrow Lynch shouldn’t have been offended. He hadn’t had much to do with the existing police force. He hadn’t hired or trained them. He’d just recently taken the position of River City police chief after giving up his role as an FBI Bureau chief.
Wendy must have been offended, too, because her elbow jabbed his ribs. Now he felt a twinge of pain—from where her elbow had jabbed him earlier when he’d tried helping her out of the bedroom window. After elbowing him aside, she’d easily slipped over the sill and had moved silently across the roof to the trestle. He’d insisted on going down first, to catch her in case she fell and to make sure nobody could grab her on the ground.
That had been a mistake because, from the ground, all Hart had been able to see was her ass as she’d scrambled down the trestle. She had moved so quickly that she’d slipped. When he’d caught her, his hands cupping her ass, she’d elbowed him again.
That time might have been an accident. This time was definitely not. But Hart wasn’t out of line—not with lives at stake.
“Somebody should have noticed us leaving,” he insisted. What if he had been one of Luther’s crew?
Neither the chief nor Wendy could argue with him now. Lynch sighed. “That’s why I brought in Payne Protection.”
“Why Parker’s team?”
The question came from someone other than Hart. His former coworker Tyce Jackson. The bearded man sat at the table beside Judge Holmes and his daughter, Bella. In the same way Luther had threatened Wendy’s family, the threat he’d used to try to influence the judge was that his daughter was in danger. Woodrow Lynch had been right to call in the Payne Protection Agency. Whatever other motives the chief might have had were beside the point.
Lynch answered Tyce. “I figured Parker’s team had a vested interest in making sure Luther Mills was finally brought to justice.”
Hart winced with regret, frustrated that he hadn’t taken down Luther himself. Tyce might have winced, as well, but with as bushy as his black beard was, it was impossible to tell. When they’d worked Vice—with Parker—they’d all tried for years to bring down Luther. But the drug dealer had been too powerful then. Would he prove to be too powerful now?
“Where is Parker?” Hart asked.
Parker had been in his office earlier, but maybe he’d left to look for some of the others. Not everyone was here yet.
Even as he thought that, the door opened. The assistant district attorney, Jocelyn Gerber, walked in, her bodyguard, former vice cop Landon Myers, behind her.
Then the door opened again and Detective Spencer Dubridge entered midargument with his bodyguard, Keeli Abbott. They appeared to be arguing over who should walk first through the door. The detective might have been trying to be a gentleman, but Keeli, the former RCPD cop, would undoubtedly be offended. When they’d all worked together in Vice, the very capable female officer had accused Dubridge of being a male chauvinist.
What the hell had Parker been thinking when he’d made these matchups? Landon and Keeli might not mind if someone harmed the people they were supposed to be protecting.
“Parker was checking on someone in his office,” the chief told Hart with a smile. He must have known about Felicity.
Hart’s usual babysitter had got sick and had dropped the little girl off at his work. It was a good thing Parker had been here then and that he was good with kids. The backup sitter should be arriving soon if she hadn’t already.
“Then he was going outside to consult with the perimeter guards,” Lynch added.
Parker and the chief had been smart to have extra security for this meeting. If Luther Mills had learned about it, the opportunity of having everyone associated with the trial in one place would have been too great for him to pass up.
Since they had no idea who and where his informants were, Mills might have heard about it. He could have ordered a hit...
Hart tilted his head and listened. But he heard no sound of gunfire.
“The eyewitness isn’t here,” Assistant DA Jocelyn Gerber said, her voice rising with alarm as she looked around the conference room. “Where is she?”
“Parker is checking on that, too,” the chief said.
The woman’s already pale face lost the little bit of color it had had. “This is bad...”
“This is ridiculous,” Wendy said. “We don’t need extra protection. Not even Luther Mills can take out everyone associated with his trial.”
“He doesn’t have to take out everyone,” Gerber said. “Just the eyewitness.” She focused her pale blue eyes on Wendy and added,
“And you.”
Because with Wendy gone, it would be difficult to prove that the chain of evidence had remained unbroken. Since she’d collected it from the murder scene, she was the most important link in the chain.
* * *
Luther Mills leaned back on the thin mattress in his cell and uttered a sigh. He wouldn’t be here much longer. The plan was already starting to work. He’d just been informed that the eyewitness had gone out a window.
Sure, that hadn’t exactly been part of the plan. The crew he’d sent after her was supposed to have shot her. But her apartment was on the third floor. A fall from that height had probably killed her and the man they’d said had gone out the window with her. Clint Quarters. What the hell had the former vice cop been doing there?
Had he just been checking on Rosie out of guilt? Quarters was the cop who’d got her brother killed by turning him into an informant. That kind of betrayal deserved the death sentence Luther had given Javier Mendez.
It was too bad Luther had had to deliver that same sentence to Rosie. If only she’d learned the lesson her brother should have... If only she had kept her sexy damn mouth shut...
But her testimony wasn’t Luther’s only problem. There was all that evidence from the scene, too.
Evidence that shouldn’t have been found.
That wouldn’t have been found if probably any other crime scene tech had been involved. Everybody knew not to look too closely at a crime he’d committed.
Little Miss By-the-Book Wendy Thompson was as big a pain in Luther’s ass as this damn uncomfortable jailhouse mattress.
But he would get rid of her and the evidence just as easily as he’d got rid of the eyewitness.
Chapter 3
“That’s lucky for you,” Jocelyn Gerber remarked after Rosie Mendez left the conference room with the chief and Parker Payne, her bodyguard, Clint Quarters, trailing behind them.