Protecting Lulu (Global Protection Agency)

by Jeffries, J. M.

  “We’ve had this discussion. Everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise.” His voice was hard and a little angry. But then he always seemed to be temperamental around her.

  “So you checked out the alibi. What was she like?” Lulu could hardly contain her curiosity.

  “I just told you she looks like you, acts like you, dresses like you. She’s a fake you. She’s made a career out of being you. Most of her clients pay her to be Lulu Bennington for a night. She does very well pretending to be you.”

  “I wonder if she would come on the show and let me interview her.”

  “That’s bizarre. This woman pretends to be you and you want to interview her?”

  “I have known this fact for a long time, but this is living breathing proof that I’m right. Men like to look at models, but when they go home they want something soft and comfortable in their bed. The fact that these men want a duplicate of me is flattering. It means my marketing campaign is working.” But who would have thought a prostitute would choose to be her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I sell glamour, luxury, and sensuality. It’s classy, but comfortable.” She reached for a pen and paper to make a note. She couldn’t wait to tell Aiden about Daphne. They had to step up the campaign. Men were buying her. They were buying into her philosophy.

  “You’re thrilled about Daphne selling you, aren’t you?”

  “I’m delighted Jake isn’t trying to kill me. I’m thrilled I have a misplaced twin who has created her own business empire based on her own natural gifts.”

  “Which is against the law,” Noah retorted.

  “That’s just a technicality.” She waved her hand airily. She needed to contact this woman. The more she thought about it, the more she loved the idea of a woman selling sex pretending to be her. “I must have her on the show. Can you contact her?”

  “You’ll have to pay her. She won’t do your show for free.”

  “How much does she charge an hour?”

  “You are too fascinated by this.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “She charges $3,000 an hour for her services, $30,000 for the whole weekend, and $7,500 for an evening.”

  Lulu was shocked. “Jake pays her $30,000 for a whole weekend, when he had me for free.” Maybe she should have been charging for her services as well. She tilted her head toward him. “Would you pay me that much for a weekend?”

  He studied her for a moment then leaned forward. “I’d pay you every dime I had.”

  Lulu felt heat build on her cheeks. She was the first to break eye contact. “You have to contact her and tell her what I want.”

  “She might think I want to cash in on the freebie she offered.”

  “She offered you a freebie!” Lulu leaped off the sofa. “Oh, hell no. Once this is over you’ll have the real deal, Mr. Callahan.” She leaned over and grabbed his tie and pulled him up. She planted her lips on his, not caring about his desire to keep things professional. He slid his arms around her. She felt the heat of his body against her. He smelled of soap and aftershave with an undertone of woodsy musk. Her mouth opened, his breath against her skin. A second later the door opened.

  “Oh look,” Aiden cried. “Mommy and daddy sex. Can’t you two keep your hands off each other?”

  Lulu and Noah pulled away. Noah sat trying to look relaxed. Lulu simply smiled as she stood and straightened her jacket.

  Noah headed out of Lulu’s office.

  “We have something you need to see,” Mark said.

  Noah stopped. “What?”

  Mark continued. “Aiden and I found something on the security tapes.”

  The conference room was in a state of ordered chaos. Open laptops sat around the table. Files piled high had been bunched toward the middle with papers spread about. Lulu shuddered. She liked order in her life and seeing the mess made her fingers twitch with anxiety and the need to straighten the piles.

  Mark directed Noah to sit down at one of the laptops then he touched a key and the screen sprang to life.

  “What am I looking at?” Noah asked.

  Lulu leaned over his shoulder watching the tape. She saw herself sitting on the stage surrounded by stage hands. One measured the light, another positioned a camera, and a third twitched the throw rug into position beneath her feet.

  “There.” Mark pointed.

  Lulu followed the line of the Mark’s black-painted fingernail. “I see a stage hand.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Mark pulled the CD out of the holder and put another one in. He fast forwarded to another part of the studio, showing the catwalk above the stage and several stage hands on it. “Just watch.”

  Lulu saw the same stagehand and again when Mark exchanged the CD for another one and then another. Each time the stagehand was visible doing something. Something she wasn’t certain he was supposed to do. She knew everyone on the sound stage and their jobs, but this man was busy doing everything.

  “Explain it to me,” Noah ordered.

  “That’s Benny,” Aiden said.

  “Isn’t he employed here?” Noah leaned forward to peer more closely at the monitor.

  “We’ve been watching the security footage, and while I didn’t think anything of it, Aiden noticed Benny McCall is all over the place.”

  “He’s a stagehand,” Noah said. “Isn’t he supposed to be all over the place?”

  “Bennington’s is union. On one CD, Benny is working the overhead lights, which is a union job. And then he’s on the stage fussing with the camera, and then we have him stringing electrical wire—another union job. He can’t do that. Each job is union,” Aiden said, “I checked his employment records and Benny McCall isn’t union. He was hired as a floater for non-union jobs. Someone calls in sick and Benny fills in on the phones, or in reception, or in the mail room. He can’t string electrical cords, or change light bulbs.”

  Noah nodded in understanding. “I remember him from the envelope incident. I talked to him and dismissed him since everything he said checked out.” He stared at the laptop screen. “Can anyone pinpoint where he was the day the light bar fell on the stage?”

  “No,” Aiden said. “I checked his time cards and he wasn’t scheduled to work that day.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t here.” Noah frowned at the image of Benny coiling electrical cord, acting like he knew what he was doing. “Did you check with the stage manager?”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t remember Benny even being on the set.”

  “We have a lot of people running around during shoot days.” Lulu added.

  Mark looked up from his screen. “Harrison is putting feelers out to Military Intel about Benny McCall, assuming that’s his real name. He should be somewhere since he’s in the Army reserves. Also, he had his fingerprints on file with his employment application. Also, I took a photo and sent it and the fingerprints to the police. We should hear back sometime today.”

  “Let’s talk to him,” Noah stood up.

  “I already checked. We can’t find him,” Aiden said. “He clocked in at 7:54 and didn’t clock out for lunch, so he has to be here somewhere.”

  Noah pushed away from the conference table and turned to Lulu. “Lulu, I’ll take you back to your office. I’m calling Ian and he’ll meet us there.” He turned to the Mark. “Call E.J., Gideon and Dante. I want you and them to conduct a floor to floor search starting with the underground parking garage and working your way up. Make sure they all have a clear photo of McCall.”

  “Already done, boss,” the Geek said. “I sent photos to everyone’s phones.”

  “Let’s get started.” Noah took Lulu back to her office. Ian waited outside the door.

  He watched Lulu walk inside knowing this could be over in the next hour. As much as he wanted her to be safe, this could be his last day with her. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Noah sat at the conference table. As each team reported in, he
checked off the floor they had cleared. No sign of Benny. Noah didn’t think Benny was going to be found. Somehow he’d found out they were looking at him again. The man was gone.

  Harrison opened the door and walked in a frown on his face. “You’re not going to like this.”

  Noah sat back. “Of course I’m not.”

  “We should have taken a closer look at Benny McCall after the incident with the envelope.” Harrison sat running a hand over his forehead. “Benny McCall doesn’t exist. His real name is Benjamin McKenzie. He’s got a juvenile record which has been sealed, so we’re not getting into that anytime soon, though he’s been clean since then. I’ve put Debra on it. She’s calling Chicago to find out what she can.” He tapped his iPad. “Benjamin McKenzie, ward of the state, was shuttled from foster home to foster home. He was a real troublemaker. Finally he had the option of jail or the Army. He chose the Army. There’s more.”

  “I’m really not going to like this, am I?” Noah said.

  “Nope. He wanted to be a Ranger, made it all the way through training and was posted to Iraq, but at the end of his tour he was dropped from the Ranger program. The reason being, he wasn’t very good at independent thought and action. He told you he’s with the reserves, but that’s another lie. According to the NYPD, he tried to get into the academy and couldn’t get in there either. And…” Harrison paused dramatically.

  Noah knew he was really going to dislike what Harrison said next.

  “He told you he was a medic,” Harrison said, “not true. He was an explosives expert…”

  “Which means he could rig the explosives on the light bar to detonate by remote control.”

  “Exactly,” Harrison replied.

  “Do we have an address for him?”

  “He has a home address on his employment record, but’s it an abandoned apartment building in Queens. Gideon is on his way out there to check it out, but I’m pretty sure we won’t find anything.”

  Noah tapped the table, his eyes closed, seeing Benny in his mind’s eye. Then he sighed. How had he missed it? He glanced at Benny’s employment records. The HR department had checked his references and they appeared on the level. His registration for NYU also checked out. On the surface everything looked good.

  “Says here he’s registered at NYU.” Noah pushed the employment application toward Harrison.

  “I did a little digging and he never attended any classes. His references check out though. I talked to the people in the mailroom and he is a nice enough guy, does his work, is always on time and never complains. He seemed happy enough being sent around to the different departments to fill in.”

  “Except when he’s dropping a light bar on Lulu’s head.” Or sending her threats, or vandalizing her home.

  “Something doesn’t add up.” Harrison tapped at his iPad. “He doesn’t have a stalker personality.”

  “Or he hides it pretty well.”

  Harrison shrugged. “Who knows? I’m compiling a list of the foster homes McKenzie stayed at. Maybe someone will give us a new perspective.”

  “When you get them, have Ian start calling to see what he can find out. He can do that while he’s watching Lulu and we’re out tracking this guy down.” Noah pushed to his feet. Benny McKenzie had been under their noses all the time.

  Lulu sat at the kitchen table sipping hot tea while Noah drank coffee. She didn’t understand how he could drink coffee all day and still sleep at night. She’d be climbing the walls. She and caffeine weren’t friends.

  Noah had his laptop open and a stack of files next to it. The one on top was open.

  “So Benny McCall is really Benny McKenzie. How did he get through the background check?”

  “He works in the mailroom. What kind of background check would you do?” Noah glanced up from his computer, one finger poised over a key.

  “We do a standard one on all our employees—police record, employment history, references.”

  “He managed to pass all of them.”

  “But he had a Social Security number.”

  “Fake,” Noah said. “A fake number isn’t difficult to get. We traced the name to a Benny McCall who died a few years ago and is buried in Chicago. Right age, enough similarity in the name and you have a new identity.”

  “His fingerprints were on file.” Lulu frowned trying to figure out how Benny escaped notice.

  “How often do you check fingerprints?”

  “If an employee works directly with Wilder or I, we do a very extensive background check. I’m sure Wilder knows everything he needs to know about your background.”

  “I volunteered everything about myself for him to check out,” Noah said. “Didn’t you look at the information?”

  She studied him for a moment. He looked tired. She wanted to touch his face to ease the strain she saw lurking in his eyes. She wanted him to confide in her, to tell her all about himself. “I’ve been dying of curiosity, but resisted the urge to check you out. I don’t second guess my brother. I trust him with my life and he would never hire anyone who would deliberately harm me.”

  He looked up startled. “That isn’t the answer I expected.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re Lucinda Bennington and you have the power to get whatever you want.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, leaning toward him. “I know you’re going to volunteer the information.”

  He chuckled at her, the lines of strain around his mouth easing.

  She waited, hoping he’d open up. She could tell he’d had a lot of tragedy in his life, but he kept it hidden. Hidden probably even from himself. He didn’t like anything he couldn’t control. She almost burst out laughing, because she didn’t either. Her mirth died away at the serious look on his face.

  “You want to know about me?” he asked his voice harsh. “My father was muscle for the Irish mafia in Boston. When he wasn’t kicking dock workers’ asses, he was kicking me and my mom around. He got sent away to prison for manslaughter and my mother ran away with me. She found another man who cared deeply for her and she married him, gave him two daughters. My father got out of prison, killed my mother and my step-father then I almost killed him. That’s it. Did I shock you?”

  Lulu tilted her head. “No.”

  “I’m a killer, Lucinda Bennington.”

  “You’re not a murderer though.”

  “I wanted to murder my father,” Noah said.

  “You didn’t. Why?”

  He looked down at his hands. “My sister, Daisy came in. I was ready to snap his neck, but I couldn’t do it in front of her.” He clenched his fists with the strength of the memory.

  Lulu wanted to touch him, to smooth away the anguish on his face. “You stopped yourself.”

  “I didn’t want to. I wanted to kill that man whose only purpose in life was to kill other people and hurt my mother.”

  “Do you think I didn’t want to do the same thing to the people who murdered my parents? I don’t think I’m as charitable as you. If I could, I would use every means possible to hunt those men down and kill them without even thinking about the consequences.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Neither did you,” she said softly trying to ease the pain inside her as well as inside him. “Those people are still out there somewhere and I want to find them.”

  “To kill them?”

  “Not anymore. I just want to know why.” She made peace with her parent’s deaths, but the reason they had to die still haunted her. Had her parents been involved in something? Or had someone been angry at them for reasons Lulu couldn’t understand. Were they angry enough to commit murder? She thought about how the loss of her parents had shaped her life. She’d lost their love, their companionship, and their influence in her life. Aunt Julia and Grandma Penny had given them time to grieve. They forced Lulu and Wilder to go on and told them it was okay to be sad. There had been nobody there for Noah. She thought about how the two of them had faced similar losses and gone in s
uch different directions. He hid his pain, she embraced hers.

  “What happened to your sisters?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She paused to think how to phrase her next comment. She slid her hand across the table to gently touch the back of his. “You never found out what happened to them? Why not?”

  He didn’t answer right away. She saw the struggle on his face.

  “My father killed their father. They watched me nearly kill a man. Do you think they needed that in their lives? They had enough to bear.”

  “They knew you were protecting them and had nothing to do with the murders.”

  “I’ve killed a lot of people, Lucinda, from nearby and from a distance. I heard the last words they would ever say and I couldn’t tell you if they deserved to die or not. I may have forgotten their faces, but I could still hear their last breaths and see the looks in their eyes as they died. They looked at me as though I was a monster. Daisy looked at me as though I was a monster. They don’t want to see me. They don’t want to remember.”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  He gave her an angry glance. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I think you’re wrong.” Lulu ached for him. Not only had he lost his parents, but two people who he loved more than he knew. “It’s been twenty years and they have probably put it all in perspective.”

  “Don’t therapist me, Ms. Bennington.” He drew his hand away.

  She could feel him withdrawing, pulling the mask back over his face. He’d revealed more to her than she expected. “I’m not being a therapist. I’m being a friend.”

  “Is that what we are, Lucinda, friends?” He watched her.

  She blushed under his scrutiny. They were already more than friends. “Even though I know you are trying to distract me from talking about your past, I’m going to answer your question. You like me, Noah Callahan.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  “In more than just in a boy-girl way.” She found herself smiling, struggling to keep her attraction to him under control. He’d turned her life upside down and seemed to be enjoying it too much.