“I mean,” he started over, “I had a crush on her in high school.”
“How much of one?”
God. Could this get any more humiliating? This morning, when he’d been eating his traditional egg and bacon sandwich, he never, in a billion years, would have thought that he’d be obligatorily discussing a high school crush with Javier Rook.
“Uh. A big one? Carried a torch for most of high school.”
“Were you ever together?”
Cedric was confused by the question simply because he was certain that Rook already knew the answer. The man was better at digging up dirt than the CIA. If he and Elena had so much as kissed, Rook would have already known when and where and exactly how much tongue. Then it hit him. He wasn’t asking for information’s sake. He was asking to see whether or not Cedric would tell the truth.
Huh.
Ced wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“No. Never. Never even called her up. That history project was the only time I was ever alone with her.”
“Huh.” Rook studied him. “Any contact since?”
“No.” Cedric shook his head immediately. “I never saw her again after graduation. Though I heard she went to Columbia, studied environmental law or something like that. But you know I don’t keep in touch with people from high school. And I don’t have Facebook or anything.”
In general, Rook preferred that the people on his team remained un-google-able. Which meant absolutely no social media. Cedric didn’t mind that one bit. The only people in the entire world who would want to catch up with him worked in this very building with him. And he didn’t much feel like he was missing out on watching his old classmates get fat and old and pop out kids and puppies. He was pretty much fine with the fact that, as far as his old classmates were concerned, he’d accepted his high school diploma and disappeared off of planet Earth.
“Carried a torch for her for four years and never even looked her up?”
Cedric shook his head. “Nope. You know I went right into the Marines. And besides, I always knew we’d never work out. We were always too different. We… ran in different crowds.”
Yeah. That was a nice way of saying that she had been brilliantly intelligent and opinionated and passionate and he’d been a shy, dumb lump in the back of the class.
Still, Rook studied him. “We take on this case, we have no way of knowing how deep this thing goes. Or who we’re actually dealing with here. We can’t afford to have you distracted.”
“You mean distracted by Elena?”
Rook nodded.
A different man might have immediately denied that this was going to be a problem. He might have insisted that everything was going to be fine, no matter what. He might have let his pride get in the way. But not Cedric Swift.
No.
Cedric took a deep breath and closed his eyes, the way Rook had seen him do a hundred times before. He shut out all sounds and sights and everything around him. He asked himself a few simple questions and when he opened his eyes a few moments later, he had an answer.
“I guess I don’t know. Considering I haven’t seen her in over a decade. Could be, I see her and the spark is gone. Or could be, I see her and it all comes back.”
It was as honest as he could possibly be and it pained him. Not the honesty, but the fact that he was having to admit, out loud, to his boss, that he might be a liability to a job. Cedric would have rather lie down on a bed of nails. But he told the truth anyways. Because it was the right thing to do.
Whether or not Cedric knew it, that personal attribute was the reason that Rook considered him his number two. Cedric Swift was a considerate man in every sense of the word. He considered the facts, he considered the impact of his actions, he considered the impact of other people’s actions. He was a slow but very steady thinker. When he started considering a matter, he considered it all the way through, to the bitter end. And when he was ready to talk about it, you could be damn sure he’d already thought about it from every single angle.
Rook valued that. He valued Cedric.
“So,” Rook said slowly, leaning back in his chair for the first time since they’d sat down. “If you were me, what would you do?”
Again, Cedric took a long minute to consider the facts. He opened his eyes and spoke calmly, resolutely. “I would take the case. And I’d put me on the offensive team this time, instead of the defensive team. I’ll still see her around, but I won’t have to be all up on her the way Atlas or Geo will have to be. And we can see from there how I feel. Maybe my feelings are nothing and you can rotate me into the bodyguard line-up. Or maybe my feelings are something, in which case you put me on the furthest, most frustrating, most mind-numbing offense assignments you’ve got.”
“No matter how we plan this thing, odds are, you’re gonna end up on bodyguard duty at some point over the next month or so. There’s only five of us and it’ll be a 24/7 job for at least four weeks. I can’t take you out of the line-up completely.”
Cedric considered this and eventually nodded. “Fair enough. I’m not trying to make this thing harder for anyone else. I assume she’ll come stay here with us while we’re dark?”
Rook nodded.
“Alright then, well, when you have to rotate me in, put me on night duty. So I won’t have to see her.”
Rook stared blankly. “You’re willingly agreeing to night duty and all the worst offense assignments?”
Cedric shrugged. “It’s part of the job. Not all our clients can fit perfectly into our lives. I’m up for the challenge.”
And he was. That wasn’t a lie. Cedric hadn’t had feelings for anyone since his crush on Elena all those years ago. He was fairly certain that his feelings factory was a body part that he’d shed sometime during his time with the military. He was just the kind of man that didn’t catch feelings. He’d had an adolescent crush on Elena, but he didn’t expect it to return. And if it did, well, he was a man now, not a boy. He’d be able to handle it. And, if worst came to worst and he couldn’t handle it, Rook would send him out on assignment until they could figure out who was dangerous for her and she was safe again.
“Any guesses about how she’ll feel about all this?” Rook asked.
Cedric’s brow immediately furrowed. “I imagine that she’s terrified. And probably grief-stricken over her friend’s death.” Cedric tapped the photo between them.
“No, Swift, I meant do you have any idea how she’ll feel about you being the one who guards her?”
“Oh.” He was silent for a while, his thoughts turning slowly but thoroughly in his head. “I’m pretty sure she won’t feel any sort of way about it. There’s even a good chance that she won’t remember me. We barely ever talked.”
Rook eyed him for another minute before he nodded. “Okay. I’ll think about it and let the team know soon.”
Cedric drummed his fingers against his leg. His eyes flickered back to the picture on the desk. “You’ll give me enough time to do whatever research I’d like to do?”
They didn’t openly talk about the fact that Cedric needed so much more time to read up on their clients than the other team members, but it wasn’t something that Rook would have forgotten either.
“Of course.”
Cedric nodded, stood, and left the room, knocking his knuckles against the doorframe as he went.
Elena Vasquez. The name tumbled in his head like clean laundry in the dryer.
CHAPTER TWO
Elena knew that the doorbell was about to ring. She’d watched Miranda walk up the sidewalk and up her front steps, for god sakes. So why, oh why, did she jump a foot in the air when the buzzer buzzed?
Because she was traumatized, she reminded herself. She tried to keep it firmly filed in her mind as a non-weakness. But still, she was so annoyed at all the jumpy, nervous habits she’d developed since waking up in the hospital with a goose egg on her temple and good number of scratches and burns on her body.
She hated her PTSD. Hated it
because she’d gotten off lightly. She’d ended up with a few scratches. While David…
God.
She clutched at the collar of her cotton shirt and yanked it away from her neck. Even thinking his name and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She still couldn’t believe that he was gone.
Her friend, her counterpart, for almost seven years and just like that… loud sound, hot heat, and he was gone. Wiped from this earth. She’d barely slept in the weeks since it happened. She hated closing her eyes.
She hated giving in to the same force that had taken her under, kept her from getting to David in the final seconds of his life. She’d been passed out cold in a stairwell while he’d burned to death in his car.
God.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her forehead against the wall as she listened for Miranda’s footsteps coming up the stairwell toward her door.
She felt a strange guilt over the fact that she was deeply relieved it wasn’t a member of her family coming to cluck over her, their eyes filled with tears and their hands filled with food she couldn’t stomach. Her mother and father, her two sisters, and her three brothers had all been the picture of an attentive, loving family. Each and every one of them had been there to check on her, smooth her hair back, tell her how much they loved her. But it hadn’t comforted Elena. For the first time in her life, Elena felt as if there were a glass wall firmly in place between her and her family. She felt as if they were speaking one language and she another.
After every visit from her family, she’d simply felt exhausted. As if she’d just left a steam room after an hour of bright lights and a hundred questions.
Miranda, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what Elena had needed these last weeks. She’d been quiet and firm, putting down small portions of manageable food and shoving Elena into the shower a few times a week. Miranda was pushy enough to usually have Elena rolling her eyes, but in the last few weeks, Elena had been so appreciative to be able to let Miranda make so many decisions for her.
Which was pretty much the only reason she’d let Miranda talk her into this personal security mess.
She couldn’t believe this was her life. And she really, really couldn’t believe that she’d let Miranda Leary talk her into getting a bodyguard.
It was truly the only time in her entire life that Elena had wished she’d had a man. Elena was certainly fluent in the romantic arts. And she’d never particularly suffered from loneliness. Nor had she ever had a longing to have another human taking up half her bed, leaving dishes in the sink, using up the hot water in the morning. Obviously, she knew that loving relationships were much more than that. Her parents had a good marriage, and most of her siblings were comfortably paired off. But she just didn’t have that thing in her that urged some people toward dating websites or blind dates set up by well meaning friends.
But something in her told her that if she’d had a man, some hairy, athletic beast with a backwards baseball cap and a proclivity toward protein shakes, then maybe Miranda wouldn’t be forcing this personal security situation quite so vehemently. Maybe Elena could have just grieved in peace with her boyfriend heading out to pick up pizza when she was in danger of wasting away.
That’s what she wanted. Not some tight-lipped, Rayban-ed, suit-wearing Terminator who patted down her friends and family when they came bearing homemade enchiladas and tortas.
She didn’t want a stranger in her space and she certainly didn’t want a stranger in her shadow.
There was a light, brisk knock on her door that had Elena sucking in a shocked breath. Even though she’d known it was coming. Barf. How sad and pathetic she’d become. She hated it.
Elena checked the peephole and checked that it was, in fact, Miranda there at her door before she took a steadying breath and let her old friend into her home.
“Look sharp, dear!” Miranda said in that bright, bubbly, vaguely British tone she had. She’d lived in the States for thirty years now and had lost almost all of her accent except for the lilt of her voice. “We’ve got the security team coming up in less than ten minutes.”
Miranda dropped a dry, forceful kiss onto Elena’s cheek and clamped two strong hands on her shoulders.
“Here?” Elena croaked. “They’re coming here? I thought for sure we’d meet at the office later today. I never thought—”
“Well,” Miranda interrupted, as if Elena hadn’t even been talking. “Now, this is not going to do. You look awful, love. Just terrible. Go and pinch some color into your cheeks, run a brush through your hair, and I’ll make an attempt to straighten the living room.”
Elena’s living room, she knew, was going to take a hell of a lot more than an attempt. Even when she was busy to the gills, racing about town and barely even sleeping in her own bed, Elena always managed to clutter her apartment with a passionate flare. But now that she’d spent almost an entire month never leaving the confines of her own home? Well, she’d messied it to within an inch of its life. “Abandon the living room. Bring them into the kitchen,” she advised Miranda. “It’s the only room I’ve barely used.”
Elena quickly brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back into a braid. She didn’t want to bother with looking pretty, but she knew she at least needed to be hygienic. She didn’t want to meet Miranda’s bodyguards, but she also knew she didn’t have much of a choice at this point.
Apparently, Miranda agreed about the state of the living room because she heard her slamming the door closed. The guests would be ushered straight into the kitchen. Elena was just stepping in there herself when she heard the knock on her door.
Miranda held up one firm finger and pointed it at Elena. “This is for your own good, love. These people will help you, okay?”
And then she was letting these strangers into Elena’s apartment.
Elena couldn’t help but inch backwards away from the hulking forms as they filed into her small kitchen, making the 3/4 fridge look like it belonged in a dollhouse and taking up every inch of available space. There were five strangers. All of them in business casual clothing, and one of them was a woman. She was tall and thin and probably the most beautiful woman that Elena had ever seen.
The other men all sort of blurred together. They were all huge, all white, and all looking at her. Elena couldn’t help but quickly turn to Miranda.
“I didn’t realize I’d be meeting an entire team of people.”
“Let me introduce myself, Ms. Vasquez. My name is Javier Rook. I’m the head of Rook Securities.”
Javier? Was he Latinx? He had dark hair and eyes, but beyond that, she couldn’t tell. Not the way that people could tell just by looking at her.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Rook.”
“Please, just Rook is fine.”
Elena shook that man’s hand quickly and brought her palms back to cupping her elbows. She was in jeans and a t-shirt and suddenly, she desperately wished she were wearing socks. And a hoodie. And mittens.
God.
She hated this. She’d never considered herself a timid person, but something in her soul had been destroyed in that parking garage. She just hoped it could grow back.
“I’d like to introduce my team.”
Elena nodded and looked to each person as Rook introduced them. “This is Atlas Bone and his brother Sequence.” The first man grinned, almost blindingly, at Elena, the second scowled just as blindingly. With their dirty blonde hair and light eyes, they were identical except for the expressions on their faces.
“This is Cedric Swift.” The next man nodded his head to Elena, his lips softening in a kind expression. He had midnight blue eyes and auburn hair that was short on the sides and longer up top. He also had a nice beard going, short but full. He had the friendliest face out of all of them and Elena couldn’t help but hope that he was the one assigned to her.
“And this is Savannah Georgia. But we call her Geo.” The woman was seriously, devastatingly beautiful, but now that Elena had an eyeful, she could see tone
d muscle under the woman’s shirt and a look in her eye like she could drop anyone foolish enough to test her. On second thought, maybe Elena wanted this badass woman to protect her.
“Nice to meet you all,” Elena tried. “I… wasn’t expecting this. Any of this.”
She brought her hand up to her forehead and stumbled backwards a step, she was suddenly so overwhelmed. She hadn’t slept in weeks, all she wanted was quiet, but whenever she got the quiet, she heard the sound of the explosion, over and over. There were strangers in her house because Miranda didn’t think she was safe in her own home and…
Elena felt a firm hand on her elbow and then the familiar sensation of a chair at the back of her knees. She sank gratefully onto one of her kitchen chairs. Miranda shoved a glass of water in her hand.
“None of us were expecting this, sweet.”
“Ms. Vasquez,” Rook said, and then to Elena’s relief, he sat down as well. The other members of his team stood against the wall of her kitchen. “I know this has got to be one of the worst times in your life. But if it’s any consolation, that’s usually when people need us. We’re here to help you through that time. To try and make your life easier and safer.”
“We?” she repeated his phrasing. “You mean that all of you will work with me?”
“Yes,” Rook nodded. “Some of us will guard you, some of us will analyze the information surrounding your last attack in order to figure out if the correct person is behind bars and some of us—”
“That…” Elena started. “Sounds expensive.”
One of the men against the wall laughed and tried to turn it into a cough. There was something oddly familiar about that laugh and it had her scanning the wall again, but nope, it was just the same behemoths from before. Unfamiliar gigantors who were apparently all part of a bodyguarding superforce that was going to use all their skills to work in unison for her protection. She pictured them all putting their hands together and shouting Unite!. Elena felt like she was losing her mind.
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