Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  The weight of the situation fell over Cedric. He’d gotten so used to being professional with Elena during work hours and then getting to be completely unprofessional with her when he was off-duty, with the understanding that one of his team was watching over them. But if he went with her, there would be no one to watch over them. Their safety would be his responsibility 24 hours a day.

  He’d taken jobs like that before, but never ones in which he would need to put his heart in a cage. Could he do it?

  He wasn’t sure. But then he pictured being stateside while Elena was abroad with Geo or Sequence or Atlas. Could he possibly hug her goodbye and then let her put an ocean between them? God no.

  It came down to one fact and one fact only. He was the best man for the job. He was the most versatile member of the security team, with the exception of maybe Rook.

  If Rook went with her, she’d have the same amount of offense and defense surrounding her as if Cedric went.

  “Would you consider taking her?” Cedric asked. He didn’t know it, but it was that question that cemented this as a good decision in Rook’s mind. If Cedric had leapt at the chance to spirit Elena away and be alone with her, Rook would have been worried about the man’s ability to keep his head where she was concerned.

  But there he was, mulling over all the possibilities as usual. Rook could feel how much Cedric wanted to say yes. But he was there, realizing that Rook was the only other member of the team that had the skills to take on a job this intense. Cedric wanted this so badly, and yet, he was still trying to go the route that would be the best for Elena.

  “I’ve been dark from my daughter for five weeks. I’m uninterested in going abroad without her. I feel too far away as it is.” When he’d started in with this excuse, he’d thought it was just something to say, but as he got to the end of the sentence, Rook realized just how deeply he felt that sentiment. He missed Ricky. And if he was in the business of being honest, he might as well admit that he missed her mother as well.

  Cedric nodded, accepting Rook’s reasoning. He took a long breath.

  “I take it you want the job?” Rook asked.

  Cedric paused. He had to. He had to truly ask himself if he could take care of her over there the way that she deserved to be taken care of. Would his feelings for her get in the way of protecting her? Could he really do this?

  When Cedric’s eyes came open again, it was to see Rook quietly studying him and he wondered how long he’d been deliberating the answer to this question. “I’ll do it.”

  Rook nodded, a satisfied look in his eyes. “I’ll discuss her options with her before dinner.”

  Cedric rose out of his chair and moved toward the door.

  “Swift.”

  He turned and saw an unexpected expression on his boss’s face.

  “Do I do that often?” Rook asked. “The thing with the email? Make you read something on the fly?”

  Cedric was taken aback by the question. Nobody asked him things like that. There was no judgment in Rook’s eyes. There was, perhaps, the slightest bit of sheepishness. Cedric cleared his throat. “Everybody does. People expect a grown man to be able to read on call.”

  Rook nodded briskly. “I’ll work on it.”

  Cedric closed the door behind him, fully bemused by everything that had just happened.

  ***

  “He said he was gonna talk to her about it before dinner,” Cedric told Atlas as the two men set the table. Geo and Sequence were putting the finishing touches on dinner and listening in as well.

  “Jesus, Atlas,” Geo called. “You’re like a kid on freaking Christmas.”

  “I’m just so excited!” Atlas called back, haphazardly tossing forks and knives onto the napkins as he went. Cedric followed behind him and scrupulously straightened everything out. “She really deserves some happiness, you know? She deserves excitement. And I just want this for her, you know?”

  To Cedric’s surprise, Sequence was the one nodding his head in vehement agreement in the kitchen. Cedric couldn’t ever remember seeing Sequence vehement about anything before. And here he was, completely advocating for Elena’s happiness. It was a little trippy.

  “She really got under all of your skin, didn’t she?” Cedric asked the group, looking from face to face.

  “She’s kind, respectful, and devotes all her energy toward making the world a better place. She’s one of the good ones,” Geo said, snapping off a bite of baby carrot with her back teeth.

  “Besides,” Sequence grunted, in what might be his only sentence of the night. “She’s been a nice break from the trust-fund babies.”

  Though Rook Securities tried to only help people who were truly in need of their services, it was true that they were an expensive agency. It was also true that three years running, the clients that they’d gone dark with had been young, rich, party-babies who’d fallen in with the wrong people and needed the team to clean up their messes.

  Even if Cedric hadn’t been completely gone for Elena, he would have had to admit that an intelligent, hard-working, big-hearted, do-gooder was a nice change of pace from those who’d partied too hard on spring break and needed a place to escape their drug dealers.

  “What do you think her reaction will be?” Geo asked.

  Her question was almost immediately answered when Elena, sweaty and breathing hard, came to a screeching stop in the doorway of the kitchen.

  There was no other way to describe it than to say that there was sunshine beaming out of her eyes. With a whoop of monumental delight, Elena sprinted across the room and threw herself into Cedric’s arms.

  He barely had time to clamp his hands firmly to her ass to keep her from falling.

  She leaned back and threw her face to the sky. “We’re going to see the elephants, baby!”

  Her grin was infectious, and Cedric found he simply couldn’t wipe the happiness off his face. But he was also suddenly aware of Rook standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching them with a half-smile on his face.

  “I take it you said yes to Rook’s idea?” Cedric said, gently lowering her to the floor.

  “Are you kidding?” She twirled a quick circle and starting listing things on her fingers when she came back around to face Cedric. “One, I get to leave the bunker. Two, I get to return to one of my favorite places on earth. Three, I get to see an elephant migration. Four, I get to leave the bunker. Five, It’s the site of my greatest triumph as a conservationist. Six, I get to leave the bunker. And seven, I get to go with you!”

  She gave a rather pre-teen sort of squeal and wrapped Cedric up in her arms. She squeezed him for all she was worth.

  Cedric looked up to see every single member of his team smiling.

  “That right there?” Atlas said, pointing at Elena’s head. “That’s another reason I love her.”

  ***

  Rook and Cedric had completely briefed Elena on every single step of her trip. They’d also completely briefed her on Cedric’s role in her life while they were abroad. It was only a week-long trip, but to Elena, it was a mini-eternity. At first, she’d been exclusively excited about this trip. But after she’d learned about how her relationship with Cedric would be so limited, she’d started to feel much more confusing versions of her feelings.

  A hundred different shades of emotion coursed through her as they boarded the plane at JFK.

  She’d expected to feel instantly on edge and exposed the second she’d left the bunker. After all, with the exception of a little time up on the roof of the bunker, she’d barely been outside in five weeks. And there were apparently bad guys after her. If it had been cool enough to wear a turtleneck, she would have pulled it up over her eyebrows.

  But the fact was, she piled in the SUV that Sequence drove, the rest of the team there with her, and she just… didn’t worry.

  Cedric sat in the jump seat, facing her, the way he had before, and she was calm. She couldn’t explain it further than that. Ced was there. So she could afford to be calm. S
he didn’t have to check over her shoulder. He was doing that for her. He had her back in every way.

  Rook had shaken her hand from the passenger seat, Sequence and Geo had given her a shoulder squeeze apiece and Atlas had bestowed a very sloppy kiss on her cheek. And then she and Cedric had skipped their way through the airport.

  It was surreal, to be out in the world with him. In some ways, he’d become totally polarized in her mind. He was both the high school semi-stranger that he used to be, and uber-professional bodyguard. The yummy-hot cuddler version of Cedric was nowhere to be found.

  There she was standing in the security line with Cedric Swift, not her sweet Ced. And then, there, Cedric Swift was lifting her bag from her shoulder and carrying for her. There he was waiting outside the single stall bathroom he’d checked before he let her use it.

  It was strange, because she knew what it felt like to be Ced’s girl, and this wasn’t it. He really was a bodyguard pretending to be her man.

  This was not a vacation.

  This was a work trip for him.

  And it was kind of freaking her out.

  When they finally boarded the plane and found their seats, Elena waited for Cedric to hoist their bags overhead and sit down next to her.

  “Earth to Ced, are you in there? Blink once if you’ve been taken hostage by body snatchers.”

  His lips tugged upwards at the corners but his eyes were on the flight attendants as they moved up and down the aisle. He visibly relaxed when the doors were officially closed. Elena knew that somehow, Rook had scored the names of each person on board the aircraft. They’d done a full workup on each person’s background. Which, to her, seemed a gross violation of privacy. But apparently it was necessary to ensure no assassins were on board.

  It had seemed intense and scary when they’d first informed Elena that they’d be doing that. But now, watching the obviously Midwestern couple share an Almond Joy in the seats kitty-cornered from them and the teenager in front of her start up Love Actually on her laptop, the idea that any of these people being there to kill Elena seemed patently ridiculous.

  No one was going to try to kill her.

  She wanted Cuddle-Ced back.

  “Are you going to be like this the whole trip?” she asked him as the plane started taxiing.

  “Like what?”

  “Cyborg Ced.”

  He laughed outright at that but sobered up quickly. “Elena, it’s my job to protect you. I’m not going to take it lightly. Even if it turns me into the Terminator.”

  She frowned but understood. “So, this trip is not going to be nearly as romantic as I’d hoped it would be.”

  He visibly softened. “You want me to take you on a romantic trip?”

  His question discombobulated her. Did she want that? She’d never wanted something like that in her life. She didn’t need a man to take her on a trip. And she certainly didn’t want some contrived gesture designed to make her weak in the knees.

  But then… she pictured spending time in, say, Lisbon with Cedric. Getting lost in the ancient, winding streets. Wine at four pm, sharp. Seafood so fresh it wiggled on the plate. Live singers in the bars they passed by as they held hands on their way back to their room. Making love with the windows open, the ocean winking in the distance.

  She colored as she realized that she wasn’t exactly thinking about a romantic trip. She was thinking about a honeymoon.

  Elena cleared her throat. “Maybe?”

  That was the best she could do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They had a short layover in Paris and then flew from there straight to Bamako. It was on that second flight that Elena realized Cedric would not be sleeping until they were behind closed doors. Which meant almost 24 straight hours of staying awake for him.

  They clicked into their seat belts on the second flight. “Do you think we can change our flight for the way back?” she asked him.

  “Why?”

  “I want a longer layover in Paris on our way back.”

  “Why?” he asked again, his brow battening down.

  “Because I want you to get a night’s rest before we do the second leg of this journey, on the way back, okay? It’s unreasonable for you to stay awake for an entire day.”

  Again, he visibly softened for her. He didn’t have to pretend to be her man right now, no one was watching them, but he linked his hand with hers anyways and Elena could feel the real Ced calling out to her.

  “You’re eerily calm right now,” he said a few minutes later.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that for someone who just left the bunker, who’s got people after her, who’s traveling halfway across the world, you’re calm as hell.”

  Elena shrugged. “You met me in a very strange time in my life, Ced. Or… you re-met me. I’m not really a crier. Or a freak out-er. I’m usually very calm.”

  “You were very collected in high school, I remember.”

  “Sure,” she shrugged again and then her eyes went sad. “David’s death, it’s kind of opened a door to sadness that I didn’t know I had. So, yeah. I’ve been crying a lot lately. And freaking out a fair amount. And it’s been scary to meet this new version of myself. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same as I was, fearless at all costs, you know? But I can feel my equilibrium coming back.”

  “So why aren’t you crying and freaking out now? Not that I want you to. But, I mean, what’s bringing your equilibrium back? I’m just genuinely curious.”

  Elena thought hard about her answer, attempting to really gather her thoughts.

  “When I went to kindergarten, I didn’t speak much English. My parents both speak it well, but at home… we just didn’t. It was only Spanish. So by the time kindergarten in Queens rolled around, I was kind of screwed. I was always a really relaxed kid, but I hated school. I had to learn so much and a whole other language to boot. My parents didn’t know what the hell to do with me.”

  “I can’t picture you hating school at all. It was always like you were born to be there. Like you knew the answer to some riddle that I never would.”

  Elena gave him a sad smile and nodded. “By the time high school rolled around I’d already cracked the code, that’s for sure. I spoke English and I had my secret weapon.”

  “What secret weapon?”

  “Well, my dad used to travel for work. He’s a travel writer. Did you know that? And when I was in first or second grade, he went to Tulum and he came back with a little worry stone for me as a souvenir. You know those? They’re flat and smooth with a divot in the middle for your thumb?”

  Cedric nodded.

  “He told me he’d haggled for it from an old bruja who’d put a good luck spell on it. And I thought it was the most special thing in the entire world. My very own magic. That I could keep in my pocket. It would protect me and take all my fears and worries away.” She smiled as she looked out the window of the plane for a moment. Cedric knew she was peering into her own memories. “I used it for years, every time I’d go to school. I kept it in my pocket as a talisman and soon I wasn’t scared of school anymore. I started to excel.”

  She turned to him now with an intense expression on her face. “You ask me how I can be so calm right now, Ced? It’s because of you. You’re my talisman now. If you’re here, then I know I’m safe. That you’re looking out for me.”

  Cedric’s throat tightened painfully as he held Elena’s eye contact. She was right, of course, that he would never let anything happen to her. But that was just his job. What she was talking about was more than that. She was talking about Cedric being necessary to her life.

  He hadn’t been necessary, well, ever. His grandfather had loved him dearly, but absolutely essentially necessary? Cedric had never felt that before.

  He tore his eyes away from Elena’s dark gaze and dragged a heavy hand over his face. He had to focus. He had to keep his mind on the job. But how could he when she was systematically tearing him to pieces.

 
“Of course,” Elena said, turning his attention back toward her. “When I graduated high school my father finally broke the news to me that he’d really forgotten to get me a present that time in Tulum and he’d bought it in LaGuardia on his way back home.”

  Cedric laughed. Loud and cathartically. “Some magic talisman that was.”

  “It didn’t matter where it came from.” Elena shrugged. “It mattered how much I believed in it, you know?”

  Cedric did know. He knew exactly what she meant.

  ***

  They took a cab from the airport outside of Bamako to the Olympus Hotel. It was a shabby six-floored, Greek-style monstrosity in the heart of the city. Scooters whizzed past their little cab, the humid, dusty air rolling up in clouds behind all the vehicles. Night was already falling. Elena would have wanted to head out to the desert immediately if it hadn’t been for the fact that Cedric hadn’t slept in a day.

  Besides, part of the deal was that she wasn’t actually going to be able to reconnect with any of her old friends. No one could know that she was there. There would be no point in getting out to the communities on the edge of the Sahel if there was no one who could house them for the night, even though they would have housed Elena in a heartbeat.

  So, it was the Olympus instead. In the room that Rook had booked for them. Elena wore a cap and sunglasses and the clerk at the desk referred to them as Mr. and Mrs. Swift. That gave both of them a jolt. Cedric switched rooms at the last minute, as was the plan.

  Their room was on the third floor, on a corner, and Cedric made Elena stay back while he checked the entire room even though it was on the opposite side of the hotel as their last room. Finally, he let Elena in, threw the locks, cranked the A/C, and collapsed backward onto one of the two beds.