“And did you happen to listen to a single word he said during the briefing?”
Okay. Naomi had thought that maybe Sequence was just a little bit standoffish. But now she knew he was a total a-hole.
Whatever. Kill ‘em with kindness. That was and would always be her philosophy. She’d be damned if some blond Neanderthal was going to throw her off her game. “It was quite a bit of information at once and I have a lot on my mind right now. What with starting my own business and trying to avoid the attentions of a known mobster.”
She smiled at him again, but he kept his eyes on the road.
Naomi sighed when he didn’t speak again. She still didn’t understand why her place of business was important to her security team, but she sure as heck wasn’t going to ask again. And apparently he wasn’t going to explain.
Whatever. She would let him do what he needed to do and she’d ask Rook about it later if she was still curious.
Uncomfortable with the silence, Naomi leaned forward and flicked the radio on, scrolling through staticky channels until she found a pop song that she really liked. She settled back into the seat, her crossed high heels bouncing to the beat when she finally felt Sequence’s gaze on her.
She flicked her head to the side to see him absolutely staring at her. Like she was a lunatic.
Without taking his eyes off of her, he punched the radio off.
Jackhole.
Whatever. Naomi kept her eyes out the window but didn’t keep her smile to herself as she started humming the melody to the song.
He said nothing for the rest of the car ride.
CHAPTER TWO
Naomi frowned at her front door.
She set her bag down on her door mat, her hands on her hips, and then full-on glared at the new set of locks—complete with electronic keypad—that had been installed while she was at work.
She was grateful for all that Rook and his team were doing for her, she really was. But she’d liked her front door looking the way it did. It had looked homey and sweet. And now it looked like a radio shack threw up on it.
She pulled out her phone and re-read the detailed instructions that Rook had emailed to her. She keyed in the passcode and then submitted her fingerprint.
Naomi almost jumped out of her skin when a loud, cranking click had her door swinging open. She stepped inside and flipped on the lights.
Thankfully nothing looked so out of place here, except for the back of her front door, which now had steel bars criss-crossing over the back. When she pushed the door closed, they cranked back into place, making her jump again. Apparently there were motion sensors that she had to deactivate as well. Naomi hurried to the panel that had been installed on her wall and frowned again.
There was a ten-digit alpha-numeric code that she was supposed to plug in and then everything would go back to normal. A red light blinked on one edge of the device and she nearly jumped out of her skin when it started to beep.
Across the river, in Brooklyn, Sequence shifted in his chair in his office. He had live feeds up of Naomi’s house on two different screens. Those same feeds were also beaming to Rook’s office and to Swift, who was the on-call agent on duty right now. If she needed anything, Swift was the agent who would go to her.
“Effing little piece of shoot,” Naomi mumbled to herself as she plugged in the code. Her face was solemn and irritated as she squinted from her phone back to the keypad, trying to input the code perfectly right.
Sequence surprised himself when a low chuckle rolled out of him. Almost nothing made him laugh. Ever. But she was just so cute with her red eyebrows and frowny mouth and her swear words that didn’t mean anything. Her finger must have slipped because the device started beeping angrily.
She jolted and scrambled to plug the code in again, but she hadn’t reactivated the screen, so she was just jumbling up the signal. That little line was between her brows again.
Sequence wasn’t on call, so he wasn’t sure why he didn’t just leave it up to Swift to talk her through it, but he found himself clicking into the audio for her alarm system.
“Naomi.”
If he’d thought she’d jolted before, this time she nearly jumped out of her skin. She shrieked, red hair flying, and whipped around, away from the keypad. If Sequence wasn’t mistaken, her hands were up in a… karate pose?
Funny. He hadn’t seen any martial arts training in her file. His lips twitched.
“Naomi, I’m speaking to you through the keypad.”
“What?” She whipped back around. And then, to Sequence’s further amusement, leaned forward toward the keypad and squinted hard. Her face filled his screen.
“Nice pores.”
She jumped back. “You can see me? Is that Rook?”
For some reason, that irritated him. “It’s Sequence. And yes, I can see you.”
“Oh.” She stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Can I help you?”
Again, his smile twitched. So apparently, his assholery that morning had bothered her. Her disposition had remained so unflaggingly sunny that he hadn’t been sure she’d even noticed he was there. As soon as they’d gotten to Ellsworth’s fancy jewelry store, she’d introduced him to Ellsworth and then disappeared into the back where she’d gotten lost in her work.
She reminded him of a hummingbird, jewel toned and ever-beating. But then he’d glimpsed her in her back room, her eyes peering down through some sort of microscope, her mouth open, studying some gem. And she’d been so perfectly still.
He’d left without saying goodbye.
“Actually,” he responded through the intercom, “I think it’s me who is going to be helping you.”
“With what?”
“I’m going to keep the cops from coming because you can’t operate your own security system.”
A few clicks of his keyboard and he made the system stand down.
Her expression cleared when she realized that he’d made the beeping stop. “Oh. Thanks.”
“Next time, if you screw up the code, press the blue button before you start over.”
“Can I just change the code to something less complicated that I’ll remember?”
“Only if it’s something that nobody would be able to guess. And it shouldn’t be your bank pin, either.”
She gave the camera a look of such insulted condescension that Sequence found himself chuckling again.
“Okay, how do I change it?”
“You can tell it to me and I’ll change it for you.”
“But then you’ll know it!”
“I know the original code too.”
“Oh. Right. Okay, the new code is…” she bit her lip with those pearly whites. “Ralph8854#.”
Sequence frowned. Who the hell was Ralph? He inputted her new code. “Give it a shot.”
He activated the system and she inputted the new code. He watched the green approval light wash over her face and she gave an excited little squeal, her arms thrown over her head.
Sequence’s lips twitched with another smile.
She danced in a quick, happy circle and then came to sudden halt. “Hold on. Is that camera on all the time?”
“No,” he told her. “It’s only on from the moment when your door opens until you input the code. Then it goes off.”
“It’s not off now,” she pointed out.
“We were talking. I kept it on.”
Was it him, or did she just blush? “Right. Well, I’m going on a run in a minute, am I going to have to go through this whole thing all over again?”
You don’t want me to see you sweaty? He almost said it out loud. Sequence frowned at himself. Jesus, he was trying to flirt with this woman?
At his obvious pause, her lip was between those insanely white teeth again.
Sequence glanced up when there was movement in his doorway and there was his twin, leaning on the doorjamb and waving a ping pong paddle around, obviously wanting a rematch to their last tournament.
“Yeah
,” he told Naomi. “You’ll have to plug in your new code.”
“Kay!” she said brightly and then twiddled her fingers at the camera. “TTFN.”
And then she was gone.
TTFN? Christ. Who was this woman?
Sequence deadened the camera and stood up, stretching hard enough to make his shoulders pop. His bad shoulder was aching him just enough to know he shouldn’t play ping pong right now. He turned to his brother. “Let’s race instead.”
Atlas wilted in despair. “Are you kidding me? Who passes up a game of ping pong to run instead? Sometimes I could swear that we’re not related.”
“Except for the identical DNA, of course.” He shoved past Atlas and into the hallway.
“Maybe I was born first and they liked me so much, they made you in a petri dish with my DNA.”
“That would make you my father, then?”
“Your father and your brother. How Oedipal.”
“Disgusting.” Sequence put his palm on Atlas’s forehead and shoved, the two of them grappling in the hallway like a pair of Great Dane puppies.
Atlas, though not as strong as Sequence, had always been slippery as an eel. He ended up with a forearm clamped around his brother’s neck. “Who were you talking to just now, in your office?”
Sequence stumbled a few feet and then slammed himself backward into the cement wall, just hard enough to get Atlas to loosen his grip. It worked. “Client.”
“A client?” Atlas wheezed. “You mean Naomi? But you were smiling. I’ve never seen you smile at a client before.”
They jostled their way into the downstairs locker room of the bunker and undressed. Surprise, surprise, Sequence preferred to wear simple black compression shorts to work out in and Atlas wore hot pink basketball shorts and a tank top with ET on it. What a weirdo.
Sequence didn’t seem to think that Atlas’s comment required a response, so instead he just jogged out to the track. His brother was right beside him.
A few seconds later, there were more footsteps. Swift joined them, his running shoes on and stretching his arms over his head. “You ladies racing?”
Internally, both brothers groaned. Swift was a hell of a lot faster than either one of them.
“I thought you were on call,” Atlas called, for the millionth time in their lives asking the very same question that Sequence had been thinking. People always asked Sequence how he could stand being that quiet. Little did they know that having a nosy-ass brother like Atlas pretty much got all your questions answered.
“Nah, switched with Geo. She’s trying to pick up hours or something.”
Atlas and Sequence frowned at one another. Trying to pick up hours? Was she having money trouble or something? Their five-person security team was extremely tight knit. If Geo was in trouble at all, not one of them was going to let her flail.
Swift, seeing their worried expressions, just shrugged his shoulders. “She wouldn’t tell me why, but apparently she cleared it with Rook, so we know that somebody’s got their eyes on her.”
That was definitely true. Rook was like the ultimate babysitter when it came to his team. As long as Rook knew what was going on with Geo, the other men on the team didn’t have to start worrying.
Sequence fiddled with the starting clock on the wall next to where they’d start the race. The track was the circumference of the building’s atrium, also known as their garage. The Rook Securities bunker was an old factory in Red Hook that Rook had bought a decade ago, before the neighborhood had started to become trendy. It had a slew of offices lining the atrium on every side, and the main factory space had been converted into their garage, gym, locker room, and the track. On the top floors were two crow’s nests that served as client holding areas if and when they ever had to put a client on lockdown for their own safety.
That was what they had had to do with Elena, Swift’s girlfriend, earlier in the year. It had no longer been safe for her to be out and about in the world, so they’d kept her in the bunker. They’d done it a few times for Moreau Davy, when his stalkers had become a little too voracious. And a few other clients for periods of time here and there. For the most part though, they ran their daily work from the bunker and traveled with clients when they had to.
“You ever seen Sequence smile at a client before?” Atlas asked Swift as they lined up at the starting blocks.
Sequence frowned. Obviously his dumbass brother was just trying to get in his head before they started the race. Unfortunately, it was working a tiny bit.
“Elena,” Swift said, bending forward and tenting his fingers on the ground. “He smiled at Elena when she was a client.”
“Everyone smiles at Elena,” Atlas said. “She doesn’t count. She’s like, the best person on the planet. No. I mean have you ever seen Sequence smile at a client because he thinks she’s cute.”
“Shut the fuck up and run the race,” Sequence growled at his brother. As the clock on the wall ticked down the seconds until the race began, he shoved his twin’s mind games to the side.
Bang! The starting clock sounded off and the three men exploded from the line. Immediately, as usual, they saw Swift’s back as he rounded the track. He was ahead of them even in the far lane.
Sequence didn’t care. He knew he couldn’t beat Swift. All he wanted was to beat his wisecracking, big-mouthed, know-it-all brother.
They were neck and neck at the halfway mark but Atlas began to pull ahead. It was most likely because Sequence had twenty pounds of muscle on his brother. Atlas was more streamlined than Sequence.
But Sequence was more competitive. He ignored the screaming in his muscles and the burn in his chest.
Pushing forward hard in the final stretch, he and Atlas crossed the finish line at the exact same second.
Swift was already pacing around, cooling down. “Which client is cute?” He picked up the thread of the conversation that had been cut off by their run.
“Naomi Cutler,” Atlas responded. Then he cut off his breath and started wincing and limping around on his left leg. “Shit.”
In less than a second, Sequence forgot his irritation with Atlas and was at his side. “Injury?”
Atlas had an old knee injury that was known to flare up now and again. He’d gotten it the same way that Sequence had gotten his shoulder injury. Courtesy of their good old dad. Sequence never liked to see his brother in pain, but there was something about his knee flare-ups that cut him particularly deep. Both of the brothers spent so much time trying to forget their father ever existed. But the echoes of their old injuries would never let them fully forget.
“Nah. Just a charlie horse in my calf.”
“Here.” Sequence sat down and motioned for Atlas to do the same. He took his brother’s foot and ruthlessly stretched his left toes toward his knee.
“Motherfruiting piece of—” Atlas cut off his colorful swearing with a loud grunt of pain, but after a minute, he relaxed under Sequence’s relentless stretching. Sweat beaded on Atlas’s forehead as he fell back onto the cool surface of the track and panted. “Damn. Thanks, bro.”
Sequence grunted and then started to stretch out his own muscles.
“She’s really cute enough to get Sequence smiling?” Swift asked, even as he effortlessly pumped out a set of push-ups.
“Apparently,” Atlas said as he rolled over and joined Swift in push-ups.
“Fuck you both,” Sequence muttered and stood up, striding over to the gym. She was cute, sure. But there was no story there. He occasionally smiled at cute women. Who cared? He wasn’t going to initiate something with a client. That was a good way to get kicked off a case, or worst case scenario, fired. Rook did not look kindly on that kind of business-pleasure mixing.
Swift and Elena had fallen in love while she was their client, but that was just the thing. They’d fallen in love. Swift had been ready to choose Elena over Rook Securities and Rook had hedged his bets and decided to keep one of his best team members on board. But that did not mean that Rook wo
uldn’t fillet Sequence’s ass if he hooked up with a client. Which was all it would ever be with Naomi. Because that was all that it ever was with Sequence. He’d never once had feelings for a woman. He’d never felt close or intimate with one either.
He had his brother. He had the other members of Rook Securities, and that was enough for him. He didn’t need more from life. Nothing other than a random hook-up every couple of weeks to keep his lid from blowing off.
He thought of Naomi’s ruby hair down her back, her huge, pearly white grin. Cute. She was definitely cute. And if he met her in a bar, he would not mind recruiting her for his monthly lid-blowing. But as long as she was a client, that was decidedly not going to happen.
Sequence lifted for a few minutes, realized just how tight his body was, and spent the rest of his workout running through a few sun salutations. He was freshly showered and thrumming with endorphins when he sat back down at his desk an hour later.
He didn’t need to, because Geo was on duty, but he checked the security log on Naomi’s system. He frowned. She wasn’t back from her run yet. That would mean that she left an hour and twenty minutes ago.
That was a long run.
He was just about to stand up and go see if Geo had more information on Naomi’s whereabouts when his system alerted him that someone was entering Naomi’s house. He clicked into the camera on the inner keypad next to her front door. A second later, there she was.
Her hair was up in a messy knot and an even darker red where it was slicked back with sweat. She was shiny and panting, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth when she concentrated on inputting her code. He shifted in his chair. Yeah. She was really cute.
He couldn’t see much below her chin and he wondered what kind of athletic gear she wore.
“Ralph8854#,” she whispered to herself as she input it. Then she moved away from the camera only to slide back into view a second later. There was a suspicious look in her eyes as she moved toward what to her would only look like a blank, black lens. “Sequence?” she asked, checking to see if he was checking in with her.
Rook Security Complete Series Page 27