Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  Naomi grabbed a corner of the bag and tried to gently dislodge it from Sequence’s hands. “Yes and no.”

  He held tight to the bag. “What do you mean, yes and no?”

  The three members of the team sidled over to the table with all the jewelry, but their eyes were all on Sequence and Naomi. Not a single one of them had ever seen him argue with a client before.

  She tugged at the bag again. “I mean that yes, I’m bringing the bag to meet Bastone and no, you can’t bug my gemology tools with surveillance equipment.”

  “I’m not running a chop shop, here.”

  She tugged harder at the bag. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”

  He snorted. Tugging the bag fully from her hands he strode over to an empty table. “Just let me look at it and see if it’s even worth the argument.”

  “No! Stop!” Apparently this was the last straw for Naomi. Her high heels clicking, she swung herself in between Sequence and the table a lot faster than either of them expected. Suddenly she found herself sandwiched between the table and a very large, very brick-wallish man. Naomi hadn’t known which of the team she’d backed into that day in the elevator until this very moment. It was Sequence. She knew, deep in her body, that this was the second time she’d been flat up against him.

  She gulped. “If you need to look at the equipment, for the love of methuselah, please let me unpack it for you.”

  Sequence stared down at her, inscrutable frown firmly in place.

  “I own that equipment free and clear. Please, I can’t go into business on my own if anything happens to it,” she told him.

  He wondered if she even knew that she could make her eyes go the size of half dollars.

  One of his teammates coughed pointedly behind him and Sequence stepped back, handing her the bag without a word.

  Naomi turned to the table. Sequence watched as her inner hummingbird calmed right down. Just as it had the last time he’d seen her work with her equipment. It was almost like she became a different person. Even as she unzipped the bag, her movements became even and practiced. She tugged out a metal briefcase from her leather shoulder bag. Sequence watched as she plugged in at least a twenty-digit code from memory.

  So, she did have experience with security systems.

  Curious now, the whole team came over to watch her work. Naomi lovingly smoothed her hands over the rounded edges of the metal briefcase before she clicked it open.

  She opened it to reveal something that looked like a pair of binoculars, a series of lenses, small bottles of liquid, calipers, cords, a touch screen gadget, and a few different ocular tools that reminded Sequence of something a pirate might use.

  “Why was I expecting that briefcase to be filled with, like, diamonds and rubies and doubloons?” Atlas asked the room.

  Naomi laughed. “I only analyze the gems. I don’t supply them.”

  She carefully laid out each tool. Some of them she had to build, like little transformers, and some of them she just had to unpack. The whole process took about five minutes and she did it with such fluid precision, that it was clear she’d done this a thousand times.

  “Hold on,” Geo interrupted. “You’re telling me that Frank Bastone lets you into his private residence with a metal briefcase that you just click open and start pulling shit out of?”

  Naomi immediately understood what Geo was getting at. “I get frisked for weapons every time. And I have to put my equipment through this scanner thing before they let me in to see him.” She made a face like she hated it. “But Frank and I have known each other for six, seven years at this point. He knows me well enough to know that I don’t exactly have the chops to be an assassin.”

  Sequence stiffened. He didn’t like hearing her call Bastone by his first name. He didn’t like that at all. But it was more than that bothering him. “Ellsworth sent you in to meet with Frank Bastone when you were twenty-three years old?”

  There was something low and angry in Sequence’s tone that had Naomi’s hands stilling on her equipment for a beat. “I’m the best at what I do. Even when I was green, it was still clear to anyone in the business that I had a natural knack for it. And Frank Bastone gets what Frank Bastone wants. He wanted me. A man like Simon Ellsworth wasn’t going to stand in his way.”

  She spoke frankly, almost dismissively. But there was something in her voice that had Sequence wondering if an entrepreneurial spirit was the only reason she was striking out on her own. He felt an uncharacteristic stab of remorse for messing with her tools without permission. She obviously didn’t want anything to get in the way of her clean break.

  “If Bastone has wanted you for seven years, how the hell have you kept him at bay?” Geo asked.

  Sequence studied Naomi’s face for any indication that she hadn’t, in fact, been able to keep Bastone at bay. In which case, her security issue wasn’t going to be a problem anymore because Frank Bastone was going to find himself choking down a bowl of poisoned applesauce. To his enormous relief, she didn’t flinch, she seemed thoughtful instead.

  “At first, his interest was just professional.” She shrugged. “It took a while for me to grow into my looks. And then around the time he started to get a little handsy, I started dating a cop. That helped.”

  “Oh yeah?” Atlas asked. “Who was your man?” They happened to be familiar with quite a few of New York City’s finest. Including Rob Mortell, an investigator stationed in Sheepshead Bay who was Sequence’s closest friend.

  “His name is Chet Rourke. He’s a detective up in the 41st.” She cleared her throat. “You guys want a tour of my equipment?”

  By the time she’d walked them through all her things, the other three had had to get back to what they were doing when she’d arrived and Sequence and Naomi found themselves alone again.

  He’d paid attention to her walk-through of her tools, but he found that his brain was simultaneously turning a piece of information over and over.

  “You’re being awfully quiet,” Naomi said to him.

  “Define handsy,” Sequence said in a low tone.

  “What?”

  “You said by the time Bastone started to get handsy. Define it.”

  “Oh.” She blushed and her pearly teeth clamped down on her lip. All of her contagious, vivacious joy kind of seeped out of her. “Nothing criminal. Just… unmistakable. He’ll touch my hair or my neck.” She paused. “He always touches my earlobes and tells me he wants to pierce my ears.”

  “Jesus fuck,” Sequence growled.

  “Yeah.” Naomi laughed but there wasn’t any humor in it. “That one always gets me too.”

  “We’re going to keep you safe,” Sequence told her.

  She didn’t know him well, but there was something in his eyes that told her this wasn’t a platitude. It was a promise.

  ***

  It was past nine o’clock when Sequence looked at the clock again. He and Naomi had been bent over her gemology tools arguing and planning and scheming on how best to integrate surveillance equipment into them.

  It was complicated because whatever they added couldn’t be detected by Bastone’s X-ray machine and it also couldn’t affect the way in which her tools worked.

  Sequence grunted when he realized what time it was. Swift and Atlas, who weren’t on duty tonight, were bound to already have gone home. Geo would be up in the on-call room, killing time considering that Naomi was currently in-house and completely safe.

  Sequence wasn’t technically on duty either, but he was the kind of person who liked to finish a project once he started it.

  “Hungry.”

  “Huh?” She looked up at him from where she’d been bent over her spectroscope. That easy smile of hers lit her face. “Was that a question or a statement?”

  “Both. Come on.”

  He led her through a maze of the hallways.

  “This place is like a beehive,” she marveled.

  He said nothing as he led her to the kitchen.

  “Wowz
ers! Check out that stove. Makes mine look like an Easy-Bake oven.”

  “Sit.” He pointed at the barstools pulled up to the counter.

  She followed directions and groaned as she took a load off. He frowned. He should have pulled up a chair for her when they were working upstairs. The woman was wearing those designer stilts again. He didn’t care how expensive they were. They must hurt like hell.

  “Drink?” He forced himself to raise his voice into a question. He was at least trying to be hospitable.

  “Sure. Whatcha got?”

  Sequence opened the fridge to show her their selection of sodas and seltzers and beers they kept on one door. He also pointed down at a few bottles of red wine they kept on the counter.

  She glanced at the red wine and Sequence happened to know it was good stuff. They kept it for when Moreau Davy, who had expensive tastes, was there with them. He figured Fancy would pounce on it.

  “I’ll take a Crisp.”

  He raised his eyes in surprise. It was a pilsner from a local brewery. He hadn’t pegged her for a beer kind of girl. But then, he figured he needed to make peace with the fact that he didn’t have her pegged at all.

  He cracked her beer and slid it down the counter as he gathered ingredients from the fridge.

  “You cook?”

  He nodded. He was the resident chef at the bunker whenever they ended up hunkering down with a client. And he pretty much ended up making a meal for everyone at least once a day anyways. He liked cooking, always had. He liked the quiet meditation of it. He liked the colors and sounds and smells. He liked that he had good instincts for it. But most of all, he liked the end results. He wasn’t a man of very many words, but he fed the people in his life as often as he could.

  “Anything you don’t eat?”

  “Feed me,” was her response.

  His lips twitched in a smile. He liked an insatiable woman.

  Sequence started chopping and prepping. She offered to help but he turned down the offer.

  When he looked up a minute later, she was drumming her red fingernails on the countertop and peering around the kitchen. Oh. She was probably bored. Whenever Sequence cooked for his brother or the other team members, he didn’t give the slightest thought to entertaining them.

  And he never, ever cooked for the women he fucked around with. He never did anything with them besides, well, fucking around. He wondered vaguely if he should put on a podcast or music or something.

  “Oh! I saw those knives on an infomercial once,” she said suddenly. “They can cut through a tin can like butter.”

  He smirked.

  She was up and studying one of them, her beer in one hand.

  “I love infomercials. It’s kind of my goal to be in one, one day. I’ll bet you get to take home whatever you’re trying to sell. All that stuff is such crap anyways. Except for these knives, of course. You ever see that infomercial for the spray-on toupees?”

  Sequence nodded, but he hadn’t needed to. She was off like a rocket, chatting and moving around the kitchen. She touched things as she went. Moved the magnets on the fridge into an intricate design. She opened up the spice cabinet and smelled this and that, setting them back with their labels facing out. She chatted as she looked over his shoulder at the pan he was making the stir fry in. Chatted as she set her beer aside to wash the cutting board and prep knives after he was done with them.

  She chatted as she searched the cabinets for plates and silverware and napkins. When Sequence turned around, he blinked at the countertop where she’d set two perfect settings. The napkins were folded elegantly and ice clinked in the water glasses she set down.

  The team often sat down for meals together, but Geo had her boots up on the chair next to her and Atlas shoveled in food with his elbows on the table. There was usually nothing more than the correct number of plates and forks and a pile of torn off paper towels for napkins. But she’d set two places like it was a fancy meal. She’d found forks of two different sizes, for god sakes! He didn’t even know they had those.

  “Just stir fry and salad,” he told her. “Nothing special.”

  “Smells special,” she grinned at him as he plated the food.

  Sequence sat down kitty corner to her and scratched at the back of his head. He watched as she carefully spread the napkin over her lap and started cutting up her food into little tiny bites.

  For a moment he felt like the Beast in that Disney movie. His fork looked weirdly small and awkward in his big hand. He wondered if she expected him to just face-plant in the food like a pig in a trough. He inwardly shrugged. If she was offended by his manners, that was her problem not his.

  His napkin stayed on the counter while he dug in to his food.

  “Oh, god,” she groaned around her first bite, stilling Sequence’s fork on its way to his mouth. Apparently she appreciated the food.

  He cleared his throat and kept eating.

  From the polite way she held her fork and knife, and her perfect posture, he assumed that she’d eat a lady-like portion and dab at her mouth with the napkin afterward. But no matter how well-groomed her manners were, she systematically destroyed the food on her plate. In fact, she finished before he did.

  “Wowzers. That was restaurant quality. You’ve spoiled me. Now that I know you’re walking this green earth, I can never go back to cooking for myself again.” She grinned at him, but he just studied her.

  Ignoring her compliments on his cooking, he pivoted. “You up for working on the equipment some more?”

  She checked the wall clock and nodded. “Heck of a raging Friday night.”

  He hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was a Friday. “You got other plans?”

  “Nope.”

  “No detectives you need to cancel on?” He wasn’t sure what the hell had made him say that. It was so unlike him. He was thankful his nosy brother wasn’t around to catch him wheedling for information about this woman. He’d never hear the end of it.

  She took it in stride, her laugh a light sound. “Nah. We haven’t seen each other in a couple years. I don’t date much these days. Too busy getting my business off the ground.”

  He nodded. There wasn’t much to say to that. And he worried if he spoke, he’d say something he couldn’t take back. Like good.

  Sequence took a plate of food up to Geo and then he and Naomi were back to working on her equipment for a few more hours.

  It was well past midnight when Sequence looked up to see her scrubbing the heels of her hand against her eyelids.

  “You’re tired.”

  She yawned. “That generally happens when one wakes up at five a.m. and works a twelve-hour day.”

  “Gotta get you home.”

  “Yup.” She stretched her arms over her head and then fished her phone out of her back pocket. “What’s the address here again?”

  “You’re not ordering a cab right now.”

  She blinked up at him. “Why?”

  “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Sequence, you’ve been working as long as I have. You don’t need to drive me all the way to the Upper East Side right now.”

  “Fancy, I’m a member of your personal security team. You’re nuts if you think I’m gonna put you in a stranger’s cab at midnight.”

  Her expression went a little funny, but he couldn’t quite interpret it. “If you insist.”

  He just stared at her.

  She turned back to her equipment and started to pack it up.

  “Leave it,” he told her.

  She looked at him like he’d just told her to leave her hands behind. “Yeah. Um. No thanks?”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  Now she was looking at him like she was regretting accepting the ride home. “That’s… true.”

  “Come back tomorrow and help me figure out how to do this shit. Leave your equipment here.”

  “Oh.” Understanding dawned. “Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow. But I’m not leaving my equipment here
.”

  He opened his mouth to argue about how safe it would be here, but she beat him to the punch.

  “Seriously, just google any piece of this equipment and you’ll understand why I’m not leaving it anywhere.”

  He looked at her for a minute and then did exactly as she suggested. He googled it piece by piece as she picked it up.

  Jesus. She had roughly $50,000 worth of equipment right there. Top of the line. And she said that she owned it free and clear. No wonder she wasn’t messing around.

  “Fair enough,” he eventually told her as she packed up the bag.

  Her heels clicked on the cement as he led her through the atrium and held the passenger door open for her. He was pulling out into traffic when he finally said the thing that had been bothering him for hours.

  “Will you take those off already?”

  “What?”

  “Those torture devices strapped to your feet. Makes my toes hurt just looking at ‘em.”

  She blinked at him for a minute. Seemed he’d struck her speechless. “You want me to take my shoes off.”

  He shrugged and watched the road. But his lips twitched when out of the corner of his eye, he watched as she slipped them off and curled her feet underneath her like a cat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sequence picked her up the next morning, though she had to slide into the backseat because Swift was in the front seat.

  Swift was talking on the phone when she brightly chirped her good mornings to the boys. Naomi did a double take at the expression on his face. He must really, really love whoever the hell he was on the phone with because… hooo boy. He looked blissed out.

  He hung up and, from the back seat, Naomi pounced. “Oooooooh. Swift’s got a giiiiiirlfriend.”

  He grinned and turned back to give her a high five. “Damn right.”

  “Who is she?”