Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  Rook laughed. Work-ups were complete background checks that Rook Securities performed on anyone they were going to be working with or investigating. They were very thorough and questionably legal.

  “Better believe I already did one first time Ricky mentioned May was seeing somebody.”

  Sequence nodded. He should have figured. Rook was one of those guys who was always in the know. The fact that he hadn’t known about him and Naomi somehow made the guilt sit even heavier in Sequence’s gut. He hadn’t meant to be sneaky about it. But apparently he’d ended up being really freaking sneaky about it.

  Rook stood. “We good? You’re going to accept my terms?”

  Sequence was quiet for a long minute, scraping his hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. I want whatever is best for her. And I’m not a good judge of that, I guess. So. Yeah. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

  Rook held out his hand and the two men shook, settling the matter. “Trust me. Therapy now is better than a divorce later.”

  Rook turned on his heel and left, leaving Sequence sitting quietly in the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Welp. Naomi was exactly where she never thought she’d be again. Pulling up in front of Rook Securities. She’d arranged with Rook to leave through the service entrance of her building, where she jumped directly into their SUV and they’d peeled away before the man who’d been tailing her was any the wiser.

  This was all, of course, after Rook had assured her that Sequence would not be driving the SUV.

  When Rook had contacted her last night, she’d had one of the more confusing and gut-twisting conversations of her life. He’d made it clear that she should not work with Melker. He also made it clear that if she would consider working with Rook Securities again, she wouldn’t have to interact with Sequence at all. Nada.

  Clearly, Sequence had disclosed what had happened. Even more clearly, Sequence had apparently explained to his boss just how little he wanted to see Naomi. So much so that they weren’t even going to be running into one another. Rook had explained that though Sequence would still be working the surveillance and reconnaissance angles of her case, he would never be interacting with her in person.

  Even more confusingly, Rook said this to Naomi in a tone that implied this should make her feel better.

  She’d been about three seconds away from hanging up the phone. Not out of anger but out of pure confusion. There was no way she was going to work with Rook Securities. But then, she realized that she was going to have to tell Sequence about the pregnancy sooner or later and as of now, she was blocked on his phone. Perhaps one of her only opportunities for getting word to him had fallen into her lap.

  Not to mention the fact that she had a mob boss pursuing her and awkwardness was not a good reason to refuse protection from the best security firm in the city.

  She hadn’t really known what to say to Rook other than okay. Which was why he was picking her up from her apartment and taking her back to the bunker.

  Geo was driving, but she’d reached her fist back for a pound from Naomi before she’d pulled onto the FDR. It was strange to see anyone but Sequence in the driver’s seat. It was strange to be in the back of that SUV again. It was really freaking strange to be pregnant with Sequence’s baby.

  As they pulled in to the garage of the bunker, Naomi made sure that her shirt was cascading down her front in the perfect way. She wasn’t really showing yet, she was only three months along. She could tell when she was stark naked and really looking for it, but she found herself nervous that they were all going to take one look at her and know.

  Naomi slid out of the SUV and straightened her pencil skirt, her heels loudly clicking on the garage floor as she followed Rook and Geo to the briefing room.

  Right before she ducked into the hallway that would take her there, Naomi paused. Something zipped up her spine and she turned around, looked up at the blank windows that lined the atrium where the cars were parked. She could have sworn that she felt him. That she felt his eyes. But all the windows were blank.

  ***

  Sequence sunk back from the window as she turned. He watched her follow Geo toward the briefing room. Where he was not invited.

  She’d gotten a haircut since he’d last seen her. Her ruby red hair was no longer cascading down her back. It was in a blunt cut an inch or two past her chin.

  It was a strange thing to throw him off-kilter, but he’d been expecting her to look the same as the last time he’d seen her. And she certainly did not. Where he’d only ever seen her wear black outfits and black heels, Naomi was awash in color this time. She wore an emerald green blouse and a magenta skirt, tight enough to make Sequence meet his maker. On her feet were her usual stilts, but these were a bright teal in color instead of her usual black.

  It wasn’t until Sequence saw her in her colorfully clashing outfit, her hair blunt and swinging, no makeup on her face, that he realized just how much her old look wasn’t her at all. Naomi was not an all-black wearing, sleeked-up Manhattan seal. No, this woman was as flamingo as a human person could get.

  She looked so damn different. He wondered what else was different about her.

  But no. That was not his concern. And it was not his business. Naomi had agreed to the terms that Rook had laid out. Sequence was not to cross her path while they were working her case. He was everything he’d worked so hard to be. Invisible. A ghost.

  Ironic how once he got everything he’d supposedly wanted, now he wanted the opposite.

  Sequence bounced on his toes as he wondered what the hell they were talking about in their meeting. Not his business, he reminded himself.

  Any info that was pertinent to his job, he’d be filled in on by Rook. And that was as far as that train pulled in to the station.

  Sequence stalked back to his office and lost himself in work.

  ***

  Two hours later, Sequence was summoned to the briefing room. He was assured that Naomi was sequestered in the game room on the second floor. They had some arcade games and pool and a ping pong table. It was one of the most used rooms in the house.

  When he stepped into the briefing room, his heart plummeted. There were four very somber faces looking back at him. “Everything all right?”

  Rook slid an iPad down to Sequence. “I’ll cut right to the chase. This situation has deteriorated very quickly. This is a lot worse than it was three months ago. Bastone has gotten…”

  “Aggressive and creepy as hell,” Geo summed up.

  “Pretty much,” Rook agreed. “We spoke to her doorman and apparently there’s been even more letters that he hasn’t seen fit to deliver to her. Fortunately, he kept them.”

  Rook slid a box of letters down to Sequence, and Sequence frowned as he pawed through them. There were at least fifteen letters there. The spiky chicken scratch sent chills down his spine. The words were even worse. He wrote to Naomi as if she were his lover.

  Sequence put two and two together. Before he even lifted his eyes from the box of letters, he knew what they’d brought him here to tell him. “You want her to stay here in lockdown.”

  “That’s right.” Rook leaned back in her chair. “It’s the only way we can think to protect her right now. We want her completely off of Bastone’s radar while we look into him.”

  “But we’re already housing Moreau.” It wasn’t an argument against keeping her there, but Sequence had no idea how this was going to work.

  “That’s why we have two crow’s nests. We can safely house them both.”

  “We can house them both,” Swift agreed. “But can we protect them both? There’s only five of us.”

  Sequence felt bad for Swift. Moreau was just staying there as a way to get rid of paparazzi. But if Naomi was in true lockdown, that meant that the team stayed there with her, offering full 24/7 protection. Which meant that Swift was not going home to the lovely Elena every night.

  Rook sighed. “It means that we’re going to be keeping the two of the
m in the same place as often as we can.”

  Sequence couldn’t help the low growl that started in his throat. He was just getting used to the idea of having Naomi in his space 24/7. Then he had to get used to having her there but not being able to see or interact with her. And now he had to get used to having her in his space, not being able to see her, and forfeiting her to Moreau Davy? World’s most beautiful man and successful wooer of at least fifty of the world’s most beautiful women? Fuck that.

  “That actually makes sense,” Atlas said, leaning forward.

  Traitor, Sequence thought.

  “If they’re in the same part of the bunker at all times, then we can safely keep an eye on both of them. Actually, Moreau wouldn’t mind going on full lockdown. He was just telling me that he wanted an excuse to start ducking his publicist’s calls. And hey! What if they fall in love and start sleeping in the same room? That’ll be even easier for us.”

  Either Atlas was a total idiot or a complete genius, because both Sequence and Geo glared daggers at his big, handsome head after that comment.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still have to convince Naomi to go into lockdown,” Rook said.

  “She doesn’t know yet?” Sequence asked.

  “Nope. We’ll have to send people back for her clothes and things. She can’t go back there. We were able to lose her tail when we snuck her out of the building, but there’s no guarantee that we can do that twice.”

  “I’ll go,” Sequence volunteered. “Not like I can do much else around here. Just have her give over a list.”

  Which was how Sequence found himself in Naomi’s apartment for the second time. He held unnaturally still after he closed the front door and plugged her code into the keypad. He felt almost as if he were disrupting a sacred space.

  Sequence was grateful that the sun had already gone down and all of her prisms and suncatchers were no longer tossing rainbows over her living room. There was only so much he could handle.

  Her minty scent swamped him as he moved through her apartment and he marveled again at the fact that he’d barely noticed it when they’d hooked up. He’d been so out of his mind with lust for her that a lot of things had passed him by. He came up to the back of her royal blue couch and laid his palm flat against it. If he could do it again…

  He shook his head and concentrated on the list in his hand. It was disconcertingly long. Rook had assured her that they had laundry at the bunker and she only needed to pack for a week or so. Yet Sequence still held a list of things to pack that was at least sixty items long.

  According to her detailed instructions, Sequence located her bright purple duffel bag in the hall closet. He took a minute to gape at the number of shoes she kept in there. Seriously, he was no expert, but she must have had at least a year’s rent sunk into her shoe closet.

  He made his way down the hall and stood stock still when he flicked on the light to her bedroom. Of course her bed looked like a slice of heaven. Her comforter was electric white and she had a hundred little pillows in bright bursts of color strewn against the headboard. It figured that her bed was the friendliest, most fun, prettiest place he’d ever seen.

  He smiled to himself as he looked at the dog-eared book on her nightstand. A romance novel. He liked picturing her reading it in bed, a cup of tea in her hand. Oh shit. He flipped through some of the pages and his eyes widened when he realized that it was not your grandmother’s romance novel. This thing had sex sex sex. Feeling like a perv for snooping, he set the book back down and backed away.

  Sequence worked his way down the list, gathering Naomi’s clothes from her dresser and her closet. Each piece of clothing was a colorful, mysterious artifact. Sequence realized that there was no longer a scrap of black in her wardrobe. He couldn’t help but wonder what else had changed about her since he’d last seen her.

  He quickly gathered all of her things from the bathroom, trying not to look too hard at any of the labels. He had a feeling that Naomi didn’t know he’d be the one gathering up her things and she probably wouldn’t want him snooping through her life and her space.

  When she was all packed, Sequence looked around her house. Not knowing how long she was going to be on lockdown in the bunker, he filled up a pitcher and watered her plants. Then he noticed that she’d left her breakfast dishes in the sink that morning, thinking she’d be back to do them later. So he quickly washed and dried them. Lastly, he opened her fridge and cabinets looking for perishable food. He frowned at what he saw.

  There was almost nothing there. She had a half-filled tub of white rice in her fridge and a bunch of packets of microwavable oatmeal in her cabinet. There were a few cans of chicken soup and some frozen fruit in the freezer. That was it.

  He wondered if she was on some kind of weird diet. She certainly didn’t need to be. Not at all. But the Naomi he knew loved to eat. She loved rich, flavorful food. Why would there be nothing but bland mush in her house?

  He reminded himself that she’d be eating his cooking while she was at the bunker, so

  she’d have plenty of nutrients there.

  He frowned as he hefted her bag over his shoulder and looked back over her house. He wouldn’t be speaking to her at the bunker, but at the very least he could feed her.

  He closed the door gently behind him and felt strangely like he was closing the door on what could have been. On a whole other life.

  ***

  Naomi figured she was taking this whole thing rather well. This being trapped in the bunker thing. This being trapped in the bunker with Sequence thing. There was apparently another client trapped along with them, though Naomi didn’t know anything about him yet.

  Geo showed her to her room up in the highest floor of the old converted warehouse. There were windows 180 degrees around the rounded room and she had a really nice view of the East River and lower Manhattan, Statue of Liberty included. Geo left her on her own and came back an hour or so later with all of Naomi’s things packed into her duffel. That’s when it hit Naomi.

  As it stood, right that very second, she was hiding her pregnancy from these people. She knew that it was not a ruse that was likely to last very long, considering how involved in her life they all were. She’d just had her 12-week appointment, so she was good on seeing the doctor for about three and a half weeks. But if she was still at the bunker, she was going to have to talk to Rook about how to get her out to the appointment.

  She looked down at her belly. In three and a half weeks, would she be showing? How long until she couldn’t hide it anymore? Naomi showered in her adjoining bathroom, pulled some pajamas on and decided to unpack her things. Her clothes she neatly folded into the set of dresser drawers on one side of her room. She paused though, when she began to unpack her bathroom items.

  There, in their pink bottle, were her prenatal vitamins. When she’d opened them, she’d accidentally peeled most of the label off of them, so it wasn’t completely obvious what they were. But anyone who paused long enough to really read the label would know exactly what they were.

  She bit her lip. She wondered who had packed her bag for her. It wasn’t Geo, because she’d been here with Naomi. She was pretty sure it wasn’t Rook, because he’d excused himself to his office after explaining everything to her. And they’d told her that Sequence didn’t want anything to do with her. So that left Swift or Atlas.

  She bit even harder at her lip. Was her secret already blown? Would they tell Sequence? Would they all figure it out before she even had a chance to gather her wits?

  Someone knocked on her bedroom door and Naomi jumped a foot in the air. The prenatal vitamins flew out of her hand and the bottle rolled around in the sink. She took a deep breath and looked down, making sure her silk pajama bottoms and matching cami were covering her belly enough. Nope. They were not. She grabbed a bunchy sweater and dragged it on before she opened the door.

  Her stomach clenched. For a moment, she thought that it was Sequence at her door. But no, immediately sh
e realized it was Atlas. He was much more unkempt than Sequence. His blond hair was long and flopped to one side, his beard was neat but long. Not like Sequence’s ruthlessly short hair and beard. Not to mention the fact that Atlas had a huge grin on his face, the way he always did. If that wasn't a giveaway, then nothing was.

  “Hi!” He held up a tray in his hand that she hadn’t noticed before. “I come bearing gifts.”

  He’d brought her dinner! That was so sweet! But it was only seconds before Naomi’s grin faded for a few reasons.

  “I have to eat in my room?”

  “Of course not! You have the run of the bunker. You can go anywhere you want.” His eyes clouded for a minute and Naomi could practically hear the caveat that was obviously running through his head. Except for Sequence’s office. “We just thought you’d had a long day and might want the peace and quiet of your room.”

  “That’s sweet of you all.” She peered down at the tray and bit her lip.

  “But…” he prompted reading the very clear not-smile on her face.

  “But, I’m not sure I’m in the mood for whatever that is.” The pungent red and green glop was turning her stomach sideways and back again.

  Atlas outright laughed at the look on her face and he lifted the tray to sniff at it. “I’m pretty sure this is chicken cacciatore. And that is Caesar salad. And that is iced tea. I thought you liked all this when you tried it the last time you were here?”

  Naomi gave him a weak smile. The last time she was here she hadn’t been knocked up. And the last time she was here, she’d been charmed and intrigued by Sequence’s cooking skills. Now, it just made her lonely to picture him down there cooking while sat up here in her lovely room. This cooking was the only part of him that she could have. Unfortunately, its mere presence in her life was making her want to puke.

  Perhaps this was a metaphor for the whole mess this situation had become.

  “I don’t mean to be picky,” she said, reaching for the plate. She’d flush it down the toilet or something.