But those assholes didn’t know that they’d stumbled upon the most loyal bitch of all time. She was merely pretending to be his girlfriend, because they hadn’t exactly hammered out the details on that yet. But if she really were, she would have been sealed as tight as a drum. Not a single tidbit of info would sneak past her. She would protect him at all and every cost.
This was what was in her mind as she straightened her jumpsuit and his tie and then swung the door open, striding back out into the madhouse.
Cameras flashed, but she focused on Cedric’s face. Because he was calm and all-knowing and not smirking at her, unlike Atlas. He escorted her into the fray, where she refused waiters plying her with wine and tiny appetizers. Who the hell’s life was this, anyways? This was absolutely nothing like she’d ever planned for herself.
Somewhere, back in Queens, she imagined her father’s bookies watching a television screen with her face on it, dollar signs in their eyes.
Well, fuck them. She tilted her chin up a fraction of an inch, felt Moreau’s hand at the small of her back. She still owed them approximately seventy-five grand. With the way things were going, she could have them paid off in two years. And Rook swore up and down that he’d never let them get within extorting distance of Moreau, whether or not she and him were together.
The group made its way through the atrium and finally to their box seats from which they’d watch the premier of Moreau’s movie.
Geo was shuttled into the plush, velvet seat beside Moreau before she realized that even with all the prep she’d been through, every single moment of study and practice for this very event, she didn’t have the faintest clue what they were about to watch.
“Which movie is this?” she whispered to him, as the last few guests were escorted to their seats.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked, a charmed glint in his eyes.
They were in a crowded theater, filled to the brim with celebrities that Geo dimly recognized. Cedric and Atlas were directly behind them, standing, arms crossed across their chests, but on either side of them, and in front of them, cascading down toward the screen, was the cast and crew of the movie. Apparently, the director was sitting on Moreau’s left, but Geo only knew that from the manifest she’d read, not from facial recognition.
“I’m sorry I’m not slobbering on your knob like the rest of the country,” she hissed back.
He grinned then, shaking his head at her. “If only you were, this whole thing would be a hell of a lot easier.”
She scowled, her breath tripping when Moreau pressed the back of his hand against hers. She could practically feel Atlas’s gaze behind them. She knew she was in for a hell of a teasing when this whole thing was over, but in the end, who really cared? She wanted to be here. Next to Moreau.
If he’d been a fisherman, alone against the desolate landscape of the gray Atlantic, she’d want to be next to him. If he’d been a soldier, sweaty and traumatized, gripping a weapon, she’d be there.
But turned out he was a movie star. So. Yeah. She was here. In this glitzy theater surrounded by a bunch of people who all curtsied at the feet of some idol that Geo distinctly didn’t worship.
Oh well.
She pressed the back of her hand against his.
Was it her or had his breath just caught?
“It’s a movie about telepathy and telekinesis,” he whispered.
“Is it the one with the billboards where you’re levitating a goldfish in your hand?”
He grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Cool,” she gave him as genuine a smile as she could possibly muster and he turned away from her, laughing.
It was gonna be a long hour and a half.
Turns out, however, it wasn’t.
She was charged by his presence next to her, and honestly, his presence on the screen. The Moreau Davy on the silver screen was makeup-ed and waxed and immaculate. He was an impossibly talented actor, sweeping the viewer along on a ride that had nothing to do with glitz and everything to do with talent. She simply believed him onscreen.
But next to her, he was lightly scented and impeccably tailored. His shiny shoes were connected to two muscular legs that veed out from his seat, taking up just a little bit too much space. She knew his leg ached still, but looking back at his smooth movement through the red carpet, she hadn’t sensed even a hint of a hitch.
The man had exceptional body control.
He was large and golden and dark haired and emanating candle light. Whatever glow had been shuttered by his accident was back in full force and Geo was. Not. Ready.
She wanted to lean over and sip him up like he was a bead of water trembling on a black-hot skillet. He seemed to be constantly trapped in that moment before he evaporated into the atmosphere, too hot for real life.
By the time the movie ended, Geo was spent and exhausted. Unwilling to do her job poorly, she’d merely expended twice her normal energy, half of herself intent on scanning the crowd, searching for any hostiles, while the other half of her was completely focused on the virile, pulsing human beside her.
The movie received a standing ovation from the crowd. Moreau merely rolled his eyes at her, assuring her that that was not an uncommon occurrence.
And then it was time to move out, back toward their waiting SUV. The crowd milled around one another like some great, insect-like colony, congratulating one another, fawning and preening. Moreau was obviously A-list enough that he was excused first to find his way back to his car.
They didn’t go out the way they came in. Actually, they were led through a semi-dingy back hallway. Atlas and Cedric were on their heels and Geo was slightly in front of Moreau. Apparently, the press weren’t allowed in this part of the building, so she was fully in charge again.
But then, a door was swinging open and flashbulbs burst once more. They were swinging out the back of the building and toward the shiny black SUV that had a ten-foot space cleared in front of it. All they had to do was put their heads down and make their way to the car.
Atlas and Cedric flanked Moreau, but at the last second, he tugged Geo back, canting himself in front of her. The paparazzi were raised to a feral, feverish pitch, screaming questions at her, wanting more than anything to be the member of the media that got the drop on Moreau Davy’s new beau.
He was protecting her, she realized, and it was as foreign and exhilarating as it was terrifying. Geo wasn’t protected. She was a protector.
Not wanting to make a scene with so many cameras on her, she let him shove his body in front of hers, her eyes sweeping the crowd. It was almost impossible to see with so many flashbulbs in her eyes and Geo had a sudden sympathy for all those celebs who wore sunglasses at night.
There was the SUV, Sequence in the front seat. There was Rook, sliding out of the passenger seat and yanking open the back door so that Moreau could slide right into safety. But also, there, across the street, were the plainclothes LAPD that Geo had been spotting all night. They wore casual suits and were speaking into pieces at their wrists.
The crowd surged on one side of the narrow walkway and Atlas put himself there, between Moreau and the crowd, but that merely shoved them toward the other half of the crowd, where Geo was the only person between Moreau and the flashbulbs. He growled, trying to rotate her so that she wouldn’t be shoved face-first into the flashing bulbs. Geo held strong though, her eyes focused on the officers across the street.
Suddenly, they were shouting to one another, running. They were converging.
She made out Wilkes, leading the charge, sprinting across the street, his eyes focused on the crowd of paparazzi right next to Geo.
She squinted into the crowd, trying to see past the flashbulbs. She barely saw faces, she saw yawning black camera lens after yawning black camera lens. There were backwards baseball caps and t-shirts and a few lit cigarettes. There were shoulders jockeying one another aside for the photo.
But there, five feet to her left, there was a face in the crowd, shadowed, but d
ifferent than the rest. There was no camera blocking that face. There were just two eyes and they were intent on Moreau. Tension skittered down Geo’s back. In her peripheral vision she could see the LAPD officers attempting to shove their way through the crowd, but they were stymied, blocked.
Meanwhile, the man with the shadowy face was slipping through, past one person and the next. He was four feet away now, and three. Behind her, Cedric was attempting to shove them along through to the car.
Rook was holding back the crowd on one side. If Moreau ran for it, he could slide into the SUV no problem, but that would also put him in the direct path of the man with the shadowed face.
Moreau clamped an arm around Geo’s shoulders and, unaware of the impending danger, tried to hurry them along.
The man saw his opening, lunging forward to the edge of the crowd. Geo went very clear and very calm.
The noise of the crowd quieted in her ears, the flashbulbs stopped blinding her. Instead, they lit the way toward the attacker. Her eyes dropped to his hand where she saw he had a rusty, six-inch blade. It was as menacing as the look on the man’s face. And that’s when she really saw his features. It was him. Ryan Rogers. His face looked impossibly wrecked, like he’d been on a six-month bender. But it was unmistakably their missing suspect.
Moreau was looking in the wrong direction and that was Geo’s saving grace. She knew, without at doubt at this point, that if he knew what was coming, he wouldn’t allow Geo to do what she was about to do. And then she’d have to fight Moreau and Rogers at the same time, which would drastically decrease her odds of success.
Instead, she used what she knew of the situation and kicked Moreau in his bad leg. Just hard enough to have him crumbling to the side, directly into Atlas’s back, who wheeled around and caught him.
Not waiting even a half a second longer, Geo lunged forward, straight at the man who was lunging at Moreau, a deranged expression on his face.
Geo squarely landed a blow on his elbow, bending his arm backwards and drawing the attacker’s attention to her. She twisted, thrust her weight forward and felt his shoulder pop out of socket.
She kicked the man’s leg out from under him and the combined weight took them both down, the way she knew it would.
She was very glad she hadn’t worn an evening gown.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the man’s knife clatter to the ground as she slammed her weight over him. Her forearm clamped down over his throat while his legs kicked beneath her. He got one wild swing to connect with her gut; Geo grunted but didn’t let up her hold of him.
Half a breath later, Cedric was there, pinning the man down from the side and letting Geo release him. The camera flashes intensified and Geo whipped around, searching for Moreau. She caught the one glimpse of him being bodily dragged into the SUV by Rook and Atlas. He was shouting, fighting, his eyes trained on her. Then there was Wilkes beside her, shouting. Two officers were on the ground, flipping Rogers and cuffing him, the deranged man’s smile grinding into the sidewalk.
She was greeted on every side by a wall of noise. She stepped forward and stumbled, knowing she had to get to the SUV. They’d leave without her if they had to, in order to get Moreau to safety.
She looked down to see what she’d stumbled on and realized that it was a knife, smaller than the first, maybe two and a half inches of blade. She blinked at it. What confused her was the fact that it was covered in shiny, scarlet blood. She stumbled again, the camera flashes starting to close in on her. The world began a slow tilt. Suddenly, Cedric was there, clamping her arm around his shoulders and dragging her forward.
“Cedric,” she said, blinking fast and hard. “There was a second knife.”
“I know, G.” He pulled her the last few feet, and hoisted her into the SUV.
The door of the SUV slammed closed behind them, dulling the impossible noise of all the people outside the windows of the car, taking pictures of the inside.
There were hands on her face, a deep voice in her ear.
“We need an ambulance,” Cedric calmly told Rook.
Rook would know what to do. He’d handle everything.
“What?” That same lovely, low voice was still in her ear.
“There was a second knife,” she told Rook. She lifted her palm away from her gut, where she’d been struck by Rogers and sure enough, her hand was as shiny and scarlet as that second blade had been.
Her vision swam as Rook began shouting orders and the SUV lurched away from the curb, through the hordes of people.
The deep, lovely voice in her ear was still there, it took her a long minute to realize it was Moreau, his hands in her hair, her body splayed most of the way across his.
Lights slid into one another and the world kept up that slow-tilting whirl, but she didn’t lose consciousness.
Geo watched as she was lifted from the back of the SUV, as she was laid on a stretcher. She answered questions from people in scrubs, snapping gloves onto their hands. She lifted her head in time to see an orderly cutting the beautiful high heels from her feet. And then something was clamped over her mouth and a strange smell filled her nose. They were drugging her and she didn’t want it. She tried to sit up but then Moreau filled her vision. His eyes swimming and his lovely voice in her ear.
He said something to her, over and over, but she couldn’t make it out. The hospital whirled past her and she realized that he must be running alongside her stretcher.
She tried to tell him not to run, that he wasn’t supposed to run on his injured leg. Especially after she’d just kicked him.
But the words turned into curlicues in her mouth and her eyes couldn’t stay open anyways.
She fell backwards into nothing. And then there was only darkness.
***
Welp. At least now she was famous for a good reason and not just for being somebody’s fake girlfriend.
The next day, after the attack and the surgery, Geo laid in the hospital room watching the news.
They played the clip over and over again. It’s funny. To Geo, the whole thing felt like it took at least ten minutes. As if she and the attacker had truly grappled with one another.
But the clip itself was barely four seconds long before Cedric was there, restraining Rogers and relieving Geo.
She sighed as she watched herself get stabbed again and again. What a freaking pain in the ass. Weirdly, it didn’t hurt very much at all. But she’d lost a lot of blood, which made her feel hungover. The surgery had taken less than twenty minutes all told. And the blade hadn’t nicked anything too serious.
She was going to be fine. In fact, she was going to be discharged that afternoon.
“Jesus, sis, you’re such a freaking badass.”
Geo turned in surprise at the voice at her doorway.
“May!”
“Hey, girl.”
“What are you doing here?”
May lifted an eyebrow. “Rook called me. Seems he needed a little help getting things all organized.”
“What?” Geo had more trouble believing that than she did believing that she’d just been knifed.
“Everything is harder to organize over here because it’s not his home turf, you know? And now he has two vested interests, Davy and you. He called me in because he can trust me to take care of you. Advocate for you. Who the hell did you think convinced the hospital to let you go today?” She dusted her fingernails on her tailored jacket. “And who the hell do you think convinced Leary to fly across country?”
“Leary’s here?”
“Actually, Leary’s getting everything set up for you at Davy’s. But someone else you know is going to help escort you across town.” May turned and waved someone else into the room.
“Val!” Geo said in surprise. Maybe it was the trauma from the day before, or the drugs in her system, or maybe the timid girl really had grown on her. But Geo was actually pretty glad to see her. “You flew across the country too?”
Val, dressed in scrubs, had a
healthy blush on her face. “Um. No. I was already here. I’ve, um, been staying with Detective Wilkes.”
May grinned and waggled her eyebrows behind Val’s back. “She’s not here in an official capacity. She just offered her help for getting you to Davy’s.”
“Wait,” Geo said as she lightly shook her head. “I’m confused. I’m going to Davy’s?”
May gave Geo a wry look. “You didn’t think that he was going to let you recover in the hospital, now did you?”
“I’m not going back to New York?”
“You’re not flying for at least a week,” May said sternly. And Geo had no idea if those were doctor’s orders or May’s orders.
A few different nurses came in with discharge paperwork and a wheelchair and all sorts of notes and pamphlets for Geo. Geo gladly let May take charge of everything. She’d thought it was strange, at first, that Rook would have called in his ex-wife to take care of this for him. But now she was merely grateful. May was, after all, the queen of all mama bears.
Val helped Geo into the wheelchair that would take her out to the car. May watched the clip of Geo’s takedown one last time, shaking her head and laughing.
She muttered something that sounded like, “In four inch heels, no less.”
There were officers posted in Geo’s hallway and their group received an escort all the way down to the parking garage, which had been cordoned off to the press. To Geo’s surprise, Sequence sat idling in a red Jeep Grand Cherokee instead of their black SUV.
“Stealth mode,” he told her as he slid out of the car.
Geo clapped an arm over Sequence’s shoulders when he lifted her easily from her wheelchair and into the car. She knew there was no use arguing.
“I’m just gonna have to let you all henpeck me for a few days, aren’t I?”
“Geo,” Sequence said, glaring at her, May glaring over his shoulder. “You were stabbed in the gut while protecting a client. You’re going to have to put up with henpecking a hell of a lot longer than a few days.”
Rook Security Complete Series Page 95