Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  “Listen May, if you need anything while you’re at the bunker and for one reason or another it doesn’t feel right to ask Rook? Just reach out. Promise me you’ll ask me for it. Okay?”

  Taken aback, May blinked at Cedric. “Oh. All right.”

  He unhanded her and opened the passenger door of the SUV for her.

  “Seat belts,” Rook muttered as he fired up the rig.

  And then May was watching the airport shrink in the window and her vacation sliding away.

  ***

  “You’ve gotta say something.”

  Rook’s voice in her doorway had her turning from her window, from the view of the East River.

  “Hmm?” she asked, her mind churning, words lost in the tide of her thoughts.

  “You’ve been at the bunker for two hours already. I gave you two the full tour, fully expecting you to roll your eyes at every turn, give me shit about all of it, but no. Instead you’re dead silent. You didn’t even have anything snarky to say about the size of the big screen in the TV room. You’re freaking me out. You’ve gotta say something, May.”

  May’s eyes trailed around the nicely furnished guest room where she’d be staying indefinitely. The furnishings were simple and clean-lined, the linens were white. There was light from three sides. The windows had a very nice view of the river and the city. The bed was a reasonable size. Not the monstrosity that Rook apparently favored these days.

  She knew that Ricky was in this room’s twin in the other’s crow’s nest. She was probably texting her friends, laying on the bed, her shoes kicked off.

  She and her daughter were one hundred percent safe here. Captive, but safe.

  Tears blurred her eyes and words jammed in her throat. The whites in the room became blinding as they mixed with sunlight as her eyes swam.

  “May.” She heard the door to her room close and then she felt two arms close around her. Out of self preservation, she pushed at Rook’s chest, but he didn’t yield and moments later her nose was pressed into his sternum. She stopped fighting. He was hugging her roughly, tightly. It was painfully familiar. It filled her with a thousand feelings she hadn’t ever been able to truly forget.

  “Tell me why you’re crying,” he murmured, and she felt his breath move her hair. He wasn’t cuddling her exactly, just like he hadn’t just called her baby. But she could feel the ghosts of what he really wanted right then as if he had just done both those things. She felt as if she could feel a parallel life playing out right beside them. Scenes from a movie, where they hadn’t gotten divorced. In that version, he cuddled her, pressed his lips to her ear. Called her a million sweet names designed to make her knees knock.

  “I love New York,” she whispered. She felt his chuckle rumble underneath the cheek she’d just turned flat against his chest.

  “You’re so overcome with patriotism that you’re crying?”

  “No,” she laughed through her tears. “I mean that I was born and raised here, just like you. It’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to live. I love it so much. But right now I hate it.” Her chest jumped with emotion. “I’m scared to be here. I feel like whoever did that to our house, he’s right around the corner.”

  “May—”

  “He tried to kill us, Rook. No one lights a fire in someone’s house unless they’re okay with killing the people inside. I think… I think my brain didn’t fully let me understand that until now. Now that I’m back here and hiding from whoever that asshole is. That asshole that tried to kill our daughter. Burn our house down. Who kicked me and…”

  “May,” he tried again. But she shook her head and cut him off.

  “No.” This time she shoved hard enough to get him to unhand her. She backed up, her teary eyes pinned on him like he was a wild animal she didn’t want to incense. Though she knew that in reality she was the wild one. “Don’t tell me how safe I am here. Don’t tell me that they’re gonna find this guy. Don’t give me any platitudes, no matter how true they are. Just let me feel my fucking feelings. Let me be angry and scared and pissed off for a while. Okay?”

  She strode around him and yanked open the door.

  “And let me be alone.” She pointed out into the vacuous expanse of the hallway.

  She didn’t look at him as he passed her. She slammed the door after him and threw the lock on it.

  ***

  Rook and Ricky ate dinner alone in the TV room. He tried not to let it bother him that May had shut him out so firmly when she was obviously struggling.

  But it was bothering the hell out of him. Just because they were divorced didn’t mean that she couldn’t lean on him now and again. Then again, this was May he was talking about. And she’d rather throw herself off a mountain than rely on him.

  He played ping pong with his daughter after dinner and made sure she brought a tray of food up to May.

  After that, Rook retired to his office. Even with May’s breakdown in her bedroom, their first night in the bunker was turning out much more successful than he might have thought it would be.

  If she’d let him finish what he’d been trying to tell her up in her bedroom, she would have known that he actually had some good news. Wilkes had reached out to Rook that morning to let him know that they were almost positive they knew who’d attempted the arson.

  Cyril Gibson.

  They’d eliminated all the other men who’d been in the IED attack with Rook. The other men who still harbored ill will toward Rook. There was just Cyril to track down. They hadn’t spoken to him yet or been able to bring him in. But Wilkes had been able to speak to Cyril’s brother, with whom he lived in Maine, and it was confirmed that Cyril had taken the train to New York City two weeks ago.

  It was also confirmed that he hated Rook with every fiber of his being. And had often talked about getting even with him.

  He was currently their number one suspect and they had cops looking for him in every shelter and soup kitchen in the city. The brother had apparently confirmed that Cyril didn’t have enough money to actually stay in the city, unless he was taking advantage of the social services they offered to vets.

  Rook checked a few emails and took care of a few aspects of business before he let his mind cloud over with memories of Cyril.

  He’d been quiet when Rook had known him. And they’d been pretty good friends. He remembered Cyril as a man who’d liked a good joke. And country music. He remembered that Cyril had been a damned fine soldier as well.

  He’d heard, after the fact, that Cyril had lost his left leg above the knee and the function in one of his hands from the IED blast.

  Rook had reached out to him, as he had all the other survivors, after he’d made it back home in one piece. Guilt had already started swamping him. But it was laced with the pain of his injuries, and the fear that he’d come back to a marriage that was screwed beyond repair.

  He couldn’t even remember what he’d put in that letter. He wondered now if, in his addled state, he’d written something that would have incensed Cyril enough to have the man try to burn his house down all these years later. With his wife and child inside.

  Rook closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to one fist. Cyril had been a good man. And he was obviously still beyond hurt from the IED blast. Rook hoped that the NYPD found him soon. God only knew what sort of pain and destruction he was both enduring and inflicting right now.

  “I know you’re going to keep us safe.”

  Rook’s head snapped up and he saw May standing in the doorway of his office. “May.”

  “I should have said that before. In the room. When I was upset. I should have made sure you knew that.”

  He was confused. “All right.”

  “I’m worried about a lot of things, Rook. But I’m not actually worried about mine and Ricky’s physical safety. And for that I have you to thank.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a long minute. “Apparently you also have me to thank for you having an attacker in the first pla
ce.” He brought his eyes down to hers. “It’s looking more and more like it was Cyril Gibson.”

  May walked into his office, walked all the way around his desk and hoisted herself up onto his desk, crumpling papers. He should have known that she wouldn’t perch in the visitor’s chair on the other side of his desk. Nope. She was a woman who really knew how to make herself at home.

  “Wow.” She spoke quietly, her eyes out the window over Rook’s shoulder and her arms crossed over her chest. “I never would have expected it from him.”

  “I forgot that you’d met him.”

  May’s brow furrowed. “Met him? Rook, I knew him for a while. Remember? He and Erica were considering buying that house in our neighborhood? They stayed with us for a few weeks when Ricky was a baby and you were out on leave.”

  Rook blanched. He drew a slow hand up to his face and covered his mouth. His eyes met May’s. “I have to call Wilkes.”

  She stopped his hand as reached for his phone. She was fully in his space at that moment, leaning forward from the desk, her black hair everywhere, her soft body wrapped in even softer clothes. It was a testament to how upset he was that he didn’t have the urge to reach for her.

  “You didn’t remember all that, did you?” she asked quietly.

  He shook his head tersely.

  “Oh, baby,” she whispered, sympathy in her eyes. She was there when he was diagnosed with PTSD. She’d been with him at the appointments. She’d been there with him through the night terrors and the mood swings before he’d started really going to therapy and getting it all worked out. She’d been there when he realized just how funny his memory was starting to act. Certain things were wiped clean. Certain things were amplified. He had trouble remembering the timelines of lots of things. Whether they had to do with the IED or not, his memories were occasionally screwy. It was one of the lovely side effects of PTSD that he’d had to come to live with. But it had been a really long time since something like this had happened.

  He remembered now, of course. Cyril and his wife, Erica, had lived in Ricky’s bedroom for three weeks one time when the two soldiers were on leave. “They’d wanted to experience what Brooklyn was like,” he whispered.

  He was aware that warm hands were smoothing the hair away from his forehead, but he was too lost in his memories.

  “And I think they wanted to see what having a kid was like too,” May added. “They were curious about Ricky.”

  “She slept in our bedroom while they were there,” Rook recalled, finally turning to look at May and realizing that she was standing directly in front of him, leaning down toward him.

  “We had to have sex in the shower that leave. It was the only place we had an ounce of privacy.”

  He smiled. “That part I definitely remember.” His smile faded. “But the rest? I’m such an idiot.”

  She took him by the chin and made him look at her. “Don’t say that! You have PTSD, Rook. You can’t be expected to retain every single detail of your life, all right? Even people without PTSD have trouble doing that.”

  “No, I don’t think I’m an idiot for having PTSD. I think I’m an idiot for thinking I was over it. Or I’d beat it or something. But there’s always something else. There’s always some new way that it gets you. I should know that by now.”

  He was looking away, so he was surprised when she suddenly pushed him back in the chair and dropped herself into his lap. He froze for a moment, a stone man, while she settled her ass into his lap, her legs over the arm of the chair and her arms firmly around his neck. It was exactly the way she used to sit when he was back from overseas. When he was having a rough time with something he’d seen or done.

  His shock subsided and muscle memory kicked in. He wrapped his arms around her middle and pulled her against him until her head fell onto his shoulder.

  “I know it’s bitter medicine,” she whispered. “That there’s always more healing to be done. But I hope you’re proud of how far you’ve come, Javi.”

  His throat tightened and so did his arms. For a moment, he was transported years in the past. They were still married. May was sweet and comfortable in his arms. He was so messed up but still so hopeful.

  His cellphone vibrated on his desk and May sat up, leaning forward, as nosy as always. “Wilkes is calling you,” she said.

  “I’ll call him back,” Rook murmured, his voice almost embarrassingly husky. He couldn’t help but tug May backwards, planting her ass back in his lap and her weight against his chest. He knew he was pushing his luck. Her offering him comfort was very different than the two of them straight up snuggling just because it felt good, but he’d forgotten just how soft her hair could be against his neck.

  She fought forward a little, out of Rook’s grasp, still looking at the phone. “Oh,” she said, a strange note in her voice. “Actually it’s not Ray Wilkes who’s calling you, Javi.” She turned to him, her eyes flat and knowing. “It’s Shaya Wilkes who is calling you.”

  He had nothing to be ashamed of. Not only had nothing happened with Shaya—he hadn’t even met her, for god sakes—if anything had happened, he was divorced! He was single! It was perfectly within his rights to receive calls from available women. His mouth opened and closed.

  “Rook,” May said, stiff as a board in his lap. “Who is Shaya Wilkes?”

  He cleared his throat again, reached around May and silenced his cell phone. “She’s Ray Wilkes’s sister.”

  May’s eyebrows rose. “Friend of yours?”

  “Never met her.”

  “Then why was she calling you?”

  Rook had the sudden feeling that he was on a witness stand while the opposing counsel led him directly into a corner. He had the feeling this whole thing was going to end with him confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed. “I was gonna meet up with her for coffee this week.”

  May blinked at him so fast her eyelashes reminded him of hummingbirds. A less experienced man might not have been aware that she was threatening him. Rook was very aware. “Was?” she asked sweetly.

  “I’m not meeting up with her anymore.”

  “And why not?”

  Rook sighed, picked May up off his lap and plunked her to one side. He picked up his traitorous cell phone and shoved it in his pocket. It was late, he was tired, and he had no interest in fighting with May. Especially not when it would contrast so sharply with how sweet she’d just been. He’d rather quit while he was semi-ahead and take the memory of her sitting on his lap with him to bed.

  He sighed. “Because I’m guarding you and Ricky here at the bunker, of course. I wouldn’t leave for something as trivial and unimportant as a date with a woman I’ve never met.”

  He powered down his computer and flicked off his desk lamp, striding around the desk and toward the door of his office. Just as he’d known she would, May got in his way before he made it to the hallway. She blocked the doorway of his office, one hand on each side of the doorjamb. “You could always assign someone else to guard duty that night, you know. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of your busy social life, Rook. Why not ask Cedric? Or Sequence? Atlas? Geo?”

  With every name she listed, her pointer finger poked him right in the sternum. She was trying to pick a fight with him and he wouldn’t bite. It was none of her business if he went on a date and it was none of her business if he didn’t.

  “Or better yet,” May barreled on. “You could just invite her to come here! That way you wouldn’t have to burden one of your employees with taking care of your family. It’s brilliant, really, if you think about it. Because then your new girlfriend could meet Ricky, too! Two birds with one stone! Problem solv—”

  It was more muscle memory than anything. Rook had spent years and years listening to May fight with herself when he wouldn’t fight back. He’d learned that there was only one effective way to get her to stop yelling when she was worked up like this. Call it self-defense, but he let his body take over as he leaned down over his ex-wife. One of his hands
came up to the doorjamb while the fingers of his other hand tangled up in the silk of her hair. His eyes fell halfway closed, and his mouth pressed against hers, somewhere between rough and soft. His eyes on hers, Rook parted her lips with his and licked into her mouth.

  The satin of her mouth was thrillingly familiar and somehow new all at once. She’d changed the flavor of her toothpaste and the intimate knowledge of that gave him instant wood. It was the same as it always was with May. In every moment between them she was both unattainable and perfectly his. She was granting him admission to something that could never be fully owned or tamed.

  The glory of the moment threatened to drag him under, but Rook forced himself to keep his eyes open just so he could believe it was all happening. May, his May, was kissing him back, her eyes closed so tight. A hundred memories swamped him all at once.

  May at sixteen, at twenty, at twenty-four, always so confident, so sexy, so adventurous. But she always, always, looked so innocently surprised when he kissed her. Just like she did now, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands fisted in his shirt. She swayed against him, the weight of her tipped-back skull fully in the palm of one of his hands.

  Rook’s tongue greeted hers. He dared not groan, fearing he’d break the spell. But he could feel something earth-quaking inside of him. She just tasted so good, felt so silky, so firm, so sweet. He traced a figure eight inside her mouth, kissing infinity into her.

  She broke away from him, breathing hard, her nails finding his skin through his shirt.

  “We don’t—” she panted. “We don’t do that anymore.”

  “Right.”

  She looked up at him, vulnerable, a hundred questions in her eyes. “Why…” she started, and then he watched as she shuttered herself off from him again. All vulnerability was slammed closed as stepped out of his embrace and into the hallway. “Try to control yourself in the future.”

  He nodded. “May…”

  She stopped, halfway turned away from him, her eyebrows raised.