“I especially want to thank our very special guest Commander Leo Darius.” Nigel yanked his attention up to the stage. “Leo, please come to the stage!”
Okay, and what was this? Leo forced a smile on his face, pushed off the wall and walked up to the front of the room, nodding, smiling and shaking hands as he went. He mounted the dais and joined Nigel at the podium.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“A solution to the problem you’ve put me in,” Nigel said. The smile on his mouth didn’t come anywhere near meeting his eyes. He turned back to the microphone. “Now, as you know, Leo had originally promised to take someone to the theater followed by a private dinner at one of Ottawa’s top restaurants. I know a lot of you bought tickets to tonight’s event based on hearing that in the press and I can tell you, we’ve never had attention like that before in the history of these events. Online bids have been coming in from all over the country. So, I’m very sorry to tell you that sadly, Leo called me last night to say that due to personal issues he’d no longer be able to fulfill this promise.”
Some light booing rose from the crowd. It was mostly good-natured, and even mingled with laughter, but it did nothing to stem the feel of a threat at the back of Leo’s neck. Had he been wrong all this time? Had Nigel been behind this? Even part of this? Leo’s smile grew tighter. Whether Nigel was part of The Anemoi or not, he was playing right into their hands and increasing the possibility of them reaching the informant before he did.
“So, we’ve decided to arrange a little surprise for the commander!” Nigel said.
Leo’s face froze. What was Nigel trying to do? Admiral Jacobs’s warning to stay natural and not do anything to tip anyone off floated through the back of his mind. But the stakes were growing higher. This was his last opportunity to retrieve the intel. He couldn’t let Nigel ruin that.
“What’s going on?” Zoe’s voice crackled in his ear. “We weren’t briefed on this.”
He had no idea. As Nigel rambled on about Leo’s prestigious military history, two waitstaff stepped on stage behind them, and set up a small café table and two chairs. They set the table with military efficiency, lit candles and poured sparkling punch into long, tall flutes. Leo’s stomach sank.
“This is your opportunity to bid on a special, private dinner date with Commander Darius, here at this event,” Nigel said. “For the next two hours, you and Leo can share an intimate meal and conversation, up here on the dais, waited on by staff, with special desserts and food.”
“We have to stop this,” Zoe said. “If he’s stuck up on that dais all night, he won’t be able to do the handoff.”
“Well, he’d better come up with a very good reason,” Alex said, “and fast. Because walking off the dais looks like a pretty bad option from where I’m sitting, but getting stuck up there isn’t any better.”
Alex wasn’t wrong. If he walked off the dais he’d cause a scene and tip off whoever was watching him that something was wrong. But if he went through with the auction date, he’d lose his opportunity for the handoff.
“Who’ll start the bidding at one hundred dollars?” Nigel said.
Hands shot up. The room was filled with good-natured laughter. Cameras started clicking. In seconds the bidding was up to three hundred dollars.
“What do we do?” It was Zoe.
“We leave it,” Alex said. “Leo wanted to go solo. He can handle this on his own. Maybe we should let this play out.”
“Six hundred and fifty dollars,” Nigel called. “Going once.”
The room spun. Were they really going to leave him up there on his own, torn with two bad options, between being sidelined and sitting on a stage for the rest of the night, or causing a scene?
“He hired us to watch his back,” Zoe said.
“Going twice,” Nigel said.
“Then he changed the game plan and decided to go it alone,” Alex said. “He changed the parameters. Not us.”
“Well, it looks like that’s all the bids we got, folks.” Nigel’s gavel rose. “Looks like the privilege of an evening, an hour alone—”
“Two thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight dollars and sixteen cents!” Zoe’s voice rose above the crowd. The gavel froze. There she stood, in the middle of the ballroom, facing the dais, like a fighter entering the circle, daring anyone to challenge her.
Nigel’s jaw dropped.
“Thank you,” Leo whispered.
He watched as her lips moved and her voice brushed his ear. “You’re welcome. I knew you wanted to get out of there.”
Murmurs rose from the crowd, their voices blending into white noise.
“Is that all the money you’ve got,” he asked softly.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Why wear yourself out deflecting a lot of little blows, when you can go for a single knockout punch?”
“Well, that’s a pretty big jump in bidding!” Nigel’s laugh rang loud and hollow. “Does anyone want to bid us up to a nice round two thousand five hundred?”
Leo reached for the gavel and pulled it smoothly from Nigel’s hand.
“I think we should stop there, don’t you, Nigel?” He leaned into the microphone and swirled the gavel through his fingers like a weapon. A wide smile crossed his face for the benefit of the crowd. “That was my date for the night, Zoe Dean, bidding there. I’m happy to donate the extra myself to round it up. But I’m afraid it would be awfully rude of me to invite a woman to an event like this and then sit with someone else for the entire night, don’t you think?”
“Well, I guess I can’t argue with that,” Nigel said. He looked genuinely confused and for a moment Leo wondered if it really had been no more than a foolish misunderstanding. “Thank you again, Commander Leo, for your very generous support!”
“I’m going to go to the bidding booth at the front desk and settle up,” Zoe said, in his ear.
“Zooooooeeeeeee...” Alex said his sister’s name like it had six syllables.
“Don’t start with me, Alex. Also, you’re paying for poutine.”
The voices in his earpiece were drowned out by clapping. Zoe disappeared back into the crowd, and he lost sight of her. But Leo lingered on the stage, long enough to take photos with Nigel, and then a handful of fans who were disappointed to have been outbid. But he barely noticed them as they flitted around him like lightning bugs. He knew what it was like to have someone admire him, adore him even, without ever seeing the person inside. It was a shallow empty feeling. He’d had that with Marisa when her youthful crush on the man she’d hoped he was faded into an aching emptiness when she hadn’t fallen for the man inside his protective shell.
But Zoe knew him. She saw him. And while he was sure that between Ash Private Security and his own bank account they’d find a way to make her whole again, she was still willing to empty out everything she had, just to have his back.
A sudden shout filled his ear, so loudly it was if Zoe was standing right behind him.
“What? No! Stop!” Zoe was shouting. “Get your hands off me!”
Where was she? What was happening?
He excused himself from the stage and pushed through the crowd. A cacophony of noises filled his earpiece. Male voices were barking orders. Zoe was protesting. Alex was scrambling in vain to figure out where she was.
“Zoe what’s happening?” Leo’s step quickened through the crowd. He exited the banquet hall, ran down the stairs and reached the front entrance. The bidding table was empty except for two young, shell-shocked volunteers. He wheeled around and raised the cuff to his mouth. “Alex! Where is she?”
“Outside.” Alex’s voice filled his ear. “Two men are dragging her out.”
* * *
Zoe’s stilettos scuffed on the stone steps as two large security guards tried to aggressively escort her from the building. One
was in her face. The other was trying to handcuff her wrists behind her back. She could hear Alex and Leo shouting in her ear, but couldn’t get her microphone anywhere near her face to answer. She could see the flash of press cameras in her face, feel the glare of television cameras and hear the babble of reporters shouting questions from behind the velvet rope. Shame washed over her as potential headlines filled her eyes.
Disgraced Gymnast Zoe Dean Dragged Out of Charity Auction in Handcuffs, would be the kind of headline they’d run if she didn’t fight back. Bam! Crash! Pow! Disgraced Gymnast Zoe Dean in Violent Struggle with Security Guards! would be the headline if she did.
She couldn’t let herself fight them. Not on assignment. Not in front of the press. She felt the cold metal of handcuffs clicking over her wrists.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Leo’s voice boomed through the night air. He strode out the front door with an authority and strength that took her breath away. “Could somebody please explain what you’re doing manhandling my date?”
The security guards stopped, pushing her to the side almost as an afterthought as they turned to face him.
“I’m sorry, but she didn’t have an invitation on her and wasn’t on the guest list,” the larger, more burly security man spoke. His chest puffed out. But even in the darkness, Zoe could tell his face was reddening.
“Take her handcuffs off,” Leo said. “Now.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an order. Zoe felt the younger of the two security guards removing the cuffs from her wrists, a lot more gently than his partner had put them on. But the other security guard still wasn’t backing down.
“With all due respect, we got a tip that this woman wasn’t your date,” he spluttered. “In fact, we were told she was a menace who was stalking you, and that you’d asked her to leave you alone. We were told you wanted her removed from the premises.”
Fire burned in the depth of Leo’s eyes. “Who told you that?”
The larger guard shook his head and didn’t answer. But the younger guard pointed toward the bottom of the stairs. They turned. Killian Lynch was walking up the stairs toward them, his smile smug and his eyes malicious. The media man waved a hand at the security guards.
“Guys, we’re good. Sorry, sorry. False alarm. So sorry for wasting your time.” Killian raised both hands palm up and shrugged at Leo. “Guess I must’ve misunderstood when you told me you weren’t involved with Miss Dean and didn’t want anything to do with her. I just thought I needed to teach Miss Dean a bit of a lesson.”
She’s out of control. Someone needs to teach her a lesson.
Just like that the world froze in tableau around Zoe. The security guards were trying to shrink back up the stairs behind her. Alex was in her ear, offering to run all the way from the parking garage, up three flights of stairs, to the front of the building to grab Killian by the scruff of the neck and haul him away from his sister.
Leo stood in front of her, strong and supportive like her champion, with his hand outstretched to help her and fight for her. She took a deep breath and felt a prayer fill her heart. She’d spent almost fifteen years beating herself up for one moment of losing self-control in front of an international audience and elbowing Killian in the face. She’d punished herself for that moment long enough.
She needed to forgive herself.
“Zoe,” Leo spoke her name as his hand brushed her shoulder and the world started moving again. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She took his hand and squeezed it hard. “But I will be.”
This was her fight. Not his. She dropped Leo’s hand and walked down the stairs toward Killian. He met her halfway up the stairs. They stood there for a moment, eye to eye, her feet one step above his.
“Have you learned your lesson yet?” Killian asked.
“Yes, I have.” Her chin lifted. “Not whatever lesson you thought you were trying to teach me. But the lesson I needed to learn. I learned that I’m going to make mistakes and I’m going to mess up, so I need to get better at forgiving myself and at accepting forgiveness where it’s offered.”
He spluttered like steam was boiling under his skin and it was choking his ability to speak. And for the first time she looked him directly in the face. He was older than she remembered. It was like he’d been frozen in her mind as a picture all these years and it was her first time seeing just how much older he’d gotten. Light from the hotel entrance fell over his face and she saw the dent in the bridge of his nose. Clarity broke over her like sunshine. Her hand rose to her lips.
“I broke your nose,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“If you ever say that to anyone I will destroy you.” Killian’s face went red. “You think I’d let some small, pathetic nothing of a girl break my nose?”
Yes, he had. She knew it without a shadow of a doubt. Memories rushed back from that moment, filling her mind. She remembered the crack she’d heard when she accidentally struck him, the way he’d grabbed his face and swore, and the way his nose had bled. She remembered how he’d disappeared from the rest of the competition and been so determined to destroy her and make sure she never competed again. Above all, she could see it in his eyes right now, despite the denying lies on his lips. He had never been able to let it go and was still so furious all these years later and determined to make her pay.
“I’m sorry I broke your nose,” she said. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to hit you and honestly had no idea I’d struck you that hard.”
Killian’s face grew even redder. “You’re apologizing to me?”
“Yes.” She was. It was time. She needed to. “I’m not apologizing for telling you to back off and leave me alone, back then. You were a creep, and you were totally out of line. I was right to defend myself. But I didn’t know my own strength. I didn’t check how close the physical distance was between us. I was sloppy and undisciplined, and still had a lot to learn about combat fighting. And, yes, I am truly sorry.”
Killian stepped up onto the step beside her, until they stood toe to toe. He leaned close, his breath heavy with anger and alcohol. “Do you actually think I’m ever going to forgive you?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I hope you do, for your sake. But even if you don’t, I’m going to let it go.”
His hand jabbed into his jacket pocket and yanked it out again so quickly she flinched. There was an envelope in his hand, plain white, with Leo’s name written on it.
“See this, Leo?” Killian waved it over her head. “I told you that I had something for you and I wasn’t kidding. I thought maybe we could work out some kind of arrangement to keep this from ever getting leaked to the tabloids. But you have the worst taste in women.”
Zoe took a long, hard look at the man she’d been frightened of all these years and shook her head. Then she turned to Leo. “I’m done here. I’ll see you inside.”
She started up the stairs. But Killian leaped up two more steps and got in front of her.
“You think you can just walk away from me?” Killian stood over her. “You think this is over?”
He lunged forward for her arm. She waited until she felt his fingertips touch her skin then she leaped to the side with precision. He pitched forward, lost his balance and fell, sprawling down the stairs on his hands and knees. Faint laughter rippled through the crowd of reporters below. Killian sprang to his feet. Hate filled his eyes. He ran at her, throwing the old vile names he used to call girls like her in secret, loudly and openly like fireworks exploding around them.
“How dare you!” He charged at her. His arm rose to slap Zoe across the face. But before his blow could land, Leo stepped in between them, so that Killian’s strike just ended up smacking Leo’s strong chest, before ineffectually bouncing off again.
“Back off.” Leo’s arms crossed. “You’re making a fool out of yourself.”
“She pushed me down the stairs!”
“No, she didn’t,” Leo said. “She just got out of your way when you tried to lay a hand on her and you face-planted. Then you hit me. Both of which were no doubt caught by the security cameras and the host of photographers you decided to pull your stunt in front of. Diplomatic immunity doesn’t protect you from looking like a fool.”
Killian’s fist shot out again, aimed straight at Leo’s jaw. The commander dodged the blow, then caught the man’s fist before he could yank it back.
“You’re done,” Leo said. “Stop before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.”
“Your life is over.” Killian swore. He yanked his hand back, pulled his phone from his pocket and pushed a button. Then he waved his envelope in Leo’s face again. “You have no idea how bad it’s going to get. Or what you’re going to lose. I’ve just posted the contents of this envelope online. I was going to give you the opportunity to buy this from me. But now it’s too late, and I’m just going to sit back and enjoy watching as your life is ruined.”
Leo didn’t even flinch. He reached down and yanked the white envelope from Killian’s hand without saying a word. Then he slid his arm around Zoe’s shoulders and led her back up the stairs. She could hear Alex applauding in her earpiece. Leo leaned his head against hers, pulling her close into his side as they reentered the hotel.
“I’m sorry about that,” Leo said. “This whole situation is a joke. As much as part of me hopes this envelope really does contain the intel I’m after, so that this will all finally be over, I can’t actually believe that all our hard work could come down to this nonsense. I thought whoever my informant was, and whatever they were bringing me, it was a matter of vital security. Not whatever colossal waste of time this has turned out to be. Now, if this is indeed my intel and that creep was really my informant, all I can do is analyze it, let the right person in military intelligence know about this and let them handle it. What a mess.”
Protective Measures Page 13