by Karen Rose
‘Gayle had a heart attack,’ he whispered, unable to find any other words.
‘I believe that’s what I just told you.’ Jill blew out an annoyed breath. ‘This is where you’re supposed to say, “Why didn’t she tell me?”’
He opened his eyes, met her angry gaze. Figured that on some level he deserved it. ‘I don’t have to ask. I already know why. Gayle puts everyone else’s needs first. She always has. If you think I don’t know that, you’re wrong. And if you wanted me to feel guilty for not knowing she’d been sick, for expecting her to come in and work in the office afterward, then you hit the jackpot. I knew she’d be devastated by Mickey’s murder, but I never once suspected it had pushed her heart over the edge.’
‘It wasn’t Mickey’s death that pushed her over the edge. She hadn’t even heard about that yet. It was you, Marcus.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Me? She heard I’d been shot and that caused her attack?’
‘No. She had her heart attack that morning, hours before you were shot. I found her clutching her chest with one hand and a piece of paper with the other. I called 911 as soon as I realized what was happening, told her to try to relax, to be still, but while I was on the phone with the operator, she closed the document she was working on and hid the piece of paper she’d been holding. All while she was gasping for breath.’
He could see it happening, which just made him feel even worse. ‘So you wanted to see what she’d been working on that got her so upset. I guess I can understand that. I take it that she’d been updating this threat list.’ He glanced at the screen, searching for a threat credible enough, terrible enough to send a fifty-five-year-old woman into heart failure.
‘Yeah,’ Jill said flatly. ‘She’d been cataloguing the threats to your life, Marcus. For years.’
‘I know. I asked her to.’
‘I figured you must have. That’s why I’m angry with you.’
‘I suppose that’s fair.’ Because he was now angry with himself. ‘I shouldn’t have put that responsibility on her shoulders.’
Jill’s glare could slice through steel. ‘No, Marcus, you really shouldn’t have. Aunt Gayle is too old to be worrying about you.’
Marcus frowned. ‘Wait just a minute. Gayle isn’t old. I agree that she doesn’t need to be worrying about me, but she’s only fifty-five. She’s always been healthy.’
‘Not anymore, she’s not.’
New panic slithered down his spine. ‘Just how bad was this heart attack?’
‘Bad enough. The doctor told her that she should be retiring soon.’
‘She only has to ask. She knows I’ll take care of her.’ He heard a note of desperation in his own voice, but he didn’t care. Gayle was family, his second mother since he was old enough to remember. ‘A house in Florida, a nurse to live with her . . . Whatever she wants.’
New ire sparked in Jill’s eyes. ‘She won’t retire. She’s too devoted to you and your family. And now that Mickey’s gone, she doesn’t feel like she can leave your mother.’
‘Then I’ll tell her that she’s retiring.’
‘No. You’re not supposed to know, and if Gayle finds out that I told you, she’ll be angry with me.’
Frustrated, Marcus looked back at his screen. ‘She didn’t log anything on that day, and none of the threats since then have been serious enough to worry about. Certainly nothing so dire that she had a heart attack. Did you find the paper she was holding?’
‘No.’
‘And she never mentioned it? If it was so terrifying that it caused her heart to jump its track, I would have thought she would have warned me at least.’
Jill shrugged. ‘Maybe in all the chaos of Mickey’s funeral and your hospitalization, she forgot.’
‘She wouldn’t just forget. Not something like that.’
Another icy glare. ‘What part of heart attack didn’t you hear, Marcus? Heaven forbid that she think about something besides you and your precious family for once – like her health.’
The temptation to snap that he was still Jill’s boss burned on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. Because she was right. He swallowed hard. ‘How long was she in the hospital?’
‘Four days.’
Three of those days he’d been in ICU. ‘Where?’
‘Luckily not at County. With you and Stone ending up there, it would have been difficult to keep the news of Mikhail’s murder from her. When I heard what had happened to Mickey, hell, what happened to all of you . . .’
‘You were afraid that she’d have another heart attack.’
‘Yeah, and her doctor agreed. We were able to keep her away from the news – not an easy feat with Aunt Gayle. I broke it to her three days later, with her doctor present. By then Stone was okay and you were at least out of ICU. I could assure her that you two were going to be all right, so that it wasn’t all bad news.’
‘She loved Mikhail,’ Marcus murmured.
‘I know,’ Jill said, her tone softer. ‘She was devastated when I told her. But her heart didn’t fail again, so I was relieved.’
‘Didn’t she wonder why we didn’t come to visit her in those first few days?’
Jill’s tone hardened again. ‘No. She didn’t want me to tell any of you that she was ill. She made me promise to tell your mother that she’d taken a little vacation. But by the time she was stabilized, I’d gotten the news about Mikhail’s murder and that you and Stone were hurt, so I didn’t say anything to anyone. Nobody even asked where she was.’
‘My mother did.’ The words came out in an accusatory tone, which was okay because Marcus was now pissed off with Jill, and to some extent with Gayle too.
Gayle had mothered him when his own mother had fallen into such a deep depression that she hadn’t been able to care for him and Stone herself. It was Gayle who’d put Band-Aids on his skinned knees and elbows, helping him with his homework and teaching him to ride a bike.
And when he was eight years old, it was Gayle who’d sat beside his bed night after night when the nightmares would wake him up – men with cold eyes and big guns, the terrified sobs of his brothers, the gunshots that somehow sounded even louder than they’d actually been. He’d woken scared and screaming for months and months to find Gayle sitting beside him, crooning soft promises of safety. Until he’d told her he’d grown out of the dreams. In reality, he’d just learned how to lie quietly in his bed, pretending to sleep. But he’d always had the assurance that if he called out to her, she would come.
She’d been there for him for almost as long as he could remember. But he hadn’t been there when she’d needed him. He’d been in the hospital, true, but Gayle hadn’t known that. She had denied him the opportunity to take care of her, and that stung. But he was far more upset on his mother’s behalf than his own.
‘My mother called her phone, looking for her,’ he added harshly. ‘When Gayle didn’t answer, Mother sent someone to her house to find her, but there was no one home.’
Jill’s chin lifted, her lips pursed thin. ‘Sorry, but that wasn’t my problem. Your mother had lots of people waiting on her hand and foot. She didn’t need Aunt Gayle fetching and carrying for her too.’
Wow. This – Jill’s contempt for his family – was the bad vibe he’d felt all along.
‘My mother didn’t try to find her because she needed her to fetch and carry,’ he said evenly. ‘She did it because she didn’t want Gayle to hear about Mikhail on the news. From a stranger. She was worried because Gayle had simply vanished. Because Gayle is her friend, despite what you seem to think.’
Jill glared at him a moment longer, then looked away, her jaw still squared and angry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was trying to do right by my aunt. Working for your family has required her to sacrifice her own needs and wants too many times. Certainly more than you all deserv—’ She drew a deep breath. ‘More than she should have,’ she amended.
More than we deserved? Marcus had never looked at it like that before. Gay
le had always been there. She’d never complained, never behaved like it was a burden or a sacrifice, and he’d never questioned her presence or her motivation. She loved them. That was all he’d needed to know. But now he wondered . . .
Shit. I do not need this right now. He’d promised Scarlett Bishop the list of the people who’d made threats on his life. He owed it to Tala to find out who she’d been and where she’d been living, because despite what Deacon and Scarlett had theorized – and everything he’d just learned about his threat list – he still didn’t believe the shooter had been targeting him.
The man and his wife, they own us. Discovering where Tala had lived would likely lead to her killer. Help. Malaya. Malaya. Freedom. She’d feared for her family. Marcus hoped it wasn’t already too late to save them.
But this thing with Jill, this simmering contempt, it was important too. The young woman obviously did not like him or his family, which made Marcus wonder why she’d wanted to work for him to start with. Which made him remember how all this had begun.
Jill had known about the threat list.
‘How did you know I was looking at the threat list, Jill?’
She blinked at the subject change, surprise displacing the anger in her eyes for the briefest of moments. But the surprise was quickly quashed and the anger was back. Anger and defiance . . . and fear. She was afraid of him. Yet she stood steadfast, her body language that of a soldier prepared to defend to the death.
What the hell? What the hell did she think he was going to do to her? What did she think they’d done to Gayle all these years?
‘I put an alarm on the file,’ she said. ‘Whenever anyone opens it, I get an alert sent right to my phone. The buzz from the alert woke me up.’
He regarded her cautiously. ‘You’re handier with a computer than you let on when I hired you.’ It made him wonder what else she’d seen in the year she’d worked for him.
She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to access the file, if that makes you feel better. I was watching over my aunt. She had a heart attack when she was looking at that file. She hasn’t had any issues since, but if she did, I needed to know. I caught the first heart attack in time out of sheer luck. I can’t count on being that lucky twice.’
That made a certain kind of sense. ‘I guess I can respect your reason.’
Her lip curled in a slight sneer. ‘But?’
But . . . he didn’t believe her. She was too quiet. Too careful. She’d had access to Gayle’s files for nine months.
And if she’s seen too much?
Gayle’s niece could be a real problem.
Offering to pay her to keep her silence didn’t seem like the best of ideas. He already paid her far more than the going rate for graphic designers.
You pay me too well. That’s never been the issue.
So they were back to why she burned the candle at both ends, working for him all day and taking classes for her degree at night. Then sometimes, like tonight, coming back to work through the night, just to make a deadline. Why?
‘But,’ he said, ‘I now realize that there is much that I don’t know about you.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Jeez. Y’think?’
He ignored her sarcasm. ‘I asked you why you were killing yourself for a degree and you answered by asking me why I was looking at the threat list. I don’t get the connection.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do. Why did you ask my aunt to catalog the threats?’
He was getting tired of her answering his questions with her own. ‘I needed to keep track of them.’
‘That’s not a good enough reason.’
‘It’s all the reason I feel compelled to give you,’ he said. ‘I am your boss, after all.’
‘Yes, you are. For now.’
He lifted a brow. ‘You plan to quit?’
Anger flashed in her eyes once again. ‘No, boss. I plan to have to find a new job when you’re murdered by one of the many people you’ve pissed off, and most employers do care about “stinkin’ degrees”.’
Ah. The pieces fell into place, relief settling over him. ‘You’re worried someone on that list will kill me.’
‘So are you,’ she challenged. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here looking at it and cursing. Here.’ She tossed him a flash drive. ‘The most recent, complete list.’
Reflex had him reaching out to catch the small drive, the movement sending a spear of pain through the bruise on his back.
Her eyes narrowed at the grimace he hadn’t been able to control. ‘Somebody got to you, didn’t they?’ she asked. ‘You’re hurt.’
Fuck. ‘I’m not hurt. What do you mean, this is the most complete list?’ He pointed at his screen. ‘This one isn’t complete?’
‘No. The file you’re looking at is stored on the Ledger’s server. That’s the one that Aunt Gayle works on. She believes it’s complete, for what it’s worth.’
Marcus rubbed his eyes. ‘What have you done, Jill?’ he asked, suddenly exhausted.
‘I’ve been intercepting the mail for the past nine months. Any letter that’s just a garden-variety-I-hate-your-guts-and-you-need-to-die, I let go through. Aunt Gayle logs it in. The really vicious ones, I move to that flash drive so she doesn’t see.’
His head was starting to throb. ‘Why?’
‘Because she loves you too much to be reading all that vitriol. It terrifies her that people want to kill you. I love her too much to let her sacrifice her health, so I took . . . liberties.’
‘What other liberties have you taken?’
‘I pay the bills and sort your mail.’
Both things Gayle was supposed to do. That didn’t sound like the Gayle he knew. But the Gayle he knew had had a heart attack without telling him too. ‘What did you leave for her to do?’
‘She keeps your calendar, answers the phones, schedules all those fancy meetings that you hate so much, and tracks the threats against you and your team – minus the ones I remove first, of course.’
‘Gayle knows about the duties you’ve taken on?’
‘Everything but the threats. She didn’t want to let me do it, but it was the only way I’d allow her to come back to work after her heart attack. She should have stayed home, but she said you needed her here since you were still recuperating from being shot.’
He closed his fist around the flash drive, not sure who he was angriest with – Gayle for keeping this from him, Jill for aiding and abetting, or himself for being so blind. ‘I’ve been back for six months. She could have retired or quit or, heaven forbid, even told me the truth. What did she think I’d do? Fire her?’ Like that could ever happen. ‘I’d cut out my own tongue before I’d even raise my voice to her.’
Jill’s lips curved, the small smile seeming genuine. ‘I know that. That’s why I’ve let this go on so long. She believes that you still need her. That you’re still “not yourself” since Mikhail died. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But I do know that Aunt Gayle needs to be needed. And I give her what she needs.’
Marcus found his anger draining away. Jill was right about Gayle. The woman did need to be needed, and he and his family had probably taken advantage of that more times than he wanted to consider over the years, without even realizing it.
Opening his fist, he glanced down at the flash drive before lifting his eyes to Jill’s face. ‘Gayle always told me about the worst threats, so that I could be prepared,’ he said, watching for any sign that Gayle’s niece knew more than she should.
Jill’s head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowing. ‘So that you could be prepared, or so that you could eliminate the threat?’
She didn’t know, Marcus thought. But she suspected, and that was troubling enough. He chilled his tone. ‘Perhaps you should define “eliminate”.’
The pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, the color rising in her cheeks. She was afraid, but she didn’t blink. That could be very good or very, very bad. ‘You were a Ranger, Marcus. You own every
gun known to man, and very few of them are registered.’
How she knew about his army background and his gun collection would be a question he’d table for later. ‘Yet you stay.’
She lifted a shoulder. ‘Like I said before, you pay me well. And Aunt Gayle won’t leave you. I can’t tell her what I think. She won’t believe you are capable of doing any wrong. She thinks you walk on water.’
Because Gayle loved him. Of that, Marcus had never had a single doubt. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Jill,’ he said, letting menace creep into the words. ‘Define “eliminate”.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I saw the patterns in the threats that came in before I took over. Some were just . . . noise. People spouting off. But others were serious. They got bad, then worse, then . . . they stopped.’
Marcus stared at her as the seconds ticked by. He’d admit to nothing, not until she made an accusation. Finally, she dropped her gaze, focusing on her feet. ‘Did you kill them?’
He had to admire her guts. ‘No,’ he said quietly. At least he hadn’t killed any of them yet. But he’d been tempted so many times. ‘I have other means.’
Her swallow was audible this time, and his admiration grew when she lifted her chin, locking stares once again. ‘Legal means?’
Damn, the girl really did have a spine. He smiled at her, very nearly amused. ‘Mostly.’
‘That’s all you’re going to say?’ she asked, her voice rising an octave. ‘Mostly?’
‘That’s all you asked.’
She drew a breath. ‘All right, if that’s the way the game is played. If you’re caught doing something that falls outside of “mostly”, will my aunt be in trouble with the law?’
He regarded her carefully. ‘Aren’t you worried about yourself?’
‘Of course, but I’m more worried about Aunt Gayle. If she gets arrested . . . Her heart couldn’t take that.’
‘You assume Gayle knows about any activities that are less than “mostly”.’