Brazen

by M. Malone

Dylan: Running a little late. Matthias wanted me to check on something first.

  Oskar: Whatever it is, I’ll do it for you if you just get here. Now.

  Dylan: Did someone pee in your protein shake this morning? I thought you’d be happy protecting the Park Avenue Princess. Jonas said she was hot.

  Oskar: Just get your ass here.

  Ten minutes later, Dylan strolled in looking smug. Hailey was still asleep, so I didn’t bother saying goodbye, but instead walked out. My phone chimed with a text.

  Dylan: Dude, what the hell did she do to you?

  I didn’t bother to answer. I needed to go home, take a shower and jack off. In that order and probably several times.

  By the time seven o’clock rolled around, I was ready. After a shower (okay, three showers), I felt more like myself. There was no telling what kind of weird magic spell Hailey had cast on me that morning, but I was a consummate professional. I’d never treated a client inappropriately and wouldn’t be starting now. Maybe she hadn’t been aware of how she was torturing me this morning, or maybe this was her twisted form of revenge. Either way, I had to rise above it. Taking a breather in the afternoons was exactly what I needed. It gave me the chance to breathe air that didn’t smell like Hailey and get a workout in.

  Dylan had been texting me random updates all day, and I’d finally just put my phone on silent so I could concentrate. If I dropped a barbell on my foot because I was distracted, the guys would never let me hear the end of that.

  Her calendar put the end of her workday at seven o’clock. When I arrived, Dylan put out his fist for a bump and then yelled, “Bye, Hailey!” over his shoulder.

  She waved, and the happy smile on her face brought back my earlier annoyance. Dylan got smiles and waves, while I’d gotten scowls and the boner from hell.

  Hailey’s smile dropped as her eyes landed on me. She picked up her handbag from the floor by her desk, bending at the waist for an unnecessarily long time.

  Hello, boner, my old friend.

  I cursed as she finally straightened and stalked past me without a word but said a cheerful goodnight to her assistant.

  Down in the parking garage, Hailey waited until I pointed out where I’d parked her car. The silence was almost as torturous as watching her sleep, so I opened the passenger door, trying to be nice.

  She moved to the back door. “I’m sitting in the back.”

  With a sigh, I moved to open the back door. Hailey’s eyes flared, clearly surprised at my easy acceptance of her brattiness. Truthfully, I was tired and about a half a second away from picking her gorgeous ass up and throwing her in the backseat. Anything that kept her out of my sight for a while would work.

  There was only so long a guy could have a boner before risking permanent damage, right? Or at least that was what I remembered from all those commercials on TV late at night.

  On the drive home, I thought about what excuse I could give Noah for needing to be transferred off this job. While we’d been friends for years, he wasn’t an easy guy to get to know. It wasn’t like we were hanging out over beers and telling each other our life stories. He was a hard-ass and didn’t accept excuses, so unless I came down with an incurable illness over the next hour, I was probably stuck for at least a few weeks. Maybe I could bribe Dylan into switching with me more often, though. Hailey would probably be fine with that since they had seemed to hit it off.

  Just one more thing to rub salt in the wound.

  As I turned to head back to Hailey’s building, a black sedan cut someone off as it turned the corner. New York drivers were wild, and no matter how long I lived here I’d never get used to that.

  It was a short ride back to her place, but I turned on some music anyway. I turned the dial before settling on a country music station. Hailey’s soft giggle lowered the tension in the car a bit. Hey, I liked songs about heartbreak and lost love.

  At the next turn, I glanced in the side view mirror again. A black sedan. The same one that I’d seen ten minutes ago. What were the odds that same car would still be behind us?

  Someone was following us.

  My phone was in the cup holder next to me, so I used the voice commands to call Matthias. Luckily, I’d put my earpiece in before driving off, so I could have this conversation without Hailey overhearing all of it.

  “Matthias. En route but have an unwelcome visitor. A black sedan. No visual on the driver.”

  I kept my voice down, hoping the music would cover half of what I was saying, but Hailey’s head still popped up.

  “Take the secondary route back to the office. I’ll have Rafe waiting to cover you in case you’re followed.”

  My eyes met Hailey’s in the rearview briefly. I didn’t think she really knew anything was wrong, which was how I wanted to keep it. Despite all her big talk about this being temporary and how she didn’t need security, I saw the look on her face this morning in the elevator. She was worried even if she didn’t want to be.

  The car on the right sped up and weaved around a truck until there was only one car between us. Shit. He wasn’t just following us. Clearly, he had some intention to engage because no one would get this close if their goal was not to be noticed. My hands tightened on the wheel as I glanced at Hailey in the rearview again. She was wearing her seatbelt, but I was regretting my decision to allow her to sit in the back alone.

  Chauffeur jokes aside, if this guy hit us, Hailey was right in the strike zone.

  “Hailey, I don’t want to scare you. But there’s a car following us, and I’m concerned that he might try to run us off the road. I need you to hang on.”

  “What? Someone’s following us?” Hailey’s terrified eyes were the last thing I saw before something rammed us from behind.

  “Oskar!”

  I struggled to keep the wheel straight as the car fishtailed. Horns blared next to me, and I hit the gas, weaving around a slow minivan. The light ahead was yellow, but I was going to have to run it. If I stopped, that was giving whoever was following us an opportunity to get to Hailey. Something I couldn’t allow.

  The next blow came from the left side. The sedan was right behind us now, and there was a loud screech of metal as he connected with our bumper.

  “Oh my God. What are we going to do?” Hailey screamed again at the next blow, and hearing the terror in her voice spurred me into action.

  I wrenched the wheel to the right, forcing the car into a spin. As we looped around, I sent up a silent prayer there were no pedestrians nearby, since I had no control of the car. For a moment, I thought the maneuver had worked and the black sedan wouldn’t have the room to execute such a tight turn.

  But as soon as our car stopped moving, I looked up to see it barreling toward us and realized I’d made a grave error. I’d thought his intent was to scare us, but it was pretty clear the intent was to kill.

  And my mistake was going to cost us. I hit the gas but not fast enough, and the last sound I heard before the crash was Hailey’s terrified scream.

  8

  Hailey

  I adjusted the ice pack on my temple and shivered. Because I’d been belted in during the crash, I hadn’t sustained any real damage, but damned if the bump on my head didn’t hurt.

  “Here’s some coffee. Is there anything else I can get you?”

  Jonas had been so nice since I arrived, making sure I had an ice pack and offering me food and even a bed to rest in until their private physician arrived. They’d given me the choice of going to the hospital, but once I found out they had a private doctor on call, I was more than happy to go that route. My family wasn’t usually tabloid fodder, but with the launch of the new fragrance line coming up, I wanted to keep the focus where it should be—the perfume—and not on whether or not someone was trying to kill me.

  Plus, it wasn’t going to be easy to reassure my father as it was, much less if he had to visit me in the hospital.

  “No, this is perfect. Thank you.” I was interrupted by a shiver that wracked my body so har
d I almost dropped the mug of coffee. “I still can’t believe it happened. It’s hard to believe that someone out there wants me dead.”

  “Our team is the best, and we will find out who is doing this. Has anything happened out of the ordinary lately? I hate to ask but anything you can remember might be helpful.”

  Instead of brushing it off and saying of course not the way I had originally, I took a minute to really think. It was impossible to run a division of a company without pissing someone off. I had exacting standards and expected everyone who worked for me to do their jobs and do them well. But that was just business. Nothing that I had done was any different than any other boss in a corporate position.

  Why would someone want to kill me because of that?

  “I’m pretty boring. All I do is go to work and then go straight home. But it’s hard to imagine anyone I know at work doing something like this. Most of our employees have been with us for years.”

  “Well, if it is someone from work, Matthias will find it. No one can hide from him.” Jonas left me with one last, sympathetic smile.

  As soon as he left, someone sat on the couch right next to me. It was Noah’s wife, who I’d been introduced to earlier.

  Lucia was a pretty, petite brunette with soft gray eyes and hair that was almost as curly as mine. She was the exact opposite of the type of woman I’d expected to be married to such an intense man, but it had only taken thirty seconds of seeing them together to understand why they made sense. She was his perfect counterpart in every way and softened his rough edges. He also couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

  Must be nice.

  I sighed. Jealousy wasn’t helping my headache.

  “The doctor should be here soon. He’s really nice and he’ll take good care of you.”

  “Thank you, Lucia. You’ve been very kind. I’m sure this is an imposition having some banged-up girl hanging out here for hours.”

  She chuckled and took a sip of the mug of tea she’d put on the coffee table in front of us.

  “It’s no problem. There's too much testosterone around here anyway.”

  “Girl, say it louder for the people in the back.” A blond woman with her hair in a high ponytail plopped down on the couch next to Lucia. “But there are benefits to that. Especially in the morning when they’re all in the gym. Holy abdominals.”

  Lucia covered her mouth with her hand. “Don’t let Jonas hear you say that. The last time he caught you drooling over Oskar shirtless, he was pouting for a week.”

  JJ’s eyes swung my way. “Speaking of our own resident He-Man, I heard Oskar is the one guarding you.”

  I adjusted the ice pack again, wishing I could drop it down my cleavage to cool off some. Thinking about Oskar was the last thing I needed right now. After the crash, he’d been like a superhero. The car that’d chased us had sped away, but he’d gotten out of the car like some kind of avenging angel, putting himself between me and potential harm.

  Luckily, I wasn’t hurt too badly, just a bump on the head, but he’d insisted on lifting me out of the car anyway. The ambulance and police had arrived shortly after, and he’d handled everything so I didn’t have to. I could tell the EMTs weren’t thrilled that I refused further medical treatment, but I hadn’t wanted to be separated from Oskar right then.

  Maybe it was the minor head injury but all the animosity I’d felt toward him all day had melted away instantly when I saw how concerned he was for me.

  “Oskar has been great. I’m not sure what I would have done if some crazy person had chased me when I was on my own. The accident definitely would have been a lot worse.”

  JJ nodded slowly. “Yes, mmm hmm. That’s all well and good, but I was talking about those guns. Have you seen his arms? He looks like he could bench press this building.”

  Lucia rolled her eyes. “Sorry about her. We’ve tried training her; it never works. The most important thing is that Oskar got you here as fast as possible. You’ll be safe here.”

  JJ crossed her arms. “I wasn’t saying safety isn’t important. Geez, Lu. You act like I’m some monster.”

  Lucia frowned. “I’m sorry, JJ. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I tensed as I glanced between the two friends. JJ looked really hurt and upset. These two had clearly known each other a long time, something I was envious of. My friends from college were scattered all over the country, and I would have loved to have my best friend living so close.

  Suddenly JJ broke into a huge grin and patted her friend’s arm. “Damn, Lucia. You’re so easy,,, every time.”

  “Ugh! I should have known.” But Lucia was smiling as she sat back against the couch.

  JJ turned to me. “Seriously though, everything really will be okay. These guys are the best.”

  Not that I needed any more convincing after watching Oskar in action earlier, but her words still managed to comfort me. Everything seemed like it was suddenly moving so fast. One minute I’d been reconsidering the idea of having private security, and the next I was almost run off the road by a madman.

  How had my comfortable, orderly life gone so haywire in just a few days?

  “Thank you. I needed to hear that. Even though I didn’t think I needed protection at first, I’m grateful for it now.”

  “You won’t regret hiring Blake Security. Besides, even though this scary thing is happening, you get to enjoy one amazing perk.” JJ waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “While under protection, you get to spend all that time with our very own modern-day Viking.”

  We all laughed, but I could only hope my blush wasn’t visible. These women knew Oskar, the man that he was today, not the irresponsible, carefree version of him that I’d known briefly years ago. He was their friend and a respected colleague. They could joke about how hot he was in a casual way, and it was no big deal. But for me, it was impossible to view him as just another hot guy. He was THE hot guy, the one who had rocked my world and left me reeling and aching for more.

  No, there was nothing funny about the way Oskar made me feel.

  “That’s definitely a perk,” I conceded, unable to resist laughing along with them. Even if thoughts of him made me feel like I was on the verge of self-destructing, that wasn’t their fault.

  I mean, they all lived together. So despite their dirty laughs, they probably thought of the guy as family, considering that he’d worked for Blake Security so long.

  JJ leaned forward suddenly. “Have you seen him naked yet? I bet that dude has a battle ax hanging between his legs, doesn’t he?”

  Having just taken a sip of my tea, I choked slightly, sending them into another fit of laughter.

  Okay, clearly they didn’t think of him as family.

  Oskar

  As image after image flashed on the screen in front of me, my rage only grew. How was it possible to have this much video footage and not one clear shot of the asshole who’d crashed into us?

  Matthias held up his hands as my eyes shifted over to him. “I know, man. Trust me, I know. I’ve combed all the surveillance available from the businesses in the area, and somehow this asshole managed to always be just out of range or coincidentally turning his head away. Bastard got lucky.”

  “Or he’s really fucking good.” I dropped a fist down on the conference table, relishing the pain in my knuckles as we watched the footage again.

  After the accident, my body had gone into overdrive. We were all trained in evasive maneuvers and basic first aid, but I’d been on a rampage at just the thought that someone might hurt Hailey.

  I was sure I’d scared her a little with my intensity, but all I’d been able to think was that I’d put her in danger. Again. Seeing her bruised and with blood on her face had not only frozen me with fear but also triggered the guilt I’d been trying to outrun for years. She was supposed to be safe and protected. It was the entire reason I’d run from her the first time.

  Now she was in danger all over again and this time, the solution wasn’t as simple as getting on a plane.<
br />
  “He’ll make a mistake eventually. They all do. And when he does, I’ll be there.” Matthias narrowed his eyes as we came to the last still image he’d captured from the video surveillance.

  It was a grainy, blurred picture of the man who’d been driving the car. There wasn’t much detail, so all we knew was it was a white male with dark hair and seemingly average build.

  Which could easily describe any random guy on the streets of New York.

  Hell, I couldn’t even explain how the guy had known where we’d be. Hailey usually left work around the same time each day, but we’d made sure to use different routes when driving her. Yet this guy had no problem following us.

  The faint sound of laughter trickled in behind us. I turned around to see Hailey laughing with Lucia. Seeing her so happy and carefree brought up a longing so acute that I ached with it. This was how she should always be. I was grateful to Lucia for making her feel so welcome, something that I hadn’t been able to accomplish.

  I hung my head. This guy was going to get away with it and the knowledge burned in my gut. How could I protect Hailey with so little information? Based on what she'd told us, she didn’t interact with others enough to have many potential enemies. Her life was her company, and that was it. This should have been the easiest case to crack, yet we’d been two steps behind this guy the whole time.

  All she wanted was to focus on her work, and I couldn’t give her that. It was a difficult thing when all I wanted was to give her everything.

  I’d failed her once again.

  When I turned around, Matthias was watching me. His eyes darted behind me to where the women were sitting.

  I’d been stupid to think that my interest in Hailey would go unnoticed much longer. People think women gossip, but this merry band of killers I lived with were like a bunch of old hens when it came to gossip. They couldn’t resist asking the questions that you didn’t want to answer, and we all knew way too much about each other’s business around here.