by Zara Chase
“Was that really necessary?” Maddie asked when Riley hung up.
“Hopefully not, but until we know what we’re dealing with, we need to rule out all the obvious suspects.”
“I suppose so.” She blew air through her lips. “Sorry. I guess I’m a bit on edge.”
“No worries.” Axel grinned. “You just don’t share our suspicious natures, which is kinda refreshing.”
They carried out sorting through stuff for another couple of hours, only speaking if anything of consequence came to light, which didn’t happen much. Maddie had three piles—things to keep, things to take home and sort through, and things to dispose of. The guys added files to the appropriate piles according to her instructions.
Riley kept Maddie in his line of sight, which was no hardship. Her full breasts strained against the fabric of her top, the nipples pert and clearly visible through the thin fabric, making it hard for him to concentrate on the job in hand. She’s pulled her hair into a knot at the back of her neck, giving him a clear view of her profile and the worry lines creasing her brow. The urge to make them go away was driving him crazy and making him damned uncomfortable. He shared a glance with Axel, pretty sure his mind was running along similar lines. They had the same taste in women, and liked to share them, so Riley would bet a year’s salary that Axel was as taken with her as he was.
But it couldn’t happen. Maddie was in danger, and it was their job to protect her. If they let their guard down and started thinking with their pricks it would be a recipe for disaster.
Maddie stood up, placed both hands on the small of her back and leaned back to straighten out the kinks that had presumably accumulated there. Unfortunately the gesture also pushed her tits out like a written invitation. Riley somehow managed to suppress a groan. Axel was less successful and a strangled oath slipped past his guard. Both men looked away from her, making sure she didn’t get to see the bulges in their pants. This was going to be one hell of a tough assignment.
“You look beat, Maddie,” he said when he was in control of himself again. “It’s getting late. Why not call it a day and get some sleep?”
“Yes, perhaps I will. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“You can now,” Axel said. “We’ll carry on for a bit, make sure the place is secure and act as your guardian angels. You don’t have to worry about anything except catching up with your beauty sleep.”
She hesitated. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Axel said, winking at her. “Beauty sleep won’t do anything for either of us.”
“Yes, but—”
“Protecting you is partly what we’re here to do, Maddie,” Riley said. “Go on up. Shout if you need us. Otherwise we’ll see you in the morning.”
“All right then.” She smiled at each of them. “Thanks. I might just take a nice soak in the bath and then turn in. Good night.”
“Night,” they replied in unison.
They watched the sway of her hips and the movement of her tight ass as she left the room and slowly climbed the stairs. When they were sure she was out of earshot, Axel expelled a deep sigh.
“Shit,” he said, thumping his thigh with a clenched fist.
Riley didn’t need to ask what he meant. “Yeah, that about covers it.”
“How the fuck are we supposed to remain professional?”
“Wish I knew.” Riley shook her head. “I don’t mind admitting that she’s gotten to me. There’s something about her. I don’t know what it is. We’ve met enough hot babes in our time, but this one’s different.”
Axel shot him a look. “Welcome back to the land of the living, buddy.”
Is that what was happening to him? Had Riley finally gotten over his disappointment?
“Not sure it’s come to that.”
“Well, all I know is that Maddie’s something else and it’s gonna be tough keeping our minds on business when she’s around.” He paused. “You know, I’m not sure she’s actually aware that she oozes sensuality. It kinda gives a guy ideas.”
Riley rolled his eyes. “A woman only has to have a pulse to give you ideas.”
“Still, someone ought to point it out to her. Seems only right.”
“She doesn’t seem to have a man in New York.”
“That’s real strange. Wonder if she’s been hurt?”
“Did you notice that she said nothing at all about her personal life? I tried to ask her several times but she deflected my questions.”
“I noticed.” Axel fell into a chair and gazed off into the distance. “Wonder what she’s not telling us.”
“Well, I suppose as long as it has nothing to do with her dad, we have no right to pry.”
“Yeah, she’s the client, and we’re supposed to be looking out for her, not devising ways to jump her bones.”
“Who’s doing that?”
“Tell me you haven’t thought about it, Mr. Cool.” When Riley looked away and made no reply, Axel flashed a smug grin. “Thought so.”
Riley shook his head. “It ain’t gonna happen, Axel. Not until we’ve found out what her daddy was hiding.”
“Shit, don’t you ever let your guard down?”
Riley grimaced. “Someone has to be the grown-up in this relationship.”
“Fuck you!”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I ain’t that desperate yet.”
Axel chuckled. “It’ll be interesting to hear if Raoul gets any reaction to running that car’s plates.”
Riley stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “We’ll know soon enough.”
“So, big thinker, initial ideas?”
“It ain’t rocket science. Major McGuire discovered something he wasn’t supposed to find and it cost him his life.”
“Yeah, I got that part. The question remains, what?”
“Exactly. Unless we can get a handle on what he was working on, we’re shooting in the dark.”
“The GIS won’t give us the time of day.” Axel grimaced. “They’re either completely out the loop or behind what happened to the major.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
“What now then?” Axel asked.
“We wait and see if anyone comes calling,” Riley replied. “I’m pretty sure no one was watching the house when we arrived, our truck’s out of sight, so—”
“So, whoever planted those bugs will want to know why they’re no longer working.”
“Exactly.”
“Then perhaps I shouldn’t have frightened the guy in the Jeep off. They’ll know now that Maddie’s got help.”
“I think that’ll make them even more determined. Someone wants what the major has awful bad, and there isn’t much they won’t do to obtain it.”
“You think they’ll up their game?”
“I think they’ll do whatever it takes.” Riley flexed his jaw. “We need to take turns keeping watch tonight, buddy. I’ve got a feeling we’ll have visitors sometime soon. You get your head down first and take over from me in three hours.”
Axel stood up. “You got it.”
Chapter Five
Maddie poured a generous measure of fragrant oil into her steaming bath water and sank into it with a grateful sigh. She closed her eyes, feeling the tension drain out of her along with her aches and pains. The relief of troubles shared was palpable.
She’d never really believed that her father had been careless enough to be hit by a speeding car right outside his own house. No one drove too fast in this residential area. If they did there would have been witnesses because it supposedly took place in broad daylight, but no one saw a thing and the car was never found.
The medical examiner confirmed that her father’s injuries were consistent with being hit by a car, but that didn’t mean anything. To Maddie’s way of thinking, the absence of skid marks and witnesses did. The local police had treated the incident as an unfortunate accident. They seemed reluctant to entertain Maddie’s suggestion that her father had been run down elsewh
ere and then dumped like a sack of potatoes outside his own house. Since she had no plausible explanation as to why it might have happened that way, she’d been forced to let the matter drop.
Everyone spouted the usual platitudes…it was a tragedy…so sad…her father was too young…blah, blah. Maddie had gotten through it all by taking one day at a time. The military listened to her suspicions with polite attentiveness but, to the best of her knowledge, did nothing about them. Maddie came to the conclusion that there was little one woman could do against a solid wall of indifference and would probably have left it at that and returned to her life in New York had it not been for the guy who followed her. And she knew he was following her because he wasn’t that good at it. Or perhaps he wanted to intimidate her into leaving.
Big mistake!
If he’d been more patient she’d have been gone by now. Now that he’d confirmed her suspicions, she wasn’t going anywhere.
Even so, she was both frightened and unsure how to fight back against her faceless pursuers. Calling Raoul had been an act of sheer desperation. If they could kill someone of her father’s standing, how difficult would it be for them to arrange another accident for her? Riley and Axel seemed happy to fight fire with fire and had cheerfully upped the stakes. They seemed self-assured, capable, and most importantly, they’d believed her even before they found the bugs that confirmed her suspicions. That meant a lot to her.
Maddie added more hot water to her now-tepid bath, somnolent but lacking the energy to climb out the tub and dry herself off. Hardly surprisingly, her body had come to life since meeting the guys. All the men she met in New York appeared to be either married, gay, or in therapy. It hadn’t seemed to matter. Maddie could live without the complication of having a significant other in her life, especially after her last disastrous attempt at happy ever after.
Riley and Axel’s arrival was forcing her to rethink that strategy. Only problem was, they didn’t seem to be interested in her in that way. They were caring, polite, and flirtatious but seemed to go out of their way to avoid touching her and hadn’t crossed the line that transcended the professional.
“Just as well,” Maddie said as she pulled the plug, stood up, and reached for a towel.
She dried herself quickly, brushed her teeth, and then slid naked between crisp cotton sheets. Focusing her thoughts on the two hot saviors now sharing this house with her definitely wouldn’t help her get to sleep, but her best efforts to redirect her train of thought seemed doomed to failure. She playfully tweaked a solid nipple as thoughts of Riley filtered through her brain. She wondered how much better it would feel if it were his strong fingers doing the tweaking. He’d heaved a few boxes around as they filled them with stuff for the recycling, and she hadn’t been able to avoid noticing the way his muscles bulged and flexed, the way the fabric of his T-shirt strained across his broad chest when he lifted the heavy loads like they weighed nothing at all.
Shit, now she was really awake, in all senses of the word. Moisture trickled between her legs and she was sorely tempted to give herself an orgasm. Then perhaps she’d be able to sleep. Her fingers hovered over her throbbing clit, but she withdrew them at the last minute. She absolutely didn’t need to fall back on self-induced sex. She wasn’t that desperate and could live without it.
She absolutely could!
Maddie ignored her needs, thumped her pillows into a more comfortable nest, and applied her mind to possible reasons for her father’s murder—if that’s what it had actually been. The guys seemed convinced that something in this house would point them in the right direction and that she would know where to look. As theories went it had merit, but unfortunately she didn’t have a clue where to start the search. She also didn’t want to disappoint her pro-bono helpers. Proving to them that she could at least think coherently was important.
Maddie drifted in and out of sleep, telling herself not to think about it. Then perhaps it would come to her.
There had to be something.
There was something. Something she’d been avoiding because her emotions were still too raw for her to cope with it. She’d managed to convince herself that her father would never pollute the bedroom he’d shared with Maddie’s mother for so many years with anything of dubious provenance. In actual fact, the real reason it was off-limits was because she didn’t want to intrude on their personal space. In her heart of hearts Maddie had probably always known that the clue, if it existed, was more likely to be in there than anywhere else.
Maddie had only been in her parents’ room briefly since her father’s death. It was so achingly familiar and yet so empty without either of them in it that she’d run out again without touching a thing. She was aware that one walk-in closet was still filled with her mother’s clothes, everything just the way she’d left it. It was like a shrine, and it would be sacrilege to rummage through it, especially when she had no idea what she was actually looking for.
Damn it, Maddie was bone weary, but now the idea of searching that room had taken root she was unable to sleep. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the clue would be hidden in there somewhere. The guys would probably come to that conclusion pretty soon as well, if they hadn’t already, and she didn’t want them to be the ones who rummaged through her parents’ personal space.
“No time like the present,” she muttered, pushing back the covers.
Maddie pulled an oversized T-shirt over her nakedness and crept down the stairs as quietly as she could, treading on the edges of the steps to avoid the parts that creaked. Her parents’ room was on the ground floor, and she didn’t want Riley or Axel to know she was in there. They might offer to help or try sending her back to bed. Neither prospect was acceptable. The task she’d set herself, too long neglected, needed to be carried out in solitude.
She could hear sounds coming from her father’s study. One or both of the guys were still going through his papers. Good, with a bit of luck the noise they were making would blanket any sounds she herself might make. She took a deep breath, opened the door to her parents’ room, and switched on a low lamp. The familiar aroma of her father’s aftershave greeted her, bringing memories flooding back, making her gasp. It was a smell she recognized from her childhood, since Dad had never changed his brand. Knowing she’d never smell it on him again somehow made his death more final than having watched his coffin being lowered into the ground.
Impatiently she brushed tears away from her eyes. This wasn’t an auspicious start. Telling herself to get a grip, she focused on where to start her search. Her mother’s dressing room seemed like as good a place as any, so she opened the door and flipped on the light. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed, but there was no dust, either. Presumably Dad’s cleaning lady had been charged with keeping the shrine in good shape.
Maddie inhaled deeply as a tingle of awareness rippled down her spine, telling her there was definitely something here. All her mother’s shoes were stacked neatly in their original boxes. Her mother had a huge collection, shoes having been her weakness. It became a bit of a family joke, her father often accusing her of having a foot fetish. Smiling through her drying tears, Maddie took a deep breath and opened the first box.
* * * *
Riley heard her coming down the stairs. It had to be her. The tread was too light for it to be Axel. He assumed she couldn’t sleep and waited for her to join him in the study. When she didn’t, he knew she’d be rooting through her parents’ room. Riley had wanted to suggest it earlier but sensed she was still too emotionally fragile to handle something so intimate. Going through her dad’s papers was one thing—his clothing and personal affects something altogether different.
Well, it seemed she was made of stronger stuff than Riley had realized. The urge to go and join her was strong, but Riley knew she needed space and left her to it. He returned his attention to the mind-numbingly boring stuff he was methodically going through, more convinced than ever that whatever her father had hidden—if he�
�d hidden anything—wouldn’t be found in here. Needles and haystacks came to mind. Axel was pretty good with computers but had found nothing suspicious on her father’s machine. Besides, Maddie said he only understood the basics and would never know how to hide stuff securely online. He probably knew it wasn’t safe, either. Competent teenagers could, it seemed, hack into just about anything they set their minds to—including the Pentagon.
Maddie remained in her parents’ room for more than half an hour. Riley heard nothing to concern him, either from that direction or from would-be intruders. The windows were too secure to be forced, and he’d shot the bolts across on the front and back doors, making covert intrusion impossible. If anyone came calling, Riley would hear them long before they got inside.
He jerked upright, alerted by a noise that had nothing to do with intruders. It was a muffled sound coming from inside the house. Motionless, Riley strained his ears, aware now that it was coming from the master bedroom. With a justifiable excuse to check up on Maddie he strode toward the room, pushed the door open, and stopped dead on the threshold. There was just one soft light burning. Maddie, in a transparent T-shirt, was immediately in front of it, huddled in a tight ball on the bed. Surrounded by open shoe boxes, she was crying into the pillows fit to break her heart.
“Shit!” he muttered almost inaudibly.
Riley knew he ought to remain professional and leave her be. She wouldn’t thank him for imposing on her grief, but something stronger than his own will deprived him of the ability to behave sensibly, so leaving simply wasn’t an option. In two strides he was at her side, pulling her into his arms so she could sob against his shoulder. She blinked when she realized he was there, and then cried harder than ever, her tears soaking through his T-shirt and dampening his skin. Riley stroked her hair and simply let her cry. He didn’t know what else to do.
“Sorry,” she said eventually, sniffing.
“It’s okay. I’m betting it’s the first time you’ve had a good cry.”