“Actually…” I shot him a look.
He arched his brows and then a grin broke out over his face. “Well, hell, man. You went and took the fall, didn’t you?”
I shoved him lightly but went back to staring at O.
If James hadn’t approached us at that moment, I might have embarrassed myself, because she really did look amazing in that dress.
“Adam.”
I nodded at him, trying to brush off the concern I felt. He looked even more tired, grayer, older now than he did two days ago. He told O he’d start coming into the office only two days a week now, but I wondered how long that would last.
“Hey.” I nodded at him before gesturing to Hawk and making the introductions. It didn’t take long before Hawk segued into a discussion about some of the newer models Clarion had on the market.
James looked like he’d found his new best friend.
“It’s nice to see you two bonding,” I said, amused.
They ignored me, and I shook my head, wandering off.
O had disappeared a few minutes ago. I’d seen the direction she’d gone and thought I’d try to find her. Just for a few minutes in private. We had a date for tomorrow, a real date, our first one.
But if I didn’t get another taste of that mouth…
She’d been moving toward the hedge maze located in the main grounds, so that was my direction as well. As I neared the entrance to the maze, I looked for the security guard who was supposed to be standing at this location.
He wasn’t there.
Slowing my pace, I looked around. An alarm began to whisper in my head. It wasn’t a loud one. Too many things that were loud ended up with the bad side effect of death and destruction.
There should be several guards around the grounds. I’d met the entire team and knew that Sullivan was supposed to be here. He was a nice guy, older, former army. A cop who picked up extra money on weekends doing security detail. The decent, responsible sort. Not somebody who’d walk off because he had to take a piss less than an hour into the event.
Hearing footsteps behind me, I ducked into the maze and twisted around the very first turn. I don’t know what propelled me to do that. A moment later, a foot scuffed up against the stone where Sullivan should have been.
“All is secure on this end, over.”
Secure…over.
Somebody was sending out a status update.
There was a pause, followed by, “No sir. Nobody saw – I’m absolutely positive. Yes, he’s neutralized. Over.”
Neutralized?
Angling my head around, I followed the sound of the voice, pinpointing the speaker’s location better. I caught a glimpse of him. He was close to the entrance, taking the place of the hired guard. He was wearing a tactical uniform.
Had Sullivan been neutralized?
I set my jaw as more voices and noise began to draw closer. I needed to be somewhere else. Actually, I needed to know what the fuck was going on, but I wasn’t going to get that information getting caught.
The hedge had any number of dips and natural camouflage, and I took advantage of every bit of it as I eased away from as much of the noise as I could while still staying close to the first person I’d heard speaking.
The man clearly didn’t do stealth all that much.
He wore too much deodorant for it. He still smelled like body odor and sweat, thickly veiled under a heavy dousing of Axe body spray.
He continued to have a one-way conversation, and I would have killed to have access to some of my old equipment. Since that wasn’t going to happen…
He signed off on the call, and I came out behind him, wrapping a forearm around his neck, jerking upward.
He was big, strong, and fast.
But he wasn’t prepared to deal with somebody like me.
I had him neutralized in seconds and dragged him into the hedge, shoving him not too gently into the greenery after I took a minute to strip off anything useful to cuff his hands behind his back. He had a roll of duct tape fastened to a hoop on his tactical vest. I cut a piece off, slapping it over his mouth as I listened.
More voices.
And there was one coming over the phone.
Shoving his Bluetooth into my ear, I melted back into the shadows just as somebody came around the corner, his weapon up and ready, looking around.
Over the Bluetooth, I heard an insistent voice.
“Is the entrance secure? She’s coming. We don’t have time for fuck-ups!”
She…
Who?
But my gut was already screaming.
“Tiger One, report.”
I had a feeling Tiger One was snoozing away in dreamland in the hedge behind me. I kept the silenced Beretta ready as I ducked into what turned out to be a dead end – but that was fine. I needed back-up.
I pulled out my phone and used my body to hide the screen as I dimmed the screen down to nothing. I sent a quick text to Hawk.
His response was fast.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
I didn’t bother responding, just punched in what facts I had. They were pitifully few.
His next response was a lot more in line with what I needed.
Son of a bitch. You find trouble everywhere. On my way.
Not bothering to reply, I silenced the phone and shoved it into my back pocket. Then I cleared the narrow path that had led me to the dead end.
Then I focused on another, and another, following the sound of the voices coming from somewhere inside the maze.
Finally, they became clearer, and worse, vaguely familiar.
“This isn’t right…not the way…” a man was saying, his nasally tone coming in harsh whispers.
“We’ve already agreed,” a female voice hissed. “You’re in this as much as I am.”
They argued back and forth, their voices dipping too low for me to hear them at times. Finally, the man cursed and nearly yelled, “We’ll find another way to get it done.”
I placed him.
The weasel.
Russel Braxton – the board member who’d been so pissed off earlier in the week when James had announced the changes coming down the pipeline for Clarion.
And the woman…I almost had her voice placed.
But then another voice rang out from the entrance. “Okay, Russel. Where are you?”
My skin went icy, dread crawling up my spine.
O.
I started moving quicker, faster, moving to intersect.
“Call him,” the woman hissed.
My phone vibrated a second later, but I ignored it as I peered through the gap in the hedges, staring in. I could just barely make out O, that murder red dress. The others, though…I couldn’t see them for shit. Didn’t know what weapons they possessed or who else they had with them.
My phone vibrated again.
“He’s not answering,” Russel said, his voice panicked. “Look, Cherise, let’s–”
The woman interrupted him, her voice coming out too loud and fast. “Olivia. Hello, we’ve been…”
Cherise.
Olivia.
“Okay, big guy…I think you’ve heard enough,” a calm voice said, right before I felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of my skull.
Continues in SEALionaire Book 3. Turn the page to keep reading.
SEALionaire Book 3
Chapter One
Olivia
Seeing Cherise and Russel Harris together didn’t exactly do wonderful things for my mood or my sanity, but I didn’t have time to deal with their bullshit tonight. James needed me.
He was getting tired too easily these days.
An ache tried to settle in my throat, but I shoved it aside. I could cry and get maudlin and sad later, when I wasn’t dealing with a cutthroat bitch and her flying monkey.
Or witch…
I smirked, amusing myself as I pictured Cherise a lovely shade of green.
The smile faded, and fast, as she lifted a hand from her si
de.
“It’s time to be done with you, darling,” she said.
I recognized the gun. It was a Clarion CR12, similar to the Glock 19. It was too big for her hand, but she didn’t seem fazed by that fact.
“You know, if you want to get more involved in the tactical side of Clarion Arms, I can help. That pistol is too big for you.” I kept my voice neutral as I slowly lifted my eyes to hers. “We have smaller handguns. You even talked about how cute they were at the board meeting last year, remember?”
“Yes.” She flashed a toothy smile at me. “And you shot down the idea of creating a designer line.”
“Weapons aren’t toys,” I said flatly. “They don’t need to look like them.”
She waved what certainly wasn’t a toy at me. “Oh, never mind that. That’s far from my concern now, but I’ll get back to that idea sooner or later…once I’m in control.”
“You?” I fought the urge to laugh. “James would sooner leave Clarion in the hands of a gorilla than you. The gorilla has more sense.”
Tiny lines fanned out from her eyes, but the anger I’d hoped to incite didn’t rouse. Damn it. Sweat beaded along the back of my neck, slid down the inside of my dress.
“Do shut up, Olivia. You’ve been a pain in the ass since day one.”
“The feeling is mutual.” I heard noises and was vaguely aware that there were others in the small clearing near the center of the maze. But I didn’t dare look away from her – or the Clarion CR12. “You do realize that I’m not the real problem, right? James has named his son as the one who’ll take over, and the cops will look long and hard at everybody on the board if something happens to him.”
“Oh, something will.” She laughed brightly. “He’s going to jail for killing you, Olivia. He’s already gotten himself into so much trouble. That was considerate of him to sow the seeds there.”
“Killing…” I licked my lips, fought to keep my teeth from chattering. “You plan on killing me and framing him?”
The gun didn’t so much as tremble. “You are quite bright. We just need him to get here.”
“You’re insane. And you’re an idiot.” Terror had my heart pounding like a mad thing, but I struggled to stay in control. I had to think. I didn’t believe for a second that what she was saying would work, but personally, I was fond of life and knew better than to rely on hope as a strategy.
“We have witnesses, darling.”
Off to the side, I heard a low grunt, a noise. Too low for them to hear. Cherise didn’t look away from my face, but she did speak to Russel. “Where is he? We need him here for this to work.”
“I’ve already tried calling him several times. I texted him and said it was urgent – an emergency,” Russel said, his voice a near whine.
“Go get him,” Cherise hissed. “You need this as much as I do, remember?”
As he backed away, I shot a look at his face, but he was too busy staring at his feet. I sucked in a breath, swinging my gaze back to Cherise. If I screamed, would anybody hear?
The party was loud, and the house was too far away.
“Hillsworth,” Cherise said softly just as a twig snapped beside me.
A shadow separated itself from the hedges and came to stand in front of me.
The man was big, so big he all but blotted out the carefully placed lights that dotted the hedge maze.
The sight of the gun in Cherise’s hand had scared me, yes. Terrified me, even.
But the sight of this man did more than terrify me. His eyes were dead. Cold and dead. A few seconds ago, I’d been methodically thinking about what I needed to do to survive – and I hadn’t really even doubted it. I mean, Cherise trying to kill me? She was malicious enough, I didn’t question that. But she was also afraid of spiders and mice and blood. An assistant had cut a finger once, and she’d all but passed out.
I could handle somebody who got weak-kneed at the sight of blood.
This man probably finger-painted with it.
Everything in me screamed to back up and run, but common sense told me to be smart. You didn’t run from predators.
So even when he took a step closer, I didn’t let myself back up. I slowed my breathing and paid attention to everything. Watched. Listened. His muscles tensed just a fraction of a second before he moved.
I dropped, but it was only barely in time.
Kicking my shoes off would have saved a few seconds, but I hadn’t exactly come back here expecting to have somebody point a gun at my face or send a goon after me. Fortunately, I’d grown up living a life that prepared me for a lot of things, and I knew how to use everything to my advantage. A split second after I dropped, the shoes were off. I grabbed one of them and flipped it in my palm. As he bent to grab me, I drove the heel into his calf. Most shoe heels would have broken. My shoes were custom made and not just for looks.
James hadn’t just hired me to be his problem solver.
The first time he’d taken me to London, I’d gone as his assistant, and we’d been jumped in the parking garage. The policeman had stated in very cute, very crisp British tones that if I ever wanted a job, to just look him up. The two men had been on the ground, one moaning, his knee busted. The other had been red-faced and still struggling to breathe after I all but crushed his larynx.
Of course, my official title said nothing about the fact that I often acted as a bodyguard. All the extra training paid off, for now at least. I hit him with enough force to hurt before slamming my fist into his knee.
It buckled, and he toppled, swearing furiously.
I was still alive.
That was a good thing.
And I didn’t know how long that good thing would last.
The big bastard had a weapon of his own, and I knew he’d be faster, smarter than Cherise. I hadn’t broken his knee. He was already upright, and now he was pissed.
Slowly backing away from him, I weighed my options.
“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” the big guy said.
Hillsworth. She’d called him Hillsworth.
“Oh, I’m going to make it plenty hard.” They had no idea how hard I planned on making things.
“Would you just get her and shut her up?” Cherise demanded, her voice a harsh whisper.
Russel was looking around awkwardly, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he looked guilty. Bastard. Son of a bitch. He should look guilty. He’d called me, told me to come here – set me up.
“It won’t work,” I said, lying through my teeth. “You need Adam here, right? Well, he headed out right as I was coming over here. Saw an old friend of his and they were going to go grab a drink or two. This…socializing thing isn’t his milieu.”
The man in front of me didn’t pay attention to a single word I said. Russel squawked though. “See? We need to just call this off. It won’t work. You heard her.”
“She’s lying,” Cherise said.
But I could feel her watching me, looking for some sign to assure herself that she was right. She wasn’t going to find one. I could lie far too well, even for my own comfort.
Lifting a shoulder, I said, “Apparently you didn’t see how uncomfortable he was. When he ran into his friend, he practically leaped at the chance to blow this joint.” For added effect, I muttered, “Asshole.”
That caught Cherise’s attention.
As I eased back a few more inches, Hillsworth took another step toward me. I was more than a little pleased to see he was limping.
“Hillsworth?” she asked, the question in her voice obvious.
“We’ll take her alive, wait for him. We can still make it work,” he said, a slow smile curling his lips. “I told you there might be a need to improvise. The price will go up.”
The dick was standing there talking about killing me the same way some people might discuss buying a car.
Swallowing, I backed up a bit more.
I was almost to the gap in the hedges. I knew this maze. I’d spent a lot of time in this garden.
I could run.
Almost there…
He lunged.
Chapter Two
Reaper
Disabling the prick who’d pulled a gun on me took a little longer than I would have liked.
It had only been a split second, but that split second was keeping me from O.
The thug lay on the ground, eyes blank, his face slack as he stared sightlessly off to the side. His neck was broken. Since he wouldn’t be needing the Glock 19 he’d been carrying, I helped myself to it.
Two guns. Nothing to put either one in, but that was the least of my problems.
A noise had me lifting the weapon I held in my right hand, a silenced Beretta.
“Dial it back,” Hawk whispered as he emerged from the night, his eyes narrowed to slits as he studied the dead body. “Passed one on my way in. Figured I’d go ahead and address the situation.”
I took that to mean he’d either knocked out or killed the son of a bitch.
Turning over the Glock, I updated him on what I knew, which was just a little above next to nothing.
He checked the weapon as I summarized the situation. Then we moved back to my previous location. I could still hear the murmured voices, and as we drew a little closer, I could see flashes of color through breaks in the hedge too. Not much. The red of O’s dress and something pale and glittery. Another woman. Cherise.
As I listened to them talk, my blood ran cold.
My muscles tensed, the urge to rush out there stronger than I liked.
Rushing into things wasn’t just an amateur’s mistake – it was an idiot’s. Maybe I’d done some idiotic things in my life, but I don’t consider myself an idiot as a whole. But it was hell, crouching there in the dark and listening as a cold, emotionless voice said, “We’ll take her alive, wait for him. We can still make it work. I told you there might be a need to improvise. The price will go up.”
You have no idea what the price is going to be, you miserable fuck.
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