“You were fine with this plan a few hours ago,” James said.
“Yeah, that was before I saw the lust in your eyes. Paris has changed you, whether you want to admit it or not. I don’t know what you’re looking for with her, or even if you know, but the only thing that’s going to heal what happened is time. You can’t fill the void of losing your—“
“I didn’t lose anything,” James said. “I killed him.”
“Stop,” Cami said, shaking her head gently. “It was an accident, James. Don’t say it like that.”
“I say it like that because it’s the truth—accident or not, he’s dead.”
“I just wish you would talk to us,” Deacon said. “I wish I knew what was going on inside your head.”
“How much talking did you do after Nicole’s death?” James asked. He didn’t want to bring up Nicole, but there was no better way to make the point.
Deacon looked away, grinding his teeth, but after a few seconds he sighed in resignation. “Okay,” Deacon said, turning over his empty hands in a gesture indicating he was giving up.
Deacon hadn’t wanted to talk about Nicole, and even now rarely did, and James didn’t want to talk about Paris.
“Look,” Cami said, “she’s our client now and we’re going to protect her as we do any other client. And seeing as this conversation is going nowhere, I’m going to bed because I’ve got to be back at Mak’s early.” She put her hands flat on the table, looked at each of them, and when there were no objections she stood up and left.
“I’m going, too,” Deacon said, briefly nodding goodbye to James and Samuel.
When the door closed, James sighed and looked at Samuel.
“They’re concerned. And so am I,” Samuel said.
“Do you think we’re making a mistake taking her on as a client?” James asked.
“Regarding your personal feelings, yes, I do—I agree with Deacon. But from a security angle, no, because I didn’t like her security from the start. I’m not sure how much danger she’s actually in, though. I do think that they’re trying to scare her more than anything.”
“Deacon is really upset by this,” James said.
“Well, he has a right to be. You should not get involved with her, and you know it—especially while you’re being hunted by Escanta,” Samuel said. “And Deacon never dealt with Nicole’s death, and I think this is bringing up all those feelings again. It’s probably going to force him to deal with the demons he’s buried for so long, and it’s probably going to get uglier before it gets better. He’s resisting, and he’s going to push back at you because he so desperately doesn’t want to deal with the pain that burdens him. Be patient with him, James.”
“I will,” James said thoughtfully.
When James had found Deacon in that warehouse, he’d taken almost a year to physically recover from his injuries, even with intensive rehabilitation. But he’d never recovered emotionally—they had beaten his soul, searing it to its core.
They were a quiet for a few seconds.
“Can you please display Mak’s surveillance on the screens?” James asked.
Samuel pressed a couple buttons and then the wall transformed into a series of images, the result of their install. All of the lights were off in her apartment and he could see her small body tucked up in bed.
James assessed the surveillance, checking for any blind spots. “Good,” he said, and Samuel turned it off.
“So, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I might as well now,” Samuel said. “You know how I love a mystery, so I’ve been doing a little digging around on Mak’s husband. He was quite the ambitious young man. Started his first company at seventeen, bankrolled by investors. By the time he was nineteen he was a multi-millionaire—without including the money in the offshore accounts. But that’s not the interesting part—this is: Around when he turned eighteen, he began traveling—a lot. Mostly in Europe. I’ve put together a file on his whereabouts over this time, up until the point he went missing.
“He booked the travel through his business, but I’m finding it hard to track any movement from the time he landed on those trips. I’ve got records of his plane tickets, but then nothing—I can’t find any hotel bookings, no car-hire records. It’s like he ceased to exist when he landed. Interesting, don’t you think?” Samuel looked proud, and intrigued.
“Very,” James agreed. “What are the chances that someone like you could delete that kind of information?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think once he landed he became someone else—used an alias. Or several.”
“And this guy had no military training, right? No agency, no Special Forces?” James asked.
“Nope. So if he did assume an alias, he had help,” Samuel said.
“So who was helping him?”
“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?”
“Do you think anything about this connects with Mak’s case?” James asked.
Samuel sighed. “I really don’t. He disappeared thirteen years ago, so if whoever killed him off wanted something, they would’ve come for her. It’s not like she’s been hiding—she has stayed in Manhattan the entire time and taken on increasingly higher profile cases. If they haven’t come for her before, we’d say at this point she’s statistically safe, right?”
“Right,” James said. “But you know what I think of ‘statistically safe.’ I agree, though, it just doesn’t make sense, particularly given that she’s never touched that money.”
Samuel yawned. “I’m not looking into it because I’m concerned from a security angle, I just want to know what happened to him.”
“I hate to admit it, but I do, too. Keep looking into it when you have spare time,” James told him, smiling now. Samuel never had spare time, but somehow he managed to squeeze in these little mysteries—they were Samuel’s version of a hobby.
“Can you please send me all of the intelligence for Mak’s case, and her husband’s? I want to look over it myself,” James said.
“I’ll send it to you in the morning. You need to sleep, James. You’ve had a busy few weeks, and Cami said you barely slept on the flight home. If you want to help this woman, the best thing you can do is be alert and ready when she is awake and moving about. You’re no good to her if you’re tired and making mistakes. Review it tomorrow and we’ll catch up again in the evening.”
“Okay, dad,” James joked. Samuel was sometimes more like a father than a friend, and sometimes he needed that.
*
Samuel delivered, and James spent the entire next day reviewing the intelligence they’d gathered on Mak and her missing husband. His disappearance was interesting, absolutely, but nothing outwardly concerning.
And since his disappearance, Mak had lived an ordinary, albeit successful life. The notes had only started when she was deep into this case, and the mob certainly weren’t against intimidating people—it was a daily habit for them. But something didn’t sit well with James, an ominous sense of something not quite right but not tangible either. He’d had these feelings before, and he’d usually been right. He hoped he was wrong on this occasion.
But if he was wrong, then something else occurred to him. The case would be over soon, a few weeks tops, perhaps. And then she’d probably have no need for his company’s services, or at the very most she’d have minimum security like Jayce—security he wasn’t involved in at all. She might come back to them, when she took another high-profile case, and James thought perhaps the universe was going to bring her in and out of his life, dangling her in front of him. Maybe this sense of longing for something he couldn’t have was his punishment for all of the bad things he’d done in his life.
The door to his office swung open and Deacon walked in.
“You’re still here,” Deacon said, sitting down opposite James.
“Looking over client reports,” James said, explaining why he was still in his office at midnight on a Friday night.
“
Looking over Mak Ashwood’s file?” Deacon rocked the chair back so that it balanced on its two hind legs.
“Yes,” James said. He didn’t want to lie to Deacon—it wouldn’t help the situation.
“Well, we might as well talk about the case, seeing as we’re handling it now,” Deacon said.
“After reviewing the intelligence, I’m not sure how much of a case there is.”
Deacon paused. “You said you thought this was going to get complicated…”
“Yeah,” James said. “The mob is unpredictable, so who knows what they have planned, but as long as we protect her properly she should be fine. I thought the circumstances around her husband going missing were weird, but after looking at the additional details Samuel’s found…I think he was doing some dirty business and got in over his head. It happens all the time.”
Deacon’s eyes narrowed. “So why do you have that look on your face?”
“I’ve just got a bad feeling about those notes, the scrolls, but I don’t know why. I can’t find anything to justify my anxiety.”
Deacon sighed, letting the chair float down on all fours. “I don’t want to suggest this, because I want you to forget all about her, but maybe we should go and do some surveillance tonight? Cami checked in, advising she was taking her to a cocktail bar downtown. We’ll go and have a look…It might put your mind at ease?”
James tapped his finger on his chin.
“Look, I’d suggest it’s better if I do it on my own,” Deacon said, “but I know you better than that, and how you like to double-check things, so let’s just go and get it over with.”
James considered it. They had nothing else pressing to do, and it would put his mind at ease.
“Okay, let’s do it,” James said, pushing his chair back.
The men checked in with Samuel and then went down to the parking lot. Deacon drove and although the tension between them was unresolved, it felt less strangling when they worked together.
Deacon had never been under James’ command in either Delta Force or in the agency—Deacon had been a Ranger. But they’d worked together on a joint mission, the last mission either of them went on—the mission that changed everything. When you see the things they had, it bonded you in a way that could not be broken. Blistering tragedy could tie souls together for eternity.
“How are Cami and Mak getting along?” James asked.
“Good, I think. Cami hasn’t said anything, and Mak seems comfortable.” Deacon’s eyes left the road only to check the mirrors.
“Good,” James said. He wanted Cami partnered with Mak because she was their best, besides himself or Deacon.
“You need to be very careful around her,” Deacon said. “And I’m not saying that because of what you so obviously feel for her. But she asks questions, a lot of them, and then you can almost see her turning the information over in her mind. She’s not unlike us in that she’s been trained to question everything—but she does it the right way, the legal way. Behind that pretty, innocent face of hers, that mind is working and if you’re not careful she’ll piece together much more than you want her to.”
“I know,” James said. Sometimes it was the way she looked at him after he answered one of her many questions—she paused, holding his gaze, tethering his mind like she was drawing further data from it. It was dangerous.
They arrived at the bar and Deacon pulled up around the corner.
“What’s the plan?” James said, letting Deacon call the shots tonight.
“Tom?” Deacon said.
“Copy,” Tom said, his voice coming through their earwigs. Tom was another Thomas Security bodyguard and he was inside the bar as Cami’s backup.
“We’re coming in to do some surveillance. Where is the client situated?” Deacon asked.
“Two o’clock from the entry. High table, and Cami is sitting with them. All clear, you should be able to enter and break up easily, since the bar is full,” Tom said.
“Copy.”
James leaned forward to tuck his weapon into the back of his jeans. It was no accident that Mak was at this bar—Thomas Security had arrangements with several bars, and this was one of them. It meant that they could bring weapons in, without questions being asked.
James followed behind Deacon as he walked past the queue and up to the bouncer. He gave the code name ‘Vester’, and the bouncer bowed his head slightly, opening the door for them. Inside, they immediately split up. James went to the back of the bar, farther away from Mak, and let Deacon take the post nearest to her. It was another way of trying to stay in the background of this case.
James blended into the crowd, like a lion in long grass. And he was every bit as much a predator.
James couldn’t see Deacon, but he didn’t need to—they were constantly connected via their earwigs. He could see Mak, though, and his breath halted. She was sitting on a stool, talking to the woman he assumed to be the friend she’d arranged to meet. His eyes traveled down her spine—the deep, backless ‘V’ of her dress revealing her soft, taut skin. And she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I forgot how cool this bar is,” Deacon said. “We should come here for drinks.”
Deacon obviously wasn’t having the same thoughts James was, which was a good thing.
“We don’t drink,” James said, turning his head as he spoke, hiding his moving lips from anyone who might be watching.
“Yeah. Perhaps in our next life we’ll come back as raging party animals,” Deacon joked.
In another life they could be and have so many things, including a woman to love. In an attempt to keep his eyes off of her almost naked back, James kept an eye on his watch, and the bar patrons, but it was looking to be a boring night at La Casa—just the way he liked it.
“Move to nine o’clock.”
Deacon’s command captured his full attention. Fast enough to get into position, but slow enough not to cause attention, James moved to nine o’clock.
“Black shirt, Caucasian, green eyes.”
“I see him,” James said. He stepped to the side, pretending to let someone through, but really he was on autopilot, blending-in mode. He did it so well he barely had to think about it, and that was a good thing because right now his focus was on the man Deacon had identified. The man who was watching Mak. He was good, he did it subtly, but he wasn’t good enough.
“I’m running it.” Samuel’s voice came through his earwig and James knew Samuel was running the man’s face, picked up by one of the hidden cameras on their shirts, through their facial recognition software.
Minutes passed, and the man continued to casually watch her. And Cami. He was with a group of friends, but James knew he’d brought them along as a façade. He was the only one watching her.
“Ooh…”
“Samuel,” James said, warning him to finish that sentence.
“You’re not going to believe this. His name is Adam Avex, a former SAS.” SAS was Special Air Services, a Special Forces unit of the British Army. “But,” Samuel continued, “he died. Two years ago.”
“What the fuck?” Deacon swore.
“I’ve run it twice. I’m not wrong,” Samuel said. Samuel was rarely wrong, and certainly not about something like this. He didn’t give information like that lightly.
What was a former SAS guy watching her for?
“Cause of death?” James asked.
“Killed in combat.”
The earwig went silent. James imagined Samuel in his office madly running searches, looking for more information. For James and Deacon, they knew what to do: watch, and don’t make a move unless he did. They needed as much time as possible to work out what was going on.
Mak covered her mouth as she yawned wide. She must be exhausted, James thought. She’d had a long week in court, not to mention the upheaval they’d created.
He wanted to take her home and tuck her up in bed—after he’d peeled her dress off her. You’re not the guy for her, the voice inside his head reminded him.
James’ hand went to his weapon before he had a chance to think about it. His hands were itching to draw it but he held back. Dead-boy Adam had his hand on Mak’s back and was asking if she had a lighter—James could tell by the action he made with his hands—the rolling of his thumb over an imaginary spark-wheel.
James wanted to walk over there but he had a good idea what Adam was doing, and he wouldn’t play into the trap.
“Hold,” James instructed his team. He was failing to let Deacon call the shots, but he no longer cared.
Cami stood up, picking up her bag that she’d conveniently hung over the back of Mak’s chair, and pretended to search through her bag. She was aware of the entire situation, via her earwig, and in her faux attempt to find him a lighter he’d had to take a step back and she’d effectively blocked Mak’s body.
Good girl.
Cami put on a good show, throwing a flirty laugh as she came up empty-handed. Adam sat back down, as did Cami, but Adam’s eyes were moving like rovers.
“He’s assessing her security,” James said. He knew the move, because he’d used it a hundred times. Create a scare, not enough to cause a scene, but enough to capture someone’s attention. If Cami hadn’t been right next to her, Tom would’ve moved in and revealed himself.
For another forty-five minutes James watched on silently until Adam and his group stood up and left the bar.
Again James and Deacon didn’t need to discuss the plan: follow him. The men were standing outside when the Thomas brothers exited and walked casually by them to Deacon’s car. James sat in the front passenger seat with his gun in his hand. They were waiting for the cue from Samuel, who would be watching them on CCTV.
“This is bad,” Deacon whispered, as if saying the words too loudly would make it all the more real.
“Go,” Samuel said and Deacon pulled out and turned left at the corner.
ESCANTA: A James Thomas Novel (The James Thomas Series Book 1) Page 10