Take a Risk (Risk #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  ‘It’s always been serious,’ she argued. ‘I don’t want you getting involved.’

  ‘You don’t trust me to solve this?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t trust you not to get hurt. If this guy has seen us together, has seen you, if that’s what has set off this frenzy – if that’s what it is – then he can identify you. I want you in hiding not trying to seek him out.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have told her,’ Ruger said.

  Colt left his seat, ignoring his brother, and came to her, removing her mug from her hands. ‘I’m not going into hiding. If you have a problem with what I’m doing then walk away from me. But you can’t stop me from pursuing this guy.’

  ‘Walk away?’ she said. ‘If I leave you, will you promise me not to look for him?’

  ‘I’m going to look for him no matter what you do. If he has a target on my back as well as yours then I deserve a chance to defend myself.’

  ‘So that’s what this is? You’re looking out for you?’

  ‘Look at it however you want. You can’t stop me from doing this,’ Colt said, walking away from her and snatching his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Ruger and I have to talk to someone, do you want me to take you back to your place, or should I leave you with Blaser?’

  ‘I don’t need a ride and I don’t need to be babysat,’ she said. ‘Let me grab my stuff from yours and I’ll make my own way home.’

  ‘You don’t have to go back there, if you don’t want to. I can—‘

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, approaching him, all the while Ruger remained at the table, sipping coffee and enjoying the show.

  ‘Out. And I’m giving you a ride home.’

  ‘I don’t want to go home. I want to go with you.’

  He laughed. ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘If you’re looking out for me then I should look out for you.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m taking Ruger? He’ll watch my back. You sit at home and I’ll come over later.’

  ‘Sit at home and wait for you to come over to my house for sex? Will you tell me what happened at this secret meeting?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I don’t think I believe you,’ she said. ‘I want to come.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t tell me that I can’t prevent you from doing this and then you prevent me, that’s unfair.’

  ‘Life is unfair,’ Colt said, his tension visibly rising.

  ‘Let her come, what harm can it do?’ Ruger said.

  ‘She’s the main target. If he’s following her—‘

  ‘Oh, so I’m a liability,’ Lyssa said. ‘You’d rather leave me somewhere alone like a sitting duck where the loon can take me out without any hindrance.’

  ‘You’ve got your pepper spray, don’t you? I’ll check out your house, then you lock all the doors and windows and don’t open the door to anyone until I get back.’

  ‘What if something happens to you and you don’t get back?’

  ‘I’ll send Blaser over.’

  ‘This is fun,’ Ruger laughed. ‘You two could keep going at it all day, both of you have an answer for everything. Look, either she comes and you get laid tonight, or she doesn’t and she gripes your ass about it for the rest of the month. She’s right that if she comes we can keep an eye on her.’

  ‘She has clients this afternoon,’ Colt said.

  ‘Which means she would have to answer the door,’ Ruger said, leaving the table to rinse out the coffee mugs. ‘Bring her this time, but Lys, we’re making an exception. If you get in the way then we’ll hole you up in an empty apartment and leave you there until this is over.’

  ‘Leave me there?’ Lyssa said. ‘What’s to stop me from leaving when I’m alone?’

  ‘The chain we’ll attach to your ankle,’ Ruger said and when his eyes met hers she saw they were blank, nothing of the usual laidback, fun-loving Ruger existed in that stare.

  ‘Ok,’ she nodded. ‘I would appreciate being a part of this as much as I can be. I’ll cancel this afternoon’s clients and you can let me come with you. I want to be a part of this because I want to help myself too, and the people I care about.’

  ‘This better not be more of your damn research,’ Colt muttered when she headed for the door.

  ‘Research on you,’ she said, stopping at his side. ‘You have to learn to trust me.’

  Without giving him a chance to respond to her words, she left the apartment and went back to Colt’s to collect her things and begin to call her clients. She didn’t want to slow the men down or get in their way, so she worked quickly, careful not to delay them.

  Nerves about what Colt had said began to emerge. She wasn’t scared of being hurt today, Colt would never let that happen. But the idea that she could be connected to Bobby’s death that he might have died because of her turned her stomach. She hoped that Colt was wrong and that it wasn’t true, but her sixth sense told her that Colt wasn’t a man who was often wrong.

  ‘This wasn’t exactly what I expected,’ she said when they pulled into a wide alleyway lined with service doors for the retail unit shop fronts on the other side of the building.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Ruger asked. ‘Guns and ammo?’

  ‘We have guns and ammo,’ Colt said.

  ‘We grew up with guns and ammo scattered on the kitchen table.’

  ‘Ok, I get it, you’re both macho men. What are we doing here?’

  ‘You wanted to come,’ Colt said. ‘Are you having second thoughts? Do you want to stay in the car?’

  ‘It took us almost an hour to get here. I’m not missing this chance to see what it is you do.’

  The men exchanged a look, then Colt turned to her in the backseat. ‘You think that what we do is in there?’

  She shrugged. ‘Seeing you in action might be arousing.’

  ‘Ha,’ Ruger burst out. ‘If you get turned on in there, honey, then there is something seriously wrong with you.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’ she asked.

  ‘Because he gets turned on in there,’ Colt said, unclicking his seatbelt and leaving the car.

  Now she was too intrigued not to follow. They’d parked at the side of the alley, so she had to shimmy all the way across the backseat to exit on the exposed side of the car. She did it so quickly that she was out of the car and at Colt’s side before Ruger was around the car.

  Taking Colt’s hand halted him from moving forward as he’d been about to do. Tilting his head, he examined the point of contact as though he didn’t understand it.

  ‘I’m not allowed to hold your hand?’ she asked, without releasing him, curious about why this was such an alien thing for him and speculative about what was going on in his mind, thus, what it said about his inner psyche.

  ‘You can hold my hand,’ Ruger said, offering it.

  ‘I’m just not used to doing business with a… partner.’

  ‘You do business with Ruger,’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t hold my hand,’ Colt replied.

  ‘As far as I’m aware he doesn’t suck your dick either,’ she said, with a triumphant smile. ‘Maybe when he does one he can do the other.’

  Ruger leaned into his brother’s ear from behind. ‘You’ll be waiting a long time for that, buddy boy. You can hold your own damn hand as far as I’m concerned.’ Slapping his brother’s back, Ruger then left the couple to head for one of the doorways on the other side of the alley.

  ‘If it’s about professionalism,’ she said, extracting her hand from his only to have him snatch it back.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You wanted us to be in this together.’

  ‘Come on,’ Ruger shouted, holding open the door. ‘You can do lovey later.’

  Crossing the alleyway, hand-in-hand, Ruger let them enter first, then came in at their back. There were metal shelving units lined vertically in front of them, they towered all the way to the ceiling and were jam-packed with all sorts of electronic equipme
nt.

  ‘Pinch!’ Ruger called from his place at the rear of their group.

  ‘Come on down!’ someone replied and they began to move through the columns of shelving.

  Computer monitors and hard-drives sat interspersed with laptops and webcams. Strange electronic boxes in all configurations lay between them with miles and miles of cabling in all widths and colours coiled around it all like snakes protecting the treasure.

  A tall guy, about the same height as Ruger, got up from a long work bench at the front of this space. A steel door was next to the workbench, but it was closed. Monitors lined the wall where he’d been working, they showed what had to be the front of shop from various angles, but there were half a dozen more that didn’t look like any retail space, except she had no time to figure out what they were for because the guy Ruger had referred to as “Pinch” passed them. She, Colt and Ruger followed him to a shelf further along, which held two long, rectangular black sports bags.

  ‘Everything you need,’ Pinch said, pulling the bags from the shelf and handing one each over to Ruger and Colt. Colt handed him an envelope.

  ‘You always deliver,’ Ruger said.

  ‘And you always pay,’ Pinch said, giving her a quick once over then leaving them to go back to his workbench.

  Her trio moved the length of the space again and then were back in the alleyway where the men put the bags in the trunk then got back into the car. Though she faltered, she clambered into the backseat and Ruger cranked the engine.

  ‘That’s it?’ she asked. ‘That’s the big, scary secret meeting that you were afraid to take me to?’

  ‘No one said it was big and scary,’ Colt said. Ruger took them out of the alley and back into the street to head for home.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to take me if all you were doing was picking that stuff up?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t know what we picked up,’ Ruger said. ‘Maybe we’re going to build a bomb, maybe you were just party to a crime.’

  Her mind didn’t sway towards the sinister when she realised that Ruger’s scenario hadn’t occurred to her. ‘If that’s the case, how do you know I won’t snitch to the police?’

  ‘If you did, we’d know,’ Ruger said and nodded at his brother. ‘He knows every corrupt cop there is. We have a great alibi too. We could off you and then claim the crazy stalker did it. So I feel pretty confident that you’ll keep quiet.’

  ‘No one is offing anyone,’ Colt said. Though he was irritated at his brother, his words were meant to soothe her, but Lyssa was fascinated.

  Taking hold of the two front seats, she pulled herself as far forward as she could go to peer at Ruger. ‘You’re an awful lot more than a pretty face, aren’t you, littlest Warner,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose I could tempt you onto my couch?’

  ‘He’s going nowhere near your couch,’ Colt said.

  ‘Everything would be completely confidential,’ she said to Ruger, paying Colt no heed. ‘You have seriously hidden depths.’

  ‘Much as that’s a great offer,’ Ruger said. ‘If we’re going to be sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner together I’d just as soon not have you know all of my innermost secrets.’

  ‘I’ll know Colt’s,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ruger said. ‘But you’ve already pointed out a great difference between your relationship with him and mine. So unless you’re willing to take our relationship up to the next level and offer the same perks to me—‘

  ‘Sex is a defence mechanism for you,’ she muttered, then turned to Colt. ‘Who was the last serious woman in his life?’

  ‘They broke up at the beginning of last year, a woman named Eva.’

  ‘Hey!’ Ruger chastised him but Colt just shrugged.

  ‘What? She sucks my dick.’

  Colt got a weird pleasure out of reminding his brother of that, like there wasn’t a thing Ruger could do to prevent Colt from being honest because she had special access to him. ‘Sex makes you more open,’ she said to him and he didn’t like that.

  ‘Don’t talk about our sex life,’ Colt said to her.

  ‘Why not? You just did.’

  ‘You started it,’ he said. ‘You brought up the sucking thing outside.’

  ‘I think he knows that I do that for you.’

  ‘You said that professional and personal were separate.’

  ‘Yes, but if I can’t get Ruger onto my couch then all he and I have is personal,’ she said.

  ‘Fine, you can talk to him,’ Colt said.

  ‘No way,’ Ruger chimed in. ‘I don’t need a shrink picking my head apart.’

  ‘Is that what you think I’d do?’ she asked. ‘Do you think that talking to a professional somehow diminishes your masculinity?’

  ‘I haven’t forgiven you for the women’s clothing dig yet,’ Ruger said. ‘You’re already on thin ice, are you sure that you want to keep going?’

  ‘You’re getting frustrated,’ she said.

  ‘Which is unusual for him,’ Colt said. ‘He’s usually cool and collected. Maybe you’ve hit a nerve.’

  ‘It’s not his masculinity that’s threatened,’ she said, edging closer to examine her rear-angle view of Ruger’s profile. ‘He fears being exposed because he thinks that it will make him vulnerable. That’s why he’s always making jokes.’

  ‘Alright, alright,’ Ruger said. ‘You’re never cancelling patients again, you obviously need your daily hit of deconstructing some poor schmuck. Leave me out of that mumbo-jumbo.’

  ‘Are you mocking what I do?’ she asked. ‘Do you not believe in psychiatry?’

  ‘I believe in proctology, it doesn’t mean I’m rushing to make an appointment. You do what you do and I’ll do what I do.’

  ‘You’re using your skills to help me. Why shouldn’t I do the same in return? There would be no charge.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Colt said. ‘Consider this one on me. I’ll pay her for you.’

  Colt wasn’t taking it seriously and that only riled Ruger more. But she had been serious. Every once in a while Ruger revealed a hint of what lay beneath his surface and she wondered if he needed more help than he’d ever let on. He wasn’t the type of man to reveal weakness.

  Sliding back in her seat, she didn’t push the issue because she didn’t want it to become a joke. But she did vow to talk to Ruger again, when they were alone and she could perhaps get him to take her seriously.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘If it’s something dangerous or volatile then I don’t want it in my house,’ she said, running up her front stoop with her keys in hand as the men came up behind her, carrying the bags they’d brought from Pinch’s.

  ‘He’s volatile and you let him into your bed,’ Ruger said, nodding at his brother.

  ‘He doesn’t have the potential to explode and kill me,’ she said, putting the key in the lock.

  Ruger snorted. ‘No? Sure about that?’

  ‘You shut up,’ Colt said. Coming up behind her, he kissed her shoulder. ‘It’s nothing dangerous.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, acknowledging that he had been honest to alleviate her concerns, as opposed to Ruger who was contrary for the sake of it. Obviously her suggestion that he might need a bout on her couch had upset him more than she had realised. ‘You two wait here.’

  ‘Why?’ Ruger said.

  Colt crowded in behind her, ignoring her request. ‘You don’t have to worry or go through your ritual when I’m here. Walk behind me.’

  ‘So that if someone starts shooting you get the bullet? No,’ she said, digging her shoulder into him to try and force him back when she tried to overtake him.

  They struggled for first position until they were in the hall at the bottom of the stairs and their wrestling made them laugh. But Ruger had stopped just inside the front door. He dropped his bag onto the floor. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  Following his line of vision, she saw a thick white envelope that must have been pushed out of the way by the front door when she opened it. ‘
I don’t know,’ she said, going towards it.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Colt said. ‘We might be able to get prints from it.’

  Ruger turned it over with his boot, but there was nothing written on the front, it was completely blank. ‘It’s from him,’ Ruger said like he just knew it.

  The pressure building in her chest knew it too and without need to call on her professional training she recognised that her blood pressure was rising. ‘What do you think it is?’

  Ruger reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pair of latex gloves, which he handed toward her. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘Who would be carrying around latex gloves?’ she asked, taking them from him. ‘I have gloves upstairs but I’m a doctor. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘I’m a germ freak,’ he said without expecting her to believe it because he said it with no conviction. ‘Are you going to look or not?’

  Taking the gloves, she snapped them on and retrieved the envelope, which she took into her waiting room behind the office, because the office was locked. Sitting on the couch, she peeled open the self-adhesive envelope.

  ‘No DNA on the flap,’ Colt muttered. ‘But there could be fibres.’

  Continuing on, she reached in to grasp a pile of documents but on pulling them out she saw that they weren’t documents at all, they were photographs – of her. All of them were black and white, but the implications of them didn’t fully sink in until she moved the top one aside and saw that the next one was of her, alone in her bedroom, getting changed.

  She gasped and dropped the pictures, sending them cascading across the floor in a waterfall of violation from her lap to a well in the middle of the hardwood floor where their momentum stopped them.

  ‘Jesus,’ Ruger muttered.

  Colt was bent over trying to scrape them together, using his jacket sleeves as protection and she saw flashes of the pictures. Her outside with Suzette, her on her back step holding flowers, and her in her house. There were pictures of her living room, her bedroom, of her cooking, and putting on make-up, mundane things as well as the more intimate ones.