by Aria Scott
I stared at him for a long hard moment before I picked up the pen and signed the paper. I had been propelled this far by my burning curiosity to know what Kincaid wanted from me. I wasn’t about to back away.
After my leg was amputated, I had spent weeks in a depressed funk. It had taken me a long time to figure out that I wasn’t depressed because I had lost half my leg. Hell, I had been one of the lucky ones. The physical recovery had been easier than I expected. The prosthetic was almost an extension of me at this point. It didn’t hold me back at all.
No, the depression was about losing my military career. I had just completed Special Forces training. The missions were going to get more intense. More dangerous. I was fighting for my country. What I was doing was meaningful.
Then an IED took that all away from me. I was discharged with honors and medals for my service, but I no longer had my job. I had lost my purpose. After I got out of the hospital, my world seemed so flat and colorless. Boring.
Starting up my private investigator business had given me a new sense of purpose, but it wasn’t until Judd Kincaid waltzed into my brother’s party that I felt a stirring in my blood. An excitement I hadn’t felt since Afghanistan.
Kincaid stood up and began pacing behind his desk. “Someone is threatening something very valuable to me. There’s been a threatening message, unsigned of course, and at least one phone call that I know of.”
Kincaid was getting all worked up because of some vague threats? “You have some very capable security staff. Why aren’t they handling it? Why me?”
“I thought it was just a random kook at first. But, I don’t know. Maybe the threat is coming from within my own circle? I’ve made some enemies.” He shrugged. “My gut says, no. But I can’t have my own bias blinding me. I need someone from the outside that no one in my organization knows about for this job. This matter must be treated with all seriousness and every last precaution because the asset that is threatened is even more precious to me than my own life.”
I raised my eyebrow questioningly at his overly dramatic tone. “What is this precious asset?”
Kincaid stopped pacing and turned to me with a pained expression on his face. “My daughter. She’s been getting threatening messages.”
Nowhere in all the digging I had done about Judd Kincaid had I seen a single mention of a daughter. “I didn’t know you had a daughter…”
He sat back in his chair. “Hannah. She goes by her mother’s last name – I’ve always done my best to keep her out of the limelight and out of public scrutiny. She’s lived with me her whole life – when she wasn’t away at school. Her mother’s rather…flakey.”
“And what did these threatening messages say?”
He pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag from his desk drawer and handed it over to me. Inside the plastic, was a small sheet of plain white paper with many creases to show that it had been folded multiple times. I flipped the bag over to see the other side of the paper. Ugly black writing was scrawled across the paper.
be patient sweet Hannah I am coming for you
“How was the note delivered?”
Kincaid tossed down the rest of his scotch. He was clearly agitated. “A friend found it on the floor and showed it to her at a party. Hannah plays guitar and sings. She has a lot of hippy-dippy musician friends. She was at one of those parties when she got the note. They all thought it was a joke, so the note was passed around the whole party.”
“So there are tons of fingerprints all over it.”
“Right.” He got up and continued talking as he refilled his drink. “When she showed it to me I thought it must be a joke, too. I wasn’t sure, but as a father, I can tell you, it made my blood run cold. I was only just beginning to relax when she got the phone message.”
“Do you still have the message?”
“Yes, I took away her phone and got her a new phone and number after I heard the message. Let me play it for you…”
He pulled a cellphone out of the drawer and scrolled through the screens until he could play the phone message. Kincaid resumed pacing as we listened to the raspy male voice, whispering the vague threat: Hann-ahhh…Sweeeet Hann-ahhh. Are you ready? I’m coming. I’m coming… Tell your Daddy.
A heavy silence hung in the air between us for a few minutes.
“When did she get this one?”
“The night of your brother’s party. I couldn’t wait – that’s why I barged in so unceremoniously. I was frantic.” Kincaid dropped back into his seat. Listening to the phone message seemed to have drained him of his energy. He looked defeated.
“And these were the only two threats she received?”
He rubbed his face wearily. “I think so. These were the only ones she told me about. I may have overreacted slightly the night I heard that phone message. Hopefully, she hasn’t been keeping anything more from me.”
“So you want me to investigate this situation, find out where these threats are coming from-”
“No.” Kincaid interrupted. “Not exactly. I have a guy working on that. He’s got connections to some of the country’s best forensics analysts.”
I was confused. “Then what am I doing here?”
“You’re here to protect Hannah.”
“Protect her? Like a bodyguard? This place is tighter than Fort Knox. You have plenty of security here.”
“Security is fine here. But unfortunately for me, Hannah is a free spirit. I’ve learned by now that I just can’t stop her. And she’s got it in her head to do this crazy music tour all across America.” He shook his head disdainfully.
He continued, “I sent her to all the best schools in the world. Christ, she’s rubbed elbows with the children of royalty there! And, she’s smart. She could do anything she wanted to do. So, what does she want to do? Be a pop star for god’s sake. It makes me crazy-but there’s just no stopping her. And I’d do anything for my baby. Especially to keep her safe.”
It was slowly starting to sink in. “I don’t understand. You want me to be her security detail? On a tour across America?”
He only nodded.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Until she gets bored with it.”
My interest in the job was rapidly deflating. I had come into the meeting expecting something exciting or edgy with just the hint of danger that would get my juices flowing. Instead, it turned out the job was babysitting a spoiled trust-fund princess.
I tossed the Ziploc bag with the note in it onto the desk. “Sorry, this is out of my area of, uh… specialty.”
Kincaid’s eyes narrowed. “I went through your file, Luke. I know about your advanced military training. You are more than qualified. And I won’t trust my daughter’s life to anyone else. I’ll make this worth your while. All expenses will be paid on top of a huge salary. Plus, there are a lot of other carrots I can offer you. You would be a fool to refuse.”
Kincaid was not a man to fuck with. I had to retreat lightly.
Before I could speak, he added, “I’ve noticed that your PI business isn’t exactly booming yet. A few divorce cases, a runaway teenager, a neighborhood dispute… petty stuff. I could change all that by dropping a few words with the right people. Your client list would grow a whole lot more… interesting. And I have a slew of contacts that would be invaluable to a private investigator. I have a man on payroll; you could just give him a call to get a set of plates run or a name scanned through all the major databases. No questions. No wait. I can give you that carrot, Luke.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy. “Let me think about it.”
Kincaid stood up. “I need to know by tomorrow, Luke. Hannah is leaving for the tour in less than a week.”
I stood up and we walked out of the office together.
“Whoever this is- whether it’s some joker, a psycho or one of my enemies, I’m not going to let this fucker get away with it. He’s not going to harm one hair on my baby’s head.” His voice grew angrier as we retraced our earli
er steps and headed back to the foyer.
We paused by the door. “Have you contacted the police about this?”
He scoffed. “They can’t do jack-shit. And I’m not going to leave my daughter’s safety in their incapable hands.”
I nodded my understanding.
Just as we were shaking hands goodbye, I heard a girlish squeal of delight. “Daddy! When did you get back?”
In walked Daddy’s little princess. I took in her appearance all at once, irritated to feel my cock instantly responding. She had a face that was young and innocent looking – wide baby blue eyes, a cute button nose, pouty lips and long dark hair that fell past her shoulders. In direct contradiction to her sweet innocence, she had a body that would tempt a saint – a full chest stuffed into a tiny white t-shirt that read ‘PRINCESS’ in gold lettering, a strip of alluring skin showing between where her shirt ended and her short-shorts began and long tanned legs that never seemed to end.
She bounced up to her father and gave him a peck on the cheek before she snuck a sly gaze my way. Unfortunately, her father didn’t miss the look. I saw his jaw clench ever so slightly.
“Hannah, sweetheart. I got in late last night. Would you go into the kitchen and see if Clara left me anything to munch on before lunch?”
“Sure, Daddy.” She headed to the back of the house, but not before her eyes lingered in my direction once again.
Fearing for my own safety, I ripped my eyes away from her sashaying ass; I could feel the testosterone pouring off Kincaid.
I kept my voice even. “That’s Hannah, I take it.”
“Yes. That’s my daughter. I’m not a man to be fucked with- believe me, Luke. I’d kill any man that laid a finger on her. You understand me, son?”
It was a not so subtle warning about the direction my thoughts had taken me. Hannah was off-limits. Which wasn’t a problem because 1: I wasn’t going to take this job and 2: immature spoiled brats didn’t appeal to me no matter how much my dick said otherwise.
Chapter 2
Hannah
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note
Aria Scott
(Luke) Chapter 1
(Luke) Chapter 2