by Honor James
“If you know their names we’ll find them. As long as they weren’t put into witness protection that is. I’d rather not have to hack their system. They tend to get downright feral about such things. Hey,” he whispered. Shifting on the sofa he pushed some of her hair from her face. “We’ll find him, Clara. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
“Yes, I know their names and where they are. I’ve kept track of them.” She had bonded, somewhat, with the women. “I know you will find him.” She believed in Elliott, Craig, and their team. “I just hate this, hate that he’s out and I wasn’t aware. What if you hadn’t come back into my life? I would have been lost, fully lost and likely wouldn’t make it out of this intact.” Like she was certain she would with having Elliott in her life.
“You are stronger than that, Clara. I know it, but you need to start to believe it as well. You are strong. Yes, this hit you below the belt, and knocked the wind out of you. But you will rise above it because you must. It’s not only your life he’s messing with, but likely the other women as well. You would have stepped up, done what was necessary, and seen to it he rotted for the rest of his days behind bars. But we’re here with you so you don’t have to go it alone. You still need to be strong. Now though you can bend a little and lean on us as you need to. We’re going to be beside you all through this, promise.”
“I know that you will.” She believed in herself and having him remind her that she was a strong woman helped her pull her head out of her ass. “Okay, I have to wait for my phone before I call them. I don’t want to call them from a number that they don’t recognize. They would freak out I’m sure.” She took another sip of her tea and leaned into Elliott. “I’m glad that I have you to lean on, both you and Craig. I’m very blessed.” Because she did care for Craig as well and having him to lean on was huge in her eyes as well.
“Wait, my phone.” She frowned and cocked her head to the side as she replayed what happened in her office. “Shoot. I think I dropped it when you came in.” She had to use his phone to call the prison, but she had used it when she was talking to Elliott. “Can you please ask them to grab that, too? Jesus, I can’t believe everything that I left behind.”
“Where do you think you dropped it?” he asked her. He was digging out his phone, and then he put it to his ear a moment later. When she told him he nodded. “Markham, can you take a look near the door for Clara’s phone? She’s pretty sure she dropped it when she tackled me. Look under the furniture in case she kicked it, too. Okay, sounds good. We’re up the street at a coffee shop when you get done.” He listened a moment longer before hanging up, and pocketing the phone once again. “They have some prints they think are viable. They’ll need a set of yours to ensure they are running the right ones when we get back to the office.”
“And the receptionist as well,” she added. “She brought the gift in to me. Someone dropped it with security and they brought it up but their prints are on file with the building security company and should be easily accessible.” She was thinking now, more than melting over a package she was thinking. “We should be the only ones who touched it since it was wrapped in festive wrap. Other than whoever sent it that is,” she added and drank the last bit of her tea.
“It’s the ones on the inside we’ll focus on most. Cutter’s collecting everything to bring back to the office. Since you’re done the tea, we should head back to the car to meet them. You and I will go in your vehicle, and they can take the package back in mine. Yoshi hasn’t called yet so I’m guessing he’s still stuck in the meeting. Hopefully he calls prior to leaving the agency otherwise he’ll be pissed he missed us.” Standing he collected the bag of snacks and his cup. “Up you get, sweetheart. We have an asshole to catch, and some ladies to warn.”
“Agreed.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Thank you. For reminding me that I’m not helpless and I’m not a pushover.” She rose and moved from him slightly. Together, hand in hand, they walked away from the cafe and back toward her office building.
“You’ve never been a pushover, Clara. Not when we were growing up, and definitely not now,” he told her. Squeezing his hand gently he gave her a smile. “Sometimes all you need is a little kick in the pants to remember who you are from those that love you most. Just glad I could be of service in this.”
“Me, too,” she agreed. “I’m honestly surprised that Craig hasn’t called you back yet. Meeting or not I’m shocked.” She would have thought that he would have seen the message and called right away. She was glad now that he hadn’t because she had been a hot mess when Elliott arrived and wasn’t sure if she could have pulled herself together as quickly as she did if she had Craig to lean on, too. “Is it a new client that you guys are looking into getting?”
“No, it was a meeting with a standing client for another job he has for us. He’s a good client, one we actually like. From what I remember of the briefing notes it’s for some big event he’s taking his family to. We’ll be providing security for him and the guests in general. His family will be primary of course, but we’re talking with the other security for the event so we can tighten up the holes we’ve found so far. It should be a truly boring as hell night of rich people talking about who knows what while wearing all their finery, and attempting to outdo one another.”
“Ah, so you will be in tuxes. Nice. Hopefully I will see you before you leave for the event so that I can drool over you both before you go?” She didn’t like the idea that she would be alone for the night, but it was a night in the possible future sometime or another, so that was fine. She was a big girl and like he reminded her, she was a strong and fierce woman in her own right.
Snorting at that he shook his head. “You’re damn well coming with me to keep me from falling asleep. I’m lucky, though, I don’t have to get into the monkey suit. I can wear my fatigues since I’ll be in the security control room the entire night. Safely out of the path of all the attendees. On the upside the staff at these things tend to feed me really well. You can dress up if you’d like, though, maybe go have a dance or two with Yoshi while we’re there.”
“I would like that. I have the perfect gown, too.” It was a gown that went to the floor, had a slit up the back almost to her ass cheeks, and plunged down the front as well as the back. It was a beautiful gown that she had never been able to wear. “Oh and I just got the perfect shoes to wear with the gown, too.” She was a shoe hoarder, something the poor men were starting to learn about her. She had a thing for shoes. “I can’t wait. I know it will be fun.” It had been forever since she had been to a black tie affair and wanted to go to another one. It was fun to look at the uptight self-righteous assholes trying to one up each other with the jewels and gowns.
“I’m sure you do, somewhere in that massive closet you seem to have solely for your shoe collection. How is it that you have so many shoes? How can you even find a pair in and amongst that heap anyway?” Shaking his head again he led her to where Cutter and Markham waited on them with her purse in hand. “You will be the belle of the ball I’m sure. A little distraction to help you keep your mind off this mess,” he added in a softer tone.
Slater was looking at her as they walked up to them. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m better now, thank you. I just needed a reminder that I wasn’t alone in all of this. That I’m a strong and fierce woman.” She took the purse and laptop case from Slater. She thanked him and then Cutter who handed her her cell phone. “We have a feeling we know who it is. I pray that we are wrong because he really is a nasty piece of work.” She took a deep breath and then said, “From what I understand he washed out of SEALs after a year on the teams. He liked hurting women and that’s something that you guys know the military frowns upon.” Rape, torture, and confinement were his trio of joys.
“To say the least,” Cutter said with a sneer. He took the keys that Elliott passed to him. “We’ll meet you back at the office. Then you need to dig up everything on this guy so we know what we’re goin
g up against,” he said to Elliott who nodded.
“No worries there,” Elliott said. “I’ll be hunting his ass down fast and hard as soon as I get a keyboard. In the meantime Clara will be alerting the other women who testified against him of his rather sudden and very early release. We may need to get them some protection as well.”
“Whatever it takes,” Slater said. “Let’s get back to the office and get things in gear.”
Taking her elbow Elliott guided her away from his car and over toward hers when she pointed it out for him. “Do you feel up to driving?” he asked when they were close.
“No, I will let you.” She pulled the key fob out of her purse and passed it to him. “This way I can focus on making the phone calls while you get us to your office. At least one of the calls.” To the woman that was still in the same town she was in. “I will give you the link to my Dropbox file on this guy as well. That way you can have the basics for him and then do your thing through your channels as well.”
“You’d better get your head in the game as well. I’ll need you to help. I can do many things at the same time, but two sets of hands and two heads working the problem are much better than merely one.” Elliott opened the door for her then went around to slide behind the wheel. After much adjusting for his greater height he got them moving back to his office.
While they drove Clara made a phone call. She was still talking when they arrived at the office and she leaned her head back and sighed. “I know, Olivia. Yes, of course. Call the police and let them know. Don’t open it.” She looked to Elliott and frowned. “No, no I’m fine. The men that I love are watching over me and will help keep me safe, I promise.” She smiled and nodded. “I know. Okay. I am calling Deandra and Phyllis. They both moved away after the trial. Yeah, we were the only ones who stayed. Okay.” She looked to Elliott and held up a finger. “One sec, Olivia.” She looked to Elliott and said, “She’s gotten a package, too. She’s going to call the police and turn it over to them. So it’s not just me.” She didn’t know if she should be thankful for that bit of news or not. Sad she knew. Once more she was talking to Olivia. “Be careful okay? Call me when the police let you know what’s happening? Okay, be safe,” she said and hung up the phone. “There we go. Crap I hate this. I’m seriously pissed at the court system because we should have been notified.”
“Shit happens, love.” Getting out of the car he came around to give her a hand out. “Once we’re inside you call the other two. Did Olivia tell you how she got the package by chance? Was it delivered, or did she just find it on her stoop or wherever? Be nice to know if he’s sending these via a courier. We might have another way to track him then.”
“She’s a florist and the package was waiting on her van after she made a delivery to a funeral home. She was more than a little freaked out about it but had more deliveries to make before she could do anything about it. Just so happened that I called her before she could call the cops.”
“We’ll tap our contacts, and see if we can’t find out what was in it. Who knows, maybe there’ll be something that ties this all together.” He led her into the building and straight up the stairs to the second floor. Guiding her down the halls he let her into his office. Grabbing a chair he pulled it over to the various computers and got her settled in. “Make your calls while I get everything up and running. But send me the link for the file you have on him.”
She pulled up her Dropbox and looked to him. “What is your e-mail by the way?” They had spent that much time together and she still didn’t have that. Weird. Then again they had spent more time face-to-face which she was happy with. Once he gave it to her she invited him to the Dropbox which held everything about the cases, including the photos from the police department, statements, and more. “Now while you are doing that I’m making the calls to the other two ladies.” Hopefully they wouldn’t be found. Both of them had left town and changed their names. They didn’t go into witness protection, but they did all that they could to hide themselves, with a little help from Clara as well.
Once those calls were made she leaned back. “They haven’t gotten anything.” She explained about the name changes as well as location changes for the women. “So it looks like it’s going to be just Olivia and me. I’m not worried about myself, I have you and Craig but I am worried for Olive. Should I have her hire an agency as well?”
“No, we’ll look after her,” he said without looking her way. He sent something to the screen she was sitting in front of. “There’s the parole board’s paperwork on our friend in question. Take a look at that. In the meantime I’m going to go brief Michael on this. I need him to give me the okay to send a couple of guys to keep watch over Olivia. Though we may need to also consider moving her into protective custody depending on where this ends up. Not at this moment, but it’s something to keep in mind should everything go sideways.” He got to his feet, and putting a hand on her shoulder he squeeze. “You have full access to the system if you want to start poking around. Just stay out of the military database. Without my clearance and access codes all you’ll do is have them hunting our asses down.”
She snickered. “You do know that now I want to get into that database, right?” Reaching out she put her hand on his and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you. For everything. And if money is an issue, don’t worry about it. Seriously, between her and myself we can afford you. Olivia comes from really old money, so she can totally afford anything Michael wants to toss her way.”
“Don’t worry about the money, not now. You get our services for free, you’re ours to protect after all. As to the military database, don’t. Just don’t. They’ve upgraded since last you went poking around, mainly because of a bunch of things I pointed out to them, so it’s best not to do that. You can go digging around once I log in, but no digging on your own time. Please, for me?” Elliott gave her a pouty, pathetic face and batted his lashes at her.
“You know that I won’t. I won’t do anything that will give you any hard times, promise,” she assured him. “Thank you, for trusting me. For everything. Go, do what you need to do and we will get to work on figuring out what to do with this asshole.”
Leaning over he gave her a kiss. “I’ll see if I can’t find Yoshi as well, and send him this way. Don’t worry, no one can get to you inside this building. Not with all the badasses we have hanging around drinking the coffee.” Giving her a wink, he left her to read the parole board’s report.
Chapter Seven
One week later…
Clara was in the gym with Markham, once more learning even more self-defense. She was really picking it up quickly Yoshi had to admit. While she still needed a bit of smoothing out, she really was picking up all their team sniper had to teach her. All the moves had been modified to suit her shorter stature. It gave her a lot of leeway in a fight, but there were some things that she’d likely never be able to. Not that he’d bet on that of course. He knew better than to bet against Clara Smith.
Turning his attention from the monitor, he frowned over at what Timmons was doing. The guy was typing like a madman, his attention flipping from one screen to another as windows popped up, then disappeared only for others to pop up. Whatever he was doing he was doing it fast and furiously. To Yoshi it was all gibberish, but he knew it was all part of the massive manhunt they had going on the ex-con from Clara’s past.
Bored to tears, he was thinking about going to get another cup of coffee when Timmons suddenly stopped typing. His low curse had Yoshi looking to him. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“The guy just checked in with his parole officer,” Timmons muttered.
“That’s good right? We know where he is right?”
“Oh, we know where he is,” Timmons said. “He called in from Clara’s place, on her landline.”
“Oh hell, well that’s not good,” Yoshi said. He turned a look to the other monitor. “We need to warn her, and get over there with a team to see what he might have left behind.”
; “I know. Go and tell her. I need to double-check a few things. I’ll send Markham and Michael over to chat with the parole officer. I think he needs to be a little more helpful to us.”
“Copy that.”
* * * *
Clara paused when Craig walked into the room where she was being tossed around by Slater. She held a hand up and watched the man as he walked toward her. She could see that he had something to say, and it wasn’t good whatever it was. She knew this by watching him as he approached, the way that he clenched his hands, his jaw, and the set of his shoulders. The men might say that her Yoshi didn’t have tells, but to her he did. She could read him like a proverbial book.
She stepped off of the mat, grabbed a towel, dried her face, and reached him midway into the room. “Craig?” she asked and reached out, her hand touching his chest automatically and allowing him to pull her into his arms without complaint. “What’s going on?”
He gave a nod to Slater. “We found your guy. Unfortunately it’s really not good, Clara. He called in to his parole officer per their midweek check-in schedule. The bad news is that he did it from your place. We need to head over there with a team to check it out. Figure out how he got in for one thing, and also figure out if he did anything while he was there. Markham, you need to meet up with Michael to go have a chat with the parole officer.”
“Copy that.” She felt a hand on her shoulder that gave her a squeeze before the other man headed off to the showers at a jog.
“He got into my house? How?” She had the best alarm system out there, and add to it what the men put in as well, it should have been impossible. “There is no way in hell that he could have bypassed my system. Are you sure that he didn’t tag into the phone on the outside at the junction box?” She was being hopeful and knew it, but to think that the man had been in her home. It made her skin crawl. Made her want to put a torch to everything and start new.