Close To Danger (Westen Series Book 4)

by Suzanne Ferrell

  “In fact, until last night, he’s been very circumspect about not being alone with me.”

  “Really?” Wes paused in his typing. “What was different about yesterday?”

  What had been different yesterday? Well, for one thing, Wes had walked back into her life. She was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about them or the few days they’d spent together two weeks earlier.

  “You mean besides you showing up unannounced and sitting like a guard dog in the lobby?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched, but he didn’t say anything. Obviously, he wasn’t going to bite on that comment. He simply waited for her to move on.

  “I had a morning meeting with a merger case I was the lead counsel on.”

  “Who with? Or can you tell me without crossing client confidentiality?”

  She arched a brow his direction. “You mean if I tell you, I’d have to kill you?”

  Again with the twitching of the lips.

  Somehow teasing him brightened her mood. The fact that he was amused, helped her relax. Most men found her intimidating and her comments more confrontational than flirtatious. Good God. Was that what she was doing? Flirting with Wes? She couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, she’d flirted with a man.

  Quickly shoving the idea out of her mind, she focused on his question. “No, I can tell you, it’s public record. My client is Dawes Mechanical Gears. A larger company, Hinkley Global, wants to buy them out. I had to go to their offices for the meeting yesterday. It was an intimidation tactic on their part.”

  “Intimidation?” That seriously protective sound was back in his voice.

  “Not physically. They have a very prestigious firm handling their contract negotiation. They assumed if they dragged in the female junior partner of our smaller firm to sit across from ten of their people, I’d buckle, and capitulate into accepting their client’s offer without a fight.”

  “Didn’t work, did it?”

  She grinned at him. “Damn straight it didn’t. Mr. Dawes built that company up from scratch. He’s ready to retire and wants to spend time traveling around the country with his wife in an RV. I want them to enjoy their golden years. After yesterday’s manipulative display of Hinkley Global’s arrogance, I intend to see that my reasonable settlement for my client becomes a little more expensive to the conglomerate people just because they’re trying to low-ball him.”

  “Do you think this corporation could have someone acting like a stalker to throw you off your game?”

  “Like a form of strong arm tactics?” She pondered his suggestion a moment, then shook her head. “I suppose they could, but…”

  “But?” He paused, fixing that steely-eyed blue gaze of his on her once more. The one that said, trust me with the truth.

  She huffed out some air. “But this feels too personal for that.”

  He nodded, going back to his keyboard. “I agree. My gut tells me the same thing. I learned years ago to trust what it tells me. Just in case we’re wrong, though, we’ll put them on the list and do some background checking just to be sure they’ve not pulled this in other negotiations. I also learned that no small nugget of intel should be overlooked.”

  Chloe watched him focus on the screen in front of him. She suspected he’d learned that last lesson on the operation he said had gone south. Whatever happened, it must’ve been bad. Bad enough to drive him away from a career she was beginning to suspect he’d been very good at.

  “Anything else happen that’s been different? Anything that would make Napier think he could try coercing you again?” He asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

  She considered her recent interactions with her boss. “Last Friday he suddenly brought this Richardson Merger case to me. He insisted that he needed me to double check all the figures with Justin, the other junior partner you met today. It was last minute and he swore I was the only one he trusted to do the work accurately.”

  “Did he approach you yesterday about it? Try to move up the deadline?”

  “Only to ask me to be sure to have the figures to him no later than Wednesday morning.” She gave a half shrug. “Guess he won’t be getting them anytime soon.”

  “So, what else happened yesterday?”

  “Well, not yesterday, but the night before.” She hesitated, not really wanting to talk about her pathetic panic in the parking garage.

  “What happened?” he asked, giving her a little nudge.

  “I left the office late. I’d been working on the numbers for the Richardson Merger most of the day and wanted to be sure I spent some time on the Dawes Merger before heading home since I was meeting with them first thing in the morning.” She paused and stared into the fire, the flames dancing around the wood. Wes laid a hand over one of hers, squeezing gently. “When I was in the parking garage, I had this creepy feeling someone was behind me. I’d look around and not see anyone. The feeling didn’t go away and I practically ran to my car. I didn’t relax until I was inside with the doors locked.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing. I drove home, double checking that no one was following me.” Here she hesitated.

  “Don’t hold anything out on me, counselor. Even the smallest detail could be important. Even a text,” he said. Something in his voice and the slight tensing of the muscle in his jaw set her internal suspicion alarm off.

  “How did you know I got a text?” she asked, then hopped off her barstool, moving backwards. “Oh, my God. You did something super-spy-ish to my phone, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t move a muscle, simply sat watching her. “I cloned it.”

  “You what?” She stared at him half in anger and half in disbelief.

  “I cloned your phone.”

  Her gaze pierced him with accusation. “Exactly what does that mean?”

  He leaned back in his seat, one elbow lying casually by his computer on the counter. “When you spent the night here, I connected my phone to yours so I could see if you were in any danger.”

  “You connected your phone to mine?” She paced in front of the fire, letting the information sink in, stopped and stared at him open-mouthed for a moment. “How could you do that?”

  “I have an app…” He let the sentence drift off as if he was telling her what he’d done was no big deal.

  “Don’t give me that,” she said, stalking back to stop a foot in front of him, pointing her finger into his chest. “You invaded my privacy. Hell, you invaded my client’s privacy!”

  “I only focused on threatening calls or texts,” he said, as if that made what he did right.

  “You expect me to believe that? How would you know the difference without listening to the calls or reading the texts?” She paced the space in front of the fireplace from the kitchen island to the far side of the cabin and back. “My God. Every one of my clients are going to have to be told. This is a nightmare!”

  “No, they don’t.” Again, that aggravating voice of patience.

  “Don’t expect me to be as duplicitous as you, Mr. Secret Agent. My whole career is built on people’s trust. Their trust to keep their secrets and to keep what happens between us private.” Again, she stomped back towards him, poking him in the chest. “Now with your little spy game, you’ve destroyed that trust and quite possibly my career.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “You were watching my phone calls and texts.”

  “I only focused on those coming from unknown numbers.” He quietly said, wrapping his hand over the finger she’d left square in the middle of his sternum. “Your stalker wasn’t going to use a personal number you could trace, no one on your client list would use an anonymous number. Those are the only texts I read.”

  The sincerity in his words and the steadiness of his gaze eased some of her ire.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I knew client confidentiality would be important to an honest lawyer like you.”

  She felt her cheeks heat at his words. “Tha
nk you. But what I mean is why did you feel the need to try and help me?”

  “Gage was out of town on his honeymoon. Bobby didn’t need the stress with the pregnancy. I saw how skittish you were when you were here for the wedding. Someone needed to keep an eye on you, even if it was long distance.” He slowly rubbed his thumb over her finger.

  “But you don’t know me.”

  “When I came to Westen I wasn’t looking for anything. Slowly, I became a part of the town. The town became my family. Especially Gage and your sister. So you’re family.”

  With a gently tug on her hand he slowly brought her to stand between his legs. He wrapped his other hand around her back, pressing her closer. “Family takes care of each other,” he said before dropping his mouth to hers.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “How’d you sleep last night, doc?” Steven Janowski asked as he took the seat opposite Dr. Dylan Roberts in the hospital cafeteria.

  About two weeks ago he’d joined the surgical department as a scrub technician and a traveling medical temp to help ease the hospital’s manpower shortage. Unlike most new hires, he needed little training. Said he’d worked as a medic for years in the army. Dylan had to admit he knew his way around in a surgery, wielded instruments like a mechanic with highly tuned tools and kept his head in an emergency. All qualities she admired in any coworker.

  She liked the big man. His sense of humor—as macabre as hers—helped ease the tension and relax the team when they seemed to need it most. She’d even considered a romantic interest in him for a day. That was, until she saw him eyeing Dr. Richards—the very handsome, very smart and very gay chief radiology resident—one afternoon. Steve, as he’d asked her to call him, caught her watching him, winked and went back to ogling. From that moment on they were friends.

  “Luckily the weather kept most of the idiots inside last night and I was able to get a little sleep after that last case. Thank God there’s designated sleep rooms for the residents. And how about you? Did you find somewhere to sleep?” she asked just as he scooped up hot oatmeal.

  Steve grinned, like a mischievous little boy with two frogs in his pocket. “Labor and Delivery was almost completely empty. They took pity on me and let me have a birthing room for the night. Closest I ever plan to come to one of those.”

  She laughed then zeroed in on the double scoop of scrambled eggs on her plate.

  “Good God, how can you eat those?” he asked, staring at her in absolute horror.

  “Like this,” she teased, and slipped a spoonful between her lips, making a moaning sound of appreciation as she ate.

  “You are a very sick woman. Powdered eggs? Always reminds me of MRE’s I had to tolerate in the field. And you got two…two helpings! Gag me now.”

  She washed down her preferred hospital food with a large drink of orange juice. “I’ll have you know powdered eggs sustained me through middle school, high school, college and four years of medical school.”

  “You couldn’t eat anything better?” he asked, working on his own breakfast.

  She took another bite, shaking her head. “Not really. My sister was working as a beginning teacher to raise me and my other sister after our parents died. We qualified for free breakfast and lunches at school. Chloe, that’s my middle sister, she lived on junk food and processed sugar. I preferred protein, so powdered eggs it was. It was that or go hungry.”

  “I was lucky. My mom worked nights and usually made oatmeal overnight in the crockpot, so I’d have something hot when I got up. Living in Wisconsin makes you appreciate hot food in the mornings.”

  “Wisconsin. Wow. So this blizzard probably seems like no big deal to you, then, huh?” she asked as she continued her meal.

  “Sleet and snow are pretty much the norm back home. That wind was pretty impressive last night, though.”

  Buzzing came from her cell phone lying on the table beside her plate. She glanced at it. The ER. She read the text. Two car collision. Four admits. Fractured legs, contusions, no internal injuries suspected.

  “Anything we have to hurry for?” Steven asked before gulping down more oatmeal.

  “Some ortho cases. Nothing that can’t wait until we finish breakfast.” She went back to her eggs. “As my sister Bobby always said, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  “That the sister that raised you?”

  “Yes. She got custody of me and Chloe and set about keeping us all together while working full time.”

  “She sounds pretty amazing.”

  Dylan couldn’t help a smile. “She is. Last year she gave up teaching to become a private investigator.”

  “A private eye?”

  She almost laughed at the surprise on her friend’s face. “Yes, sir. She had one case that turned into a major Meth lab explosion northeast of Columbus and the take down of a narcotics ring.”

  “I read about that. Almost killed the sheriff in a land slide or something.”

  “Cave-in. My sister not only helped save him, she married him two weeks ago and is now a deputy sheriff.”

  “Congratulations,” he said, lifting his coffee mug in salute then taking a drink. “So, what does the other sister do?”

  “Argues.”

  Steve choked on his coffee. “Excuse me?”

  Dylan laughed, ate the last bite of food and wiped her mouth. “She’s a lawyer. Which fits her perfectly. Never knew any topic she wouldn’t delight in debating with you. So she argues for a living. Which reminds me.” She picked up her phone, double checking the call list. Still no call from Chloe.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I’m the youngest, so usually both Bobby and Chloe check in on me, especially when the weather is bad. Bobby called last night and I assured her I wasn’t traveling.”

  “But Chloe hasn’t called?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Which is so unlike her.”

  “Maybe the storm knocked out her cell service,” Steve said and drained his cup.

  “Could be.” She pocketed her phone in her lab coat and stood. “I’ll check on her later. Right now, I have a date with some broken legs in the ER.”

  “I’m sure she’s somewhere safe,” Steve said, staring straight into her eyes.

  For some reason his confident gaze reassured her that Chloe was probably just fine, somewhere safe and warm.

  * * * * *

  “How soon do you think it will be before power is restored to the new subdivision?” Mayor Tobias Rawlins asked Harold Russett, the county engineer.

  Gage leaned back in his chair while the members of the town council discussed the state of emergency the blizzard blew into Westen the night before. When he’d first taken over as Westen’s sheriff he’d barely tolerated meetings with Tobias and the town council, seeing them as leaches sucking at the marrow of the town to line their own pockets and inflate their egos. What he’d found one night last spring when his world had literally caved in on him, was that these men would step up when necessary. They’d helped to rescue him and then help Westen not only heal from the near destruction a crazed man had planned for the town, but saw it thrive.

  These meetings might bore him to tears, but he knew the group would make decisions affecting all the citizens of Westen. Input from every person, including him, was valued and measured into the decisions.

  “The electric company has us on their list. Power’s out in sections all over the state, not just our area,” Harold said.

  “Which means we’re low man on the totem pole again,” grumbled Grady Conner, a thirty-year-old farmer elected this past fall to represent the local farming interests on the town council.

  “The town center, most of the businesses and civic buildings have power,” Harold continued.

  “I checked in at the jail over at the courthouse. Power and heat working just fine, as well as communications,” Gage added.

  “Good. Good,” Tobias jotted all the information on the legal tablet in front of him. “I checked in with Doc Clint. He w
as at the clinic. Everything is functional there, too.”

  “Lucky for him, he lives right across the street from it,” Gage said, getting chuckles from the others. “Took me nearly an hour to shovel out my truck before Bobby and I could head into the office. Clint said Harriett let him know the electricity was out at her place, so we can assume all the residents north and east of town, as well as near the river, may be without power.”

  Tobias made some more notes. “Thanks to Harold having André keeping the county road plow working, the main roads into and through the downtown area are passible. So, our first order of business should be to check with residents to see if they have power.”

  The door to the meeting room opened. Fire Chief Deke Reynolds entered. “Sorry it took us so long. Had to shovel out my truck, drop Libby off over at the courthouse, then get gasoline for the snow blowers,” Deke said, taking the vacant seat by Gage.

  “You have more than one?” he asked.

  “Kyle and some of his football buddies are going to spend the day helping people get out from under the snow.” Deke turned to Colm Riley, the town treasurer. “Connor was in the crew.”

  The tall red-headed man grinned. “Good thing. Keep them out of trouble.”

  “I told them not to charge, but I suspect some people will be happy to give them tips.” Deke turned to Gage. “Libby’s getting that list together Bobby asked for.”

  “What list?” Tobias asked, peeking up from the tablet.

  Gage filled him and the others in on the plan to check on the elderly and any residents outside of town with no phone or electricity.

  Tobias leaned back in his chair. “How are you going to do that with the roads impassable in the outskirts of the county?”

  “Same way Harriett got into work.” Gage grinned at the image of the older lady making her way to work as he left the office to head to the meeting. “Snowmobile.”

  * * * * *

  The buzzing of his smartwatch alarm woke him. He hit the button and squinted at the message flashing for his attention.

  All courts closed due to inclement weather. Office closed through Thursday.