Keeping Her Safe

by Myrna Mackenzie

  While she would toss and turn in her bed and wonder why on earth Daniel Fortune had had to send her a man like Vincent.

  A man who reminded her that no matter how much progress she had made over the years, she still had weaknesses. Ah well, no matter; by morning she would have those weaknesses harnessed.

  Vincent wasn’t going to get under her skin again. And he’d probably soon be gone. Those notes were most likely written in the heat of the moment and would soon stop.

  Reporters got them all the time. There was no real danger other than Vincent’s masculine appeal.

  Vincent spent a long time staring up at the ceiling that night. He had half a mind to call Derek and ask him if everything was all right. The other half of his mind wanted to drive to Natalie’s house and tell Derek that he would take care of things from here on out.

  Which was stupid and wrong. Derek was a good guard. He knew how to do his job.

  Even if Natalie tried to give him the slip? Vincent wondered, and he almost smiled at that. He remembered her climbing from that window, remembered her giving him that knowing smile and tossing his own words back at him. She was sassy and determined and she cared about her subjects. He had to admire that about her. Her green eyes were alive with intelligence and indignation at the injustice done to her friends. She was a beautiful woman on a mission, and she was determined to do her job no matter what. Could Derek handle that?

  “The better question is, can you handle that?” Vincent asked himself. He was attracted to her, and he never allowed that to happen on a job.

  But he would handle it this time.

  Somehow.

  “This is so difficult to handle,” Blake Jamison said two days later in a conversation with Ryan Fortune, head of the Fortune family and empire and now a new friend and relative whom Blake cherished. “I don’t really understand how all of this can have happened. In the years since we’ve been married, Darcy and I have led a dull but mostly contented existence. My family has had its problems, but this…this is so…I don’t know how to handle this. How is it that one of my sons—”

  His voice broke. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to us,” Patrick Fortune, Ryan’s cousin, said. Patrick’s banking business had led to a life in New York but he was spending more time in Texas these days and planned to retire here soon. His opinion carried weight. “I’m sure you know that the Fortunes have had their own history of family problems over the years.”

  “Yes, but for one of my sons to kill his own brother!” Blake practically yelled the words. “How does a man deal with that?”

  “I don’t think he does, Blake,” Ryan said quietly. “I don’t think you’ll ever be able to reconcile the fact that Jason was able to kill not once, but twice, and that one of those he murdered was his own brother.”

  Blake ran one hand through his hair, mussing it. Not that it mattered. Did anything matter anymore?

  “I spent years trying to locate Jason. I don’t know what else Darcy and I could have done. We tried so many things. We tried to reach him, to change him. He was always difficult, but still, he was mine. I thought he would change as he grew up. I thought he was still mine. I understand that he seemed to be an exemplary employee while he was working for you.” Blake raised his eyes questioningly, hopefully, to Ryan.

  “He seemed to be. But there’s a lot we still don’t know. Like the woman he killed. He passed her off as his wife. It appears that she wasn’t. The police said that her real name was Melissa Anderson, not Melissa Wilkes.”

  “If that reporter, Natalie McCabe, hadn’t seen what happened and reported it, he might still be on the loose.”

  Ryan shook his head. “They would have found him in time. Family members always get questioned. The fact that he claimed to be married to her and wasn’t would have only made the authorities more suspicious. Natalie’s witnessing the act only speeded up the process.”

  Blake nodded. “I’m glad she turned him in. That’s a terrible thing for a father to say.” Tears filled his throat, and he paused, searching for words. “There’s a sickness in him, I think. He has to be sick.” But sickness implied that no one was to blame. That wasn’t what he meant to say.

  Blake held up his hand as if to add something, but he didn’t know what was left to say. He had fathered three sons. Emmett was missing, Christopher was dead, and Jason might as well be dead.

  “You can’t change what has happened, Blake,” Ryan was saying softly. “Don’t even try to make sense of it. It’s impossible. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

  “I know. I have to learn to live with this.”

  “You have to learn that you’re not to blame for Jason being in prison for murder,” Patrick said. “Don’t go down that road. As Ryan said, this isn’t your doing.”

  “Christopher was a good man,” Blake said, barely able to even mouth the words. “I can’t forgive Jason.”

  “You don’t have to,” Ryan said tersely. “Not unless you want to.”

  Blake shook his head. “I can’t, but I have to see him. I have to try to understand. I have to learn to deal with all of this somehow.”

  In his heart, Blake knew that he had to learn to deal with his own part in what had happened. Despite what Patrick and Ryan had said, Blake knew that he was not blameless in all of this. Not by a long shot.

  Jason had been a problem child, and Blake had let it pass. He had ignored Darcy’s pleas to keep his children away from their grandfather, Farley. Farley had been half-crazy and jealous of the Fortune family, telling his grandson, Jason, about how Kingston Fortune had been fathered by a Jamison and how some of Kingston’s money and power should have belonged to the Jamisons. Never mind that Kingston’s father hadn’t even known he’d had a son, or that Kingston had been raised by the Fortune family. Farley ranted and raved to Jason, and Jason, already a troubled young man who idolized his grandfather, had listened to his grandfather’s demented ravings of injustice for years.

  Deep down inside, Blake knew that he was to blame. He should have paid more attention to Jason, loved his son enough to try harder to save him from himself. If he had done that, maybe Jason’s idolization of Farley wouldn’t have happened. Farley had been a dangerous man.

  Now Blake couldn’t help wondering just how dangerous and depraved Jason really was, and what he would do now that he was trapped.

  “I have to try to do something,” Blake said.

  Five

  The next morning, Vincent peered down at the report on Jason Jamison. He tried to think about what it had been like for Natalie in that moment when she had realized that Jason had murdered Melissa, when Natalie’s eyes had met his.

  Jason was a man who had killed twice. He was a man without scruples, and Vincent didn’t doubt that he would kill again if killing suited his purposes.

  “Is he the one?” Vincent whispered. “And if he is, what kind of connections does he have? Have I done all I can to make sure that Natalie is safe?”

  Against his will, a memory arose of himself as a young boy swearing to protect his mother from his father’s fists. Yet he had come home from school time and time again to find her battered and bloody. The impotence had almost driven him crazy. It was what drove him to do what he did for a living, and most of the time he was damn proud of his accomplishments. He was no longer assailed by those doubts or that feeling of being helpless in the face of circumstances.

  Jason might have connections, ways and means Vincent was unaware of. Most likely he did, since he had been able to work his way up so far in Fortune, TX, Ltd. But Vincent had resources, too, and he could supply Natalie with round-the-clock surveillance.

  “Heaven help Jason Jamison if he gets through my boundaries. He won’t touch her. I swear I won’t let him,” he said beneath his breath.

  Blake watched as Jason was led in cuffs toward the table where he waited. It was now or never, he thought. Jason was under heavy guard, but once he was moved to a maximum-security
prison, communication would be even more difficult. At least it would be more stilted, if that were possible. If they were ever going to begin to talk, to unravel the twisted threads of their relationship that had contributed at least in part to Jason’s downward spiral into darkness, then let them do it here. Today.

  “Son.” Blake barely got the word out, his throat was so tight.

  Jason smiled. “‘Son?’ How touching, but inappropriate. Farley was my father, more than he was yours.”

  The knife sliced through Blake. “Farley was your grandfather. He was not a sane man, not near the end and not for many years before that.”

  Jason narrowed his eyes. Blake almost could envision his son doing to him what he’d done to Melissa if Jason hadn’t been cuffed. “The Fortunes made Farley that way,” Jason said.

  Blake shook his head. “The Fortunes didn’t have anything to do with that. They owe our family nothing.”

  “They owe us everything. Kingston Fortune was sired by a Jamison. He built an empire, one that should have stayed in the Jamison family.”

  “Kingston’s father didn’t even know he existed. Kingston was raised by Dora and Hobart Fortune. He was theirs.”

  Jason growled. “The money and the power should have been ours. Farley tried to tell Kingston that, but Kingston wouldn’t have anything to do with him. I would have made the Fortune family pay for their indifference. I had plans.”

  “Is that—” Blake felt tears clog his throat. “Did Christopher’s death have anything to do with your plans?”

  Jason stared his father full in the face. “Christopher was a pain in the ass. He tried to spoil things for me.”

  If he hadn’t been seated, Blake was sure he would have fallen. Christopher had been good and kind. Of all the Jamisons, he was the one who saw the way clearly, who always chose the path of least destruction. He was the one who cared.

  “You killed your own brother.”

  Jason laughed. It was an oily, ugly sound. “You should have seen him. He actually wanted us to try to be a family. What an idiot.”

  Rage boiled within Blake’s chest. Bile filled his throat, but he fought it back. “You don’t even care that you killed him.”

  Jason smiled again. “On the contrary, it was one of the finest moments of my life. He was always the good one, but where did all that goodness actually get him? Facedown and bloated, floating with the fishes in Lake Mondo. And you know what the best part of all this is?”

  Blake felt the blood draining away from his face. He braced himself for what was to come.

  “It hurts you that he’s dead. I love that,” Jason said. He licked his lips slowly. “I really do love that.”

  “And the woman?”

  “The bitch? She was going to betray me. Too bad she didn’t get a chance. Melissa was an opportunist. She might have changed her mind and decided to stick with me if she’d had a chance. But—” he leaned forward slightly “—she was having trouble talking at the end. Her eyes were bulging out. She wasn’t nearly as pretty then as she had been.”

  Blake fought for air, for words, for sanity. “You don’t even care, do you? Not about Chris or the woman or anything.”

  Slowly Jason shook his head and smiled. “I care about one thing.” He paused as if for dramatic effect.

  Blake refused to ask the question. It was obvious that Jason couldn’t wait to tell him the rest, anyway.

  “I care about revenge,” Jason said. “I want revenge, and I’ll have it. Don’t worry about that, father.” He drawled the last word, sneered it. “I’ll have my revenge, on everyone who deserves it.”

  Blake’s heart broke completely then. Jason was going the way of Farley. He had no laudable goals, no future, no conscience. It would be so easy to walk away. He wanted to walk away. No, to run, as fast and as far as he could, to pretend that this son had never been born.

  But that was where the problems had started, wasn’t it? He had turned away from Jason’s childhood problems, pretended they didn’t exist. Two people, one his beloved child, were dead as a result. His conscience would never allow him to live in peace for the rest of his life. Especially if he turned away again.

  Rebelling against all that came naturally, Blake watched the guard take Jason away, and he vowed one thing. He would do all that he could to fulfill Christopher’s goals and the goals that should have been his own.

  He would reach Jason somehow if it was the last thing he did.

  Natalie felt like a tightly strung wire. Nearly a week had passed. Vincent was everywhere she went, and knowing he was always behind her made her aware of herself in a way that she never had been before. That was all too clear this morning, she noted, staring at the mess on her bed.

  Clothes were tossed everywhere, taken from her closet, studied and discarded.

  “Agh!” she yelled. “The man is making me crazy. I’ve never paid that much attention to what I wear. For the past few years, all my efforts have gone into my work. And I’m not going to let the fact that some man is constantly staring at my butt make a difference now.”

  So saying, she picked up the closest article of clothing at hand and marched into the bathroom. Once there, she applied only as much makeup as was necessary to look professional. She donned the slim leaf-green dress, ran a comb through her hair and prepared to leave the house.

  Almost without thought, she checked every window lock, the back door, swished every curtain into place so that no one could peek inside and closed the door behind her. Just as Vincent had advised her.

  Exiting her apartment building, she couldn’t help but look for Vincent sitting in his black sedan across the street. That little move was fast becoming a ritual, even if it rankled that she couldn’t stop herself from looking each day.

  But to her surprise, Vincent wasn’t there today. Derek, her nighttime shadow, was still sitting in his SUV. He waved to her as she moved out.

  Vincent never waved. He just looked dark and brooding and determined. Ever since that day when he had traded words with Brad, he had kept his distance, ever watchful but not interfering with her life in any way. In spite of the space he maintained between them, she could never seem to ditch her awareness of him. Not just as a bodyguard, but as a man.

  She hated that. So this was a good thing that Derek was here today, wasn’t it?

  “Absolutely,” Natalie whispered. Besides, Vincent had assured her that Derek was very good at his job. She would be just as safe with him as she was with Vincent, wouldn’t she?

  The fact that her back felt naked and exposed today was just ridiculous. She didn’t need Vincent to feel safe, did she?

  Besides, she hadn’t received any new threats lately. Any day now, Vincent would tell her that he was being pulled off her case. The danger was over.

  Vincent would drop out of her life just as fast as he had dropped in. She supposed that was a good thing. It meant that she was safe, and she didn’t really need Vincent. In any way.

  Jason glanced out the window of the transport van. He stole a look at the guard driving the van. The man was nervous, his jaw tense with a nervous tic, his back ramrod straight. His hands were clenched on the wheel. Jason liked that. It felt good to scare someone after the long days of enforced confinement and humiliation.

  It had been all he could do to contain himself these past few days. His head had been pounding and he had almost messed up badly when he had lost his temper with one of the scumbags who was housed in the same jail.

  Small-time scumbags. Riffraff. Brainless thieves and drunks. Not a brain among them. No one who could manipulate the way he could. The temptation to try the blade he had bribed out of a guard had been almost overwhelming. Not that there was anything special about the knife. It had a serrated blade that would work well enough and would cause some extra pain. There was that, but he had been forced to pay an exorbitant sum and work too hard, convincing a Fortune TX, Ltd. underling that he had debts of honor he wanted to pay while he was locked up and helpless. The dolt
had believed him and had sent him the money. The guard had come through with the knife.

  As for the idiot guard, he knew which side his bread was buttered on now. When Jason had lost control with the convenience-store thief who had gotten too close and nearly caught Jason looking for a hiding place for his treasure, Jason had savaged him with his fists, feet and teeth, ignoring the temptation to try the evil blade. The knife was for later, and anyway, in the end the guard had been more than willing to make more easy money by hiding the knife for him. The idiot was probably sorry that his charge was being transported to maximum security, because now the gravy train would end.

  Jason wanted to laugh. If only the guy knew the whole story about how things would end…

  Well, he would soon enough. In fact, right now would be a pretty good time. The van was out in the middle of nowhere and there was plenty of forest for cover.

  Jason slid his hand down beside the seat. The cuffs hurt like hell and made it tough, but then his whole life had been tough. Tough was the thought of facing a lifetime behind bars or a shortened life by getting juiced. Pain was nothing.

  Finally he grasped the hidden blade and held it in his clenched hands.

  When he looked up, he was staring into the eyes of the guard, the one who had placed the blade in just the right place.

  “Just like you told me,” the man said. “I’ll take my money now.”

  Yeah, like that was going to happen. Once the guards had transported him to max, the guy would have no incentive to stay quiet anymore. He might figure he could get more money by lying to the authorities and squealing, suggesting that things had happened differently than they had. Jason knew the type. Heck, Jason was the type, only much, much smarter.