Trust No One (Vista Security)

by Diana Layne

  “And then the poor girl falls asleep and has to depend on a man to rescue her. Whereas if she’d known better she could have missed the long nap and taken care of herself.”

  Ben sat up straighter, ears tuned to MJ, any attempts to listen to national news abandoned. Obviously, MJ had forgotten his presence, but just a few simple words summarized a life philosophy and sent him a clear, strong message. MJ did things her own way and didn’t depend on others. Only reiterating what he’d seen with his own eyes.

  “Bedtime, sweetie.” MJ headed toward the bedroom with the sleepy little girl, singing, “I love you, you love me…”

  The melody sounded familiar to Ben but he didn’t recognize the words. And now, he’d never have a need to know. A few minutes later he heard another kiss and a ‘Nite, darling, I love you,’ then MJ came back into the living room.

  “So bath, story, song, tuck into bed. You’re quite into the cozy family routine.”

  “I like it,” she said, walking past him and disappearing into the kitchen. “Where’d you put the pie?”

  “Fridge. Middle shelf, left side.” He heard her open the refrigerator door. “Because you didn’t have it? The family routine?”

  “I had it. Until I was nine. Want your pie?”

  “Definitely.” The sound of an opening drawer and the clank of dishes told him she was transferring the pie pieces out of the box to plates.

  “Tea? Or milk?”

  “Tea’s fine.” And bourbon would be better. “So you’re trying to recreate your childhood?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” She came back into the living room, hands loaded with dessert plates balanced on top of the tea glasses.

  He took a glass and a plate, eyeing the chocolate pie with meringue piled high enough to rival his mom’s. “Depends upon the childhood, I suppose.”

  “Mine was worth recreating.”

  “And yet you’d teach Sleeping Beauty to empower herself?”

  “Only sensible thing to do these days.”

  He pushed her, curious how deep her wounds were. Were they as deep as his, or had she found some trick to healing he missed?

  “If Sleeping Beauty can take care of herself, then who would the Prince Phillip have to rescue?”

  MJ stopped mid-bite and gave him a look that said she was surprised—or impressed—he’d been paying attention enough to remember the hero’s name. She chewed and swallowed then answered. “Prince Phillip is fictional. In real life, there are no princes.”

  Wounds still pretty deep. “Maybe there are some men who would like to be a woman’s prince.”

  “Yeah, right, they’d like to be only as long as it takes to get into Sleeping Beauty’s pink panties.”

  The words barely left her mouth when she grimaced. She shoved another huge piece of pie into her mouth.

  “The story of your life?” He took a smaller, more manageable bite. Almost as good as mom’s too, he conceded.

  She pointed her fork at him, speaking around a mouthful of chocolate pie. “Can the shrink stuff. I don’t need analyzing.”

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With thorns so–”

  “What the hell?”

  “Hush, I’m creating here.”

  “Creating what?”

  “A nursery rhyme, keeping with the spirit of the evening.”

  She frowned. “No one calls me Mar–”

  “Shh. I think I have the ending. With thorns so sharp—that’s a play on your last name as well, Thornberg, get it?” Not letting her make a comment on his brilliance, which from the look in her eye wouldn’t be anything positive, he continued, “With thorns so sharp, they’ll pierce your heart and blood flows from the hole.” He smiled, knowing she’d like to pierce him with more than thorns.

  “Cute,” she said in a tone that conveyed the opposite.

  “I thought so. And quite accurate. You are quite thorny.”

  “Only with people who barge in and bug me. And as for your attempt at being creative—call me Mary again and I’ll cut out your tongue.”

  He ignored her tone and grinned. “But the name works so well with the rhyme.”

  “I am so not amused.”

  He pulled in his smile. “I didn’t think you would be. So let’s move to the reason I came. Tasha.”

  “That’s even less amusing.”

  “Faster we talk about her, faster I leave.”

  “Now that’s tempting. Why don’t I believe it? Maybe since we’ve already talked about her? Can’t see anything else I have to say. I don’t know where she is. We don’t keep in touch. Period.”

  “But you know where she’d likely go?”

  “Nope. I’d say try Ed’s wife, but I don’t think they were especially close either. Tasha kept to herself. I was much closer to her brother. Why don’t you go bug him?”

  “Can’t. He’s disappeared.”

  “What do you mean disappeared?”

  “Disappeared as in we can’t find him either.”

  “Was he on an assignment?”

  “Nope. Both he and Tasha took some personal time.”

  “So why aren’t you looking at him as the suspect?”

  “We didn’t think he’d have sex with the senators before he whacked them.”

  “Sex?”

  “Some of the conditions of the senators, naked and in bed, suggested they’d had sex and maybe died of a heart attack.”

  “You have reason to believe it wasn’t a heart attack?”

  “From what I understand, yes.”

  “But you said the crime scenes were clean?”

  “We know how to do that in this business, MJ.”

  “So you’re moving forward on someone’s hunch?”

  “Hunches have proved right in my past, how about yours?”

  She nodded, scraped the last of the pie off her plate. “You think Niko is helping?”

  “The last we traced him, he left the country for Russia. And then he disappeared. It’s possible he snuck back into the states with another passport, or came in through the border, but evidence is pointing more toward him being in Siberia.”

  “Siberia? As in prison?”

  He only nodded.

  The news hit MJ hard, though Ben could tell she tried to hide it. She stared at the muted television as commercials and the news program flashed by with a look that suggested her attention was far away.

  “You don’t have other family do you?” he asked.

  “Niko and Tasha aren’t related to me, we were just . . . raised by the same person.”

  “But you lived together long enough to feel like a family?”

  “Our upbringing in Ed’s household wasn’t exactly traditional.”

  Considering who Ed had been, Ben could understand.

  “But I have Angel now, and she’ll have a normal childhood. One like I should have had.” MJ seemed to have slipped into a reflective mood.

  “Helping us find Tasha isn’t going to prevent Angelina from having a normal childhood.”

  “There’s no helping to it. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

  “What?” She turned to him and frowned, and it was if a light turned on when her eyes widened. “Jeff wants me to find her? I’m not in the business now. No way.” She shook her head, clamped her mouth in a tight line and stared back at the television.

  The flashing pictures reflected in her dark eyes. “This won’t pull you out of retirement.” He doubted the sincerity of his words, but hey, whatever it took. It was his job to get her to go after Tasha.

  “Wanna bet?” Obviously she realized he couldn’t offer her any assurances as she continued, “If I do this one job, there’ll be another, then another. No. Unh unh. Not going to happen.”

  “You at least know how Tasha thinks.”

  “You’re right there. And if she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be found. Just leave her alone and she’ll show up when she’s ready.�
�

  “Leave her alone and she’ll come home, wagging her tail behind her . . .”

  MJ’s face screwed into a scowl. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “From Little Bo Peep—the nursery rhyme. You might know your fairy tales, but you’re lousy with nursery rhymes.”

  “Angel’s not old enough for them. The book I have doesn’t have pictures.”

  “Little Bo Peep lost her sheep–”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll skip the rhymes, thanks.” MJ looked at a clock on the wall. “And now it’s getting late. . .”

  Ben stopped playing nice. He’d known it would come to this. “You have no choice.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I can’t take no for an answer. Jeff won’t let me. You have to help us find Tasha.”

  “And just how do you think you can make me? Hold a gun to my head?”

  “Would that work?”

  MJ made a rude noise. “What do you think?”

  “Didn’t think so.” Ben took a breath and plunged on. “Jeff gave me a better weapon. Angelina.”

  MJ’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. Her pie plate hit the coffee table with a hard clanking sound that made up for her speechlessness.

  “Vista is helping you push the adoption through faster than normal. They will pull back the help, make things more difficult, possibly stop the process al–”

  She sprang on him in a flash. Had him by his shirt, jerked him close. He’d known she would. He didn’t defend himself.

  “No,” she said in a soft controlled voice, one more deadly with its very control. But he was trained, too, and it would be a tough fight if she followed through. She knew it. He could tell.

  He held her gaze and spoke quietly, “I’m only the messenger.”

  She shoved him away and slumped into the couch, banging her head against the stuffed cushions as if she was trying to knock out the image of what faced her. “That son of a bitch.”

  The very forlornness of her response tugged at him. While he’d chosen Vista as an employer once he was out of the military, he realized she’d never had a choice in her occupation. Ed began training all three children for the business as soon as he’d given them a home. Ben understood her reluctance to be forced back in, even for a brief time.

  “It won’t take long. We’ll bring someone in to watch Angelina, or maybe Tex’s wife--”

  “No. She’s going.”

  “We can’t take a kid with us.”

  “No ‘we’ to it except for me and Angel. You aren’t going. You’re just the messenger,” she echoed his words back to him.

  “I can’t let you go alone.”

  “You want Tasha found, you will. You think she’s just going to pop up if I have another agent in tow?”

  “Orders. Either I go with you, or I’ll stake out your place and follow you.”

  “What? I’m suddenly untrustworthy? After all I’ve done, all I’ve sacrificed?”

  He didn’t understand it either. “Just speculating here, but you aren’t officially on payroll. You might take the kid and run.”

  “You could be using me to find her so you can take her out.”

  “Always that possibility, true.” Though he didn’t have that order, no assurance he wouldn’t get one.

  She tossed him a disgruntled look that told him what she thought of his theory. “Why’s Tasha killing these guys?”

  “Just now wondering that, are you?”

  She ignored him and continued speaking, more to herself than him. “What’s Jeff know that I don’t? Is he afraid Tasha’s going to convince me to join her, or is it something else?”

  She narrowed her eyes, and suddenly turned her sharp gaze to him. “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “Only the dead guys had no obvious connection to each other except they were all politicians. Jeff didn’t seem to know much more either.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Of course not. But it’s not my job to question.”

  “My gut tells me he knows something more. Or at least suspects.”

  “Like?”

  “Like were they all senators at the same time? Did they serve on a committee together?”

  “Possibly.” Ben shrugged. “No doubt there’s questions that need answers, but I’m not supposed to solve the mystery. You’re supposed to do the brainwork. My orders are to go with you and bring Tasha back, regardless of her motivation, and I plan on following orders.”

  She stared at him, anger radiating toward him. He imagined she was envisioning strangling him or something equally lethal.

  “I’m not Keith, MJ,” he said quietly, taking a risk thinking the memory of her last assignment was holding her back from working with him. “And the safety of the world doesn’t rest on this assignment. I won’t betray you.”

  “Just because you say so, I’m supposed to trust you?”

  “Shoot me if I’m lying.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  “Does that mean–”

  “Yeah, you can tag along. We can act like we’re dating. I doubt Tasha’s kept tabs on me to see if that’s true.”

  “When are we leaving?”

  “I’ll have to talk to Tex.”

  “Give him a phone call, and we’ll head out in the morning.”

  “No. I’m not going to call tonight. He and his wife are at the Christmas play rehearsal. And I have a valve job to finish tomorrow.”

  “See you after work then.” Ben left the apartment, and opted for the stairs to relieve the tension of the evening. Traveling with a baby. He’d rather face a bullet.

  Instead of going to the elevator, he turned to go down the back stairs. Though MJ had agreed to have him travel along, Ben made a planned stop in the parking garage looking for her car. He’d been in the business long enough to know better than to trust anyone as well, although his lesson hadn’t been as harsh as MJ’s.

  He found her car, pulled the little device out of his pocket, slipped it just under the back bumper. That taken care of, he headed into the night air, to the front of the building where his truck was parallel parked curbside.

  Darkness dropped the temperature sharply, and he zipped his jacket. The glowing street lamps showed the street was deserted. No doubt the town rolled up the sidewalks at sundown.

  Ben unlocked the door on the dinged and rusty old Ford truck, dreading the next coming days. He opened the door, stepping to get in when a searing pain pierced his arm. He mentally registered the shot before he heard the “thump” sound of a silenced high-powered rifle.

  He dove into the truck, scrambling for his pistol in the glove compartment.

  A movement in a window in MJ’s apartment caught his eye. He aimed, ignoring the pain and blood he felt running down his arm. When an image came into focus, he realized it was MJ. Holding a gun.

  Damn. Had MJ shot him?

  Chapter 6

  MJ, tempted to sink into a chair, sighed with relief instead. The emotions pummeling her in Ben’s presence left with him. Not allowing any time to dwell on her feelings, she pulled her focus to what she needed to be doing for this unplanned for—unwanted—trip. She went to her safe, unlocked it, and pulled out her Sig Sauer P220 she’d bought to replace the one Keith stole. She had no reason to use it other than the shooting range, but leaving after work tomorrow meant she needed to prepare tonight.

  Chances were slim she’d fire a single shot, but she wouldn’t consider going on any assignment, no matter how tame or routine it promised to be, without–

  A sound like glass shattering outside made all thoughts freeze. A brief pause and then her feet moved before she formed a conscious thought to go to the window. Automatically, she killed the living room lights, and habit had her slipping the bullet clip into her gun.

  No doubt there was a good explanation for the sound she heard. Something non-threatening. Ben’s presence in town had simply thrown all her alarm switches to se
nsitive hair trigger. The whole idea of going back to work may have made her jumpy. But there was an old saying that had saved many operative’s lives: Better safe than sorry.

  A look outside the window confirmed Ben’s red clunker truck still parked out front. But the street light revealed his once intact windshield was now riddled with a myriad of lines running through it, resembling something Angelina might have scribbled on paper. Chunks of glass, here and there, were totally missing. MJ dropped the curtain and pivoted away from the window, processing what she’d seen. Had some kid thrown a rock? Not likely. Then what would shatter his windshield like that? The answer seemed obvious, but why would someone shoot at Ben?

  Standing beside the window with her back to the wall, this time she inched the curtain away with her gun and peeked out to scan the street below.

  Where was Ben?

  She zeroed in on him, lying across the front seat, his gun out and aimed. . . at her! She dropped the curtain back in place. What was going on?

  MJ processed all she’d seen. Someone shot at Ben, and for some reason he thought the shooter was her. From his angle he’d be unlikely to hit her even if he fired, so MJ inched up and took another look. This time she swept a broader area with her gaze, and although rusty from years out of the business, her brain still managed to process the scene with practiced thoroughness. She took in the silent downtown of two and three story buildings, the parking spaces vacant in front of each business as her building was the only one used for apartments.

  All looked quiet and silent until...

  There. Across the street at the old State National Bank building. Movement at a second story window. A flash.

  Adrenaline spurting through her veins like hot motor oil, MJ dropped down to the floor again, flattened on the carpet. When no bullet came zinging through her living room window or wall, she peeked out once more and this time the truck was pitched off balance. The back tire once full of air was now slowly sinking into the ground.

  Shit, someone was really after him.

  He must’ve concluded the same thing and realized it wasn’t her. He clambered out of his truck, on the apartment building side and scrunched down, using the full sized F150 truck as a shield from the shooter with high ground advantage across the street.