by Lexy Timms
Dani picked up her shoes and slipped them on. “Nice to have met you…”
“Milligan.”
She blinked a few times. She’d half-expected him to come up with a ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones.’ “Really?”
“Really.”
“Nice to have met you, Mr. Milligan.”
“Nice to have met you…”
Dani stopped at the door and half-turned, taking in his disheveled hair and untucked shirt. For a moment she felt as disconcerted as the flunkie who had fled only moments before. “You really don’t know?”
“I don’t.”
Dani paused a moment. “Nice to have met you,” she said, and left.
Luke nearly jumped when his phone vibrated. He’d forgotten it was in his pocket. Dani was already at the door and glanced back at him as he dug it out. He looked at the screen and looked back at her. “I… need to take this…” he mumbled, wishing like hell he didn’t have to.
Dani nodded, and smiled. It was a little sad, a little rueful, but she didn’t say a word. She went off, probably in search of that mysterious brother she’d been fussing over. Luke bent over the phone and walked quickly to the back of the conference room, where the smell of fresh scotch was wafting up from the carpet and the wallpaper was starting to peel.
“Yeah?”
“Everything under control?”
Luke glanced down at himself. Given that he looked like he’d just been pawed by a wild animal of the female variety, under control didn’t begin to cover it.
Focus, boy. Forget the pretty girl.
Besides, what were they asking him for? Obviously it wasn’t, given the light show in the street below that still hadn’t fully dissipated.
“Care to tell me what the hell all that noise was about?” Luke growled into the phone.
“We don’t know. There was a call about an armed man entering the hotel, but our surveillance didn’t see anyone come through with a weapon.”
“We were on lockdown!” Luke hissed, and looked furtively behind him. Dani was still in the hallway, talking with the guard, stealing glances his way. “We were told it was an active shooter.”
“Active? No. there were no shots fired, no calls to 9-1-1.”
“No one reported this? Then what the hell’s with the cops outside?”
“How should I know? It’s all negative. Like I said, someone at the hotel heard something about an armed man entering the hotel. But no one called it in.”
“What the hell kind of game is he playing?” Luke thought out loud. “What’s the point of a fake shooter?”
“That’s what you’re there to find out.”
“If he’s got cops in his pockets…” Luke moved to the window. The police cars were pulling out. Three of them. No SWAT teams. Shouldn’t there have been SWAT teams? “More than a few cops…someone higher up?”
“We’ll run a check. Won’t be the first time a cop’s taken payment to give a show.”
Luke turned from the window. The hall outside the doorway was empty. He felt the loss. He cleared his throat. “There’s a girl here…”
“You don’t have time to play, Romeo.” The voice was losing patience, had come back sharper, with hidden edges that put Luke’s back up.
“Shut up and listen. She knows I’m not an analyst. Also, she has some training, I don’t know what. Definitely martial arts. Who knows what else. I’d guess firearms, the way she reacted when they locked us down.”
“Description?”
“Tall. Blonde. Leggy. She’s wearing jeans.”
“Stand by. We got a man inside on the hotel service. Checking.” There was a pause. Then a low whistle. “Tell me she doesn’t know who you are.”
“Why? Who is she?”
“That’s Danielle. The old man’s daughter.”
“Dani.” Luke’s mouth became suddenly dry.
“That’s her. Says here she’s spent some years and a lot of money taking martial arts, competed in high school. But there’s not much information on her.” There was a long pause. “Did you get an in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She knows I’m not a pencil-pusher, but she thinks I’m one of Daddy’s pet soldiers.” The smell of the whiskey was getting stronger. Reeking like the rest of this set-up.
“Be careful. There’s not a lot known about her. She’s been doing a hell of a lot of traveling. If she’s trained, that could shed some light on some of this.” There was a short pause. “On the other hand, this could be the break you’ve been working for…”
“Or it could blow the whole thing.” Luke balanced the phone against his shoulder and tucked in his shirt, made sure his tie was straight.
“Don’t let it. Play along. Did you get a chance to talk to her?”
“Yeah…” Luke swallowed, and coughed a little. His fingers going instantly to his lips. He’d found a way in.
“What?”
“We, uh, talked. Had to keep the volume down because of the active shooter that didn’t actually happen. But we talked.”
“And?”
Shit. “Kissed.”
The pause this time was significantly longer.
“Kissed?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then. Well done. You have an in. Use that.”
WTF? Seriously? “How do you… I can’t use her like that, it’s…”
“You’ve been working on this for six months. This is the first solid break we’ve gotten. Do NOT get noble on me; you know this is part of it.”
It might have been part of it, but it still left a bad taste in his mouth. Outside he heard an emcee. Applause. Seriously? He’s still going to make the announcement? He raked his fingers through his hair, with no idea if he was making things worse or not. Given his luck today, every strand was probably standing straight up. “I need to go.”
“Don’t drop the ball on this one. Kiss her. Sleep with her. Do whatever you need to do to get where you need to be.”
The connection broke. Luke stood there staring at the phone in his hand, noting that the battery was almost dead.
Fuck this up and his phone wouldn’t be the only thing to die.
Nothing made sense. Why put a lockdown on the place for no reason? Why invent a shooter? Something wasn’t right.
None of this was right. Starting with one very mouthy blonde.
I should’ve known she was trouble. I knew I needed to stay away from her. And what did I do?
He growled, not liking that train of thought. He ordered that voice in his head to kindly take a flying leap, and headed back to the ballroom trying to look as confused as everyone else. It wasn’t that hard. Moments ago he’d held a beautiful blonde in his arms, then the whole thing had blown up in his face and she was…out there somewhere. They’d been on lockdown for no apparent reason, but someone had cared enough for appearances to pull in some cops to make it look official.
And now he was under orders to have sex with a goddess.
Right. What could be simpler?
Chapter Four
If Dani could have figured out a way to kick her own ass, this would have been the perfect opportunity to challenge her aim.
I should’ve known that doofus would be trouble. I should’ve stayed away. And what do I do? Sure, all charm and all ears at first, but damn if he didn’t shut down when his phone went off. The fact that she’d been walking out the door at the time it had rung had very little to do with anything. She could have sworn that he’d been following her. Would have bet money on it in fact.
Freakin’ A! He’s probably married! That had to be it. The way he reacted, trying to crawl into the wallpaper, head down, mumbling excuses. Married. Definitely married. Dammit.
Married or not, she needed to get her head in the game. Just how many people had her father invited? It felt like half the people in Atlanta were in the ballroom. Boxed in by little black dresses and tuxedos, she couldn’t see a thing even in her high heels. She finally took them off, figuring they were hindering her a he
ll of a lot more than they were helping.
Dani climbed up on her tiptoes, pulling on the memory of the ballerina she once was. How hard should it have been to find the guest of honor? Logic dictated he’d be in the thickest press of bodies. She spotted several friends of her fathers she wouldn’t mind dodging, but one somewhat lanky recent graduate eluded her.
“I find a married man,” she muttered through gritted teeth, carrying on her own personal tirade as she searched. “And he’s the one I end up getting hot and heavy with while my baby brother is out here with a damn shooter on the loose!” She would have continued, in fact, she had a quite a bit of ammo on herself after all, bet suddenly David’s head floated above the general milling of the crowd. Thank bloody goodness he was tall.
“David!” Why she called when there was no way she’d be heard in all this noise, she had no clue. It seemed every conversation in her vicinity was dissecting the lockdown, with suitable hysterical exclamations that gave the entire crowd a somewhat volatile feel that she hadn’t felt since the elections in…well, that was a memory better left untapped. She’d had enough angst for one night already, thank you very much. Instead she called out again, and pushed her way through. If she stomped a little hard on the occasional instep, it was somewhat justified. If she’d been wearing her shoes, she might have been able to do some real damage so her victims might have at least been thankful to have bruises over broken toes. Besides, she’d said “Excuse me” at least once and, so far, no one was making much of an effort to move out of her way.
She burst through a wall of suits, guards she realized, and threw her arms around her brother who seemed startled to see her, if welcoming. But her second reunion of the night was cut short before she could get so much as a single word out by her father, who strode through the masses with all the force of Moses parting the Red Sea.
Not wanting to share her brother just yet, she tried to draw him around, to follow her, to just listen for once as she questioned him and made sure he was okay. He was laughing and shoving her, denying anything to do with the threat, and teasing that she’d set the whole thing up to cover her own escape from the party.
“Doesn’t putting the place on lockdown sort of preclude any kind of escape?” she asked, laughing with a certain amount of relief, then stiffening as her father’s arm shot out, to part them, she thought, only it wasn’t she who had his attention. He pulled something off of David’s back, a yellow slip of paper.
“What’s this?”
Her father’s roar silenced the crowd around them. Dani let go of her brother’s neck, uneasy, as David turned to face their father. Something in his expression left her uncertain, and she stepped back without meaning to.
“David?” She’d been left breathless from her race through the ballroom. She stood, feeling the sweat trickle down between her breasts, trying to catch her breath when her whole body screamed for more adrenaline that she no longer had.
David’s face had gone pale. Something was definitely wrong. She opened her mouth to ask, but he held up a single hand. Wait.
Dani clutched her shoes in one hand, felt her other hand curl into a fist. She scanned the crowd, but without knowing what she was looking for it was difficult to say whether or not she could spot it. Marcus had already come running like the trained little Rottweiler he was. Edwin Rineheart waved the paper under Marcus’ nose, and Dani almost fancied she could hear him ordering Marcus to “Get the scent, get the scent! Go ge ‘im! Good boy!”
The paper in his hand crumpled in white-knuckled anger. He threw it to the floor, stomping it childishly for good measure, and then turned his gaze squarely on his errant daughter.
“I see you found a way to go even less formal,” her father growled, casting a venomous glance at the shoes in her hand. “I suppose I don’t have to ask where you were.” He treated every word as a curse. He might as well have spat in her face. “And I suppose it don’t matter with whom.” He turned to walk away, pausing long enough to add, “Not that it ever mattered to you.”
It shouldn’t have hurt, yet it did. She opened her mouth to respond but he beat her to it, turning his attention on the crowd gathered around him.
“LADIES AND GENTELMEN!” he yelled out, all smiles. Jekyll and Hyde. He turned into the jovial host so fast, Dani’s rejoinder was lost in the wind.
Probably just as well. I didn’t really have a good comeback to my own father calling me a whore.
David sidled up to her, his hand reaching for her shoulder in the way he had of trying to remove the sting of their father’s disdain. For as long as she could remember, she’d protected him from their father. And for his part, he was always there to help her find a way to stand up again. She took a deep breath, and blinked back the tears.
“LADIES AND GENTELMEN!” her father repeated. “Very sorry about all the fuss! Someone in the hotel lobby thought he saw something that turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. It never had anything to do with us at all, but for safety’s sake… well, why take a chance, huh?”
During Dani’s mad dash through the ballroom, she’d paid little attention to the other guests. Now she saw they’d been gathering to leave, purses clutched in nervous hands as dutiful dates held out various wraps; solicitous despite their own frowns and obvious concerns about delaying for so long as it took for a society exit from an important affair. Now faces turned toward Edwin Rineheart as though he were their liberator, with a certain relief comingled with fear that had nothing to do with active shooters.
Dani took advantage of the confusion to slip free of her brother’s grasp to snatch up the paper that her father had ground into the floor.
“So,” her father was saying, his tone coaxing, covering a hint of steel that conveyed that his words were, in fact, an order. Dani knew that tone well, and she flinched as the words spilled out of her father’s mouth. “I want everyone to go back to drinking all my booze…” He smiled at the round of nervous laughter. “And be sure to eat up all that shrimp, ‘cause you know that won’t reheat.” More laughter, freer now. Purses and wraps returned discreetly to tables and chairs. Party-goers willing to give this strange celebration a second chance.
Her father watched with a beautiful smile that hid something ugly. Dani shuddered. So… MUSIC!” He clapped his hands at the quartet that had only just returned to their seats. “Not you guys. Let’s get something we can all dance to, eh?”
Lights flashed, and the staid society party blossomed into a mini-rave, or as least as close as her father could come to it for his son’s sake. Lights slammed off, strobes kicked in, and red and yellow spotlights searched the room for someone or something to show.
The four musicians in tuxedos and gowns were replaced by one man with a cloth around his head and a T-shirt that said Godzilla is Elvis and had the illustration under it for proof. He spun a turntable, sometimes backward, and the grand ballroom was filled with recordings of angry musicians who hated the very people who now tentatively began dancing to their music.
Dani uncrumpled the paper in her hand. Three words stood out in the flashing, roving lights.
BANG! YOU’RE DEAD
Dani looked at her brother in alarm but he was gone, already on the dancefloor. In plain sight of everyone. Including, presumably, the person who’d taped the message to the back of his jacket.
So who did she need?
Luke!
Dani whipped around, searching the crowd frantically for the analyst who most certainly wasn’t a bookkeeper, but the darkened dancefloor made it impossible to find anyone at all.
Okay, maybe David had disappeared, and strange-but-hot Luke was nowhere in sight, but Dani still had one person she could confront.
And at this point, it would be a pleasure.
Only, when he looked at her it was to glance again at her feet, with such absolute contempt she found herself taking a step backwards, forgetting for a moment that she was a grown woman. Something her father seemed to keep forgetting.
Now her face felt like it was burning and she knew she’d turned red. It only ticked her off more.
“Really?” Dani snapped. “My brother’s life is threatened and all you can think about is my bare feet?” Dani shoved her shoes back on so hard, she nearly tore off one of the heels. She slammed her foot down onto the floor, realizing belatedly how much the action resembled stomping her foot.
Just like the petulant four-year-old he thought she was.
For fuck’s sake!
“There, all properly shod, Daddy,” she spat. “Now that my bare feet don’t get you all excited, tell me who the hell wants…”
“Excited?” her father snarled. “You come here, uninvited I might add, dressed like a two-dollar hooker and you have the nerve—”
“If anyone would know what a two-dollar hooker dresses like—”
“Can you honestly tell me you weren’t making out with a stranger while the rest of us were locked down?”
Making out? While there was a certain amount of stunned admiration that her father already had that kind of information when her lips still felt somewhat crushed and bruised, there was also the realization that a certain pimply-faced brat was going to have to be taught you don’t rat out the boss’ daughter. Something involving a knee to a groin might get that particular point across best.
In the meantime, there was a certain parental unit who needed a smug look wiped off his face. “Just who was locked down? Huh?” She flourished the note in his face, uncrumpling it for his benefit so that he could read it all over again. “The guy who wrote this? The person who STUCK IT ON MY BROTHER’S BACK?”
Her father swiped for it, but Dani was faster. “I’m not playing games with you,” she said, shoving it in her pocket and positively daring him to come after it. He considered it. She could tell. Her mouth went dry when she realized that he was actually considering it, fists clenching and unclenching while his eyes darted around them, eyeing each guest dancing in the vicinity, pretending that they weren’t watching this altercation between the boss and his infamous daughter. Her jaw clenched as she realized her father was actually assessing the damage it would do his fucking reputation if he laid a hand on her in public.