Still Waters (Greenstone Security Book 1)

by Anne Malcom

  Murder scenes in L.A. were treated like spectator sport. Not just by journalists and police, who had become a little jaded by something as common as a garden-variety murder, but the bored and desensitized public who watched too much CSI.

  I glanced down at the hand at my elbow, then up to the eyes that I’d only just begun to banish from my dreams. “Let me go, Keltan,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “No,” he replied. “I’ve done that too often. Wasn’t too keen on the results.”

  I stared him down, the box rattling so loud that the roar almost took up my ability to hear myself think.

  Almost.

  Self-preservation had those words, the stare, the mere presence of this man bouncing off my shield.

  “I’m standing in the middle of a murder scene where a lady with a three-thousand-dollar handbag and a bad nose job just took a photo of the blood on my shoe,” I hissed, evil-eying the woman in question before focusing my death glare on Keltan. “Let me go before I strangle her with her tacky pearls.”

  Keltan glanced down at my light pink shoes, which were, in fact, stained. I picked the wrong day to deviate from my go-to black. But I wanted them to go with my new Celine. Oh, how vanity did me in. And my shoes.

  I hoped this murdering asshole really did get caught and rotted in jail. These shoes were nearly impossible to find. And replace.

  Like the life he had taken.

  That box rattled slightly too, in a way that told me once I was home, and in safe surroundings the gravity of that would hit me so I didn’t give a shit about the shoes. But focusing on damage to precious accessories was what was keeping it sealed for the time being. And my eagerness to get this story locked down.

  Keltan did let me go, and I didn’t hesitate to make the most of that by storming underneath the tape an officer held up for me and going straight for the stairs.

  No way was I going for the elevator, considering Keltan was following and an enclosed space with him was just about as hellish as being trapped in a closet five feet away from a murderer.

  “Jesus, Lucy. You wanna slow down so you don’t break your fuckin’ neck falling down the stairs?” Keltan hissed from beside me.

  I gave him a sideways glance, not slowing my stride in the slightest. If anything, I sped up. “I have managed to navigate stairs for almost three decades. I think I’ll continue long enough to get out of here. Unless the universe is really deciding to fuck with me even further.”

  Luckily, my pace meant there was only one flight to go, and freedom was within reach. In the form of a basement garage in which my car was currently residing.

  As if the universe was giving me one final taunt, I tripped going onto the landing, missing a step from being too busy glowering at Keltan. I would’ve gone flying, given the chance.

  Keltan’s reflexes didn’t give me even a glimmer of one, his arms around me, saving me from a header.

  The familiar feeling of those arms had me wondering if a header with the carpet would have been a safer choice.

  Keltan’s gripped my arms, his thumbs rubbing against my bare skin. “You’ve had a shock, Snow. It’s okay to lose your cool.”

  His voice was so soft it gave me pause. As did the arms around me and that familiar feeling of drowning in his presence. Then I found it.

  The surface.

  I wrenched myself from his hold, ignoring my body’s protest at the removal of the contact. “The only thing I’m losing is my patience,” I informed him icily. I crossed my arms. “Why exactly did you even come here?” I spat, deciding the landing of an apartment building where I’d just witnessed a murder was as good a place as any to ask this particular question.

  Something ticked in his jaw as his eyes explored the distance I had made between us, almost hugging the wall of the landing. I knew he was considering crossing it, trying to use his body and my response to it as a weapon. But he stayed still.

  Smart man.

  “I handled the security for Lucinda.”

  I rolled my tongue over my teeth. “Well you did a bang-up job,” I said dryly.

  His jaw hardened. “I said handled. She fired my company yesterday. Inexplicably. Before that, her security detail had been… extensive.”

  My ears perked up, the need for the story overtaking the need to get away from Keltan.

  “And why did she need such extensive security?” I asked. “She’s a jewelry designer, not a Russian diplomat.”

  From what I’d heard, Keltan’s crew was new but making a name for itself as the “it” security company. Yes, this was L.A.; there were “it” bags, “it” girls, and “it” security companies. It didn’t help that most of the men in the employ of Greenstone Security could also serve as rugged male models or be the lead alongside any of the movie stars they protected.

  I’d already heard he was handling security for Lexie’s band, which I was happy to hear. Mia’s daughter had become somewhat of an overnight sensation, and she was still young. This world might eat her alive yet. Not that Bull would let that happen. Or Keltan.

  Or Killian, despite the rather messy breakup of what everyone had thought was a forever kind of thing. I’d known the kid since he was in diapers. I knew the way he looked at her. It was a forever type of thing. For him at least. Which was exactly why he ended it with the pretty young girl headed for the stars. Life had given him a lot of hits, and he didn’t think he was destined for those same stars. For the thousandth time, I cursed his mother for making that man think he belonged in the gutter, sacrificing his own happiness because of it.

  I made a mental note to call Rosie for the hundredth time in order to plan some sort of hit on Killian’s mother.

  Maybe planning a murder might get my friend to talk to me for the first time since she disappeared five months ago, right after Skid was murdered, Lucky was shot and Bex was almost killed by the psychopath responsible for almost blowing me up, breaking my arm and setting in motion the events that broke my heart.

  The man actually responsible for that particular break, the one that didn’t heal like a bone did, was eyeing me with solid brown eyes and a stiff jaw.

  He folded his arms, his eyes going guarded. “Not my job to ask questions.” He paused. “Though it is yours.” Accusation dripped from his tone, and I cursed the fact that he managed to somehow see straight through me, in all ways.

  I jutted my chin up. “No, it’s my job to interview designers, talk about the latest bag that costs more than a reasonably priced used car and decide whether neutrals are in for fall.” I paused. “They are. So, go stock up on beige if you want to be ahead of the curve.” I gave him a long icy glare, which he didn’t flinch from, nor break. “Now, you didn’t answer my question. Not to satisfaction. If A, she fired you, why was tall, dark and grunty at the scene of the murder? And B, why did you come all the way down here when you have rock stars to protect and a reputation as a badass to uphold?”

  Keltan’s eyes analyzed me in a way I did not like. In a way that I’d forgotten they did. Like they recognized the illusion of the stillness of my decorum and swam deeper to inspect the chaos.

  “Heath was there because our security systems were still alerted to a breach in the property. We didn’t disable them considering Lucinda’s personality. She tended to be… rash, to say the least. Plus, she’d already paid and needed them.” He stepped forward. “And I came because the second I heard your name and “murder scene” in the same sentence, my fuckin’ heart stopped beatin’. The only thing that kept me sane was that echo of your voice on the other end of the phone.” He stepped closer, his hand going to my jaw. “I came because I had no other fuckin’ choice except insanity if I didn’t see you, touch you, have every one of my senses ensure me you were safe and in one piece.”

  His breath was hot on my face at that point, his body pressing into mine once again. Too many times in such a short period. The vulnerable, exposed parts of me wanted to lean into that. What he offered. Especially the unwavering safe haven.


  The still. The real still, not whatever illusion flickered on the surface that fooled most people except the man in front of me.

  But then I was still in control. Me, Lucy. Not the Lucy who listened to eight-year-old voices or who let the man in front of me beyond the stillness. This was the Lucy who managed to survive the loss of this. Who managed to do it without her best friend. Who managed to wrench herself away from her home and move to a city that housed the man who broke her heart in order to give herself the life she’d dreamed of.

  The Lucy who excelled at keeping rattling boxes shut.

  So I put my hand on his chest, relishing the feel of it for one split second before exerting enough pressure to communicate my need.

  For him to stop touching me.

  He was strong enough to ignore the gesture, but he still complied, despite looking more than a little unhappy about it.

  “You came, you saw, but you didn’t conquer,” I informed him. “I’m not dead. You can now go about your day and I’ll go about my life.”

  I went in the direction of the last flight of stairs, but his voice stopped me.

  “You think I’m gonna let you walk away, Snow?” he asked roughly. “That I haven’t been thinkin’ of you for six fuckin’ months and twelve days? You think we’re done?”

  I twirled, but not before I disguised every emotion on my face. “Yes, Keltan. I think we’re done,” I lied, my voice flat and final and empty. On the surface, at least.

  Then without waiting for a thing, I turned on my heel and left.

  “You know we’re not.” The words floated after me like a harbinger of trouble.

  Of doom.

  “You done?” a voice growled from behind me, so close the smell of mint lozenges imprinted itself in my hair that I’d secured atop my head with a discarded and unused pen. Pens were going the way of the newspaper in this digital world. Rather sad. Hence me giving the forgotten artifact another use.

  Because I’d been engrossed in my own retelling of the day’s events, rather more embellished and less grizzly than they’d been, the voice rather than the mint scent had me jumping half out of my chair and almost spilling coffee all over my laptop.

  I turned to face Roger’s bushy brows, raised in surprise. In the short time I’d been working for the publication, I didn’t do such things as jump out of my skin. I especially didn’t risk things like a cup of coffee. Especially since sleep wasn’t something I had been on great terms with. I didn’t normally outwardly project anything rather than that false stillness that I clutched for defense and survival.

  Damn Keltan for making it that much harder to fake the stillness. Not the murder scene I’d just waltzed onto.

  I could’ve handled that.

  I had practice, after all.

  “I’m done,” I told Roger, glancing at the screen where I’d just typed the last word of the story.

  He eyed the computer too, much like a hungry dog regarded a juicy bone. This was big news. Yes, people got murdered in the City of Angels all the time. But if those people were famous, it was different.

  Sad, but true. Worshipping at the altar of celebrity meant that we mourned at their graves much the same way.

  Plus, we had the scoop.

  News was ever more competitive now. Death like this was currency. Another sad fact of life.

  Roger waved his hand at me in a shooing motion, stepping forward. “Well move so I can read it and make sure it’s good enough to send to copy. We’ve got piss-all time to get it in before primetime news. With any luck, they’ll pick up our story.”

  I rolled sideways on my chair to give Roger the room to bend over my computer, his muddy brown eyes darting back and forth over my words at an alarming speed. His body may have gotten round and soft with age, but those eyes had a sharpness to them that contrasted with the belly overhanging from his black slacks.

  “My story, you mean,” I corrected.

  There was a pause as my words filtered through Roger’s reading of my words. “Yes, yes,” he muttered, waving his hand dismissively at me.

  I sat perfectly still, despite having the unnatural urge to fidget or chew my fingernails or do something to betray my nerves at having him read my story. I was never nervous about my stories. Then again, stories about Celine’s latest collection weren’t exactly something I needed to worry about. They would take me places, namely to the Celine store, but not the places that included a byline on the hottest story in Hollywood.

  I was proud of the words. Writing them was somewhat cathartic, helping me continue to run from the events and the memory of the touch I’d been without for six months.

  And the gaping hole in a throat of a woman.

  And hiding in the closet from the man who murdered her.

  On that thought, something that had been drowned by everything else that happened in the past two hours popped into my mind.

  “The manifest isn’t here.”

  Old Spice had been looking for something.

  Of course, my brain had skimmed over the reason for Lucinda’s murder. My story had touched on possible motives, namely robbery. She was a jewelry designer, after all. And she had four ex-husbands. Who, from what I’d heard, wouldn’t exactly be crying at her grave.

  My mind continued to work on the scene I’d entered. Sure, I’d been distracted by the blood and the dead body and then the murderer, but the rest of the apartment hadn’t looked disturbed. It was an explosion of prints and an example of questionable taste and decorating decisions, but not of a thief searching for some shiny baubles.

  And slitting someone’s throat is a rather intense method of killing for a robbery gone wrong.

  Personal.

  Add to that Keltan’s words about added security and the sudden firing of his company.

  My mind ticked over all of this while I watched Roger read the story that was so not finished.

  It was not finished, and I was not finished with it.

  Distraction in the form of investigating this story would work twofold. Helping me continue to run and maybe get myself on more than one byline that wasn’t life or death in the fashion industry but of the real kind.

  Then maybe stories that got me back to the grassroots of journalism and muckraking. Maybe make some sort of difference.

  Those thoughts silenced, or rather scuttled back to corners of my mind to develop, when Roger straightened, stepping back.

  His pudgy pink hand reached into the pocket of his cheap slacks. The man was worth a lot. Journalism didn’t pay much, but he was also a shrewd businessman who’d made good investment decisions in the early 2000s.

  Yet he continued to wear polyester pants and button-down shirts that finished at the bicep.

  He retrieved a lozenge, taking his time to unwrap it while staring at my screen.

  Roger had a process. I knew this. Everyone knew this. Stephanie, the features editor and the woman I vaguely wanted to hit with my car, knew this too and was watching the process of Roger putting the lozenge in his mouth, pinching his cheeks together as he sucked on it.

  If Roger didn’t like the story, the crunch of the lozenge against his teeth would be the only thing communicating this. It would echo through the busy newsroom as the harsh sound of failure.

  That meant a complete rewrite.

  Silence followed by a borderline disturbing heavy swallow of a half-sucked lozenge meant work had to be done to make it publishable.

  A stiff nod meant passable.

  There had been a handful of actual verbal responses, but they were not for someone who spent her time writing about shoes. Mario, from sports, of all places, got a smile and a clap on the back for uncovering a famous football player who was not only cheating on his pregnant wife but taking steroids like candy.

  I knew Stephanie was hoping for the crunch.

  We had not become swift friends. In fact, I really hadn’t become swift friends with anyone apart from Carrie, my copy editor. She braved the resting bitch face and demand
ed we go out for drinks because “someone with that good of a taste in shoes can’t be someone I’d ever hate.” She was married, happily so, and she had twelve-year-old kid who was “the spawn of the Devil.” She was crazy too.

  Although I had conversed and had drinks with most other people at the office, I mostly kept to myself. Well, as much as I could. It was literally my job to mingle and make connections and go to ‘the hottest’ parties.

  Luckily, Jon, my roommate, who I’d gone to college with, was all about the hottest party. Well, any party.

  He was my perfect plus one: crude, more judgmental than Anna Wintour and gayer than Elton John.

  All the things you want in a friend, especially when your best friend was MIA for nigh on six months, and the rest of your girls were living back in your hometown.

  Stephanie was not girlfriend material. She was one of those women who smiled to your face while underneath that mask she scowled and plotted your demise.

  She was watching Roger with eyes slathered in too much shadow and not an ounce of genuineness.

  I didn’t waste my time focusing on her, careful to keep my expression even and on Roger.

  His eyes moved from the screen to me. They glowed with something that made a small smile tease at the side of my mouth.

  The corner of his mouth tipped up.

  “Send that to Carrie. Right now. We’ll make primetime at this rate. You’re good at shoes and bags, Walker.” He gave me a pointed look that was swimming with something that rather looked like pride. “You’re better at murder and blood.”

  On that, he turned on his cheap and vaguely offensive shoe and left.

  Without his considerable expanse, I was able to get the most glorious view of Stephanie’s pinched face before she quickly turned it into a plastic smile, hampered by Botox and collagen.

  “Wow, Lucy. Good on you. You must be so proud. You know, it’s a shame that someone had to die for this, though. You didn’t murder her for the story, did you?” she asked, her voice saccharine sweet and ending with a laugh that was worse than any fingers on a chalkboard.