Still Waters (Greenstone Security Book 1)

by Anne Malcom

  And I so was.

  Luckily Keltan was focused on doing his job too, moving his attention the computer.

  I watched him navigate the chaos of his computer desktop.

  “What is this?” I asked in horror, looking at files littered everywhere like… well, litter.

  “I think it’s this new-fangled technology they called a computer,” Keltan replied dryly.

  I glared at the side of his head, then got distracted by how hot he was in profile. I shook myself out of it. “How do you know how to find anything in that?” I nodded to the folders he was scrolling through. Then I glanced to the neatly stacked papers on his desk, the lack of dust on the shiny surface. And the same with the rest of the office. “And how do you have an office like Martha Stewart organizes yet have that shambles?”

  “I’ve got a system,” Keltan responded, clicking a video file. “And order and cleanliness is left over from the army. Can’t shake that out of me.”

  “But I guess it doesn’t translate to computers,” I muttered.

  “System,” he muttered back.

  The video file came up, the preview a still from a large, cluttered space that looked like a design studio. Lucinda’s, if the decorating style was anything to go by.

  Keltan hovered the mouse over the Play button before glancing up at me. His eyes were hard. “I don’t like this,” he told me.

  I returned his stare. “I’m not asking you to like it.”

  He glared.

  “You’ll find a way to get this video anyway if I don’t show it to you, won’t you?” he surmised.

  I nodded once. “And you most likely won’t like my other methods.”

  He sighed and muttered a curse under his breath.

  It took a little bit for Keltan to find the day in question, once I explained Monica’s description of the scene and of Lucinda herself. He had a knowing look on his face when I mentioned the similarities she’d alluded towards a certain dictator.

  Then he pressed Play.

  Lucinda walked with the men, her murderer included, into her cluttered workspace. She leaned over her computer and had what looked like an erratic conversation, then rattled off some numbers that they documented on a phone.

  “You don’t have sound?” I asked Keltan, leaning in to squint at the screen to try and read their lips. Although the image was crisp—they had some good cameras—the angle of their bodies made it impossible to make out their words. I doubted an actual lip reader could.

  Keltan had been watching the screen intently too, his jaw tight. “No,” he clipped. “Our shipment of the latest audio devices got held up.”

  I pursed my lips. “Well that was decidedly bad timing. For Lucinda, anyway. For moustache man, it was good, I’d say.”

  Keltan rubbed the back of his head. “That’s him? The one you saw? The one who almost fuckin’ saw you?”

  I nodded, watching the figure. I might not have gotten the best glimpse of him through the slats of the closet, but it was well enough to know almost beyond any doubt that the man on the screen with the bad suit was the same as the man who’d reeked of Old Spice and liked to slit throats.

  “Fuck,” Keltan muttered.

  He yanked me to his side, moving his chair to accommodate me sitting in his lap. I didn’t exactly object to the new position. It was rather nice, actually.

  Keltan rubbed my jaw with his thumb. “Goes against every instinct inside me to let you anywhere fuckin’ near this shit,” he mumbled. “Every part of me. This shit is bad, Lucy. It’s not somethin’ we’ve just stumbled on. This shit has been on our radar for months. It’s bigger than a story. Not worth you riskin’ anything for. Not worth me riskin’ you for. Shit, nothing on this planet is worth risking you for.”

  I eyed him. “Are you telling me I can’t do the story?” I asked in an even voice. Underneath, it was not even. I didn’t do well with being told what to do. Ask any teacher, parent, or employer in my life.

  Not since Gray. Not since before that. It had always been there, my aversion to authority. But him trying to use his love like a weapon to control me, then beat me, then damage my soul kind of amped up that aversion.

  “No, babe,” Keltan said with a small grin. But it was full with melancholy. “May be an army grunt, but even I have enough brains to know you can’t tell a wild thing not to do anything. Unless you put it in a cage.” His hand tightened. “No fuckin’ way am I ever putting you in a cage.” He paused. “I’m asking you not to do the story. If not for your own survival, then for mine.”

  I bit my lip. That was a low blow, wording it like that. Making it seem so easy. It wasn’t. “You don’t know what this means to me,” I whispered. “This is it. Me finally being able to swim out from clothes and bags and superficiality and actually do something. Be something more than that.”

  He frowned. “You are more than that.”

  I gave him a look. “You’re slightly biased. And I don’t want to be more just through your eyes or your opinion. I want to be more by my own. I want to do it for myself.”

  He paused and it was long. “Fuck,” he muttered.

  The curse was a win. Though the fear in his eyes, the fear I put there, was a loss.

  “You’re going to do this shit, aren’t you? Unless I handcuff you to my desk?” he asked, resigned.

  “You handcuff me to your desk, you better plan on doing it till I’m old, gray and dead. Because that’s the only way you’ll manage not to have me burn your house down and your little security club of hot guys,” I said.

  He quirked his brow. “What is it with you and fire?”

  “It makes an impression,” I replied.

  “You don’t need fire to make an impression,” he muttered, eyes roving over me.

  For a moment, a long moment, I considered staying right there, in that office, on top of his hard thighs, in his soft embrace, forever. But forever wasn’t designed for stillness. Neither was I. Unfortunately.

  So, I stood, and he let me, but he did it with a frown. And then he stood too.

  “I don’t have time for this. I’m leaving,” I said, rounding his desk to retrieve my bag that had been thrown on the floor and long forgotten. My accessories were really taking a beating with Keltan around.

  I picked it up, silently promising to take more care of it. It wasn’t paid off yet, after all.

  “Okay,” Keltan said, rounding the desk too, standing with his arms crossed, watching me bend and straighten intently.

  My thighs burned at his gaze, but I kept my face impassive. Or tried to. “Okay?” I asked, pleasantly surprised. I was actually expecting the handcuffs.

  I had a bobby pin in my pocket for emergencies, and I’d been planning on using it as a makeshift key. I’d done it before. Twice. I was a pro.

  With Rosie as a friend, it was mandatory to learn how to get out of handcuffs.

  “I’m putting Heath on you,” he added.

  There it was.

  I stilled, crossing my own arms and narrowing my gaze. “You’re not putting Heath on me,” I told him firmly.

  He merely smiled in that smug way that made me want to shake him, then jump his bones. Luckily the words ruled the latter out of the equation, on account of the anger.

  “I’m a grown woman. I don’t need a babysitter,” I seethed.

  “Babe, you, not two minutes ago, threatened arson and meant it. I know you meant it because of the track record. You would benefit from a babysitter, even in regular times. Now, when you’ve decided to take it upon yourself to investigate a murder to which you’re the sole witness?” His eyes glittered. “You need a fuckin’ bodyguard to make sure you’re not a witness to a second murder. Your own.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need a bodyguard to make sure I’m not a witness to my own murder. Self-preservation and survival instincts will do that just fine.”

  He stepped forward so his body brushed against mine. “I don’t doubt your survival instincts, but you were close enough to fuc
kin’ smell a murderer not even three days ago.”

  “Yes, but that’s barely a fair point. He’d doused himself in enough terrible cologne that the neighbors on the ground floor would likely have been able to smell him,” I retorted.

  His eyes flared in warning. “This isn’t a fuckin’ joke, Snow.”

  “I disagree. I think this, going from zero to a million in the space of less than a week and then you telling me you’re putting a bodyguard on me, is a complete fucking joke,” I told him with a raised brow.

  He put his hand on my waist to yank me to his body. “We’ve finally waded through two fucking years of bullshit to get you right where you are. Standing in my arms. Still. Listen to me when I say I’m going to do whatever the fuck it takes to make you stay that way. Because you forget that you made me stand still. From what I was running from. You getting yourself in the situation you were in three days ago but not walking away from it?” His eyes swam with chaos. “That’ll get me running all over again. But not fuckin’ fast enough, babe.”

  I saw them then. The demons. The ones he’d alluded to. The ones my own had exchanged pleasantries with but had yet to get to know because of their reluctance to get themselves banished. The battle that had him losing his best friend, that sent him to me, was chasing him right now. Because of me.

  And that hurt.

  I was stubborn and scared of how fast this had happened when it took so long to get here, but no way would I make him fight that battle when it wasn’t necessary.

  “Okay,” I said quietly.

  His body sagged, but only slightly, and the worst of the battle left his eyes. “Thank you, baby,” he murmured.

  And that thank you, with the soft voice, the returning stillness and his arms around me, it was worth the bodyguard.

  Just.

  Heath had been wonderfully mute for most of the day.

  That was after he demanded that he be the one to drive my car, declaring there was “no fucking way he was letting me drive in shoes like that.”

  I’d glanced down at the Manolos he was glaring at. They’d done nothing to him. I glanced back up at his icy blue eyes, my brow raised. “I’ve been walking, talking, and kicking macho men’s asses in these since I was fourteen,” I informed him. “I think I’ll manage driving said macho men. But I can always resort to the former.”

  His mouth had twitched and he didn’t reply, merely held out his hand for the keys I was holding.

  I stared at him.

  He stared back.

  I might have met my match in Heath. I knew he would likely, out of pure male stubbornness, stay silently outside the offices for as long as it took. Keltan probably ordered him to do that exact thing in order to hamper my investigative skills. I wouldn’t put it past the infuriating kiwi.

  I thrust the keys into his upturned palm with more force than necessary, glaring at him.

  “You get what you want. But since my heels won’t be used for driving, they’ll be itching to be used for another purpose,” I threatened.

  Another mouth twitch.

  “You want to give me empty threats, or you want to get in the car so we can go about our day, babe?” he asked dryly.

  I sucked in a breath, hating infuriating, attractive kiwi men.

  But I got in the car.

  And then Heath drove me around L.A., first to Lucinda’s old rehab facility, where they told me about something annoying called “client confidentiality,” so I’d scrapped that idea and gotten Heath to drive me back to the office, where I could do some Googling.

  Yes, I was resorting to Google. But I thought the search engine was widely underrated.

  Heath had deduced that sitting with me inside the newsroom was not going to work for him, so instead he parked himself at the coffee shop on the ground floor of the building.

  It was well situated for someone like me to do the walking, talking, writing thing throughout the workday, and, as it turned out, for a bodyguard to sit and… guard. Against what, I wasn’t exactly sure, considering no one had shot at me so far.

  I highly doubted they would.

  But the look in Keltan’s eyes gave me pause. I’d already tried to grill Heath for what he knew about the Lucinda case.

  “Client confidentiality,” he’d clipped.

  I rolled my eyes. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  Silence.

  “The client is dead. She doesn’t need you to be confidential,” I informed him, hoping it would probe him into divulging some information.

  More silence.

  I glared at his profile as he pulled into the parking lot underneath my building.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “I’ll do it without the help of any of you.”

  He gave me a look, all the while executing a perfect parallel park. “You need to seriously reconsider that.”

  “What? Giving up on questioning a mute man from the bottom of the world, where it’s obviously mandatory to learn how to piss women off?” I replied.

  He parked. Rather impressively. It pissed me off. These men were too good at everything. It would have taken me at least two tries.

  “No,” he clipped. “This whole fuckin’ thing. You’re gonna get yourself in trouble.”

  I smiled at him. “Of course, I am. But I’d do that whether or not I investigate the story. At least this trouble might get me a promotion.”

  I went to undo my seat belt, but a hand at my wrist stopped me. I glanced up at the previously impassive face, half obscured by a beard.

  It was no longer impassive, dancing with something else.

  “No, this will get you dead,” he said, voice hard. “Keltan is like a brother to me. One of my best mates. Know him. Know what you mean to him. Likely knew that before you even fuckin’ knew it. So you might seem to be unworried about the prospect of wading into shit that gets women murdered, but I’m not keen on seeing one of the best men I know have to fuckin’ bury you,” he told me harshly. “Because I’d have to bury him too. Maybe not put him in the ground, but I’d wind up saying goodbye to a mate of mine nonetheless.” Ice-blue eyes burned into me. “You best think long and fuckin’ hard about that before you make any more decisions about just how much that promotion means to you.”

  I blinked at him. At the most words I’d heard him string together… well, ever. And he may not say much but when he did say something, he knew how to make the words hit their mark.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  He eyed me. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I replied confidently, and untruthfully.

  But a girl’s gotta fake it till she makes it.

  Then I’d gotten out of the car, and he’d followed me, glowering in silence before parking himself at a table by the window of the coffee shop, informing me that if I “even thought of trying to give him the slip he’d make it look like an accident.”

  “Make what look like an accident?”

  Another meaningful glower.

  “I’m pretty sure that goes directly against the bodyguard portion of your job. Which is the entirety of your job, just for clarification.”

  He did not dignify that with a response.

  If Keltan was the New Zealand version of Lucky, then Heath was the New Zealand version of Bull. Even he rivaled Bull’s silence. Then again, Bull’s silence wasn’t quite as quiet since Mia entered the equation. Nor was it so full of demons. Heath’s might have been. He hid them well, but something worked behind those eyes

  Tragedy most certainly.

  But not one that concerned me.

  I’d left him to his brooding, ignored the pointed look I got from a flustered-looking Stephanie who was having to do her job, and sat at my computer.

  Well, I’d gotten a coffee first, because it was practically a crime to be that close to the sweet smell of coffee beans and not indulge.

  In the midst of my Googling, I had a thought.

  Manifest.

  The thought popped into my head like one of those lame
cartoons where the light bulb appeared after an idea had finally finished cooking.

  He was looking for a manifest.

  In my research of Lucinda before interviewing her, which was what I did before any interview so I didn’t ask dumb questions and look like an idiot, I’d read that all her designs were made in Italy from the finest quality metal, then handmade in some specialist factory, and then shipped here for sale.

  Shipped.

  Manifest.

  I was more than embarrassed that it had taken me so long to put it together.

  But I had Keltan and the whole dead body and almost dying thing, so I hoped that gave me somewhat of a pass.

  I picked up my phone.

  “You’re speaking with the genius of the world, the universe and all the galaxies beyond. How may you serve me?”

  “You have caller ID, Wire. You know it’s me,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Why do you think I answered with my handsome charming quip instead of my club-assigned biker grunt?” he replied teasingly.

  I grinned wider. Wire was the club’s resident computer whiz, and he was only twenty-four. I’d known him since he was a prospect, and you would rarely see him without some form of caffeinated beverage in his hand. Nor did he sleep much, or at all. Hence having to be always “wired.” His eyes would never stay in one place too long unless it was life or death, which there had been way too much of lately.

  “How are the grunting bikers?” I asked. “Behaving?”

  “Well, there’s been no explosions,” he said hopefully. “A win for us.”

  “No explosions equals win,” I agreed.

  “Well, that could be because both you and Rosie have left,” he replied.

  The car bomb may’ve had a lot more to do with the son of underworld kingpin exacting revenge for his father’s murder, but the explosions before that may or may not have been because Rosie and I got pissed off with the men during lockdowns. Or were bored. Or drunk.

  I sobered. “Rosie still commencing radio silence with the club too?”

  “Yep,” he said, the tapping of keys in the background telling me he was in the windowless room full of computers where he spent eighty percent of his time. “Cade’s got me trying to hack into satellites to find her. That’s some serious ‘lock you up under the Patriot Act’ type shit, but I’d do it for Rosie. In a heartbeat. Plus, I’d get away with it because I’m brilliant. But I know she’s okay. She just doesn’t want to be found. She promised me she’d burn all my hard drives, and backups, if I broke any federal laws trying to find her.” He sighed. “What is it with you chicks and burning things?”