The Socialite and the SEAL

by Jenna Bennett

  He looked at JB. “I was there in case the dog was hurt. There was no dog. They can give you the details. I don’t wanna leave the house unguarded.”

  “Mick is there,” JB said.

  “By us. I’ll see you later.”

  Rusty walked away.

  “Tansy’s in the conservatory,” JB called after him. He added, for Max’s and Gus’s benefit, “Next to the phone. It didn’t ring the whole time you were gone.”

  Max nodded.

  John turned back to him. “So what’s this thing about ‘where Conrad said it happened?’”

  “We followed the directions,” Max said. “We found the spot. At least it looked like what he described. So we pulled off and took a look around.”

  “And?”

  “First off, there were no tire tracks. You saw how fast he was going when he lit outta here. It isn’t far, so he was still traveling at a pretty good speed, we assume, when he got there.”

  JB nodded. He’d certainly noticed Conrad taking off down the road like a racecar driver at the Nascar 500. And he didn’t think Conrad would have been slowing down before he had to.

  “He said the guy stepped out of the trees and flagged him down,” Max said. “If he’d had to stop fast, there’d be signs.”

  “So maybe he gives lousy directions. Did you look for tire tracks somewhere else? Maybe it just didn’t happen where he said it happened.”

  “I’m not sure it happened anywhere,” Gus said darkly, and JB arched his brows.

  Max nodded. “We drove past, just in case we were wrong. But there wasn’t anywhere else it could have been. So we came back to the place that matched the description. The place without any tire tracks.”

  “And?”

  “We pulled off to the side of the road and got out,” Gus said. “And walked all over the place. Both sides of the road. Into the woods. There was no sign of the dog. No paw prints, no dog shit. No fur. No blood.”

  “Why...? Oh.” Gus had thought the dognapping might have been a lie, and the dog had jumped or been flung out of the convertible. And that Conrad had been afraid to tell Tansy, so he’d made up a story. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Means the dog isn’t suffering on the side of the road,” Max said. “Besides that, it’s hard to say whether it’s good or bad.”

  JB nodded. “So there was no sign of the dog. Any sign of anything else?”

  Gus shook his head. “I was all over that patch of woods. There were no footprints. No broken branches. No flattened grass. No quick burials. Nothing.”

  So basically, no one had been there. Or if anyone had been, he’d passed without leaving any sign of his passing. Gus was that good. But was el Saud?

  Before JB could ask the question, Gus added, “He might be able to do that. But I doubt it. Especially if he was carrying a squirming, barking, biting bundle of fur.”

  JB nodded. So did Max. “So what are you saying?”

  “That it looks like Conrad made it up,” Gus said. “That maybe something happened to the dog, something we don’t know yet. Maybe it flew out of the car somewhere else, and he’s afraid we’re gonna figure it out, so he lied about the place. We didn’t see anything, but it’s a very small dog. Or maybe he’s working with el Saud. Maybe he drove the dog somewhere and handed it off.”

  Possible. All of it sounded very possible.

  “We gotta get that dog back,” JB said, and then stopped when his pocket buzzed. “Maybe that’s Tansy. Maybe el Saud called.”

  He pulled his phone out and looked at the display.

  But it wasn’t Tansy on the other end. It was Rusty. And he didn’t waste any time. “She’s gone.”

  “We know. I was there, remember?”

  “Ms. Leighton,” Rusty said, and JB lost his breath and his ability to think. “She’s not in the conservatory. She’s not anywhere else in the house. It’s a big place, but I’ve been running around calling her name, and she’s not answering.”

  “Someone must have called her,” Max said, and glanced at JB. “In the few minutes since you left. And told her to meet him somewhere. Probably bribed her with the dog.”

  Probably. If someone called and told Tansy he had Mimi, and for her to meet him in the back pasture in five minutes or the dog got it, JB was pretty certain she’d have gone.

  “How would he make it onto the property? How would she make it off?”

  “We’ll have to find out,” Max said grimly, and headed for the house, while Gus took off running toward the back gate to check on Cisco.

  JB stood for a second, his hands knotted into fists, while he thought about hitting Conrad in the face and watching blood spurt. If the asshole hadn’t lost the dog in the first place, none of this would be happening.

  Then he shook it off and hurried after Max.

  12

  Rusty met them at the door to the conservatory. “She isn’t here. Her father’s still looking, but she’s nowhere I can find her. Mick’s monitoring the cameras, but so far, there’s no sign of her.”

  “She’d know where they are,” JB said. “She’s lived here her whole life. If she wanted to get somewhere without being seen, she’d know how to do that.”

  Rusty nodded.

  “Dammit. I can’t believe I left her alone. I can’t believe she’d leave without letting me know!”

  “He probably told her he’d hurt the dog if she told anyone. Or let anyone see her. She loves that dog. So she believed him.”

  Probably. But— “She should have told me,” JB said. “She should have trusted me.”

  “She probably thinks she’s protecting you. The dog might not be the only thing he threatened.”

  Maybe not. But Tansy should have known he could take care of himself. And her. And her little dog. Just as soon as he figured out where it was.

  This misplaced anger wasn’t getting him anywhere, however. “What do we do?”

  “We figure out where she went,” Max said calmly, “and we go after her.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Max opened his mouth, but closed it again when he heard running footsteps outside on the patio. They all turned toward the door. JB had assumed it would be Gus, coming to update them on Cisco and the security of the back gate, but it was one of Mick’s guys, in the white shirt and black windbreaker. JB stiffened—they all did, and all reached for their weapons—but after a second, JB recognized the guy from the meeting yesterday. He stopped a few feet away, and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Mick’s guys could use more PT than they got.

  “What?” Max demanded.

  The guy lifted his head. He was so out of breath that he could only manage a few short words at a time. “Gate’s open. Conrad’s gone.”

  Hell!

  Max stepped aside to let the guy into the conservatory. “Go. Update Mick. Tell him to text me Conrad’s home address.”

  The security guard nodded and pushed past them, staggering a bit as he set off again, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Let’s go.” Max headed out, with JB and Rusty behind him. They set off for the garage at a jog.

  “The house—” JB began.

  “Mick’s got it. And I’m pulling Cisco off gate duty and sending him and Gus inside. They can sit on Leighton till we get back.”

  He was already dialing. By the time he’d explained the situation to Gus, with a minimum of words, the three SEALs had reached the garage.

  “Just take the Maserati again.” Rusty jumped into the back without discussion. JB got behind the wheel, while Max fitted himself into the passenger seat, still talking to Gus.

  “Strap in.” JB turned the car on and felt the powerful engine tremble beneath him. In any other kind of situation, this would have been the experience of a lifetime.

  It was the experience of a lifetime now too, but not in a way he wanted.

  They took off like a shot down the driveway.

  “Left out of the gate,” Max told him.

  JB no
dded. It was mere seconds before the gate came into view, and luckily it was still open. JB turned the wheel in plenty of time, and the Maserati skidded sideways onto the—thankfully empty—road beyond. He put his foot on the gas, and the Maserati shot up the road to the left.

  “Mick’s contacted the local PD,” Max continued, “and explained the situation.”

  “We don’t need help from the local PD.”

  “If they see us,” Max continued, without acknowledging the remark, “they know not to pull us over for speeding.”

  Ah. Good idea. Since they were traveling at roughly three times the speed limit.

  “They’re dispatching a unit to Conrad’s place.”

  JB opened his mouth, and Max added, “They have orders to observe only.”

  Hopefully they had orders to do more than that if something went wrong. He was damned if he’d let Tansy get killed while two flatfoots were sitting outside in their car arguing about the definition of observe.

  “Why are we going to Conrad’s place?” Rusty wanted to know from the back seat. “You think he took Ms. Leighton there?”

  “I think he took the dog there,” Max said. “I think he put the dog in the car, drove it to his apartment. Or house, or wherever he lives. Locked it in, and then came back to the Leighton place with the crazy story about el Saud.”

  JB glanced at him. “Why?”

  “Eyes on the road,” Max said.

  JB looked at the road. “Why?”

  “Because while we were out looking for the dog, Andy called. There’s been a sighting of el Saud.”

  Huh. “Let me guess. Not in Philadelphia.”

  Max shook his head. “Mecca.”

  Saudi Arabia. A long way from Philly. “Pilgrimage?”

  “Probably someone there old Omar wanted dead. Or maybe el Saud’s gotten religion. I don’t really care. He’s not here.”

  No, he wasn’t. He hadn’t stopped the Maserati, and he hadn’t taken Tansy’s dog. He hadn’t called Tansy, either. Not from Mecca.

  “Conrad?” JB said.

  Max nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  “Why?”

  “You said it yourself. He was Ms. Leighton’s bodyguard least year, after she came back from the Med. And then she got better and didn’t need a bodyguard anymore. And Conrad went back to gate duty. Not as much fun. Not as glamorous. And with no pretty girls depending on him.”

  “Fucker,” JB snarled.

  “He probably wrote the damn note thinking he’d scare the Leightons enough to get his old job back. And he’d get to spend his time protecting Ms. Leighton from this non-existent threat he’d invented. Never thinking they’d take it seriously enough to call in reinforcements.”

  “Dumb fuck.”

  “It would have been smarter for him to fade into the background at that point,” Rusty said from the backseat. “Eventually, we’d figure out that there was no threat. If this thing with the dog hadn’t happened, we’d have done just that. James Cooper’s in Texas and el Saud’s still in Saudi Arabia. Neither of them is here. We would have dug a little deeper, and stuck around another few days or maybe a week, but when nothing happened, Uncle Sam—or Commander Baker—would have ordered us back to Virginia.”

  JB nodded.

  Rusty continued. “If Conrad would have just waited, he’d have gotten his job back. We’d have left, and just to be on the safe side, Walter Leighton would have insisted that Conrad follow Ms. Leighton around.”

  Max nodded. “I would have probably suggested that to Mick. Just as a precaution.”

  “But he couldn’t wait,” Rusty said while the car zoomed down the road toward wherever Conrad called home. He poked JB in the shoulder. “You were going around with Ms. Leighton, doing his job—the way he saw it—so instead of just waiting it out—no patience—he tried to get rid of you.”

  JB glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

  “We talked about it in the car coming back,” Max said. “We think he fired the shot yesterday morning. Not trying to hit anything, just hoping he’d spook the horses and you’d get thrown and end up off duty for a while. I guess he’s too stupid to realize that if you got hurt, one of us would take over.”

  JB nodded. If the first of Tansy’s bodyguards was injured, the SEALs would certainly see that as a threat and double down on the protection. The last thing they’d do, would be to leave Tansy in less skilled hands.

  Not that his own hands—or his own brain—had been all that skilled, to not figure this out.

  “And the shot at the house...”

  “Was Conrad trying again. He probably heard on the radio that you were going climbing. Mick made sure his crew was tuned into our phone frequency, just so they’d know what was going on. If Conrad was in the guardhouse, he’d have enough time to get into position on that side of the house before you reached the top.”

  And time enough to squeeze off a round aimed at JB. “Stupid fuck.” He might have hit Tansy. She’d only been a few feet away.

  Hell, he might have hit JB himself in the head. And been looking at cold-blooded murder.

  Instead of whatever the hell he was looking at now.

  Probably not kidnapping. Tansy would have gone with him willingly, if he told her he thought he might know where Mimi was. And you couldn’t arrest a guy for borrowing a dog for a couple hours. Even if you really wanted to.

  “Left at the next intersection,” Max said. He had his phone out and was looking at the map. “Looks like another couple of miles.”

  “Shouldn’t we have caught up with them by now? If this was where they were going?” At the speed the Maserati was going, it would certainly blow past lesser mortals. JB had been weaving across both lanes for a while now, going around other cars. Luckily, it was the early part of the day and not a lot of traffic. “They didn’t have much of a head start.”

  “If they’re not here,” Max said, “I’m not sure where they are. So let’s just hope we get lucky.”

  Great.

  “Hang on.” JB saw the intersection up ahead. “Let’s just get there as quick as we can. That way, if they’re not there, we can figure something else out.”

  “Works for me,” Rusty said, and held on to the seat as the Maserati skidded into the intersection, narrowly avoided getting clipped by a truck carrying lumber—that wouldn’t have ended well—and took off down the road followed by a symphony of horns.

  “Nice driving,” Max commented.

  JB glanced at him. “I have incentive.”

  “Maybe we should always dangle a damsel in distress over your head. You’d get us everywhere faster.”

  “Let’s not and say we did,” warred with “Fuck you,” in JB’s head. But since Max technically was his boss on this op, he settled for a grunt and no comment, and focused on getting to Tansy as quickly as possible instead.

  * * *

  When Conrad first called the house and said to come down to the gate because Mimi was there, Tansy hadn’t hesitated. Maybe Mimi had gotten away from the bad guy who had dognapped her. Maybe she had bitten him, and had jumped out of his arms and run home. She must be exhausted, going all that way on those short legs. She must be terrified. She might be hurt.

  She hadn’t even stopped to consider whether leaving the house was a good idea. She had promised John she’d stay in the conservatory, but that didn’t even cross her mind. Not until she got almost to the gate, and saw Conrad’s car parked there.

  He drove a big truck. Black, with oversized tires.

  Almost like he was trying to overcompensate for something, a small, evil voice in the back of her head whispered.

  Conrad liked looking good. Not just handsome, but good. Strong. Heroic.

  The passenger door was open, and she approached carefully. Maybe Mimi was inside?

  She wasn’t, but Conrad was. Sitting behind the steering wheel with the truck running. “Come on.” He sounded impatient. “Before she gets away.”

  Now Tansy did hesitate. She could jus
tify—to John—going down to the gate. She was still on the estate, and safe. But getting in Conrad’s truck... John wouldn’t understand that.

  “She was just outside the gate,” Conrad said. “I tried to get to her. But...” He made a face, and his voice turned abashed, “you know she doesn’t really like me.”

  “She likes you just fine,” Tansy said automatically. “She was outside the gate?”

  Conrad nodded. “She must have gotten away from the guy and run home. But when she saw me, she took off up the road. I chased her for a few seconds, but she’s too fast for me. So I went and got the truck. I thought we could go after her.”

  Tansy hesitated.

  “I’d go myself,” Conrad said, “but she ran away from me last time. I’m not sure I could catch her now. But if you’re there...”

  He trailed off invitingly.

  If she was there, she could call Mimi, and Mimi would come.

  If Mimi was out here, afraid and lost and maybe hurt, how could Tansy refuse to look for her?

  She boosted herself up in the cab next to Conrad and pulled the door shut behind her.

  Conrad put the car in gear and they rolled out through the gate. “I’m just going to leave it open. I’m sure we won’t be gone long. With those short legs, she can’t have gotten far.”

  Tansy nodded. Part of her was already starting to regret this, but it was too late to back out now. The truck was picking up speed up the road, and the estate was fading into the background.

  “Slow down,” she told Conrad. “I won’t be able to see her if you go that fast.”

  “In a minute.” He kept going. “She’ll be farther along than this.”

  They passed the entrance to Suzanne’s home, up the road from the Leighton’s, and Tansy peered down the tree-lined drive, past the iron gate. She couldn’t see Mimi, but at the speed Conrad was going, that wasn’t surprising. And Mimi would have fit through the gate. Or under it.

  “Slow down,” she told Conrad again.

  “In a minute,” Conrad said and kept going. By now, the Leighton estate was just a memory in the back window, and Tansy was starting to get a bad feeling.