“Protection gets ramped up to the sky.”
“And getting away can be so fucking hard.”
Declan’s head shook sadly. “All the cameras now.”
Liam told Courtenay, “Someone’s bound to find a picture of you.”
“If not immediately then very fucking soon after.”
Liam’s hand squeezed Courtenay’s shoulder. “Great in a war zone. For your civilian professional killer, though, a sniper shot has ugly red paint all over it, and it all says, ‘capture.’ We don’t want that.”
Declan frowned. “So, it’s going to be up close and personal, and we’re going to have to lure him out of his cover somehow.”
Liam took out another sheet. “We’ll definitely need someone or something that will entice him enough to leave his bubble of protection there.”
Declan nodded. “I read everywhere I could for his recreations, hobbies and interests. I can only find the one reliable pursuit.”
“I looked, too. I found some news items. Stuff on a couple of attorneys’ websites. No hobbies at all except for chasing after whatever his cock points at.”
Liam nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
Declan asked Courtenay, “How about you, did you find out about the size of it?”
Courtenay fidgeted. “Oddly enough, that didn’t come up in any of the reports that I found.”
Liam’s eye sparkled and crinkled a little in the corners. Declan’s jaw set and his eye hardened.
“We could use a hooker. There’s that woman who’s famous around here,” his eye caught Courtenay’s then he cleared his throat. “Well, there’s any number of hookers around here.”
Liam’s head shook and his mouth tightened, “No, that isn’t any good. Irons will just say, ‘If we can use a hooker then we would be better off using someone who’s already inside the team.’ You know that he will.”
“I’m not liking the direction this is going.”
“Maybe it’s time we asked our Venus of the Venal how she feels about it. Do you not think that should come into the calculations?”
Declan looked at Courtenay again. “Really,” she said, “I’m ready to do anything for you boys.” She touched Declan’s thigh. Under the thin sheet, she saw the speed of his stiffening reaction.
Chapter 6
We met with Irons, all three of us, at a cafe at the top of the Riches Mall. Irons was sitting at a table by the glass balcony, waiting and smug when we arrived. It was pretty annoying how he always did that. Like it meant he was a step ahead. It made me feel like he was wrong-footing Liam and Declan. Probably it was just all a part of his keeping the upper hand. I didn’t like it, though.
We sat all on one side of the table, me, Declan, Liam. That made Irons look superior again, though I didn’t say anything about it. Declan and Liam just didn’t want to sit anywhere nearer to him than they had to, I guessed. I was more comfortable too, sitting where I had a good view of him.
He blinked slowly as he looked up. Like we were late or something. Which we were not.
“Thank you all for coming.” His voice was so smooth he almost purred.
His eyes roved all over me as he spoke. Flaunting it, like I was a piece of property he might consider buying. Or maybe something he could just take. Every time it happened I sensed Declan tense up. Each time Irons’ gaze wandered carelessly over my breasts, hung around the insides of my thighs, or held my eyes with that sardonic look of his.
Liam started to tell Irons what they’d learned, we’d learned, about the courthouse. The daily schedule, the restaurant where almost all of the judges and attorneys took their midday meals. Irons waved a hand like he was brushing away some straw.
“Malfease is going to have a constant security detail. He’ll be guarded every minute. All the time he’s at the courthouse and everywhere he goes during the day. You’ll never be able to get to him that way.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed as he slumped forward.
Irons said, “No. The judge is going to be in residence in an out-of-town mansion called The Eerie. While he’s there, at night, that’s the only place where he will have any freedom of movement, and that’s the only place where you’ll be able to get to him.”
“So,” Declan said quietly, “Are you proposing that we storm the place? How big is it?”
Irons’ eyebrow rose. “Your enthusiasm is admirable. If not your sense of the practicality.” He looked from Declan to Liam. “No, the way to the judge is going to be as I thought from the start.” He looked at me. “You’ll need to set a honey trap.”
As his eyes travelled over me, I felt him, like he was touching me through my clothes. It was uncomfortable and unsettling but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it. A shower of dark thrills burst inside me. I shifted in the chair and my spine flexed.
“The judge is not as young as he was, but he still very much enjoys female company. Pays for it most often, so he’s extremely susceptible to flattery and ready to chase after the slightest encouragement.”
The tone of his voice made me think of long, dark tunnels and cold dampness. My feelings about our Mr. Irons seemed to get more complicated every time I saw him. He was large, strong and handsome. Charming with a dark edge to him. Worrying. But exciting. There wouldn’t have been any point in pretending, he did make me hot inside my panties.
“I told you there would be a job that needed Courtenay’s particular skills.” His eye fixed me, “This is it.”
Liam said, “Let us just try to come up with another way.”
“There is no other way.”
Declan said, “She isn’t on the team. Not as an active member like that.”
“Courtenay would be very well suited to the role that I have in mind. I think she would handle it perfectly.” He looked from Liam to Declan then back to me. “I’m sure she would also be glad of the opportunity to make a start on repaying the help that she was given.”
Declan’s voice was low and flat. “You’ve got some fucking balls on you, I’ll have to give you that. You come in here, tell us what to do, how we need to run our business.”
“I’m just telling you what you need to know. For all of our benefit. Things change, Declan. You have to be ready to adapt.”
Declan said, “So, even if we accepted what you say, and I’m not at all sure that I do, how do you imagine our Courtenay, beautiful though she undoubtedly is, how do you see her reaching out for his attention?” Declan’s head tilted a little, “Should she be scantily dressed at the back of the courtroom and then sext him during a recess, are those the kind of lines that you’re thinking along?”
Liam said, “Or, perhaps His Honor is adept at semaphore. Or Morse code, maybe.”
Irons’ expression didn’t change. He waited a moment. “As a senior attorney, I have accommodations at The Eerie myself for the week of the hearing.”
His eyes slid across the three of us, but his head turned to face me before they flashed into mine. “You will come along as my assistant.”
“Will I be staying there, too?” A part of me was frightened and another part was excited.
His smile was thin and formal, but behind it I sensed there was a leer, tugging to break free. “You will have a room there, yes. It will be near to mine.” The hoods of his eyelids slid down and slowly back up. “For convenience. And practicality.”
Thunder rolled behind Declan’s voice, but he kept it in check, “While your practical needs are conveniently met,” his lip tightened, “How is this going to get the job done?”
Irons waved a hand airily. “That’s for you to figure out. After all,” he looked from Declan to Liam then back again, “that’s your job, isn’t it?”
“The point is,” Liam said, evenly, “It’s us that’ll need to do the job. Not our Courtenay.”
Irons shrugged. Declan was rising in his seat. Liam’s hand rested on his forearm. “We’ll work something out, Mr. Irons. It’s all going to be just fine.”
Declan smold
ered as he said, “You’d better be sure that you’re ready to make the necessary adaptations when the time comes, Mr. Irons.”
“I always greet change as opportunity.”
Liam gave Declan a look and Declan was quiet.
Irons rose. He told me, “I’ll send a car for you in the morning, Ms. Cullen. I very much look forward to us working together,” and he blinked and added, “Closely.” Then he turned, and he left without another word.
Declan was ready to explode, “What the…”
Liam put his hand on his arm and the look he gave him was firm, but it was tender at the same time. I couldn’t wait to get these two alone. I wished there was somewhere we could go right then.
Declan sat back and told Liam, “It’ll all be okay.” And his eyes twinkled. “I have a plan. Now,” he said, “we need to get the gorgeous Courtenay some clothes, suitable for her new status in the legal profession.”
“He always greets a change as an opportunity, does he?” Liam’s head shook. “There will be a change coming, and I can guarantee it won’t be too long. We’ll see what kind of an opportunity he takes it as.”
Chapter 7
From the cushioned black leather corner in the dark of the long limo, I watched the traffic fade. The lights of stores and bars and restaurants fell away behind us. For the journey and for my arrival at The Eerie, I wore a new, dark navy skirt suit, with a smart cream shirt and deep blue heels, halfway between business and sin.
Tonight and tomorrow, the judge would be at The Eerie, and that would be all the time I would have to get his interest and to gain his trust. Looking out through the smoky glass, I crossed my legs one way then the other. I tried to be comfortable and enjoy the ride and forget about what I was heading into.
The car headlights cut a pale, silvery tunnel through dark green trees that got closer and closer together. We turned off the highway then started a long drive uphill.
After we wound upward on the narrowing road for ten or fifteen minutes, getting slower at every twisting turn, I realized we hadn’t seen or passed another vehicle since we started upwards. For some time we drove with a high stone wall on one side. At an old painted sign that said, ‘The Eerie,’ we turned off through a wide gateway flanked with stone pillars.
The drive got steeper. We left the trees behind. Now there was only night sky, but there was no moon and by then it was almost completely dark. The wheels of the limo crunched on shale for easily five minutes, maybe more, before I even saw the wide and spiky silhouette of the old Gothic mansion.
The driver carried my bags up the pale stone stair to the columned porch and the huge black paneled double doors.
The door was opened by a huge, athletic, blond man. His hair was cropped short, with a slightly shaggy Marine style tuft on top. His piercing blue eyes shone from under hooded lids in the deep hollows above cheekbones that could cut paper. The broad jawbone hardly moved but his voice shook me. Powerful and deceptively mellow, behind a military tone of command, there was an undisguised leer.
“Ms. Cullen?”
He blocked my entry. I nodded. “I’ll be giving you security. Clearance and induction.” His eyes fastened on me and I felt the night chill on my back. “Assuming you pass clearance, then I’ll need to search you.” His eyes already were. It was uncomfortable. Not in an entirely bad way, I have to confess.
He ushered me in, through the wide, tiled lobby. He made me walk in front of him and I was sure I felt his eyes on the backs of my thighs as I walked and the skirt snapped from side to side. I was conscious of the clack of his heavy heels behind the clip-clop of my own. We passed a sweeping, carpeted stairway in the center, and he told me to follow a narrow hallway with a low roof. We stopped at a narrow door.
He held open the door to the small room with two chairs on either side of a metal table with a lamp in the middle.
He had me sit at the table farthest from the door. I had to squeeze by the table to get to it and sit. Taking his time, he sat in the chair opposite. He looked in my eyes for a long time. Then he studied my neck. My throat, exposed at the stylish open collar of the cream business shirt I wore under the suit jacket.
Along the way here, I had felt armored and chic in the suit, with my fresh, professional makeover. As he studied me I felt more like a twelve-year-old who put on her older sister’s clothes to try to get in to a bar.
He demanded my ID, and I gave him all that Liam had prepared me with. When the blond man asked questions about who I was, I stuck to the story. Everything I said, he greeted with a sarcastic, mocking look. A tilt of his chin, a stretch of the eyebrow. Or he’d lower his eyelids as he said, “Really.”
Soon, the clothes felt like they were sticking to me, and I was having difficulty remembering the parts of my story that were true. Whatever he asked me, the urge to say too much was strong. Liam had warned me about that. Don’t overstate your case. Don’t explain anything unless you’re asked. Most of all, he told me to be confident that it was a formality. Whoever did the interview, they would let me through but they would try to psych me out first.
Be a cat, he said. I tried. I felt like a cat on hot coals. I knew that wasn’t going to help. I answered all of his questions. I made an effort to speak slowly. When you feel like you’re being interrogated, it’s always a temptation to rush, Liam told me. It’s natural. You want it to be over.
He said that innocent people do it, too. But that it gives an interrogator chances to trip them up. He’s just doing his job, he told me, asking the stupid questions. You’re doing yours by answering them. Try to treat it like that. Like it doesn’t mean anything.
When Liam told me all that, it made perfect sense. I was sure I was going to be able to do it perfectly. Now, the shock of this man’s blue eyes made me feel like I could never carry it off and I was bound to be caught.
He stood. I drew breath as he leaned forwards, as if he was going to scrutinize me like a specimen. As his face came near to mine, I squirmed. At the same instant as a jolt of heat drenched my panties, his eyes and his nostrils widened.
“Hmm,” his voice set off vibrations in my core. “Who are you, really? I wonder.”
He swept up my ID documents, turned on his heels and strode out, shutting the door firmly behind him. Sitting alone at the metal table, I tried to persuade myself that I’d done well, that I’d persuaded him I had nothing to hide and I wasn’t intimidated.
The scent of my own heat was enough to make me doubt it. The trembling inside my thighs confirmed it. Still I had to continue to act the part. I hadn’t given any thought to what it would mean if I were caught. What the consequences might be.
When he came back, the tall blond man looked at me from under his drooping lids. He had maybe the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. To lighten my mood and maybe ease up my discomfort I tried to imagine him curling them.
“What are you grinning at?” His voice seemed harsh and more Germanic.
I shook my head and straightened my face.
“Tell me again what you just said to my brother.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My brother was interviewing you a moment ago. Tell to me all that you just told to him.”
I didn’t know if he was joking. If he was, I couldn’t see the payoff, so I played along. I repeated all of the details I had just given him. From that point on, though, keeping a straight face was only marginally an option.
When I finished and he asked me more of the same kinds of questions he’d asked me before, many of them the very same questions, I kept as business-like a look on my face as I could but it felt absurd. His eyes narrowed and he studied me hard before he got up and left.
Three Hitmen: A Triple Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 2) Page 5