by Dale Cadeau
Sitting down, Angel addressed the group of men. “Let’s sit down and discuss this. Chase that means you, too—sit down. Clay, why are you just sitting there and allowing this?”
Clay wiped the laughter from his face. “It’s too bad you’re late Angel. You missed the best part. Chase is threatening to sue you guys for sending him to the she-devil’s den. He is quite funny when he is pissed off. You just had to have been here to appreciate it.”
Angel turned to Chase. “I’m here now. Chase, we all discussed this the other day and concluded that the best way for you to learn the tricks of the trade is to train with Sam. She’s the best, next to us. Why are you back so soon? I thought that you would at least give it a chance.”
Chase looked at Angel with stormy blue eyes that usually held a twinkle. “That woman, if that’s what she is, is a she-devil. She doesn’t give a guy a break. As soon as I got to her compound, I had to change into fatigues and run a ten-mile hike. You would think that anyone with one lick of sense would know that after being on a plane for a couple of hours a guy would need to relax and get situated in his room. And that’s another thing. The room she gave me was with ten other guys. I was given a small cot, with one small locker beside it. Where was I to put all my luggage, I asked her. She just picked all my bags up and threw them out the door and told me to put it in storage. That I wouldn’t need any of my beauty products while I was there.”
Chase stopped for breath and continued. “The hike she took us on was through a jungle with branches slapping our face every step of the way. I knew when we sat down for our meal of army crud that I couldn’t stand another minute of it. So I bribed one of the guys on guard. That’s another thing that is strange. Why does her compound have to be guarded? We were only in frigging Canada for God’s sakes, not some foreign country with hostile natives. At least I was smart enough to tell the pilot to stay put for a day or two while I checked the place out. I finally made it back this morning. I couldn’t leave until after two. I don’t think that woman sleeps. She was prowling the compound every thirty minutes. I really wanted to learn, but I didn’t expect to have to go to a boot camp. There’s no way I’m going back there. I’ll just hire a personal trainer to get me up to speed.” Grabbing his coffee cup on the table in front of him, he settled back in his seat. As far as he was concerned the subject was closed.
“So Sam doesn’t know you’re gone? You just snuck out like a thief in the night. I don’t envy being in your position right at the moment.” Angel grinned at Chase, still steaming at the situation he had found himself in.
Still laughing at Chase, Clay piped up. Looking around the table he asked, “How long do you think it will take Sam to get here? Shall we place bets?”
Chase spit his coffee out of his mouth. Sitting straight up in the chair, he looked at the ginning guys sitting around the table. “What do you mean? Taking bets on when Sam will get here. She won’t care that I left. I paid her up front so the money is hers without doing the job.”
“You didn’t stay long enough to have a chance to really know Sam. Your cut your visit too short. Knowing Sam, she’s not going to let you go just like that. You signed up for the training and she never shirks her duty. Sam is probably already on a plane flying here to grab you and take you back,” Brad answered, his hand covering his wide grin when Chase paled in his seat.
Chase turned away from Brad and looked at Clay, Angel, then Grant. “He’s kidding right? No one in their right mind would go after a person that doesn’t want to stay. It’s not like in the army where they hunt down deserters. It’s just a training camp that you pay to go to. Come on guys stop the joking.”
“Didn’t you read the contract that you signed when you got there?” Clay asked
“Didn’t see any need to. Brad, Angel, and even Grant told me that Sam’s was the place to go for the training. But they failed to mention that Sam was a she-devil, not the Amazon I was expecting. So no, I didn’t read the contract, just signed it and handed the cash over. I don’t read contracts. I have someone that does it for me at my office. And I mistakenly believed that you guys wouldn’t steer me wrong.”
“I can’t believe in your line of business that you would take someone’s word and just sign without reading it yourself first. Well, you’re going to regret that you didn’t. The contract states that she owns your ass for one month,” Clay told a surprised and disbelieving Chase.
“There’s no way that is legal. I’ll just call my lawyer right now. He’ll know what to do.” Chase reached into his pocket to grab his cell.
Angel reached over and grabbed his arm before he could get it out of his pocket. “You told me the other night at the club that you want to join our little group. Did you forget the phone calls that you have been getting? I though you wanted this? If you can’t take one night with Sam you will never last with us. We sometimes sit for days on a stakeout anywhere in the world, not all our jobs are state side. And Clay’s right, Sam will come for you. You better hide if you don’t want your ass back in Canada before tonight.”
“Won’t you guys protect me from her? She’s just a little thing. I know any one of you could take her.”
All the guys grinned back at him and Clay told him, “We would never take on a woman like Sam. In fact, Brad hides whenever she’s around and will only speak to her on the phone. He still thinks he’ll get a bullet in his shoulder to pay him back for the one he gave her. No, you’re on your own.”
All talk stopped abruptly when they heard Grace from the reception area greet someone in a loud voice, loud enough to carry to the conference room. That wasn’t like Grace, who was usually so soft-spoken. All the guys rose from their seats, ready to find out who Grace was greeting. There was no need. Moments later, a very pissed off James walked into the room.
“What the hell has been going on while I’m away? And it better be good. I was on my honeymoon for God’s sakes. Can’t you guys give me a break and play nice for a couple of weeks?” James walked up to where Clay was standing beside his chair. An abrupt James pointed at Clay. “This is my chair. I’ll take over now and see if I can’t sort out the mess you’ve all gotten yourself into.” James plopped down in his chair as Clay moved to the one on his right and the rest of the men also took their seats.
James reached for a cup and poured himself a coffee, while glaring at everyone sitting around the table. “Well, who is going to speak first? Maybe it should be Chase? As I can lay most of the blame on him for my abrupt departure from my honeymoon.” Looking at Chase with furious blue eyes, James continued, “I got a hysterical call from Sam just before dawn this morning. It seems she lost my brother. A brother that I didn’t know knew Sam. So that tells me the rest of you were in on this little plot.” James turned his gaze on Clay.
Clay just held his hands up. “Don’t blame me. I’ve been at the hospital with Laura. She was burned on her hands by a package that was delivered the other day. So, if you’re looking for your culprit keeping looking around the table. My money’s on Brad being the leader in this, from what I heard only a few moments ago.”
James trained his eyes on Brad.
Brad spoke up. “Hey, that’s not fair. Angel started it all. I just helped. Chase is a big boy. We were only trying to help him.”
Angel, who had been silent, sat forward and leaned his elbows on the table in front of him “Your brother got bored and thought he would help us with our latest job. I told him he should take some training if he wanted to start tagging along. That’s my part in it. Brad came up with sending him to Sam. After all, she is the best for training the skills needed on our job. I think you have to look at your brother for interrupting your honeymoon. He didn’t even stay a full day and night with Sam before he bailed.”
James turned back and stared daggers at him brother. “I’ll get back to you. First, I want to know about this job you are on. As far as I knew when I left, we had no jobs until next month. We planned it that way so we would all have a rest. So what happe
ned? What emergency came up that you couldn’t put off?”
Clay leaned forward in his seat. “Well, it really wasn’t a job. It was more of a favour for a friend.”
James grabbed his cup and leaned back comfortably in his seat. “Tell me more about this friend, and how the whole firm is involved. I had to come back from my one and only honeymoon I will ever have. So I want all the details. Now!”
Clay knew that James was being deceptively calm, this usually happened just before he exploded. “My friend Lance started a club on the outskirts of the city a few months ago. He called me in to look into a problem he was having. Someone had started trying to grab women in the parking lot at night. So I went in.”
“OK. So how did the others get involved? It should have been easy enough to stake out a parking lot and grab the guy,” James asked.
Clay glanced at Angel. “Well, Angel became involved when I met Laura on the vanilla side of the club. I didn’t want to let her get away. So, I brought Angel in so he could scope out the spice side of the club. He didn’t want to at first, but I also pulled a favour on him and the women at the club love him in his leathers.”
James’s eyebrows just rose as he looked at Angel sitting at the table. “Go on, this is starting to get interesting.”
Angel took over the narrative looking at Chase. “That’s where Chase comes in. He bought his way into the spice side of the club and wanted to join in on our action. And that leads us back to Chase being sent to Sam.”
Chase finally spoke up. “That’s not the total story. He’s not telling you about the woman he also met at the club.”
“OK, Chase, I will get the full story. Angel, I know how you got involved but how did Brad and Grant get dragged in?” James took a sip of his coffee and looked over the rim at him.
“I can take the blame on that,” Angel replied “I brought Grant in when Clay had to go to the hospital to look after his lady Laura. The club had managed to get some grainy pictures of the guy from the parking lot, from their camera feed, but not good enough. I had Grant hook the club up with something a bit more high tech. This allowed us to get a better quality picture and we managed to get a good side view of the guy. From Grant’s other skills, he did get an identification on him and we now think that he is only after Cyn. Brad was brought in to help Grant and also to help me keep an eye on her.”
James put his cup on the table and looked over all the guys sitting around it. “Let’s see if I got this straight? The firm is involved in a case not on the books. While doing a favor for a friend, Clay met a lady he couldn’t bear to leave alone, so Angel dressed as a Dom, and found a woman, too. Oh, I almost forgot, Chase also found a woman, one that’s mighty pissed at him for taking off in the middle of night. Is that it? Anything I might have missed?”
Clay, looking uncomfortable, said, “No, that’s about it. We have it handled. Well, all except for Chase. We didn’t know he would leave and have Sam after his ass.”
“So if you have it handled, does this mean that the guy in the parking lot has been apprehended?” James looked at Angel.
“No. We know who it is, but can’t figure out why he’s after Cyn. Until we do, we can’t bring him down. We were just having a meeting about the situation when you came in.”
“Well, gentlemen.” James stood up from his seat. “I will leave you to figure it out. I have my own Lady upstairs waiting for me. And don’t disturb me unless the building is being burned or rushed by the mob. And Chase….” James spoke as he reached the door and grabbed the handle. “I would hide. Sam will be here soon and if she catches your ass, well, you don’t want to know.” He slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
Angel picked up his ringing cell phone and looked at the display. He smiled, seeing the club’s number. Cyn was calling him, just as she had promised.
“Hello, Cinnamon.” He was relieved to finally have the chance to connect with her.
“Well I guess that means Cyn’s not with you?”
“No.” Angel’s mouth went dry at Lance’s words. He glanced at his watch. “She should have been at the club hours ago.”
“I haven’t seen her at all,” Lance’s voice sounded concerned. “I thought you were both spending a lazy day in bed. I could see the sparks between the two of you last night. So I assumed that you got together. When’s the last time you saw her? I trusted you to look after her.”
“I know. I’m kicking my own ass now. I saw her a couple of hours ago when she left in her car to go to the club. She wanted to go alone. She told me nothing had ever happened in the daytime, so not to worry. I didn’t feel good about letting her go. But, you know Cyn, she was determined to go on her own. She promised to call when she got there. Are you sure she’s not in her office and you just didn’t notice her coming in?” Angel was praying that Lance had been so busy he didn’t notice her arriving at the club.
“Just a minute, let me ask Bob.” Lance put his hand over the phone, but Angel could hear him yell for Bob asking him to see if Cyn was in her office.
Bob replied back as he opened Lance’s door. “She never came in today. I’ve been at the door since noon. I’ll check, but there’s no way she got around me.”
Seconds later Bob returned. “No, her office is dark. I checked at the vanilla bar. They haven’t seen her either.”
Angel could hear Lance thank Bob and the door closing.
“Angel, did you hear? She didn’t make it. We have to find her.” Angel heard Lance rising from his chair.
“Wait, there is no sense going off half-cocked. Give me a few minutes. I’ll have Grant hack into the cameras on the highway and see if he can spot her. Maybe she just stopped somewhere.” Angel tried to stay calm, though his first reaction was to race out and search for her also.
“OK, I’ll give you fifteen minutes. If you don’t find her, I’m going to her house. If she’s not there, I’m calling the police.” Lance slammed the receiver down.
Angel snapped his cell shut and looked at the guys, who were all staring at him in concern. “Grant, Cyn’s missing and she’s not at the club. Can you hack into the highway cameras and see if you can see her on her way to the office? I’m hoping she just stopped someplace and lost track of time like she did yesterday.”
Grant rose and swiftly made his way to his office, Angel dogging his every step.
Grant sat down at his computer and within minutes was bringing up the highway feeds. “How long ago do you figure? I’ll have to hack in their archives.”
“About two hours or a little more.” Angel was leaning over Grant’s shoulder, watching the screen as he pounded at the keyboard. Finally he had the feed from two hours ago showing the highway that Cyn would have had to take to the club.
After a few minutes of watching the feed from different cameras, Angel finally spotted her car and pointed it out over Grant’s shoulder. “There she is, right where she should be if she’s going to the club.” Angel watched the car speed along the highway, with relief. Seconds later his face changed to concern as suddenly her car veered to the left and took the ramp west onto another highway. “What the hell is she doing? That’s not the way.”
Grant quickly changed camera feeds and caught up with her speeding along the highway heading out of Detroit. They watched for a while and when she didn’t get off at any of the ramps that would take her back into the city, Angel stepped back from Grant’s chair. “I don’t have a clue where she’s going.”
Clay and Brad had come into the office and were standing on the other side of desk. Clay asked, “Tell us what you remember about this morning after you got up and before you left? She might have given you a clue as to where she’s heading.”
Angel turned to Clay and headed over to the couch on the back wall of Grant’s office. Shaking his head, he sat down and swiped at his hair that had loosened from the tieback. “I knew I shouldn’t have let her go alone this morning. My instincts were right. Something was off. I just let her sweet talk
me into seeing things her way. I should have my ass kicked for allowing it.”
Clay turned toward Angel. “I can kick your ass later. We don’t have time for it now if we want to find out where she’s heading. What did the two of you talk about this morning before you both went your separate ways?”
“We didn’t talk much. We just sat on her patio having coffee and she talked about her garden. I thought it a little strange because she only has a backyard the size of a postage stamp, not really enough room for one. But she was very animated about some seeds she wanted to plant. Something she planted when she lived at the commune. I soon got her thinking of other things and didn’t give it another thought.”
“Well that does seem to be strange. But not something that would give us a clue to where she’s going,” Clay replied as he sat down in the chair in front of Grant’s desk. Brad had just parked himself on the corner of it.
Grant turned his chair away from his computer and broke in. “Hold on one minute. I think if my memory services me correctly that at the trial she would spout out every once in a while. She carried on about how her garden was growing and about some seeds that she had planted. Most thought from her outbursts that she had gone off the deep end. Thank God Lance was there for her. She really looked spaced out from the pictures of the trial that I’ve seen. Give me a minute to check something out.” Grant turned back to his computer and started pounding on the keys again.
Angel grabbed his cell. “I’ll just call Lance and tell him what we know so far. Maybe he can decipher this garden stuff for us.” Angel was just starting to dial when Grant turned back to them.
“I knew I saw something about seeds. Here it is. It’s in part of the transcript of the trial. She interrupted the trial a few times when they were questioning that Ward guy. She stood up and told the judge that her garden was safe and the seeds were growing. They took her out each time she had an outburst. When it was her turn to finally take the stand, she was calmed down and hardly said anything. If it wasn’t for those high-paid top lawyers and probably Lance, she would be in prison or worse, ended up in a mental institute. There are no other references to seeds or any garden in anything else.”