The Business of Strangers

by Kylie Brant

  “Yeah.” He gave a slow nod. “But I know who my enemies are. And you don’t.” With the words, comprehension dawned, and with it, certainty. “You wouldn’t need my information on Colton if you already knew who wanted you dead. You wouldn’t have needed Stanton, either. You don’t know who’s out there pulling the strings, do you? If you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

  She picked up her glass, downed the remaining liquor. “I’d give anything to not be having this conversation.”

  But things were clicking into place. Pieces of information that had never quite added up before were now making sense. “Larry said he thought the group he’d done the tattoos on were army. Funny thing is, the information I got on Rianna Kingsley doesn’t show any record of military service. She went right from college to the police academy.”

  Ria arched a brow. “Since you seem to have all the answers, I’m having a hard time figuring what I’m still doing here.”

  He stared at her, wondering, more than was comfortable, what lay behind that stoic facade. “Not all the answers,” he murmured. “Not by a long shot. Who are you? What are you?” He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. But he did get a response.

  At his last questions, she flinched as though he’d struck her. And her eyes…for a moment the look in them would have fit perfectly in the collection of photos he had on his apartment wall.

  Desolation. Stark and unvarnished. The sight of it stripped his mind of the points he was puzzling over. The expression vanished in the next moment, but he knew he hadn’t imagined it. There was a primitive sort of protectiveness welling up inside him in response.

  “I’ll make you a deal.” Ria turned to catch the eye of the waitress, motioned her over. “I’ll still pay you for whatever information you gather on this Colton. Give me the week to get answers to some questions I have of him.” When Marta arrived at the table, she requested more ice. She waited for the woman to move away before meeting Jake’s gaze again. “At the end of that time, if you still want to try to collect from the job he hired you for, as well…” She shrugged. “You’re welcome to try.”

  Jake reached over, picked up her hand, tightening his grip when she would have pulled away. “You’re really, really going to have to stop trying to bribe me,” he murmured. Her skin was smooth beneath his touch as he skated his thumb across her knuckles. “Call me sensitive, but I’m starting to find it annoying.” He watched the irritation flash over her features, and something else. Awareness.

  Satisfaction bloomed low in his belly. “You haven’t been exactly forthcoming with answers, so I’m having some doubts about the, uh, veracity of any information you’d be willing to pass on about your discoveries.” He intentionally ignored the sneer on her lips at his words. “Since it would appear that we both have a vested interest in any forthcoming info, as well as a shared lack of trust on both our parts, I suggest that the only real solution is for us to work together to find out what Colton is up to.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Her words came slowly, with just the right amount of hesitation. “It might make sense to join forces. You have to admit, I have the most riding on this, though. You have to give me something, as a mark of good faith.” She leaned toward him, the curve of her breast barely grazing his arm. “Tell me anything. Where did Colton go when your men followed him?”

  Jake brought her hand to his lips. “They followed him—” he pressed a kiss to her palm “—out of state.” When her fingers curled in his, he wisely released her and moved out of range. Given the sparks spitting from her eyes, he’d be wise to be cautious. “Nice try, by the way. I especially liked the almost accidental brush of your breasts on my arm. Distracting and devious.”

  Ria sat back and bared her teeth at him. “Accidental is the only way I’d get that close to you again.”

  He laughed, picked up his glass. The exchange had put him in a good mood. “I reserve the right to change your mind about that.”

  “I’m the one with everything to lose here. You realize that, don’t you?” She drank as well, as if to douse her temper. “I have to worry about both you and Colton. If there even is such a person. You could have made him up. I’d be a fool to trust you.”

  “And I you.” He waited for her to catch his gaze over the rim of her glass. “For all I know, you could have sent Colton to me.”

  She had the nerve to look offended. “Me? Why would I?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never pretended to understand how cops think. Entrapment, maybe? Some elaborate scheme you cooked up with Columbus Vice?”

  “And I thought I was paranoid,” she muttered.

  “You are.” He delivered the words calmly, surely. “From what you’ve said, you have reason to be. And so do I. You’re just going to have to decide whom you distrust less. Me or whoever is trying to kill you.”

  Ria stared at him, refusing to state the obvious. As of a few minutes ago, by his own admission, the two had become one and the same.

  Two hours later Ria waited for Jake to get them cleared through the surprisingly complex security at his offices. As they passed by the last guard and headed for the elevator, she said, “Are all the occupants of this building as cautious as you are?”

  He punched in a number and the doors began to close. “There are no other occupants. I like having space.”

  She slanted him a glance. “So you rent the entire building to keep away curious neighbors who might take too much interest in your business, is that it?”

  “Sort of. Except I don’t rent the building. I own it.”

  Of course he did, Ria thought dourly. It was becoming obvious that his properties were vast. If he’d been operating for ten years, the length of time Detective Edwards had said Alvarez had been in prison, he’d had ample opportunity to amass a fortune. It was almost inconceivable to her that he’d managed to stay free all that time, despite the Columbus PD’s suspicions about his activities. Jake Tarrance was either very very good at what he did, or incredibly lucky.

  Either way, he was also incredibly dangerous. This whole thing could be an intricate trap, although try as she might, she couldn’t figure out what he could have to gain from involving himself in this mess, other than the reason he’d stated.

  But she hadn’t stayed alive this long by being careless. And despite his acting as though their partnership was a done deal, she had yet to separate fact from fiction in his tale.

  He ushered her through some well-appointed offices and then punched a code into the keypad outside another door. In a few seconds a green light winked and he opened the door, ushered her inside.

  When he flipped on the switch, she looked around curiously. Expensive artwork adorned the polished paneled walls. There was an acre wide desk, behind which were floor to ceiling bookcases. A leather couch and several matching chairs sat to the right of the desk. But what caught and held her attention was the lack of windows.

  It was a completely interior room. She was certain that was by design. She’d already determined that he was a cautious man. Not for the first time it struck her that in this way, at least, they were similar.

  He went to a large mural on one wall and a moment later had the painting sliding aside to reveal a bank of CCTV monitors. He fiddled with some knobs as she stepped to his side. He allowed the tape to reverse some more, then stopped it as it showed a door opening, the same one she’d recently walked through. A man she recognized was showing another inside. It took her a moment, but she finally placed him. It was the man who had been behind the bar the first night she’d gone to Hoochees. The one who’d joined Jake in the parking lot later that night.

  “Recognize the man with Cort?”

  Ria focused on the second individual on the screen. As Jake had already said, this wouldn’t be someone who would stand out in a crowd. But that wasn’t the reason she didn’t recognize him. Her stomach hollowed out as she searched his features with a knife-edged feeling of desperation. He could be a stranger,
or he could be the man who had tried to kill her six years ago. And again a few nights ago.

  But there was no way to tell. If she had ever known him, she didn’t remember. Disappointment rose, harsh and punishing.

  Belatedly, she became aware of Jake’s gaze on her. She shook her head. “I don’t know him.”

  But she might have, a sly inner voice whispered. She could have known him at one time, only too well. Could have served with him on some sort of assignments that even now she could only guess at. He might have been the one to explain what those assignments were. Might have been the one to put two bullets in her back.

  Her lack of memory had never made her feel so vulnerable. How could she protect herself from an enemy who had no face? One intent on exacting retribution for acts she had no memory of committing? Despite its futility she traced the man’s features with her gaze, looking for something, anything familiar. She didn’t find it.

  Jake reached out, turned on the sound. Ria listened quietly, but there was nothing familiar about the man’s voice, either. When he got to the point of asking Jake to kill her, a sheen of ice seemed to settle over her. It provided a sort of numbness that insulated her from emotion, which was just as well. Emotion had a way of clouding judgment, and she needed to think clearly. She watched the tape in its entirety, a part of her marveling at the matter-of-fact way the two men discussed her death.

  When it was over, when the screen went dark, Jake reached out to snap it off. Then, still silent, he stared at her, waiting for her to speak.

  “Like I said, I don’t recognize him. You could have staged the whole thing.” She gave a shrug that was far more nonchalant than she was feeling.

  “You can’t afford to believe that.”

  No, she couldn’t afford to believe it. And it would be incredibly stupid to ignore the coincidence between the shooting incident and this man walking into Jake’s offices days later with a contract on her life. After years of watching one lead after another disintegrate upon closer examination, all this had come to a head after she’d interrogated Larry Stanton about the tattoo. There was a common link in all of this, and Stanton just might be it.

  “I told you he didn’t carry ID. What I didn’t say was that he was carrying what looked like a simple gold pen and a calculator.”

  “You think they were something else?”

  “We take…precautions before allowing people in here. Cort found a small camera in the head of the pen. He thinks the calculator was some sort of scrambling device. It would interfere with any attempts to monitor the conversation electronically.”

  Nodding toward the bank of screens, she said, “Under the circumstances, wise precautions to take.”

  “We’re in the habit of taking precautions ourselves.” Motioning her to one of the chairs, Jake seated himself on the couch. “But we’ve never seen anything like the gadgets he had on him. There’s nothing like them on the market.” He gave a self-deprecating grin. “And by that I include the black market.”

  He would know; she was certain of that. “It’s still difficult to believe he’d come so prepared, and still make his pitch to you once the devices had been taken from him.”

  “I think he had to.” Jake rolled his shoulders, one hand going to the back of his neck, rubbing. “Stanton was already dead. The deal had been set in motion. This guy was confident that our conversation could never be traced back to him, regardless. We’re following up on the name he gave, but as I’ve said, I’m sure it’s phony.”

  “But you managed to follow him.”

  Jake gave a modest shrug. “He underestimated who he was dealing with. I alerted Cort to put things in motion after I called the prison. Most wouldn’t have had my resources.”

  She was beginning to wonder about the extent of his resources, herself. “You said you trailed him to the airport.” The fact that he’d been waved through security spoke of either immense wealth or high-level clearance.

  Jake leaned forward, his hands clasped, arms resting on his knees. “He got into a government-issued helicopter. His flight plan said he was headed to New York, but it was altered midflight.”

  “And you know that—how?”

  He looked impatient. “I have people everywhere paid to furnish me with certain types of information. Try to focus, Ria. That’s not important. What is important is that Cort and a few of my other men were able to take my jet and follow this Colton to Washington, D.C.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly chilled. The information was coming too fast and hard, seemingly disconnected pieces that somehow had to be linked. And her time for putting it all together was depressingly short.

  One week. That was the timeline Colton had given Jake for the hit on her. Glancing at her watch, she mentally amended that to six days and a few hours. Less than a week to solve a mystery that had haunted her for six long years. And to help her she had to set aside a very natural distrust of the man watching her with a mesmerizing ice-blue stare. Had to accept his story as if not truth, at least as possible. Entirely possible.

  A familiar core of excitement formed in the pit of her stomach, growing despite her attempt to tamp it down. She’d have to be more cautious than ever. But the prospect of having the answers she’d sought for so long in just a few more days was very nearly dizzying.

  Mentally, she reined in her exhilaration. There was a lot to be done before she solved this. The most important thing was staying alive while she gathered the information. Given the events of the last few days, that just might be a far more difficult feat than discovering the answers she sought.

  “What do you have on the guy who shot at you the other night?” Jake asked.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “He set up across the road, waited for me to come home. It would have been a perfect opportunity. He was close enough that he shouldn’t have missed.” Ducking back into the car for the flashlight had been due to an ingrained sense of caution that was more instinctive than logical. That instinct had saved her life.

  “I’m wondering if Colton was the shooter.”

  She’d wondered the same thing, but there was absolutely no way to be sure. “It could have been one of the drug dealers we arrested.” Two of them, at least, had turned out to have extensive hunting experience. That alone, however, didn’t narrow them down. Half the males in Alabama had probably hunted at one time or another.

  “How did the other two come after you?”

  “Knife and garrote. Professional, and above all, quiet.”

  “A sniper could be a professional, too.”

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to fit with the other two attempts.”

  “When did they take place?”

  That penetrating blue gaze of his made it difficult to dissemble. “Six years ago, thereabouts.”

  “That would have been—what? A year, half a year before you started the academy? Why would the attempts stop for all these years and then begin again?”

  His words arrowed through her, reminding her that he knew too much about her already. It would be crazy to arm him with even more knowledge. “I don’t know.”

  He looked at her shrewdly. “You’re not saying. You need to consider the fact that I’m the one who will have the information about Colton. If you want to get to him, you’re going to have to open up to me. I’m not walking into this thing unarmed. I want to know everything.”

  “Nobody is inviting you into this thing at all,” she snapped. She rose, emotion demanding a release. Rounding the chair, she grasped its back, her fingers splayed over the butter-soft leather. “All you have to do is pass on the information your men discover about Colton’s identity. I’ll do the rest.”

  The slow negative shake of his head infuriated her. “Why not? Prove to me that you have no intention of following through with the hit. Let me act on the information myself.”

  “He’s going to notice if you’re not dead after a week,” Jake said dryly,
not taking his eyes off her. “Given Stanton’s death, I have every reason to believe he can carry through on his threat of getting Alvarez released immediately. I can’t allow that to happen. No, we work together. And I’m not going into this blind. I want to know everything you know, or suspect, about this guy. Let’s start with the other two attempts. You said they failed. Who were they?”

  Ria felt her lungs constrict. It was as though the walls were moving in on her, depriving her of oxygen. It struck her that she’d never had these types of questions leveled at her before. Never found herself talking about what had taken place six years ago. Even Benny knew only what he’d guessed from the type of information he’d gotten for her.

  Jake remained silent, watching her, and a chasm of suspicion yawned between them. The thought of telling him anything required an act of trust so huge she couldn’t even contemplate it. No, not trust. Never that. If she were to put her faith in anyone, it wouldn’t be the man who had accepted a contract to kill her.

  But she needed the information he could get for her. Needed to find out for herself if Colton could lead her to the answers she was seeking. Any facts she gave Jake wouldn’t be news to Colton, even if Jake passed them on to him. The man wanted her dead. He wouldn’t be overly concerned with how much she’d pieced together in the last few years.

  In the end, it was less an act of faith than accepting the lesser of two evils. She returned Jake’s fathomless gaze, reading nothing in his expression. He might be sincere about helping her, or he might be planning to double-cross her at the worst possible moment. Knowing that, accepting it, was the biggest risk she’d ever taken.

  But if it led her to the man who’d left her for dead, who’d had Luz killed, it was a risk well worth taking.

  “All right.” Despite the hammering in her blood, her voice was steady. “Come to my place tomorrow night, after dark. I’d prefer some discretion. Your presence last time didn’t go unnoticed. Bring me the name and any other information your people discover on Colton.”