“Probably just worried about the firm’s reputation.”
“That was my thought, too.”
She touched my arm lightly. “I’m sure he’s worried about you, too. He just…that firm has always been the most important thing to him.”
“I know.”
She was quiet for a minute, staring down at her toes as she kicked at the soil in the side yard. “Whose house is this?”
“It belongs to Gray Wolf.”
She nodded. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Alexander’s taking care of everything.”
She smiled. “Things going well there?”
I blushed. “Things are fine, Momma.”
“You like him. I could see it that night we had dinner together.”
“I do like him. And I think he likes me, too.”
Her smile widened. “Good. You deserve a little happiness, baby.”
I felt like a child being patted on the head for a job well done. It was ridiculous, really. If she’d known that I was still a virgin until a few days ago, she’d probably be shocked. I’m pretty sure she thought I lost my virginity when I was high school and dating this boy from the basketball team. Wouldn’t she be shocked to find out I never even let him go to second base?
And now I really felt like a child.
“I have to get back inside, Momma. If Alexander finds out that I told you were the safe house was…”
“My lips are sealed,” she said, making a movement like she was zipping her lips closed. “No one will know I was here.”
She kissed my forehead and gave me a hug before she turned and rushed off down the block where she’d parked her car. I watched for a second, then headed back around the house myself. I was nearly at the corner, just a foot from the window I’d slipped out of when someone grabbed my arm.
“Shouldn’t have called your mommy, bitch,” a male voice hissed in my ear.
I thought for a second it was Tony, the Gray Wolf operative Alexander had left me with when he went out earlier. But this guy was shorter. Stouter. He shoved me up against the wall, his hand at my throat. His breath was sour as he spoke close to my face.
“You’ll make sure that Brendan Harmon gets out of jail as soon as possible. If he doesn’t, I know where you are now. I’ll come back and make sure you regret every second he spends behind bars. Do you understand?”
I nodded almost frantically. He had his hand pressed against my throat, tight enough that I could almost feel the bruises forming. His eyes were dark and red-rimmed. Drug abuser eyes. He had a ski mask over his face, but it didn’t do much to hide his features. I stared at him, trying to memorize every curve of his jaw, every line visible along the edges of his eyes.
“I will hurt you, bitch,” he hissed, his spittle flying over my face. “I will make you pay.”
“I understand.”
He studied me for a second, and then he stepped back. I thought for a moment that he was just going to let me go. But then he struck out at me, catching my jaw with the bottom edge of his fist. I ducked as I saw the second blow coming, but I tripped over the edging of the flowerbed that was meant to be growing against the brick of the house. As I fell, he bent over me and hit me again and again. I stopped counting the blows after four or five. And then he started to kick me.
I rolled into a ball and just waited for it to end.
Chapter 13
Alexander
I didn’t want to leave Tierney. She was bored, I know, but I got a call from her personal assistant at the office. The cops had finally released Tierney’s office. I drove up there, picking through the things the vandals had gone over. The loveseat was completely destroyed, the cushions ripped to shreds. My laptop was on the floor, the battery drained, but it looked as though it had survived its ordeal. That was more than I could say about Tierney’s desktop. They’d thrown the monitor onto the floor, smashing it into small pieces.
I wondered how they thought they were going to get away with this. Clearly they weren’t.
So what had the point been?
They’d rummaged through Tierney’s drawers, too. I picked through what was left, wondering what they thought they would find there. And then I saw it. A file folder on the floor that had Brendan Harmon’s name written clearly on the tab.
Was that just a coincidence, or was he behind all this? And if he was, what was the message here?
There was something not right about that kid. I’d sensed it the first time I set eyes on him. I’d done a little research on him these last few days and discovered a few interesting things. A friend of mine over at the Boys and Girls Club told me that a couple of the kids who went there had pointed to Brendan Harmon as their drug dealer. And a quick check of arrest records over the last year—since Brendan turned eighteen—showed he’d been picked up twice in the area of the club. Both times it was for drug possession.
At the very least, he liked selling drugs to children. At the very most…was it possible he had taken that little girl? Was it possible he had a thing for kids and this little girl was just an escalating pattern of behavior? Was it possible that if he got off for this, he had bigger and darker things in store for the children of this city?
I went back and looked at the original threats Tierney had gotten. Two of them were written in script, the rest emails or type written notes. The ones written in script were eerily similar to the handwriting of the statement Brendan wrote out for Tierney when she first took his case.
Why didn’t she see it? Tierney was a smart girl. Surely she saw what a psychopath her client was. Why would she continue to represent him?
I had this sense that Tierney and I would never see eye to eye on her profession. But that meant that she would never see danger when it was right there in front of her, right?
I drove by the apartment building. There were still cameras affixed inside and out, so I knew no one had bothered the place. But I wanted to see it for myself.
The police station was quiet when I arrived a while later. The sergeant on the front desk was less than helpful, but he told me that the three suspects were still in custody, each of them waiting arraignment on the pending charges. Apparently their families had abandoned them to the legal system. A little bit of money slipped to a public defender and I was able to get a brief dossier on each of them. They all came from wealthy families. They each attended the same private high school Brendan Harmon had attended before being shipped off to that military school back East. Each had spent time in and out of rehab, as well as jail. There were four arrests for the girl and one of the guys, two for the other. Each one was drug related.
I found it interested that two of them were arrested near the Boys and Girls Club the same day Brendan Harmon had been.
Were they his dealers? Did they held him kidnap that little girl? What did that mean for the girl now? If she was still alive, who was feeding her? Who was looking out for her?
Did that mean she was no longer alive?
I put in a call to the prosecutor’s office—as sick as it made me feel, those inadequate bastards!—trying to get more information on the drug arrest. Was there someone else there that day? Was it possible that Brendan had more people working for him on the outside?
I needed to know how much danger Tierney was still in despite Brendan being locked up in county jail. I needed to know if I should be looking over my shoulder as I made my way to the safe house. I didn’t want to bring trouble to her door if I could help it.
My cell phone buzzed as I turned the corner onto the safe house’s street. I was about to pull it out when I saw an array of vehicles outside the house. I recognized David’s BMW—and that worried me. David never came to a scene unless someone seriously fucked up.
What was going on?
I rushed to the house, bursting through the front door. The first thing I saw was the same thin, washed out cop who’d been at Tierney’s apartm
ent days ago. The second was Tierney, her face bruised and swollen, sitting on the couch with an ice pack pressed to her jaw.
“Tierney?”
I rushed into the living room, nearly falling down the steps. David was immediately there, Tony beside him. The two of them pushed me back into the kitchen, Knox following.
I suddenly had a flashback to the night I got the call about Vanessa.
I’m sorry. It’s bad. The doctors aren’t sure she’ll survive the night.
I couldn’t go through that again.
David pushed me hard back against the sink. “Where have you been?”
I tried to move around him, but he grabbed the front of my shirt and shoved me back again. David had never been violent around me, and that in itself brought me out of my shock and fear for a second.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I’d never seen him angry, either.
“Following a lead. Is she…what happened here?”
“She’s okay,” Knox said. “A little bruised, but nothing’s broken.”
I nodded slowly, my eyes darting to the entrance of the living room even though I couldn’t see inside.
“It’s your job to be here with your target,” David said. “Why was Tony here?”
“I asked him.” I focused on David again. “I’m pretty sure I know who’s behind the threats against Tierney, but I had to check out a few things. Tony wasn’t on a case, so he agreed to come over.”
“It wasn’t Tony’s case. It was yours. And when I assign a case to one of you, I expect you to stick it out no matter what.”
“I am. I was. I just…I couldn’t take her to the places I went today.”
David shook his head. “This is unacceptable. I can’t have targets getting hurt while we’re watching over them.”
“What happened?” I asked, staring pointedly at Tony.
Much to his credit, Tony looked ashamed.
“I thought she was in the bedroom. She’d been in the bedroom since you left. But then I went to see if she wanted some lunch and she wasn’t there.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Didn’t the perimeter alarms go off?”
“No. She must not have stood close enough to the doors to set them off.”
“We think she went out the window,” Knox said.
I shook my head. “And you didn’t think of that?”
Tony shrugged. “She’s paying us. I thought she’d be smart enough to go out the front door.”
I bit back the anger that was building, building. I wanted to hurt someone; I wanted to make someone pay for the bruises I saw on Tierney’s face. I wanted to put my hand through the wall.
“She told her mother where the house was.” David glanced toward the living room. “We think whoever did this followed her mother here.”
“Is that what she said?”
“She’s working with the cops, Alex,” Knox said. “She knows what she did wrong.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t do anything wrong. This asshole,” I said, shoving Tony back a few paces, “never should have taken his eyes off of her.”
“Hey! I was doing my job. I didn’t expect her to sneak out the window.”
“You should have been watching the video feeds.”
“That’s not fair, Alexander,” David said in his calm, steady voice. “We’ve designed those feeds so that they don’t have to be watched twenty-four seven.”
“I trusted you to watch over her,” I said, as if David hadn’t spoken at all. “All you had to do was keep her in the house. Keep her safe!”
“Alex,” Knox said, putting her hand on the center of my chest as I took a step toward Tony. “He did the same thing I would have done.”
I shook my head, but then the cop came into the room.
“Detective Snider,” David said respectfully, approaching him with his hand outstretched.
“I’ve got all the information she could give. I’ll send someone over with some mug shots, see if she can pick out her assailant. She seemed to think she got a good look at him despite the ski mask.”
David began to speak, but I stepped up in front of the cop.
“Have you found out who put that girl up to breaking into Tierney’s apartment? Have you talked to the other two vandals? Do you know who’s behind all this?”
“We have a lot of cases we need to take care of, Mr. Garcia. I don’t have time to follow up on every breaking-and-entering job out there.”
“Or you just chose to ignore this one because she’s a lawyer defending someone you think doesn’t deserve a defense. Isn’t that more like it, Detective?”
“That’s uncalled for, Alexander,” David said in a low, dangerous tone.
I knew I was pushing my luck, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You were pretty clear to me, Detective,” I said, pronouncing his title like it was a slur. “You don’t like who her clients are. And that’s hardly motivation to do your job, right?”
“You’d better back off,” the cop said, shoving his finger into my chest. “I’m not like you. I can’t pick and chose my cases. But I do that best I can on each and every one of them.”
“I doubt that.”
The cop’s face suddenly turned red. I was pretty sure he was going to hit me when Tierney called my name.
“Alexander.”
And suddenly, nothing mattered but her. I went to her, took her bruised face between my hands. It hurt me to look at her. Her right eye was swollen, her right cheek puffy and darkening with bruises, her lip split in the corner. I brushed my thumb over the side of her mouth, and she moved into me, her hands on my chest. I kissed her gently, trying not to hurt her. But she didn’t seem to mind the pressure. She kissed me back, catching my bottom lip between her teeth briefly.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “It’s my fault. My mom insisted on seeing me. It never occurred to me that someone would be following her.”
“It’s not your fault. I never should have left you.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t say anything else. I kissed her again, our lips lingering for a long moment. Knox cleared her throat, and it hit me all at once that I’d just outed myself, showing my boss that I couldn’t even follow the basics of the rules he’d set out for me when I began working for him.
I couldn’t look at David, aware of the disappointment I’d see in his eyes. But I couldn’t let go of Tierney either. The fear that washed through me when I walked into this house to find her bruised and battered? A job wasn’t worth walking away from this.
I wasn’t going to leave Tierney’s side again.
Chapter 14
At the Compound
“I had to take Alexander off the case. He was pretty pissed at me.”
Ricki came around the side of the desk and climbed into David’s arms. “It’s not like Alexander to act like that.”
“I think a lot of it has to do with his feelings for the client.”
Ricki’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah? You think there’s something going on there?”
“They made it pretty obvious. They’re in a relationship.”
Ricki chewed on her bottom lip a second. “It’s kind of hard to get angry with him, considering that that’s kind of how you and I got together.”
“I wasn’t protecting you. I was working the tech with you.”
“Only because I hired Gray Wolf to find out who was making threats against me.”
“True. But I wasn’t your bodyguard. And Ash didn’t tell me I couldn’t sleep with you.”
“Would you have obeyed him if he had?”
David ran his hand slowly down the length of Ricki’s back. “I don’t know. But, then again, you never really gave me a chance.”
“Me?”
“You were all over me from the start.”
She laughed. “I wanted your body, not necessarily your ring on my finger.”
“But did you really think it wouldn’t lead to that?”
She shrugged, her tongue sliding slowly over her lips as the memory burned on her cheeks and in her eyes. She couldn’t resist teasing him.
“I don’t know. I guess it might have been there, at the back of my mind.”
He sighed, his thoughts forced back to the subject at hand. “I just…I hate having to get mean with one of our operatives. Alexander has been a great employee from day one, never questioning me, never defying any of my instructions. But this—”
“Maybe it’s love. Maybe they’ll end up like us.”
“Maybe. But I can’t have him on the case if his personal feelings could get in the way.”
“Well, that’s always a danger. I don’t think it’s natural for a man and woman to spend as much time together as some of our operatives do with their targets and not develop some feelings.”
“But they’re professionals.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that they all have hearts.”
David sighed, burying his face against her chest. “We’re not going to survive if this keeps happening though. Then our operatives won’t want to go out into the field anymore, and we’ll have to hire new ones and go through the same thing again. Just like Ash.”
“You’re not in competition with your brother, you know. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you did some things like him.”
David sat back and studied his wife’s face. “You know nothing about sibling rivalry.”
She ran her finger down the bridge of his nose. “I know plenty. I have two siblings, remember?”
“But you haven’t seen them in years.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t remember the fights we used to have.” She kissed him gently. “Call that guy, that Kipling guy. Maybe he’ll have a few suggestions for you.”
She climbed off his lap and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To feed our son, Mr. Grayson. But I shall return. After you make your phone call.”
He groaned, but when she was gone, he reached for the phone. He’d already called Kipling McKay twice and been politely, but sternly, turned down both times. He took a deep breath as he dialed, thinking that the third time was supposed to be the charm.
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