Deadly Proposal (Hardy Brothers Security Book 4)

by Hart, Lily Harper

  “You’re such a pain.”

  “I’m the light of your life,” Mandy shot back, grimacing as she shifted on the bed. “I’m also bored. What are you going to do to entertain me?”

  “The entertainment reinforcements are coming,” James said. “Emma and Ally are on their way.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  James leaned to the side, worried about how much he should tell her. Finally, he decided lying wasn’t an option. “I’m going with Finn and Grady to the courthouse. We’re going to watch the video of the explosion.”

  Mandy’s face tightened. “Oh. You don’t think the explosion was an accident. I didn’t even consider that.”

  “You’ve had other things on your mind.”

  “How long will you be gone?” There was a neediness to her tone.

  “Not long,” he said, giving her a quick kiss. “I’m going to go to the courthouse, and then I’m going to go back to the apartment and get you something to wear. I’ll even bring you back whatever food you want.”

  “The doctor is going to cut me loose,” Mandy reminded him. “I won’t need food.”

  “I’ll be back by lunchtime,” James said. “You’re going to want food, and so am I.”

  Mandy closed her eyes briefly, fighting the urge to argue. “How about Lebanese?”

  “That is your favorite,” James said. “You want your regular?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want some trashy magazines, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want anything else?”

  Mandy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to give me anything I want?”

  James couldn’t fight the smirk. “Pretty much.”

  “Just bring yourself back when you can.”

  James’ heart pinged at the naked emotion flitting through the depths of her blue eyes. “I wouldn’t be leaving you if I didn’t think it was important.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I know.”

  James was still torn, worried, but he gave her another quick kiss. “I’ll bring you a present anyway.”

  FINN and Grady were waiting for James in the lobby of the courthouse when he arrived. He was still wearing his tattered suit from the night before, so he was drawing a number of curious stares.

  The courthouse wasn’t normally open on a Saturday, but Judge MacIntosh had pulled some strings. Because of his efforts, the police officers investigating the explosion were using the lobby as a command center – and the handful of court personnel on hand were busily milling about.

  The explosion was big news in the county, Sophie supplying most of the information in a dual byline for the Daily Tribune. James wasn’t surprised to find her in the lobby when he entered.

  “Are you here in an official capacity?”

  Sophie looked tired, the dark rings under her eyes highlighting her fatigue. “Kind of,” she said. “I’ve been here all night. I wanted to be around if they found anything. It’s part of the job and, well, it’s part of being a member of this family.”

  Grady was standing next to her, his shoulder brushing against hers. He didn’t reach for her, though, and James knew it was because Sophie desperately needed to appear professional in front of the assembled police presence.

  “Thank you,” James said.

  “How is Mandy?” Finn asked.

  “She’s better since Emma and Ally got there,” James said. “I’m sure they’ll keep her distracted. The doctor says she can go home tonight if she stays stable.”

  “You don’t like that, do you?” Finn asked.

  “I would feel better if she spent another night in the hospital,” James admitted. “She’s just so … hurt.”

  “She’ll get better,” Grady said. “We need to take this whole situation as a win. Things could have been a whole lot worse.”

  “I keep telling myself that,” James said. “I’m still a little … unsettled.”

  “Anyone in your position would be,” Finn said. “You need to take care of yourself. Once you get her home, she’s going to be your patient.”

  “I don’t know if that’s going to be better or worse,” James said. “Don’t get me wrong, I want her home. I need her home. Although, truthfully, the doctors being so close is somehow comforting. It makes me not have to deal with things.”

  Grady nodded sympathetically. “In a few weeks things will be normal again.”

  “Will they? We still don’t know why the car exploded.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Finn said. “There were cameras in the parking lot. This is going to tell us what happened.”

  “Maybe,” James said. “It might just be another mystery.”

  “We’ll tackle that if it becomes a problem,” Finn said, moving his arm to direct his brother toward the back of the lobby. “Let’s take it one step at a time.”

  When the brothers got to the security office, James wasn’t surprised to find a familiar face waiting for them. Clint, one of the courthouse’s fulltime security officers, was sitting behind a computer.

  James had only seen Clint once since he’d found the man in a pool of his own blood on the lobby floor. Despite growing up in the same small town with Mandy, James hadn’t reconnected with her until her stepbrother, Troy, started threatening her life. She’d come to Hardy Brothers Security out of necessity, and love had kept her from ever leaving.

  Of course, James hadn’t figured out who was trying to hurt her until it was almost too late – and by then his heart was already claimed. Before he’d managed to find her, James had discovered Clint’s body on the floor of the lobby – a victim of Troy’s misguided attempts to get rich.

  Mandy had taken James to the hospital to visit Clint in the days after he’d killed Troy in a protective rage, and Clint’s recovery had been long and arduous. Seeing him now filled James with guilt. The man had tried to protect Mandy, but James had never viewed him with anything but suspicion.

  Now, here he was, helping again.

  “Hey, Clint.”

  “Mr. Hardy,” Clint said stiffly. “I’m glad to see you. How is Mandy?”

  Clint had been harboring a crush on his girlfriend for years. James reminded himself that the man was not a threat, and forced a smile onto his face. “She’s going to be okay.”

  “I hear she’s really banged up.”

  “She’s going to take some time to recover.”

  “I’m just glad you were there.”

  James stilled. “I didn’t save her. The paramedics saved her.”

  Clint pointed at the computer screen he’d been watching. “You called her away from the car,” he said. “If you hadn’t, she would have gotten inside and then she would have been blown into bits.”

  The frown on James’ face was pronounced. “What do you mean?”

  “Look.”

  James watched the video, his heart thudding harder every time Clint replayed it. “I can’t believe she survived.”

  “She was lucky,” Clint said. “There’s something else.” He rewound the video for a long stretch, the small figures entering the courthouse zipping to and fro. He stopped at a certain point and then started the video again. “Watch.”

  James furrowed his eyebrows, the footage filling him with confusion. He saw Mandy pull into the parking lot and exit the vehicle. She was clearly angry, something that filled James with remorse. If they’d driven together, if he hadn’t been so selfish, none of this would have ever happened.

  After Mandy disappeared from the frame, Clint forwarded a few minutes and then returned the footage to normal speed. “This is about twenty minutes after she entered the building,” Clint said.

  James leaned down so he could see more clearly, clenching his jaw when a furtive figure emerged from the darkness and headed toward Mandy’s car. He watched as the shadow dropped to its knees and pushed an object under the driver’s side seat beneath the carriage of the vehicle. After a few m
inutes, the figure – completely shrouded in black, including a knit mask covering everything but its eyes – glanced around the parking lot before leaving in the direction of the adjacent ghetto.

  “Someone planted a bomb,” James said grimly.

  “Yeah,” Clint said. “We’re going to send the footage to the state lab to see if they can enhance it. I thought you would want to see it first.”

  James slapped Clint on the back. “Thank you for showing me this.”

  “You’ve kept her safe before,” Clint said. “I’m hoping you can do it again.”

  “I will do it again,” James promised. “Before you send it to the state boys, can you make sure we get a copy at the office?”

  He was expecting Clint to balk. Instead, the security guard merely nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Five

  “Someone tried to kill her.”

  James had managed to contain his rage long enough for the Hardy brothers to make it to the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. He was inconsolable now.

  “It looks like it,” Finn said, not bothering to attempt a lame lie. “I have trouble believing someone picked her car out at random.”

  James ran a hand through his unwashed hair, leaving it in a haphazard mess when his fingers retreated. “This is my fault.”

  “How do you figure?” Grady challenged.

  “She drove her car because I was being an ass,” James said. “We would have been together if I had just gone with her like she wanted.”

  “How do you know that someone just wouldn’t have planted a bomb under your Explorer and killed you both?” Grady asked.

  James faltered. “I don’t.”

  “We need more information,” Finn said. “We need specifics on the bomb. We need to know if it was set on a timer, which doesn’t seem very likely right now since you two left early, or we need to know if someone triggered it remotely.”

  The tension in James’ shoulders amplified, pressing inward. “You think someone was watching her?”

  “I think that someone made a decision,” Finn said carefully. “They decided to press the trigger when they realized Mandy wasn’t getting into her car. You said you called her over and she was going to ride with you. If she’d driven that car home, she surely would have died.”

  “But … .”

  “But nothing,” Grady said. “Finn is right. The odds are that someone planted the bomb and then watched. Whoever it was didn’t expect Mandy to have another ride home. If you’d arrived together, you would have died together.

  “However misguided your fight with Mandy was, maybe it happened for a reason,” Grady continued. “That fight essentially saved her life.”

  James pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand who would target her. Her only enemy was Troy, and that idiot is dead.”

  “We have to approach this in the same way we did the initial stalking,” Finn said. “It could be someone from the courthouse.”

  “We can’t be a hundred-percent sure she was specifically targeted either,” Grady added. “While I think it’s unlikely it was random, it’s still a possibility.”

  James didn’t like either scenario. “The only thing we have going for us is that she’s going to be relegated to the apartment for the next two weeks,” James said. “She’s going to have to recover. It’s going to be easy at first. She’s not going to have the energy to leave.”

  “What are you going to tell her?” Finn asked.

  “The truth,” James said. “I’m not going to start lying to her now. If I explain how dangerous things are, then she’s more likely to agree to house arrest.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” Grady hedged.

  “I’m learning,” James admitted. “I’m going to tell her the truth. She needs to know.”

  “And if nothing happens once she’s recovered?” Finn asked.

  “I’ll deal with that when the time comes,” James said. “Right now, she’s my patient, and I’m not letting her out of my sight. Period.”

  Grady shrugged as Finn’s probing gaze hit him. “We don’t have a lot of options right now.”

  Finn blew out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. We need information. We can keep her safe now that we know someone is gunning for her. We’ll do what we can, one step at a time.”

  “I only care about keeping her safe,” James said. “That means I can do office work, but you two are going to have to pick up all the slack in the field. I will not leave her alone.”

  It was a statement, not a request.

  “It’s going to work out,” Grady said. “We’re all in this together.”

  WHEN James returned to the hospital, it was later than he initially hoped. He’d showered back at the apartment, settling on the couch long enough to watch the noon news so he could see the coverage on the explosion. Unfortunately, he’d fallen asleep.

  The previous evening had not been an exercise in relaxation. Mandy had been still – eerily so – the entire night. James had tried to lull himself into sleep with the sound of her rhythmic breathing, the feel of her steady heart under his hand, but his mind had been jumbled. When it was all said and done, he’d only managed to catch about two hours of interrupted slumber. He was exhausted.

  Once he entered her hospital room, guilt about falling asleep rampant, things got worse. Dr. Fitzgerald was hovering at her side, a thermometer in his hand, and a grave expression on his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Fitzgerald glanced at James. “She’s running a low-grade fever.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  Dr. Fitzgerald held up a hand to caution James. “It’s not especially dangerous. In fact, this is what I was worried about and why I wanted to keep her two nights.”

  James dropped the two bags he was carrying onto the chair by Mandy’s bed. “What does it mean?”

  “It means she’s fighting her condition,” he said. “Her body has been through a trauma. She’s healing a lot of wounds. She’s not in any immediate danger, Mr. Hardy. She does need to stay here.”

  James cringed when he saw Mandy’s eyes swimming with tears. She wanted comfort. She wanted their bed. She wasn’t going to get that tonight. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You just need another night here. You can go home with me tomorrow.”

  “I want to go home now.”

  “I know,” James said. “I brought home to you. I’ll be here with you all night. I promise.”

  Mandy lifted the covers over her face, hiding the tears James knew swam beneath them. She hated crying. She considered it emotional blackmail. James perched on the bed next to her, drawing her healthy hand into his and rubbing comforting circles across the bridge of her knuckles as he regarded Dr. Fitzgerald.

  “Can she still go home tomorrow if the fever breaks?”

  “Yes. She really just needs rest. Her two friends weren’t exactly conducive to relaxation.”

  James scowled. “What did my sister do?”

  “She didn’t do anything,” he replied. “She’s just a ball of energy. Ms. Avery doesn’t need a ball of energy. She needs quiet.”

  His words made sense. James would give Mandy anything her heart desired – as long as it didn’t endanger her health. This was the one scenario where he wouldn’t cave.

  “She’ll be quiet.”

  Dr. Fitzgerald nodded. “Try to get some food into her. I’ll be back in an hour or so. I assume you’re spending the night again?”

  “You assume right.”

  “I’m going to make sure that no other visitors are allowed in,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “If she could get twelve hours of sleep – I’m not joking, she needs a big block of sleep – I think it would make a world of difference. She’s exhausted. And, even though she won’t admit it, putting on a brave face for her friends tired her out.”

  James felt like beating Ally from afar he was so frustrated. “I get it.”

  “When you get her home, she needs to rest. She’s brave, I get that. I don’
t think the … effervescent … Ally means to do her any harm. The best thing you can do for her right now is to make sure she gets more sleep than is necessary – and absolutely no stress.”

  No stress? Crap. James had no idea how he was going to deliver on that promise. “I got it.”

  “I believe you,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “Feed her. Watch some television with her. Then sleep. I think both of you need it.”

  AFTER about ten minutes of cajoling, and another ten minutes of outright begging, James managed to convince Mandy to lower the blanket and enjoy a pouty dinner. Her appetite wasn’t big, but once she’d managed to down about a third of her meal James let it go. Her stomach was unsettled, but it was her heart that was laden with tumult.

  Once he cleared away the containers, James took possession of the remote control and focused on the television. “What do you want to watch?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you going to pout?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay,” James said, refusing to rise to her obvious bait. “I get to pick.”

  He flipped through the limited channels the hospital offered, sighing when he saw Martin Brody investigating a beach crime scene on AMC. “Oh, good, Jaws 2.”

  Mandy perked up, warming James’ heart without even realizing it. “It’s almost the beginning of the movie.”

  “It is.”

  “We didn’t miss the sailboat extravaganza.”

  “We didn’t.”

  Mandy shifted in the bed, patting the open space next to her. “Come up here.”

  James didn’t argue, knowing the endeavor was fruitless. She hadn’t asked about his afternoon excursion, and it wasn’t lying if he didn’t volunteer information. For now, he was content watching the movie and letting her mind and body rest.

  Mandy managed stay awake until the initial sailboat attack, sleep ultimately winning its relentless assault. James nodded at a nurse when she poked her head in the door and mimed shutting the lights off. Once it was dark, James turned the sound down but let the movie play. There was something comforting about watching a movie he’d seen twenty times – each one with the blonde slumbering beside him – as she cuddled into his side.

  He pressed his lips against her forehead, feeling its warmth as her head lolled to a resting position on his shoulder. He wanted to pull her on top of him, to find solace in her very being. He knew he couldn’t. Her body couldn’t take the stress. Instead, he focused on the movie. Somehow, before his favorite part – when the shark took out the helicopter – he joined her in quiet slumber.