Bowie: The Sinner Saints #5

by Adrienne Bell

  “What?” she said. “Don’t tell me that I can’t say thank you now either. Pretty soon you’ll be telling me not to talk at all.”

  He loosened his death grip on the wheel and started tapping his thumbs against it instead. Was he seriously mulling the idea over?

  “I don’t know why you make this so hard,” she went on. “It’s pretty basic. I say sorry. You say no problem. I say thanks. You say you’re welcome, and that’s the end of it. People do it all the time.”

  “I’m not good with chitchat.”

  “And I’m no good with strained silences,” Charlie said with a shrug. “But if you’re really not into small talk, then I could always dig a little deeper and ask what exactly you meant when you said that I had more heart than anyone you knew.”

  His eyes narrowed as the line of his lips hardened. His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel again.

  “You’re welcome,” he said tightly.

  “See.” A wide smile crept across Charlie’s face. “Was that so hard?”

  He shot her a glare out of the corner of his eye. Apparently, it was.

  “Well, I’m proud of you,” she said. Without thinking, she leaned over in her seat and kissed him on the cheek.

  It was a friendly peck, nothing more. It lasted a fraction of a second. Her lips barely pressed against his skin, but the moment they did a jolt of awareness rushed through Charlie. It was as if time slowed down and she was able to experience every sensation—the stubble lining his jaw, the smooth skin above, the heat radiating off his body.

  Charlie sucked in a sharp breath. She forced her backside into her seat and stared straight ahead. Not that it helped. Bowie was still staring at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “What was that?” he asked. His voice was tight—not quite angry, but not happy either.

  She opened her mouth, ready to beg forgiveness, but stopped herself just in time. He didn’t want her apologies, and honestly, neither did she. Not when she wasn’t sorry.

  She drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to look at him.

  “That was my way of saying I think you’re pretty amazing too,” she said.

  To her surprise he didn’t look away. He just stared at her with wide eyes and an open mouth. It took her another couple of seconds to finally put her finger on his expression.

  Shock.

  That’s what it was. Somehow she’d managed to do the impossible. She’d stunned the solid brick wall that was Bowie Tamatoa. Charlie might have been proud of herself—hell, she should’ve been—but she was too busy dealing with her own tangle of confusing emotions.

  The knot in her belly tightened as his gaze slowly traveled from her eyes to her lips, lingering for a long moment…until the car behind them laid on the horn.

  The light had turned green.

  Bowie cleared his throat as he put his foot down on the accelerator. That was the last sound either one of them made as they drove the rest of the way across the city.

  Chapter Five

  Jake and Rhys were leaning against the reception desk and talking when Charlie and Bowie finally arrived at Macmillan Security. Jake gave Charlie a wide smile the second she walked through the doors. She instantly went over to his side.

  “You okay?” he asked, pulling her into a hug. The show of support wasn’t surprising. Jake was one of her dearest friends. They shared a hell of a bond, as well as more than a couple of scars from the day armed gunmen had broken into her house and filled them both with bullets.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Charlie said once he’d finished squeezing her. She spoke to Rhys, “Have you guys been here all night?”

  He nodded. “Carter called us in a little after midnight.”

  “Now I feel bad,” she said. “I should have brought doughnuts.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jake said. “Verity’s going to swing by with some on her way to work. She’ll be relieved to see you. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

  Charlie pushed her hair behind her ears before giving him a shaky nod. “I’m okay. I promise.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed. His gaze flickered over to Bowie, who was behind her.

  “How about you, man?” Jake asked with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “You look like you had a rough night.”

  Bowie pulled his shoulders back and straightened his spine. He was only a couple of inches taller than Jake, but right now it looked like he was in the mood to show them off.

  “I’m fine,” Bowie said tersely.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, a teasing smile forming on his lips. “Sounds like it.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes. The last thing she needed was these two going after each other. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

  “I need to pull a few boxes out of storage,” Rhys said, turning toward Bowie. “I could use your help.”

  “Of course,” Bowie said before looking over at her. “I won’t be long.”

  Charlie nodded. In all the years they’d been friends, this was the first time he’d ever assured her he was coming back.

  Was it because he thought she was still nervous, or afraid? Or was it something else? Something that had to do with the look in his eye just before the light had turned green?

  She watched him disappear around the corner. When she looked back, Jake was watching her with wide eyes.

  “So,” he asked, his brows arching. “How was your night?”

  “Don’t you dare start,” she said, slapping him on the arm. “My day’s been bad enough already.”

  “Really?” Jake asked. “And here I’d thought you’d be in a good mood after getting to spend the night with your new roommate. I take it things didn’t go well.”

  Charlie’s cheeks began to burn.

  “Oh, Jake, you have no idea.” She dipped her voice down low so no one could hear. “I had too much to drink at the bar I was hiding out in, and…and…”

  “And what?”

  “I came on to Bowie.”

  “You did what?” Jake’s brows shot up. It took him a couple of seconds to recover from the shock. If only she could bounce back from her suffocating shame so easily. “That’s great.”

  “Not great,” Charlie said, shaking her head so vehemently that her hair smacked her in the face. “It was horrible. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  “But Bowie—”

  “Is no kind of interested,” Charlie finished his sentence for him.

  Jake’s brow crinkled. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Oh, he made it crystal clear,” she said.

  Of course, there had been that moment. The one where his lips had been so close to hers. Where she thought that she’d seen a glint of something more burning in his eyes. But it didn’t matter what she imagined seeing. His words were all that mattered…and there had been no ambiguity in those.

  “How?” Jake asked with a frown. “What exactly did he say?”

  “Does it matter?” Charlie turned away from the reception desk and started walking down the long hallway that led to everyone’s offices. Jake stayed right by her side. “Just imagine the most awkward and embarrassing conversation that your mind can dream up, and then multiply it by a thousand.”

  “It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.

  “You’re right,” she said, coming to a stop in front of Carter’s door. “It was worse. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m done reliving last night’s total humiliation and ready to get to work.”

  Jake opened his mouth, but she quickly rapped three loud knocks on the door before he could speak. The locked door clicked open and she stepped inside.

  As usual, Mason and Carter were huddled around the large desk in the center of the room. Their heads snapped up the instant Charlie entered.

  It was funny. Anyone in their right mind would be intimidated by the guys she worked with. After all, these were some of the biggest badasses alive. Their talents went far beyond the physical. Sure, every guy here knew a hu
ndred ways to kill someone with a ballpoint pen, and all the other commando stuff that came in the standard issue Army special service manual, but their scariness didn’t end there.

  They knew how to play people’s emotions. How to make them trust. How to make them fear. How to make them talk. Around these guys, no secret was safe, no lie went undiscovered.

  And yet, this was where she felt most at home.

  Smiles spread across the men’s faces as she walked in. Mason glanced at the clock hanging on the wall.

  “Seven twenty-one,” he said. “Who had the seven to eight slot?”

  “Rhys did,” Jake said, stepping into the room.

  “Damn,” Mason said with a chuckle. “I hate losing to him.”

  Charlie crossed her arms in front of her chest and pinned Mason with her least amused stare. “You guys were betting on what time we would make it to the office?”

  “More like when you two would get out of bed,” he said with a devilish twinkle in his eye.

  Great. It was going to be one of those days. “Well, don’t let Bowie hear about it. Trust me, he is most definitely not in the mood.”

  “That’s a shame,” Mason admitted. “And here I was going to yell at him for getting you up before ten and making me lose.”

  “Ten o’clock? That’s nothing,” a female voice called out behind them. Charlie turned to see Sara Baumgartner, the newest addition to Macmillan Security walking through the office door. “I’d bet on next Thursday.”

  “Would it kill you to knock?” Carter asked, his lips twisting down in annoyance. “Or at the very least, not pick the lock every time you come in here?”

  “Probably not,” Sara said, walking over to Mason’s side and wrapping her arm around his waist. “But then again, how am I supposed to keep in shape if I don’t practice?”

  Carter shook his head and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. It looked like tensions were running a little high around here after a night of no sleep. Charlie figured she’d better steer the conversation toward work before any more arguments broke out.

  “So, have you been able to dig anything up on Darktide?” she asked.

  “Quite a bit,” Carter said, his brows pulling down.

  “We’ve had dozens of dealings with Darktide on cases over the past few years, ranging from the mundane to outright confrontations,” Mason said.

  Charlie stepped closer to his desk. “Any that stand out?” she asked.

  “Not at first,” Mason said, leaning over the piles of papers in front of him. “They all seemed pretty ordinary. All except one.”

  He pushed a manila file across the desk to her.

  Charlie looked at the label and narrowed her eyes. “Buck Fuller?”

  Mason cocked his chin to the side. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Trevor brought up the Fuller case last evening when he cornered me at Henry’s party.”

  “What exactly did he say?” Carter asked.

  “Not much. He just mentioned the explosion back in Sacramento, and tried to make it sound like it was our fault,” she said with a shrug. “Still, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said.

  “Me neither,” Charlie agreed.

  “Well, in this case you both have good reason,” Mason continued. “You remember that journalist that Fuller had murdered at the American Embassy in Rome?”

  “Sure,” Charlie nodded. “He used the same M.O. there as when he tried to take out Ally. Hired extra security at the last minute, had his own team commit the murder, and then tried to pin it on the new guys.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “The extra security was local. But guess who was the private contractor that supplied his usual security team?”

  “Darktide,” Charlie said with a sigh. It made sense. Back then, Fuller was the head of the Defense Appropriations Committee. Not only would it have been easy for him to contract Darktide as his own personal security team, but he’d also know he could trust them to do his dirty work.

  “Why didn’t any of this come out in Fuller’s trial?” Sara asked.

  “Because Darktide made sure to bury it under an avalanche of redacted documents and classified information,” Mason said.

  Charlie opened the file and began thumbing through the papers. “But the trial is over. Darktide successfully protected their reputation. Why did they suddenly start caring about some random file we have now? Unless…”

  Charlie looked up at Mason. Her eyes went wide as realization swept over her.

  “See, I told you we needed her last night,” Mason said to Carter. “She would have put this together hours before I did.”

  “Put what together?” Sara asked.

  “Darktide wouldn’t risk coming after us or this file unless it contained some information that no one else had,” Charlie said, flipping through the file at a frantic pace. “Something that wasn’t particularly important during the trial, but is now. A smoking gun…in another crime. A more recent one.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said with a wide smile.

  Charlie looked up from the file. “But I don’t see anything suspicious.”

  “That’s because there’s nothing in the file,” Carter said, crossing his arms.

  “But…” Her words trailed off as a knock sounded on the door. Carter pushed the button to unlock it, and a moment later Rhys and Bowie walked in, both carrying a couple file boxes each. They were off white and worn…and totally unfamiliar. They rarely used boxes to organize files in the office, and when they did, they were dark brown.

  “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for in Fuller’s file because I made sure it never was put in there,” Carter said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, watching the guys put the boxes in the corner.

  “I try to keep most of Bowie’s assignments off the official record,” Carter said.

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” she said, rolling her eyes. She hadn’t been able to dig up much when he disappeared for days or even weeks at a time, no matter how she tried.

  “And this is why,” Bowie said.

  “Wait,” she said. “You knew what this was all about?”

  Bowie shook his head. “Not until Rhys filled me in.”

  “A short time after Fuller’s arrest I sent Bowie on a trip to the Embassy,” Carter said. “I wanted him to gather as much documentation as he could before the government had a chance to get rid of it.”

  Charlie tilted her head to the side. “Why?”

  “Because I had a feeling something like this might happen,” he said. “And in case it did, I wanted as much ammunition as I could get.”

  Charlie nodded her head. People could say a lot about Carter Macmillan, but they couldn’t accuse him of not covering his bases. “So what did you find?”

  “Not much,” Bowie said. “A handful of papers was all. A personnel list, a few police reports, and some eye witness statements from the incident.”

  Charlie arched a brow. “And the Embassy just handed it over no questions asked?”

  The line of Bowie’s jaw tightened, but his gaze didn’t falter. “All that matters is that the documents ended up in my possession.”

  “Strong arming government officials?” Charlie gave him a wry smile. “That’s what you do every time you disappear?”

  “Not every time.” The corners of his eyes tilted up just a touch, hinting at a roguish smile.

  Damn. It was a sexy look.

  Charlie’s cheeks lit up. She turned her attention to Carter, before the fire could spread and become more noticeable.

  That was the last thing that she needed.

  “So, Bowie comes home and throws the Embassy documents in with the rest of the secret papers from the Fuller case,” she said. “I’m still missing what Trevor is after.”

  “So were we,” Carter said. “Until Mason cross-referenced the names of the men on Fuller’s private detail against the Darktide database.”

&
nbsp; “And?” Charlie asked.

  “There was one name missing,” he said. “Daniel Cooper.”

  A tingle started deep in Charlie’s belly. She’d felt this before. Plenty of times. And in every time it never boded anything good.

  “Maybe he was fired,” she tried. “Or found another job.”

  Mason slowly shook his head. “He’s not in their system anywhere. It’s as though he never worked there.”

  “So, where is he?” Charlie asked through clenched teeth.

  Mason pushed another paper toward her. Charlie’s stomach sunk deeper as her gaze fell over the sheet—a printout from a Baltimore-area newspaper. The obituary page.

  Charlie glanced up at the date. It was only two months old.

  “The official story was he was fatally shot fighting off a carjacker late at night,” Carter said. “He left behind a family—a wife and two kids.”

  “A wife?” Charlie forced herself to look up from the paper. “She has to know who he worked for.”

  “She did,” Mason said. Bile rose up in Charlie’s throat at the word did. “And she raised quite a shit storm over it too when Darktide refused to acknowledge Daniel’s employment, cutting off all his benefits. She even went to the press about it.”

  Charlie closed her eyes. She let the paper fall to the desk. “Don’t tell me she ended up getting carjacked too.”

  “Convenience store robbery,” Mason said, his voice low. “Two weeks ago.”

  Charlie felt a hand fall over her shoulder. She didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Bowie. She knew the feel of him. And right now she needed his comfort.

  She leaned back into the wide expanse of his chest. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t even stiffen. He just let her draw in a little of his strength, right now…when she needed it most.

  She didn’t dare open her eyes. She could only imagine how everyone would be staring at her. The funny thing was, she didn’t care. Not even a little bit.

  “I told you they were merciless,” Bowie said, low and close to her ear. “Darktide will eliminate anything and anyone in their way.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s more,” Mason said. “We tracked down the director of the division Daniel Cooper would have worked in.”