Full Force

by Elle James

  “I know he’s the one I saw in the Russian embassy,” Emily said. “Surely they wouldn’t have done something stupid like kill the man on American soil.”

  “You would think they wouldn’t have done it at the embassy,” Mustang said.

  “Perhaps that’s why they want Emily out of the picture,” Mack said. “She saw Blunt there. She could call them out and have the embassy investigated for kidnapping and potentially for murder.”

  Mustang frowned. “You wouldn’t think having an affair with the ambassador’s daughter would be enough to make the Russians want to kill the journalist.”

  “You didn’t see how mad the ambassador was,” Emily said. “He stormed out of the conference room shouting obscenities. His face was red and there were veins popping out on his forehead. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone quite that mad.”

  “Well, since we can’t find the journalist, we’ll have to settle for the other American in that session with the ambassador,” Declan said.

  “The address you gave me...is it his home or office?” Mustang asked.

  Declan snorted. “His home.” He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and clicked some buttons. “I just sent you a text with the office address, too, so you have it. Mack and I will go by his office. You and Emily can swing by his home. We tried calling his work number, but got no response. He might be there, but he’s not answering. Same with his home number.”

  Mustang nodded. “We’ll head for his house. Hopefully he can shed some light on what’s going on.”

  “If we find him,” Emily murmured. “Alive.”

  Declan climbed into his truck. Mack joined him. They took off in the direction of Phillips’s office.

  Mustang held the door for Emily and waited while she slipped into the sedan. Then he slid behind the steering wheel, adjusted the seat and mirrors and pulled out into the traffic. He followed the directions given by the map application on his cell phone. Twenty minutes later he pulled into the driveway of a modest town house with a one-car garage.

  Just by looking at the building, he couldn’t tell if anyone was home. The shades were drawn and the garage door was closed.

  He stepped out of the sedan and walked around to hold Emily’s door for her.

  She joined him and they walked up the driveway to the front door. With every step they took, Mustang scanned the surrounding area, searching for anyone who might take a shot at Emily. He wished she hadn’t insisted on coming along for the conversation with Jay Phillips. She would have been safer staying with Charlie at her estate with the other members of his team guarding her.

  But then Mustang wouldn’t have been able to keep his sights on her. He’d worry the entire time he was away. He trusted his team to protect her, but he felt more invested in her well-being and wanted to be the one looking out for her.

  At the door, Emily pressed the doorbell.

  Mustang could hear it echo in the interior of the structure.

  After a full minute Emily pressed the button a second time. Again no one answered.

  Emily glanced up at Mustang. “I hope the others had more luck at his office.” She turned and took a step toward the car.

  As Mustang turned with her, he heard a sound. He reached out to capture Emily’s elbow, pulling her to a stop beside him. Then he pressed a finger to his lips and tilted his ear at the town house.

  Another sound came from behind the door.

  Mustang turned and banged on the door with his fist. “Mr. Phillips, we know you’re in there. Open the door. We only want to talk to you.”

  No sounds emanated from inside the home.

  Emily leaned closer to the door. “Mr. Phillips, it’s me, Emily Chastain, the interpreter from our meeting with Ambassador Kozlov yesterday. I need to talk to you.”

  Nothing.

  “Please, Mr. Phillips.” She leaned her forehead against the door panel. “It’s important. Someone is trying to kill me. I need your help.”

  Mustang couldn’t let Emily stand out in the open any longer than necessary. He touched her shoulder and turned her toward the vehicle.

  They’d just stepped off the porch when the door behind them opened.

  Mustang spun and stepped in front of Emily.

  A thin man with brown hair and brown eyes poked his head through the gap in the door. “Miss Chastain?”

  Emily leaned around Mustang. “Yes. Mr. Phillips, are you okay?”

  He shook his head, his gaze darting left then right. “Not really. I’m afraid to step out of my house.”

  “Has someone tried to attack you, as well?” Emily asked.

  He nodded. “If I hadn’t had such a good security system installed, I’d likely be a dead man by now.” He frowned at Mustang. “Who’s he?”

  Emily gave the man a weak smile. “He’s my bodyguard. I’ve been having a little trouble myself.”

  Mustang snorted. “Not just a little.”

  Phillips shot another glance around and opened the door a little wider. “You can come in.”

  Mustang followed Emily through the door and closed it.

  Phillips reached around him, shot the dead bolt home and armed the security system through a panel on the wall.

  “Come into the kitchen. It doesn’t have any windows.” Phillips led the way down the hall into a modern kitchen with granite countertops and dark cabinets. A small dinette table with four chairs took up a small corner. The private investigator nodded in that direction. “Have a seat and tell me you’ve had a better past twenty-four hours than I have.”

  Mustang held a chair for her and Emily sat.

  “I can’t say that my day’s been better.” She told him all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, ending with the attack in the university parking garage.

  Phillips ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “Sounds like what I’ve experienced. I had an appointment across town from the Russian embassy after our meeting with Kozlov. I never made it there. Someone ran me off the road and down into a ditch. Fortunately, I was able to drive back out of it relatively unscathed. At least they let me go from the embassy. For a while, I wasn’t sure they would. But I made up a story about my next appointment being with the military for an investigation on a base, and they’d be searching for me if I didn’t show up. That seemed to tip them toward releasing me.”

  “You were luckier than I was. My car is totaled.”

  Phillips’s lips twisted. “Yeah, but I spent the next couple of hours trying to lose the guy who’d run me off the road. I finally ended up hiding the night in a used car lot. I didn’t sleep a wink. When I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be followed, I headed back here, only to find the alarm going off and the place surrounded by police.” He smiled. “It was nice to know my security service worked. But once the police left, I haven’t felt much like going out again. Not when someone is clearly trying to get to me.”

  “We’ve tried to call you,” Emily interjected. “Mustang and his team.”

  “I hardly use my landline and let calls go to voice mail.”

  “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill you two?” Mustang asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out. Now that I know you’re involved, it kind of narrows it down to the people and discussion that happened in the Russian embassy.” He glanced toward Mustang. “We signed a nondisclosure agreement, but I’m seriously rethinking that at the moment.”

  “He knows pretty much what was discussed. Sachi Kozlov came to me, worried about her lover, Tyler Blunt, who went missing yesterday.”

  Phillips’s eyes narrowed. “I heard that on the radio. Wow, who would think the ambassador would be angry enough to kill all those involved with his daughter’s indiscretions?”

  Emily shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No. Something
isn’t right.” Phillips ran his hand through his hair again, his mouth pinched in a tight line and the creases around his eyes deepening, making him appear older than his years. “Someone tried to break into my house.”

  “Do you have information they might not want shared? Information they might have tried to steal?” Mustang asked.

  “Only the files I had on Blunt.”

  “You gave them the photos you’d taken,” Emily said. “What more could they want?”

  “I wasn’t too worried about the images I left with the ambassador’s assistant. Those were only the prints. I have digital copies of those photographs.” He frowned.

  “Do you suppose they were after the digital copies?”

  “They would have to know how to get to them. I have them backed up to the cloud. Even if they got my desktop computer and laptop, they couldn’t completely destroy them.”

  “What was in those pictures?” Mustang asked.

  “I followed Blunt, capturing him and Sachi making clandestine assignations. I have photographs of them together outside restaurants and nightclubs.”

  Emily shrugged. “Again, it’s not enough, in my mind, to want to kill us. We signed nondisclosures. We aren’t going to the tabloids with the information.”

  “I’m not even sure they’d care who Sachi is going out with,” Mustang said. “It’s not like she’s the First Daughter or a celebrity.”

  “True,” Phillips said. “I’ll go back through those photographs, in case I missed something important.”

  “Could you forward them to me?” Emily asked. “It might help to have a second set of eyes reviewing them.”

  Phillips shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Emily nodded. “I know. The nondisclosure agreement.” She empathized, “I wouldn’t want you to compromise your integrity.”

  “But you’d think all bets were off when someone is trying to kill you.” Mustang held up his hand. “I understand. It’s your word. A person’s word is gold.”

  “And it’s my livelihood. If people found out I don’t hold true to my promise of complete discretion, I wouldn’t have a business.”

  “You won’t have a life if we don’t figure this out soon,” Mustang said, clearly trying to press the man into disclosing more.

  “I get that. I just want to review the photos first and decide what to do. I promise you’ll be hearing from me if something turns up. But I’m not handing over every single snapshot. Not yet anyway.”

  Emily leaned across the table and touched the man’s arm. “Will you be all right?”

  He shrugged. “I have my security system and enough food in my refrigerator and pantry to last a week.” Phillips gave Emily half a smile. “Surely they’ll give up after that.”

  “If you need anything, we can bring it. All you have to do is call.” Emily dug in her purse and handed Phillips one of her business cards.

  “Got a pen?” Mustang held out his hand.

  Emily pulled a pen out of her purse and handed it to him.

  Mustang scribbled his and Declan’s cell phone numbers on the back of Emily’s card. “Call either one of those numbers. We can help.”

  “Thank you,” Phillips said, his shoulders sagging. “I’ve been in the PI business for twenty years, but I’ve never been this close to being killed. I pride myself in blending in. But no amount of blending seems to work in this situation. I’ll have a look at my images again. I’ll let you know if I find anything unusual.”

  Emily squeezed Phillips’s arm. “Thank you. And please, stay safe.”

  The private investigator narrowed his eyes. “Same goes for you,” he said. “I can see someone coming after me, but it doesn’t make any sense that they would come after the interpreter.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.” Mustang stood and touched Emily’s arm. “I’d like to get back to the estate before dark.”

  “Let’s make that stop at the organization that hired me to translate. She nodded and pushed to her feet. “Then I’m ready to head back to the estate.”

  “I’ll be in touch, one way or another,” Phillips promised. He pulled his own card out of his pocket and handed it over. “This has my private cell on it that I don’t give out to everyone.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said.

  Mustang held out his hand.

  Phillips took it and shook with a surprisingly strong grip. “Prior military?” he asked.

  Mustang nodded. “Marines.”

  Phillips’s shoulders squared and his grip tightened on Mustang’s hand. “Semper Fi.”

  “Semper Fi,” Mustang echoed. “Stay safe.”

  Mustang led the way to the door and exited first, performing a swift evaluation of the street, houses and bushes nearby. A car slowed as it approached.

  When Emily moved to step out onto the porch, Mustang’s arm shot out, stopping her in a clothesline move—straight arm across her chest.

  Her eyes widened. “What’s wrong?”

  The vehicle slid by at a slow pace and Mustang could peer into the interior.

  An old man hunched over the wheel, as if struggling to see the road in front of him.

  “Nothing. It was just an old man.”

  She smiled up at him. “Getting punchy?”

  He nodded. “After being shot at in the university parking garage, I’m thinking punchy is a good way to be while we’re out and about.”

  Emily shivered. “You’re right. She touched his arm, sending a shock of awareness through his body. “You go right on being punchy. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  Her hand slid down his arm to capture his fingers with hers. For a moment he held her hand, enjoying the coolness of her fingertips against his warm palm. Then he released her fingers and wrapped his arm around her shoulders and walked with her to the car.

  Once she was safely inside, he got in, shifted into Reverse and pulled out of the driveway onto the street.

  They made a quick stop at the office that hired her for the translation. The administrative staff had nothing to add that would help them in their investigation.

  It was early afternoon and traffic was just picking up. People from all over the city rushed to get home, causing the roads to clog and vehicles to move at a snail’s pace. By the time they reached the Halverson estate, dusk was creeping up on the trees, casting long, dark shadows over the landscape.

  Mustang pulled up to the gate and pointed at a section of the stone wall. “They already have the wall back up.”

  Emily shook her head. “That’s amazing.”

  “I guess when you have as much money as Charlie Halverson, things get done a heck of a lot quicker.”

  “She seems like such a strong woman, yet she surrounds herself with the best in security systems and personnel.”

  “For a reason,” Mustang said. “Her husband was killed and there was an attempt on her own life. That’s how she met Declan. A group of men took her from her limousine in a kidnapping attempt. If Declan had not been there when he was, she could be dead.”

  “Grace told me about what happened. It’s a miracle he got her out alive.”

  “Right place, right time.”

  “Right hero.” Emily smiled in his direction.

  “Declan will be the first to tell you he isn’t a hero. Our team has been operating on the rule of if you see something that needs doing, you do it. It’s purely reflex.”

  “Hero reflexes,” Emily insisted. “And save your breath. You won’t convince me otherwise.” She laid a hand on his leg and squeezed lightly.

  Before she could remove the hand, Mustang pressed his over hers. “Just promise me you won’t tell Declan he’s a hero. It would go to his head and he’d be impossible to live with.” Mustang gave her a sly grin.

  Emily held up her free hand. “I promise.”

  Mus
tang maneuvered along the driveway to the big house with one hand on the steering wheel, the other still holding Emily’s. He didn’t want to let go.

  All the way, he kept a watchful eye on the shadows beneath the surrounding trees. Charlie would have beefed up the security, but whoever was after Emily had breached the estate’s protection once. He could do it again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emily couldn’t remember a time when she was more exhausted. The stress of being on guard all day had taken its toll. The only thing holding her up from collapse was Mustang’s arm around her as she stood in the foyer, a frown marring her brow, as Charlie greeted her. “I heard what happened at the university.” She gripped Emily’s hands in hers. “Are you all right?”

  Emily nodded. “I am.” She turned to Mustang. “We both are.”

  Charlie’s gaze went to Mustang. “Thank God you were there to get her out alive.” She hooked her arm through Emily’s. “Come. You must be starving. I want to hear all about your visit to Mr. Phillips. Did you learn anything new?”

  Charlie led Emily and Mustang into the kitchen and urged them to sit at the large table while she worked with her chef to deliver a substantial meal for the two of them.

  “Aren’t you going to eat, too?” Emily asked.

  “We finished dinner less than an hour ago. We saved plates for you and Mustang. Will chicken cordon bleu be enough for you?” She placed meals in front of both of them.

  “More than enough,” Emily said, her stomach rumbling as she sniffed the heavenly scent of roasted chicken wrapped around ham and cheese with a delicate layer of breading. Her mouth watered as she cut off a piece and brought it to her lips.

  Heaven. Pure heaven.

  She moaned her pleasure.

  Beside her, Mustang chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eat a bite of chicken with quite that much enthusiasm.”

  Heat rose in Emily’s cheeks. She cut off another slice of the chicken. “We didn’t have lunch, did we?”

  Mustang shook his head. “We were otherwise occupied staying alive.” He took a bite of the chicken, too, and nodded. “This really is good.” He nodded to the chef, busy preparing the kitchen for the next day’s meals. “My compliments to the chef. Sure beats MREs.”