“Let me take you,” Rex said, and I scowled at him.
“I don’t think so, Willy. I can make it on my own.”
“Kansas was following you all night, Mason, and you didn’t even notice,” Rex said, looking adorably worried. Damn him. “What if someone else starts tailing you? Someone with less respectable intentions than Kansas claims he had—note the emphasis on ‘claims’ there. Even if he was bodyguarding you, someone obviously thought you were in enough danger to need a professional to watch you.”
He shook the margarita, then dumped it into a glass, pushing it across the bar to me.
“No salt?” I whined, and he gave me a look.
I sighed, sitting down and sipping at it as Rex started another one, I assumed for Christy since she was simultaneously pouting like a five year old and wagging her cleavage in his direction. Slut.
I pushed my own boobies together, just to make sure they were looking their best. Lady pride, you know?
“Why would anyone think I need a bodyguard?” I asked, frowning. “The most dangerous thing I’ve ever done was the time in junior high that I snuck into a sewage processing plant on a dare.”
“I remember that,” Christy chirped as Rex made a face, looking like he might just spew his guts.
"I have no idea," Rex replied. "But obviously someone thinks you do."
“So you know bodyguards… Are you really a super secret spy?” I asked, and Rex looked at me like I was crazy as he passed Christy her margarita. I noticed that she got salt.
“Am I a what?”
“A super duper secret soldier spy.” I grinned, chugging back another gulp of my drink. “That really flows off the tongue.”
“Uh, why the fuck would you think I’m a super… duper… secret spy… thing?” he asked as he began making another drink.
“There’s a website,” I said with a shrug. “It says you and lots of other rich, hot dudes were trained as children to be awesome 'Bond, James Bonds'.”
“Oh, that Shady Lady site, right?” Rex said, grinning. “Yeah, I’ve seen that. What I really want to know is how she got pictures of my hot tub and Sonny’s guest room closet. I also kind of want to know why the fuck she thinks that a bunch of rich people would send their kids off to spy school. Sonny, Brawn, and I all went to Hillcrest Academy, unfortunately. It would be way cooler if we’d gone to mercenary spy school, though.” He paused. “Maybe then I could have escaped the off-duty cop security guard who arrested me at that Walmart. I mean, the guy only had a taser. I had a .44.”
I scowled. “You deserved to be arrested for breaking some poor, innocent single mommy’s hands!”
“Hey,” he protested, glaring at me. “I’ll have you know that so-called ‘innocent single mommy’ is the woman who abandoned my goddaughter as an infant. That was the first time she’d ever seen her mom, and you know what that bitch did? She punched her, because my goddaughter wouldn’t give her a credit card! She deserved what she got.”
“I don’t know that hand breaking was the answer, but she does seem like a bitch,” Christy said helpfully, and I huffed, waving the words off.
“Yeah, whatever. It totally sucks you’re not a spy. You’re a good bartender, though. Could I have another margarita?”
Rex chuckled. “I don’t know, you seem a little tipsy. You do have work tomorrow, you know.”
I made a face. “Yeah, I guess. I am getting pretty sleepy.” I yawned. “It’s amazing how quick a little bit of alcohol can…….”
- rex -
I smiled as the lock clicked, slipping the tools back into my lock pick set and tucking the kit into my pocket. Beside me, Mason was leaning up against the hall wall, legs sprawled out and head tipping to the side, her mouth hanging open as she snored loudly.
I may have slipped a small amount of knockout drug into her margaritas. Which makes it sound better than it is, since the kind I used would completely paralyze a person if you gave them more than a pinch. But, on the bright side, she was safely home instead of wandering the streets, drunk off her ass and begging to be shot.
I pushed the door open and bent down, picking up Mason and cradling her carefully in my arms. I slipped into the apartment, glancing around the living room. The place was what you’d expect of a young single lady: Comfy looking furniture in pinks and yellows, pictures of wine glasses and cat memes on the walls, and romance novels on the coffee table.
I didn’t linger, figuring I’d already reached my limit of creepy for the night, and I carried her into the bedroom, setting her carefully on her bed. I smiled as she snored away, shaking my head at the drool running down her beautiful face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
I jumped, wincing as I looked up and came face to face with Luke, Mason’s limp dick lover. Dammit! Lotus would kill me for getting caught like this—I was trained better than this. But Mason was so distracting, it was hard to remember to do things like canvass the area. Who wants to bother checking bathrooms and closets for hostiles when you could be staring at such a pretty face?
“Luke, funny seeing you here.”
“Really? Because last time I checked, this was my girlfriend’s apartment, and you’re the son of a bitch she despises.”
I shrugged. “Mason and I were at the same bar. She had a little too much to drink, I brought her home. No need to get nasty about it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me what to do… Majesty.”
I tensed, edges of my mouth turning down as I stared at the little bastard, eyes cold. “Where did you hear that name?”
“That’s right, I know who you are,” he continued, like I hadn’t said anything. “And what you are.”
“Congratulations,” I said dryly. “So do you want me to snap your neck or choke you to death?”
“You’re going to stay away from my girlfriend, or everyone is going to know who and what you are!”
I blinked, looking at the idiot with disbelief. “Do you have a villain speech memorized or something and can’t stand to miss a line? Because it’s like I’m talking but nothing’s coming out. Let me reiterate: I am perfectly capable of killing you, Limpy. So either fuck off, or get ready to feed some fishies.”
Luke laughed, proving that he had an IQ smaller than his dick length (damn small). “I’m not afraid of you.”
“That’s a mistake,” I said. “Even your girlfriend would tell you that, and she just things I'm a billionaire with an iffy record.”
A moan came from the direction of the bed, where Mason was now doing something that looked remarkably like making out with her pillow in her sleep, and I winced. Yeah, it was probably time to get out of here. It was bad enough I had the poor girl on camera peeing.
“Okay, Limpy, I get it that you apparently have some great need to live in a comic book, but I honestly don’t give a fuck. Anyone on the Dark Web can find my old codename if they know where to look. There’s a fucking website called brotherhoodbuildingspies.com that is totally dedicated to outing my buddies and I for our Family connections. Lucky for us, your average citizen doesn't believe things that sound like it was stolen from the rejected script for Mission: Impossible 69. Your threat is no threat at all, Limpy. While my threat—of snapping your neck—is very real.”
“Fuck off,” Luke shot back, proving that he had quite the vocabulary.
“Wow, I can’t believe you weren’t in my class at Harvard Law,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re so verbose. And your debate skills! Amazing. Where was it you went again? Oh yeah, Online Law Degrees for Less, right?”
“I will have you know that my law degree is from East Oklahoma University at Little Farm Town,” he snapped, and it was all I could do not to laugh.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard amazing things about EOULFT,” I said in a dry voice. “Isn’t that where the lawyer who’s on the billboard in Times Square graduated from? The one who will ‘put the fury in the jury’ while he ‘takes that ticket and really kicks it’?” I flashed him a smile. �
��It’s been great seeing you, but I’m leaving. And you are, too.”
“Like hell, I am,” he snarled, and I shook my head. I didn’t trust this bastard as far as I could throw him, and I wasn’t about to leave Mason alone with him, passed out on her bed.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
I didn’t give Limpy another chance to argue, grabbing his arm and twisting it around his body until he was forced to stumble alongside me or risk a broken arm.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted as I hauled him into the living room. There was a briefcase sitting by the door I fairly sure wasn’t Mason’s, so I grabbed it and tossed it into the hall, along with Luke. And when I say I tossed him, I mean that I tossed his ugly ass.
I winced at the bang as the man hit the opposite wall, dropping unconscious to the floor, then shrugged. Let the neighbors call the police. I’d be long gone by then. Luke, on the other hand… Good thing he was a lawyer.
chapter FOUR
THREE LADIES & A BAMBI
- MASON -
Five o’clock AM, and the building was as close to empty as it ever got. Sure, there were a few guards in the lobby and one or two wandering the halls, but every desk I’d seen this morning was vacant and the frosty white walls of the labs didn’t show a twitch of movement. Even Mrs. Cho’s desk was empty except for a chart cataloguing the number of Bic pens in the office and what looked like a poison dart frog in a Tupperware container.
I yawned as I studied the frog, toying with the security pass I’d been gifted upon my early arrival this morning. Apparently Rex had let his boys know I was in need of access ASAP. I’d say it was weird that I was on the top of Rex’s mind like that, but considering he’d apparently been following me last night, it was probably to be expected.
Man, I still couldn’t believe somebody had hired a dude to bodyguard me. Surely it wasn’t Wesley? Was it possible he was worried about me for some reason? If there was anything to worry about, it was me getting so drunk I fell off the Brooklyn Bridge.
I wasn’t sure how much access this security card gave me, but it allowed me to take the elevators to Level 32—it seemed all six of them were working fine today. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enter my own office, since it had a specialized keypad just like Rex’s that seemed to require a code as well as a card. That didn’t matter, though, since it wasn’t my office that I was here at five o’clock to enter.
Taking one last look at Mr. Poison Frog—his big black eyes really were cute—I started off down the dimly lit hallway, my purple 1950s fit-n-flare dress swishing as I marched with a confidence I didn’t truly feel.
There were three labs in this hallway, just like Wesley said, all of them named after women. I had no idea who Angela or Greta were, but I had a sneaking feeling, based off the picture in Rex’s office, that the bio-heart could be found in the one known as Felicia’s Lab.
I swallowed hard, glancing around nervously before attempting to slide my security pass through the slot. My Undercover Vibrator might be made for this job, but it couldn’t hurt to try the old fashioned way first, right? After all, I wasn’t sure how great I felt about shutting down the entire building’s security system just so I could steal something. Who knew what kind of things were in this building that could be put at risk?
A loud beep filled the hall, and I made a frustrated sound as the pad flashed ‘Access Denied—User Unknown.’ Dammit. From what I understood, the naughty security gadget I’d stashed in my desk would only create a short glitch in the security, and considering that everyone would know after it happened, I doubted I’d be able to pull it off more than once. I need to be absolutely sure this was the right lab before I tried and use it, otherwise I could miss my chance if it turned out that Rex was hiding the heart in Greta’s Lab just to spite me.
“Looking for lab supplies? Or maybe a microscope? When I was in junior high school, Brawn and I broke into the lab to look at our junk with those. I’m sure your lady parts are equally as fascinating as our boy parts were in magnification.”
I winced at the sound of Rex’s amused voice, my whole body tensing as I felt his massive form behind me. Right behind me. And his body wasn’t the only thing I felt pressing against me. His guns were there, too. The one that fired bullets, hard against my head, and the one he had apparently magnified at some point in life, hard against my buttocks.
“Hi, Rex,” I chirped, probably the lamest response I could possibly come up with after being caught trying to break into a high security lab at a billion dollar pharmaceutical corporation.
“Is it just me, or are you having a deja vu moment, too?”
I blinked, then let out a short bark of laughter. “Wow. We’ve done this before, haven’t we?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding like he was holding back a laugh as well. “We’re just missing the snake.”
My face went red. “Oh, God, not the snake...”
‘NO TRESPASSING,’ the sign said, which was pretty damn paranoid considering it was taped on the door of a penthouse apartment in the sort of building that had off-duty cops as security guards, doormen posted downstairs 24/7, and elevators which required keycards and a security code to ride. Of course, none of that mattered if you managed to get a temp job cleaning the hallways and public restrooms. And by ‘getting a temp job,’ I really meant buying a poufy blonde wig and dressing up like Cindy Lou Miller, who does it every day.
This was insane, I knew it was, I’d been lecturing myself on the need for professional help since I’d started planning it three days before, but I hadn’t been able to talk my hard-headed self into stopping. What did it matter if I ended up in jail? With Frankie gone, I had nothing left at home.
Tears ran down my cheeks, and I wipe them angrily away as I studied the door before me. Apparently my brother’s murderer wasn’t blowing smoke when he posted giant ‘no trespassing’ signs to his apartment door, because he had four locks—two regular, two electronic—and his door was made out of steel. I wondered idly if my reaction at court last month when he’d gotten off scott free, not a single day served for Frankie’s loss, had been what inspired him to turn his place into a bank vault.
“It’s got to be one of these,” I muttered as I shuffled through Cindy Lou’s giant key ring, looking for the one that would open this door.
“Freeze.”
I froze, my entire body stiffening as I felt something press against my skull. Something big and hard, and I didn’t mean that in a nasty way. Oh, how I would have paid for it to be a hard-on up against the back of my head right then. Shooting a load is one thing. Shooting a bullet… Now, that’s what I call a bad finish.
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling dry and hoarse as I tried to speak. Not that I had any idea what to say. Finally I managed.
“Hi, Rex.” Yes, I do realize that was probably the stupidest thing I could probably choose to say when caught by a murderer with a gun, trying to break into his home. If I survived the night, I was definitely working on my vocabulary.
There was a long silence, then finally he spoke, voice low and annoyingly sexy. Bastard.
“I don’t know you. Don’t try and pretend that I do.”
My lip curled up in anger, eyes narrowing as I whirled around, not giving a damn about the gun now pointed right between my eyes. “Fuck you, son of a bitch! I’m—”
“Mason Dansley?” Rex’s voice was one of disbelief as he stared at me, shaking his head slowly. “What the hell are you doing at my safe-house?”
His safe-house? What the hell did that mean?
“I’m here to make you pay for what you did to my brother,” I growled, and Rex’s jaw tightened, his eyes going dark.
“You’re here to kill me? I can’t let you do that.”
I blinked. “What? No!” I reached into the pocket of Cindy Lou’s uniform, pulling out the plastic snake I’d bought at the comic book store Frankie used to work at. “I came to put this in your bed.”
Rex’s eyes dropped to the toy, a look of u
tter incredulity coming over his face. “You came to put that in my bed?”
“That’s right,” I snarled, feeling triumphant. “It feels like a real snake, too, and it even wiggles on its own. You’d be screaming your head off for hours!”
Rex stared at me for another long moment, then he dropped the gun, stuffing it into his jacket. “I like snakes.”
My face fell, and the snake dropped from my hand to the floor, my shoulders slumping.
“Now get the fuck out of my building before I decide to shoot you. I have a flower arranging class in an hour, and the guy I just beat down puked all over my shirt so I need a shower.”
“Did you really have a flower arranging class that day?” I asked, and Rex shrugged.
“Everyone’s got to have a hobby,” he said, lowering the gun and slipping it back in its holster. “Was planting a plastic snake in my bed really all you were planning that day?”
I nodded. “I was sixteen. It was the scariest thing I could imagine at the time.”
Rex chuckled, then glanced over at Felicia’s Lab. “Did you want to go inside?” he asked, and my eyes widened slightly. Was this a trick question?
I hesitated for a moment, not really sure that this was the best way of getting into the lab. But then, what could it hurt? “Um, yes?”
Rex nodded, lips twitching in amusement. “Cool. So… what do you think the less suspicious thing to do would be?”
I cleared my throat, shifting uncomfortably at the question. “Er… I don’t know? Ask if I could go in?”
“Bingo! She wins the prize!” Rex laughed, shaking his head. “You should really have an excuse ready if you’re going to try and breach security with a method you know is likely to fail. Or, in this case, just go ahead and ask if you could see in some of the labs. It would be perfectly believable for a new employee to show some interest in the labs on her floor.”
Heart Thief (Black Market Billionaire Book 1) Page 8
