“I was deciding on a suit,” Fallyn said, kicking off her heels and sipping the tea. It was good. Refreshing. Just what she needed right now. “Maybe you can give me some direction. Which one was Heather’s favorite?”
“The gray.” Jordan reached down and lined Fallyn’s Louboutins up alongside Heather’s more conservative footwear. “She loved to wear the red blouse you were just looking at with it.”
Well, at least there was something I had right. “I hate these suits. I want to remember her as the kid she was in that picture.” Fallyn pointed to the framed photograph next to the bed.
Jordan studied the photograph. “That was her favorite photo. Maybe you should bury her with it.”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? “You’re right. I should.”
A soft silence engulfed them as they worked together to lay out Heather’s burial clothes. Jordan attached a flag pin Heather always wore to the suit’s lapel. Next came jewelry—a bracelet from Nepal, a pair of earrings from Brazil. Her sister had collected jewelry from every country she’d visited. Hose and shoes, and the outfit was complete.
Downstairs, she heard her father laugh. Carl’s laughter joined his.
It seemed disrespectful in a way, and yet, Fallyn knew Heather wouldn’t want them moping. “How’s your dad, Jordan?” Fallyn asked.
“He’s not following the doctor’s orders to slow down. He retired from State, but ends up ‘consulting’ all the time.”
A text came in on Fallyn’s phone from Caroline. Cavalry is on its way. His name is Tony Gerard. You’ll like him.
One guy? That was it? The group of reporters outside would eat him alive.
Fallyn pocketed her cell phone and headed for the safe at the back of the closet. She wanted to finish up here and head downstairs for a front row seat when this Tony character arrived. “I was going to ask you about my sister’s safe,” she said to Jordan. “The funeral home said to bring the insurance papers and I…”
“Need the combination?” Jordan was always finishing her sentences. Had she done that with Heather too? “Sorry, I don’t have it.”
“Surprisingly, that is one thing she shared with me. It’s not that. When I was going through the items in the safe earlier looking for the insurance policy, I came across a computer tablet.”
Fallyn retrieved it from the safe and held it up. “There’s a passcode for the files. I tried a bunch of obvious ones, but none of them worked. Do you know it?”
Jordan stared at the tablet, reached out and touched the edge. “Funny, I never saw her use that. Are you sure it’s hers?”
She’d asked her dad about it and he’d been clueless as well. “Who else’s would it be? It was in her safe.”
“It’s just, she wasn’t big on technology. A total throwback like my dad, but I could take it and try a few ideas with the passcode tonight after Dad goes to bed.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out.”
They went downstairs and found the last of the crowd moving out the door. Carl helped Eric put his coat on. “Going to run your dad home,” he said. “You need anything, call us.”
Jordan reached to hug her and Fallyn automatically stepped back. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
If the brush-off offended Jordan, she didn’t show it. She knew Fallyn wasn’t the touchy-feely type like Heather had been.
The woman stepped back, nodded. “I’d be glad to order the floral arrangements or line up the caterer if you need help.”
While it was tempting, Fallyn needed to stay busy, keep her mind occupied. “I appreciate that. I can handle the flowers, but I’m not sure which caterer to use for the gathering at the church after the interment. Are you able to take care of that?”
Jordan’s face lit up. “I’m on it. I’ll get the one Heather liked.”
No wonder Heather had hired Jordan as her assistant. She glanced between Carl and Jordan. “You two are welcome to ride with us to the funeral and the cemetery, if you like.”
Carl nodded, all business. “Of course. Thank you. Let’s go Eric. You’ve had a rough day.”
They said their goodbyes, Fallyn accepting a brief hug from her father before the three of them tackled getting past the reporters. She withdrew, after a moment longer than she would have liked, and saw his face, the harsh lines, the sorrow. And now he had to deal with another crowd.
Those damned reporters. What she didn’t need was Dad more upset. Time for a diversion. It was, after all, what she’d built her business on—statements that said a whole lot of nothing, but kept the reporters occupied while people slipped away.
“Hang on, Dad. Let me distract the reporters so you can get to the car.” Throwing her shoulders back, she marched out the front door, headed down the sidewalk to give the media what they wanted—and maybe the full Fallyn Pasche brow-beating they deserved—when a big guy in a dark trench coat, wearing mirrored aviators and looking like a one-man army, emerged from the alley and every person on the lawn came to attention.
Well, hello, big boy.
Fallyn’s pulse did a funny thudthud under her skin as she watched him close in on the reporters. A cameraman made a move toward her dad but the hunk in the aviators beelined, blocking his path and sticking his hand over the man’s camera lens.
A female reporter next to him was courteously forced back several steps.
Fallyn returned to the house, where she watched, fascinated.
In under a minute, the hunk had every last one of the media backing away, herding them to the curb, several of them running for their news vans as fast as their footsteps would carry them.
Damn. Who was this guy?
* * *
After dealing with the press tearing up Senator Pasche’s lawn, Tony rang the bell. Grey had called him less than an hour ago, told him to hot-foot it over to the Senator’s place and bust up the collection of reporters turning the woman’s death into public fodder.
The door opened and a woman answered.
It might as well have been Heather Pasche standing there. He’d known Heather. Not well, but he’d met her a couple of times when she’d interacted with the chief justice, and Tony, being assigned to the chief’s protection detail at the time, had accompanied him.
Now, the good senator, as well as the chief, was gone and that same burn, that reminder of his failure, crawled up his throat like acid.
Don’t go there.
He bit down, focused on the woman’s high heels, her long legs, any goddamn thing that would take his mind off the chief. Any goddamn thing that would keep the panic, the absolute burning from inside out, at bay.
“Hello,” she said, waving him in. “If I thought it was appropriate, I’d kiss you for chasing off those reporters.”
“Appropriate?” he shot. “Who cares about that?”
He flashed a smile, a rarity these days, and entered the foyer, glancing at the immaculately tidy living room of the late Senator Heather Pasche.
“I’m Fallyn.” She held her hand out. “You must be Tony Gerard. Caroline told me you’d be here.”
He shook her hand, a brief clasp before letting go.
Her resemblance to her now deceased sister unnerved him. “Uh, Grey wanted me to let you know Teeg is on his way.”
“Teeg?”
“Yeah. He’s the Justice Team’s techie nerd. Grey said something about a tablet you needed help with.”
“Oh, that’s great. Thank you.”
Tony shrugged. “Don’t thank me. I’m the messenger. As far as the press, I’ll keep an eye on them, but I gave them the spiel about private property and they backed off. The cops at the corner helped.”
“There are cops at the corner?”
“As of ten minutes ago, yeah.”
Looking at this woman would never be torture. Her deep green eyes had a depth to them. Intense yet bright. Playful. Her light brown hair had lighter streaks and it accentuated her eyes, bringing out the green. Something told him she knew that. Knew that p
eople, men particularly, would be drawn to them.
And the way she stared at him? The scrutiny. Hell, he could see the gears shifting. Like Grey, the Justice Team’s leader, she didn’t just look at you, she analyzed, mentally peeling back layers and figuring out how to extract what she needed. Goddamn headshrinker.
Last thing he needed now was a psychological exam. What she found inside his head would scare the crap out of her. Send her screaming from the fuckup and wondering why Grey even trusted him.
“So you work with Caroline?” she asked.
Small talk. Great. “Um…Sort of.”
Three weeks ago Grey had approached him about full-time employment that entailed…well…whatever the hell they did in search of justice. At the time, it’d been a lifeline. A reason to leave the Supreme Court Police because without the chief, the man who’d been a father figure to Tony, the job was torment. Flat out horrendous. A daily bloodbath into the reminders of his failings.
But, of course, Tony’s boss at the Court, fearing the resignation had been a rash decision, one born of grief over the loss of the chief justice—ya think?—wouldn’t let him quit. Something Tony couldn’t rationalize since they should have strung him up for blowing his assignment. His sole job that morning had been to keep the chief safe. Instead, the man bled out on a bridge.
All that crap about it not being Tony’s fault? Who believed that?
Definitely not him. He’d lost control of the situation on the bridge, of the chief, and now the man was dead.
Period.
His boss though? He’d flat out refused his resignation. Made the argument that the chief’s death was too fresh to make such a radical decision.
Instead, they’d reached a compromise. Tony would take his three weeks banked vacation, go to an island, get some rest, get laid, and at the end of that time, if he still wanted to resign, they’d throw him a great going away party.
Except Tony hated the beach and he hated being idle. The getting laid part he could live with. That was a plan he could get behind, but that first night, sitting alone in his apartment, even picking up the phone to call a woman was too much work. Even if female company could fill the void, she’d eventually have to leave and he’d be alone again.
Boredom and his own looping thoughts terrorized him. Sleeping didn’t help. Between the dreams and his hyperactive brain, he’d relived the judge’s death a thousand times.
By the third day of his vacation, he’d called Grey and damned near begged him for a temporary assignment until he figured out what the hell to do with his life.
And how to stay sane.
Justice Greystone to the rescue.
“Sort of?” Fallyn teased. “You don’t sound too sure about that. You work for Mr. Greystone in what capacity?”
Still probing. But Tony had already diverted his eyes away from her and her analysis. Nothing doing, lady. He walked to the window, checked his peeps on the lawn. All good out there.
A cab pulled up and out hopped Teeg, the Justice Team’s wunderkind of hackers.
Saved by Geek Boy.
He strode to the door. “Teeg is here. Mind if I let him in?”
“By all means. I’ll get the tablet.”
Three minutes later, introductions and the uber-polite can-I-get-you-anything formalities were complete and Teeg plugged the tablet into his computer.
“This’ll take me a couple minutes,” he said.
Fallyn’s gaze came back to Tony. More studying. Great.
“So, Mr. Gerard, how long have you worked for Grey?”
Yeah. She wasn’t gonna give up. He’d have to deal with her straight away. Tony looked back at her, made direct eye contact. “Not long. For the last five years I’ve been on a protection detail for the Supreme Court.”
“You work for Grey and you’re a bodyguard at the Court?”
Tony shrugged. He hated that term. But hell, if she’d shut up about his life, he’d let her call him anything she liked. “Yes, ma’am. Consider me a contractor for the Justice Team.” He smiled. “Moonlighting. Caroline was worried about your…situation.” He went back to Teeg who clicked a file, apparently making progress. “What have you got?”
“Not sure.”
He typed in a passcode and the lock screen morphed into a background of colors with a set of file folders lined up along the bottom.
“Neat and orderly,” Fallyn said. “Just like Heather. Can I take a look?”
Teeg turned the tablet toward her and she scrolled through a couple of folders, brought up two images of what looked like receipts.
Then she hit a folder with multiple files. She clicked one. A spreadsheet with columns appeared.
“I’m not sure what this is.” She angled the tablet back to Teeg. “It looks like dates and times, but this other column is a jumbled mess of letters, numbers, and special characters. Almost like passwords.”
“Yeah,” Teeg said. “But some have spaces in weird intervals, like a list of names, but the groupings don’t make sense.”
Tony had seen stuff like this. Classified documents. Hell, based on what Grey had told him, Fallyn probably dealt with shit like this on a daily basis. This was a woman who manipulated sensitive information for a living. Made it go her way.
Spin-doctor.
A job she was damned good at, from what he’d been able to find from his phone on the drive over.
She looked over Teeg’s shoulder. “You can’t figure it out?”
“I can figure out anything, just not in five minutes. The files are all coded with something I haven’t seen before and I don’t have a legend. It’ll take me some time. Couple days maybe.” He looked up at her. “I could take it with me.”
“No,” Fallyn said. “Absolutely not.”
In the weeks since Tony had met Teeg, he’d learned a few things. The first being that Teeg had zero interpersonal skills. A nice kid, but there was a reason he sat huddled behind a computer all day. He simply did not want to deal with the bullshit that came with talking to people. Give him a computer, a keyboard, and some action figures and Teeg was a happy guy. Which was no doubt why Teeg swung back to him with that help-me stare.
Hell. Teeg wanted no part of this. Tony went back to Fallyn. “Ma’am—”
“Jesus,” she said, “will the two of you stop calling me ma’am? I can’t stand that.”
Tony nodded. “Of course. Sorry. Ms. Pasche—”
She held up her hands. “Fallyn. Please.”
“Okay. Fallyn, Teeg is good. The best in DC, but we’re not talking about the Romper Room of hacking here. This tablet was locked in your sister’s safe and my guess is a United States senator doesn’t do that unless the device contains classified information. And classified information is hard to decode.”
Fallyn rolled her eyes. “I get that. Believe me, I’m not stupid about classified government documents.”
And, whoa, sister. What was up with the attitude? Forgive him for trying to be helpful.
Whatever. He’d cut her some slack. He understood the grief and irritability that came with the loss of a loved one. “Never said you were. Just not sure what you expect him to do in ten minutes. Because, no offense, if he could decode a senator’s passcoded files that quickly, I want to move to Neverland and drink beer all day. At least there I’ll be safe from terrorists who can hack our government’s top secret files in three-point-five seconds.”
Fallyn’s head snapped up and those sharp eyes nearly took him apart. Eeee-doggies. Yeah, he’d been rude. Would probably get his butt chewed out for it, but miracle workers they weren’t.
“Fine.”
The word fine should have been obliterated from the English language. Fine never meant fine and it sure as fuck didn’t mean fine right now.
Teeg swiveled his head to Fallyn then to Tony, eyes wide with panic. Clearly, the kid hated conflict.
Tony let out a mental sigh. If they were gonna get this tablet into Teeg’s possession, Tony would have to be the one to do i
t. A job he didn’t much mind because he was stubborn enough to wear Fallyn down, to convince her to let them take the tablet.
Unlike Teeg, Tony wasn’t afraid of conflict. He, in fact, thrived on it, hungered for it. Fallyn Pasche, he was quickly figuring out, would be a worthy opponent.
He faced her, met her gaze head on. “Fine what?”
“Fine you should move to Neverland because you are not taking this tablet anywhere.”
Nice.
She grinned at him and that grin ignited a fire that got his junior brain—the one in his crotch—ready for all kinds of action.
Hello, Fallyn Pasche.
“Oh, crap,” Teeg said.
Tony set his hand on the kid’s shoulder, gave it a pat. “Take a break. Go have a smoke or something.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Then go outside and breathe. Give your lungs a treat so Fallyn and I can talk a minute.”
The kid stared up at him with some kind of weird hero worship and Tony snorted again. Total pisser, this kid.
Teeg leaped from his chair and headed for the front door, closing it gently behind him. All the while, Fallyn kept her eyes on Tony, still analyzing.
Chess.
The two of them on opposite sides strategically maneuvering, trying to capture the other’s king. And anything else that got in their way.
For him, checkmate meant walking out with that tablet.
Damned if it wasn’t twisted, but for the first time in five weeks, he got off on the anticipation. The battle.
Time to get to work.
But Fallyn wouldn’t be easy. He saw it in her rigid stance. Add to that the sharp curve of her cheekbones in contrast to her full, sexy lips and he might be done for. All that intensity mixed with feminine softness might just knock him to his knees. Again, something she was more than likely acutely aware of.
A burst of adrenalin roared into his brain and he breathed in. Enjoyed the high. Sick. That’s what he was.
Oh.
Well.
“Talk to me,” he said.
Her head dipped forward. “Talk to you?”
“Yep.”
She laughed. “About what?”
“About why you don’t trust us to take this tablet.”
Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) Page 2
