Jigsaw (Black Raven Book 2)

by Stella Barcelona

  “Not a parenting decision. A security decision. One of the judge’s wives was killed yesterday.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Zeus. Ragno told me about it, and it was blasted all over the news. I was expecting a call from you.” Zeus hadn’t touched base with Theresa after communicating with Agent Martell about the additional security measures to be employed for Ana and Theresa, in light of the heightened threat directed at the ITT proceedings.

  “I’ve upped security for you and Ana and assessed how to proceed.”

  “No shit. I feel like we’re living in a combat bunker. Agent Martell, plus her team, now make six.”

  “So what are you not understanding? You go to work. Ana goes to school. After, you both go home. Period. Just three weeks, Theresa. Everything will return to normal when this trial is over.”

  “Three weeks is an eternity to a six-year-old. How can you not comprehend or consider that? I fully understand the need to curtail activities. Art? We’ll make do at home. Piano? She’s probably thrilled. She hates to practice anyway, and without practice, it is all a waste of your money. But dance? No way. There are three mandatory practices three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Mandatory, Zeus. Understand? She has to go.”

  “No.”

  “Then you can be the one to tell her she won’t be in the recital.”

  A red light couldn’t be avoided. Zeus glanced around as their car stopped. A yellow Peugeot. Two women inside talking, their heads turned to each other. A black Fiat, with a gray haired man, two hands gripping the top of the steering wheel, staring dead ahead. Nothing particularly interesting. Or threatening.

  Sam, sitting next to him, was scrolling through filings on her iPad, giving no indication that she was paying attention to the conversation he was having with his ex.

  “What do you mean? Recital’s in March.” He knew, because being invited to do a solo dance seemed to be the most exciting thing that had ever happened in his daughter’s life.

  “Yes, and if any student misses four classes in the first quarter of the year they can’t be in the recital. Period. It’s a Las Munequitas school rule.”

  “Oh come on.” He stretched his legs, accidentally rubbing against Sam as he did. She shifted away from him. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “To you, maybe, but in the world of dance schools and recitals, it’s pretty standard. Las Munequitas is the best, Zeus, and Ana is lucky to be in it. She is really, really good, and to be invited to do a solo at her age is almost unheard of. When I told her you wouldn’t allow her to go to rehearsals, she cried all night.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. If anything ever happened to Ana, especially anything I could’ve prevented, I’d die. I’d place the bullet in my goddamn fucking brain myself.

  “Do what you do best, Zeus. Make it safe for her. It is simply a dance school for young girls in Coconut Grove, for God’s sake. If Black Raven can’t protect Ana when she goes there, you tell me what, exactly, are people paying your company a fortune for?”

  “It isn’t a necessary risk.”

  “Damn you, Zeus,” Theresa answered. “How can you be so cold?”

  He shut his eyes for a second, thought of his little girl crying all night, thought of her absolute joy when she talked about her costumes for the dance recital, and bent. As they crossed the bridge leading to the Ile de la Cite, he said, “I’ll talk to Agent Martel and see if we can work it out.”

  “Hurry. There’s a class this evening. I’d like to tell Ana your answer before she goes to school, so she isn’t miserable throughout the whole day.” Something in her tone told him she wasn’t done.

  “That it?”

  “Samantha Fairfax is the one, isn’t she?”

  Fuckitall. “Excuse me?”

  “The reason why your heart was never in our marriage. I saw you on every news show yesterday, holding her.” Carrying her, he mentally corrected his ex-wife. “I put two and two together when her name was familiar. Seven years ago, you went on a job for a few weeks. The Dixon job. We were having issues.”

  Issues? Even before the job, I told you we needed to see other people. My way of saying I didn’t want to move our relationship forward. It was a damn hard statement to make to someone he’d been seeing for three years, someone who’d been a lifelong family friend, who his mother adored.

  As he sank further into the seat, she continued. “I’d figured out I was pregnant, I didn’t tell you right away, and you got shot while on the Dixon job. The job for the billionaire. Her grandfather. I wrestled with the decision whether and when to tell you. I had no idea where you were when I made that phone call. You came back and proposed, looking like a man who was doing the honorable thing.”

  Her voice was quiet and controlled, the tone of a woman who had the confidence that came with being undeniably correct. The French government buildings loomed in the distance. As he let his ex have her say, Zeus scanned the streets for signs of trouble, trying not to be distracted by the raw pain in her voice. “But you weren’t a man who was excited to be proposing to the one great love of his life. You always referred to the job where you got shot as the Samuel Dixon job. Odd, that you never mentioned Samantha Dixon Fairfax, even though you were different after that job, and the differences had nothing to do with getting shot. After seeing the look on your face as you ran through the streets with her, I know. She’s the reason why you could never be happy with me. Isn’t she?”

  Zeus didn’t know what to say. Yeah. You’re right seemed damn callous, especially when he’d always denied that there was anyone else. Which had been the truth. Once he committed to the idea of the marriage, he never would’ve gone back to Sam.

  Not that Sam would have taken him back, a fact that was now perfectly clear. The problem was that once the excitement of their new marriage wore off, once Ana was born, and they settled into routine life, Theresa sensed something was missing.

  Yeah, dumb shit. Like your heart.

  Four or five years into it, Theresa got worn down by what she called their spark-less marriage. His distraction-by-design. His half-hearted presence, even when he wasn’t working. The way he was distant with her, especially during sex, and afterwards. Finally, she’d been the one to file for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences in the pleadings. In person, she’d told him she was tired of being lonely.

  He got it. He understood. Totally.

  Next to him, Sam shut the cover to her iPad and bit the side of her lip as she looked out the front window of the car. One of the many new security measures in place was that no pedestrians without proper clearance were allowed within a mile of the building that housed the trial. In comparison to the crowds that had lined the streets the last couple of days, the empty sidewalks on the Ile de la Cite seemed eerie. Sam glanced at him, a worry line bisecting her brows.

  He mouthed, silently, to Sam, “We’re fine.”

  “Answer enough,” Theresa whispered, tired of the extended silence with which he’d greeted her question, the exact silence he always gave when he chose not to go down an emotional road. “I only wish that you’d been honest from the start. With me. With yourself. We didn’t have to play the charade. I didn’t, at least. Don’t know what you were trying to prove to yourself. Yes, I needed you, but not that badly. Let me know your decision as soon as you can about dance school. Goodbye.”

  The phone clicked, and Theresa was gone.

  “Ragno,” he said, “You heard that?”

  “Want me to say no?”

  As the car pulled up to the side door of the courthouse, the one he’d decided the Amicus team would enter, he said, “Nope. Need you to act on it. Ask Vick to draft a plan for team coverage while Ana’s at Las Munequitas. Also, send me the plan for school coverage and transfers. I want to reevaluate logistics and coverage for both Ana and Theresa. Monitor their GPS trackers from here on out.”

  “Will do.”

  Zeus had a ground team in place, headed by Agent Small. ITT participants, judg
es and lawyers alike, were to use the same entrance. It was different from the entrance where the bombing had taken place the day before, which remained a crime scene. The new entrance was on the north side of the building, and media was there to showcase the arrivals. The rationale was that they were going to show the world that the ITT participants weren’t scared. That the terrorists weren’t winning.

  Bullshit on that.

  The Amicus team was no longer part of the dog and pony show. They were going to enter through a side door. Their path and the entrance had been cleared in advance by a ground team of Black Raven agents. An exterior security team, consisting of French military officers, awaited them.

  As the car pulled to a stop, Zeus said, “Small. Are we clear?”

  “Yes.”

  He opened the door, and turned to help Samantha out the car. In a few seconds, they were in the building, without incident. “Ragno. Ready for Samuel.”

  “Okay. I’ll find him. Give me a sec.”

  After clearing interior security, he ushered Sam into the courtroom, took her coat, handed it to Agent Jenkins, and waited at her side while she opened her briefcase. Lawyers were filtering into the cavernous courtroom. Abe and Charles took their seats. The gallery was filling with press and onlookers.

  He pulled her chair out for her. As she settled into it, he leaned down, inhaling the scent of jasmine as he bent to whisper in her ear, “Need to go to the bathroom before the proceedings start?”

  It was a question that didn’t need asking, because Sam sure as hell knew how to let him know she needed to go to the bathroom. The beauty of being her bodyguard, though, was that no matter how cool she was towards him, she couldn’t get rid of him. Even to pee.

  When the month ended and the verdict was reached, he’d lick his wounds and shake her out of his system. For now, though, he watched her back stiffen as she absorbed his tone and question. He was going to enjoy the hell out of being near her. Even if all he did was manage to irritate her and get blue balls for his trouble.

  She gave him a cool glance, shook her head no, and powered up her iPad.

  Turning to find a seat in the gallery, he walked past the American defense team, led by Brier, as they entered the courtroom. Brier’s sharp brownish-green eyes held Zeus’s for a second. The charismatic attorney gave Zeus a nod, then his second-chair attorney, a long-haired brunette with large blue eyes, said something that captured Brier’s attention. She wasn’t as striking as Sam, but, like Sam, the brunette managed to exude feminine grace while looking professional and intelligent.

  After finding a seat in the front, Zeus shrugged out of his overcoat and handed it to Agent Jenkins, who took it and proceeded up the crowded aisle. His gaze was on the table of lawyers for the United States. Brier and his team of three attorneys were now sitting across from Samantha. His pretty brunette associate was seated to Brier’s right. Not much space separated the two of them as they bent their heads and talked. Brier’s hand lingered between her shoulder blades. In reply to something Brier said, she moved even closer.

  A fling? Maybe. Or two business associates trying not to be overheard? Probably.

  Zeus guessed that Brier’s associate was at least fifteen years younger than him. Even if they were having a fling, was it relevant to anything? Doubtful. Interesting, though. His eyes slid to the prosecution team, made up of four men with grim faces and look-alike dark suits, sitting at the end of the table, heads together in conversation. Sam, facing Zeus’s direction, was talking to Charles.

  Samuel’s voice boomed through Zeus’s earpiece. “Zeus, this call isn’t about business. It’s personal.”

  “Okay.”

  “Got a call from Samantha’s boyfriend last night. Senator McDougall. Fine man. Says he’ll see her this Sunday in London.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “It’s an interesting turn of events.”

  Ragno had informed Zeus of the dinner plans the night before, based on a conversation that had taken place between Sam and McDougall. Zeus sank into the aisle seat. When Ragno had broken the news to him, he hadn’t focused much on the full implications of what it meant that McDougall was showing up for a dinner date with Sam. Eyes on the American flag behind the now-empty dais and the black leather, tall-backed chairs, where the judges would sit when proceedings commenced, he now wondered what he’d done wrong to deserve having to bodyguard Sam while she was on a dinner date with McDougall.

  Don’t have to wonder for long.

  He fully deserved this express shipment of reciprocal, suckass payback. After all, he’d delivered an abrupt message that he was marrying someone else within hours of spending days in bed with Sam, making love to her as though he meant the words behind the deed. He shrugged, rotated his neck a bit as he shifted in his chair, and let someone slip past him to a seat down the row.

  Embrace the suck. Dinner with her boyfriend is nothing compared to what you did to her.

  Awww. Fuck. Whether they planned an open marriage or not, McDougall flying across the Atlantic for a dinner date sure as hell meant McDougall expected to sleep with her. And guess who the fuck is going to be standing on the wrong side of that bedroom door?

  Raging jealousy—the likes of which he’d never felt before—burned a hole in his gut.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Embrace the fucking suck.

  He exhaled, when he didn’t even realize he’d been holding his breath. “We’ll work it out. She told us they were having dinner. We’re coordinating the logistics with the Senator’s security detail. Don’t worry, she’ll be safe.”

  “For the moment, it isn’t her security I’m worried about.”

  Refocusing across the courtroom to Sam, who now had both Charles and Abe leaning into her for a discussion, he said, “Okay?”

  “Do you remember the conversation you and I had the evening before you took that bullet for me?”

  As Jenkins reappeared and slipped into the seat on Zeus’s left, Samuel’s question transported him for a moment to the night before the Dixon protective detail had gone to shit, when Dixon had confronted Zeus in the library and told him to stay away from Sam. It had shocked the crap out of Zeus that the man had even been aware that something was developing. The man was eagle-eyed when it came to his granddaughter, and clearly the many long evenings of hushed conversations in the library between his bodyguard and his granddaughter hadn’t been lost on him. “Glued in my memory.”

  “You were the first, and so far, the only person who told me to fuck off.”

  His heart did a stutter beat. “Did you ever tell her about our conversation?”

  “No. Not that conversation, nor the same conversation I had with three other men with whom she became involved. In case you’re wondering, two before you. One after. Seemed to me she fell the hardest for you, though.”

  Zeus felt blood coursing through his veins as his blood pressure ratcheted up. “Have you had that conversation with Senator McDougall?”

  “Saw no need. I approve of him.”

  The meddling son of a bitch.

  “Good to know,” he spoke through a clenched jaw. “But why is any of this relevant to my job now?”

  “Because the way I see it, my granddaughter has a choice coming up. She can either choose McDougall and enter into an important marriage that will clearly facilitate the career for which I’ve groomed her all her life.” He paused. “Or she can follow her heart, and choose you. That is, if as I’m assuming, there’s at least a possibility that you two have picked up where you left off seven years ago, before you decided you needed to marry your pregnant girlfr—”

  “Sam told you what happened between us?”

  “Of course she did, though I could have figured most of it out on my own. But that was years ago. Somewhere in the intervening seven years, our relationship has become less open. More strained. Now, I don’t always know what she’s thinking, like I once did. And this week, I’m sure as hell out of the loop. We usually talk every morning, when
she’s on her second cup of coffee. As you damn well know, she hasn’t spoken to me since our argument, when she refused to resign.”

  “Something tells me the argument started before her refusal to resign.”

  “Yes, and I bet you damn well know you’re the reason for it.”

  Zeus drew another deep breath, trying to tamp down the anger that roiled up from his gut. “Samuel, you hired me. Understand? I’m not the one who set the wheels in motion on this. And by the way, don’t even bother asking me to name my price to stay away from her. Answer would still be to go fuck yourself.” Glancing at Jenkins, he realized he was talking loud enough for the man to overhear. His agent was doing a damn good job of looking straight ahead and pretending that he hadn’t gotten an earful of personal shit he had no business hearing. “Just like it was the night before I took a bullet for you.”

  Samuel chuckled. “I know that. Don’t you understand? I approve of you as well. I wouldn’t stand in your way. As a matter of fact, by the way the charges are adding up for the protective detail and the bounty hunt, seems to me I’m doing just the opposite of paying you to stay away. I’m paying you to be in her face and make her realize she’s at a fork in her personal road and for this she’s giving me the silent treatment. She’s that pissed off that I hired you. You’re a different matter entirely. If there is anything between you and my granddaughter, I want her to give it some thoughtful consideration.”

  “Dammit, Samuel,” he muttered, “You can’t play people like this. People’s lives aren’t a game. Hers especially.”

  He watched Sam lean back in her chair, pause for a moment with her eyes resting on Brier, whose head was still bent to his second chair attorney. He’d seen that look in her green eyes before. She was thinking. Weighing options. Assessing the situation, trying to gain control. She pushed her chair back, walked around the counsel table, and leaned down at Brier’s chair, interrupting the head-to-head conversation between him and his associate.