Quiet Man: A Dream Man Novella

by Kristen Ashley

  This was where training was crucial.

  This guy bolted, not a man on the mark knew it was him and he might be able to outrun Mo if Mo had to take off from his current position. Though the team would see Mo make a break for him, he could slip through a crowd like this and do it easy.

  Then, if he got free of the building and didn’t park in the parking lot, which he likely wouldn’t considering Smithie had cameras all over and they were visible, when he got out of camera range and to his car, they’d have no clue who he was or where to find him. And obviously, no car on camera, no make and model or license plate.

  He needed a tail that night.

  No, he needed put out of commission that night.

  Mo couldn’t lift his arm and alert the team, the guy might see him and know he’d been made.

  His body screamed to do it.

  No.

  It screamed at him to rush the man and incapacitate him in a way he’d never recover.

  But it wasn’t Mo’s job to take down the guy. He couldn’t rush him from his position backstage.

  It was his job to stay on Lottie.

  So he had to hold.

  His only choice was to keep him in his peripheral vision so he didn’t tweak him with a movement that would communicate he’d been made and set him to running.

  Something he might already know since they’d locked eyes.

  Mo needed the lights to dim even though he would be concerned the guy would make his move when they did.

  It seemed to take years for them to go out.

  His hand went right up, wrist to lips.

  “Red polo. Jeans. Thinning hair. Second row. Left side. Stay on him,” he ordered before tagging Lottie’s robe.

  He was two seconds late in throwing it over her bare shoulders.

  She took off her top only in the final few seconds of her last song and never her panties.

  He still really hated it that hundreds (probably thousands) of people had seen her mostly naked.

  But tonight, he hated it oh so fucking much more.

  He didn’t have headspace for that.

  The second she had her hands through the arms of the robe, he took hold of her and started to move her to safe ground.

  “Eyes on him,” Axl, one of his buddies on Hawk’s team said in Mo’s earpiece. “I’m on him. Following through.”

  This meant Axl would tail him home.

  He got Lottie into the room, the girls streamed out, and he looked down at her.

  “Gonna step into the hall. Be gone half a minute. Lock the door. Get dressed.”

  She stared up at him, her hands arrested in the act of tying her robe closed.

  “Lottie,” he growled.

  “Okay. Locking the door,” she whispered.

  He went out. Heard the lock go.

  He then stepped two steps to the side and pulled out his phone.

  He called Hawk.

  “Status,” Hawk said as greeting, not sounding like Mo just woke him, even though Mo knew he just woke him, and waking Hawk, he probably woke Hawk’s wife, Gwen.

  Undoubtedly a common occurrence for Gwen.

  Fortunately, she was a kickass chick and she loved her man so much, Hawk could grow a beer gut and take up fishing every weekend and she’d simply wait for him to come home and still jump his bones.

  “He’s here tonight.”

  “He made a move?” Hawk asked.

  “No. But I know it’s him. Axl’s on him. I want him taken tonight.”

  Hawk said nothing.

  Mo didn’t either, letting his boss think.

  Finally, Hawk spoke.

  “Gut?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How sure?”

  “Very.”

  “We’ll take him tonight. You’re wrong, we’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m right, I want in.”

  A moment then…

  “She’s under your skin,” Hawk murmured.

  “She’s not under my skin. I sleep on her couch. I guard her. But when this is over, she’ll be in my life. My choice? For the rest of it. So that’s not under my skin. She’s just going to be a part of me.”

  Hawk did not sound surprised when he asked, “And her?”

  “That part of where we’re at for her has been difficult to contain.”

  “You should have reported this,” Hawk said impatiently.

  “I would have, but it’s been contained.”

  “It’s been contained, and you wouldn’t let me pull you off her detail, which, if I knew this, was what I’d fuckin’ do.”

  Mo decided not to respond to that.

  “So, knowing this, I’ll ask again. Your gut. How sure?” Hawk asked.

  “This is our guy.”

  “I wouldn’t normally ask, you know it, but—”

  “She was dancing, he was watching me, not her. Second row. Faded-out polo. But new jeans.”

  “New jeans?”

  Hawk didn’t make that query because he didn’t get it.

  He made that query because that nailed it.

  “And I’d stake my life that I saw him Sunday in King Soopers,” Mo added.

  “We’ll move,” Hawk declared. “Now. And you’re in.”

  Thank fuck.

  Hawk disconnected.

  Mo pulled oxygen through his nostrils.

  Then he turned and knocked on the door to Lottie, shouting, “Mo!”

  Every inch of his skin crawled. His muscles felt twitchy.

  He wanted to be out there.

  He needed to be in the dressing room.

  She opened the door.

  He crowded her in.

  He then said a prayer of gratitude that she hadn’t fucked around putting on her street clothes.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as the door clicked behind him.

  He locked it without looking at it. If a girl needed in, she’d just have to knock.

  Lottie’s face was pale.

  “He’s here.”

  “Ohmigod,” she breathed. “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Are they—?”

  “Just do your thing, Lottie. Let’s get you home.”

  “But, are they—?”

  He lifted both hands and framed her face.

  Her eyelids went hooded and her body swayed to him.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  She was so fucking his.

  Mo fought how badly he needed to claim that and repeated his order of, “Just do your thing, baby.”

  It took her a beat.

  But then she whispered, “Okay, Mo.”

  That was his girl.

  He pressed in lightly and let her go.

  It was slow, he could tell she was concentrating on her movements, but she walked back to her mirror.

  Mo stood by the door, put his back to the wall and aimed his eyes at the floor.

  “You okay?” she called.

  “Don’t think about me.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Of course it was.

  God, he needed to fuck her.

  “Just focus,” he ordered.

  “Right.”

  “And not on me,” he added.

  “Mm-hmm,” she mumbled loudly.

  She was totally gonna focus on him, just be quiet about it.

  He kept his gaze to the floor.

  Her voice broke the silence.

  “You can’t tear him apart when you get to him, Mo. I’m not visiting my man in the pokey and I hear conjugal visits are hard to arrange.”

  His neck still bent, he turned his head her way.

  “Lottie, shut up.”

  “You got it,” she whispered.

  He looked back to the floor.

  Lottie went back to being Lottie.

  She took off her makeup. Brushed out her hair.

  Saw to business.

  Including the business of giving him room to do what he had to do.

  Soon.
/>   Fuck.

  Soon.

  Thank Christ.

  Now all he had to do was stop himself from committing murder between now and getting her on her back in her bed.

  With what he’d been through since meeting Charlotte McAlister…

  Piece of cake.

  * * * *

  He’d been wrong.

  It was not a piece of cake.

  What he had not been wrong about was that this was their guy.

  Threat neutralized, Lottie was home, asleep, had no idea he was not there, and Axl was sitting in her living room just in case she woke up and found out he was not there, Axl could tell her what was going down and she’d continue to feel safe, not all of a sudden without a bodyguard.

  Mo was in the guy’s house with Hawk and Smithie.

  The man had been identified by Smithie and his bouncers as an irregular regular. He didn’t come often, but they’d all seen him, more than a few times. Too innocuous to be red flagged, they’d never have called it.

  Until Mo had.

  In his house, there was no sick-fuck shrine to Lottie.

  What they found after Jaylen asked the man for a word, he tried to bolt, Axl locked him down, they detained him in Smithie’s office and got his wallet off him, then sent a team to his house, a team that included Hawk, were a number of very disturbing journals.

  And a basement that was being equipped to do all the things to Lottie he’d written that he intended to do.

  Yes. He was building his confidence and preparing to follow through.

  That was part of his visit to the club that night. Keep an eye on his mark, or now his marks, build his hate and assess the lay of the land.

  The man was still in Smithie’s office.

  This huddle was about next moves.

  “Any involvement of law enforcement at this juncture that has any hope of sticking would include perjuring ourselves repeatedly,” Hawk noted.

  “I’m down with that,” Smithie said.

  Mo said nothing.

  He was still trying to get out of his head how much plastic sheeting had been put up in the basement.

  And the neatly aligned instruments laid out on a table.

  But Hawk knew Mo would never perjure himself to the cops.

  Unless ordered to do so for the good of the mission.

  Or to protect someone who meant something to him.

  So he didn’t have to answer.

  “Second option is I contact a man I know who’s adept at disappearing people,” Hawk went on.

  Mo focused more fully on his boss.

  “I’m down with that too,” Smithie declared heatedly.

  He was still seeing plastic sheeting as well.

  Not to mention that table of instruments.

  “I’m not talking a hit, Smithie. I’m talking forced relocation where the chance of return is nil. This includes check-ins to make sure that nil stays nil. For an added cost, it includes permanent incapacitation,” Hawk explained.

  “I’m down for that too, even if I don’t know what permanent incapacitation means if it doesn’t include this sick fucking fuck being very fucking dead.”

  Right.

  Smithie was holding on by a thread.

  Mo knew the feeling.

  “No fingers. No tongue. No eyes. A combination. Or in extreme circumstances, no legs or paralysis,” Hawk told him.

  “And again I’m feelin’ like I hit the lottery because none of these choices sound bad to me,” Smithie returned.

  “Smithie, you would have to live with that,” Hawk pointed out.

  “And you think this’ll be a problem?” Smithie demanded to know.

  “I think right now you’re pissed as fuck and freaked as hell and all that is on top of you being worried, with that increasing with every day this guy went uncaptured and every letter you got. So I’m not sure you’re thinking straight,” Hawk retorted.

  “Tell me, Hawk, you perform some magic with Mitch or Slim and they find cause to search this house legally and find what we found, what happens to this guy?” Smithie asked, calling up Hawk’s buds, Mitch Lawson and Brock “Slim” Lucas, two DPD cops, two good men and the first ones Hawk went to if he needed law.

  “I don’t have the power of clairvoyance, Smithie,” Hawk told him.

  “Me either. But I’ll tell you this, a sick fucking fuck like this guy has to do something sick fucking fucked up to be fucking locked away forever, where he needs to be,” Smithie shot back. “And seein’ as that’s not gonna fuckin’ happen, not this time, he gets caught, he maybe does some time, and that’s a big maybe, since, so far, he hasn’t really committed a crime.”

  “Those letters are threats, he used the postal service to send them, and that’s definitely a crime,” Hawk pointed out.

  “That’s thin and we all know it,” Smithie spat.

  They did, so Hawk nor Mo said anything.

  Smithie kept going.

  “But say he does some time. He gets out, fixates back on Mac or some other girl, and manages to get his shit together before someone finds out. And then some girl, if she’s found before she’s made dead, has a lifetime of having to deal with something that she didn’t get a say in, like I got a say in having a lifetime of living with what we decide for this guy tonight.” Smithie shook his head. “I’ll take my demons. I won’t have some woman facing hers.”

  “Smithie—” Hawk tried.

  Smithie cut him off. “Or he gets off on the insanity plea, because there’s no arguing the guy is fucked right the fuck up, and he’s sent to a looney bin. Gets medicated. Gets therapy. Gets ‘cured.’ And that same end scenario happens, just after he goes off his government-funded meds and remembers he’s a whackjob.”

  “So your vote is he disappears,” Hawk deduced.

  “My vote is the only vote that counts, motherfucker, seein’ as I’m payin’ for this shit,” Smithie retorted.

  “And Mo and me will know and we’ll have to keep our mouths shut and live with those demons for your choice too, Smithie,” Hawk returned fire.

  At this juncture, Smithie glanced at Mo before he looked back at Hawk. “Can you share why your man is in on this discussion?”

  “He has a say,” Hawk replied.

  “I get that, seein’ as he’s here,” Smithie said. “I’m askin’ why.”

  “Because I called him in,” Hawk answered.

  Smithie looked back at Mo.

  Mo just stared at him.

  “Shit, you fell for her,” Smithie muttered.

  Mo said nothing.

  Smithie looked him up and down and his brows drew together. “And she fell for you?”

  Mo remained quiet.

  “Of course she did,” Smithie muttered. “You’re you. Before I even saw you, coulda drawn a picture a’ you, someone asked me to conjure up Mac’s dream man.”

  Well…

  Hell.

  Something occurred to Smithie, his eyes went to the ceiling before coming back to Mo and his hands went to his hips.

  “Do not get any thoughts in your head, motherfucker. She’s got talent. She’s a headliner. She was born for the stage.” He took a hand from his hip, pointed it at Mo, and declared, “You are not tellin’ her she can’t dance.”

  Mo felt his lips thin.

  “There!” Smithie jerked his finger at Mo, not missing Mo’s slight movement. “You’re one of those guys! Christ!” He threw up both hands. “I thought I was done with those guys. Jack didn’t mind his woman stripping.”

  Mo had no clue who “Jack” was. He didn’t remember Lottie telling him about one of the women who had a man named Jack.

  He still said nothing.

  “And what about you?” Smithie asked Hawk. “Not real professional, one of your boys tags the woman he’s guarding.”

  “It’s been platonic,” Hawk ground out.

  “Right,” Smithie said.

  Mo was done.

  With a number of things.

  What they were
discussing right then the least of them.

  “I’ve touched her, that way, once. Tonight. When I needed her to focus and I put my hands on her face. Once,” Mo growled. “Lottie wanted a new bodyguard so we could start things up, but no one could be on her, but me. We held off. Now we need to make a decision about this guy because it’s done and that means my job is done which means I can claim my woman, so I’m done with this chat.” He turned to Hawk. “What do you want to do?”

  “What do you want to do?” Hawk asked calmly.

  “I want him dead.”

  Hawk didn’t even blink.

  “But I’m pissed as fuck and I’m tweaked as hell right now which means I can’t fully get behind that,” Mo continued. “So I want you to call Lawson and Lucas and get his ass in jail. We really got no choice but to let justice take its course, not that I can’t live with the other option, or Smithie can’t, or you can’t, but because I’ll probably have to explain it to Lottie and she won’t be able to.”

  “Shit, fuck, you just had to bring Mac into it,” Smithie muttered irritably.

  “She’s not being brought into it,” Mo shot back. “It’s all about her and has always been all about her. If I had my say, any victim would be able to choose what punishment their offender would get. That would be random and chaotic, but I don’t give a fuck. It’d be fair, and it’d give closure and power to the people who were stripped of it. I don’t get to decide the way our criminal justice system works. But from the second those journals were found, I was unofficially off the job, and the path was cleared I could officially claim Lottie as mine. So now I do get to decide how she’s protected in all ways. And I’m not gonna ask her to live with the fact that she knows some guy had his tongue cut out, even if I, personally, would like the opportunity to pull it through a gaping hole in his throat.”

  “I think I like you,” Smithie announced.

  “I don’t care,” Mo replied and looked again at his boss. “Are we done?”

  “You might have to give false testimony, Mo,” Hawk reminded him.

  “I don’t care about that either,” Mo replied. “Are we done?”

  “You were on her, so no one has to know you were in the house,” Hawk muttered. Then said, “We’re done.”

  Mo turned on his boot and walked toward the door.

  “You got two days leave, Mo,” Hawk called to his back. “Starting today.”

  Mo said nothing as he walked out of that house.