Hard to Handle

by Raven Scott

  “Mom, how are things with Dad? And I don’t mean what I saw earlier!” Kaylee quickly protested slapping a hand over her forehead. “Oh god!”

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. You’re a grown woman so you have to understand these things.”

  “What does that mean, Mom? I know Dad hasn’t been himself for a long time.”

  “Oh, he has his moments. Yes, he’s not the same as he was for most of our marriage, but sometimes that happens. I’m just learning to take advantage of things when it’s good.”

  “Is he still drinking too much?” Kaylee asked.

  “Yes, I won’t deny that. But until he wants to do something about it, I can’t help him. And neither can you or Junior,” her mom explained. “I know that’s hard to hear, but that’s the truth, Mikayla. The sooner you learn that, the less stress you’ll have in your life.”

  Kaylee bit at her lip.

  “Is he still angry with me for moving away?”

  “Not angry. More disappointed and overly protective. But he’ll get over it, okay? He has to. You can’t live with us forever, afraid to upset your father.”

  Kaylee leaned into her mom, and the two women shared a loose embrace for a few moments.

  They left her parents’ house at almost ten o’clock and drove back to Sam’s secluded cottage. Niko was waiting patiently for his walk so they quickly took him around the block. In the bedroom, they quietly got naked before Sam picked her up high under the bum and lay her back at the edge of the bed as he stroked deep. There were no preliminaries, no words, and only one position.

  Friday morning, Sam woke her up early for a run. They went four miles at a steady pace. She came back a sweaty, gasping mess, and he looked like he had gone to get the mail. They ate toast and coffee in his small but modern kitchen. Kaylee’s mind was off concocting plots when he interrupted by clearing his throat.

  “I have a confession.”

  She sipped her coffee and looked back at him. Her confessions lately had been pretty massive, so it seemed fair that he could have one or two of his own. She held her breath and waited.

  “I lied to you about taking you and Antonoli as a client.”

  Her brows furrowed with puzzlement.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means I’m not actually working for you. Like, there is no official assignment here.”

  Kaylee smiled, shaking her head and feeling a little like Alice in Wonderland.

  “Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one to me. I’ve just seen you and a bunch of your employees put in a lot of hours in the last two weeks. So how is that not working for me?”

  “I’m on vacation,” he added as though that would somehow make it clearer.

  “What?” she said, laughing. “You really have to find something fun to do in your downtime.”

  “Funny. That’s what Renee said.” Then he cleared his throat. “You won’t be billed for the work because I did it on my own time.”

  “You mean you’re literally on vacation. Right now?” He nodded, looking a little sheepish. “Why? Because we’re sleeping together? Is that some kind of violation to the company code of conduct?”

  Sam sat back in his chair.

  “I’ve never read the company code, to be honest. And that would have been a good reason. But I wasn’t charging you from the beginning.”

  “Why?” Kaylee asked. She wasn’t mad, just perplexed.

  “You wanted complete confidentiality or you would get someone else, and I couldn’t do that. So I pretended to agree to your terms like you were the client. But that was just so I could help you without argument.”

  “Hmmm, clever,” she mumbled and sipped at her coffee.

  “I don’t lie to my partners, Kaylee. Not intentionally. And one secret was enough to last a lifetime.”

  “I get it, Sam. I insulted your integrity,” she said quietly. “Why did you help me then, on your vacation?”

  “Don’t ask me that. You knew I couldn’t walk away from you even if I tried,” he said in a heated voice. “That’s why you came to me in the first place, Kaylee. I just wasn’t going to do it under your terms.”

  Kaylee had known they had unresolved things between them. How could they not, after everything that had happened? But it didn’t make it any easier to face them, knowing they were her doing.

  “I don’t know what to say. Thank you seemed inadequate.”

  He looked away. “You don’t need to thank me, lass.”

  “Can I at least cover the cost of the team and the equipment? The expenses you’ve incurred?” she suggested, starting to feel really guilty about the trouble she had caused. “Please? It wasn’t my intent to put your people at risk, impact your business or take advantage of our . . . relationship.”

  “The team is always well compensated so the matter is settled,” he said, chopping his hand through the air.

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Well, I could hardly hide it from you once a bill is due, now could I? And I want you to understand that I have not been following your direction through this situation. I’ve been directing it. I will continue to do so.”

  She looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Finally he looked back with his sky-blue eyes sharp and direct.

  “You want to go after the mayor, Kaylee. And I won’t let you do it alone. So if we do, it’s with a plan that I approve.”

  They studied each other for a bit until Sam raised an eyebrow and Kaylee sighed.

  “Fine. But I won’t sit on the sidelines, Sam. I won’t be tucked away while you and your band of warriors go to battle.”

  “Why would I do that? I might need your ninja skills.”

  Kaylee couldn’t resist a small exasperated smile.

  “Now, today is my last official day of vacation and I’ve been told I need to do something fun. So let’s go find something.”

  They went golfing, something they both loved and hadn’t done in years. Sam had a set of clubs that he’d brought over from the U.K., and they made a quick stop at her parents’ house to get hers out of storage. The country club her family belonged to was booked weeks in advance so after some research, they found a small nine-hole course outside the city. While the round started out casual and fun, it quickly became competitive. He was good. Powerful and accurate, but Kaylee was better. It turned out that Samuel Mackenzie was a big, bad-ass motherfucker, except when he was losing to a girl. Then he was just grumpy, volatile, and downright emotional. Kaylee hadn’t had so much fun in years.

  Afterward, they returned to his place to shower, then walked to a nearby pub that Sam often frequented.

  “We can’t go at him with threats,” Kaylee determined, talking about how to shut down the mayor’s involvement in widespread corruption in Baltimore. “He’s too connected with many unsavory people who want to keep him in power. It has to be more surgical and controlled.”

  “Like, go after what matters to him most?”

  “Exactly. What would matter to a politician who’s been in power for over seven years? Something more important than money?”

  “More power? His health? Family?”

  “Hmmm, maybe,” Kaylee pondered. “I have a friend who still works in his offices. I haven’t spoken to her in a few years, but she might have some insights into what he’s like personally, besides what’s in the papers. But there has to be something we can use to apply pressure.”

  “You mean, like coercion?” he asked with a straight face. “I’m starting to see that you would make a brilliant criminal mastermind.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe that will be my next career move.”

  He flashed her a smile.

  “What is it that we’ll be asking him to do? Stop taking brides? I can’t imagine he’s the only one, Kaylee. He might just be the tip of the iceberg.”

  “I know that, but if he’s the one controlling my dad, then he’s the only one we need to take out of the game.”

  “Unless we can get
him to use his powers for good instead of evil.”

  Now Kaylee smiled at his silly teasing. “How?”

  “If we have to find out what motivates him the most, and we agree it can’t be money, then we have to convince him that he can have more of it without corruption than with.”

  Kaylee tapped her finger on the pub table, feeling a tingling of excitement.

  “That’s going to require a lot of plotting,” she suggested.

  “I’ve seen your skills, ninja. I think it’s worth a shot. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll use a club instead of a scalpel. I’ll just take a team and go in to have a chat with him.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sam asked Renee over on Saturday to get her insights on a few things. Namely, the information from Mark McMann that seemed to incriminate the mayor of Baltimore in bribing Jason Holt, then forcing George Clement out of running Clement Media, and the ideas he and Kaylee were throwing around to address it. But Sam also needed an impartial perspective on the situation, and Renee would provide that. They had similar years of experience at MI5, the British secret service, investigating all sorts of plots and criminal enterprises, some involving high-level government officials. She would have a good handle on whether their plan had merit.

  And, quite frankly, Sam was no longer certain of his own objectivity when it came to helping Kaylee.

  Unfortunately, Kaylee thought Evan would have some ideas, and Evan brought along Nia to meet Kaylee again. And Evan invited Lucas in case they needed to hack into something quickly, and Lucas couldn’t stay away from his new girlfriend, Alex, while she was in town. Noting that it was a party of seven, Kaylee invited Junior over to join them, making it eight.

  At two o’clock, Sam looked around his rear yard, backing onto the river, and gave up on the idea of a private discussion with anyone. While Evan and Lucas’s girlfriends chatted among themselves and played with Niko, everyone else was in the middle of a giant debate.

  “I think we find the evidence we need and give it to the police,” Lucas said, handing out a cold beer bottle to anyone who raised a hand. “There is always a data trail.”

  “Maybe, but we haven’t found one yet. And we don’t have enough leads to know which direction to go next, right?” Evan reasoned. “Seems to me that our best sources of accurate information are Holt, McMann, and George. It’s in the best interest of everyone else involved to not tell us anything. Fleming, for instance. If that’s true, let’s look at what those sources have provided so far. We know from Holt that someone from city hall was likely involved. We can’t talk to George directly, but we’ve gone through all the communication and records we can access from four years ago. They don’t tell us much about who’s influencing him, except it has to be someone powerful and connected. Now, we have the lead on Mayor Gordon from McMann, and it finally connects a few dots. So it seems to me that we either act on intel we have, or back down.”

  “I say we back down,” Junior mumbled. “This is all too crazy for me. You can’t just take down a city mayor—particularly one that we all think is well connected to who knows what kinds of organized crime.”

  “It’s no different from a senator. Three actually, but who’s counting?” Lucas stated blandly.

  “A czar and a prime minister,” added Evan. “Under DaCosta operations of course.”

  “A few judges and a bishop,” Renee topped up.

  They all looked at Sam for his contribution.

  “A prince. But we were only fifteen and he was a wanker,” he told them with a big smile.

  Everyone laughed.

  “All right,” Junior conceded, throwing up his hands in defeat. “You guys are obviously the experts.”

  “So, we agree? We’ll look for a way to get to the mayor?” Kaylee asked.

  “Until we have more evidence,” Lucas said.

  “Agreed, let’s do it,” Evan added.

  Kaylee looked up at Sam, and he nodded with his support.

  “Okay! I was going to call a friend of mine who works in the mayor’s office, but I don’t like the idea of getting anyone else involved. She’s the one who gave me the lead on contract overspend four years ago. Thank God I kept her name out of it then,” Kaylee explained, leaning forward. “So I did a lot a research this morning and, from what I can remember, Lyle Gordon likes to think he’s a bit of a celebrity. He throws big parties, and his wife is very social. He loves to be on the front page of major papers and thinks nothing of having his kids there with him. And from what I’ve pulled up, he hasn’t changed at all in his second term.”

  “He has an ego,” Sam concluded.

  “Yes,” Kaylee agreed. “Maybe that’s his motivation. He obviously loves being mayor and being the man in charge. But another election is around the corner, and there’s a city councilman who’s been eyeing the job for years now. Emeril Marchesi has persistently hinted at city corruption under Gordon’s leadership. In fact, Marchesi is the one who started to make noise about city budget mismanagement back when I was writing for the Journal. No one really paid attention to his accusations from what I remember, but it was enough to mark him as an adversarial opponent. It looks like Marchesi lost to Gordon by only a slim margin in the last election. So what if Mayor Gordon believes hard evidence of city corruption will go to Marchesi before the next election? I bet he’d do anything to prevent that.”

  “Anything like what?” Junior asked, drawn back into the planning out of curiosity.

  “Like declare his own stance on stopping city corruption, and using the evidence to start a public inquiry.”

  The five people around her were silent for about a minute. Then Renee grinned.

  “It’s brilliant, actually.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas added. “It sounds like something the CIA would do.”

  “It does, actually,” Evan mumbled, looking at Kaylee with new eyes.

  “But the mayor is corrupt, so why would he go along with this? Stop the corruption that he’s profiting from?” Junior asked, clearly baffled.

  “Because the evidence is going to come out anyway. This way, he can control it and use it to his advantage. Be a hero, the one to clean up a dirty city.”

  “Okay, but why not just give the evidence to Marchesi and let him use it. Then get a good man into the office.”

  “It’s an option,” Sam noted. “But we don’t know he’s a good man. And we don’t have any leverage to use on him, so no control over how he uses the information.”

  “The evil you know, and all that,” said Evan.

  “Lastly, that won’t necessarily remove any influence that Dad’s under, Junior. At least not right away,” added Kaylee.

  There was more silent contemplation.

  “Like I said, you guys are the experts in this kind of thing,” Junior told them. “But to me this sounds like a massive game of chess where we’re intimidating the criminals.”

  “Exactly!” Renee agreed. “It’s bloody brilliant!”

  Junior just shook his head and went back to listening. The others leaned forward so they were surrounding Kaylee in a tight circle.

  “So how do we approach Gordon?” Lucas asked. “We can’t just knock on his door with a proposition.”

  “And it has to come from someone he thinks has clout in his social circles, right?” Kaylee reminded them. “I mean, the family is in the paper and local magazines every week at a charity event, or expensive social function. His wife is on two charitable boards, heads the Scottish Society and the PTA. It has to be someone from these types of circles.”

  “What about you, Evan?” Lucas asked. “You’re still on the board at DaCosta. That has to carry some influence.”

  Evan shrugged. “Maybe—”

  “Wait,” interrupted Renee. “What was that, Kaylee? His wife is head of the what?”

  “The PTA?”

  “No,” Renee said, shaking her head and pulling out her cell phone to type in something. “You said head of the Scottish Society. The Scottish Heritage Soci
ety of Maryland, to be exact, and one of the largest organizations of its kind in the United States according to their website. And that’s going to be our in.”

  Renee looked at Sam as he sighed dramatically. The others looked between them, waiting for an explanation.

  “Are you going to tell them, or should I?” she finally demanded. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

  Renee stood up and stepped just in front of Sam then bowed, backing away.

  “May I present to you,” she stated in an overly formal, proper English accent, “Samuel Mackenzie, Viscount Andri and the future Earl of Seaforth.”

  Lucas was the first to snort; then Evan was laughing also. Sam rolled his eyes, and Renee had a big grin on her face. Kaylee smiled up at Sam.

  “That’s useful, having our own resident Scotsman who could pretend to be titled. It would definitely impress them,” Kaylee mused. “But do you think we’d get away with it?”

  “You all think I’m taking a piss?” Renee replied with an even bigger laugh. “I’m dead serious. Sam’s dad is the current Earl of Seaforth.”

  Sam shoved his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans and shook his head. He had not seen this coming. He shot Renee a dark look that he hoped demonstrated how annoyed he was. His family title wasn’t a secret exactly, but it wasn’t something that he ever talked about. Certainly not in America.

  “Are you kidding me?” Lucas asked with eyes squinted. “How did I not know this?”

  “Wow,” Evan added. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

  “Okay, let’s all calm down. It’s hardly a big deal. Viscount isn’t even a real title, it’s just a courtesy, really,” he mumbled. But his friends continued to look at him like he had grown another head.

  Kaylee cocked a brow at him and Sam shrugged.

  “So what do you think?” Renee continued. “Will his majesty here be impressive enough to get the mayor’s attention?”

  “Yeah,” Kaylee replied. “I think he’ll do.”

  Renee went back to her phone to do more research on the mayor’s wife, Emma Gordon, and her Scottish Society activities. Evan, Lucas, and even Junior started to pepper Sam with a bunch of random silly questions about the peerage in Great Britain. Sam answered a couple but ignored most. Kaylee just listened. Her eyes connected with his every once in a while, but Sam couldn’t tell what she was thinking.