Once Upon a Friendship

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “You want to hire me?” Her mouth hung open as she looked up at him. Those silvery-blue eyes familiar—and yet different somehow. “What about George? And the attorney you told your father you’d hire for him?”

  That’s what he needed to talk to her about. And... “Dad’s attorneys will be seeing to him. I’m asking you to represent me.” Looking around them, at the people coming and going, passing by, he added, “Can we go to your office?” Surely it had a door. He picked up his briefcase.

  “Of course.” She led the way with quick steps, glancing back at him to say, “And of course I have time for you. I’d make it even if I didn’t.”

  Liam wasn’t surprised at the words. He’d known she would.

  He was just a little taken aback by the sudden flood of relief pouring through him.

  * * *

  “GEORGE THREATENED TO have you physically removed from the building?” Gabrielle stopped short of shaking her head, but, in truth, she felt a little dizzy with the turn of events over the past twenty-four hours.

  Liam, the one who’d lived the privileged life, was in her office, seeking her help. As though she wasn’t just a confessional, she was an equal. Worthy enough to be on the front page of his life rather than tucked into a small space three pages from the end.

  Sitting behind her large, but old and scarred desk in a room that might have appeared big enough if not for the floor-to-ceiling bookcases filling two walls and the file cabinets along the third, Gabi asked, “Didn’t he get your father out on bail?”

  She had windows, but because her office was on the first floor and passersby could see in, she had to keep the blinds partially closed. And because all of the other walls were taken, the windows were behind her.

  Absolutely nothing like the office he’d had, with its high-rise view of the entire city of Denver spread out before him while he’d been at his desk.

  Upright in the wood-framed chair in front of her desk, he’d be able to see through the windows, though. “Yes, Dad’s been released on his own recognizance,” he told her. “The prosecutor chose to send the case to a grand jury rather than press charges himself.”

  She nodded. “In a case like this, I’d expect that. The grand jury is a closed session without the defendant or defendant’s lawyers present. The prosecutor presents his evidence, including witnesses, and the jury decides whether or not there is sufficient evidence to warrant charges. Of course, even if the grand jury decides there is not, the prosecutor could still press charges, but it’s not likely he’d do so. His chances of getting a guilty verdict from a trial jury would be pretty slim if he couldn’t convince the grand jury with no defense being presented.”

  “It’s like a pretrial, then,” Liam said.

  “Right. It’s a way for the prosecutor to present his evidence to a jury without the defense knowing what that evidence is, to see if what he has warrants the expense of a trial.”

  “How long does that take?”

  She shrugged, knowing what Liam needed most was honesty, when what she wanted to do was assure her friend that it would all be over soon. “It could be quick, but in a complicated case like a Ponzi scheme, it could take months. Or longer.”

  As he sat there looking grim, she asked, “What time did he get out?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Didn’t he call you when he got home last night?”

  “I have neither seen nor spoken to him since you and I left him yesterday.”

  Really.

  She did shake her head then. And didn’t feel light-headed. Just...confused. “I don’t understand. Are you back on the disowned list?”

  “I have no idea. Which is why I need you. Something’s going on, Gabi. I can do a lot of the investigating, but I need help. A lawyer. You’re the only one I can trust.”

  “Why not call your father? You need to call him, Liam. He needs you. You just have to be the one to capitulate. You know that.”

  He shook his head. And, strangely, didn’t look all that devastated. Determined was more like it.

  And kind of...no, quite...handsome.

  She sat up. Unsure where that thought had come from. Of course Liam was handsome. He was drop-dead gorgeous. As every one of the twenty or so women he’d dated in college and since had been quick to attest.

  His handsomeness just wasn’t anything she ever thought about, the way she didn’t think about the air she breathed. It was just there. Normal. Until that moment.

  Liam was changing right before her eyes. Not just standing up to his father, but standing up for himself.

  He was treating her differently, too. And she had no idea what any of it meant.

  She knew what it couldn’t mean, though. Whether she noticed how handsome he was or not, Liam would never be more than a very close, very dear friend to her. Not only did they come from completely different worlds, not only was he a self-professed lover of women who didn’t see himself being happy with just one for the rest of his life, he was, most importantly, family to her. To her and Marie. Their threesome was sacred. And completely platonic...

  “My father is the reason George won’t speak with me,” Liam said, his elbows on the wooden chair arms, his fingers steepled in front of him. “He forbade it. And gave orders to have me removed from the building if necessary.”

  “Before, maybe, but not now. Not since yesterday.”

  “Since last night. According to George, my father emphasized the mandate in the car on the way home. He said I’m not to be trusted.”

  “What!” She didn’t mean to squeal. She glanced toward her door, half expecting to see someone there, checking to see if she was okay.

  “I know. It’s incomprehensible. He had me escorted up to George’s office by security and escorted back down again, too. With no chance to stop off and see him—he’s back in his office as usual this morning—or to speak with anyone else.”

  “Jeez.” She let out a whoosh of breath. Wishing she sounded more intelligent. She’d thought nothing Walter Connelly did would shock her.

  “Crazy, right?” He seemed perplexed. Disturbed, certainly. But not panicked.

  And Gabi realized again that Liam was changing. And, based on his composure now, probably had been for a while. Subtly. Slowly. Without her being aware.

  It was as though she was sitting there with a handsome stranger. Who was occupying her close friend’s body.

  He sat forward. “I have to find out what’s going on, Gabi. I have to protect myself. At this point I don’t put it past them to somehow hang this on me.”

  “Your father wouldn’t do that.”

  “I don’t think he would, either. But I would have bet my entire trust on the fact that he’d never gamble again, and I’d have lost that one.”

  “You really think he’d hang you out to dry? His only child?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that I need your help. I need you to represent me as if I was being investigated. Do whatever you would do to prove my innocence. Tell me what I need to be looking for.”

  Over the next ten minutes he told her about the information he’d kept in private files, separate from Connelly, the lists he’d made. His thoughts were ordered. Concise. Intelligent. Spot-on.

  “Okay,” she said, her mind fully focused as he fell silent. She had a pad full of notes in front of her. “I need a little time to sort through this. To do some research, maybe make some calls and to think. Can we meet up again in a couple of hours?”

  “Away from the Arapahoe,” he said. “I’m probably being paranoid, but I wouldn’t put it past my father to have had it bugged by now. He knew we’d closed on the loan less than half an hour after it happened. Clearly he has eyes everywhere.”

  “You want to skate? We could go to the rail trail.” An old railroad track that had been converted into a
fifty-mile paved sport path that ran through central Denver and out to the suburbs.

  “I haven’t had my skates on in a couple of years,” he told her. She and Marie had taken up inline skating during college. On a lark. Because Marie had been taking a fitness class and had hated jogging. They’d fallen in love with the sport. And eventually had talked Liam into joining them for some cross-country skates on Saturdays.

  “When the weather’s nice Marie and I still go just about every weekend. But we haven’t been out yet this year. It’ll be cold, but the pavement’s dry. We could go for a short skate.”

  “Okay, yeah,” he said.

  “I’ll ask Marie, see if she wants to go...”

  He nodded. Gabi smiled. Good. Normal.

  But when he stood—a tall, suited man whose looks screamed success—and picked up his five-hundred-dollar leather briefcase, her breath caught.

  How could she have just asked this man to go skating with her?

  He was Liam, she reminded herself with a mental shake. She and Marie had skated with him more times than she could count.

  He grabbed her hand. Squeezed it. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.” She thought her voice sounded normal enough. Hoped it did.

  But as he walked out her door with a casual “See ya later,” she resisted the urge to rub the hand he’d touched against her jacket. It felt strange. As if it wasn’t quite the hand she’d always known.

  Which was absolutely ludicrous.

  But kind of fit Liam’s place in her life at the moment.

  * * *

  LIAM WAS A FEW minutes from home when his cell phone rang. June Fryburg, the editor who’d published his piece on the near abduction—as well as many of his travel stories over the years—wanted him to cover an upcoming court case involving a seventeen-year-old boy who was suing his parents for the right to go off his antidepressants. Unless the boy came up with some surprising medical testimony he was going to lose, but the case was making national news and June, the editor of a small, but gaining-national-attention online news source, thought Liam would give the situation the respectful coverage it needed, as opposed to the sensationalistic handling it would get from their competitors.

  He accepted the challenge. He pulled his BMW into its newly designated parking spot behind the downtrodden building he’d just purchased and was about to go in to tell Marie his good news when there was a knock on the window of his car.

  Reaching into his jacket was instinctual. And dumb. He didn’t carry a weapon. Nor was his cell phone in his pocket. He’d just dropped it on the floor when the knock had sounded.

  “Liam Connelly?” The voice was deep. Gruff.

  He turned to look. And saw a man, wearing dark pants and an equally dark tweed jacket, staring down at him. The thick neck and broad shoulders pretty much consumed his attention as he reached toward his feet for his phone.

  “I’m here via Jeb Williams.” His father’s former navy SEAL bodyguard.

  The man didn’t sound threatening. To the contrary, he had his hands out, palms up. Realizing suddenly how he must look—as if he was reaching for a weapon—Liam grabbed his phone. Held it up.

  The big guy nodded. Liam dialed.

  Williams didn’t pick up. His father’s employees had undoubtedly been told not to take his calls. George had already told him as much.

  He had a choice. He could stay locked up in his car until the guy gave up and left. Or he could open his door and find out why a thug was using Williams’s name to seek him out.

  Liam opened the door. Got out and faced the man.

  “How do you know Jeb?” He went on the offensive because it was better than being intimidated. Or afraid.

  “We have much of the same training,” the man said. “Personal security and criminal justice.”

  “What’s his wife’s name?” Liam felt a bit stupid as he asked. Public internet searches would have listed people with whom Williams was associated.

  “Mary Ellen. He met her in college—the criminal justice training I was telling you about. She has a degree in nursing, though she hasn’t worked in years. They have two kids. Heber was born at four in the morning and Faith on Christmas Day.”

  He hadn’t even known Williams had two kids. He’d met Mary Ellen a time or two, at Christmas parties. Knew the couple had kids. Just not how many. Or their names or ages. Williams’s specialty had been buyout acquisitions—hostile takeovers, putting people out of work, stripping them of businesses that had been in their families for a generation or more—not a part of the business that interested Liam. He thought there should be another way.

  It was an area he and Walter had never agreed upon. Which was one of the reasons he hadn’t mentioned the purchase of the Arapahoe to his father.

  “I’m Elliott Tanner.” The bigger man held out a thick-fingered hand. “I’m licensed and bonded as a PI and also as a bodyguard, here to offer you my services.”

  “Your services?” He didn’t need a thug. Nor could he afford a payroll at the moment.

  “I’m in the business of knowing things that technically I don’t know. I hear them from sources who pay a lot of money to be nonexistent.”

  “And you want to tell me that you’ve heard something that leads you to believe I have personal security needs?”

  “Your father has Williams.”

  “My father received threats.” Chin high, Liam studied the man, assessing not only what was being said but what wasn’t. And why.

  “You had a visit from the FBI yesterday.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  Tanner shrugged.

  He wasn’t going to hire him. Wasn’t even considering it, but because he wanted to find out as much as he could about Tanner—namely who had sent him and why—he asked, “Just what is it you think I need?”

  “I think that until you find out what’s going on with your father’s company, there are a lot of people out there who you can’t trust. People doing things you can’t see.”

  “But you see them?”

  The man was right about one thing—there was a lot Liam couldn’t see. Good guys and bad guys and criminally bad guys. So who did Elliott Tanner work for? The good side or the bad? Was Williams a suspect? He was one of the five Walter had named.

  But at the moment, Liam wasn’t even sure about his own father. A gambling man who’d been adamantly against playing games of chance—to the point that his son, in order to rebel against the old man to the fullest extent, had chosen to play the tables during college—was now playing for dangerously high stakes.

  “I’m trained to be the eyes in the back of your head.” The man looked at him without blinking.

  He was trained for something, that was for sure. Another thing was pretty clear to Liam—if this man was somehow involved in this mess with his father, he wanted to know where the guy was and what he was doing, as opposed to meeting up with him unexpectedly in a dark alley. He wanted a reason to keep tabs on him without seeming suspicious.

  “Since you know so much, you must also know that I no longer have access to Connelly finances.”

  Maybe that was it. This guy was an undercover fed—trying to find out if Liam would somehow find funds to hire him. Funds that Liam had already told them he didn’t have.

  “I’m aware of that, yes.”

  “Then you know I can’t possibly afford to pay for personal security services.” He had a sizable trust, but some of it was designated for Threefold. It was now his only retirement account since his father had taken away his stock options and written him out of his will. It was the money he had to live off for the foreseeable future. Until he could support himself with his writing. He was in the process of doing renovations to his new home—on a much more modest scale than he’d originally envisioned. And bodyguards di
dn’t come cheap.

  “I’m here as a favor. I’m willing to take you on, just until this Connelly issue gets settled, for a discounted rate.”

  He named a fee that Liam could easily afford, but which was ridiculously low for the services Tanner was proposing.

  “Someone else is paying you.” Liam didn’t ask a question. He stated the obvious.

  “I’m not denying that fact.”

  “And you aren’t going to tell me who.”

  “No, sir. And you can trust me to be as discreet in my dealings with you.”

  “While you report back to whoever is paying you.” He hadn’t lived with his father his entire life without learning how the man’s world worked.

  “If, in the course of serving you, I find you involved in something illegal, I might report that.”

  “So you’re an investigator, wanting private access to my life.” That made sense. And pissed him off, too.

  “I work under contract. The services I am offering you are those of a personal bodyguard. That is the work I will do for you.”

  “While you investigate me for someone else.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said only that if I find that you’re involved in illegal activity, I might report it.” He pulled an envelope out of the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. “It’s part of my standard contract, issued to every one of my clients, as you’ll see here.” He held the envelope out to Liam.

  Standing in the cold, with numbing fingers, Liam took the time to look over the contract.

  “I’d like to have an attorney look at this,” he said.

  “Gabrielle Miller, I assume.”

  Eyes narrowed, certain that he didn’t want this man to get too far out of his sight, Liam nodded.

  Tanner handed him a card. “I’ll wait to hear from you,” he said. He walked toward the building and disappeared around the corner. He didn’t look back.

  Liam did, though. He looked all around him as he traversed the short distance between his car and the private residents’ entrance in the back of their building.

  If Tanner’s goal had been to scare him, he’d failed. Mostly. But he’d been put on notice. Made aware.