Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Okay.”

  I climbed onto the bed, lying on top of the covers, still fully dressed save for my shoes. Erin snuggled into her pillows beside me, careful not to touch me. But that lasted only a few minutes.

  “Can you get under the covers?”

  I got up and pulled the comforter back. At the same time, she wiggled and writhed, finally dropping her robe onto the floor from the depths of the blankets.

  I lay back down and she reached for my hand. We lay like that for a long time, side by side, holding hands, the light comforter lying over the both of us. And then she turned into me and snuggled her head against my shoulder. I didn’t move, afraid of scaring her away. But, in all honesty, nothing could have made me happier. The weight of her body against mine was perfect. I’d lain with a lot of women, but the feel of her beside me was different. I wanted to be there.

  How long had it been since I’d lain with a woman because I wanted to be there?

  “Thank you,” she whispered softly in the dark.

  My chest hitched a little. I was the one burning with gratitude. She was healing something inside of me that I’d thought was forever damaged. It was impossible to put into words how wonderful that felt.

  I just wished we could have met under different circumstances.

  Chapter 15

  Joss

  It was early, just before dawn. The air was colder today, a hint of the winter that was due to come in the wind. I stood against the rail at the edge of the back porch of Kirkland’s house, looking out toward the fence that separated this property from the Archer ranch next door. There were horses moving in the early dawn light, tearing at the grass that grew there, moving among the cows that shared the grazing land. Sutherland’s husband raised horses, she raised both horse and cattle. I’d heard rumors they planned to combine their two properties with Archer taking control of both horse interests and Sutherland to continue working the cattle on top of running Gray Wolf’s satellite office here with Kirkland. It seemed like a reasonable deal to me.

  If only conflicts in marriage could be worked out that simply.

  Carrington was with Aidan when I Skyped last night. It killed my soul to see his face now that I knew it was my fault what was happening to him, to our family. If I’d never come into his life, he never would have had to live with bodyguards and death threats. He would never have known the name Jack Mahoney.

  All this time I blamed him. If he’d just come clean with me, if he’d been honest. But the truth was, it was all my fault.

  And now it was up to me to fix it.

  “You’re up early. Did the baby wake you?”

  I shook my head, gratefully accepting the cup of coffee Kirkland held out to me. “No. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You talked with Clint last night.”

  “I did.”

  “Did he have answers for you?”

  I nodded. “More than I’d wanted, I think.”

  Kirkland leaned against the railing and studied my face over his own mug of coffee. “He’s a good man, Clint is. I wasn’t too sure at first, but he’s proven to be quite an efficient operative. And he’s good to Sutherland, and Ryan.”

  “Ryan? Are they still together?”

  He smiled. “I think once that woman gets her claws into a man, he’s not going anywhere until she lets him go. And she’s not letting Clint go any time soon.”

  I remembered Ryan well. She was a petite little lady, not much different than me, except for the extra ten or fifteen years I had on her. But she was a firecracker, one of those women who doesn’t keep her tongue in her head if she thinks someone’s wronged her. It was both admirable and annoying.

  “I’m glad he’s proven to be such an asset.”

  Kirkland was still watching me even though he tried to hide it behind his coffee cup. He took a few small sips, but his eyes were heavy on my face.

  “What?”

  “You’re sad. Not just upset, but downright sad.”

  I tried to smile, but it wobbled before it reached my lips. “I am.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because I’ve put my family in danger. Because I’ve created this mess that hurt so many people I love.”

  “You didn’t do anything, Joss.”

  “I did. I hurt Ash and Mina and Ford. I dragged David into this mess and you and Sutherland. I caused Kipling to get shot and--“

  “Stop! You didn’t do any of that.”

  I shook my head, tears rolling freely down my cheeks. “Mahoney went after Ash because of me. He’s going after Carrington to hurt me.”

  “But that’s not your fault, Joss. That’s on Mahoney.”

  I snorted. “Like it makes a difference.”

  “You love Carrington. You’d never do anything to hurt him.”

  “But I did. Just by marrying him, I set all this in motion. And now…” I sighed heavily, trying to get control over my emotions. “I have to leave him.”

  Kirkland set down his coffee and took me by the arms. “Joss, now you’re just talking nonsense. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do!”

  “But don’t you see? If I leave him, Mahoney won’t have a reason to hurt him.”

  Kirkland shook his head. “He might still.”

  “But if he thinks he’s destroyed my marriage, why bother? He could just come after me directly.”

  “And that’s better? Joss, for Christ’s sake! You’re talking crazy now.”

  I shook my head, pulling away from him. “Thank you for letting me come here. Thank you for being a friend. But I have to deal with this on my own now. I can’t let anyone else I love get hurt because of me.”

  Kirkland grabbed my arm and yanked me back, the movement painful enough to cause me to cry out.

  “We’ve been through a hell of a lot together, haven’t we?” he demanded, his eyes wild with anger and fear. “You never backed away when I needed you and I’ll be damned if I back away now that it’s you. We both knew what we were getting into when we got into this line of work. We both know what’s at stake.”

  “But that was before you had a wife and kids. Before Carrington and the girls. Things have changed now.”

  “No, they haven’t. You’re still my friend, my sister in arms. I’m not turning my back on you and you’d better not turn yours on me.”

  “Never,” I whispered through my tear torn throat. “But what am I going to do? He wants to punish me, but what more can he take from me?”

  Kirkland pulled me into his arms. “Everything. But we won’t let him. Let me make some calls. Let me help you, Joss.”

  “Okay,” I whispered in defeat.

  “And promise me you won’t do anything rash until we can figure this thing out.”

  “Of course.”

  But was that a promise I could keep? I couldn’t lose Carrington, couldn’t see my girls ripped from me. I barely survived what happened to my husband and son,the last time. A part of me died that night, a part I would never get back. How would I survive if it happened again?

  I wasn’t going to let it happen. Not this time.

  Chapter 16

  Erin

  It was technically my day off. I went into the office to use the computers there, thinking a little privacy would help me make the connections I failed to make last night. I was just too screwed up last night to work with Boone looking over my shoulder.

  Sleeping with him last night had been…interesting. I hadn’t thought I could lie with another person like that. It was hard enough to adjust to sleeping in the barracks with other Navy recruits, let alone sharing the same bed. But there was something about his warmth, about his nearness, that was reassuring to me. I hated his past, hated the things he’d done. I hated how honest he was about it all, clearly not ashamed in the least of how he’d made his way these past years. But there was something about the way he saw me, the way he could see things no one else did, that made him safe in a way I never thought anyone could be.

 
I couldn’t even sleep in the same bed with my mother. She’d tried many, many times. Mostly the long months I was in the hospital after the attack. Probably the worst times for her to try, with the memory of the attack too fresh in my mind.

  Was the fact that I took comfort in having Boone close to me that way proof that I was finally healing? Or was it just lust finally wriggling its little head? Was I finally reaching the end of puberty, my hormones taking over from my mind, some thirteen years late? His kiss was incredible, but not really that incredible. Was it something else?

  Was it the connection of his experience with his sister that made me feel close to him? I thought that was most likely.

  He knew me. He understood better than anyone else ever had.

  And he didn’t resemble any of my attackers. That was a plus.

  Did that mean I believed he wasn’t lying to me? No. Did it mean I trusted him? Yes and no. I believed I could trust him when it came to my physical safety. I shouldn’t have trusted him even with that, but I did. I just didn’t trust him with anything else.

  Elizabeth Tanner didn’t appear to exist even after hours of searching, using programs the CEO’s brother had designed for this exact purpose. That meant it was an alias. I had to learn her real name to figure out who she really was. The best way to go about that was facial recognition software, but I didn’t have a picture of her. But there was the video my teeny camera had taken and the bar had its own security cameras. Either might have captured her on tape. I couldn’t imagine her missing out on the scam’s opening volley.

  I worked for hours, painstakingly reviewing the information I could find on each female sitting in the bar. I was beginning to think I was wrong when the system suddenly spit out something interesting. I focused first on the middle aged woman Boone had sat beside when he first came into the bar, then perhaps the woman on the other end of the bar. But, it turned out, she wasn’t either of those. She was a waitress the camera barely caught long enough for the software to catch a good look at her face. I hadn’t even realized there was a waitress working that night.

  Janet Elizabeth Runion. Thirty-four. Born in Springfield, Illinois to Amanda Mahoney Runion and Robert Carl Runion.

  She had an arrest record that was three times the length of Boone’s. And it wasn’t all just theft.

  Attempted murder.

  Aggravated assault.

  Prostitution.

  Multiple DWIs.

  This woman was a real piece of work. How had Boone gotten himself caught up with her?

  But then again, a quick check of her father showed me a story that wasn’t terribly surprising. He also had quite a lengthy arrest record, most of it for crimes stemming from a drinking problem. There were counts of domestic violence as well. He was even convicted a time or two, though it didn’t seem to slow him down. Not until his death some fifteen years ago, that was.

  Yet, a bad childhood couldn’t excuse the kind of crimes listed on her rap sheet. Wasn’t I a testimony to the fact that darkness didn’t have to spawn more darkness?

  Elizabeth and I had grown up not a hundred miles from each other. Even though she was six years older than me, we hadn’t had dissimilar lives. We both faced diversity in a similar time frame, both lived in the rural areas of a mediocre state. We both survived in our own ways, but we’d chosen vastly different paths.

  What would it have been like if I’d chosen to act out as she had? What if she’d chosen the military instead of crime? Would we still be here, just on different sides of the coin? Or would we have found ourselves walking a very different road?

  Would Boone have come into our lives?

  I shook my head to clear it; these were heavy questions for this late in the afternoon. I needed to figure out a plan.

  I knew Elizabeth must be staying in a hotel nearby. I knew Boone had gone to see her yesterday because I could smell a woman’s perfume on him when I came home. Besides, she’d need to be close in order to receive the reports Boone was meant to be sending her. He’d called her just this morning under my watchful eye and fed her information on McKelty that we’d carefully fabricated. We told her that McKelty had a crush on the actor Bodhi Archer, that she’d seen every one of his movies, and that she was hoping he’d star in the movie of her favorite book, The Damaged One. In truth, McKelty knew Bodhi Archer and found him less dreamy than she had believed before speaking to him in person.

  I watched Boone as he spoke with her. My chest hurt a little when I heard her refer to him by little terms of endearment, suggesting a sexual relationship between them. He wouldn’t look me in the eye as they spoke, further underscoring the idea. I’m not sure why it hurt. It wasn’t like I had a formal claim on him. But it did.

  Using a program David Grayson had created that allowed for a search through security systems working on a WiFi network in the city, I used the picture of Elizabeth drawn from the bar’s security footage to search hotels in the area where Elizabeth might be staying. I got multiple hits, most of them from the lobby cameras of a hotel not five blocks from Gray Wolf’s offices. I hacked into the hotel’s system to find her room, finding her registration to be under the name Janet Boone.

  Was she trying to be clever? The use of the last name irked me, thought I know it shouldn’t have.

  I cleared my searches from the system and headed out. Boone expected me to save him from her clutches and I intended to do just that.

  “You were in there a long time. What are you up to?”

  Jules was watching me from behind her massive desk, the paperwork piled up around her like a mountain surrounding a lone valley.

  “I was checking out some surveillance footage.”

  “From the mall?” Jules smiled softly. “McKelty mentioned it to Tony the other day. I thought you’d say something when you were ready.”

  “I thought I saw something, but it turned out to just be some kids playing with a small ball.”

  “A hackey sack?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She nodded. “Those things are making a comeback. Personally, I’d be happy to see them fall out of favor again. They’re a damn nuisance.”

  I just nodded. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting a friend.”

  Jules’ eyebrows rose. “Is that right? Glad to hear your expanding your social circle.”

  “Can’t spend all my time hiding out at home, can I?”

  Jules winked before turning back to her pile of paperwork, a sigh of resignation slipping from her throat.

  My life was complicated, but in that instance, I was glad I wasn’t her.

  Chapter 17

  Boone

  Elizabeth strolled into the restaurant wearing a short shift dress that barely covered her long, curvy thighs. The neckline dipped down low, showing off her impressive cleavage, her hair bouncing on her shoulders and her eyes emphasized with the heavy, dark lines of her makeup. Several heads turned as she passed, men admiring the movements of her hips, the women hating the perfection she was able to achieve.

  “Always have to make an entrance, don’t you?” I asked as I stood to greet her.

  “Always.”

  She refused the light peck on the cheek I’d intended to offer, forcing a full on kiss on the lips. That sticky lip gloss left a sickly sweet film on my lips that I discreetly wiped away with a napkin as I resumed my seat.

  “Twice in a row. This must be some sort of record.”

  I cocked my head slightly, my eyes moving around the restaurant, at the attention we were garnering. “Are you complaining?”

  She smiled that seductive smile that had gotten her into more than a few beds. “No. I always love to see you, Boone.”

  “She slipped a few things about Carrington Matthews to me this morning. Thought you’d like to hear it.”

  She leaned forward a little, the smile replaced by a grimace of distaste. “What’s that fool up to?”

  There was a darkness in her tone, like she knew the man personally and disliked
him. “Was he a mark of yours once?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t go for redheads. Besides, he’s a little young for my target audience.”

  But there was something. I’d never seen her express such contempt about a mark before.

  “Erin thinks he’s cheating on his wife. She says that he arranged for a couple of private meetings last week while she was assigned to him, meetings he wouldn’t allow her to follow him to.”

  “Really? I thought she wasn’t supposed to leave his side.”

  “She’s not. So she followed him and saw him go to a hotel. The Belmonte out on the highway.”

  “That’s an interesting choice for a man of his means.”

  “A little more discreet, I suppose.”

  She inclined her head slightly, her eyes never leaving mine. “Do you know when he’s supposed to go there again? Or who he was meeting?”

  “Whoever he met with was already there when he arrived and left after him. Erin never saw her.”

  “Or him.”

  I grunted, but didn’t ask. “She thinks he’s going there again tomorrow afternoon. Five o’clock.”

  “His wife’s due back today.”

  “Do you really think having the wife around will slow his extracurricular activities?”

  She shrugged. “It didn’t before. He had a one-night stand with a client representative while his wife was home with the kids. Told her he drank too much at a dinner meeting and decided to take a room at a nearby hotel. She actually believed him, the stupid woman.”

  Again, I could hear anger and bitterness that could only come from a personal connection. What was Elizabeth’s connection to these people?

  “Well, anyway, if catching him red handed is what you want, tomorrow’s your chance.”

  “I’ll send someone over. Maybe we’ll get some nice pictures we can show her.”

  “What is this really about, Elizabeth?”

  Her perfectly drawn eyebrows rose. She studied me, all amusement wiped from her expression. “Why do you want to know? That girl of yours putting a bug in your ear?”