VINCENT
Dragon Security Book 2
Glenna Sinclair
Copyright © 2016
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Prologue
Quinn
“Olivia! Livie! I need help!”
I tried to hold the boxes in place to keep them from falling on my head, but they weren’t cooperating very well. When we loaded the truck in Austin, it seemed like a good idea to stack them as high as possible to make room for our dressers and the couch, but now…
“Olivia!”
“Here, let me.”
A woman, taller than me, came up and pushed the box that was threatening to topple the whole stack back into place.
“Thank you so much!”
“I was just coming over to introduce myself and…I guess I got here just in time.”
I turned and found myself looking into milky blue eyes and a face marked by adolescent acne. But she was pretty in a middle-aged woman sort of way. I’d guess she was about forty, tall and thin with dark hair that was also thin and incredibly straight. Not a hint of curl anywhere despite the humidity that was making even the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck curl. I almost envied her that.
“I’m Quinn,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Beth Harrington. Short for Elizabeth…but I guess you could have figured that out.”
I smiled, reaching up to brush the sweat from my cheek. “You live around here?”
“Right next door. My bedroom actually looks right into your living room.”
“Good to know.”
“The lady who owned the house before you, she had these heavy curtains. It was no issue, really.”
I just nodded, wondering if she was implying that I might spy on her, or that she might spy on me. It was a little odd.
I walked to the end of the truck, peeking around the corner for my daughter. She seemed to have evaporated in the heat. Not that I blamed her. The air conditioning was on in the house, and it was hotter than hell in this truck. I almost wished I’d given in and hired a moving company to take care of this. But we were here now.
The move from Austin was supposed to be a new beginning for us. I wanted to get away from the losers who’d been threatening to take over my life. Everything was just encroaching too much, coming close to expose all my secrets to Olivia. I couldn’t do that.
“It’s a nice neighborhood,” Beth said, coming up behind me. “Mr. Laurence over there”—she pointed to the house directly across from mine—“is a retired postal worker. And Miss Holland, next door to you—on the other side—is a retired journalist. She used to work for the Houston Chronicle back when people still got all their news from the paper.”
“The real estate agent told me that this was a quiet place to live. I chose it mostly because it’s close to my daughter’s school. Scottsdale Academy?”
“Yeah? Your daughter must be super bright if she’s going there.”
“She is,” I said, pride dripping from my words. “Aced the entrance exam in less than two hours.”
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“It is.”
I turned back to the contents of the truck, wondering if we’d be able to get it emptied before dark. I really didn’t want to be out here at all hours. I longed for a nice hot bath…I had this new package of bath salts that I hadn’t had a chance to try out just yet. And the bathtub up in the master bedroom was deep and wide enough to fit a whole family, the jets a joy I’d been looking forward to since I first saw this place. But we’d barely begun, and it was already early afternoon.
“Would you like some help? I don’t have anything else to do today.”
“You really don’t have to.”
“No, I want to. What else are neighbors for?”
I smiled. “Yeah? It that would actually be great. My daughter and I…I think we bit off a little more than we can chew with this move.”
“No problem.”
She jumped right in, grabbing a couple of heavy boxes off of a pile as if they weighed nothing.
“Well, alright.”
I loaded up the hand truck and followed her into the house, directing her to the appropriate rooms for the boxes she had. Before I knew it, we had the truck nearly empty and she was offering suggestions for where to place the furniture. When we were done, I ordered pizza—a rare treat—and we sat around the table, sharing a bottle of red wine.
I surveyed the kitchen, loving the marble countertops and the unspoiled laminate flooring. It was so much better than the place we were renting back in Austin. I made good money—very good money—but we were saving so that we could buy a house without owing on a mortgage. This was it. And it was beautiful, the perfect house for a little girl to grow up in. Olivia seemed okay with it, though she was worrying about the friends she’d left behind in Austin. At ten, she was already acting like a teenager, glued to the screen of her cell phone or her iPad at any given moment. Right now, she was texting a couple of girls she swore this week were her best friends, even though last week they’d been her mortal enemies. I almost couldn’t keep up.
“You’ll make good friends at school,” Beth assured her. “Friends that you will have all your life.”
“I had friends. I don’t know why we had to move all the way down here.”
“I told you, the school is better here. And the job market.”
“You had a good job.”
“Yeah, well…”
“That’s okay,” Beth said, glancing at me. “We’ll all be the best of friends before you know it. Then you’ll barely remember your life back there.”
Olivia snorted, but I found myself hoping she was right. I could use a few friends, a good job, and a normal life. God knew I’d fought hard enough for it.
Look at me now, Momma. I told you I’d survive.
Chapter 1
Megan
I could hear laughter before I stepped out of my office door. You’d think this was a playground instead of a place of business. And business was good. We’d had to expand our staff twice in the last few months, hiring three new assets, four new monitors, two new secretaries, and a new researcher to help run the background checks that were coming in—twenty, thirty each day.
Peter would be proud. He would tell me that it was all me, that I’d done this. And he’d only be partially right. I couldn’t have done it without his support. Or without my fiancé, Luke. Or my best friend, Sam.
But only Sam was left now.
I gathered the paperwork I needed for this meeting and flipped out the light, kicking the door closed with my heel.
“Okay, people! Let’s try to pretend we’re professionals and this is a normal work day, alright?”
Sam was blushing, tugging at the edges of the sweater she was wearing. I didn’t even have to ask. Hayden was teas
ing her again because—despite being one of the most beautiful women I’d ever known—she tended to dress rather conservative. And when I say conservative, I meant she dressed like the church lady from those old Saturday Night Live skits with Dana Carvey. It wasn’t her fault, really. Her mother was ultra-conservative, and Sam found it difficult not to hear her mother’s voice in the back of her mind when she got dressed every morning. At least she didn’t wear turtlenecks anymore.
They slowly settled down, gathering around the desks at the side of the room. Hayden Dubois, my best agent, despite his ongoing flirtation with every girl in the place, sat on the edge of one of the desks, making the poor girl to whom the desk belonged blush when he winked at her. Dominic Gil, my most volatile asset, was leaning against the wall, a pair of sunglasses perched on the end of his nose. He was out pretty late working a case and he wasn’t pleased that I’d asked him to hang around for this meeting. Marcus Hanson and Vincent Caplin, my two most recent hires, were seated at the small conference table right in front of me, like A-students eagerly awaiting their next assignment. And Dante Saladin stood alone in the center of the room, his legs slightly spread, his arms crossed over his chest, looking very much like the cop he once was.
I found myself watching Dante, wondering about this man who reminded me so much of the fiancé who left me the morning of our wedding. The face was totally wrong, but there was something about the way he held himself, the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t aware of him. And his voice…it sent chills up and down my spine every time I heard his voice unexpectedly because he sounded so much like Luke. I shouldn’t have hired him. I knew this would happen, that I would be haunted by the similarities. But he was smart, loyal, and he did his job as well as or better than all these other men put together. What else could I do?
“Okay. We need to go over a little bit of company policy. You guys tend to be a little lax with your paperwork, and that’s not going to fly. As I’m sure most of you realize, there is a lot of regulation when it comes to this type of business. I can’t answer to the lawmakers if I don’t have the proper paperwork turned in on time. And you know who I’m talking about…”
A couple of guys, including Hayden, looked over at Dominic. He pushed his sunglasses higher up on his nose and leaned his head against the wall.
“So, if you could try to do that, I’d be very grateful.”
I glanced at my notes. “We’ve also had problems with the expense reports. Please make sure you have all your receipts. If you don’t have a receipt, don’t bother asking for a reimbursement.”
There were a few groans, especially from Marcus.
“Finally, you’re all getting a pay raise.”
That created a stir. Even Dominic pulled away from the wall and lowered his sunglasses to look at me. I waved my hands to get their attention.
“It wasn’t me. You should thank Sam. She’s the one who found the funds.”
“Thanks, Sam!”
“Yeah, Sam!”
She began to blush so hard that I thought the little veins in her head might explode. And then Hayden got up and wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her high into the air and kissing her cheek.
I was pretty sure she was going to pass out.
“Okay, guys! Get to work. Go earn that raise.”
I watched them file out, Hayden laughing as he slipped out the front door with Dominic. He was headed out to do a little more digging into a case we’d been working together on the side for a little less than a year. Things went cold six months ago when a couple of key witnesses were arrested for their part in some sort of terrorist plot. But we were still looking, still trying to figure out how my brother, Peter, managed to get himself killed almost two years ago. It was a car accident, but it wasn’t just an accident. I needed to know what happened, and Hayden was doing his best to help. He’d gotten some sort of lead from a friend of a friend that he was going to check out today. I could only hope something panned out.
“Vincent?”
The tall, quiet man I’d hired less than two weeks ago slowly unfolded himself from his chair and sauntered over to where I was. I gestured for him to follow and led the way to my office.
I was a little weary of new hires. Not all qualified applicants always fit in with this kind of work. I needed guys who could be tough and who weren’t afraid to use a gun when necessary, but also guys who knew when to be diplomatic. I could usually read a guy the moment I walked into a room with him, but Vincent was a little different. He was quiet all the time, almost detached. Not a bad thing when acting as a highly trained, highly efficient bodyguard. But it could be a bad thing when dealing with the clients themselves. But he had all the right qualifications. And he was a buddy of my brother, Cole. So…I hired him and put him on a couple of larger jobs, ones he worked with Hayden, then Dominic. He seemed competent, but that sort of work was different than working a case that was more intimate, more one-on-one with the client.
It was time to test Vincent out in a real situation.
“I’ve got a new case for you.”
He didn’t say a word. Didn’t even grunt.
I sat behind my desk and opened the file folder Sam had handed me this morning, the client’s information typed out neatly in front of me. I really didn’t need this though. I’d met with this client myself. Normally, we had all potential clients go through a screening process, but this case was…well, sensitive. Sam brought it straight to my attention in order to treat it with some delicacy.
“We have a client, a woman who owns her own business, with a small child. She’s being harassed by an unknown person.” I pulled a letter paper clipped to the file and handed it to Vincent. He took it, his warm, chocolate-colored eyes moving quickly over the typed words. “She believes that this person knows where she lives, where her child goes to school, and where they do the majority of their shopping. For this reason, she thinks they might be in danger of a physical attack.”
Vincent set the letter on my desk.
“I need you to go stay with her for a couple of days, take her kid to school, take her to work. Keep an eye out for anyone in her life who might be acting oddly.”
Vincent stood in front of my desk, towering over it and me in a way that might be intimidating if I wasn’t used to being surrounded by big, tough men. Or if I hadn’t been in the military myself, fighting alongside men like Vincent in Afghanistan. He didn’t intimidate me. He aroused my curiosity.
What made a man like him—tall, strong, Hollywood hunk gorgeous—so quiet? Not even Sam, who could make the Pope open up on all his dark secrets, could get Vincent to say more than two or three polite words to her. I read through his military records. He’d distinguished himself in Afghanistan, earned the bronze star twice and had three purple hearts. And everything Cole told me about him was pretty impressive.
He simply didn’t talk.
“This is likely just a run of the mill stalker case, but we need to be especially vigilant because there’s a child involved. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I nodded, my eyes moving slowly over him. He had dark hair that he still kept military style, but he’d relaxed a little on the whole facial hair thing. He had a five-o’clock-shadow thing going on that made his rugged jawline seem even more rugged. And those dark eyes…they seemed to look right through you. In a way, he reminded me of Sylvester Stallone, back in the day when he was doing those Rambo movies. Only less Philadelphia and more Los Angeles.
Tall, dark, and silent. What a cliché.
I closed the file and handed it over to him. “She’s expecting you at the address on the folder.”
Vincent inclined his head and turned toward the door.
“There’s one other thing, Vincent.”
He paused, his shoulders doing this little flex before he turned to regard me with those dark eyes again.
“This client…she’s a porn star.”
If that idea offended him—or excited him,
which was the very reason I wasn’t giving this case to Dominic—it didn’t show. He bowed his head just slightly and left.
I really hoped I wasn’t making a mistake with this one.
Quinn Smith seemed like a really nice lady. And her daughter, Olivia, attended the same private school I went to at her age. I really didn’t want anything to happen to either of them.
Chapter 2
Quinn
I tugged the bathrobe closer to my chest, as I watched the last scene unfold on the tiny camera screen.
“We need more close-ups. You remember what they said about the last one.”
“Yeah,” Coleman, my cameraman said. “But it’s hard to get close-ups when our male lead had a big ass pimple on his upper thigh.”
I shuddered a little. I was the one who had to get up close and personal with that pimple, so I knew better than Coleman did. But I wasn’t about to bad mouth one of the biggest names in foot fetish videos when he was within earshot.
“Just do the best you can. Maybe Rita can do something about it.”
“She tried. Short of popping it…and he won’t let her do it. Says it’ll leave a scar.”
“God forbid.”
I went back to the set, sitting on the edge of the bed. This was better than some of the videos I did at the beginning of my career, but having creative control didn’t mean I didn’t still have to get very intimate with guys I barely knew or, like this video, a man I couldn’t stand. Dicky Hump—whose real name was a boring Rufus Green—thought he was God’s gift to the porn industry and all women and that he’d invented the whole foot fetish genre. No one could possibly convince him otherwise, although many tried. But, as long as he had a long, thick cock and he was willing to stick it places other actors balked at, he usually got what he wanted.
Susie, my makeup artist, came over and touched up the body makeup that’d gotten smeared with the last take.
“You’ll want to wash this stuff off as soon as you get home. Wouldn’t want you to get pimples, too.”
VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2) Page 1
