VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2)

by Glenna Sinclair

  He’d said that this could be good for me and that this could take me out of my own head and make me stop blaming myself for an accident that was simply that: an accident. And he was probably right. But I didn’t think that any job could ever make me stop blaming myself for what happened to Syd.

  We shouldn’t have been drinking. And I really shouldn’t have allowed her to take the keys to the truck. And I really, really shouldn’t have reached over and touched the wheel while she was negotiating those curves…

  I couldn’t stop seeing it happen over and over again. Even now, even in this strange woman’s house, it played itself out in my head until I had to get up and move so that I could stay a step ahead of my demons.

  I went downstairs, but stopped when I caught sight of Quinn sitting at the kitchen table, a mug between her hands.

  What demons was she trying to outrun?

  Chapter 4

  Megan

  I was still at the office close to midnight, finishing up paperwork. Since I had yelled at my people for not doing their paperwork, I thought I should get mine caught up, too. I was also waiting for Hayden, half-hoping he might have some good news for me for once.

  I shouldn’t have held my breath.

  He tapped on my door just as I was putting the last form in the last folder.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Tell me you have something.”

  He shook his head ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m sorry. My friend…he looked at the police report, but it’s been too long. Even the test we had done on the paint scrapes…he said a Chevy Suburban is just too generic. There are too many of them out there to trace back to any one person. Especially black. There’s nothing more he could tell us except that he agrees that it wasn’t an accident.”

  Disappointment burned through me. I leaned back in my chair and regarded Hayden, annoyed by the sympathy I could see in his eyes.

  “Okay. So we regroup and go at it another way.”

  “I really think we’ve done all we can for now, Megan. If some new evidence were to come to light…”

  I nodded. “Is that your way of telling me that you’re ready to move on to something else?”

  “Of course not. I’m just trying to be realistic.”

  I stood up, slamming a file cabinet door with my hip. “Are you saying that I’m not being realistic?”

  “Megan—”

  “Don’t patronize me, Hayden.”

  “I’m not.” He grabbed my shoulders as I tried to move around him. “I know this is important to you. I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t have high expectations.”

  “Go to hell!”

  I shook his hands off and moved around him, surprised to find Dante leaning against a desk just outside my office, curiosity hard to ignore in his eyes.

  “Megan, please don’t,” Hayden said, following me out of the office.

  I spun on my heel and pressed a finger into his chest.

  “You do what you want to do. Okay? But this is my brother. This is my family. I don’t know about you, but family is fucking important to me. I don’t care about being realistic or having high expectations. I’m going to find out what happened with or without your help. Got it?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  I spun back around and pointed a finger at Dante.

  “Go home and mind your own business.”

  I marched out of there, aware that I was overreacting, but not really caring. I was tired, and I was frustrated, and I missed my brother and Luke…why did he have to leave me? Why couldn’t he come find me now? He’d left that note…

  Why did it feel like my life was unraveling a piece at a time, and it all began when Luke, my fiancé and the love of my life, left me at the altar two years ago?

  I needed a drink. That’s what it was.

  “Sam? Can you come over? I have this lovely bottle of wine…”

  Chapter 5

  Quinn

  I was mostly behind the camera today, watching over Coleman’s shoulder as he shot footage of another actress and the hot new hunk we managed to steal away from another production company. This footage was more BDSM than foot fetish, though she did use her foot in some very interesting ways. The final few scenes were due to the editors this weekend. The hunk was pretty hot. Tall and blond and looking pretty good once Susie did her magic with the body makeup and a little bit of baby oil. Almost as hot as the girl in the leather bustier and zippered mask.

  I was hyper aware of Vincent standing by the door, practically patting down everyone who came and went. Most of my production staff was aware of the threats I’d gotten, but some of the actors and their people were clearly annoyed by his attention. Everyone, that was, but this redhead who came with the hunk. She was hanging out by the door, talking to him about God knows what, twirling her hair and licking her lips like he was an ice cream sundae she couldn’t wait to devour.

  “Dragon boy seems to be having fun,” Susie said near my ear.

  I looked over just in time to see the redhead lean in and whisper something close to his ear. He didn’t acknowledge her, even when she touched his arm and continued to whisper. He actually glanced over at me, then shook her off, moving slightly to the left. The redhead seemed a little confused by his movement, but then she got the message and walked off.

  “He seems a little…” I didn’t know the word for it.

  “Aloof,” Susie supplied for me.

  I nodded. “He doesn’t talk much. But he seems to like Olivia. He had a whole conversation about Disney princesses with her at breakfast. She seemed to enjoy educating a man on that sort of thing.”

  Susie looked hard at me. “And Mom? Did she enjoy spending the evening alone with a man?”

  I knew I was blushing; I knew that Susie and Coleman were both taking special interest in my answer. But there was really nothing to tell.

  “He told me the rules of this arrangement, and then we both went to bed.” I brushed a piece of hair out of my face as I turned back to finish watching the last scene we’d filmed. “It’s not like this is some great romantic movie. I’m not Whitney Houston, and he’s not Kevin Costner.”

  “No,” Susie agreed. “He’s much better looking.”

  I gave her a look, and she laughed as she walked away. Somehow I found myself looking at Vincent when I had been watching Susie walk back to the dressing rooms. He was just standing there, looking completely bored out of his mind. But there was something about the intensity of his seemingly distracted gaze that told me he wasn’t bored. He was paying close attention to everything that was going on around him.

  He was…I would have to be blind to say he wasn’t good looking. He was impossibly good looking. The way his chest stretched out the front of that t-shirt was making my thoughts wander over the mountains and valleys that weren’t mine to think about. And those eyes…there was just something about them that made my body ache in places it never really had before. But he was distant. Detached. That was something I wanted to change. I didn’t know how and didn’t know why, but I wanted to draw him out. I wanted to hear that deep voice a little more; I wanted to know his story.

  I told myself that when this whole thing was over, he’d be gone and I’d never see him again. But I couldn’t help myself.

  ***

  Lunch was brought in by a caterer downtown and set out on tables at the front of the studio. I grabbed a plate, picking and choosing from the meats and vegetables provided, not sure if I was really hungry or if I was just ready to sit alone in my office for a little while and forget everything that had been happening in my life.

  The production staff swarmed the table behind me, all laughing and joking with each other. A lot of them I’d hired after we arrived in Houston. Some were college students hoping to get real life experience with film. Others were veterans of the porn industry I’d found through contacts back in Austin. They got along like brothers and sisters, though, usually happy to see each other, but occasion
ally fights broke out that had to be moderated. Today wasn’t one of those days, I was glad to see.

  I snuck away and settled on the long, microfiber couch in my office, sighing as every muscle that had tightened under the strain of trying to get a day’s worth of filming done on shorten schedule slowly began to relax. I set my plate on the couch beside me and closed my eyes for a second, trying not to think about how much was left to do before Vincent insisted we call it a day at three.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  I opened my eyes, a little surprised to see Vincent, a plate in his hands, at the door.

  “Um…of course not.”

  He came inside and grabbed a chair, straddling it backwards. He dug into his food, wrapping a piece of ham around a chunk of cheddar cheese and popping the whole thing into his mouth.

  “Sorry about the rabbit food,” I said. “Most of the actors we work with are on strict diets and we try to comply with the food we provide.”

  “No problem. I’m always happy with anything that’s edible.”

  “Must make things easy for your wife or girlfriend.”

  He glanced at me. “I’m single.”

  “Yeah?” I couldn’t help the little titter of my heart at that idea. “Have you always lived in Houston?”

  “No. I’ve only been here a couple of months.”

  “Where are you from?”

  He glanced at me, those dark eyes almost boring through me. “You just moved to Houston, didn’t you?”

  “Almost three months ago.”

  “Why?”

  I picked up my own plate and picked at the sliced carrots I’d chosen. He wasn’t going to make this easy, was he?

  “I made it known that I wanted to start my own production company, and the people I was working for, they didn’t really like that idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was making too much money for them. They wanted to keep me in front of the camera. But my contract was up and I was ready to get out of there, so they blackballed me. One of the producers even threatened to out me.”

  “Really? He wanted to make your real name public?”

  “Not only that, but he apparently had some footage of my face from a movie we’d done some time ago and he threatened to put that out on the internet if I didn’t resign with his company.”

  “Did he?”

  “No. I threatened to tell his wife that he was sleeping with half of the women who acted in his movies. That shut him up.” I took a bite of carrot, chewing it thoughtfully. “Then I paid them a significant amount of money under a deal that got me out of any more obligations I might owe them outside of my contract and forced them to promise not to bad mouth my new production company within the industry.”

  “Seems a little unethical on their part.”

  “Everything about this industry is a little unethical.”

  He was quiet for a minute, playing with a piece of meat on his plate.

  “Does it ever bother you?” he finally asked, those eyes coming up to my face. “Have you ever considered getting out of this industry?”

  That was something I’d been thinking about since the first movie I did. I wanted out. I wanted a respectable life for my daughter. I wanted to do something I could talk to her about, maybe even show her one day. But there was a thin line between want and need. We needed money. We needed health insurance and a roof over our heads. This industry paid for that.

  “I’m trying to retire from the acting part of it. And the rest…I’d like to transition into mainstream movies, but it’s a difficult market to break into when I can’t tell anyone what my past experience is, you know?”

  He nodded as though he agreed with my assessment of my situation. But then he looked me in the eye and asked, “What does Olivia’s father think of all this?”

  I snorted. “Olivia’s biological father was an alcoholic who didn’t know how to control himself. His biggest problem in life was deciding whose bed to go to when he was horny: his new wife’s—who wouldn’t kick him out now that she’d finally got that ring on her finger because she was tired of working for a living—or his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter’s room down the hall.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vincent said, a spark of something—anger, maybe—flashing in his eyes.

  I shrugged. “It’s a familiar story in this industry, you know. We’re all damaged in some way.”

  “Is that why?”

  “My mother kicked me out when she realized I was pregnant, and he just stood there and watched. I ended up in a homeless shelter for a couple months until I could get a job and a room. But it was never enough. I didn’t have a high school diploma; I didn’t have the life experience to survive. If I hadn’t been approached by a producer to do one of these movies, we probably would have ended up a statistic, another dead teen mom and her baby, a headline to make some middle-aged housewife sad for a minute before she went back to her latté and her aerobics class.”

  He was watching me, and I waited to see pity on his face, in those expressive eyes, but I didn’t. Curiosity. Anger. Surprise. But no pity. I liked that.

  “So, that’s my story. What’s yours?”

  His eyes fell to his plate, his fingers picking at the corner of a piece of ham. “There’s not much to it, really,” he said after a minute. “Grew up in San Diego. My parents still live there. They still live in the house I grew up in with my brother and three sisters.”

  “The Marines?”

  He shrugged. “I got myself into a little trouble after high school. The judge said it was either jail or the Marines, so I went into the Marines, served my time, and got out about a year ago. I bummed around for a while, then got a call from a friend telling me his sister’s security firm was hiring and I should come check it out.”

  “Sounds like a good friend.”

  “We saved each other’s lives a few time over there,” he said so casual, like he was commenting on the weather.

  “You served in Afghanistan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Must have been tough.”

  He shrugged, shoving a piece of meat into his mouth as though he were trying to end the conversation without really saying it. Then he sat up and dumped the entire plate, most of his meat and cheese, into the trash.

  “I should go walk the perimeter. Stay in here, please.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched him go, wondering why he was so distant. Had something bad happened to him? Or was it something like gangs, drugs, that sort of street life? I remembered what it was like trying to avoid that sort of thing in the neighborhoods I was forced to live in before the money for the movies began pouring in. There were prostitutes and gang bangers on every corner, making it impossible to come and go after dark most nights. Was that the kind of life he escaped when he went into the Marines? Or was it something simpler?

  My mind went to dark places just because…I don’t know. He didn’t give off that vibe of a middle-class kid who got caught drunk driving. But maybe it was something that simple. I knew absolutely nothing about him—except that the security firm he worked for had a stellar reputation. Surely they vetted him. And if he was a friend of the owner’s brother, he couldn’t be that bad, right?

  I’d let this man into my house. Close to my child. I wanted to know about him.

  At least…that’s what I told myself.

  ***

  We managed to finish just about everything we’d needed to do today. It was a little rushed and some of the scenes could have been done a little better, but it was okay. I gave Coleman the green light to send the dailies over to the editor to see what they could do with them. Another movie wrapped up—and another set to begin first thing Monday morning.

  I stared out the window of the SUV as we drove to Olivia’s school, thinking about the long weekend that stretched out in front of us.

  “I don’t suppose we could take Olivia to the science museum tomorrow, could we?”

  “It’s a little too public
.”

  I’d figured that, but I’d promised her weeks ago that we would go. And this was the first weekend in months I didn’t need to do some sort of work.

  “What about the movies or something like that?”

  Vincent shook his head. “Sorry. We should stick around the house this weekend.”

  We pulled up to the school just as the bell rang and the line of cars waiting to pick up kids began to move. I opened my door while we were still moving, waving to Olivia where she was standing at the front of the school with the rest of her class.

  “Don’t do that!”

  Vincent leaned over and snatched the door handle, yanking it closed almost before I could fall back against my seat.

  “I was just—”

  “We don’t know where your stalker might be. He could show up just about anywhere, especially a place he already knows you visit at a specific time every day.”

  “This is my child’s school!”

  “Yeah. What a perfect place to set a sniper on the roof and take you out before anyone even notices.”

  That thought sent a cold chill down my spine. I kind of sank down into myself, staring down at my hands. Vincent reached over and touched my arm lightly to get my attention.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a little softer. “I just…don’t do that again.”

  He pulled to the curb and got out of the car, walking around to escort Olivia to the back door. She jumped inside, innocent excitement bursting from her entire, slight body.

  “Mommy! We’re going to have a concert for choir! Isn’t that the coolest thing?”

  “When?”

  “Next month. And Miss Franks said that I might be able to sing a solo! That means I get to sing all by myself in front of everybody.”

  “That’s pretty cool, baby,” I said, twisting around so that I could see her face. “What song are you going to sing?”

  “Candle on the Water. It’s from this movie we saw last week, Pete’s Dragon.”

  “I know. That used to be one of my most favorite songs.”

  “Really? It’s really a good song, Mommy.”