RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1)

by Celina McKane

  “What are you going to do when he decides to turn on you, Granny? You ought to at least use a more lethal weapon than a broom.”

  She cackled out her Granny laugh and said, “That old broom has chased off more than one critter in its time. It’ll do. Did you need something, cher?”

  I had forgotten why I called. “Yeah, I’m not going to be able to come out for a couple of weeks. I have to work fulltime on this kidnapping thing while Blake is out of town. I was thinking about asking Mrs. Olsen to check on you.”

  “What do I need to be checked on for?”

  I smiled. “I just want to make sure you’re okay, Granny.”

  “And who’s gonna make sure you’re okay, cher?”

  “I’m a big boy.”

  “And I raised you up. You forget that I been lookin’ after myself since before you were a swimmer in your daddy’s…”

  “Okay, Granny, I get it. You’ll call me though if you need anything, right?”

  “I will, and you do the same.”

  “I love you, Granny.”

  “Je t'aime, chéri.”

  ********

  I spent the next week at the mansion getting to know both Alicia and Celia’s schedule. Most of the time, it was kind of fun. Celia and I were beginning to understand each other a little better, and I was finding out every day that there was a lot more to Alicia than a pretty face and model body. She continuously amazed me with the baby, and she treated everyone she met with respect. When Celia took a nap, Alicia and I would share a meal or just sit and talk. She told me a lot about growing up in Russia. I found out through those conversations that she was born in Georgia and lived there most of her life but moved to Moscow as a teenager. Her father split when she was only two years old and her mother was rarely home. Her older brothers took on the role of her parents. She said they were tough on her, but she seemed grateful to have had them, considering her alternatives were a single, middle-aged prostitute and an absent father.

  Alicia’s days off were Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I didn’t like it when she was gone, not only because I missed her, but because Celia was not happy with Ezra, the girl that worked as her replacement. The baby did a lot of crying, and I took to picking her up and walking with her or playing with her just to get her to stop. Ezra took care of her basic needs, but her maternal instincts were nowhere near matching Alicia’s.

  I was relieved when Alicia was back on Thursday. I only got to see her for a few minutes before Leif came to relieve me for a few hours. Granny wasn’t answering her phone again, and I hadn’t been able to get ahold of anyone else to check on her.

  I had visions of Ol’ Sly eating her dancing in my head.

  As soon as I got to Granny’s, she fixed me a plate of shrimp étouffe and served it with a slab of cornbread the size of a brick. “Eat, cher.”

  I picked up my fork and took a bite of the delicious stew. After I’d chewed it and washed it down with some of Granny’s sweet tea, I asked her, “Granny, will you please turn on your phone and answer it when I call?” She only gave me a non-committal shrug. Sometimes I wondered if my grandfather had been a saint. I’ll just bet she was hell on wheels when she was younger. Resigned to not getting a straight answer about that, I said, “Has Ol’ Sly been leaving you alone?”

  She laughed and said, “I spect that depends on your idea of bein’ left alone.”

  Laughing cautiously I said, “What does that mean, Granny?”

  “He come round from time ta time.”

  “And when he comes around, you come inside, right?”

  “That depend on what I got ta do round here.”

  “Granny, that gator is gonna turn on you one of these days.”

  She waved an old palm at me and said, “Eat, cher.” I rolled my eyes and took another bite. “Ain’t no gator gonna wanna eat all dis ol’ white meat. I spoke ta Blake.”

  She was a master at changing the subject too, but this one I was interested in.

  “When was this?”

  “Before he left ta Cali, he come by. We had some gumbo and talked a while.”

  “How did that go?”

  “He’s fighting some demons, cher. He has to do that in his own way, and all we can do is be here for him when he wants us.”

  It was unlike my Granny to take such a passive stance. Knowing there was more to it, I said, “What kind of good gris-gris did you send him away with?”

  A gris-gris is a spell, and Granny has hundreds of them. She believes in the old Creole magic her ancestors claimed to possess, and even though Blake doesn’t, I’d be willing to bet he took whatever she gave him and didn’t argue. Nobody argued with Granny.

  She grinned and said, “Jus a lil’ dime to wear around his neck and ward off the evil spirits.”

  I laughed simply at the thought of my giant, grumpy friend wearing a dime with a hole drilled through it on a string around his neck. I was surprised that Granny hadn’t just given him a mirror to put outside his front door. She has one outside of hers, and I have one outside of mine to appease her.

  According to Creole legend, M’su Diable (the devil) is very vain and so enchanted with his own appearance that a mirror outside the door will distract him so much he’ll forget to go inside.

  Granny and I spent the rest of my visit talking about some work I was planning on doing to her house as soon as I got a break from work and her telling me all of the community gossip. I got back to the mansion just in time to send Leif home and find Alicia getting the baby ready for bed. Celia was dressed in a pair of fuzzy pink pajamas, and Alicia was holding her to her chest and rocking her to sleep. She had her eyes closed, too, and a pretty smile on her face.

  I stood at the door for a few minutes watching them. There was no denying the love Alicia had for that baby. If she had any connection to these kidnappers, I was sure that she didn’t know it. I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything to hurt Celia or anyone else for that matter. She was one of those people who seemed to be made for motherhood. I wasn’t sure why that affected me so deeply. I’d not only never had a mother I’d never even considered having kids.

  I tore myself away and slipped across the hall quietly to my own room. The Bransons had both been out when I came in, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t necessarily eager to see either one of them. Matt was still angry about Blake being in L.A. to speak with Belinda, the baby mama, and Julia just rubbed me wrong all the way around. The less contact I had with either of them, the better, I thought.

  I left word at the front gate when I came through that I was back if they needed me, and when I got to my room, I tuned my radio into the station they were using for private communication. I lay down on the bed and stretched out. This was one of the least physically challenging cases I’d ever had, but mentally, I was exhausted.

  It was worse not having any leads than it was when you had a dozen. My mind just couldn’t shut off. I was constantly going over different theories and scenarios. Then there were the feelings I had for Alicia. Each day that passed they got stronger. I was constantly warring with myself over that as well.

  I’d just closed my eyes when I heard something outside my door. I opened them and saw Alicia. I guess it was her turn to watch me. I liked it, but I wasn’t sure I liked what the idea of that did to my body.

  “Hey.” I pushed myself up so my back was against the headboard.

  “Hi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes. Is the little imp down for the night?”

  She smiled and held up the baby monitor. “For now at least,” she said with a smile.

  “Would you like to come in and sit for a while?”

  “Okay, for just a minute.” She came into the room, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She sat a couple of feet away from me, and folding her hands in her lap, she asked, “Did you have a good visit with your grandmother?”

  I smiled. “Yes, there’s really no such thing as a
bad visit with Granny.”

  Laughing, she said, “From what you’ve told me about her so far, I can see how that would be true. She sounds really interesting. Is she still fighting alligators?” I had told her about the episode with Granny’s broom and Ol’ Sly during one of our talks. Once, she’d gotten over the shock of it, she’d laughed until she had tears in her eyes, as I imitated Granny’s accent and repeated the last conversation we had about it.

  “Just the one,” I said with a grin. “Did you know your grandparents?”

  I instantly regretted the question. Her eyes clouded over, and she said, “No, unfortunately I never met them.” I’d found that when it came to her past where her brothers were concerned, she was pretty forthcoming. But with all other aspects of her life, she was hesitant to share. Changing the subject back to me, she said, “Have you lived in New Orleans your whole life?”

  “Not in New Orleans but close. I’m from Houma out in the Terrebonne Parish where Granny still lives. Have you ever been there?”

  She shook her head.

  I said, “There’s not much to see where I come from. I grew up right along the swamp in the house Granny still lives in.”

  “And you weren’t scared of the alligators either?”

  “Not for the most part. I mean, if I came up on one face to face, he might scare me, unless I had Granny’s broom.” She giggled, and I said, “Granny has lived out there for so long that it’s made her believe she’s invincible, I think.”

  “Invincible?”

  “Like she’ll live forever,” I told her.

  “Oh, I guess that could be a dangerous way to think.”

  “Yeah, when it comes to gators, I’d have to agree. She has this idea that if something or someone is going to hurt her, she’ll get a feeling about them before they have a chance.”

  “She’s superstitious then?”

  I thought about Blake and the dime.

  “Yeah, very.”

  “She sounds like a lot of fun,” she said sincerely.

  I nodded and said, “That, she is.”

  “Is she your only family?”

  I thought about my mother. I don’t often wonder where she is, but that’s usually because I avoid thinking about her. “Yeah, she’s all that’s left.”

  “When I was a girl, I often wished I didn’t have so much family.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I can imagine. With four brothers, even going out on a date must have been a chore.”

  “It might have been, but we were too busy worrying about things like survival to go out on dates. My brothers were involved with some…shady people by the time they were grown, just from being forced out to the streets in order to survive. I was the youngest, so they did what they could to make sure I was taken care of.”

  “So what about when you moved from Georgia to Moscow?”

  I saw her visibly tense.

  “What about it?”

  “Were your brothers still heavily involved in your life?”

  “Yes,” she said, simply. Standing up she said, “I think I’m going to call it a night, Ryder.”

  I stood up, too. Damn, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted this case to be over so I could fall asleep at night in my own bed knowing that baby was safe, and so I could kiss Alicia. I got the feeling she wouldn’t object.

  “Ryder, you know that I wouldn’t knowingly do anything that put Celia in danger, right?”

  I thought that was an odd statement, considering we weren’t even talking about the case. “I know that.” I did believe that. It was just a feeling I had in my gut. I did hope the feelings I had about her in other parts of my body weren’t getting in the way of that. “When I talk to you about your family, that’s just because I really want to know more about you. When I ask you questions about the Bransons, your connections with them, and your possible connections to the men trying to take Celia, that’s my job. I hope you understand that it doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. I just have to be sure everyone that is near to that baby is being completely honest about everything.”

  “I’m not the one you need to protect her from.”

  “I believe that, but I need you to believe that in my job, the more information you have, the better.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I don’t have anything to hide. Good night, Ryder.”

  My gut told me she had plenty to hide. My heart was trying to override it. “Good night, Alicia.”

  I watched her go, and after trying to relax for a while and being unable to, I pulled out my tablet and signed into the file Blake had on the house staff. I pulled up Alicia’s file and began to read:

  NAME: AISHE “ALICIA” MELUA-RAPAVA

  AGE: 24

  OCCUPATION: NANNY

  MARITAL STATUS: DIVORCED

  Divorced? In all of the time we’ve talked, she hasn’t mentioned an ex-husband at all. It only fed my notions that she did in fact have a few things she wanted to hide. She’d been in the states for almost two years. That would make her married and divorced by the age of twenty-two. I wondered how old she’d been when she married and if that was why she’d moved from Georgia to Moscow. I skimmed through the part that listed out a few jobs she’d had working as a caretaker for children, and at one point, for about a year, she worked in a nightclub. It didn’t say what her job title was there, but it was owned by an “Abel Rapava,” her ex-husband. She didn’t have any type of criminal record, which was good, but the next page was a list of her family members and known associates, and they had plenty.

  FAMILY:

  MOTHER: EKATARINE MELUA

  AGE: 44

  OCCUPATION: NONE LISTED

  MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE

  Mom had a list of arrests almost as long as my arm, and that was pretty damned long. Solicitation, felony drug charges, public intoxication, indecent exposure…it went on and on. I felt pretty lucky I’d never met my mother at that point.

  FATHER: UNKNOWN

  BROTHER: DAVIT MELUA

  AGE: 30

  OCCUPATION: NONE LISTED

  MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE

  Davit had arrests for armed robbery, illegal weapons, drug trafficking…currently incarcerated and serving a ten-year sentence for assault. Damn! I looked back up at Mom’s age. She was fourteen when she had him. I guess that might explain some of her problems, unless that was a symptom of them as well.

  BROTHER: DANIEL MELUA

  AGE: 29

  OCCUPATION: BRICK LAYER

  MARITAL STATUS: WIDOWED

  Daniel had only been arrested twice. One time he was arrested for assault and served two years in prison. The other time he was arrested for drug trafficking. Blake added a note in red out in the margin about his wife’s death being investigated as “suspicious.” The third brother’s records looked about the same. I skimmed through those, and when I got to brother number four, I stumbled across another one of those things Alicia hadn’t mentioned. Her youngest brother—Aleks—is two years older than her, and he currently lives in the United States. He left Moscow and came over on a student visa when he was twenty-one. He’s an environmental engineer, and he’s working in the research department at Ole Miss and living in Mississippi in a town only about an hour away. Yesterday I wondered where she went on her days off, and I’d casually asked her something about it when she got back. She’d done what she often does and quickly changed the subject, never really giving me an answer. It had made me wonder if she had a boyfriend. I wonder now if she was with her brother, but why would she want to hide that? The file also said that he is currently in the process of obtaining his legal citizenship, and unlike his other brothers, he has no criminal record. Why wouldn’t Alicia want me to know she was visiting her brother if that was, in fact, the case? It would make sense that was where she stayed on her days off. He lives in Gulfport, Mississippi. That’s only about an hour drive from where we sat now. Maybe I’d rather believe she was keeping things from me than that she had a boyfriend.

  I made a ment
al note of several questions I wanted to ask her about her brother and moved on to what I was suddenly most interested in, the ex-husband. This guy sounded like a real piece of work. First of all, his age is listed at forty-two. I had to wonder if Alicia married him willingly, or if it was some kind of arranged thing as I read on. His name is Abel Rapava, and he’s a successful union organizer amongst agricultural workers. His practices have been watched closely by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Georgia for over a decade because of multiple disappearances and suspicious deaths of protestors and the whiff of bribes in high places. No charges brought against him have ever stuck, so his record is clean, but it sounded to me like he used his money to clean it up. The file also listed him as the employer for two of Alicia's brothers, which is what led me to wonder if maybe the marriage was arranged or at least strongly suggested by her family.

  Blake left a note in the margin of this one that said the divorce was handled privately, and the details of it were “sealed” by the court and not a matter of public record. I wasn’t sure if that was simply the way they did things in Moscow, or once again, if there was something there that Alicia and her family were trying to hide.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RYDER

  I didn’t sleep much although the radio was quiet all night. I couldn’t stop thinking about Alicia and her possible connection to all of this. I spent most of the night online doing research. I didn’t find anything that Blake hadn’t already, and I wasn’t sure what I was even looking for, but my gut was telling me there was something we were missing. My plan was to call Blake as soon as the sun came up and find out what his thoughts were on the ex-husband and the brother that lived less than a hundred miles away. It was just after five in the morning when I finally fell asleep. At seven, I heard Alicia and Celia up and moving around across the hall, so I got up and washed up and then began dressing. It was hot, and I didn’t want to wear a jacket, so I tucked my Sig Sauer into my boot and the radio into my back pocket. I was making my way to the nursery when there was a sudden deafening noise that came from outside in the direction of the garage. It sounded like an explosion. It rocked the house so hard that it sent my big body hurtling across the hall. I used the momentum to keep moving. Celia was screaming in her crib, and Alicia was standing frozen to her spot and pale as a ghost. The radio in my back pocket was full of chatter now, but my main goal at that point was to get Alicia and the baby off the second floor of the house in case there was another explosion.