Bulletproof (Unknown Identities #1)

by Black, Regan

  “As long as they pay me, I don’t care,” he replied, hoping to shut down her inquisitive nature. It was the truth even if she didn’t want to accept it. He’d survived training so that he could have the distinct honor of doing Gabriel’s dirty work, no questions asked.

  “What’s the longest you’ve ever worked with anyone?”

  “Are you going to make me beg?”

  She had the audacity to wink at him. “Hopefully later.”

  “You know what I meant.” The woman had a bad-boy complex. Nothing else made sense. Very few boys or men were built much badder than him, but that wasn’t how he wanted her. He didn’t want to be a novelty or simply a convenient way to scratch an itch.

  Could the day get any more twisted? What the hell was she doing to him?

  “Cooperating with an interview doesn’t have to be painful, John.”

  “Not according to my experience,” he said.

  “Fine. I’ll drop it.”

  “Thanks.” It probably wouldn’t be a lengthy reprieve, but he’d appreciate every minute of it.

  In a comfortable silence, they finished the soup, which was as delicious as she’d promised.

  As he cleared the table, that small furrow of concentration appeared between her brows as she went back to work on the laptop.

  When the dishes were done and the leftovers stored for later, he started to leave her to her work. He’d taken basic precautions when they’d arrived, but his instincts told him further measures were necessary.

  Larimore might be a madman, but he’d clearly put a big bounty on Amelia.

  “You need clothes,” she said absently, stalling his departure.

  “Would it make you happier if I mended the damn shirt?”

  She looked up at him, blinking several times. “Would you mend it if I said yes?”

  “No,” he said without any heat. “I could, but I wouldn’t.” The instant curve of those full, petal-pink lips stoked the fire he couldn’t seem to stop feeling for her.

  “Duly noted. If you’re inclined to change, you might find some clothes in the basement. I let Grandma’s church store donations here until the annual rummage sale.”

  “Thanks?” He said what she wanted to hear, but he felt no real gratitude.

  “Hey, if you don’t care how you look, I don’t,” she said, her eyes back on the computer screen.

  He didn’t believe her. Worse, he realized he cared. He never had before. Damn, but the woman knew how to get to him.

  “I’ll take a look.”

  “Or I could just order something online for you from my Macy’s contact.”

  He ignored her teasing. Beyond the obvious risk of an assassin posing as a delivery man, there was the issue of weathering a direct assault if they stayed here too long. “We won’t be here long enough for the delivery,” he said.

  “Good point.”

  “Go ahead and work,” he said. I’m going to make this place secure.”

  John walked out before she could say anything else, marveling at her ability to concentrate despite the stress. He had no doubt now that Gabriel wanted him to stand between her and that bastard Senator Larimore. If the grimy politician had even half of the access she believed he did, this place was already in an assassin’s sights.

  Larimore’s lackeys would know about this house and just how to play her boss to drive her out here. John massaged the scars on his wrists. He needed to re-evaluate. What he’d seen as defensible clearly had some weakness Larimore no doubt intended to exploit.

  Worst case scenario, John thought with a grim sigh, the senator knew something about Gabriel and the corporation he represented. How wide a net could Larimore cast? It was hard to believe Gabriel would allow that kind of breach to go unanswered. Maybe he hadn’t.

  John cracked his knuckles as he headed upstairs to the attic. Locker thirty-one. It wasn’t a place as Amelia assumed. It was an order – one only Gabriel and his recruits like John should know. An order only Gabriel should speak.

  Locker thirty-one had come up early in John’s training as a command for a tactical retreat. The reasons and circumstances were irrelevant. An order issued meant an order followed.

  Discussion, questions, any hint of doubt or independent thinking resulted in pain. Who could have fed her source that phrase?

  If Amelia’s knowledge of the phrase changed the parameters, things were about to get much worse. And if he’d saved her from bounty hunters only to have one of Gabriel’s Cleaners kill her, there would be hell to pay and John would deal it out.

  He shook his head, wondering just how fucked an operation could get. It was a question that had been answered too many times in the past to warrant real consideration now.

  A smart man would be afraid, but fear was a luxury John couldn’t afford. It was obvious now why Gabriel put him on this job. He had to keep Amelia safe until she got the Larimore story out. Too bad for Larimore he was on Gabriel’s shit list. Hopefully Amelia would make more permanent arrangements for her safety once Larimore was contained.

  John didn’t want to stick close to her any longer than necessary. She tempted him as no woman had previously. Not just physically, though it had been a long time since he bothered to assess a woman’s features before using her to relieve the pressure.

  Amelia, with her beauty as bright as her mind, stirred something else inside him. Something without a name, something he knew men like him couldn’t have. Shouldn’t want.

  At the top of the stairs, squares of pale, weak light fell across the floor from the windows in the widow’s walk. It seemed the sun was trying to cut through the clouds. Giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim conditions, he noted the space was abnormally clean for an attic. Apparently Amelia’s grandmother hadn’t believed in letting dust gather on anything. Trunks of differing sizes, chairs, a birdcage swinging from a stand, and an old freestanding mirror in an oak frame were lined up neatly under the low pitch of the ceiling on one wall. Every item gleamed as if ready to go downstairs at a moment’s notice.

  Why?

  He looked around for a light and found the switch for a fixture in the ceiling. Stopping short of pressing the old push-button style, he pulled out his pocket knife and removed the switch plate. He breathed a sigh of relief when everything looked normal. The dusty wires showed no signs of tampering. Still, paranoia hadn’t proved fatal yet, he thought, staring up at the fixture itself.

  If, as he suspected, she’d been driven out of her apartment to this old house, it wasn’t a big leap to think they would try and use something here against her.

  Testing the chairs, he found one that would serve as a decent stool and carried it over to the shadow under the ceiling fixture. The finial came unscrewed smoothly, a little too smoothly, and put him on guard.

  With one hand steadying the frosted glass of the globe, he peered up through the small opening, looking past the down rod for wires or anything else out of place.

  Satisfied, he lowered the globe a fraction of an inch at a time, until he saw the mechanism he’d hoped not to find.

  One of the two light bulbs was the clear incandescent type, but the other was deadly. Made to resemble a compact fluorescent light bulb, it was in reality a device that would ignite an electrical fire at the least. More likely, it would take the roof right off the house.

  “Why?” he asked the collection of odds and ends. There were more efficient means to eliminate Amelia and they’d foiled a few attempts already this morning.

  He’d call this particular method sloppy or lazy if it hadn’t been such a sophisticated device.

  With the threat neutralized, he replaced the globe and secured it with the finial. Returning the chair to its proper station at the wall, he considered his next move. Since they hadn’t blown any other devices and Amelia was working intently, he decided he had a few minutes to play with before searching the rest of the house. Explosives weren’t his area of expertise, but he knew the artistry involved took years of practice and lef
t a distinct signature.

  He hoped his suspicions were wrong about the signature on this device.

  The reporter downstairs wasn’t the only person who knew how to investigate. Eyeing the wrought iron spiral staircase to the widow’s walk, he pulled out his cell phone as he made the climb.

  The wind was stiff, but the signal was excellent. The view even better as the deep blue water stretched out to the horizon.

  While working his Regular Joe construction job, he’d heard plenty of rumors about the best practices of arson and insurance fraud. Pals on a recently completed site had shared stories about how they’d been approached and the going rates. After skimming a few articles online, he decided the faulty light bulb or wiring was considered a new favorite with people who wanted to cash out an insurance policy quickly, but he made a call to confirm.

  After a terse greeting and a few short replies to his questions, John knew it was most likely only one device had been wired into the house. But it wasn’t much relief.

  If anyone had come up to the attic and hit the switch, the roof would have burned out and fallen in on the house. Who would want to frame Amelia for arson?

  John looked out across the water as he considered the bomb and its most likely maker. He paced around the widow’s walk, enjoying the incredible scenery while his mind worked with the problem. Where would Amelia run if the house was coming down around her ears?

  He couldn’t shake the idea that Larimore had hired people to herd Amelia toward something... John just had to figure out what that something was before the senator succeeded.

  It no longer felt like a question of ‘if’ an assassin got through to Amelia, but ‘when’.

  With a last look at all the possible approaches, he ducked back inside the house.

  Chapter Eight

  A shadow fell over the table. It took a moment for Amelia to pull herself out of the story, but when she looked up, it was worth it. John’s inscrutable, granite-like expression made her want to leap into his arms and suck on that generous lower lip.

  Where the heck had that thought come from? Clearly she was losing it to the trauma of the day. She shook it off and checked the clock on the wall. It read ten minutes to noon and she remembered she’d never replaced the battery. She looked to the laptop and realized she’d enjoyed more than three hours of uninterrupted research and writing. She smiled, losing herself in the story was always a good sign.

  He held out his cell phone. “It’s for you.”

  She didn’t want to accept the call, knowing it had to be Bernie. No one else she knew would have John’s phone number.

  Her mouth twisted to the side while she thought up a quick argument or two. He’d be furious she hadn’t checked in and was likely calling because he’d heard about the airport. Or the incidents in Sudbury. Or – she cut off her rambling thoughts knowing he would likely argue for her to drop this story for good.

  “Hello?” she said with a bright, if false, smile in her voice.

  “Don’t pretend things are fine,” Bernie snapped. “Detective Fincher called. It seems you were spotted in Sudbury poking around near an accident scene. He also said the authorities want your statement for that shooting at the airport. I offered to let them question you here.”

  “Bernie, that’s not happening.” The idea of going into the city was daunting and not because the words were flowing. Considering the events at the airport, the police surely wanted to do a lot more than question her. Besides, John had called this place defensible and she trusted him.

  Completely. It was a more than a little surprising.

  “Good Lord, Amelia. You’ll be the reason I end up with a triple bypass.”

  She could just imagine him rubbing at the deep grooves in his forehead. “Don’t blame me for your bad diet and lack of exercise.”

  “Let this one go,” he urged. “Please.”

  Bernie didn’t plead. Bernie gave orders and occasionally, in her case, he gave a shoulder to lean on. Maybe things were worse than they appeared, though she was hard pressed to imagine how. “Something else happened.”

  “Come back to the office and talk to the Detective.”

  “Let him know I’ll cooperate, but I’m not dropping the story. People need to know –”

  “I don’t care,” Bernie cut her off. “No story is worth your life.”

  “This story will increase circulation and subscriptions ten-fold. I’m thinking if we do it in a series –”

  “I won’t print it.”

  Amelia sucked in a breath and held it, turning away from John’s quizzical expression. In deference to his security measures, the curtains were drawn across the kitchen window, but in her mind she pictured the idyllic winter view of years past. Trees painted gently with an early snow, the shadows of bare limbs creating a lattice work across a lawn turned white and sparkling under a cold winter sun.

  This house on the peninsula had been her anchor, the one place where life didn’t dare go wrong. Grandma didn’t put up with it. Bad things might happen elsewhere, but here is where everything healed.

  Even on short winter days, she would bundle up and go out to the old glider swing to read or write her assignments. It felt like a lifetime ago. The images flitting through her mind while Bernie railed about common sense and self-preservation, finishing with a dramatic ‘to hell with circulation’.

  She laughed. It was too preposterous to offer a more polite response. “You’ll never convince me you mean that. We’re invested here,” she reminded him. “I’m not taking unnecessary chances.”

  This time the sharp burst of laughter was from John. She glared him into a swift silence. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. It wasn’t exactly surrender, but she counted it a point in her favor.

  “I have a bodyguard per your request. He’s with me twenty-four-seven, as you insisted. He’s proven invaluable, so I’ll say you were right and thank you for insisting. But I’m not quitting on this story. If you won’t print it, I’ll find someone who will.”

  “You could try. As I said last night, you’ve made enemies in every political camp. No one wants to see your byline on a weather report. Let sen –”

  “No,” she snarled. “Larimore doesn’t get a pass on this.” She rubbed at her forehead. “I’m telling you every layer of this is worse than the previous one.” She’d been poring over a few of defense budget items, trying to reconcile what wouldn’t be logically reconciled.

  “I believe you. But I need you alive.”

  She met John’s gaze. “I’ll stay alive. The bodyguard was a good idea.”

  “Overkill,” Bernie said with a snort. “Quit trying to kiss up to me.”

  “How’s the cat?” She racked her brain for a better distraction while he sputtered at the sudden change of topic.

  “Plato is less of a pain in my ass than you are. The cat isn’t getting death threats. Your email inbox is full of –”

  “You’re reading my email now?” Exasperated, she stalked out of the kitchen into the front room.

  “Of course,” Bernie admitted. “Just your Torch account. I would never breach your private account.”

  “Oh, never.” Amelia figured it was only because he couldn’t crack her password. Encryption was one more thing she’d learned from her source – the one who’d gone predictably silent after this morning’s failed meet. She hoped her source was alive as John believed.

  “We’re getting plenty of mail right here to the office full of threats, promising retribution.”

  “Snail mail or email?”

  “Both.”

  “That’s a good sign considering you haven’t printed anything,” she said. “I’m on the right track.”

  Bernie’s heavy sigh resonated through the phone and pricked her conscience. He might not be in the direct line of fire, but the tense, uncertain situation was taking a toll on him. She shook it off, knowing she had to stay true to the big picture.

  The senator was abusing his power
for nothing more than money as far as she could tell. Money was fine, necessary even. It’s not like she’d duck if someone threw cash her way. She didn’t give a damn about the man’s net worth, only that he’d amassed it by burying his enemies –literally and figuratively.

  He’d made deals with contractors, filled his share of helpful bills with the expensive choking crap that ruined potentially good legislation. Now, it looked like he’d killed his daughter solely to continue sketchy research into a bizarre super-soldier concept. The research was strange enough on its own. Add in the deplorable lack of ethics and she felt slimy just from reading the few nuggets of fact hidden by a heavy veil of legalese.

  The man had to be stopped and she was apparently the only person in the country willing to do so.

  “This is bigger than I thought,” she said, interrupting her boss’ current tirade. “I’ll send you the story, Bernie, and you can judge for yourself.”

  “It’s done?”

  “The draft is close enough to give you an idea of what you’d be turning down.”

  His only reply was a long, slow exhale.

  “Look, do what you want with it after you read it, but know that I’m only giving you twenty-four hours. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll send the story to other –”

  A loud crash ended the call as a shower of splintered glass from the broken front window sprayed across the carpet.

  She dropped the phone as John suddenly materialized from the kitchen, wrapping her in a protective embrace and sweeping her away from the danger. His momentum carried them behind the sofa and she found herself trapped between the shelter of his body and the equally unmovable wall.

  Her heart pounding, his quiet exhalations teasing the hair at her temple, she waited for gunfire, explosions, or an armed intruder to barge in and haul them away.

  None of those options would have surprised her.

  The ensuing silence, however, shocked her more than the breaking glass. Peering over his shoulder, she spotted a rock in the middle of the faded oriental carpet her grandmother had prized. “A rock,” she whispered, trying to think past John’s warm, masculine scent enveloping her. His every muscle was tensed, braced for battle, while she felt her own body going lax, eager for something far more personal and private.