Wrath pursed his lips. No. He wouldn’t like to sit. Or rather he wished that he felt an aversion to the idea. Dammit. Now he was on the mental tilt-a-whirl. “Yeah. I’ll sit a minute.”
“What’s your name?” Tegan asked as he carefully situated himself in the very small padded chair. “Nobody has said, and I feel rude not knowing your name.”
“They call me Wrath.”
“Wrath.”
He liked the way his name sounded on her lips. “That’s all anyone ever calls me.”
“That’s not a name.” She cocked her head to one side. “I’m Tegan Hyde-Pierson.”
Wrath snorted. “And you’ve got plenty of names for us both, so I think we’re all good.”
She actually laughed. Damn, that was a nice sound. It was all musical and almost girlish in a nice way. There was no high-pitched or shrill tone that grated on his ears. He—He liked it. Strange.
“So, Wrath,” Tegan said in a conversational tone. “What is it that I have to do in order to allow you to do your job? I’ve been informed that my behavior hindered your job performance earlier this evening.”
Wrath shrugged. “And I’ve been informed that you acted pretty much the way any other civilian would have in that situation, so I guess we’re all even up.”
“Are you going to be following me to school?” She seemed horrified by this notion.
“I don’t need to attend classes with you, no.” Wrath couldn’t even stomach the idea of sitting through a bunch of business classes. “But I’ll be driving you to and from school as well as taking you to any outside appointments or activities. I’ll get you set up each night at your home.”
She blinked and seemed to affect a very carefully blank expression. “And what does that entail?”
“Checking your place for signs of breakin or intrusion.” He shrugged. This security detail stuff was more boring than fun, but that was always the nature of the intel-gathering portion of any operation. Patience paid off. “It’s not a big deal. Once I’m sure it’s safe for you to go into your home, you go inside, I set the alarm, and we monitor things from outside.”
“So you don’t have to—sleep in my home?” She seemed oddly disturbed by this idea.
“No.” Wrath was oddly disturbed by this idea as well. She was not his type. In fact, he could not imagine a woman less his type than this one. “I’ll try not to intrude too much on any part of your life, really. I promise. Today was a bit of an exception.”
“How did all of that come about?” she asked softly.
Wrath hated it when people like Stedman Hyde-Pierson kept the other parties involved completely in the dark about their situation. It was a pet peeve of sorts. “We got a call. Or rather your father got a call and put it through to Nash. It was a tip about a hit going down. We’d known for a few days that the mafia boss intended to come after your father.”
“But why?” Tegan asked quickly. She jumped up from her chair and started pacing in front of the little fireplace on one side of her room. “Why would any mafia person know anything about my father?”
Wrath stared at her very carefully. He had his own theories about this, and Nash was not in agreement. “Usually mafia families issue hits when someone doesn’t cooperate. Your father seems to think that the mob asked him to do some business for them and he refused.”
“That would make sense, right?” Tegan turned to stare at him. “He’s in finance. Maybe they wanted him to wash their money, or whatever they call it. He refused and they’re mad about it.”
Wrath just nodded. There was no need to point out how improbable that scenario really was. It was an awful lot of trouble to go through just because a man said he didn’t want to do business with you.
“Well, I’ll leave you till the morning,” Wrath said in what he thought was a pretty amicable tone of voice. He got up from the chair and headed back toward the door. “I want to get moving around six in the morning.”
“Six?” The word came out as more of a yelp.
He shrugged. “I hate traffic.”
Chapter Four
Tegan was still stewing about the 6:00 a.m. departure time the following morning. It did not help that she didn’t keep much in the way of wardrobe choices at her father’s Brookline estate. Getting dressed that morning had been an exercise in frustration. Her knee-high camel-colored boots were a little on the snug side, and her leggings were a season out of style. Still, she was wearing gray leggings and a purple oversized sweater. It wasn’t like she was going to get invited to walk the runway like this anyway.
Tegan trotted down the sweeping front staircase of her father’s home at ten minutes till six. She hadn’t had any coffee and her stomach was grumbly. That pretty much meant she was in a bad mood.
There had been a tiny thought in her head that it would be deliciously satisfying to get downstairs before Wrath arrived. That way she could be leaning against the banister, acting as though she had been waiting an age for him. Unfortunately, she spotted the top of his dark head before she’d even gotten halfway down the steps.
Arms crossed, he was staring into what appeared to be space with no discernable expression. Oh yeah. This trip into Newton was going to be loads of fun.
With that doom and gloom in mind, Tegan didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Are you ready to go?”
“Good morning.” The pointed way he looked at her and said the words made Tegan feel almost ashamed for her bad attitude. It wasn’t like it was his fault that she was having a bad morning.
She sighed. “Good morning. Can we go now?”
“Of course.” He made a gesture to the front door. “The car is right out front.”
Tegan didn’t know why she had expected one of her father’s cars to be the mode of transportation this morning. When Wrath had brought her home last night, it had been in the same nondescript dark blue sedan that was currently idling in the driveway.
She got in with a sigh. There was no point in waiting for the “gentleman” to open the door for her either. He made it into the driver’s seat before she’d even managed to get the passenger side door open. She slid into the vehicle and closed the door. As she put on her seatbelt, she noticed that there was classical music playing. Debussy. How odd. She would have expected hard rock or death metal from this character.
Wrath got the car moving without a word from her about destination or anything else. Tegan pressed her lips together and decided she wasn’t going to say a word. If he thought he knew everything about her, then who was she to disabuse him of that notion?
They drove in silence for nearly twenty minutes before Tegan couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m surprised you’ve got classical music playing.”
“You don’t think someone like me could like classical music, is that it?” He glanced over and gave her a look filled with judgment. At least she felt judged.
Tegan refused to let him have the upper hand. “I’ve heard several people tell me that it makes them sleepy while they drive. I have that problem myself. That’s the only point I was making.”
“Oh.” He seemed to consider this.
He drove with one arm resting on the window ledge and one hand lazily draped over the top of the wheel. It was an extremely lackadaisical position. She wondered if he was always like that. He seemed to be a strange contradiction of things. Tegan found herself fascinated in spite of herself. She liked puzzles, and Wrath was certainly one of the most mysterious ones she had run across in a long time.
“How did you get into this kind of work?” Tegan could not stop herself from asking.
Wrath shrugged and reached over to turn down the music. “I joined the marines right at eighteen and did three tours overseas. Nash was my commanding officer. He started this business, so when I got out, he offered me a job.”
“Why did you leave the marines?” Tegan personally thought that career would have suited the guy perfectly.
“My last tour in Iraq saw a lot of action, and I got too close to an IED
that damaged the hearing in my left ear. They put me out of the service on a medical profile.”
He seemed almost flippant, but Tegan sensed he felt anything but. The guy had been shot trying to protect her. He wasn’t a wimp. He seemed to thrive on action. Telling him that he wasn’t good enough for a job he loved because of something that had happened while on that job had to have really hurt. If someone like Wrath was capable of that particular emotion, anyway.
Tegan reached over and gently touched his arm. The gesture seemed so natural, yet he looked at her as though she had attacked him. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sure leaving the marines was hard. It seems like a job you really liked.”
“I did like it,” he murmured. He spun the wheel of the car and then braked.
It took Tegan several moments to realize that they were suddenly parked in front of the building where she had her first class of the day.
WRATH FOUGHT THE urge to touch the place on his arm where her fingers had brushed his skin. He wasn’t used to people touching him. At least not like that. Ana had yanked a bullet out of him. She’d bandaged him. His male friends often times slapped each other on the back or hugged. None of it felt like that soft brush of skin on skin that Tegan had just given him.
“So.” Tegan was looking at him. He was supposed to be paying attention. Dammit.
He cleared his throat and tried to remember how to speak actual words. “Yes?”
“I just go to class like normal and you’ll be here when I get done today at noon?” She looked doubtful. He wondered why. If he said he would be somewhere, he would be. Then she pursed her lips and fiddled with the weird strip of thick, knitted fabric sticking up above her boot tops. “Because I don’t understand how I can be safe on campus but not safe walking less than two blocks to meet my friends for dinner.”
Ah, yes, that was a little difficult to explain, although logical to someone used to the habits of predators. Wrath settled into talk business. That was far more comfortable anyway. “The chances of the mob trying a hit while you’re at school are slim. At least for right now that’s the case. When they fail a few more times, they’ll get more and more desperate.”
“Desperate?” Now she looked like she was going to be sick. Maybe he had been too frank.
“They chose last night on purpose,” he explained. “You were out in a public place. The campus is public, but there’s a lot of security. You don’t see a bunch of bums sitting around, do you?”
She actually looked horrified. What was that about? “No, of course not!”
“A campus is a large place, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities for a stranger and a hitman, at that, to just blend in, pick his target, and pull it off without getting a lot more attention than he wants.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “So, right here at noon?”
“How about if I meet you at the building’s doorway?” he suggested. She was acting like a mouse again. Wrath tried to remind himself about the civilian reaction thing again. She was probably being normal, and he should attempt to be sensitive. Blech!
She smiled. “That would be really great, thank you.”
The sight of her face beaming at him was like a kick in the groin. Had any woman ever possessed a smile like that? It lit up her whole face and reminded him of that musical laugh from the night before. Her blue eyes were sparkly and beautiful. The way her pert nose sort of turned up at the end and her high cheekbones made her look elegant and yet very gorgeous in an approachable way. She wasn’t a china doll. She was real in her own way.
Before Wrath could even get his brain to stop ruminating on the beauty of her smile, she was out the door and gone. He could only watch her stride confidently across campus in those boots and leggings. She had great legs. Really great legs. Actually, her body was pretty damn smoking hot as a whole.
Dammit. He was staring again. Wrath put the car in gear and grumbled the whole way to the parking garage. He tucked the vehicle into a spot way near the back and got out. He wasn’t lying when he had told Tegan that there was a low risk of the mafia attempting a hit on a college campus. That did not mean that Nash didn’t want Wrath poking around to see what sort of risks there were on the Boston College campus. He was to blend in as much as possible—as if—and see if there were any obvious opportunities that the mafia men might choose to exploit at a later date.
Wrath popped the trunk of his car and rummaged. Blending in on a college campus was not exactly his strong suit. He’d never been a college student. He was a marine. The whole entitled liberal thing didn’t fit him. Although he had to admit that he was being more than a little bit of a biased asshole about it. Ana had informed him the other day that not all college students were entitled or liberal. Since he’d never spent much time with college kids, he figured he had to take her word for it. Analisa had grown up way different than he had.
Pulling a Red Sox cap down onto his head, he shoved a handgun into the holster at the small of his back. A leather bomber jacket covered the weapon nicely. With his jeans and boots, he looked like the college rebel. At least he figured that was what he was going for.
It took no time at all to backtrack to the building where Tegan had most of her classes. The grounds were starting to buzz with activity as people ran to catch their morning classes. Busses came and went at the curb. Thousands of cars packed the parking garages. People with backpacks littered the area as they yakked on their cell phones and drank their lattes.
Wrath spotted the best possible position for a sniper almost at once. Gasson Hall was located just across an open grass square and at a slight angle to the Carroll School of Management where Tegan was in class. The tall Gothic Revival style tower would offer the perfect vantage point for even a halfway skilled sniper with a decent rifle to put a bullet in Tegan’s forehead as she walked out of her building.
Unacceptable.
Chapter Five
Wrath had now decided that his earlier assertions about college security had been completely off the mark. He had managed to gain access not only to the building, but also to the tower itself. A few picked locks. A few smiles to the security guards and a few mumbled explanations about having business up there for his professor’s research project had allowed him total access.
Now he climbed the last set of stairs to gain access to the tower’s flat top. He opened the final door using a set of lock picks from his pocket. As he emerged into the sunlight, he squinted and pulled the bill of his cap down lower over his eyes. The four gothic spires that graced each corner of the tower jutted up all around him. There wasn’t even much breeze up here. Not with the building’s facade providing a natural windbreak.
Wrath began pacing around the perimeter. He kept an eye out for signs of occupation or surveillance. That was when he noticed the cigarette butts. They were clumped on the side of the tower with the best view of the Carroll School of Management. That wasn’t a particularly comforting sign. The likelihood that some employee was up here taking smoke breaks in this location was a bit farfetched. The front of the building was not the shadiest or the most comfortable spot.
Wrath turned a slow circle. No. If he were going to sneak up here to smoke a few cigarettes, he would have spent his time on the opposite side of the tower. In fact, it looked as though someone regularly did.
The chair situated in a corner of the tower’s top came complete with a little crate that supported an ashtray. There were butts in the tray. Wrath looked them over and pronounced them to be Camels. The individual had also left a magazine stashed beneath his makeshift table. That left the other obviously unconnected pile of cigarette butts to open speculation.
Wrath approached the sniper’s lookout. He squatted down on his haunches and pulled a pen from his pocket. Using it to poke at the butts, he realized that they were menthol Kools. No employee who smoked Camel Regulars one second was going to swap out for menthols so he could stand over here and gawk at the kids walking by below. This was most definitely their hitman.
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A quick photograph with his smart phone let Wrath send this latest tidbit of intel to Nash. It was possible they had run across a mafia assassin who smoked menthols in the past. Not probable, but possible at least.
The rattle of the doorknob made Wrath spin around. His pulse sped up and adrenaline poured into his veins. He had locked the door behind him. That wasn’t a key in the lock either. It was another set of picks. That meant his sniper was about to come back and check the perch.
Wrath spun quickly and let his brain formulate a plan without allowing anything else to get in the way—like common sense. The towers were spiky and the architecture was elaborate. There were plenty of handholds. Four strides and he had reached the edge. One big leap and he’d cleared his way to the top of the crenellations. The stone cut into his nail beds, but he ignored the discomfort.
Bracing his boots against the uneven and yet regular Gothic pattern in the stonework, Wrath began to climb his way toward the tower. He had to keep himself out of the view of most of the people below. He could only imagine the sensation if a bunch of college students thought they had a jumper on campus. That was way too much attention. Besides, Wrath wanted a look at the assassin.
The door swung open. Wrath slammed the thick soles of his boots against the lip of the spire’s lowermost ring. He pressed his back into the stone and used the pressure to keep himself in place. He was at least twenty feet up above the man walking deliberately toward his lookout point.
The first thing that struck Wrath about this man was his height. He was freakishly tall. He didn’t even have to stand on tiptoe to see over the edge of the tower to the quad below. That meant he should have been easy enough to pick out in a crowd. He wore a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up to cover his hair, so Wrath had no notion of hair color or much of anything else. He was nicely dressed. The boots looked expensive. They weren’t trendy. They were functional. And yet there was obvious and visible proof that the guy took care of his equipment.
Nash Security Solutions Page 3
