Nash Security Solutions

by Lola Silverman

  “Huh,” Quentin muttered. “How odd.”

  “What’s odd?” Nash swung around in his comfy leather chair. “Did you see something?”

  “No.” Quentin wished he had kept his mouth shut. “I was just thinking that it has been several days since Francesca has had one of her episodes.”

  Nash raised an eyebrow. It made him look skeptical in a very rude way. “Episodes?”

  “In soldier lingo they’d be called a flashback, I believe,” Quentin explained tersely. “She’s the one who found her husband’s body.”

  “Damn,” Nash breathed.

  “I thought you knew that.” Quentin frowned. “I thought everyone knew that.”

  “Stedman claimed he was almost certain that Francesca was the one who killed him.” Nash scratched his chin thoughtfully. “He said that was his theory as to why she never showed anyone the suicide note. He doesn’t believe there is one, or that it’s actually a document that revokes her authority within the company and gives the shares back to Stedman.”

  “He would think that,” Quentin snorted. “And I haven’t seen the note, so I couldn’t say.”

  “Has it come up with the lawyers?” Nash wanted to know. “I’m surprised. If he has the judge in his pocket enough to issue a court order that Stedman gets to sit in on her therapy sessions, then I can’t believe he hasn’t ordered her to turn over the note.”

  “He probably did,” Quentin reasoned. “The woman is cagey. You wouldn’t believe how clever she can be. She could thwart him if she wanted to.”

  “Look, Quentin,” Nash began slowly. “I realize that you’ve become very fond of Francesca.”

  “More than fond,” Quentin grunted.

  “She’s years older than you are, kid.” Nash’s expression was one of polite indulgence. “There’s no future in this association. There can’t be. Are you telling me that you want to be some fifty-year-old man leg shackled to a seventy-year-old woman?”

  “It’s not quite ten years,” Quentin said defensively. “And she looks amazing for her age!”

  “I’m not arguing that.” Nash held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just asking you to look at the facts. You keep forgetting the age thing. I wouldn’t do that. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.”

  Nash’s words stung, mostly because they were all things that had passed through Quentin’s mind at one point or another. He had seen how others treated women who attached themselves to younger men. The term cougar had become mainstream in the last few years. He didn’t like the idea of people staring at Francesca and speculating about what she was giving him. As though he would take money in exchange for sex or something. It was preposterous. And yet if he had been an outsider looking in, he would have wondered the same thing.

  “You need to think about what it would do to her too,” Nash pressed. He reached over and put his hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “I like you. I always have. You got a raw deal in your hometown after that incident in the bar. Just because a bunch of locals are afraid of you should not mean that the whole town treats you like a menace. You were a good soldier, and you’re a good employee and friend.” Nash sighed, and Quentin felt a big but coming on. “But you’ve let yourself become emotionally tangled up in this situation. I think you feel just a little too much empathy for Francesca. I get that. I feel the same way about Ava.”

  “And you’re sleeping with her,” Quentin said bitterly. “But then the two of you are only a few years apart, so what does it matter?”

  “No,” Nash said sharply. “I’m not sleeping with Ava. I never—well, there was one slip. But since then, I’ve behaved myself. It pisses her off, I think, but I’m not crossing that line again. I don’t like the way it feels to violate my own principles.”

  “Fuck your principles,” Quentin growled. “If you really care about the woman, why would you put the both of you through some moral bullshit just because you’re too much of a coward to admit what you feel?”

  Quentin got up. He was so done listening to this crap. He needed some air. Shoving open the back door, he stepped out of the truck. Unfortunately, that was right about the time his battle reflexes caught the gleam of sunlight bouncing off a rifle barrel across the street. There was a whizzing noise and a sharp pain in his shoulder. Then he heard the rifle report and hit the ground. His only thought was that he’d suddenly become a target just because he had been helping Francesca to become more independent. Oh, the irony.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Quentin?”

  He tried to blink, but there was only blackness. Had he passed out? Lame. After all of the things he’d been through in his life, the idea that one silly gunshot wound would make him pass out now was shameful.

  “Quentin.” That was Nash’s deep voice. “You were hit in the shoulder with a high-powered rifle. I’ve got you inside Ava’s house. You’re going to be fine.”

  Someone was digging at his shoulder. Quentin raised his hand to shove the person away. Whoever it was, they hadn’t bothered to use any anesthetic, and it hurt like hell. Someone else immediately grabbed Quentin’s arms. Whoever it was pinned his hands out to the sides and left him like that. The position immediately brought to mind some very unfriendly memories.

  “No!” Quentin struggled. “Let. Go!”

  “Let him go!”

  Francesca’s voice was like a balm. He immediately relaxed. He pulled his hands down to his sides and waited. Then he felt the cool slide of her fingers as she threaded them with his.

  “Can’t you see that you’re triggering him?” Francesca demanded of the other person, whoever it was. “When a man has been through the stuff Quentin has, you have to think wounded animal or he’ll rip your arms off.”

  Nash’s chuckle echoed through the room. They must be in Ava’s kitchen. This was the second time that they had dealt with a gunshot wound in Ava’s kitchen. Quentin wondered if the pharmacist guy was the one digging in his shoulder. If so, Quentin had a whole new respect for Wrath.

  Quentin moved his lips and tried to speak. “Francesca?”

  “I’m right here, sweetie.”

  “Sweetie?” That was Carson. Great. The whole crew had come running.

  Finally. Finally! Quentin’s vision began to clear. It started with a bit of light bleeding through the darkness. Then he blearily focused on Francesca’s face. There were worry lines around her mouth and eyes. She was patting his hand. Then she lifted his fingers to her lips and kissed each one.

  “I was so worried,” she whispered.

  Quentin managed to lift his hand. He touched her cheek. Then a sharp pain in his shoulder made him gasp. He whipped his head around and growled at the little man poking at his shoulder.

  “Wallace is just trying to help,” Francesca promised. She cupped his face in her hand and turned it back toward her. “He’s Ava’s friend. Remember? He worked on Wrath.”

  “Hurts like hell.” Quentin’s voice sounded rough, and his throat hurt. That seemed odd. Had he been screaming?

  Nash touched his good shoulder. “You had a bit of an episode right after you were shot. There was a lot of yelling.”

  Great. He’d had an actual flashback. He hadn’t had one of those in years. Of course, he hadn’t been shot since he left the marines either. That was sort of Wrath’s territory. The man managed to get himself shot every other week.

  “I sent Carson to get Wallace since he’d done it last time,” Nash explained. “Wrath went to look for signs of the shooter, but I doubt we’ll get much.”

  Francesca cleared her throat. “I think we all know why Quentin was shot.”

  “Why is that?” Ava wanted to know.

  Francesca pressed Quentin’s hand to her cheek. He could see the glitter of tears in her eyes. “It was because of me. Being around him is giving me the confidence to fight Stedman. He doesn’t like that. He never expected it. Why would he not want Quentin out of the way? If Quentin dies, then I might retreat back into my head and stop being a pain
in his ass.”

  Ava moved in closer. Quentin could smell her perfume. It was pleasant, but it did not affect him the way Francesca’s natural feminine scent did. “What would happen if you lost Quentin? Would you give up?”

  “No!” Francesca sounded outraged. “I would be even angrier.”

  “So, then, let’s get angry and go give Stedman a piece of our mind.” Ava grabbed Francesca’s hand. “Seriously. Let’s go right now. We can drive to Stedman’s estate in Brookline and have a little chat. It’s important that he knows he failed anyway.”

  “Bad idea,” Nash growled. “I’m not letting you go over there. What if he decides he’d rather just get rid of the two of you and stop worrying about you both?”

  “How fortunate that you don’t get to dictate my actions,” Ava said frostily.

  Quentin’s fuzzy brain settled on a conversation that he’d had with Nash just a little while ago in the surveillance truck. It felt like decades ago now. And yet he vaguely remembered Nash saying that while he really liked Ava and wished that he could be with her, that he refused to acknowledge all of that chemistry because it compromised his job.

  Right now, as Quentin watched Ava and Nash facing off in Ava’s kitchen, the only thing that Quentin could think was that Nash was an idiot. The both of them were idiots. And Quentin didn’t want to be the same kind of idiot.

  Yes. Francesca was older than he was by enough years to make it awkward to explain to people if they had to. What he was realizing was that he did not care one bit what other people thought. He loved that woman. She was incredible, and he wasn’t going to risk living one more second without her.

  “Come here,” Quentin told Francesca.

  She knelt down to better see his face as Wallace still worked on his shoulder. “What, sweetie?”

  Quentin used one hand to draw her in close enough to kiss. He laid one on her lips and felt her surprise begin to melt away as she responded. Quentin pulled back long before either one of them wanted. Then he smiled at her. “You and Ava go and kick Stedman’s ass. Just be careful. Promise me.”

  “I promise.” She kissed him once more. Then she turned around and grabbed Ava’s hand. The two of the exited the kitchen while completely ignoring Nash’s disapproving expression.

  *

  “Are we stupid for doing this?” Francesca whispered to Ava as her friend pushed the doorbell at Stedman’s Brookline mansion. “And why does the man have no security? Shouldn’t he be up to his eyeballs in like mafia soldiers or something?”

  Francesca looked around at the estate grounds and frowned. The place looked weirdly deserted, yet there were lights on inside. Ava rang the doorbell again, but nobody answered. It was starting to feel kind of eerie.

  Ava moved to the long windows on either side of the elaborate front door. “Do you think he’s in there and just not answering because he sees that it’s us?”

  “You don’t think knowing it was us would make him even more eager to answer? I feel like he’d love another opportunity to berate us and tell us how he can live our lives better than we can.”

  Ava giggled. “You’re right. Hmm. Let’s see if the door is open.”

  “Ava!” Francesca held her breath in shocked anticipation, but it was too late for that. Ava had already turned the handle.

  “It’s open,” Ava whispered.

  Francesca cocked her head to one side. There was a funny noise coming from inside. It sounded faintly animalistic. “Do you hear that?” Francesca moved closer to the half-open doorway. “It sounds like a dog or something, right?”

  “Dog?” Ava was still whispering. “Stedman doesn’t have a dog.”

  “It sounds like something is hurt.” Francesca could not help herself. What if Stedman was gone and there was something or someone in there hurt and unable to call for help. “What if it’s the housekeeper, Constance?” The sudden horrible possibility ghosted through Francesca’s mind. “She could be in there on the floor bleeding to death!”

  Ava moved between the half-open door and the frame to slip into the house. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s see what it is. If it is Constance, I want to call an ambulance.”

  Francesca followed Ava, but her stomach was in a ready series of knots. She could not shake the sensation that there was something very, very wrong inside this house. Constance might be hurt, but Francesca had always wondered why the woman allowed herself to remain employed by Stedman anyway. The man was a complete jerk. Couldn’t Constance find another job?

  “Constance?” Ava whispered hoarsely. “Are you in here?”

  There was no answer. The only sound was the moaning, which was getting louder and louder the closer they got to the back hallway where Stedman had an office. Francesca half-remembered being in this house and going into that office accompanied by Lyle. She had never been allowed to stay in there for long, but she definitely knew where it was.

  “Stop right there.”

  Francesca froze. In front of her, Ava did too. But the voice wasn’t talking to them. The harsh tones came from further down the hallway. In fact, Francesca could see light seeping from Stedman’s office into the poorly lit hallway.

  “It’s Stedman,” Ava breathed. Her voice was so quiet that Francesca had to lean in close just to get the gist of what she was saying. “He’s talking to someone else.”

  “Closer,” Francesca murmured. “Get closer.”

  The two of them pressed up against the wall and inched closer and closer to the doorway. The moaning noises had increased. Francesca shivered as she realized that they were hearing the sounds of a man in severe pain, and not a woman. There was a low quality to the voice that lacked any sort of femininity.

  “Your usefulness has run its course, Anton,” Stedman said. “I apologize for the ruse to get you here to my home, but you understand how difficult it is to murder a man in front of the men. What would I say when they asked me why I thought I should be running the organization?”

  There were more pained noises. This time, Francesca heard gurgling as though Anton were choking on his own blood. She vaguely knew that Anton was the Sokolov’s second-in-command. He was the man that had been fighting with Stedman off and on for control of the Boston Bratva.

  Stedman wasn’t done with his horrible speech. “By killing you now, I save myself the explanation of your demise. I can tell the men whatever I want. But you can be most certain that I will tell them that you were gunned down by the Irish mob. That way I can keep them distracted while I take over the rest of the organization and my private life at the same time.”

  Ava reached back and grabbed Francesca’s hand. The women held tight to each other as they heard footsteps moving toward the hallway. Francesca was frozen in place. She knew she had to move. If Stedman caught them here and knew that they were witnesses to a murder, he would lose his mind! Then Francesca heard a strange noise. It sounded as though a seed or a dried pea had been pushed through a straw at high pressure. It took her a moment to realize that Stedman had just used a gun with a silencer to shoot Anton. The man was dead.

  “We have to get out of here,” Francesca whispered urgently. She began tugging on Ava’s arm. “Now. Now. Move.”

  The two women turned and fled back toward the door. Escaping the mansion was the only objective for the moment. Francesca didn’t want to think about the rest until they had reached a safe place to sit and think.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Insane.”

  That was it? Francesca gaped at Nash and wondered why the sometimes garbled but fairly complete recitation of the last forty-five minutes seemed to bring almost no reaction. Did the man not think it was worth calling the police or something?

  “Insane?” Ava put her hands on her hips and glared at Nash. “That’s all you have to say?”

  The kitchen was still crowded with Carson and Kayla, Wallace, Nash, Ava, and poor Quentin sitting in a chair with his arm in a sling. For once, Ava wasn’t trying to serve everyone food or make sure that t
hey all had a beverage in hand. The woman looked mad as hell.

  She pointed at Nash. “You’ve been looking for something ironclad on Stedman for weeks! I just told you that the man committed a murder right in front of us, and that’s all you have to say?”

  “He didn’t commit a murder right in front of you,” Nash mused. He sighed and ran his fingers through his short steel-colored hair. His gray eyes were more than a little scary sometimes when he started to go all intense. Right now, he looked as though he were trying to use laser vision on Ava. “Stedman committed a murder within your hearing. Did either of you see a body?”

  “What?” Ava looked outraged. “No! Did you expect us to push the door open and tell him to say cheese while we took a picture with our phones to post to all of our social media sites? Oh, hey, everyone,” Ava said mockingly. “I just saw this! Cool, right?”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.” Nash sounded irritable. He moved toward the refrigerator. Pulling open the door, he took out a bottle of beer and popped off the lid. “I’m just trying to make the point that we can’t take this to the police without a body.”

  “So, call the cops!” Ava shouted.

  Nash shot her a look and then took a deep slug of his beer. “You know if we send them out there, they will not only find no body, but it will tell Stedman that someone was snooping. Guess where he’ll come to look for someone to pin a trespassing charge on?”

  Francesca could see where this was going. She could even see Nash’s point. She could also very plainly see that Ava wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable. In fact, it appeared that Ava’s face was turning slowly from pink to purple. In a few minutes, she was going to completely lose it and start spouting off things that she would regret.

  With that in mind, Francesca leaned down and brushed a kiss across Quentin’s cheek. “I’m going to take Ava upstairs before she sets him on fire.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Quentin murmured with obvious amusement. “We’ll keep Nash down here.”