by Becky McGraw
“Dave isn’t here, I’m doing the hiring. Our conversation last night tells me you’re more than qualified to work here,” he replied.
“While the cat’s away?” she asked, with a breathy laugh.
“The cat left without giving the mouse any kind of cage or boundaries, so yeah, I’m playing. I’m doing what he should have done himself.”
“I want to be an operator, not a desk jockey,” Cecelia said flatly.
“Operator will come, but you have to prove yourself first. You’ll work for Deep Six, so if we need agents, you’ll have your toe in the door.”
Slade was determined to convince her and he didn’t know why. Yes he did, this woman deserved the chance her brother was denying her. She’d worked hard to develop the skills to work here.
“David will never let that happen, and you know it. I’ll be stuck behind that desk for life, if he doesn’t fire me when he gets back.”
“Better than being stuck in the sandbox, right? There’s no telling when that conflict will end. Do you really like it over there that much? Away from your family?” Slade coerced, and she groaned.
“No, I don’t like it, but I’m doing my duty, and it’s the only thing I have.”
He heard her weakening, so Slade went in for the kill. “You have your marketing degree, so you could put that to use for Deep Six too. Dave is doing it all right now, so I’m sure he’d appreciate your help there.”
“He doesn’t appreciate anything I do,” she replied with disgust and defeat in her tone.
“Give him a chance, and be patient. Susan will have him whipped into shape in no time.”
Whipped being the operative word in that statement, Slade thought, with a laugh. In his case, that wasn’t a bad thing. He needed someone to reel him in sometimes, and Susan was just the woman for the job.
“Yeah, she’s the best thing that ever happened to my brother, and I hope he listens to her. He’s just so damned stubborn it might take more than one lifetime for her to do that. I like my new sister-in-law.”
“I like Snapper too.” As unlikely as it was, Susan was the best thing that had happened to Dave, and to Deep Six Security. The guys had more comradery now that they’d ever had. That went a long way towards making a cohesive team. “She keeps us all in line around here.”
“Okay I’ll be your damned secretary, but if he fires me when he gets back you’re in big trouble mister, because I’ll be unemployed.”
“Susan won’t let him fire you,” Slade said, with slightly more confidence than he felt.
“Okay, let me call command and tell them to get my exit paperwork done, instead of the re-enlistment. I’ll still have to go back to the base for a week or so, and then ask for terminal leave, before I can work for you. I think I have enough leave built up to cover the time it will take to process the paperwork, but I’ll have to check.” Cee Cee took a deep breath and blew it out. “My CO is going to be pissed, because I just told him I was re-upping.”
“Try and speed things up, if you can.” If it took a few weeks, the odds were Dave would be back then and he wouldn’t hire her. “Find out your time frame and call me back.”
Slade hung up the phone and looked over at Lola, and she lifted her head from her paws to look at him. “Women are more trouble than they’re worth, Lt. Lola,” he said.
Lola’s eyes narrowed, her ears moved forward and she held his gaze for a second, before she barked.
“Not you, baby girl,” Slade said, with a laugh. “You’re the perfect woman for me. You do what I tell you to do and don’t talk back.” Looking placated, Lola got up and walked over to him to let him scratch between her ears. “And you help me keep my shit together too.”
Slade had a feeling he would need her to do that often during the two weeks he would be tied to this hot seat.
CHAPTER TWO
Somehow he’d survived the first day of his two weeks of hell, so Slade was a little hopeful that it might work out after all, when he sat down behind his desk on day two. He might have more hope though, if Susan and Logan would fucking call him.
He’d just flicked on his computer, when the phone on his desk rang. His heart skipped a beat, then plummeted when he glanced at the display and saw the caller was Jaxson Thomas, not Logan. He wondered what the former Navy SEAL who’d been put in charge of the security detail in Houston needed. There was only one way to find out, so he picked up the phone, connected the call and closed his eyes.
God, please don’t let there be a problem.
“What’s up, Jax?” Jaxson sighed deeply, and Slade tensed because that was not a good sign.
“Logan said you have the con while they’re gone and we need you here in Houston ASAP. There’s been an incident and the prince is pissed.”
“How pissed?” Slade asked, grinding his teeth. “Can I just call him? I have things to do here.” He had no idea what those things were, but the last thing he wanted to do was drive all the way to Houston today. No, the last thing he wanted was to be in charge of handling this problem at all. But it had to be handled, and probably with kid gloves. He’d often heard Logan bitching about how hard Prince Ahmed Khalil could be to deal with sometimes. They had to deal with him though, he was Deep Six’s biggest contract right now.
“Pissed enough to order us all out of the hotel,” Jax replied, sounding frustrated. “A call isn’t going to cut it. His son was kidnapped this morning.”
Adrenaline shot through Slade making him dizzy, as he stood. “I’ll be there in a few hours.” His eyes fell on the box that held Dave’s cell phone and he cursed.
“Did you call the police?” Slade asked.
“No, the prince didn’t want to involve the police. He didn’t really tell me why. He didn’t say anything to me other than get out!”
“I’m on my way,” Slade said, hanging up the phone to grab his sunglasses and keys off his desk. He stood and looked down at Lola. “Let’s go handle this Charlie fucking Foxtrot, Lola. It looks like we are in charge, whether we want to be or not.”
An hour later, Slade strode into the coffee shop down the street from the luxury hotel to find his men sitting at small round tables nursing lattes, and looking morose. His eyes landed on Jax, and the former Navy SEAL’s lips pinched. “Glad you got here so fast.”
Slade sat down in the empty chair beside him. “Okay, what the hell is going on?”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but the manager says you’ll have to take your dog outside,” a young waitress said, staring at Lola, who plopped down beside his chair.
Slade was used to this, but it irritated him every time. “Tell your manager that my dog is a service animal and under the ADA she is allowed to be inside this shop.”
Her eyes widened and she glanced back over her shoulder at the man standing behind the pastry counter, who obviously didn’t have the balls to deliver the message himself.
Slade waited until the waitress met his eyes again. “Tell your manager that unless you’d like to hear from both my attorney and the ADA, he’d better just get back to making his donuts.”
When the girl’s eyes welled up, Slade blew out a breath. “Just a word of advice? Next time, you might want to ask that question first, sugar.”
“I’m sorry.” Her lower lip trembled, she bit it. Slade growled as his eyes fixed there, and he watched her mouth move. “Is there something you’d like? It’s on the house.”
Two of the guys snickered and Slade shot them a look. He wished he’d never mentioned during one of their ‘team bonding’ nights, which Susan had instituted, that was the one thing a woman could do to drive him crazy. He didn’t have time for bonding right now, he needed answers.
“Coffee, black please,” he replied, turning in his seat as the girl walked across the shop to the counter. “What happened?”
“Some time after eight o’clock last night someone came up the back stairway to the penthouse level. They walked right past the guard...” Jaxson shot Caleb a glare, which told Slade that Caleb w
as that guard. “And took Zami from under our noses. I’m not a hundred percent sure of the time, because no one noticed the kid was gone until his nanny went into his room to wake him this morning.”
“Anyone check with hotel security to review security video?” Slade asked.
“There is no security video and hotel security has been told not to let us within twenty-five feet of the front door.” Jax huffed a breath, looked down at his cup and shook his head. “Even if they had video, I doubt the head of security would cooperate with us.”
“Why is that?” Slade asked.
“It’s a long story. The HOS is a woman, and the prince being an Arab, doesn’t like that fact or acknowledge her. That’s why he hired us to work with the guards he brought with him from Saudi.” Jaxson looked back up, and his lip pinched again. “Understandably, that didn’t put Ms. Kincaid in a very cooperative mood.”
“That’s a pretty fancy hotel. Why didn’t they have security cameras?” Slade asked, giving a distracted smile to the cute little waitress when she delivered his coffee. Any other time, he would’ve flirted and probably wrangled a date out of her, but he didn’t have that luxury at the moment. He needed to fix this cluster and get his ass back to the office.
“Oh they have them, but the prince wouldn’t allow them to be used on the penthouse level. He felt it was an invasion of privacy for his wives and daughters.” Jaxson rolled his eyes, and huffed a breath. “You know how that works.”
Yeah, after two tours in the middle east, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, Slade knew exactly how that worked. He was surprised the prince even allowed his men to be around the women at all since they weren’t related.
“Okay, so we have no clue where the kid is or who took him? No ransom notes? Declarations from the kidnappers?” Since a middle eastern prince was involved, this might be a political statement of some kind too. That did not bode well for that boy if that was the case.
“Nothing yet, so for all we know Zami could’ve just wandered off.” Jaxson shot another glare at Caleb.
“I only left for five minutes to go to the damned bathroom at three in the morning!” Caleb shouted, and the three other people at tables in the shop all looked startled. He leaned his forearms on the table, and talked to Jax in a quieter tone. “You said yourself we have no idea when the kid went missing, so stop blaming me. I doubt they had my bathroom schedule, because I don’t have one. Unless someone saw me leave and called them, if that was the time he was taken then you better start looking at employees and family.”
“You think this could be an inside job?” Slade asked Jaxson, but he wouldn’t meet his eyes. The man’s jaw worked plenty though. He knew or suspected something he wasn’t telling him. “Talk to me, Jaxson.” Speculation at this point was better than nothing.
“I’d rather not say,” Jax replied his jaw tight. “There’s no proof of anything, so it’s better not to muddy the water and put you on the wrong trail.”
“Well, this is accomplishing nothing. I guess I’m going to have to go find some proof. That hotel manager and head of security should be able to help me get an employee list,” Slade said, pushing back his chair to stand. Pulling out his wallet, he tossed twenty on the table, which should cover all the coffee and a healthy tip for the waitress. He turned toward the door, but looked back.
“I’m telling you they won’t let you in,” Jax warned. “But if you do get in tread lightly or you may wind up on your ass on the curb out front. The prince is really in a lather. I think he wants everyone’s heads to roll.”
Slade studied Jaxson’s face, and it looked like he’d already made the decision that head would be his, or he was going to offer it up. Not if Slade could help it. He needed the former SEAL’s help in finding that kid. Deep Six couldn’t afford to lose Jaxson Thomas, even if they lost this contract.
But Slade needed to sort things out at the hotel first. The money the wealthy prince threw at them for this security detail was mind boggling. They really couldn’t afford to lose the contract either. Or have an international incident that might damage their reputation so nobody would hire them. This needed to be kept hush-hush and handled quickly.
“Meet me back at the office. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Slade said, as he walked to the front door.
***
“Mr. Baker, I had no control over what happened on the penthouse level. You know that,” Taylor said, folding her hands in her lap.
She wasn’t glad the seven-year-old had been abducted, but she was glad for the lesson she hoped it taught the arrogant Saudi prince. Men were not always the better person for the job. But that lesson was one a lot of men needed to learn. Especially the old school sheriff in her hometown, who had driven her to Dallas to take this boring job in the first place.
Taylor was damned tired of dealing with men with that perspective. Her present boss, Mr. Baker, seemed different when he hired her for the job, but he sure wasn’t that way now.
“You had control over every other level, Ms. Kincaid,” he replied, twisting his hands on the desk. “There is no excuse for you not knowing what happened, even if you weren’t permitted on the penthouse level. I want you to pull every security tape we have for last night and personally review them.”
“I’ve done that, sir.” She’d been doing that since they discovered the kid missing at seven o’clock that morning. And then she’d interviewed all the staff who’d been on duty. “I told you there was nothing other than two black-clothed men going down the back stairs. They disappeared in the area where I told you six months ago we needed to add security cameras. There’s nothing on what kind of car they were driving.” Taylor was having a hard time keeping her voice calm and professional.
She didn’t want to sound smug, but when she’d brought up installing those additional cameras, this man had treated her like a paranoid woman. She’d proposed them to avoid a situation just like this, where they’d be caught with their pants down.
Who was paranoid now?
Taylor wanted to stand up and shout to this man that whoever took the Khalil boy knew there were no cameras in that area of the parking lot, knew their security protocol, and was aware of the lack of guards and cameras on that level of the hotel. And it was the prince’s own damned fault, because he refused to allow her to monitor the floor.
That insider knowledge the kidnappers had meant they had assistance from either someone in the prince’s entourage or someone on their hotel staff. The prince would never allow her to interview the family, but maybe she needed to re-interview her staff, ask more questions. Maybe branch out her investigation to staff who weren’t on duty.
Mr. Baker let out a long-winded sigh. “If you’ve looked over the tapes and found nothing, if you’ve interviewed the staff and found out nothing, I’m afraid I have no choice. I can’t go back to the prince without some kind of resolution.”
Taylor’s eyes flew back to Mr. Baker’s. “No choice? No choice in what?” she asked, sitting forward in her chair, her heart pounding in her chest.
“No choice, but to let you go, Ms. Kincaid. At least that might pacify the prince long enough for us to figure out what happened here and find his son.”
“You can’t fire me!” she shouted, vaulting to her feet. “This situation was in no way my fault!” Taylor was not going to let this man make her the sacrificial lamb when the prince had his own personal security, as well as those arrogant men from Deep Six he’d hired because she and her guards weren’t good enough for him. She wasn’t good enough for him.
They are the ones who should be fired, not her!
“I’m afraid it is your fault, Ms. Kincaid, since you are my head of security. Prince Khalil has demanded I get to the bottom of what happened and since you have nothing to help me, I am firing you. He is one of this hotel’s best customers, and I owe him answers.”
“Tell him that this is his own damned fault then!” Taylor walked over to lay her palms on the desk and lean in. “He tied my hands so I
couldn’t help him.”
“No, I think you tied your own with your attitude once he refused your assistance and hired the security firm.” Mr. Baker’s tone was calm, but Taylor heard the tremor in his voice. “If he takes this to our corporate office, I may be fired as well, for keeping you on knowing that. The way you handled yourself in that meeting was just shy of unprofessional.”
“He discriminated against me because I’m a woman,” Taylor said, standing up to fold her arms under her breasts. “That is what’s unprofessional. That’s not legal, and you might just be hearing from my attorney.” Once I hit the lottery. Right now, she was just wondering how she’d keep her house.
“And you acted like one, Ms. Kincaid, by being emotional and taking that as a personal affront to justify removing yourself from anything to do with his security, even though he and his family were still hotel guests.”
That meeting two years ago was permanently burned into her brain. Being in a meeting where you are the head of hotel security, but are being talked around as if you are invisible, being excluded from the conversation because you are a woman, was just about the biggest slap in the face Taylor could ever imagine. No, the biggest slap had come when the prince came right out and said he didn’t want her or her employees providing his security because the guards were under her supervision and she was a woman.
That was the final straw. The camel’s back had broken and Taylor felt obligated to let the cocky Arab know that although his attitude might be accepted in the middle east, it sure wasn’t accepted in the United States of America where he happened to be temporarily residing.
Mr. Baker had personally escorted her out of the meeting at that point, but Taylor didn’t care. It needed to be said, because it was obvious none of the other men in the room were going to clue him in. Especially Dave Logan, the owner of Deep Six Security, who had just been handed a security contract that probably set him up for life.
“I’ll have Crawford assist you with clean—” Mr. Baker started, but the knock at his door interrupted him. He glanced at his watch, then at the door. “I have an appointment, Ms. Kincaid. Crawford is waiting in your office to help you gather your things and escort you out of the hotel.”
