Lewis Security

by Glenna Sinclair

  When the meeting was over, I could’ve sworn I saw smoke coming up from all the feet running from the room. I followed everybody out, then dropped my paperwork off with Lydia. She peered at me from over the top of her glasses. “Wait. You mean you’re on time for once? Call the weatherman. I think hell must’ve frozen over.”

  “What’s that got to do with the weatherman?” I asked.

  “You’re such a smartass,” she grumbled with a grin. “If you weren’t so darn cute, I’d put you over my knee and spank you.”

  “But that’s usually why women want to spank me,” I winked.

  “Oh, you.” She waved me off and giggled like a teenager. Really, she was old enough to be my mother. It was fun to make her smile, though, especially when she was usually on my ass. Just like my mother.

  The phone rang, which was good—there was only so much flirting I could do with a woman who wore sweaters featuring cats playing with balls of yarn—and I trotted downstairs to say good morning to the surveillance crew.

  “How are things in the cave?” I asked when I reached them. The room was dark, but only because they wanted it that way—I guessed living by the glow of monitors was easier than living in fluorescent lighting. Otherwise, there were no windows. All the better to keep our surveillance secrets secret.

  As usual, Danny and Jenna were throwing barbs at each other. They were another pair who needed to fuck and get it over with already. For all I knew, they already were. Marcus, as always, wore a set of headphones as he typed up reports on everything he’d seen overnight. I tapped him on the shoulder and he grinned as he turned off his music. “What’s up, man?”

  “Not much. How’s it going down here?”

  “Oh, the usual.” He rolled his eyes. “I would give anything to get a break from this, to be honest with ya.”

  “Shh.” I pointed to the ceiling. “Boss is on the warpath this morning. You don’t want him to hear you complaining.”

  He removed the headphones, then took off his thick-rimmed glasses and wiped them on his shirt. I noticed how careful he was with them, and how carefully everything was arranged on his desk. He had the same attitude we all did, and the same discipline thanks to a history in the military.

  Jenna threw her hands into the air over something Danny said, and I nodded in their direction. “What’s going on now?”

  “I think they’ve been dating for a while now,” he confided. He could’ve shouted it and they wouldn’t have noticed, so wrapped up in their argument. “And Danny said something stupid. Big surprise. So they’re fighting.”

  “Yo, guys.” I waved my hands to get their attention. “Chill out. Pax is in a mood today. He already got on me, Dylan and Spence.” Just like that, they stopped. Jenna made sure to toss her pink-streaked hair to the side and shoot him a dirty look—the last word.

  She eyed me up, and I knew exactly what she was doing. “How’ve you been, Brett?” Danny’s eyes bored holes into me when he glanced over, but he turned back to his work like he couldn’t have cared less. It was like a bad play.

  “I’m good.” I wasn’t going to be part of their drama and would’ve gone back upstairs even if Pax didn’t call me up. His voice was loud, sharp. I looked at the three of them. “See? Told you.”

  “Good luck,” Marcus murmured.

  “Yeah, you too.” We bumped knuckles before I went back upstairs. I had the feeling I was gonna need all the luck I could get.

  Lydia pointed frantically to Pax’s office, and I got the feeling the call that had interrupted us was a big one. Maybe a new case. My shoulders slumped before I could stop them—I was just closing up a three-month-long case and wanted to take a few days to relax if possible. Not that my last case was all that stressful. Spence wasn’t the only one who felt like he was doing nothing but babysit. But a night at home in my own bed might’ve been nice—even two or three nights in a row.

  Pax barely looked up at me when he waved me in. He was still on the phone, and his creased forehead told me he was listening hard to the details of what was probably a new case. My heart sank. Looked like I wouldn’t be getting any time off just then. I would’ve swallowed glass rather than say anything to him about it when he was stressed out.

  “Okay. We’ll be down there soon.” He hung up the phone and took down a note while I waited at attention. I noticed a handwritten envelope next to his left hand, and when he looked up and noticed where my eyes were, he slid it into a drawer.

  “I have something for you. At least, I think I might. Ricardo’s still trying to get the information out of the girl. She’s being a little jumpy.”

  “What happened?” I did what I could to hide my irritation.

  “She witnessed a murder last night. They’ve had her at the station all night, and from the way it sounds, it wasn’t just any murder.” He stood up and checked his pockets for his keys.

  “What was it?”

  “A mafia hit.”

  “Oh, shit.” Now that could be exciting. Maybe I didn’t need time off, after all. I just needed something interesting to happen.

  “You up for this?” he asked. “It might mean guarding this girl from whoever did the hit.”

  “Hell yes.” We walked out the door together. So much for sleeping in my own bed—if the case was mafia-related, there was no way I could leave the girl alone.

  “I’ll drive.” Pax opened the doors to his SUV and I slid into the passenger seat. The car could’ve been brand new, straight off the showroom floor, he kept it so clean. Sometimes I thought his cleanliness stepped over the line into obsession.

  “So it’s Ricardo’s case?” I asked as we pulled away from headquarters, a nondescript little building in the middle of a Brooklyn block full of nondescript buildings. No need to draw attention to ourselves. Some agencies like ours had offices in the middle of Manhattan, in big-time high-rise buildings with dozens of staff members. I was willing to believe we did better than they did at the end of the financial year. We had lower overhead, fewer staff members but a sterling reputation for the work we did. Having a close relationship with a band of detectives helped, too. Our relationship with Ricardo Montez and his department was a profitable one, but not because we handed him kickbacks or anything like that. He wouldn’t have taken them even if Pax was the sort of guy who would offer them—in fact, I had the feeling the relationship would fall apart if something like that was ever brought up. They were cut from the same cloth, maybe because they grew up together.

  Pax nodded, and I noticed that the tension hadn’t left him. What the hell was going on in his head? I wished I could ask, but I didn’t dare. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would open up—not that I was the type who wanted to share feelings, either. But it was obvious something was eating at him. I reminded myself that we weren’t friends. We were colleagues.

  It was rush hour by then, which meant we crawled our way to the police station. The girl had been there all night, which meant she was probably a basket case by then. “Did he say anything about where she lives, what her situation is?” I asked, just to have something to talk about. Sitting in silence was eating at me.

  “No—he didn’t mention anything about that.”

  “She’s a young girl?”

  “He didn’t specify.” And Pax didn’t offer any more information but that. I took the hint and kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride, using the excuse that I had to get myself into the right mental space to handle a new client. There was something exciting about opening a new case, too. Plenty of possibility for something interesting to happen. I needed more of that in my life, anyway.

  Chapter Two – Molly

  “How’s that coffee treating you?” The handsome young detective sitting across from me gave me a sympathetic smile. He was the Good Cop. I had figured that out a while back, probably within three hours of being at the station. I was frustrating the hell out of them, and he was the guy who was supposed to cozy up to me to get the information they needed.

  None of
them were more frustrated than I was. I didn’t mean to walk into something so terrible. The image of that man’s face when the bullet tore through him was branded in my brain, burning and sizzling. Nothing I did could wipe it away.

  “It’s good enough,” I murmured with a smile. “Thank you.”

  “I just want to be sure you have what you need.”

  “Thanks.” His eyes crinkled a little at the corners like I was wearing on even his patience. That wasn’t my problem. None of it was.

  “Is there anything else you remember about what you saw last night?”

  I shook my head. “Maybe I’m blocking it out or something. I just remember seeing the man getting shot. I remember running away, and I remember the cop pulling me over for speeding.” I looked down at my bandaged hands. It was the blood on my palms that had clued him into there being something wrong with me. I had cut them up when I tripped and fell while running from the scene of the shooting. Stupid me. I could’ve gotten away if it wasn’t for that—I would’ve taken a ticket, no problem, if it meant not getting hauled into the station.

  The cop stood up and stretched. He was really good-looking, and he had a nice temperament. I wondered what he did with his free time. Then again, I thought ruefully, he’d just spent the night at the station with me. What woman would put up with that sort of schedule for long? Men like him were married to their job.

  The door to the gray-walled room swung open, and in strode the Bad Cop. He was handsome, too, but in a different way. Good Cop was the All-American blond-haired, blue-eyed kid who had probably lettered in track and field in high school. Maybe football. Meanwhile, Bad Cop had a dark, intense sort of smoldering sexiness. It could’ve been fatigue and punch-drunkness, but I thought in the back of my mind that even if I had more information to share, I would’ve stalled just for the sake of hanging out with them.

  “How’s your memory coming along?” Bad Cop asked in a clipped tone. He was just barely holding back his sarcasm.

  “I don’t know why you all feel the need to waste your time,” I murmured. “I’ve been telling you since last night that there’s nothing else for me to share with you. I witnessed the shooting and I told you were it took place. You found the body, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, the body was there. And that’s strange, since the body in that abandoned building was easily identifiable and had ties to the mafia.”

  My stomach turned to ice. The mafia. I would have to get myself involved in something like that, wouldn’t I? I cursed myself for the hundredth time in twelve hours for going down there in the first place. I knew it wasn’t a good section of town. I had my reasons for being there, but they weren’t good reasons. It wasn’t like any photos I took down there would be something I could sell to a newspaper or magazine.

  “I’ve told you everything I can,” I insisted. “And I gave you my camera, didn’t I? What else do you need?”

  “Yes, you gave us your destroyed camera,” he murmured, shaking his head as he flipped through pages in a file folder.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help that I dropped it. I fell.” And I held up my hands to remind him of how I’d torn them up. Under the bandages, they looked like I had run them over a cheese grater. The street had been full of broken glass and cracked concrete. I hadn’t even felt the pain at first, not until long afterward. Adrenaline, I guessed.

  “Yeah, I know that, too.” He took a seat across from me and loosened his tie. “I’m sorry, Miss San Lorenzo. I know you’re feeling confused and upset over what you witnessed yesterday.”

  I was sorely tempted to warm up to him when he talked like that and looked at me the way he was looking at me. His dark eyes were tired, but they were also full of compassion. Could I trust him? Or was he only trying to butter me up?

  “It was awful.” I let my chin tremble a little because it was impossible to keep it from trembling when I remembered again how terrified that poor man had been. Mafia ties. I wasn’t surprised. None of it surprised me. So he wasn’t a very nice person, the man who’d been shot. I could only imagine the number of awful things he had done. Had he ever made a person get on their knees before he pulled the trigger, the way he’d gotten on his knees? Had they blubbered and begged the way he’d blubbered and begged?

  He might very well have done just that. Karma might have bitten him hard in the ass. Still, he was a person, and he had been a very scared person.

  “It’s one thing to see something like that in the movies,” I whispered. “But it’s another thing to see it in person. To see a real person’s life come to an end right in front of you.”

  The Bad Cop nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s terrible. There was a living person in front of you just a moment ago, and then?” He snapped his fingers. “They’re gone.”

  I felt tears pricking behind my eyes as I nodded. I couldn’t cry again. I had already spent the better part of an hour during my time at the station weeping over the memory. That was probably a result of adrenaline leaving my system, too. The shock of the situation had worn off and the pain and confusion poured in.

  There was a knock at the door, and I looked up as it opened. “Sorry,” a tall, broad, bald-headed man murmured as he stepped in. “They told us we could find you in here.”

  Bad Cop—what was his name again? My memory was oatmeal after sitting up all night—stood to greet our visitors. There were two: Mr. Clean with his tight t-shirt and bald head, and another man who I couldn’t come up with a nickname for right away. He was built much the way Mr. Clean was, broad-shouldered and thick in the arms and chest. His waist was slim, trim, and he wore a pair of jeans better than any model I had ever seen. Even in my half-delirious state, I couldn’t help but appreciate him. He had strong bearing, too, and a proud tilt to his head. Military, I guessed. My photographer’s eye took him in and drew conclusions while Bad Cop had a soft-spoken conversation with them.

  Then, he turned back to me. “Miss San Lorenzo, this is Paxton Lewis.” Mr. Clean nodded with a tight smile. “He owns Lewis Security, an agency out of Brooklyn. My team works very closely with his in cases like yours.”

  “Cases like mine?” I let out a short laugh of disbelief. “I don’t have a case.”

  “It looks as though you do,” Bad Cop insisted. “You’re the witness to a mafia hit. And at least one of them saw you, according to your statement.”

  Damn it. I shouldn’t have made that statement. The last thing I needed was for the cops to hang all over me. I was scared to death, sure, but it would’ve been easier to hide myself from the bad guys without cops around me all the time. Wouldn’t it?

  “I don’t want any part of this,” I insisted. “Why can’t I just go home? I can move, I’ll leave town if I have to. I just want to move on and pretend this never happened.”

  The almost indulgent smile every man in the room wore infuriated me. I dug my nails into my palms and felt more awake and aware than I had since the night before. “Listen. This might be a joke to you guys—“

  “Nobody said this was a joke,” Bad Cop cut me off. “If you think you’ve been sitting here with us all night for the sake of a joke, we have a bigger problem on our hands than I thought we did.”

  I brushed him off. He was starting to get on my nerves, no matter how cute he was. “All I’m saying is, let’s not make a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be. I’m no mafia witness. I’m just a girl who was trying to take pictures in the wrong place at the wrong time.” My black hair was in a braid, hanging over one shoulder. I picked at it, twirling the end around my fingers before stroking its length. I had to do something to keep my hands from shaking.

  “Unfortunately, this is the way it happens sometimes. Normal people like you—law abiding people—can’t live their normal life without stumbling on something you stumbled upon. This is why it’s so important for us to shut down this activity whenever and wherever we can.” Bad Cop sat across from me again, and he looked more sincere than he ever had. I got the feeling I was finally talking
to the real person, not the façade he wore when he was trying to get through to a witness.

  Good Cop cleared his throat. “Most people are eager for protection in a situation like this,” he added.

  “I don’t need protection. I know I don’t. Only one person saw me, and even then, he hardly got a look at me. I ran. I think he followed me part of the way. But that was it. He wasn’t even close enough to get a look at my license plates. I mean, how is it possible that anybody would come after me?”

  Bad Cop stood and leaned his palms on the table. “Let’s just say it would help me sleep better tonight if I knew you were safe. Okay? Until we figure out what happened, who pulled that trigger and why, it’ll be better for you to have somebody keeping an eye on your safety.”

  “Detective Montez is talking about us,” Paxton interjected. Montez. Right. Bad Cop did have a name, after all.

  “So where do you come in?” I asked. The nightmare was only getting worse. If I could go back and do it all again…

  He took the seat Montez had left empty. “I run an agency which employs ex-military men and women who act as private security agents. We help people like you.”

  Ex-military. Well, that was something at least. But not enough to convince me.

  He continued. “Do you live alone?”

  I nodded. “I have an apartment in Queens.”

  “Big? Small?”

  “Smallish. One bedroom.”

  “What do you do for a living? I heard something about photography?”

  So they had already been sharing notes on me. “I’m a freelance photographer. I generally shoot events and portraits, and occasionally I’m able to take photos which I sell to the media. But only occasionally. I was just out taking pictures last night, trying to find something interesting to shoot.” I winced at the word “shoot”.

  Paxton smiled ruefully. “And you did find something interesting, didn’t you?” I nodded in misery. “So you did get a shot of the murder taking place?”