by Dana Volney
When this was done, provided they were both alive, he was going to ask her more about her credentials. Not because he didn’t believe she possessed them, but because she must have stories beyond his imagination.
He took a step back to his room, and his heartbeat pounded through his chest when she disappeared out of his view. Dammit. She’d told him to stay there. She was the professional who knew how to handle this situation. If they were negotiating a trans-Pacific shipping contract, he would be in his kick-ass element.
How dare Franklin send people to hurt him, and how dare they tangle with Winter in the process. She had nothing to do with this mess. What if she got hurt shielding him? His stomach turned. He couldn’t keep her in harm’s way like this. He didn’t have a lot of options. The reason she was there was because he did need protecting and that was what she did for a living. He sure as hell hoped she was as good as he expected her to be—in any case, he was about to find out.
• • •
She felt the shift in the room—they weren’t alone. If Eliam would listen and stay the hell in his room, she could focus more on the intruder at hand.
As soon as she was out from behind the bar, she saw a glint from the hallway. She hurried toward the entryway, stopping short of the end of the wall, where she slowed her breath. The tip of the intruder’s gun slowly appeared. Keeping her own gun in her right hand, she waited until the intruder’s full gloved hand was in view before she grabbed it with her left hand and pulled. A person in black lunged forward and she raised her gun to hit him, but he blocked her arm. She punched his solar plexus then lower in his stomach before he pushed her and swept her legs. She fell back and kicked the side of his knee from the floor. Hard. He screamed and fell. She scrambled to her feet and found her gun close by on the floor. Rising her hand high in the air she whipped the guy in the back of his neck.
She reached into the liner of her jacket, pulled out zip ties she always kept with her, and cuffed the intruder where he lay. She rolled him over to get a good look at his face. Young. Good fighter. Bad hit man. Holland would be getting a call tonight—he’d said she was the only one with the contract, and there were still many hours left on her exclusivity.
There wasn’t much she could do with the man unconscious. She pulled out her phone and paused at it for a beat. She was going to have to call him; there was no other way. Eliam’s attacker needed to be arrested and investigated, and there was no one better than Alexander Dreyer.
“Detective Dreyer.” He answered on the first ring, but his husky voice sounded full of sleep.
“Hey, Alex. It’s Winter.” She made her voice light on purpose. They’d broken up six months ago and had only bumped into each other on occasion—mostly when their interests had aligned professionally—and never had she instigated the connection.
“Is everything okay?” He paused. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Yep, and I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t have to.” Believe me. You’re the last person I wanted to talk to today.
“Shoot.” His tone was now lucid.
“I have a client in danger.” She found the guy’s gun, ejected the bullet from the chamber, and let the clip fall to the floor. “I just knocked the second attempt in the last twenty-four hours unconscious on his floor.”
“I’ll be right over.”
If there was one thing she’d learned from their time together, it was that he didn’t take his job lightly and he never second-guessed someone in danger. Two facts that she shared with him and had ultimately been their undoing. It was hard to make time for each other when the job always came first. She relayed Eliam’s address and disconnected.
Eliam. Shit. She whirled around. He stood in his living room, watching the man on his floor, a combination of horror, panic, and anger in his eyes. It couldn’t be easy to have definite proof that someone, otherwise known as your stepfather, was actually trying to kill you.
“It’s okay. He’s taken care of.” She moved to block his view of the intruder, who had a growing, painful-looking lump—damn, she’d hit him hard; she tried not to smile at her triumph—and stepped closer to Eliam.
“This man broke into my home to kill me.” His statement was filled with disbelief and resentment. “Is he dead?”
A chuckle escaped before she could stop it. “No.”
“Oh.”
Was that disappointment in his voice? Maybe she’d underestimated Eliam’s stomach for violence. His dark eyebrows furrowed and the cut of his jaw became more distinct—he was one tall, sexy man.
Shit. Mysterious men always get me.
“I’m going to have this investigated.” Before she’d thought her client was well built and had a nice face, but now that she’d caught something dark about him, she wanted to slip her arms around him and press her lips against his while trailing her hand down his hard chest.
Stop acting like a horny teenager and do your job.
She checked her libido. She didn’t date clients. Not ever. Besides, now would be the exact wrong time to flirt with the man, when she needed to focus on keeping him alive.
“How will that stop him? Franklin is careful. In business he is always diligent, and I’m assuming wanting me dead is a business decision.”
“Alex is the best. He’ll track down Franklin and find evidence to have him arrested.”
Eliam nodded, but the harrowed lines of his face told her he wasn’t convinced. “I agree the best way to stop this is to go to the source.”
There was a “but” in his sentence he wasn’t saying, and she had a bad feeling about what he’d left out.
“Taking matters into your own hands won’t solve anything. It’ll only make it worse. Trust me,” she said in her sternest voice.
His golden-brown eyes looked directly into hers. Silence stretched on, and with every breath she knew he was going down a path he couldn’t come back from.
“Matters don’t seem to be going well anyway. I appreciate your services. But it’s time I make a couple of calls of my own.”
“No.”
“No?” His voice deepened, and his hands rested easily on his trim waist.
“I can’t let you do that.” Did he even know hit men or people of that nature? “I’ve called in the police, there will be an investigation, and you want to be clean in all of it.”
“I want to stay alive, and this seems like a him-or-me situation.”
“It won’t be you. Trust me.”
“You keep saying that. And while I’m inclined to believe you can protect me, I’m not so sure on the trust just yet.”
She moved closer to him, close enough to smell his spicy musk. “I’m the best at what I do. You can trust that.” The doorbell rang and she turned from Eliam and his brooding. He didn’t have to trust her. She wasn’t sure what that meant in this situation anyway. He just had to believe that she’d protect him. At all costs.
• • •
“We do need to talk about other enemies you may have,” she said as she answered the door. “We can do that after we leave. Pack a bag. Probably for a couple of days.”
Eliam collected his thoughts, the whole jumbled mess of them. She was right—hiring his own hit man probably wasn’t a good idea. So, he was stuck with her and whichever detective she’d called. They better make headway soon or he would figure out how to take matters into his own hands. There was work to be done at Prince Industries—contracts to solidify and some powerful ties to make, ones that Franklin had nearly decimated. Eliam didn’t need some petty vendetta holding up the business now that he was in charge.
“Eliam Prince, this is Detective Alex Dreyer. Eliam is president of Prince Industries. Formerly his stepfather’s position and one he apparently isn’t happy to lose.” Winter glanced between the two but let her gaze linger on Detective Dreyer. Eliam caught the unspoken words between them—he’d bet it had something to do with a personal history.
Eliam shook the man’s hand. “Franklin Black. That’s who’s b
ehind the attacks.”
“And you’re sure no one else would be coming after you? Have you noticed anyone following you in the past month? Week?” Detective Dreyer asked as he put one hand on his hips. He was dressed in a suit and tie, way too formal attire for the wee hours of the morning.
“The timing seems too coincidental to be anyone else.” If it were someone else, or more than just Franklin, he was going to have to reevaluate his life choices. Or start playing dirtier.
“I’ll check into things. See what I can dig up.” Detective Dreyer spoke more to Winter than to him.
They moved and spoke with deftness as Eliam watched them, which usually came from a sense of intimacy. How did she know this detective and why had she chosen to call him? Were they lovers? Why the hell did he care? Someone was trying to kill him and he was wondering whether Winter and this detective had got it on in the past?
“What will you do with him?” Eliam needed to be in the conversation—this was his life, after all.
The man on the floor started to groan, moving a little. The detective, who was no taller than Eliam, hauled the assailant up on his feet in one quick motion.
“I’ll call you when I know something more.” The two men headed for the front door. “And you call me with any new information.”
“Me? How would I get any information?” Her steeliness was suddenly sweet.
“Winter.”
“Fine. I have a couple of feelers out.”
With that the detective, his boyish charm, and the man sent to kill Eliam were gone.
“Seems like a pretty good friend to call him at this hour with this problem.” Ah hell, he didn’t need to know why she called Alex—that knowledge wouldn’t keep him alive. But it might satisfy other growing curiosities about her.
“He’s an old friend and really good at what he does. He’ll help.”
She left out the word “me”—clearly there was nothing Detective Alex Dreyer wouldn’t do for Winter Wyn.
Eliam nodded instead of letting her in on his suspicions. They weren’t in the ninth grade, and this wasn’t a time to pass notes back and forth figuring out who liked whom. “Why aren’t you packing?”
“Where are we going?”
“A safe place.” She was back at the bar, loading all the sprawled-out crap back into her bag.
“I have work to do, and I won’t let any of this stop what needs to be done.”
“And you need to be alive to do that work. Felix and Eddie will come over tomorrow, and we’ll reassess with this new information we have.”
“New information?”
“Tonight. What just happened. Go pack.”
Admittedly, he wasn’t totally inclined to believe that there’d really been a price put on his head, but now he had undeniable proof. And that knowledge conjured a primal instinct of survival.
“Do you know the intruder?” he asked.
“No. I only know the ones I’ve already caught. We don’t belong to some Association of Bad Guys and the LEOs Who Chase Them to compare notes and strategies at our convention.”
Who the hell was he surrounded by? Louis, a trusted family friend, had called Winter, but who was she? And who were all these people she kept talking about? Nope. No more of this crap until he got answers. “Are you one of them?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you freelance as a killer as well as protection?”
“Eliam. I know this has you rattled, but I can assure you I don’t do that anymore.”
“What?”
She laughed. “I’m kidding. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Bad choice.”
“Okay, okay. But, seriously, I was in the army for ten years, protecting American interests and watching my buddies’ backs. I left the service with top honors and qualified as a sharpshooter in both rifle and pistol. Felix, Eddie, and I were under Louis’s command in Company A stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and you trust Louis, right?”
“Yes.”
“And he trusts us. The rest of my team I met through operations, and although we didn’t work on the same army team, they have great skills, and these people have never let me down.”
Eliam rubbed his temples. “Then what do you suggest we do now?”
“Pack.”
Yeah, whatever. He’d try, but his mind was racing and he felt like jumping out of his skin, courtesy of all the elements he was not able to control. Tomorrow would be a new day and he knew just how to start it. By calling stepfather dearest.
Chapter Five
This was crazy—she was crazy. She’d never even considered this option before. Bringing a client to her home was definitely breaking a billion codes she should live by. There was really something to be said at keeping a safe house somewhere—after this job, she was going to look into acquiring one.
Her security detail had never been this serious before. Not in the States. She had become accustomed to fairly small-time gigs: death threats that were as weak as the person acting them out, angry shareholders, activists, corporate espionage. The few hits that had been put out on other clients had gone away quickly. The first chance she had to sneak away and call Holland, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. Thirty-six hours. He’d been very clear on the terms and she’d given him no reason to doubt she intended to fulfill her obligations—there’d been no need for a second hitter.
Second hitter? Who was she becoming? She knew who she’d been in the army—it had been an evolution, but she’d always had a clear picture of why she’d enlisted. To serve and protect. Whatever it took—which for her first five years had taken on a very different meaning. A dark meaning. She’d scored high in firearm proficiency and had subsequently been recruited to a company that used her skills on the regular. Most of those missions would haunt her until the day she died. Louis’s command had brought her back to why she joined in the first place, and they performed tasks she’d wanted to do the entire time—carry out missions that aided her country, fellow troops, and the people they were sent to protect. The army was a lifestyle—it had its own rules for society. Back in Seattle, she sometimes felt lost. God help her, sometimes she wished she was back in the desert.
“Where are we going?” Eliam hadn’t spoken since they’d left his penthouse.
“Somewhere safe.” She tried to keep an even face and tone even though rage jumbled inside. She could’ve been killed right along with Eliam—was that the goal all along?
“I want definitive answers from now on. I’m in this as much as you are, if not more.”
Fair point. “My house,” she said quickly and softly.
“Your house?”
She nodded and in the darkness of the car she hoped he couldn’t see her uncertainty.
“Are you sure that’s the best place? I mean, won’t it be easy to figure out that’s where we are?”
“No.”
“I could check into a hotel under a different name and pay cash.”
“I’ll loop you in on what’s happening and the decisions that are being made regarding your security from now on. But in return I need you not to question everything. I need to think through some issues, and backtracking to explain things that have already been decided isn’t going to help us get ahead of anything.”
Silence fell on them again. Not that she was a huge talker, but Eliam’s strong silent persona was robust and he certainly didn’t share pleasantries when he didn’t want to. Well, he could be silent for now. He should be collecting his thoughts anyway. She had questions he was going to answer tonight.
She parked in the garage and motioned to him to stay put until the door was fully down.
She showed him through the entryway and kicked off her boots. As he took off his coat to hang it on her green coatrack, she noticed the muscles in his arms. Every time she nearly forgot about his sexiness, he managed to subtly remind her. Damn, everything about this guy was dark and thick. A look that made her swoon inside. Too bad he’s a client.
“This way.” She pointed to the small opening that separated her entryway and living room. “There are the bedrooms, mine is on the other side.” She pointed to the left. “Kitchen, living room, and office.” Her arm ticked off the places she named clockwise from where they stood.
“Nice.”
“The basement is unfinished and the upstairs is my office.”
He looked at the ceiling. “All of it?”
“Yup. I like my space; it’s all one room.” She liked her loft area with its big window that looked out over the beautiful greenery of Seattle. The view helped her think. She also fancied her punching bag up there and the comfy sofa she’d had since college for when she napped. She was the queen of the power nap.
“You have a nice home.”
“Thanks. I’m slowly fixing it up. The flooring is next.”
He glanced down and she lightly rubbed her black-socked toe over the old beige carpet. She wanted hardwood floors, dark and knotty, to go with the cottage charm of her newly painted walls.
“You can still go in to work, but we’ll take a different path.” Having Eliam in her home was odd enough, but they didn’t need to get too personal. Talking about her redecorating projects was weird. “Felix and Eddie will get there before us to check it out. We won’t follow your normal patterns, and we’ll need to look at your schedule and mix it up a bit. Professionals like routine. We won’t give them one.”
There was that stare again—deep and dark and hiding something. “They, these people after me, clearly don’t think anywhere is off-limits.”
“They rarely do. You should try to get some sleep, though.”
It wasn’t too late yet. She didn’t know what else to do with him—watch TV, drink, chitchat? Asking him all the questions she wanted and getting straight answers out of him seemed like a bad bet now that the time had come, but after he relaxed a little, or couldn’t sleep, maybe he’d be more open.
“You think I’m going to sleep after all of this?”
