by EC Sheedy
“I’m going to freshen up,” she said. “Dinner will be thirty, forty minutes. That okay?”
Joe thought she was more than fine just the way she was, but he understood the drill. She needed space. “Fine.” He walked toward her. “What you told me . . . Getting past that. It’s a hell of a thing.” He stroked her hair.
“It was a long time ago. And as to that ‘getting past it’? Life doesn’t really give you a choice.”
“Maybe you’re right, but it’s not fun dragging it up again.”
“True.” She paused and a slight frown creased her forehead. “Made me feel like that nine-year-old girl again.” Then touching his face, she added, “Now, I’m going to get my act together for dinner, and come back here all grown up.”
He turned her hand, kissed her palm. “Good, because I’m a lot more comfortable around consenting adults.”
She gave him a quick smile. “I’ll bet you are.”
He watched her disappear into the bedroom.
He didn’t know a lot about kids—on a personal level— but the idea of someone hurting a child, trafficking in them, made him dangerously angry.
In the last two years, partnering with Julius Zern in Guardian, protecting families—particularly the kids—had become a large part of their business, and it took them all over the world. But generally the work was for wealthy, high profile parents who were afraid of kidnappers and ransom notes—not sickos with travel plans.
Joe’s relationships with kids might have been all business—one game of video bat battle hardly counting—but he liked them and he respected their innocence. He’d even taken a bullet for one once. Because kids weren’t meant to be hurt. By anyone. Anytime. Ever. Period.
Out of all of April’s story, one thing stuck like a burr in his brain. He couldn’t pinpoint why he was so sure, but he was; this trouble with Phyllis Worth meant trouble for April. It was connected—and he had to figure out how.
Joe went to the phone, dialed Kit. Got Julius instead. “What are you doing there? I thought you were in Mexico City with the Milonos.”
“Was. Nick Milono’s meetings went better than expected so the family decided to come home early. Plus one of the kids wasn’t doing so well with the air down there,” Julius said, his unusual bass-toned voice more gravelly than usual.
“You sound like crap.”
“Feel like it, too. Got a head cold. Where the hell are you?”
“Vegas.” Joe tried to visualize his partner, six-foot-four and outweighing him by twenty pounds, being broadsided by a cold virus. Normally it would take the offensive line of the Oakland Raiders.
“Nice. Who’s the client?”
“Not so nice—brutally hot. And there is no client.” He rubbed his jaw. “It’s kind of . . . personal. And if it’s all the same to you, I’ll leave the complete story for a stool in a dark tavern and too many beers.”
“Your call.”
“Is Kit there?”
“No. He’s going out with . . . what do you call those beautiful creatures with curves? Been so long, I forget.”
“Kit’s got a date?”
“Yeah. He’s caught himself a live one.”
“You feeling sorry for yourself?”
Julius laughed. “Hell of a thing, Kit getting all the babes.”
Joe looked again at the door April had gone through. Not all of them. Not that Julius had trouble getting women— when he bothered. Which, from what Joe could see, wasn’t very often. The occasional tall, leggy creature showed up in his life for a month or two, then she was gone, and Jules never seemed the worse—or better—for it. A story there, Joe figured, but he never pressed. Zern’s business until he decided otherwise. Plus, the guy was a work freak and, like Joe, most of his life was lived coming and going.
Since the two ex-army buddies set up Guardian, their business had grown steadily. In the current climate, there was no shortage of demand for well-trained muscle, sharp eyes, and even sharper brains. They knew they’d made it when their phone started ringing with calls from families in places like Saudi Arabia, China, and, of all the damn places, Iceland. If the family was important, and they had a travel itinerary, they called Guardian.
“While you’re sitting there feeling hard done by,” Joe said, “could you do me a favor?”
“Name it.”
“See what you can find out about the name Hanlon, Gus or August Hanlon. Out of Seattle originally, but could be anywhere. Went off the radar around twelve or so.”
“That’s a pretty blind search.”
“All I got.” And if anybody could find out anything, it would be Jules. The man had friends in all the right places, high and low.
“I’ll do what I can. And I’ll get Kit on it when he gets down from his love cloud.”
April walked back into the room—all grown up, just as she’d promised—and suddenly Joe had to concentrate on breathing.
“You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Thanks, Jules.” Joe lowered his voice. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Is she pretty?” he asked.
Joe’s mind blurred about the time he saw April stroll deeper into the room wearing some strappy little black dress that showed enough leg to bring a man down from a hundred paces. He was having trouble un-blurring it. That dress would slip off like silk from warm marble. If he was real lucky, she’d be thinking exactly the same thing. Distracted, and without looking away from her, he said, “What was that?”
Julius laughed. “Forget it—and enjoy. But remember— be careful out there.” He hung up.
Joe did the same but left his hand on the phone, his eyes never leaving April. He had no intention of “being careful.” Hell, his defenses were already breached, all that was left were a few crumbling walls.
And the black dress had pretty much finished those off.
Giselle caught Quinlan unaware. Coming up behind him, she covered his eyes with her soft hands and whispered in his ear, “Guess who?” She nipped his earlobe.
He covered her hands with his. “A beautiful young woman who—I thought—was doing what she calls her ‘spa thing’.”
“I love it when you’re wrong.” She took her hands from his eyes, kissed his head, and walked around to face him.
He was sitting in one of the double lounges beside the pool, his papers and files neatly stacked beside him on a round glass table. A plate of cheese and a large bowl of fruit sat in the middle of the table, along with a glass and a fine bottle of Burrowing Owl Merlot. A new wine he’d only recently discovered.
Earlier, Quinlan had taken his work—today mostly research reading—outside, intending to enjoy the soft breezes of early evening, the sunset and, finally, the cooling air.
He was also expecting a call from Las Vegas and preferred to take it privately on his cell. Since Henry had stopped calling, he was forced to rely on the reports of his hired hands. So far such reports had yielded little, other than the fact that Castor had worked out earlier in the Sandstone exercise room, then procured himself a prostitute. The lack of news had Q unsettled.
Giselle reclined on the lounge beside him, obviously intending to stay—with no apology about disrupting his work or his concentration. That he didn’t mind alternately irritated and surprised him. In truth, he welcomed the diversion.
“I’ve come to talk to you,” she said, closing her eyes. “Oh, but this is nice.” She stretched, putting her hands above her head, and wiggling her toes in the last of the sunlight touching the base of the lounge. “You do know how to live, Q.” She said the last with her eyes still closed, an impish grin on her face.
Quinlan frowned. Her toenails were painted black, making him think of street punk and rebellion. He’d need to speak to her about that. But not this moment. This moment he would enjoy the stirrings in his loins, the sight of her woman’s mound, high and round, enfolded in fine white cotton.
He liked the way the waning light played on her hair and pale skin, making her look fragil
e and ethereal. He liked the bikini she wore, a thousand dollars worth of white fabric and lace that showed off every inch of her smooth skin, high on the thigh and skimming the rounds of her buttocks. But not a thong. Quinlan didn’t like them and refused to buy them for her, considering them excessively immodest. He had no wish to see her parading around his friends at the pool in a state of near nakedness. She was for his eyes only.
He marveled, as he always did, at the paradox of her, her disingenuous playfulness and the intensity and wildness of her response to him in bed. She delighted him and troubled him. He was perilously close to a new and uncomfortable emotion—an emotion he’d always believed was the downfall of the stupid and careless.
“What is it you want to talk about?” he asked, knowing his own desires veered away from talk to another more interesting activity upon sight of her. Unfortunately, those thoughts were also inopportune, given the only privacy they had was the lounge canopy, not enough to conceal them from the second floor of the house. With a staff of four, there was bound to be someone looking on.
“I’m going home,” she said. “Later tonight, I think.” The words hit him as if they were cold sharp stones, alphabet pieces he needed to assemble before he could understand their meaning. “Home?” he repeated, subduing his shock and an inexplicable surge of . . . disappointment. No.
Momentarily unable to add more to his inane echo, he finally said, “I don’t understand.”
She opened her eyes, turned her head to look at him. “Home—as in the place I grew up? Dad, brothers, a sister, all that stuff.” She smiled at him, oblivious to his confused reaction. “Dad’s fifty-sixth birthday is next week, and one of my brothers has arranged a party. It’ll be wild. And a big surprise for Dad.”
“I see.” He swallowed, seeming to have trouble clearing his throat.
“It’ll just be for a few days. It’ll be fun. God knows there’s never enough of that.” She reached across Q, picked up the half of a peach he’d left on his plate, and took a bite. She knew he hated her eating from his plate, yet he let her transgression slide.
She was going away. While his brain processed her words, his stomach muscles clenched.
“Mmm, this is good,” she murmured.
The peach juice made her lips shine, and she tongued it from the corners of her mouth, momentarily disturbing his concentration. “I didn’t know you had . . . siblings,” he said.
She took another bite of the peach, smiled before answering. “Siblings? Why does that word sound so right coming from you.” She put the peach pit back on his plate. “Yes. I have siblings, Q. Two brothers and one sister.”
“You never mentioned them.”
“You never asked. Too busy fucking me, I guess.”
“Giselle, I’ve told you I—”
“I know, I know, you don’t like the word . . . just the act.” She grinned briefly. “You know, for such a totally fuckable man, you’re a real prude.” She rolled over and swung one leg across his crotch, then she raised herself above him on her knees. “And, by the way, that was not a complaint.” She undid his belt, unzipped him, and slid her hand inside his pants, stroking him over his silk boxers.
When she found him semi-erect, her grin widened. She yanked his boxers down, so quickly his breath caught. “Looks like I have some work to do,” she said. Enfolding his penis in her hand, she pumped him, slowly tightening her grip.
His body bucked, and he briefly closed his eyes, before clasping her hand, stopping its work. “Not now, Giselle.” He clenched his teeth, swallowed. Quinlan refused to let sex—his body’s demand for it—cloud his thought process. And while it had been growing increasingly difficult with Giselle, he considered his self-imposed rule inviolable. “No,” he said again for her benefit—and his.
She looked surprised, shrugged, and rolled off him.
Q did up his zipper and belt. “This idea of yours, about going home. I’m against it. I don’t like plans being dropped on me without proper consultation.”
“What’s to consult? I’m going home for my dad’s birthday. What’s the big deal?” She sat up, yoga-style, looked at him, her eyes questioning. Alert.
“The big deal, as you put it, is that I expect to be considered when you make decisions that affect me and my household.”
She looked at him in what he could only call bafflement. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You know I don’t kid.”
For a moment, silence took its place between them on the lounge. A silence of weight and sharp edges.
She got up, stood over him, and tilted her head. He stood to face her, the lounge solidly between them. “And I don’t think I’m going any further with this conversation,” she said. “Because if I do, there’ll be a winner and loser. Not a good thing for a relationship of convenience like ours. So I’ll just say again: I’m going home. I’ll be back—when I get back. As long as you don’t say another word about ‘consultation’ or how my decisions affect your freakin’ household.”
“You’re being childish, Giselle. I don’t like it.”
“And you’re being an asshole, Quinlan, and I don’t like that.” She stomped off with all the pageantry of a spoiled heiress.
He watched her go, then took the first step to follow her—to set her straight about his requirements. His phone rang.
He checked his call display: Las Vegas. He drew in an impatient breath and watched Giselle disappear into the house before he answered.
“Mister Braid? Mercy here.”
“Yes?” Q had hired two people to tail Castor: Mercy was one of them, Charity was the other. It was Mercy who’d originally called him to tell him about Victor’s death. She’d wanted him to know of her and her sister’s availability for any work that he might have. It seemed Victor’s death had seriously cut into their income. On Victor’s recommendation he’d hired them once before to locate some particularly time-sensitive SEC filings that he’d needed before they were made public. He’d been impressed with their work—and he’d made a fortune. Their dealings, all arm’s length, suited Quinlan. “Is there a problem?” Q pulled his gaze from the house where he could see Giselle pacing, see her pick up the phone.
“Henry Castor just got into a cab. I’m right behind him.”
“Good.”
“No. Not good at all. He’s headed for the University Medical Center.”
Quinlan closed his eyes—the hospital where Rusty Black lay, barely alive. Obviously the blundering oaf intended to correct his first botched effort and kill the woman—against Q’s specific orders. Or he’d lied. Perhaps Miss Black was more than the "bit player” Henry claimed she was. And perhaps he hadn’t got the information he needed from her during their earlier encounter.
He worked to make sense of it. But only one thing appeared certain: Henry Castor was an idiot; worse yet, he was a loose cannon. Tension hot and sharp clutched at his spine. He detested unpredictability.
“What do you want me to do?” Mercy asked.
“Give me a moment.”
Quinlan walked toward the pool, stood gazing into its pristine water. All Henry had that Quinlan didn’t at this point was the name of the mysterious pipeline—the person who would lead him to the girl. That name was all Q needed to remove Castor from the game. Therefore, his decision was either to protect Rusty Black from the murderous fool at all costs and elicit the information from her himself at a later date—both time-consuming and risky—or let Henry do whatever he planned to do—and see where the blood-soaked path led him.
“Mister Braid?”
“Do nothing,” he ordered. “Let him proceed with whatever his plans are—but do not lose him.” He hung up, thinking about Castor’s bloodied path and whether or not the footprints he made on it would lead to himself.
If Castor made any more mistakes . . .
Slowly massaging his nape, Quinlan considered a fallback plan, one requiring his personal involvement. Something he hadn’t considered until this moment. The thought brou
ght an unexpected surge of excitement.
Hands-on killing . . . it had been a long time.
He’d been young then, hungry and ambitious. Today he was fifty-five years old, feeling the weight of his years and a growing boredom and complacency. His old appetites for sex, money—life itself—had waned.
Until Giselle . . .
Giselle who’d ignored his demand that she stay. He felt a chill, a shortening of his breath. Perhaps Giselle sensed his graying spirit.
Perhaps revisiting those youthful times, involving himself directly in activities that had his blood pumping and his testosterone boiling would invigorate him.
Perhaps taking Castor’s miserable life would renew his own. He rubbed his forehead. It was insane, worse, highly impractical, to consider murder as some form of cosmetic surgery for an aging spirit.
Dear God, the risk. It was unthinkable.
Again, he looked up, toward Giselle’s window. It was dark. She was gone—and she hadn’t said goodbye.
Chapter 14
April couldn’t eat another bite; she’d barely managed half the chicken Caesar salad she’d ordered as it was. Impossible to eat with Joe’s blazing silver eyes fixed on her as if she were the main course, and the steak in front of him—the size of a welcome mat—was an appetizer.
They sat across from each other at the table the room service staff had set for them by the window. Outside, the lights of Las Vegas danced, rolled, flickered, and burst like eternal fireworks. Not content to rival the stars, they obliterated them. The night was glass clear, the sky a blue-black curtain, nothing more than an inky backdrop for the heat and bold radiance below it.
Like this dinner was a backdrop, a setting for seduction; normal on the surface, all shimmer and fire underneath.
April knew her town, her world within a world. She knew that outside this room there were thousands of milling people, winning and losing, laughing and loving; while inside was only a man and a woman, both edgy, expectant, and . . . hopeful.
