Guarding Raine (Security Ops)

by Brant, Kylie

  Both men watched as she turned on her heel and strode into the house, and then Mac let out a sigh. “Let’s go into the house. I’ve got sort of an office set up on the first floor.”

  Upon entering the family room, Mac sank down into the desk chair and indicated for Trey to pull up a seat.

  “I think I noted a bit of hellcat in that last exchange,” Trey remarked. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a long story,” Mac answered, his voice sour. “Suffice it to say that Simon Michaels did a number on me when he hired me, and his daughter is continuing in the fine tradition of her old man.”

  “You think this job was overreaction on Simon’s part? Or was he right to be alarmed?”

  Mac rubbed the back of his neck reflexively. “He definitely had reason for concern. From what I can gather, the police aren’t treating it too seriously. There hasn’t actually been a physical threat made, although the tone of the letters was nasty enough. But if the sender escalates? There’s every possibility she could be real danger.”

  “So what’s with her attitude?” Trey jerked his head toward the door. “Either you haven’t convinced her of the risk or you’ve failed to bowl her over with your smooth manner.”

  It was a long-standing joke between them that Mac’s personality could cause the kind of friction needed to light a match. Realistic, Mac called it. Abrasive was a term Trey threw around a lot. The humor of it was that the two of them were more alike than different. Trey just knew how to use the pretty words to cover up what he was really after. Mac believed in calling a black one-eyed jack a spade.

  “You’d definitely have been better in this job than me,” he admitted without rancor. “I knew that from the start.”

  “Not necessarily. That terse, dictating manner of yours might actually be considered by some women as godlike. It just apparently hasn’t convinced Raine Michaels that you have her best interests at heart.”

  Mac’s fingers drummed restlessly on the desktop as he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think that’s it, at least not all of it. I actually got through to her a while ago. Despite her attitude, I think this whole mess really has scared her. But she’s determined for some reason to hide that fact from me, and maybe from herself, as well. That’s the angle I can’t figure out.”

  Lifting a shoulder, Trey asked, “Does it matter? You can handle things here, can’t you? Raine doesn’t look big enough to give you too much trouble.”

  Mac snorted at that, but remained silent. His partner had no idea just how much trouble Raine Michaels could be, and he’d be hard-pressed to explain it to him. She hadn’t actually done anything, after all. It wasn’t her fault that everything about her seemed to bother him in some inexplicable way. No, that was due more to his need for a vacation than anything else.

  “You’ve checked out the phone?”

  Nodding, Mac fingered the cell he’d dropped in his pocket. “Caller probably used a prepaid cell, a throwaway. No way to track it and the number was blocked, at any rate. I’ll put our app on her cell so if he calls again we’ll have a better chance of getting a trace. How busy are you right now?” he asked his partner. “Have you taken on any more cases in the last few days?”

  Trey gave him a rundown of current clients, the approximate length of each case and the manpower and equipment needed for each.

  Mac nodded pensively. They were pretty busy, busier than he would have liked at the moment. They had been expanding fairly rapidly in the past year, and hiring more men as needed. It sounded as if every one of them was going to be kept active for a while.

  “I spoke to a Detective Ramirez, who’s in charge of Raine’s case.”

  “Did you get anywhere?”

  Shaking his head, Mac replied, “Got the usual confidentiality runaround. Not that I expected any different. He wouldn’t say what leads, if any, he’s been following. I have no idea whether or not he’s run checks on some of the people closest to Raine.”

  “Do you suspect the threats have been made by someone she knows?” Trey asked.

  Lifting a shoulder in response, Mac answered, “It’s a place to start. I don’t like not knowing anything about the people who have access to her. I’d like to get some information on a few of them. It won’t be easy. The comings and goings around here resemble a subway station.” He handed the list to Trey.

  Trey perused the names, a frown marring his brow. “How many of these people are in and out of here in a day?”

  “Lots,” Mac answered dryly. “She isn’t even sure who comes some days. When she’s painting she’s kind of in a world of her own.”

  “Okay,” Trey said, pocketing the list. “I’ll get background checks on all of them. Anything else?”

  When Mac shook his head, both men rose. “I’ll get on this right away, then,” Trey promised. Walking across the room, he asked, “What kind of artist is Raine Michaels, anyway? Have you seen any of her work?”

  Mac shrugged indifferently. “She paints.”

  Trey looked at him with mock patience. “Very astute, Mac. I’d gathered as much when you spoke of her pictures. Are these hers on the wall here?”

  They moved to examine the paintings Trey indicated. “Looks like these are all hers,” he noted, looked at the signature in the corner. Each was signed simply Raine. Each bore the unmistakable stamp of the same artist.

  Both men examined the paintings, four in total, in silence. “She’s talented,” Trey said, his voice tinged with surprise. “I haven’t heard of her before. Is she shown anywhere?”

  Mac shrugged. He didn’t have the interest that Trey did in the creative world, “She’s got a show coming up soon. She’s been getting ready for that. She has an agent, if that means anything. André Klassen.” He nodded in the direction of Trey’s pocket. “He’s on the list.”

  Trey’s eyebrows rose. “He’s no slouch, either. He wouldn’t take her on if she didn’t show promise. And if these pictures are a sample of what she can do, she’ll go far.”

  Mac studied each of the pictures in turn. All were done in a similar manner. The scenes were slightly out of focus, as if they were being viewed beneath water. Each painting depicted people, in crowds or as couples. He looked closer at one that showed a man and woman standing side by side in what, at first glance, would seem to be intimacy. It was only upon closer examination that he noticed each had a hand reaching for the other, but weren’t quite touching. That one point seemed to accent the slight distance between the two, adding to the overall effect of incredible yearning. “You can barely make out the features of these people. Why’d she smudge them up like that?”

  Trey chuckled. “You’re a philistine, you know that? It looks as if Raine Michaels favors a form of Impressionism. An artist who does it really well doesn’t need everything in the picture to be clear in order to convey emotions and a message.”

  Taking one last look at them, Mac wondered if the almost surreal view of reality in the pictures was indicative of Raine’s grasp of the world. If so, it depicted almost perfectly the person described by her family, a woman who saw things differently, who reacted to events with a maddening naiveté. He couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the technique in her paintings. He was no art patron, but even he could feel the emotions she’d captured there. Such a viewpoint in her personal life, however, could be downright dangerous.

  He turned away from the pictures. He couldn’t afford to think of Raine as more than a client. This glimpse into her perception of the world around her made her seem too human, more than a case. Emotionless objectivity was the quality he brought with him to each job, the quality he was paid handsomely for. Somehow that element receded in the presence of her talent. He made sure to avert his gaze from the paintings as he walked Trey out of the room and through the front door.

  Raine woke up, her heart pounding, chills chasing up and down her spine. Panting, she pulled the sheet closer around her, scooting up to lean against the white wicker headboard.

  The nightmare
was back.

  Her body was trembling with the aftershocks, her mind still frantically reassuring itself that it had only been a dream, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening all over again.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, her eyes went wildly to the window, latching with desperation on the full moon, the bright stars. It was always easier when she could concentrate on the night’s natural light, when the sky was bright despite its blanket of darkness.

  She concentrated fixedly on the brilliance of the moon. It lit the sky with almost dusklike shadows. It wasn’t really dark at all. Not really. She needed to believe that, had to believe it to quiet the pounding of her heart. It hadn’t been a night like this one that she’d been dreaming of. No, then the sky had been utterly black, and she’d had to depend on the streetlights’ artificial glow to guide her way.

  That night had given her a lasting fear of the dark, but she’d since learned plenty of ways to compensate for that fear. She was using one now. If this didn’t work, the switch to the lamp at her bedside was within easy reach. The night-light she’d long relied upon was still in the drawer of the table next to her bed.

  She didn’t reach for either. Already deep breathing was calming her, the chills chasing over her skin were lessening. Before the letters started, it had been years since she’d had the nightmare. Now it was coming with increasing frequency. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what had triggered its return. Reality had an ugly taint to it these days.

  Raine propped herself wearily against the headboard. Though the effects of the nightmare eventually faded, she knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not yet. After a time, she clicked on the lamp and slipped from her bed. Padding to the door in bare feet, she flipped a switch that turned on the light in the hallway. Some fears could be faced and conquered. But such feats took time, and she hadn’t been willing to wait until her fear of the dark disappeared before she’d bought her own home. She’d simply hired an electrician to wire the space so that she’d never have to walk into a dark room.

  Reaching the end of the hallway, she turned the light on inside her studio from a switch mounted outside the door. She pushed open the door and strode quickly to the painting she was working on. It was the second to the last one she needed for the show, and overall she was pleased with its progress. She went to a table in the corner of the room and selected some paintbrushes. A flash of movement at the window caught her eye, and she was drawn slowly to it, peering into the darkness. At first she saw nothing but shadows, and then she could discern a figure moving. Her throat went dry and her breath seemed trapped in her chest. Who was out there? Was it the same person targeting her for a mind game of cat and mouse? Would she wake in the morning to a new sick message in her mailbox or elsewhere in her home?

  Even as those questions echoed in her head, she began to breathe freely again. Because she recognized who was down there, knew the identity of the person even though she could make out little more than movement and shadows.

  It was Macauley, and he was pacing the small patio at the back of her house. She could tell by the impatient stride, the set of the shoulders. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew she was right. He was also awake tonight, and the knowledge gave her an odd sense of kinship. She watched as he strode across the patio and back, over and over. He moved as a man tormented, as if he, too, had nightmares that kept him from sleep, kept him from peace.

  She backed away from the window, feeling as though she was guilty of spying. Raine had no way of knowing what sent him outside at this time of night. He could have been working off some restless energy built up from the day. For all she knew, this was his way of dealing with a particularly pesky problem, striding back and forth in the moonlight until a solution appeared.

  But somehow she felt it went deeper than that. Maybe her own experience had her assigning like motivations to the man, but she thought he moved as a man driven into the night to exorcise demons that preyed on the unconscious mind. She was familiar with those demons, and felt an immediate empathy for him.

  She didn’t know what kind of ghosts were haunting Macauley O’Neill. She didn’t know what past experience had molded them. But she knew without a doubt that they existed.

  Chapter 4

  The hammering of the workers reverberated through the house for the next few days. And despite her promise to remain understanding about the noise, Raine frequently felt on the verge of screaming. On the day the work had begun she’d been surprised to see Macauley come into the kitchen at breakfast. When he’d handed her a package of earplugs she’d laughed and thanked him. But after three days she was no longer laughing. For the fourth time that morning men had tromped across her studio and were currently working at removing the glass from her windows.

  She finally admitted defeat. The earplugs had helped mask the noise coming from the rest of the house, but they couldn’t cover up the sounds in this room. Nor could she work with the constant visual distraction. She’d be getting no work done that day, so she cleaned her brushes and left. Wandering through the house, she noted similar noises coming from all directions.

  The job was actually going much more quickly than she’d imagined. Already half the house sported the new glass Macauley had spoken of. The tiny wires running through it were scarcely noticeable. The front door had been replaced and adorned with a shiny new deadbolt. Men were at work in the kitchen taking that door down, also. Raine sighed silently. She couldn’t deny that the precautions made her feel more secure. Yet they were also a blatant reminder of why she’d felt unsafe to begin with.

  Wandering outside, she noted a car coming up the drive. She shaded her eyes against the bright morning sunlight, trying to detect the identity of the driver. A quick grin crossed her lips when she recognized Sarah’s bright red sports model. Eagerly, Raine started down the steps to greet her friend. If she couldn’t work, the next best thing would be to spend some time talking to Sarah. Her quirky sense of humor was just what Raine needed today.

  “Hi,” Sarah called as she climbed out of the car. She paused after slamming the door and looked toward the house. “I just knew that a trip out here was in order this morning. And look at the sight of all those half-naked men.” Several of the workers had shed their shirts in the warm sun. She sighed appreciatively. “I must have a sixth sense about these things.”

  Raine laughed and came around the car to give her friend a quick hug. “I arranged it just for your benefit, too. That’s the nicest thing about you—it takes so little to make you happy.”

  Sarah’s return smile was forced. “I wish that trait ran in our family.”

  Immediately, Raine sensed her friend’s mood. “What’s the matter? Is Joe in trouble again?” Joe was Sarah’s brother, younger by six years. Their parents had died when Sarah was nineteen, and she’d raised Joe herself. He’d been in and out of scrapes for the past few years, and Sarah was constantly worried that someday he was going to land himself in something she couldn’t get him out of.

  Lifting a shoulder in response, Sarah simply said, “Joe is Joe.” She smiled slightly. “Someday he’ll grow up and become a responsible citizen, right?”

  Raine wasn’t so sure about that. She’d had occasion to observe Joe quite a bit over the years, and she thought he’d been spoiled beyond belief, first by his parents and then by his sister. Several times she’d suspected Joe was to blame for some odd bruises on Sarah’s face. But when she’d mentioned her suspicion once, her friend had become angrier than she’d ever seen her. It was the only time they had quarreled, and Raine had learned to leave the subject alone. Although she wanted desperately to help her friend, she respected the boundaries she’d set.

  She said only, “How can he miss with a sister like you to look up to?”

  Sarah agreed with mock solemnity. “That’s exactly what I keep telling myself.” She nodded toward the house. “It really looks like things are starting to happen here. Mac doesn’t mess around does he?”

&nbs
p; Turning to face the house, Raine agreed dryly, “He makes things happen, all right, although I’m sure under different circumstances he does more than his share of messing around.” Her tone gave the words an unmistakable connotation, and Sarah widened her eyes in mock disbelief.

  “Raine, I’m shocked! You’re starting to sound as bad as me!” She laughed. “I’ve finally corrupted you. I’m so proud.”

  Quick color flared to Raine’s cheeks at her friend’s teasing. The words, as well as the thought itself, had been totally unlike her, and she wondered uncomfortably where they’d come from. It wasn’t like her to idly speculate about a person’s sexual habits, and she certainly hadn’t given any conscious thought to Macauley’s. At least she hadn’t believed so until she heard her own words a moment ago. She curled her fingers into her palms in sudden tension. Stress was definitely taking its toll on her.

  “I don’t see Mac with the others.” Sarah was looking at the men. “I don’t suppose you arranged to have him appear half-nude for me, too?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Shucks. Something tells me that would definitely be a sight worth seeing.” She turned to Raine. “What are you doing out here, anyway? I expected to find you holed up in your studio all day.”

  “I would have been. But there have been men traipsing through it all morning, so I finally gave up.”

  “No wonder you’re so glad to see me,” Sarah remarked idly. “Since Mac spread the word that your place was off-limits to the students, it must seem deserted in there, even with the crew you have working.”

  But Raine didn’t hear the last part of the sentence. “Mac told the students what?”

  Sarah shot her a look. “Didn’t you know? I ran into Cindy Zeller on campus, and she told me. Apparently Mac called the professors of all the art classes you help with occasionally and told them to spread the word to their students. Everyone was real bummed out, and of course they didn’t understand, since Mac gave the teachers no details. I assumed it was because he didn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of people traipsing in and out of here while so much work was going on. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that certain what kind of reception I’d get here myself.”