DRAGON SECURITY: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Olivia’s dollhouse.

  I sat up out of instinct. She was in my daughter’s bedroom.

  “Quinn!”

  No. I was done. I wanted this to end. And I wasn’t about to allow this woman to take anything else from my child.

  I was out of the bed and halfway across the room before I realized I’d moved. There was a baseball bat beside the door that I used to believe was good enough for protection. What a fool I was! But it was solid, and it would do some damage before Vincent could get aim with his gun.

  I flipped on the hall light, illuminating the open door to Olivia’s room. It’d been closed when I went to bed. I charged across the landing, shoving it open the rest of the way with the head of the bat. It was dark, but I could see the outline of Olivia’s prized dollhouse on its side on the floor. I flipped on the light here, too, but there was no one there. I opened the closet door and used the bat to move clothes out of the way. Nothing.

  “I know you’re here, Beth!”

  “I’m here,” she called out from across the hall.

  I was halfway across the landing when Vincent grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “She’s setting you up. She knows I’m here.”

  “I don’t care. I’m done with this.”

  “You don’t know what she’s got, Quinn. You don’t know that she doesn’t plan to fire a weapon on you the moment you walk through that door.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” I said, shoving him back with a hand against his chest. “I don’t care anymore. I just want this to end.”

  I spun around, intent on marching into my home office. But the moment I did, the door exploded into a million tiny pieces of wood. Vincent pulled me back, out of the way of the tiny flying projectiles, and yanked me into the master bedroom. I heard him engage the lock even as he continued to push me back, shoving me into the walk-in closet.

  “Stay here!”

  “Vincent—”

  But he wasn’t listening.

  I closed my eyes, trying to listen to what was happening in my house. But all I could see was the fear and anger in Vincent’s eyes just before he disappeared behind the closet door.

  I couldn’t just stand here and wait for that crazy woman to kill him!

  I slipped out of the closet and made my way cautiously to the bedroom door. It was dark, and I tripped over a pair of shoes I senselessly left out. I pressed my ear to the door and listen harder than I’d ever done anything in all my life. I couldn’t hear anything. There were no voices, no explosions, no gunshots. Just silence.

  What was happening?

  There was light. I could see light shining through the cracks of the door, so I knew Vincent hadn’t killed the light in the hallway. But I couldn’t see anything. Then there were voices, but I couldn’t tell if they were male, female, Vincent, or one of the other men watching the house. I didn’t know and not knowing was driving me crazy.

  I opened the door just a crack. There were wood splinters all over the carpet in the hall, the remains of the door to my office barely hanging on the hinges. She’d used something big, a shotgun maybe. It was absolutely shattered.

  But there was no one there now. Had they found her? Did she get away?

  I slipped out of the bedroom and silently moved across the hall. The light was still on in Olivia’s room, so I knew she hadn’t gone in there.

  I paused. I heard noises in the entryway at the foot of the stairs. I thought for a second the door had opened, but decided it was just someone moving a piece of furniture. Why would someone move furniture? What was happening?

  I crossed to the spare room where I kept my exercise equipment. The door was closed, as it had been since I was in there this morning. She had no reason to go in there except to hide. Vincent took my bat, but there were a couple of wood splinters that were big and thick. Perfect stakes. I picked one up, wrapped the end of it in the sleeve of my nightgown, and pushed the door open. I flipped on the light, but there was nothing. No one.

  She wasn’t up here. Vincent probably knew that, and that was why all the noise was downstairs.

  I turned, thinking I should go back to the closet before Vincent figured out I’d ignored his demand. As I did, she stepped out of the bathroom, a twelve-gauge shotgun dangling from one hand.

  “Hello, Milly,” she said in an almost girlish voice.

  My heart sank.

  “What have you done, Beth?”

  “Nothing. Yet.” She raised the gun and focused it on the center of my chest. “But I won’t do it anymore. I won’t share you with all these men anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyebrows rose as though we were having a genuine conversation, not some insane dialogue.

  “I mean the men in the videos. All those men you were with, all those men you touched, all those men whose cum you allowed to drip all over you. I won’t do it anymore. I’ve been watching those videos for six years. And then you were just here, this vision from the depths of my loneliness and you were mine. I won’t share you anymore.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But I’ve seen you. I saw you kissing that man, saw him touching you. I saw the two of you in your bathtub, saw him watching you walk through the house. You’re not his.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You’re mine.”

  “You’re my friend, Beth. You’ve been my friend.”

  “I saw you,” she said, her chin wobbling like she was about to cry. “I saw you looking at this house, saw you talking to the real estate agent. I knew your face because of the movies.”

  “The movies? I don’t show my face on the movies.”

  “You did. There are three movies, Women in Prison, Schoolgirl Charms, and Girl Friday. Three movies in which you show your face, where they focus on your expression when the man—”

  “I remember.”

  She nodded. “I got Schoolgirl Charms for free when I ordered gag gift for a girl at work. I was so embarrassed when I saw it in the package, but there was something about your face, something that spoke to me. It took me two weeks to get up the courage to watch it, but then I did, and you were so beautiful! So graceful. I’d never watched a movie like that before, but there was something about you, so I bought the other two. And when I realized that was all, those were the only ones you were in, I was so disappointed. But then I saw something familiar when I was searching for other movies, when this ad for a fetish video came on. The same tattoo on your thigh. That’s when I knew you’d become Milly LeBouche. You changed your name and you tried to hide the tattoo, but sometimes it was visible and I knew it was you. And then you were here and I thought someone had finally heard my prayers, that you were brought here just for me.”

  “Beth—”

  “You are meant to be mine. Why else would you pick this house out of all the houses in Houston? You are mine, and I’ll have you all to myself.”

  “But Beth, what about Olivia? She’s my baby.”

  “She’s in the way. But it’s okay.” She smiled brightly, holding up her free hand. “I figured it out. We’ll go away, just you and me. We’ll go somewhere nice. I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco. Do you think that would be good? The sea air might be good for us. Healthy.”

  My heart was in my stomach. I wanted to rush her, to slam the stake I still clutched in my hand into her chest. I wanted to take out this threat to my child’s safety. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen the crazy before, that I hadn’t realized what a danger she was. Instead, I let her pick my daughter up at school and spend hours with her. What the hell was I thinking?

  And then I saw movement behind her. Someone was in Olivia’s room.

  “Okay, Beth,” I said slowly. “We can go to San Francisco. We can buy a nice little house there, live near a park? I like parks.”

  “Me, too. We can go for walks every morning.”

  I nodded, trying not to look toward Olivia’s room, trying not to let her know that something wa
s happening behind her. I stepped toward her and held out my hand.

  “We should go now. We can pack a bag and—”

  “No. I have clothes for you already. I bought them after I saw that woman come to your house. She’s a bad woman. She wants to hurt you.”

  “Who does?”

  “That woman.” She picked up her gun, her hand sliding down the stalk like she was touching the arm of a lover. “I’ve seen her picture in the papers. She runs some sort of security firm.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was here after the cat. After I tried to warn you with that cat. She was here with the police.”

  “She’s trying to help me, Beth. But I can call her now, tell her I don’t need her help anymore.”

  “Good. I don’t like her.”

  I nodded. “I’ll call her. Just give me the gun.”

  Beth immediately tensed. She raised the shotgun, pressing the stalk to her shoulder. Looking down the barrel of that gun was probably the most frightening thing I’d ever done. Vincent stepped into the doorway of Olivia’s bedroom, just three or four feet from Beth. I must have given him away somehow; I must have moved my eyes the wrong way. Beth swung around, somehow managing to fire the shotgun as she did. Vincent dove behind the wall as the plaster shattered into tiny pieces. I cried out, but Beth didn’t stop. She grabbed my arm and pulled me back, nearly falling through my bedroom door.

  Once again I heard the lock engage.

  “That was stupid!” she screamed. “Why did you have to do that? Why couldn’t we have just gone?”

  “I’m sorry. Please, I didn’t know he was there.”

  “You did. You knew it all along. You betrayed me!”

  “No, Beth…”

  She was holding me, her arm grasping my upper arm so hard that my fingers felt numb. I might have dropped the stake but for my determination to not let her win. Even as I tried to calm her down, I lifted my arm and slammed the piece of wood into her upper thigh, the feeling of resistance and then the sickening pop as it smashed against bone forever ingrained in my muscle memory.

  I let go and dove toward the closet the moment she began to scream. The door shattered over my head, showering me with pieces of wood and plaster and God only knew what else. I cried out, pressing my hands to my ears.

  The bedroom door burst open. It was so chaotic, everything seeming to happen at once. I was falling, pieces of the closet doors falling all around me. Beth was screaming, the gun exploding with its final shot. And the door burst open, and Vincent was there, already firing his handgun. Beth fell backward, landing in the center of my bed, that stake sticking up out of her thigh like a strange sort of replica of the Eifel Tower.

  Hayden rushed in behind Vincent, another man, his gun raised, behind him.

  We all sort of stared at Beth for a long minute. Vincent was the one to approach her finally. He touched her throat just as she began to moan.

  “Call 9-1-1,” he muttered. And then he was kneeling in front of me. “I told you to stay in the closet.”

  “I know.”

  He groaned, his hand moving carefully over my face. “You’re going to hurt for a couple of days.”

  I didn’t know it, but a couple of pellets from the first shot had imbedded themselves into my shoulder. And splinters from the closet door cut and stabbed my arms and my face. But, in that moment, I didn’t care.

  “You’re okay?”

  Vincent chuckled softly. “I’m not the one who confronted a crazy woman.”

  I touched his face, his chest, looked him over for wounds. But there wasn’t a mark on him.

  “I’m okay,” he whispered, moving close to me, his lips just brushing my ear. “We’re both okay.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned into him, suddenly too exhausted to respond.

  The last thing I remember about that night was Vincent carrying me out the front door to the ambulance. I caught sight of Beth on a gurney, blood staining the white sheet they’d pulled over her.

  “It’s over.”

  Vincent brushed a piece of hair from my face.“It’s over.”

  Chapter 18

  Megan

  “I think it’s time to have a discussion about the rules under which we operate out of this office,” I announced, watching my assets lounge against desks and walls, looking for all the world like a group of supermodels waiting to have their picture taken for a military calendar. Hayden was smiling at some pretty monitor, that charming smile enough to make the poor girl forget where she was. Marcus and Cole were leaning against the far wall, Dominic staring at the screen of his phone like I wasn’t talking. And Vincent, sitting at an empty desk at the front of the room, his face as expressionless as ever.

  And Dante. He was standing just inside the door, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

  “We provide security. That requires that we spend a lot of time with our clients, sometimes in intimate situations that could blur the line between professionalism and romance. You will refrain from crossing that line. Do you understand?”

  Hayden groaned, catching my eye from across the room. “Does that include the friends of our clients? Or daughters?”

  “Yes. I can’t have my men going around breaking hearts. This is a serious business that deals with serious situations. You will conduct yourselves accordingly. Understood?”

  Everyone nodded or muttered a “yup”—including Vincent. And then he stared at his fingernails as if he had nothing better to do than worry about his manicure.

  “Now, we have several assets who are behind on their paperwork. You know who you are. If you could get that in by the end of the day, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  There was a little grumbling, but no other response.

  “Okay. Get to work, boys.”

  I headed out of the room, but Vincent grabbed my arm.

  “I have a personal issue that just came up. Would it be a problem if I take a few days off?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He was gone before I could ask for more information. I watched him go, then my eyes were drawn to Dante. He was watching me with this smoldering look, his dark eyes as mysterious to me now as they’d ever been.

  I was in my office less than a minute when he stuck his head in.

  “Can we talk?”

  I gestured for him to enter. He hesitated a second, then entered, pulling the door closed behind him before he took a seat in one of the chairs in front of my desk.

  “My friend with the NYPD sent back a report on your brother’s accident.” He set the files I’d given him on my desk. On top he set a single file folder that was so thin there was no way there was more than a few slips of paper inside. “He concluded that it was simply a tragic accident. No one else was involved.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  I snatched the file up and opened it, finding myself staring at a well-documented summary of the accident complete with drawings.

  “Where’s the reenactment?”

  “He didn’t think you’d want it since the findings weren’t what you expected.”

  “No, I want it.”

  “I’ll call him and arrange for him to email one.”

  Dante stood and tapped his knuckles on the stack of files. “For what it’s worth, maybe it would be better for you to let this go. Sometimes an accident is just an accident.”

  “But you don’t know all the details. You don’t know that my brother was investigating something that might have involved terrorism.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I don’t know everything. But I see a good woman tearing herself apart over something that she can’t change. Even if you prove that the accident wasn’t an accident, it won’t bring your brother back.”

  “But maybe it’ll offer his son a better legacy than the one he has now. And maybe we’ll finally finish what he started.”

  “Some things are better left alone, Megan.”

  I looked up at him. “I appreciate your help, Dante. But I don’t
want your advice.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  I watched him walk away, the disappointment so palpable that I felt like it was this weight sitting on the center of my chest, refusing to allow me to breathe. I was really hoping this would be the break we’d needed.

  “It didn’t pan out,” I told Cole sometime later. “He didn’t find anything.”

  “How could he not? Even Hayden said there had to be another car involved.”

  “Yeah, well, Dante’s guy thought it was just a single-car accident.”

  “No fucking way! If it was that easy, why did they come after Amber?”

  “There’s more to it, Cole. And we’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “We will.”

  Chapter 19

  Vincent

  I sat in a rental car, staring up at a house I’d be welcome inside of a million times in the past. But not anymore. My face was the last face the people who lived here wanted to see. I don’t know why I was here.

  A new letter had come just after we managed to stop Beth Harrington. This one was…different. The tone was almost desperate, the accusations less accusations and more pleas. I don’t know. I’d read them—each and every one—each time they came. But I was with Quinn for two weeks, so I didn’t. Maybe that break, maybe that new perspective, allowed me to see what these letters really were.

  A cry for help.

  I took a deep breath and walked slowly up to the front door. I rang the bell with a quick jab of my finger against the button, telling myself that I had to do it fast so that I wouldn’t change my mind. I could hear footsteps; I could even imagine Lupita’s face as she came to open the door.

  Lupita. The maid.

  “Mr. Vincent!”

  She smiled so brightly, her arms tossed out to her sides like a woman who’d just been given the best surprise of her life. She smelled familiar when I hugged her, like apples and cinnamon.

  “Are they home?”

  She immediately tensed, the happiness disappearing. “They won’t want to see you.”

  “I know. But I had to try.”

  She looked at me for a long second, then nodded. She stepped back and gestured for me to come inside.