GRAY WOLF SECURITY, Texas: The Complete 6-Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  David had to admit that Kipling was turning things around. The operatives had been working under their own code of conduct, following their own rules. That had led to chaos when it came to cases that began to go awry. In one case, a client was attacked outside a safe house when the operative assigned to the case had left someone else in charge while he went off on his own to investigate. And then there was the shooting at a client’s house that led to charges against a client and a wounded operative. Those things never happened under Ash’s watch—the owner of the original Gray Wolf and David’s brother. It was embarrassing for David to have them happen to him.

  He knew he wasn’t in competition with his brother. But sometimes it felt that way.

  He read through the list again, trying to decide whom to call in for an interview and what to say when he did. Kipling would want to sit in—and that was both a blessing and a curse. Kipling’s opinions were clear and helpful, but David was afraid if he began to lean on the consultant too much, he would lose some sort of control. But it was important to him that this company survived. Maybe giving up a little control wasn’t such a bad thing.

  He looked at the list again.

  Meredith Franklin. Former Marine.

  Colin Parks. Former Army. Green Beret, like Ash.

  Nolan Everett. Former Marine.

  Susan Waters. Army.

  It was an impressive list. Almost intimidating.

  The phone rang as David continued to struggle. He lifted it almost absently, drawn out of his thoughts by the soothing Latin accent of his caller.

  “Mr. Grayson? This is Juan Teran Maximillian Alvarez.”

  The name caught David’s attention. “Of Maximus?”

  “And Renaldo’s. Yes, yes.”

  David sat back in his chair, a little surprised to be speaking to the man who owned two of his favorite restaurants here in Austin. They were exclusive restaurants, rumored to be favorites of local celebrities, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey. And Maximus just happened to be where he and Ricki dined for their last anniversary celebration.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Alvarez?”

  “I understand Gray Wolf Security is the best security firm in the area and I am in need of security.”

  “What kind of security?”

  “My wife. There have been certain threats made against her life. I would like to hire your firm to watch over her, make sure none of these threats are made good on.”

  “What kind of threats?”

  “Well…”

  There was hesitation in his voice, like he didn’t really want to explain. David had learned long ago that that kind of hesitation often suggested something nefarious going on. Perhaps the threats were of a sexual nature. Or there were no threats and he simply wanted someone to watch over his wife for other reasons. Either way, David didn’t care. He was a fan of Mr. Alvarez’s restaurants. He would love to work with him. Plus, helping him on this affair could lead to more work, perhaps even security for his restaurants. That would be big for GWS 2.

  “Would you mind coming to my home today?” Mr. Alvarez asked. “I would prefer to discuss this in person.”

  “Of course.”

  David was smiling when he hung up. His wife, Ricki, came through the door just then, her pretty face glowing with the pregnancy that was just beginning to show.

  “What are you so happy about?”

  “We just picked up a potential new client.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Juan Alvarez. The owner of—”

  “Maximus. I remember.”

  “He wants us to watch over his wife.”

  Ricki nodded, her eyes moving slowly over David’s face. “I didn’t know he was married.”

  “Neither did I. I guess he keeps his personal life on the down low.”

  Ricki moved up behind him and pressed her hands into his shoulders, giving him a brief shoulder rub. “Who are you going to assign?”

  “We’re a little short handed. Alexander is working that stalker case, Ingram is guarding that state senator. And I just sent Knox to handle a little security job in Red Rock.”

  “That leaves Elliott.”

  “Elliott’s perfect. He’s quiet and unassuming. He won’t become unnecessarily involved in whatever it is going on over there. And he won’t become involved with anyone.”

  “You hope.”

  “He’s been dating that girl he met at the grocery store last month, that school teacher?”

  “They broke up.”

  David’s eyebrows rose as he twisted to look back at his wife. “How do you know that?”

  “Because he talks to me. She wanted more than he was willing to give, so he ended it.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me these things?”

  “Because you never seem all that interested.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t. I just said you don’t seem to be. You give off this aura of disinterest sometimes.”

  “I don’t.”

  She laughed. You do, my love. When we first met, you were more angry than anything, making it incredibly hard for me to read you.”

  “That’s because I was in a wheelchair.”

  “It wasn’t just the wheelchair.” She bent and kissed the top of his head. “But I know you now. And they will, too.”

  She walked away, peeking over her shoulder as she reached the door.

  “Love you,” she said with a little smile.

  David watched her go, thinking that sometimes she drove him crazy—in all the right ways—and sometimes she drove him crazy—in all the wrong ways.

  He sighed. Time to get to work.

  Chapter 2

  Elliott

  David came into the pit and gestured to me. That was all it took. I stood and grabbed my sports coat and my keys, crossing the room in a few, short steps, already putting my head in the right place. It was time to take on another job.

  It’d been a little over a week since I’d had a job. I’d been stuck at my desk since, working on paper work that was not my strong suit. I joined the Navy because I didn’t want to be a paper pusher and didn’t want to sit at a desk for the rest of my life. But, somehow, I still found myself doing that forty percent of the time. God forbid someone not know exactly what I did on my jobs, what I said, what the outcome was, what…I don’t know. It was as if they needed to account for every second of my time on the job. I did the best I could with the reports, but I often fell behind and rarely turned them in when they were due. I’d rather be out in the field than doing damn paper work.

  “We have a new client,” David said as he climbed into my SUV. “A restaurateur with a pretty wife who has been getting threats. He wants us to watch over his wife for a while.”

  “How long’s a while?”

  David shrugged. “We haven’t really worked out the details yet. That’s what we’re about to do.”

  I nodded. That wasn’t usual. I often went into a job blind. It was just the way these people who could afford our services worked. They didn’t trust anyone, and they wanted to look you in the eye as they exposed the darker side of their lives to you. I could understand that. There were things about my past I wouldn’t willingly discuss with just anyone. Even if that anyone was paid to help me. Maybe especially then.

  “This guy owns two restaurants and multiple real estate ventures in town,” David continued. “This case, if it’s handled right, could potentially lead to more work with Mr. Alvarez.”

  “In other words, be a good boy. Right?”

  David glanced at me. “It would be helpful. We’ve had a few issues in the past few months that I’d really rather avoid.”

  “You have nothing to worry about with me, boss,” I said, reaching over to pat his shoulder. “I’ve got your back.”

  David smiled. We fell into a companionable silence for a few minutes as I followed the GPS David had set up. I could feel him watching me. I hated to be watched, especi
ally when I knew he wanted to say something. I glanced at him.

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I was just wondering what you thought of Kipling McKay.”

  That was a loaded question. Kipling McKay was military. He knew how to run an operation like my commanding officers in the SEALs did. And his new regulations were almost a relief. But that didn’t mean that I preferred his methods over David’s. If it had to be one or the other, I would stick with David.

  But I couldn’t say that out loud.

  “Well, he’s certainly efficient.”

  “He is that.”

  “And he seems to have made things a little safer for the operatives.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  I glanced over at him. “Are you thinking about making him a permanent member of the team?”

  David rubbed his chin lightly. “I don’t know. My brother, Ash, thinks it would be good for us and good for him, but I’m not sure. He’s got something of an iron fist mentality going on and that worries me. He’s not opening himself up to the way we do things. And that could be a problem.”

  “Then you cut him loose.”

  “Yeah, well, he has done some good things for us, too. He’s made me see how my lax management skills have allowed some stupid things to happen. Like Tony getting shot during Knox’s case.”

  I bit back a smile. That whole thing was a bit of a fiasco. Tony was trying to escort an old woman out of the target’s house when she pulled a gun. The idiot disarmed her, but then pulled his own gun, allowing her to shoot him with it. Damn stupid thing to do. Caused him to lose his job.

  “That was on Tony, not Knox or the rest of the team.”

  “Yes, well, Knox shouldn’t have called him for help.”

  I glanced at him. “I’m sorry, boss, but I have to disagree. We have to feel free to call the other operatives for backup whenever it’s necessary. We have to know that the others have our back.”

  “I never said you couldn’t call for back up. But it makes sense that the call come through me.”

  I nodded. “And it should. But sometimes, in the heat of the moment, it seems quicker to call direct.”

  David crossed his arms over his chest and glanced out the window. “I was in the field once.”

  “Were you?”

  “Back when I was working with Ash at the original Gray Wolf compound. I was helping Ricki find out who was hacking her systems at the company she owned at the time.” He shook his head. “It was frustrating for me to have to rely on everyone else to do the leg work. Donovan Pritchard was there for her when her stalker tried to kill her. I wasn’t. That was incredibly frustrating.”

  I’d heard rumors that David had met his wife while working in the field, but I wasn’t sure how true they were, especially since the number one rule had always been hands off the clients. But, of course, Alexander and Knox both had hooked up with their current significant others through a case. There was just something about spending time with someone under dangerous circumstances that made sex—and maybe even emotions—undeniable.

  But it would never happen to me.

  David dragged his hand over his face. “I don’t know. I like Kipling well enough; I’m just not sure I’m ready to share the management duties with him.”

  “He’s a nice enough guy. And he knows about the operational side of things where you know about the organizing and the reports and the technical stuff. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you worked together—instead of this sort of him-or-me kind of thing.”

  David glanced over at me. “You think?”

  “You both have a strength. And you both have weaknesses. It’s never a bad thing to work with that, to even each other out.”

  David didn’t say anything the rest of the way to the client’s house. And I use the word “house” generally. It wasn’t really a house, but an estate tucked behind a community gate. The damn thing took up a whole block of the planned community, tucked back from the street behind dozens of trees and this very beautiful—and probably very expensive—wrought iron fence. The gate—another gate—had the initials JA scrawled at the top in some fancy script. The gate rolled open after we touched a button and held up our IDs. The security was insane! We’d already shown our ID at the front gate—and now we were doing it again.

  I drove slowly up the front drive, thinking I’d already seen a pretty impressive home when I first drove up the drive to the main house of the Gray Wolf 2 compound. But this…? It was more than amazing. It was gray stone and marble, a house that should have been in Los Angeles or Tuscany or some other really impressive, really expensive place. But it was here, in downtown Austin, Texas.

  What the…?

  “Wow!”

  I glanced over at David, impressed that he was so impressed. David grew up wealthy—right here in Austin. For him to be impressed was fairly significant.

  “This is his house?”

  David glanced at the address on the GPS. “This is what he told me.”

  I shook my head as I stared up at the front of the house. It looked like a massive resort meant to house more than two hundred people. Incredible.

  The front door opened as we walked up to the front door, a tall man in a dark suit stood in the doorway with his eyes strictly focused on us—as if he thought we were going to touch something we shouldn’t. I suddenly felt like a child left alone in a candy store, tempted to steal, but being watched by the clerk like a hawk. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  We were escorted through the massive entryway to a large, bright room at the back of the house. Several more men, all in well-tailored, dark suits—were lounging around, some talking on their phones, others just staring out the lovely French doors, apparently waiting for something. None of them seemed to notice David or me.

  “Gentlemen!”

  He came from the far side of the room, following some sort of corridor from there that I hadn’t noticed. He was tall, his slightly long hair brushed straight back like the Latino heroes of 1950s television. He was wearing a gray suit that hung from his body like a second skin, clearly expensive, clearly well made. The moment he entered the room, the others straightened their spines, their cell phones slipping into pockets. This man clearly commanded authority.

  “I am Juan Teran Maximillian Alvarez,” he said as he approached us. “You must be David.”

  David smiled as Alvarez shook his hand.

  “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you, Mr. Alvarez,” he said.

  The man’s eyes turned to mine. “And you are?”

  “This is Elliott Wallace. He’s one of our operatives.”

  “One of the best, I hope,” Alvarez said.

  “Of course.”

  He smiled really big, his bright, white teeth almost blinding. “Well then, let’s go have a conversation.”

  Alvarez led the way down another corridor to his small office, chattering in his thick, Latino accent all the way. I already didn’t like him. There was something sleazy about him, something dark that just didn’t set well with me. Maybe it was just his I’m rich and you’re not attitude. Or maybe it was something else. I didn’t know, but I didn’t like him.

  We took seats and were offered drinks, but David and I both refused. No drinking on the job was kind of a no-brainer.

  “Well,” Alvarez said, settled behind his desk with a drink in front of him and a huge cigar between his fingers, “how do we do this?”

  David adjusted himself in the chair, moving the file folder on his lap that held the contract all clients of Gray Wolf were required to sign.

  “I guess we need to know the nature of the threat,” he said.

  Alvarez nodded. “It is…you see, I was quite a playboy before my marriage. Apparently there are a few out there who dislike my wife because they see her as some sort of threat. We’ve been getting emails and calls from various sources, threatening her bodily harm. And I’m due to leave the country here in a few hours, but I don’t want to leave her a
lone. Unprotected.”

  “It seems to me that this is probably the most protected place in the city,” I said. “Between the community gate and the security here at the house…those are bodyguards out there, aren’t they?”

  Alvarez studied my face for a second. “Very observant, Mr. Wallace.” He inclined his head slightly. “Those are my security detail, but I will require each of them to travel with me.”

  “Why not leave one or two behind for your wife’s protection?”

  “Because I will be quite vulnerable where I’m going,” Alvarez said, studying the end of his lit cigar. “And, well, my wife tends to resist my security’s attempts to keep her safe. I thought, someone new, someone who doesn’t know her and whom she doesn’t know, would make this process much better. More secure.”

  Alvarez reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers, handing them over to David. David glanced at them, then handed them to me. They were pretty generic threats against both Alvarez and his wife, but mostly his wife. Threats to kill her in very graphic terms. Nothing shocking, but I could see how they might upset a man like Alvarez.

  “I want my wife to stay in her rooms as much as possible,” Alvarez said. “She tends to get herself into trouble when she wanders the property. And I would prefer that she not go into town unless absolutely necessary.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “I’ll be gone a week. When I return, if things go well, we might discuss a longer contract.”

  I could almost feel the pleasure rolling off of David in waves. The idea of taking on more of Alvarez’s business was a real coup for him.

  “Things will go well,” I assured them both.

  Alvarez seemed satisfied. He stood and excused himself to get his lawyer to review the contract before he signed it. As he left, David glanced at me.

  “We can’t keep that woman a prisoner in her own home.”

  “Those threats aren’t credible.”

  David’s eyebrows rose.