Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “No, no, no!” Ashley was saying to someone. “I didn’t have a party! No fiesta, Marta!”

  “Madre de Dios!”

  The hell? This didn’t sound like any home invasion I’d ever heard of before. I pushed opened the back door, gun sweeping low as I visually cleared the room.

  Ashley stood in the middle of the living room, her back to me, a little Hispanic woman right beside her. The older woman turned, saw me with my gun, and screamed. Ashley spun around, her eyes wide as she caught sight of me. “Frank? Holy fuck! Is that a gun?”

  Oops.

  Chapter Eight - Ashley

  My heart began racing the moment I saw Frank with his big handgun.

  As he looked at me sheepishly and began to apologize, someone burst through the front door. Frank dropped to a crouch again and brought his gun back up. “Jake?”

  I put a hand to my chest, felt my heart fluttering in my breast.

  Beside me, Marta, one of our cleaning ladies, looked like she was about to die of a heart attack, repeating some phrase over and over again Spanish under her breath.

  “Yeah, Frank!” Jake called back.

  “False alarm!”

  “What the hell are you two doing?” I yelled as I put an arm around Marta and began to try and soothe her. “Trying to scare us half to death?”

  Frank winced, did something with his gun, and put it away as the front door opened and closed again, the enigmatic Jake disappearing back outside. “Sorry, Ashley, we heard a scream while we were behind the house. We thought you were in trouble.”

  Beside me, Marta continued to mumble. “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “Marta came in and saw the mess. Guess I forgot to call the cleaning service this morning, tell them about it being, um, more.”

  Frank nodded, said something to her in her native language as he came over, the words tumbling from his mouth with ease. Immediately, Marta began to calm down. She replied, glanced at me, then said something else.

  Wow. He spoke another language? And fluently? I found myself trying to follow along with him, with the way he rolled his R’s, the shape of his lips. Brushing a strand of hair behind my ear, I stepped over to Frank’s side so I wasn’t crowding Marta anymore.

  “She’s sorry about causing a scene,” Frank translated. “She’s just never seen the cabin this bad. Other people’s sometimes, after big parties, but nothing like this.”

  “Could you tell her I understand? And that I’d scream, too.”

  He smiled and translated for me. Marta rattled off something.

  “Says it’s going to cost more than your normal bill. She’ll need to call some girls up here to help. At least her daughter.”

  Immediately, thoughts of money filled my head. My credit card issue wasn’t settled yet. All I had was five hundred dollars in cash. How did people get through the day like this, not being able to pay for things they wanted or needed? I groaned as I looked around the cabin.

  “Well?” Frank asked.

  I turned my attention back to Marta, to all the cleaning supplies at her feet, the distraught look on her face. “I’m thinking,” I said, tapping my chin.

  She raised an eyebrow at me. Shit or get off the pot, lady, that’s what that eyebrow said.

  My thoughts drifted back to the conversation I’d had with Frank while we’d been checking out his car. When was the last time I’d done any actual work? Geez.

  Marta’s look intensified, her eyebrow somehow going higher. She just wanted to know what was happening.

  I nodded to myself. “Know what?” I said to them. “I’m going to do it.”

  Frank looked down at me, something like surprise on his face, a little smile on his lips. “You sure? This is going to be a real shit show to clean, you know that, right?”

  I crossed my arms in front and stuck out my chin as I turned and looked up at him. “Think I can’t do it? That it?”

  He laughed. “I think it’s a job for more than just one person.”

  “Are you volunteering? Once you say yes, you can’t take it back.”

  There was a look of shock on his face. “Well, I don’t know–”

  “I mean, if you help me go through all this, you might find something useful.”

  “I–”

  “And I hired you to go over the scene, didn’t I? The crime scene?”

  “Now, Ashley–”

  “What if we billed the hours under the contract I already have with Frost? Your boss has already cleared you for work, hasn’t he?”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay. Fine, I’ll help.”

  Beside us, the look on Marta’s face had turned from annoyance to confusion as he and I bantered back and forth, and I pulled him into work the exact same way my mother used to when she was raising money for the non-profit foundations she helped.

  I smiled up at him and nodded. “Excellent.” I went over to where I’d left my purse on the counter between the living room and the kitchen, pulled out my wallet, and withdrew a crisp one hundred-dollar bill that I folded up.

  Behind me, Frank and Marta exchanged words, probably about my deciding to clean the cabin on my own.

  I walked back over to Marta and offered her the money.

  She looked at Frank to see if I was serious as I stood there with the cash extended in my hand. He just shrugged.

  When she didn’t take it, though, I grabbed her arm and stuck it in her hand. “This is for coming out here. I know you have jobs you could’ve been doing instead, so I still want you to get paid.”

  Confused at what this crazy white girl was doing, she glanced at Frank again as he translated my words for her. Marta grinned, as the money quickly disappeared into her pocket, and she threw her arms around my neck and gave me a hug. “Thank you, Ms. Maxwell.”

  At first, I was in shock. I’d never had an employee hug me like that before. That wore off quickly, though, and I embraced her right back. “You’re welcome,” I said, smiling, as I pulled back from her and took her by the arms. “Do you need any help carrying your supplies out to the car?”

  Frank translated, and Marta shook her head no, saying something to Frank. “She’s got it,” Frank translated back to me.

  With nothing for her to do there, I walked her to the door and sent her on her way, but not without another hug. The second one felt even better than the first, to be honest.

  “Hell of a tip you just gave that lady,” he said from behind me.

  I shrugged and flicked my hair out of the way as I glanced back over my shoulder at him.

  He stood there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, his chin set, a small smile on his full lips.

  “Well, it’s a long drive out of town,” I said. “I didn’t want her to leave empty-handed. She gets paid by the job, I think, not by the hour.”

  He nodded. “We’re really gonna clean this whole place?” Frank asked from behind me as I watched Marta load up her cleaning supplies in the back of her little car. “You ever cleaned a mess this big before?”

  “Not up to it?” I asked slightly tauntingly with a smile as I turned back to watch Marta head around to the driver’s seat.

  “Don’t confuse me for someone who don’t like hard work,” he drawled. “I grew up on a farm, and used to get out to the barn by five every morning to milk the cows before school.”

  Marta started up her car and pulled away, giving me an enthusiastic wave as she headed off down the drive.

  “So it’s about me, then?” I asked as I whirled around to face him. “Worried I don’t have it in me? Little rich girl like me can’t get her hands dirty? That it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Didn’t say that, neither. Just wondering if you know the scope, is all.”

  “Too big for me to handle, then?” I teased.

  Shaking his head, he threw his hands up. “Once again, you’re twisting my words here.”

  “Well, what did you mean, then, Mr. O’Dwyer?”

  “All I meant was, this is a big job. And, even with
my help, it’s still gonna be a big job. And don’t even look at Jake. He can’t keep his own damn place clean.”

  He was right, it was going to be a big job. But everything was like that, wasn’t it? Even planning a vacation was a huge task. Picking out clothes, packing, talking to your travel agent and making sure they had everything for you. All you had to do, though, was break it down into a lot of smaller jobs. I didn’t see how this would be any different. “Well,” I said as I shut the front door. “I’m going to go inspect the cleaning supplies.”

  “Fine,” he said, following after me. “I should probably tell Jake I’ve been drafted into cleanup duty, then.”

  I laughed. “Think of it as character building. That’s what my mother always said.”

  “Built enough character in the service to last me a lifetime, believe me.”

  He disappeared out the back door, on his search for his partner.

  Meanwhile, I began my search for where someone might keep cleaning supplies in this place.

  Chapter Nine - Frank

  Just what in the hell had I gotten myself into? Cleaning up that whole damn cabin with just Ashley to help me? I mean, I appreciated the fact that she wasn’t acting like some spoiled brat about all this, just trying to throw money at her problems. Even respected it. She could’ve been crying and bitching about all this, but was instead sticking her middle finger up at the world and telling it she could take care of herself.

  But, shit, this cleaning thing was going to take all day.

  I grumbled to myself as I headed out through the little deck area, with its expensive fall patio furniture and wrapped up umbrellas, and stepped into the woods behind the house. I saw Jake through the woods, his white shirt not giving much camouflage, and went out to meet him.

  As I skirted a tree and some underbrush, my mind went back to the business of cleaning that whole damn place. Not that I minded. Like I told her, I’d grown up on a farm and been in the service, and my uncles had taught me what hard work meant. And, believe me, if you weren’t hurting from the work by the end of the day, you’d be hurting from them catching you shirking your responsibilities. Their hands were just as hard as wooden spoons and smacked twice as hard.

  No, in comparison to calving and branding, or mucking out the pens, this was going to be a cakewalk. Just a little glass and stuffing to deal with, vacuuming and sweeping and the like. I’d swept plenty of barracks during basic, and could handle that. No problem.

  Didn’t mean I had to like it, though.

  I crossed over a log, pausing to look around again at the size of the property. Nah, there was no way anyone would have seen someone way back here. Even with it being fenced in and all, someone could have slipped in while she was out or waited until she’d gone to sleep. And, if they had enough patience to sit and watch the cabin that long, that meant they were calculated and potentially dangerous.

  Patience was what made a man or woman dangerous. Put a plan together, wait for the perfect opportunity. That’s what the criminals who didn’t get caught, the generals who won battles, and the predators who got their prey all had in common. Knowing when to strike at the best time, and when the your opponent both least suspected it and was least prepared.

  Whoever this was, they had that virtue of patience. And that, right there—that made them something to be worried about. Unfortunately, without knowing who it was, or what exactly they wanted, I couldn’t take the fight to them and put them on their backfoot. We were stuck in a defensive posture on this.

  That was, of course, if they were even still around. Maybe last night had been their move? There was only one way to fight out, and that was by being patient.

  And, through all this, I was going to be stuck cleaning. Of course, helping her did help with what I was doing.

  After Jake showed me the little hidey-hole back behind the house, I’d begun to have the creeping feeling that she needed some sort of protective detail. This was more than just some teenagers breaking in to cause a mess. How much more, I had no idea. But Goddamn if something didn’t smell fishier than a Catholic’s kitchen on Fridays during Lent.

  But something told me she wouldn’t accept a protective detail. Not yet, at least, on just a little bit of evidence. She had a prideful streak a mile wide.

  “Everything sorted?” Jake asked as I came upon him poking through the woods.

  I nodded. “More or less. She decided she wants to clean the house herself. Gave the cleaning lady a tip for driving out and sent her away.”

  “Good for her. Big job. She having her girlfriends come over? That Sheila friend of Jessica’s?”

  I shook my head, stamping closer through the underbrush. “Nope. I’ve been volunteered. Or lassoed and brought in. Not sure which.”

  He grinned from ear to ear. “You? Man, she’s got some nerve, doesn’t she? Almost admirable.”

  “It all just happened so fast, man,” I explained helplessly.

  “Yeah, buddy, I’m sure it was real hard for her to get you wrapped around her finger.”

  “I’m serious, Jake! She could talk circles around a lawyer or a conman. Remember that one we busted for that little old last year? Swear she’d have given him a run for her money. She kept using this, ‘so that’s what you’re saying’ technique.”

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “Well, what did the conman always say? He wasn’t stealing, or taking anything they didn’t want to give?”

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I’d been suckered in because I’d made it easy on her. “Regardless,” I said, “I think she needs to be watched.”

  “Safe house?”

  I scratched my chin and looked back at the cabin. “Maybe? Right now, though, I feel like if we tried to squirrel her away we’d been cutting off some of our leads. She doesn’t know what someone would want here, and I tend to believe her.”

  “Because you think she’s honest?” he asked. “Or something else?”

  I shot him a look. “Because I don’t think she has anything that doesn’t belong to her daddy, that’s why. You ready to head down?”

  Jake looked around at the earth tones of the trees the rocks, and sniffed the air again one last time. “Think so. I’ve been up and down this place, but haven’t found any more clues except for how the guy maybe came in. A little spot over that way leads down to a side road. Haven’t had a chance to go down and check tire tracks or anything.”

  I nodded, and we both headed back down to the mansion side-by-side as we waded through the lush bushes and high grass.

  “You think it has to do with her pops, right?” Jake said after a moment of silence. “Walk me through it.” Jake liked to do it this way, and I hated it. Even if it did work. He’d honestly taught me more about detective work than any of the crime novels or detective fiction I loved so much. Hell, he’d probably taught Peter a thing or two, and the boss man had spent time investigating bombings in Iraq and running intelligence gathering missions on insurgents.

  I cleared my throat. “Alright, first off, if they were trying to get something from her, they’d have a damn sight of a time trying to get it. From what she’s told me, she spends a lot of her time traveling. Perp would have to do the same, don’t you reckon? What are the odds he’d know about where Ashley was going to be at this exact moment, and that she’d have whatever they were looking for?”

  “That’s fair, grasshopper.”

  “Shut the hell up. If you’re Master Po, I’m Mowgli’s mom. Secondly, like I said earlier, she ain’t got nothing lest it belongs to her daddy. Far as I can tell, she’s just letting life blow her around from place to place. Whatever sounds good at the time, that’s where she’s headed. Bonnaroo? She’s there. South by Southwest? Okay. Burning Man? Why not?”

  “I get your point.”

  “Well, would you entrust something to her, even if you were her daddy? Not as much as that man has on the line.”

  He nodded. “You’re pushing for a protective detail on this, aren’t you? Why?”


  I drew up and stopped, hands on hips as I looked around the property. I looked Jake square in the eyes. “I don’t think they found it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t go through a house from top to bottom the way they did, looking every which place possible if you’ve already found what you want. I’m surprised they weren’t knocking holes in the damn walls in there, the way they tore everything up. If they’d had more time, they might have.”

  He nodded, looking off into the distance as he took his turn to scratch his chin. “Your argument’s got merit, I’ll give you that. But who’s to say she doesn’t have something someone wants? Young women like this, the jet setting traveler types, they get mixed up in drugs, accidental smuggling, muling. All just for a laugh, because they got too much damn money to care. You remember all that Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton shit? Girls like that can go crazy. Believe me, saw it all the time out in LA.”

  Either one of us could be right. Maybe, though, it was a combination? I grunted and looked back at the cabin, catching sight of Ashley as she appeared at the back door and looked at us both just standing there like bumps on a log. “What’re you saying?”

  Ashley pulled open the back door and stepped out onto the patio. Beside me, Jake spoke in a low voice as she waved to us. “Saying she might not be as innocent as you think, that’s all. She could be into something, and barely have any idea she is.”

  I nodded and waved back. “Could be. Either way, I reckon she probably needs our help. And someone around her at all times, even if she doesn’t know they’re there as a bodyguard.”

  “Yep. That’s what you're good at, though. Right?”

  Ashley cupped her hands and yelled. “Hey, Frank! You almost ready to go? I wanna get my clean on!”

  “Just a minute,” I hollered back. I turned to Jake as I pulled my keys out. “Reckon it’s in my wheelhouse. Stick around and backtrack that trail, see if there’s tire marks, whatever?”

  “Really?” he asked as he looked down at the keys to my baby. “You’re going to actually let me drive it.”