Guardian For Hire: A For Hire Novel Page 11

  Maddy brushed past him, making short work of the long hallway before breezing into the living room. She thrust her shoulders back, shook out her hair, and even managed a smile at Sarabeth before settling onto an armchair and motioning for Gavin to fill the empty space adjacent to her on the couch.

  “So, how’s it going, Ms. Lockwood?” Maddy kicked up her boots onto the glass coffee table and leaned into the leather cushion behind her.

  “Oh, it’s fine.” Sarabeth placed her book on her lap and eyed the other woman warily. “Do you have news?”

  Out of his periphery, he noticed Maddy’s quick glance toward him before she answered. His full focus was on Sarabeth.

  “Oh, nothing for you. Some stuff to talk to Gavin about, but I thought I’d add some much-needed estrogen to the scene before we trek off to his work dungeon for all the boring stuff.” She craned over to look at the cover of the book in Sarabeth’s lap, a wide smile splitting her face when she caught a glimpse of the cover.

  “How far are you?” Maddy asked.

  “Oh, I—” Sarabeth blushed, clearing her throat.

  “Did the duke capture her lover and torture him yet?”

  Sarabeth perked up. “That’s where I am right now.”

  “Can you believe him? Like he thinks Stephano would ever betray Estrella. She’s his world!”

  “I know, right?” Sarabeth smiled, nodding.

  “Try to read really fast, and I’ll be back up after I handle the boring job stuff. I can’t wait to hear what you think about the next part.”

  “Will do.” Sarabeth nodded and buried her nose in her book again while Maddy made her way toward the basement stairs without a second glance at him. Whatever she knew, it had to be big if she’d gone to so much effort to deceive Sarabeth. And there was no question in his mind, that was exactly what she’d done. The only detail that remained a mystery loomed in his mind.

  How bad was it? Trip to the proctologist bad, or trip to the boneyard bad?

  Once they were safely in his office, Maddy closed the door quietly behind them and leaned against it, still clinging to the knob as her hair fanned out against the dark wood.

  “It’s pretty bad, yeah?” He settled into his leather desk chair and she came away from the wall to sit in the armchair across from him.

  “It ain’t great,” she admitted, the frown line between her eyes deepening.

  “Get on with it, then.” An icy fist gripped his heart, and with every passing second it got worse. Already, he was imagining whisking Sarabeth onto a plane and hightailing it out of the country to keep her safe. Maybe someplace sunny where she could lay out and read to her heart’s content. When had he turned into the kind of guy who ran away from trouble? Before he could find the answer to that question, Maddy continued, leaning toward him.

  “I stopped by the police station. It would seem that they discovered new prints on the remnants of the car where it had been rigged to detonate. They’re not sure of anything yet, but it looks like the prints match a pretty infamous mid-level gangster in the area. He’s only served time for petty stuff so far, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a killer, it just means…”

  His brain supplied the rest of the sentence Maddy had left unsaid. It just means he’s too good to get caught doing the important stuff.

  “The mob?” He speared a hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes closed, trying to focus over the noise of every nerve in his body firing. Acting rashly wasn’t going to help Sarabeth. He needed to figure it all out first. Like a puzzle. “I get Nico. He could’ve been in deep with a loan or something. That doesn’t explain why they’d be after the employees at The Healing Place. Especially Sarabeth, who wasn’t even listed as a litigant and didn’t profit from the scam. I’ll wager that she has family money, but nothing that a loan shark could conceivably think he has a claim to.”

  “And there’s the rub.” Maddy sat back and blew a wiry curl from her tired eyes. “This guy is connected to Vito DeSalvo. Now, Vito himself has been squeaky clean—almost eerily so—but when they were turning over Nico’s books from The Healing Place, you’ll never guess whose name wound up in the books.”

  Shit, this was getting deep. “I think I can.”

  “And you’d be right. Now the only question is if Vito is tying up loose ends because he was in cahoots with Nico and wants to make sure he doesn’t go down in the embezzlement trial somehow, or if Vito was a client and on the business end of said scheme. Maybe Vito got caught dipping his wick in the healing wax, if you get my drift.” Her auburn brows disappeared behind her bangs as she waggled them suggestively.

  He rolled that around in his head, tapping a pen against the desk as he thought. “Is that a reason for murder, though?” It didn’t sit right. “Mobsters aren’t my specialty, and maybe I’m buying into a television stereotype, but are they known for being monogamous? I never got the impression that fidelity was something a Mafia wife might expect.”

  “So then what’s your guess? The money angle?”

  “There’s always a money angle,” he murmured, still racking his brain. “But if Vito thinks one of these people knows where the cash is hidden, I’m not sure how he plans to pry that info from scattered pieces of brain on the pavement. Last time I checked, nobody cross-examined our girl before they tried to blow her to smithereens.”

  “You’re right.” Maddy gnawed on a thumbnail, and the room went quiet again. He could practically hear the gears shifting in their minds as they turned over possible connections, but even with this new information, he could sense that there was still a major piece missing from the puzzle. After a long lull, she sighed and kicked her boots onto his desk, leaning back to rest precariously on the two back legs of her chair.

  “We may not have it nailed, but I’m glad for the intel. It reinforces that you’re doing the right thing keeping her close. Time to step it up, because there’s no guarantee that we’re going to crack this thing before they figure out where she is. You’ve had a week, and with those kinds of resources at their disposal, I don’t know how much more time you’ve got until someone finds her. When they do, you’ve both got to be ready. And you’ve both got to be careful. Especially you.” She stared him down hard.

  “What do you mean ‘especially’ me?”

  She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “Look, you can play nice, polite guy in front of her, but I’ve seen you around women. And I mean lots of women. Like, entire countries full of women—”

  His jaw tightened and he nodded. Even Maddy didn’t think he was good enough for the doc. A much-needed reminder. “Message received.”

  “No, not like that. I mean, amid all your skank-ass usual types, I think you’ve got a winner here. I don’t want you to blow it.”

  “That’s not what’s—”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Her words were a verbal slap in the face. “You can like her, hell, even I’m starting to like her, but don’t let your feelings override your street smarts. She may not like what she has to do, but it’s your job to make sure she does it. I don’t have time to groom a new partner, and I’m sure as hell not buying new clothes to wear to your funeral, so make sure you keep your shit in order and focus on the job.”

  He nodded curtly, annoyed that her approval of him and Sarabeth as a couple made him feel better in some ways, but worse in others. It was a pleasant surprise that Maddy could imagine a world where the two of them worked together, but at the same time, the last thing he needed was thoughts like those clouding his senses. “Roger that.”

  “She is cute, you know. Smart, too. Much better than your usual trolley o’ tramps.”

  He half smiled. “Right. Not too good for a thug from Edinburgh, though?”

  Just as he recognized the same pitying look Maddy had been giving Sarabeth before their journey downstairs, he cleared his throat.

  “Not important right now. At the moment, we need to try to find the missing link because we’re clearly overlooking something.”
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br />   “I wish I had some clue as to where else we’d look. We looked into possible investors, employees, family friends, clients.”

  A tiny bell sounded in his head. “Try to get your hands on the official client list. Maybe call that guy you’re friends with in evidence over there…Baxter? See what he says. Then run background checks. Every little minute detail counts—I want to know what kind of soap they use and where they bought it from. That’s the kind of detail we’re talking about.”

  Maddy nodded. “Good enough for me.” She sauntered toward the door, the clicking of her boots echoing as she climbed the stairs.

  At least that was one task out of the way. They’d gotten a verbal list from a friend of Owen’s in the DA’s office, but that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t been overlooked. He’d have to cool his heels, hang back, and figure out how to tackle the real work. Number one on the list was telling Sarabeth how serious things had gotten without panicking her. Number two was teaching her how to defend herself. And the all-important number three?

  Figuring out how he was going defend himself against her.

  …

  It was an hour before Gavin came up from his bunker. It was sweet that he and Maddy were trying to make things easier on her, but it was shocking how terrible they were at lying considering their professions. The whole time Maddy sat beside her chatting about the book she was reading, she seemed disengaged. No matter how high she pitched her voice or how well she tried to feign her enthusiasm, there was a stale kind of hollowness to every movement.

  The whole thing had her on edge, but she kept up with the show Maddy was putting on, laughing at her jokes and playing along. When the woman finally left, Sarabeth waited to see if Gavin would come to her or if she was going to have to go to him and demand the truth. From the time the door clicked shut behind Maddy and Gavin’s heavy footfalls sounded down the hall, it was only thirty seconds, but it was the longest thirty seconds of her life, as her brain conjured every possible horrible scenario, all ending in her gory demise. When he stood before her at long last, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved that she was finally going to hear the truth or if she wanted him to go away so she could have some more time to wallow in her not-so-blissful ignorance.

  “Hey, I want to show you something,” he said, his palm resting on the arm of the couch at her feet.

  “What is it? A newspaper report? An autopsy result?” Jesus, was someone else dead? Her heart thundered and she swallowed to work up some saliva in her suddenly bone-dry mouth.

  He screwed up his brows, his nostrils flaring. “What? No. Nothing like that. I want to show you the rest of the lower level. Come on.” He walked out of the room without sparing her another glance.

  She trotted along after him, her book falling to the ground in her haste. The beat-up steps were cool against her bare feet, but she made quick work of them until she was eventually walking along the dark corridor beside him. “Are you about to show me your Phantom of the Opera lair?”

  “What?” It was the first time he’d really focused on her, and she noted the tense cut of his jaw. He was grinding his teeth.

  “Nothing. Just trying to break the tension. Will you put me out of my misery and tell me what Maddy told you? Please?” She stopped in the middle of the hall, hoping he’d stop along with her.

  It worked. They faced each other, their bodies practically touching in the cramped space. “Look, what Maddy told me isn’t important. I’ll tell you when the time is right, but for now we need to focus on what’s best for you. Can you do that? Can you trust me enough to wait?”

  She’d never heard him sound so intense before, and her head was nodding before she’d even given it permission to do so. There was a command in his voice that she couldn’t deny, and the rasping growl behind every word had her thinking that if he’d commanded her to strip naked in the middle of the hall, she would have done that, too. Heat rushed to her face, and she tried her best to shake away every thought other than the present. He wanted her focused? That’s what she would be. Because, for some unfathomable reason, she did trust him. After little more than a week, she trusted him more than almost anyone she knew. That thought was almost as terrifying as the car bomb.

  He held her gaze for another second and turned away. They continued farther down the hall until they came to a glass-front door, and he held it open for her to pass through.

  The room was huge. With gray stone walls and a matching cool dark floor. A chill went up her spine as her feet made contact with the unyielding ground. The room must have gone for a mile, long and narrow, with two large targets poised against the far wall. Where she stood, beside the door, were two small booths cased in glass, each with a pair of protective muffs resting on a Plexiglas counter.

  “Oh no, no, no…” she mumbled, her brain working faster than she was able to process. A shooting range? In his house? Seriously, it was like he was about to show her where he hid his Batmobile next.

  “You need to learn how to protect yourself. From whatever comes. So it won’t be enough to carry an empty clip anymore.”

  “I…I don’t even know how to hold it right,” she said softly. She shook her head and her hair hit her in the face as her movements became more and more spastic. It was one thing to ask her to trust him with her life, but it was another to thrust her without warning into the mind-set of taking some else’s. “I-I can’t do this.”

  “Sarabeth, please. You need to be strong, okay? Try to pull yourself together.”

  She heard his words as if through a fog, but she stepped up to the shooting window all the same, running her fingers along the cool steel pistol that waited for her there.

  “I don’t know…”

  “It’s paper right now. Focus on the paper.” He took her icy hand and squeezed it. “You said you could trust me. Trust me enough to know I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t necessary.”

  She wet her lips and straightened, nodding. “Okay.”

  He started by teaching her the basics of gun care. How to hold it, how to flip the safety, where to point it, where not to point it—at him, seemed to be the biggest suggestion. It was easy enough. Nothing she hadn’t seen in movies a hundred times before.

  “Good. You’re doing great. Now I’m going to teach you to aim. Normally we wouldn’t go so fast, but we’re kind of doing a speed course, so you have the basics and I feel comfortable letting you carry while you’re here.”

  Because she was going to need it. She could feel the color draining from her face. “Hey, look at me.” She met his intense gaze and let his conviction calm her. “I’m going to take care of you. This is a precaution.”

  “All right.”

  “Now, you’re going to want to keep your feet hip-width apart, firmly planted on the ground.” He demonstrated and she followed suit. Or tried to. Somehow, despite her best efforts, her knees were shaking at the very idea at what she was about to do, paper or not.

  “Not quite.” He walked behind her, his torso pressed to her back, and tapped her upper thigh, positioning her legs closer together. The touch sent a rush of heat through her thighs and the ache that was always dimly in the background whenever he was around burst into full recognition.

  Just another reaction to yet another stressful situation. No big deal.

  “Thanks,” she breathed, her voice huskier than she would have liked.

  “Okay, now I’m going to show you how to aim.” His palms burned against her shoulders as he squared them, and his fingers trailed her arms at a torturous pace until each hand wrapped around hers, the calloused pad of his pointer resting against her own.

  “The kickback is going to surprise you, so try to gear up. All right. Let’s give it a try in one—”

  His body was so warm…

  “Two—”

  His hot spearmint breath sent tingles up her neck.

  “Three—” He depressed his finger, and the force of the metal shook her, propelling her against the hard muscle of his chest.
The sound wasn’t what she had expected—the cinematic glory of the action movies her ex-boyfriends had forced her to watch. No, the actual car backfiring sound was like a wake-up call to the rest of her life.

  She dropped the gun, unable to control her shaking any longer. “I-I’m sorry. I can’t. This is too much—I need to know what’s happening.” She stared him down, blinking back tears.

  He blanched, but his gaze held hers, firm and steady, before he nodded. “Okay. Okay, I get it. But you have to promise me that you’ll stay calm, all right?”

  She did her best to give a solemn nod, but the rest of her body quaked beneath her. This was the moment. Truth and dare.

  “I can do calm.”

  “We have information that leads us to believe that the mob might be involved with the recent murders.”

  And just like that, calm flew out the window.

  Chapter Ten

  Once Gavin managed to talk her out of her hysteria, she’d given herself an hour to wallow in bed. An hour to sit alone and process, but when the alarm sounding the end of her hour found her stuffed underneath the covers of her blissfully horse head–free bed in the fetal position, her whole body ached to stay there until whatever rip-off Sopranos character was after her finally showed up. The mob. The frigging mob. She’d seen The Godfather. She knew how this ended.

  A knock on her door quickly followed the buzzing of her alarm, and her heart stopped mid-beat.

  “Sarabeth? You okay?” Gavin’s voice was gruff. She’d been surprised when he let her run off the way she had. He hadn’t approached her door or so much as walked by since he’d told her. It was good of him, really. To let her have her space.

  “I’m great.” She struggled to get the words past the ever-increasing knot in her throat.

  “Good. Well, then.” There was a long pause and for a minute she wondered if he’d left. “You can have some more time, if you need it, but we do need to keep working as well. This isn’t going to be easy and I want to get you up to speed with at least the minimum…”