Midnight Vengeance (10 page)

He was listening to her voice but he was also listening to the pattern of her breathing, watching the blinking of her eyes. He casually held a finger to her racing pulse. Those things told him as much as the words did.

She was stressed, terrified.

He’d been trained in interrogation. He knew how to break bad guys, how to extract all the intel possible, and he wasn’t gentle about it. He didn’t want to break Lauren though, God no. But he
did
want to understand. So he wouldn’t trick her out of intel or beat it out of her, but he could make her trust him enough to talk. He turned still, letting her take her time to decide. Stillness was a gift and he’d always had it.

For Lauren, he could wait forever.

She continued watching him and he turned himself into a still pool. No possible threat, just acceptance. Whatever she wanted to tell him, he was ready to hear it.

Quiet, inside and outside the small pretty house. Snow was falling steadily, damping sounds. He turned himself into a statue, breathing from his diaphragm, slow, steady, silent.

She watched him for a full minute, two.

Jacko wasn’t used to opening himself up in any way to anyone, but he did it now. With most people he presented an opaque front. He had a rough background and he’d learned the hard way that you don’t present any weakness to the world.

He’d been born to a druggie mom who dragged home a succession of “uncles” who rarely spent more than a weekday or two with them. One of the fucks had been his father, though he had no clue which one. Neither did his mom. He didn’t even have a clue what race his dad was. One thing was for sure, though—the fucker wasn’t white bread, no sir. Jacko looked like a mongrel with a hundred different ethnicities swimming in his blood. In the Navy he put himself down as
Mixed Race
.

He’d zipped fast and hard through adolescence where he’d been thrown out of high school for fighting so often he just stopped going, then straight into the Navy where he got his GCE. From there just kept moving faster and harder up into the SEALs.

SEALs weren’t touchy-feely kind of guys. He didn’t like talking about his childhood and he couldn’t talk about his missions with the SEALs or for ASI, which didn’t leave much space for small talk. Fine with him. He wasn’t into emoting or group hugs. Right now, though, he tried to dismantle a lifetime of thick concrete walls, the ones that had saved him as a child and that allowed him to function in the hellholes he was sent to as an adult.

He wanted Lauren to trust him, instinctively. He wanted to be the guy she turned to, instinctively. So he sat, wanting her to understand she could trust him.

It wasn’t that hard. His teammates knew everything about him they needed to know, which was that he was loyal and knew how to shoot. Lauren could know more. No walls with Lauren.

Finally, she nodded. “Okay. I grew up in Boston. My parents divorced when I was ten and my father died soon after. My mother married a very rich man from Florida, originally from Colombia. Very, very rich. Alfonso Guttierez. He didn’t make his money the nice way, though she didn’t care. He had enough money to create a patina of elegance around him, but he was a crime lord. Drugs, guns, you name it. Officially, his money came from a string of casinos and hotels and restaurants he owned.

“My mother liked the money, and didn’t care how he got it. I was sent to boarding school throughout my teens and then went directly to college in upstate New York and got a job at a museum in Chicago. I rarely went home to Florida. There was something creepy about my stepfather and all that wealth. I didn’t want any part of it. I would have died rather than touch a penny of my stepfather’s money. He had a big family back in Colombia and took a nephew in to what I guess you could call the family business. Scumbagitude. Alfonso was able to hide what he was under an elegant façade but Jorge was...” she shuddered. “Jorge was bad news. Violent and a little crazy. And unlike Alfonso he gambled and took drugs himself. Two years ago, my mother and Alfonso were in a car crash that killed them both. Alfonso had made my mother his universal heir. She outlived him by an hour and the entire empire came to me.”

Lauren’s head fell slowly forward to his shoulder. Jacko cupped the back of her neck and waited. He placed his thumb along the carotid and felt the fast pulse there. Her warm breath washed his neck.

She pulled back, looked him in the eyes. “I inherited millions. I don’t even know how much. I didn’t want it, but the law wanted to give it to me anyway. Six hours after my mother’s will was read, Jorge tried to kill me. He killed a girlfriend who was staying with me instead. And he killed another friend his goons mistook for me. I barely escaped that time, too. I survived this long in Portland because a—a friend got me new ID. But he is after me and he will never stop.” For a second, Jacko was so filled with rage he couldn’t think, which was bad. Elite soldiers don’t have feelings. They don’t
want
to kill. They could when they had to, no question, but that’s not what SEALs were about.

But right now? Right now he wanted to rip this Jorge’s heart out of his chest, see his blood flow, look down on his dead carcass and spit on it. He shook with the desire to kill.

Jacko had to wait a moment until his voice was calm. Inside he was raging but Lauren needed to see him in control. He pulled away, lifted her head so she could look him in the eyes to see the truth of what he said.

“That’s over, honey. It’s all over. No one is ever going to hurt you again, even come near you, not as long as I am alive.” He waited for the words to sink in. “Do you believe me?”

“I—I think I do.” She nodded jerkily. “I really really don’t want that money, Jacko. I don’t even know how to give it to him, which I would if I could. I think I could renounce it legally but I’d have to come out in the open and he’d get to me. That money is tainted—it makes me sick just to think of it. But he wants me dead now, no matter what.”

Lauren put her hand against his face. He hadn’t shaved so she’d be feeling bristly stubble. Her hand was cold against his cheek. She tried to smile. “I know you think you can keep me safe but you’ve got a job, Jacko. A life. You can’t stick by my side 24/7.”

Oh yes I can,
he thought.

“I’ll show you.” Jacko put his hand under her elbow and rose. She rose with him, surprised.

“Show me what?”

“You’ll see. Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

* * *

Jacko was fast.

It had taken her two hours to pack her car but it took him only fifteen minutes to transfer all her car’s contents to his SUV, even though there wasn’t that much room with the huge bike in back. He brought his vehicle around, backed it into her garage and worked quickly and quietly.

When she asked if she could help, he said she could pack more of her stuff if she wanted, so she did. Including things it had broken her heart to leave behind. It felt good to be able to have more of her books, the two sets of linen Frette sheets, the posters of Picasso’s bullfighters she’d had framed in light maplewood.

He came to get her in her bedroom, kissed her nose and lifted the bags from her hands.

Lauren looked up at him, at that dark intent face. As usual, she couldn’t read his expression. He presented a completely blank slate to the world and for the first time, she wondered whether it was a tactic as opposed to his nature. Because the man who’d been in bed with her was not a blank slate. He was a man of fire and passion.

She put a hand on his forearm, savoring the power and the warmth, and said the hard thing that needed to be said. “Jacko, last chance. Some very powerful people are after me. Jorge has an army of goons. The last thing I want is for you to be hurt.”

“Honey.” He put his hard hand over hers and oh wow, it felt like he was transferring strength to her by touch. “I’m not going to get hurt and neither are you. Guaranteed.”

Guaranteed.
Nobody could guarantee anything in this world. She knew that. Her mother and stepfather had been protected by vast amounts of money and a phalanx of thugs and in the end, they’d succumbed to a drugged-up teenager. Life at times was like a scorpion, stinging everything within reach. So no, Jacko couldn’t guarantee her safety or even his own.

But she felt better. It was like a small lifeboat suddenly appearing in a storm where she was barely keeping her head above water. Crazy as it sounded, she felt reassured. And she didn’t feel so alone.

It had been so very hard before Portland, completely on her own with her secrets and in hiding. Sure she had Felicity and Felicity was great, but Lauren liked being surrounded by friends. It had been the hardest part of being a runaway—being alone. It was why she had slipped up here in Portland, lulled by the friendship of Suzanne and Allegra and Claire. Enveloped in their warm embrace.

Jacko was watching her carefully, dark eyes intent. They stood there and she felt a surge of...rebellion. Jorge Guttierez, the scum of the earth, had made her life a living hell these past two years. He’d killed two people simply because they’d been close to her. He was a drug dealer and a psychopath.

It was time for this to end.

“Okay?” Jacko asked, deep voice quiet and firm.

“Okay.” Lauren didn’t know if it was really okay or not, but the word felt good in her mouth. It had been a long long time since she could say that anything was okay.

Jacko looked around her house. “I’ll come back and pick up the rest of your stuff.” He lifted his hand when she opened her mouth. “Believe me when I say no one will see me doing it.”

She looked at that hard, tough face and believed him. She nodded.

It was snowing hard by the time she settled into the passenger seat of his SUV. She looked behind uneasily. Anyone who had eyes to see would note that this was a move. Luckily, he had darkly smoked glass almost everywhere, except in the front windshield. The windowpane was very clear.

“I know you killed the security cameras across the street,” she said. “But when we do pass by security cameras, won’t they see me? I know it’s stupid to think of this now when I should have thought of it before, but now that I’m thinking in terms of cameras...”

Jacko turned to her, one big hand resting on the top of the steering wheel. “I have mapped out an itinerary of about three blocks without security cameras.” He picked up his cell. “But I have something even better than a safe route.”

Lauren looked on, puzzled, as he got out of the SUV and took snapshots of the entire front of his vehicle. Not selfies—he didn’t appear anywhere. Just photos of the front of his SUV. The vehicle didn’t dip when he got back in. Maybe it was reinforced.

Jacko showed her the screen of his cell. “Look carefully, honey, and tell me what you see.”

For a moment, she didn’t take in his words because her heart lurched when he called her
honey
. Such a simple word. Guys used it all the time. One friend in college told her he called all his women either
honey
or
babe
in case he forgot their names.

Something told her that wasn’t Jacko’s style and that he wasn’t a big one for endearments.

She focused on the cell monitor to keep herself under control. She took the cell in hand, turned it so it was horizontal, but it still didn’t make sense. What was she looking at? Vague stippled patterns.

“Can you see yourself?” Jacko asked.

Lauren frowned, studied the monitor carefully. “No,” she said slowly. “I can’t. Why can’t I?”

“Because the front window is coated with a special film. It’s invisible to the naked eye, which is why I see perfectly through it and why it doesn’t raise any questions to outsiders or cops. But the film prevents vidcams or cameras from seeing inside. So no one is going to see you. No one. And images are slightly distorted to human sight, too. Not enough to raise a flag but enough to make it impossible to read who the passenger and driver are.”

Lauren looked from the cell monitor, which showed an uneven camouflage effect to the window itself, which was perfectly transparent to her on the inside. On the film though, you couldn’t even tell there were people inside.

“That’s pretty nifty,” she said. “Smart guy.”

Jacko shook his head. “Careful guy.”

Paranoid guy, too, but she wasn’t complaining.

He pressed the remote and rolled out slowly, waiting on the curb until the garage door was closed again. Lauren looked back with a small pang. She’d been happy there.

Jacko shot her a narrow-eyed look. “I’m really sorry, but you’re not going back again. Not until we’re sure the danger is over.”

He was protecting her. She tried smiling at him. It probably wasn’t convincing but she did try. “I know, Jacko. I know. That house is the least of the things I’ve lost.”

His jaw muscles flexed. “We’ll get everything back for you. That’s a promise.”

Lauren nodded, throat tight.

Nice thought. But she didn’t believe it.

Chapter Six

It was still snowing heavily by the time Jacko got onto one of the main roads, blending smoothly into the traffic. No one noticed his SUV and that was exactly as it should be. He’d even smeared some muddy snow on his tags. No one was going to get to Lauren through him.

Though he was concentrated on the road ahead—the snow was so heavy it challenged even his driving skills—he could see her perfectly well in his peripheral vision. She was sitting quietly, gloved hands in her lap, staring straight ahead. All he could see was her profile, steady and composed, but very pale.

It pained her to leave her little house and he understood completely. One night there and even he felt at home in it. She’d worked on it and she loved it, and a scumbag drug dealer was chasing her away. He tightened his hands on the wheel, wishing they were around the fucker’s throat.

Well, he had a plan. He was good at strategizing and he was good at operational implementation, and as soon as humanly possible Lauren would be free and someone would be dead or in jail. The way he felt, preferably dead.

Lauren suddenly sat up straight and looked around. “Shouldn’t we have taken Kearney? Don’t you live in Roseway?”

“Yeah. We’ll get there but first we have to stop by the office. I have some stuff to settle there. Then we’ll get you set up at my place.” He slanted a look at her. “My place isn’t nice like yours.”

She looked at him, luscious mouth upturned in a small smile. “I’ll bet you have one of those mega plasma HD billion-inch TV screens.”

“Bingo. 3D, too.”

“And a huge sound system.”

Badass sound system, yeah. “Bingo again. And an enormous bed.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
Damn!
He could kick himself in the ass. It made it sound like the price of his protection was sex.

Though...yeah. It wasn’t the price, of course. He’d offer his protection for nothing because just the thought of someone hurting her made him a little crazy. So, not the price, no sir. He was protecting her because he couldn’t do otherwise.

But man, if more of that sex he had last night was available, he wouldn’t say no.

His dick stirred at the thought, the thought of sliding back into her warm silkiness. Right...
now.
God, he had to grip the wheel hard and concentrate on driving because blood was rushing to his dick, which never listened to reason. Because now was not the time.

Maybe later? He had to shift in his seat because his dick was getting stiffer by the second.

Lauren turned a bright shade of red.

What a fuckhead he was. “Forget I said that. Way outta line. Sorry.”

She reached out and put her small hand on his. Even through her glove it seemed to burn. “Don’t apologize, Jacko.” She frowned, peering at a street sign as he signaled a turn. The sign was barely visible in the swirling snow. “Isn’t this—” She looked at him. “Isn’t this the street where Suzanne’s office is?”

“Yeah.” Jacko reached for his cell, put in the earbud, punched in a number.

“Yo.” Metal, pulling office duty. Metal wasn’t built for offices, just like Jacko wasn’t, but they loved their jobs and if it required ass in chair once in a while, they could handle it.

“Coming in with package. Switch off vidcams.”

“Got it.”

Jacko relaxed slightly. Metal was a soldier and didn’t ask dumb questions. He knew Jacko wouldn’t make a request like that without a very good reason. And that very good reason was sitting next to him, pale, frightened, but composed.

And frigging gorgeous.

He nearly sighed as he rounded the corner and pushed the button to open the back gates. He was on a mission now and when he was operational, he was all business. Like most SpecOps soldiers, he could narrow his focus like a laser beam. The op. It was always about the op. Everything else was secondary.

Except now, for the very first time in his life, his attention was divided. Keeping Lauren safe was the op, but Lauren herself was distracting him. The idea of someone hurting her messed with something deep inside him, made him less...efficient. Scared him. Which was scary because Jacko didn’t do fear. No, sir. And yet here he was, sweating lightly, making sure the vidcams of his company were off because—though Midnight’s cybersecurity was ace—you never knew.

Metal was waiting in the yard, impassive as ever, though Jacko knew he was curious. No one asked for the security at Alpha International to be turned off, ever.

Jacko drove in and killed the engine, listening to the ticking as the motor cooled. He was absolutely one hundred percent convinced that what he was about to do was right. But it hurt, just the same.

Do the hard thing
. A Navy SEAL motto that had never let him down.

“Jacko?” Lauren turned her face to him, pale and troubled. Her skin glowed in the dim light. “Why are we here? I need—I need to stay away from Suzanne. I don’t want anything about my situation to touch her.”

“We’re not here for Suzanne,” he answered, getting out and going to the passenger side. He opened the door and held his hand out to her. She stepped down, pointing her right foot like a ballerina until she touched the ground. She looked like a fairy princess in the snow, white flakes falling on her dark hair. She stood for a moment, hand in his, looking up at him and he saw...complete trust.

She was putting her life in his hands.

He swallowed. That trust was sacred. Nothing was going to happen to her; he’d stake his life on that, and he was. But before he could dedicate himself to her completely, the next step was necessary. Hard, but then nothing in his life had ever been easy. And he’d never had a prize like Lauren to fight for before.

Metal materialized by his side.

“Midnight in?” Jacko asked.

Metal nodded. “Waiting for you.”

Yeah. He imagined that. The request to kill security would have been routed up to boss level.

“Senior’s coming in a minute,” Metal added.

Senior. One of the most effective senior chiefs in the history of Navy SEALs. And, like Midnight, a terrific boss.

For just a second, Jacko allowed himself a pang at the thought of leaving. Tiny, just for a second. But then he looked at Lauren, patiently waiting for him, trusting him, and the pang was gone. This was what he had to do.

Embrace the suck. A good rule in the military and in life. He was just going to put his arms around the suck and hug tight. Not the first time it had happened.

He put a hand to her back and they made their way in the swirling snow to the back entrance of Alpha Security International. It was the business entrance, where people doing actual work came and went. The fancy front office was for show and for clients.

Alpha Security International shared a building with Suzanne’s interior design company, which explained how it was that ASI could be as sober and serious a business there was, while lodged in the most elegant surroundings he’d ever been in.

Alpha Security’s employees were mostly former SEALs with the odd leatherneck tolerated. They were rough and tough men, used to hardship and Spartan surroundings, but they all enjoyed the space Suzanne had created for him.

Goodbye to that, too.

Jacko ushered Lauren over the threshold. As they walked down the corridor, she looked up at him. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her.

She gave a small smile and nodded.

They walked into the lobby of Alpha Security and the secretary, Alison, waved them through. “He’s waiting for you, Jacko,” she said.

Yeah.

Lauren was looking around and he realized she’d seen Suzanne’s offices but not ASI’s. She touched his arm. “We’re here for a reason?”

He nodded.

Her voice was low, quiet. “I don’t want Suzanne—or, God!—Isabel involved in any way in my troubles. Or Allegra. Or Claire. Promise me that.”

“I promise she and Isabel will be safe. Allegra and Claire, too.” He could make that promise. Midnight would see the world burn before he let anything hurt his wife or daughter. Ditto for Senior. Bud had already taken a bullet for Claire.

Midnight was waiting behind his desk when they walked in. His eyes widened slightly when he saw Lauren. For Midnight, that was a sign of huge surprise. He rose to his feet.

“Lauren?” Midnight looked from Lauren to Jacko. “Are you looking for Suzanne? Because she’s out with a client.”

“She’s not looking for Suzanne,” Jacko said after he settled Lauren in one of Midnight’s comfortable client chairs. He himself stood, because what he had to say was going to be quick. And painful. The faster it got done the faster he could move on to the next stage. “She’s here because I have something to say.”

Midnight sat back down, leaned back a little in his chair. “Shoot.”

“I quit.”

Lauren took in a shocked breath, but Midnight simply narrowed his eyes.

“Request denied,” Midnight said and that surprised
him.
He’d worked himself up to this and now...it wasn’t going to happen? “At ease, sit down and explain yourself.”

Jacko dropped into the chair.

* * *

Lauren jumped up at Jacko’s words. Oh my God! Jacko was
resigning?
Over
her?

The one thing she knew about him was that he loved his job. She couldn’t allow this.

“Mr. Huntington—”

“John,” Suzanne’s husband said. He’d said it to her many times but he was so formidable she found it hard to call him by his first name. She nodded, forced herself to remember to use his first name. “Please sit back down.”

She dropped to the chair. “John. This is insane. I can’t let Jacko lose his job over my problems.”

“No one’s losing his job, Lauren. Least of all Jacko. He’s too valuable to the company. So why don’t you tell me what this is about? Is it related to the fact that you left the party last night when someone took a photograph of you?”

John’s eyes were dark, but not as dark as Jacko’s. There was a gunmetal sheen there that reflected light. But they were as observant as Jacko’s.

She shot a glance at Jacko sitting next to her. He was stiff, impassive, the only sign of emotion his jaw muscles jumping. He looked at her and his message was clear.
Your call.

Okay. She took in a deep breath. “Someone very bad is after me, John. He will stop at nothing. I’ve been on the run for two years, and sooner or later I’m going to make a mistake and he’ll get me. Last night—” She swallowed hard. “Last night might have been one of those mistakes. This morning I tried to get out of town and go...somewhere. But Jacko stopped me.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Jacko said, deep voice hard. “The running stops now.”

She was twisting her hands in her lap, but then pulled her fingers apart. She met Jacko’s eyes then John’s. “I can’t lie and say the idea of being protected by Jacko isn’t appealing. But it’s not practical.” She turned to Jacko completely, looked him full in the face. “You can’t stay by my side 24/7. Because that is what it would take. You’ve got a job, a life. You simply can’t do it.”

“I
can
stay by your side 24/7,” Jacko growled. “No question.” He looked at his boss. “Which is why I quit.”

John was fiddling with a pencil, which looked out of place on his super high-tech designer desk with the six thin film monitors and the projected keyboard. “No, Jacko,” he said. “You can’t stay by her side day and night.”

Jacko half rose out of his chair. “Goddammit! Sir. Yes, I can and yes, I will.”

“No.
You
can’t.” The pencil was suddenly pointed at him. “But
we
can. Now, sit.”

Jacko’s face turned blank as he lowered himself back to the chair. “Sir?”

John nodded at her. “Is she yours?”

At any other time Lauren would have protested the language, bristled at the tone.
Is she yours?
No, she wasn’t anyone’s. But this was something between John and Jacko.

“Yeah. She is,” Jacko said immediately. He made a fist, bounced it off his knee.

“Then she’s ours,” John said simply. “And we look after our own. We’ll keep her safe. ASI has manpower. When you’re working we’ll detach someone. We can work out a plan, shift schedules. This is what we do.”

All of a sudden Jacko’s face changed, lightened, and Lauren realized what relief he felt. He didn’t look so impassive—a strong man making a big sacrifice, quitting the job he loved for her. His face was so grim and fixed all the time she hadn’t noticed but now she did. He didn’t look like he was bench pressing three hundred pounds. He looked relieved.

“Okay, Lauren.” John turned to her, that handsome CEO look gone, the warrior underneath visible. She’d always seen him with his wife, and he curbed his essential nature when he was around her. Right now, he looked like Jacko, he looked like Douglas. He looked like all his men. Tough and mean and indestructible. And coldly efficient.

At any other stage of her life, seeing that look on a man’s face would have scared her. Alfonso had looked just like that when he dropped that affable rich-guy affect he’d had. Dark and dangerous, belonging to a world of blood and iron. Only John was dangerous in defense of people, not against people. Like Jacko and Douglas and the rest of the team at ASI. Not criminals, good guys. But just as scary as the bad guys.

The instinctive part of her recognized a dangerous animal and she recoiled, then checked herself. These two men were going out of their way to make her safe.

Jacko she could sort of understand. For some reason he had placed himself at her service, like a knight of old. It had to be more than the sex they’d shared. Men didn’t turn their lives inside out for a one-night stand. Underneath his impassive exterior, she felt he cared for her.

But John? What did John care?

“Why do you care?” she blurted, then bit her lips. But she needed to understand. Putting herself in Jacko’s hands when he cared for her, that made sense. But John was about to be involved too.
Why?

He didn’t take offense. He just sat back in his chair, looking between her and Jacko. Jacko was staring straight ahead, but he reached over and held her hand tightly.

“We’re all military men in this company,” John said. He had a deep, mesmerizing voice. Well spoken but with a slight hint of the South. Not as much as Jacko, but definitely there. “We had each other’s backs in the military and we have them now. A threat to Jacko and who he cares for is like a threat to my own family. I’d expect him to defend Suzanne and Isabel with his life, and he would. It’s mutual. We’re all in this together. And—” He shrugged broad shoulders. “Suzanne loves you. That goes a long way with me.”