Midnight Vengeance (12 page)

“And instead?” Bud asked.

“Instead, I got Carla killed, too. We met at a café in town close to where she worked. She was worried—she heard the panic in my voice over the phone. I explained the situation to her and she was angry. Said that a friend of her father’s knew someone who could help. I started calming down. I’d driven all night and I was exhausted. She said to come home with her and she’d call in a security company she knew through work to protect me.” Lauren stopped, looked around the elegant premises, at the owners of the security business, John and Douglas. “Maybe like this one. It was just what I needed, safety. The time to think. We paid the bill and I needed to go to the bathroom. I left everything on the table, including—”

“Including your cell,” Jacko said.

Lauren hung her head in shame.

“Yes,” she whispered. That one careless, thoughtless act had snuffed out Carla’s life. “Yes, except my cell. They killed her instead of me. I came back out of the bathroom to see two men walk into the café, right up to her. One took out a gun, put it against her forehead and pulled the trigger. Then they walked right back out again, fast. Everyone in the café was so shocked no one tried to stop them. Carla looked a little like me.”

“Like this?” On the monitor, Bud turned another monitor around. And there it was—Carla’s portrait photo that had been on her social media pages. Pretty, blond, lively.

Now dead.

Lauren nodded, chest burning with remorse.

“She’s blond,” John noted.

“So is Lauren,” Jacko chimed in.

Lauren blushed, a hot rush of blood to her face and chest. Clearly Jacko had a way to know that. An intimate way. But none of the men showed signs of anything but concentration.

“I, ah. I have changed my hair color several times.”

Polite silence.

“I should have gone to the police. But I had zero proof. It would have been my word against Jorge’s, and he can hire the best lawyers there are. I didn’t think of hiring a lawyer myself or, even better, bodyguards. All I could think about was getting away, as far away as possible.”

“He would have gotten to you anyway,” Jacko stated, voice flat. “No question. Throw enough money or men at the problem of getting to you and you’d be dead. You were right to run. Except...” Jacko gave a long hard stare at John, then Douglas. “The running stops. Right here. Right now.”

“Damn straight.” John leaned back in his chair.

“Oh yeah,” Douglas said.

“So now you—” John pointed a finger at Jacko. “You’re taking the week off. You’ve got a lot of accumulated leave you haven’t taken. We’re going to put together a protection roster and protocol to ensure 24/7 protection for Lauren when you come back to work.”

“Thanks.” Jacko bowed his head slightly, then lifted it. “And Bud’s going to look into this Jorge, find out what’s happening. Get some eyes on the fu—creep.”

“You bet.” Bud’s stern face looked out at them from his monitor. The image was so clear he could have been in the room with them. “I’m going to start investigating this guy. From what Lauren says, he’s probably breaking a million laws, not to mention two homicides. I know an LEO in Palm Beach, can’t be bought off. He can do some digging. We’re going to bring down a world of hurt on this Jorge. I’ll check in with you later.” His image disappeared in a wink.

“Oh.” Lauren’s head whirled. A few hours ago, she’d been packing to go somewhere, anywhere. To leave her friends behind, to leave her whole life here behind. Her new life would have been sere, friendless. Planned to be that way. Her heart had ached at the thought of what was before her. And now this. A reprieve. And maybe, just maybe a normal life at the end of it?

An impossible dream, only a couple of hours ago.

Her gaze shifted from John to Douglas and back to John. “I don’t know how to thank you. But you must promise me that Suzanne stays away from me. And Douglas, Allegra too. And tell Bud that Claire has to stay away from me. They shouldn’t even know I’m still in town. You need to tell them I went out of town. I don’t want any of them near me.”

“Why don’t you want us near you?” an indignant female voice inquired from behind her.

Lauren twisted in her seat. There she was. Suzanne. Wearing one of her perfect pastel suits that looked like a million dollars on her. And you couldn’t hate her for it because she was so nice. The thought of anything happening to her—

Lauren jumped up, put her hands in front of her, palms up, as if staving off danger. And she was. Anything happening to Suzanne would kill her.

“Suzanne!” she called sharply. “You shouldn’t be near me!”

Suzanne walked forward quickly, as if she hadn’t spoken at all, and simply enveloped Lauren in a warm, perfumed embrace. Lauren pulled in a deep breath. Suzanne smelled so good. Not only of an expensive perfume, but of friendship and love. If those were smells, they would be Suzanne’s.

She bent her head to Suzanne’s shoulder to hide the sudden spurt of tears. Two years of not crying, and between Jacko and Suzanne, she kept breaking down.

“No,” she whispered shakily into Suzanne’s powder-pink jacket. But she clung even more tightly.

Suzanne lifted her head and spoke to her husband. “What’s going on, John?”

Before John could answer, Lauren pushed herself away from Suzanne. It was hard to do but she’d gotten used to pushing away good things. “You’ve got to stay away from me, Suzanne. Someone is after me and you could get caught in the crossfire. Jacko and John and Douglas are going to try to fix this, but until it’s fixed, I shouldn’t be anywhere near you. Or anywhere near Allegra and Claire.”

She took a step back, far enough not to feel Suzanne’s body heat, or smell her perfume. It hurt.

To her surprise, Suzanne stepped forward again and put her arm around Lauren’s shoulder. “Nonsense,” she said briskly. She looked at her husband. “John won’t let anything happen to me, will you, John?”

John stood up, walked toward them. He put a big hand on Lauren’s shoulder. Douglas had stood up, too.

John’s face was hard. A warrior again, not a highly successful businessman. “Nothing is going to happen to Suzanne or Isabel. We keep our women safe. Don’t worry about that.”

“Oh yeah,” Douglas chimed in. His scarred face was hard, too. “Nothing’s going to happen to you or Suzanne or Isabel or Claire. And no one on this earth is going to touch Allegra. You can bank on that.”

Lauren believed them. There was a concentration of male power in the room that was more than testosterone. These were men who had been tested again and again and had come out victorious.

There was an aura in the room, a feeling of strength and purpose. These were serious men. Even Suzanne was serious. When Suzanne was in business mode and not in friend mode, she was invincible. Firm and smart.

All of a sudden, Lauren had a vision of Jorge. Instead of him looming hugely in her head, this gigantic monster, a Godzilla capable of swatting away her future, her life and the people close to her, she saw him as he was. Weak and petulant and a little crazy. An addict, too. All of this heartache was because he thought he could simply step into Alfonso’s shoes. Whatever else Alfonso had been, he had been a hard worker. Jorge was a spoiled child. He’d gotten close to her twice because of luck and her own stupidity. Not through his own intelligence.

The presence of Jacko, John and Douglas—and even Suzanne—made her realize she had better and smarter people on her side.

For the very first time the thought crossed her mind—
I’m going to win this
. She’d been so grief-stricken at the loss of Cheryl and Carla, so caught up in the idea that Jorge could find her wherever she went to ground, it had distorted her thinking.

She was going to win this. She was going to get her life back.

Another male hand landed heavily on her shoulder. Jacko’s.

“As long as I am alive, you’ll be safe,” he growled.

Chapter Seven

Some color had come back in her face. Jacko glanced over at Lauren in the passenger seat. Her skin had been the color of ice when they arrived at ASI.

He’d gone in fully expecting to walk back out without a job. Instead, he’d come back out with a
team.
Midnight and Senior—man. Those guys were real team leaders. A member of the team needed help? They stepped right up. Jacko was intensely grateful for that. But intense gratitude was nothing compared to the white-hot relief he felt knowing that ASI had his back. Lauren would be kept safe, no question.

Jacko could have done it alone—he knew that. He’d have locked them in his secure quarters forever if that’s what it took. But he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to be on alert 24/7 because he’d be sharing the job of protecting Lauren with his teammates.

Basic principle of bodyguarding and of soldiering—never do it on your own. You work in shifts. Otherwise the adrenalin of constant alertness will eat you alive.

So not only were they going to keep Lauren safe, they were going on the offensive. Oh yeah.

It wasn’t in Jacko’s nature to hunker down. If he knew Lauren was protected, he and ASI could go take down this son of a bitch.

He’d give Bud some time to dig up intel. It was always good to go the legal route. But bottom line? If there was no progress soon, he’d leave Lauren with Metal—no one better, no one smarter, no one meaner when he had to be—and go off to Palm Beach and smoke the fucker who was after her himself.

He knew how to do it and leave no clues.

So sometime soon Lauren’s nightmare would be over. Oh yeah.

“Jacko,” she said, turning to him, “I don’t know how to thank you—”

Jacko held up a hand in horror. “God, don’t thank me.” His throat tightened. He had a lot of skills. Get in his way and you’d be sorry. But words weren’t what he was good at. “Just...don’t.”

Unspoken words choked him.
I would happily die to protect you. No will ever touch you again.

I think I love you.

That last thought made him sweat. He gripped the steering wheel harder, his palms suddenly damp.

Fuck.

His hands were sweating. That never happened to a sniper, and sweaty hands had sure as hell never happened to
him
. He’d always been the meanest, nastiest motherfucker around since he was twelve. No one messed with him then; no one messed with him now.

He’d shot and killed really bad guys without breaking a sweat. Sometimes he hadn’t used a bullet but his bare hands. And now just look at him.

He weighed twice what Lauren did. He could bench-press her. Hell, he could bench-press
two
of her. Yet she somehow reduced him to a wreck, particularly when he thought of someone hurting her.

He could have put it down to sex, but he’d felt this way for four freaking months now and they’d only had sex once. It was off the charts, okay, but still...

In those four months in which he wasn’t getting his rocks off
at all
, just seeing her made him sweat but also made his day. He felt...different when he was around her, as if there was this force field around her that skewed his molecules.

No, that wasn’t it.

Hell, he didn’t know
what
was it.

All he knew was he felt good around her and missed her when she wasn’t there and by God, no one was going to hurt her.

He couldn’t say any of that. The words stuck in his throat and they fucking hurt because they couldn’t come out. The words were like knives, cutting him. He swallowed and looked at her and she seemed to understand.

That was the thing about Lauren. She...understood him. She never treated him like a piece of meat or a walking dick like other women did. Well, Suzanne, Allegra and Claire didn’t. But every other woman did. She listened to him, though he didn’t speak much around her. But when he did he had her full attention.

He felt good around her. Wanted to be around her as much as possible.

Was that love?

Fuck if he knew.

Uncomfortable with the thoughts in his head, he was grateful when they reached the underground garage of his building.

He switched off the engine and turned to her.

She recognized instantly that he had something serious to say. When she turned to him, her entire focus was on him. It felt like a beam of light was on his face.

“Okay. This is how it’s going down. When you want to go out, we come straight down here where no one can see you get in the vehicle. I will temporarily disable the security cams when we come down to the garage and I’ll let the security guys in the lobby know. And I’ll tell them that no deliveries come up except from them. Just in case you have to be out in the open, I know a guy who can manufacture hats with brims that beam down a special invisible light that messes with recorded images. No facial recognition software will be able to pick up your face. It won’t be stylish but it will be effective.”

He didn’t even go into pancake makeup, which fooled skin-texture analytics and graph measurement software. But they were available and she’d make use of them.

“I should stay in as much as possible,” she said softly.

“Yeah. But I don’t want you to feel caged. If the weather clears, I can take you for walks in the country where there are no vidcams. I always keep my bike in back so maybe we could go for a ride. Would you like that?”

“I hear you’re very good on your bike. Though I also hear you go about a million miles an hour. We’ll have to go slower than that.” She stretched out a hand to caress his cheek and leaned forward. The kiss was soft, warm, fleeting. She pulled back just a little and searched his eyes. “You’re taking such good care of me, Jacko. Thanks.”

His throat tightened and he swallowed heavily. “No problem. Let’s go up and I’ll show you around.”

He left her in his apartment while he went back down to bring up the last load of her stuff. Crazily, though he knew for a fact that nothing was happening to her, he was anxious until he walked back through his door and found her putting things away.

Muscles he hadn’t known were tense immediately relaxed the instant he saw her. Okay, maybe there was a way to save his sanity.

“Lauren,” he said quietly. “Come here.” He was able to put his hands immediately on what he needed and palmed it. He knew where everything was, at all times, because he was OCD when it came to gear. He sat down on his long brand new sofa and patted the cushion next to him. “Sit down.”

She came right away, sat down next to him. Folded her hands and waited for what he had to say. He loved that about her. She was always no nonsense. Never whiny or pouty. If she’d been busy with something she didn’t want to interrupt, she’d have said so, firmly.

She treated him as a teammate, and as someone he could count on, always.

His heart thumped once, hard.

Jacko tried to look at his place through her eyes. “First of all, I hope you’ll be okay here. I haven’t, um, decorated.” At all. He had a bed, a long sofa and a big screen TV. A table with his six-monitor computer set up. A table to eat on, with a couple of chairs. That was more or less it.

Luckily he was sailor-neat. Not that there could be a mess when there was nothing there.

Lauren smiled. “I’m not assigning decorating points, Jacko. I’m not the décor police. I’ll be comfortable here—don’t worry. And I can always order throw pillows online.”

He smiled back. “Oh yeah. Do whatever you want. Consider the place yours. Throw pillows, curtains, frills. Those flower petals in silver thingies that Suzanne has everywhere. I’m game.”

She tilted her head. “We could start with food. Your refrigerator has ten bottles of microbrewery beer, a hunk of stale cheddar and a soft tomato.”

He winced. She’d probably seen that his cupboards were completely bare, too. Well, he rarely ate at home, and when he did it was takeout. Didn’t know how to cook. Now things had changed. He’d be taking most of his meals home, for the first time in his life. The thought didn’t disturb him as much as he thought it would.

“There’s a supermarket that does online ordering. When we’re settled, we’ll order. And I’m good at ordering takeout. I have the menus for Chinese, Thai and Tex-Mex. You won’t starve.”

“No.” She smiled. “I won’t.”

He took in a deep breath. This next part was going to be tricky. He opened his hand to show her what was on it. “Here.”

She picked it up, puzzled. He could understand that. It was a tiny piece of tech with a thin steel rim.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a tracker.” Jacko held up his hand. “Now, I don’t want you to feel weird or anything but I want you to keep it on you at all times. Just until we know what’s going down.” Or until that fuckhead Jorge was dead. “I’ll be with you as much as possible and when I can’t be with you Metal or another ASI guy will. But you know, there might be times when you’ll be alone here. The place is secure, trust me. But if I’m not physically with you, I need to know where you are. At all times. So I gotta ask—you think you could do that? Keep this on you?”

There were so many things he wanted to add.
I don’t even know if we’re together, besides this crap that’s happening right now. I’d fucking hate to be tracked myself. But please do this for me, so I don’t go bugfuck crazy when I can’t physically see you. It nearly killed me to go back down to the garage.
But he didn’t know how to say the words. All he could do was sit beside her with the tiny piece of silicon and brushed steel in his open palm and hope she didn’t hit him across the face.

She didn’t. She looked at it thoughtfully, studying it. Then she put in on her knee and reached behind her neck to unclasp a light gold chain. In a moment, she’d somehow threaded the chain through the tracker and put it back around her neck. She stroked it and smiled at him.

“There,” she said softly. “It’ll be on me at all times.”

Oh man. He swallowed. A wave of something—heat, lust,
love?
—swept over him, like a solar wind in a sci-fi flick. Whoosh. Enormous heat. What felt like another realignment of his molecules.

He placed his hand over it, just below her collarbone. Her skin felt so satiny, so smooth. Not like normal skin, like something finer than that. He looked at his hand on her neck, fingers curling slightly. He had big hands, strong hands. Steady hands.

But right now his hand felt huge and awkward. Not part of his own body, more like a part of hers. He was unable to take that hand away, as if she were a powerful magnet and his hand was pure iron.

“Thank you for this,” he said hoarsely. “I appreciate it.”

She blinked. “Jacko, I don’t think you’re clear on what’s happening. You just offered to quit your job—and I know you love it, don’t deny it—for me. You’re rearranging your entire life for me, to keep me safe, and you think I’d balk at making sure you know where I am at all times?” She edged closer to him. “And do you think I’d complain about you sharing your home with me?” She looked around at the huge emptiness of his living room and brought amused eyes back to his. “Though I really might be doing some decorating here. I promise no chintz.”

He ran the back of his forefinger down her cheek. “You can make this place wall-to-wall chintz for all I care. Whatever the hell chintz is. As long as you’re here, and safe, I’m okay.”

“Thank you.”

He shook his head sharply. “I told you, don’t need thanks. Don’t want it.”

She leaned in even farther, smiled into his eyes. “Then what do you need? What do you want?”

“I’ll show you what I want,” he whispered. He lowered his hand. She had on one of those sweaters that buttoned up the front. They had a name but he couldn’t remember it right now. He could barely remember his own name. He unbuttoned the sweater slowly, watching her, ready to stop if she wanted him to.

But she didn’t stop him. She sat quietly while he opened the sweater and folded one side back. She had on one of those lady bras that looked sexy as hell. In some light purple color that probably had a weird name. Suzanne would know. She had names for every color under the sun. He unhooked the bra, brushed it aside and bent forward to kiss her breast.

Lauren gave a soft sigh and arched her back. One hand rose to his neck and she held him tightly to her, fingers caressing the back of his head. She tasted salty sweet, incredibly delicious. As he licked and sucked at her, he gently slid off the sweater and the bra, then lifted his head. Though he’d only sucked one nipple, both were erect and cherry red. The breast that was wet from his mouth was pinker.

Jacko reached out an unsteady hand and outlined the deeper pink. “Razor burn.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “Sorry.”

“Do the other breast,” she answered softly.

Oh yeah.
As he licked and kissed it, Jacko finished undressing her. She helped, lifting and moving and pulling, until she was naked on his couch, lightly flushed, smiling at him.

He couldn’t smile back. His face just wouldn’t. A smile felt small and inadequate to what he was feeling. She was sitting like a queen, pale and glowing, looking at him with softness in her gaze. No woman had ever looked at him like that. Women looked at him pre—and post-fucking. The pre-fuck look was speculative and the post-fuck look was, thank God, usually satisfied. But there was never any emotion there.

Lauren’s feelings were written all over her face. Feelings for
him.

He had no idea what was on his own face; he could barely feel himself, he was so concentrated on her. He had tons of feelings rolling around inside, so many and so strong he couldn’t express them. He had no words to tell her what she meant to him. What he felt seeing her on his couch smiling at him as if he were the center of her world. He couldn’t explain it to her in any way.

There was one thing he could say, though, and it came from the deepest part of him.

“I’ll keep you safe.” He wanted to say more but the words just wouldn’t come.

“I know you will, Jacko.” Lauren smiled at him, cupped his jaw with a hand. He shifted and kissed the palm of her hand, a little calmer now. She’d understood all those unspoken words. He didn’t have to say them because she understood.