Barracuda Security Complete Trilogy Page 2

  “Hey, Kai!”

  I looked up as I got out of the car and smiled as a beautiful blonde came rushing toward me; the apron wrapped around her ample curves gave away her profession as the owner and head baker at Lili’s Cupcakes.

  “Lili! How are you this fine morning?”

  “I’m experimenting with new muffin recipes,” she said, showing me a small pink box. “Could you try them, let me know which you like best?”

  “Oh, Lili! You’re going to make me lose my six-pack if you keep this up.”

  She blushed as her eyes slid to my abs, as if checking to see I really did have a six-pack. “That’s okay,” she said, her eyes slowly coming back up to mine, “women like a guy with a little meat on him. You know that, right?”

  “Then why are there so many magazines filled with men with perfect abs?”

  “Well, there’s the guy you like to look at, then there’s the guy you like to hold on to.” Her blush deepened as she said it. “Here, take these. Share them with Cady.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I leaned close and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

  Her cheeks burned as she looked up at me. “You’re very welcome,” she mumbled before turning and running back across the parking lot to her shop.

  I pushed my way through the front door of Barracuda Security—my new business—smiling at Cady as I did.

  “Lili?” she asked, indicating the box. “You know that woman has the hots for you, right?”

  “She’s a sweet woman.”

  “That’s not what she wants you to call her.”

  I waved her words away and changed the subject. “Anyone else in this morning?”

  “Paxton’s out back. She’s struggling over the report on her last case.”

  “What’s so hard about it? I thought all young people were proficient in computer stuff!”

  “She can use the computer. She just doesn’t like writing essays, as she calls it.”

  “Put a few words together, tell me what happened. Not that hard.”

  “Tell her that.”

  I grunted, not seeing the point in arguing any more. I set the box of muffins on the corner of Cady’s desk and popped it open, sighing at the lovely fragrance of the fresh baked pastries. I chose a dark one that looked like it might be marginally healthy. The first bite was like heaven, making me sigh again.

  “You have to admit, she’s a damn good cook,” Cady said as she reached for one herself.

  “Damn good!”

  My office was once a pawn shop. It was longer than it was wide, the floor still showing the marks of the counter that once ran the length of the store. Behind Cady’s desk were two more, narrow utilitarian desks that accommodated the two operatives I currently employed. Along the left side were file cabinets that were mostly empty—we’d only opened our doors six months ago, so we hadn’t yet built that large a client base—and a low table that held the printer/scanner/copier. A wall divided the office in two. In what once housed the storage area of the pawn shop was now a very narrow corridor that led to the back door. On either side of the corridor were three doors, one to a small, unisex bathroom, a break room, and my office.

  The door to the break room was open. I stuck my head in and watched Paxton Morris peck at the keyboard of her laptop like a chicken pecking at the food scattered across the ground.

  “Didn’t you learn how to type in high school?”

  She glanced at me. “I think I missed that day.”

  “Don’t you type on your smartphone, with all those texts you send?”

  “I use my thumbs for that. I can’t use my thumbs on a keyboard this size!”

  I chuckled, despite myself. “Why don’t you try sweet talking Cady into transcribing it for you?”

  “I did. She wanted a price I wasn’t willing to pay.”

  “What’s that?”

  She glanced at me. “She wants me to convince you to ask Lili for her number.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Yeah? Well, little does she know, I already have it.”

  “No, shit?”

  “I got it the first time I came to look at the building, long before I met any of you fools.” I waved my hand at her. “You should have taken her up on it. You’d have a free day now if you had.”

  “Well, hell! I guess I know for the next time.”

  “She’ll ask for something more complicated next time.”

  “I know. But I’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m sure you will. Report on my desk by the end of the day.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, snapping a lazy salute. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

  I just shook my head and turned, taking another bite of my muffin as I pushed open the door to my office. “Sorry to make you wait,” I mumbled around the sweet pastry.

  A man with dark hair stood up from where he’d been sitting in one of the cheap chairs Cady insisted needed to be arranged directly in front of my desk. He turned and the muffin bite I’d been working on suddenly turned to glue at the back of my throat.

  It was Roman Pierce.

  Hell, I’d expected to run into him eventually, what with coming to live in this town that I knew was his hometown. But I’d gone six months without even a fleeting glimpse of him. Yet, here he was, standing in my office like he and I had been best friends, or something. It was almost surreal.

  I lowered my head, struggling to swallow that clump of muffin. “Sergeant Pierce.”

  “You know me?”

  “We shared a room for nearly three weeks in a hospital in Washington D.C.”

  He nodded, frowning slightly as he studied my face. “Yes, well, I was told I had bandages on my head the whole time. I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”

  “Your picture was all over the papers when you woke. I read a few of the articles.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, rubbing his chin with a thoughtful gesture that I think was supposed to look sophisticated, but was actually kind of childish. “I forgot about all that. But I guess it was kind of a big deal when I came out of that coma!”

  “I was glad to hear it,” I said politely. “They weren’t sure you would wake up when you were in Washington.”

  “They said that. Took me nearly three months to come out of that coma, and almost as long to get to the point where they’d let me leave the hospital. But it all worked out.” He looked me up and down, his gaze lingering on my legs. “This reporter put me in touch with a nurse from Washington. She told me about you, said you were pretty kind to me. Said you read to me nearly every night for two weeks.”

  Rolling my shoulders, I moved around him to sit at my desk. I dropped the remnants of my muffin into the trash. “There wasn’t much else to do in that hospital.”

  “You were in there for quite a while, weren’t you?”

  Seven months. The longest seven months of my life.

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

  He returned to the chair he’d vacated and studied me across the desk. He tepee’d his hands; the gold of his wedding band sparkled in the dim light. I stared at it, and thought about the woman whose letters I’d read..

  “I’m looking for some security.” He chuckled softly. “Obviously.”

  “What kind of security? For your home?”

  “Naw. I live in one of those new apartments across town at the moment. .You know? . . . The ones down by the beach Great security there.” He seemed to notice the attention I was paying to his wedding ring. He looked at it himself, holding out his hand like a woman showing off an engagement ring. “The wife and I…we’re going through a bit of a separation at the moment.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He wasn’t the only one who’d been curious about his hospital roommate. during that time in the Washington D.C. hospital. I’d also asked around, and heard that he’d been transferred to a private hospital not long after. The Army moved him down south, mostly because his mother had some pull with the government, or something like that. His family had
some money and his mother threw it at the problem, hiring all the best neurologists and whatever was needed. When he woke, she had the best therapists come in and get him back to the state he’d been in before the debris nearly took his life. If not for Mommy, it’s anyone’s guess what state the Army might have left him in.

  But Mommy wasn’t the only one who’d come running to his side the moment he was back in the sound. The letter writer, the woman whose words had offered me a bit of hope during a dark time, had come to him. They married not long after he was released from the hospital, and played house for a while with their little girl. And, I suppose, that’s the way it should have been. That was what the woman in those letters had wanted. And, I guess, I was happy for them when I first heard. But then I moved to this town and began to hear other things.

  That’s the thing about these little towns: gossip spreads quickly. I heard from the real estate agent, who helped me buy my house, about the Pierce marriage. Apparently, Roman Pierce wasn’t the American hero all those articles had wanted the world to believe.

  “Pierce family has lived in this area for generations,” the woman told me. “Old man Pierce was something of a milquetoast, the kind of man who allows his wife to walk all over him. No wonder he died so young of a heart attack! And that boy…he didn’t fall far from the tree! Just like his mother, that one. And poor Briar. Such a nice girl, had no idea what she was getting into marrying him. I think the head injury just made him more of an ass!”

  “Yeah, well, women go through these things sometimes. She’ll change her mind and welcome me back soon enough. They always do.”

  I rolled my shoulders again. Something about the flippant way he said this forced me to fight back the desire to punch him.

  “So, what can I do for you, Pierce? What kind of security are you looking for?”

  “It’s for my sister, actually. Rylee. She’s a lawyer with Young and Ferguson downtown.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Rylee Gruffydd. She married some Welsh dude while she was in England six or seven years back, but they’re divorced now. Only thing she got out of the marriage was a weird last name. But…anyway, I have reason to believe she’s being stalked by this guy I knew overseas. I’d like to have someone posted on her round the clock, make sure he doesn’t come after her before I can locate him and smooth things over, you know?”

  “This guy’s problem is with you, not her?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Then why is your sister the target? What’s the guy’s beef with her?”

  Pierce shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Never stopped to ask.”

  I tilted my head as I regarded him. Most guys who’d received a threat against a family member would know exactly what was behind it. I didn’t believe that he didn’t know.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  Roman ran his hands over the top of his head. “The thing is, I don’t want Rylee to know anything about this. I’d rather she doesn’t know that you’re protecting her and I really don’t want her to know that I’m the one paying you to do it. Is that possible?”

  “We’ll do the best we can.”

  “Good.” He scratched his chin, fidgeting like he was really nervous. I couldn’t think why he would be nervous around me. “His name is Colin Johnson. We were in the same unit in Afghanistan.”

  “Why is he interested in hurting your sister?”

  “Because I pissed him off.” He scratched his chin again. “I’d rather not give details.”

  “We can protect her better if we have all the details you can give.”

  “I just want you to follow her around, make sure no one’s bothering her. That’s all.”

  I dragged a pad of paper toward me and wrote down the name: Colin Johnson.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Just that I want her watched, twenty-four/seven.”

  “You’ve said that.”

  Roman nodded. “How much?”

  “We normally require a retainer of five hundred, but I’ll cut that in half for you, being an Army man and everything.”

  “I appreciate that.” Roman stood. “I really am grateful for you doing this, Kai.”

  I nodded, pulling myself to my feet as well. I wasn’t quite as graceful as I once was, and quick movements sometimes caused my prosthesis to catch for reasons I could never fathom. It did just then, catching on nothing but a floor it normally slid easily across. I fell forward just enough to knock my thighs against the desk.

  “Hey, man! You okay?”

  “Fine.” I pushed myself up, regained my balance and walked around the desk like it was nothing. I shook his hand and gestured for him to lead the way out. “If you’ll leave your number with Cady, we’ll have updates for you every evening.”

  “Perfect.” Roman turned and offered his hand. “Keep a good eye on her, if you don’t mind.”

  “That’s what we do.”

  Roman walked out and I shoved the door closed and leaned over to rub my thighs. Fucking desk! Damn leg smarted. You’d think after all this time, I’d have it down perfect, but there were still days when I felt as though I’d only had the leg a few hours and I was still navigating the strange waters of walking with something artificial sticking off the bottom of my leg. It was like walking on stilts, but all the time.

  I fell back into my chair and pulled the pad of paper to me again. Colin Johnson. Why did that name feel familiar to me?

  “Cady? Call Maclean. Tell him I need him here ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was something off about this situation. Was it my fascination with those letters that had come to Roman Pierce while he was in the Army? Was it my fantasies about a woman I’d never met? Or was there really something off here?

  Whatever it was, I had every intention of finding the truth.

  Chapter 2

  Maclean

  It was the picture that got me, I think—sitting there on the side table, like she had a right to it. I picked it up and stared at it, trying to figure out when it had been taken: Had to have been within a month of the accident because her hair was short. She’d cut it for her birthday, twenty-nine days before she died.

  She shouldn’t have it.

  I opened the back of the frame and popped the picture out, slipping it into my back pocket. I moved away from the bed, and opened the closet door and peeked inside. She didn’t have much, just a few changes of clothes. They didn’t give you much when you left prison, and she’d only had a few months to earn any cash. If I had anything to do with it, she wouldn’t be earning much more.

  I couldn’t believe she had come back here. What right did she have to be here, to come to this place where my Meredith had lived and breathed, had loved and played? What right did she have to spoil my memory of Meredith with her presence?

  I went into the bathroom and studied the medications she had in her cabinet, half hoping I’d find something that would violate her parole. What I found instead was a prescription med for anxiety. How insane was that? What did she have to be anxious about? It wasn’t her wife who had been murdered by a fucking drunk driver!

  I was about to step back into the bedroom when I heard the distinctive click of the front door opening. Cursing softly under my breath, I quickly snapped off the light and dashed across the room. I slipped through the bedroom window sliding it closed it seconds before she came into the room, tugging off the light T-shirt she’d worn to go jogging in. I sat there for a moment and watched her move around—this arrogant, selfish woman who’d been so completely indifferent to the havoc she’d created in her stupidity. She’d actually come to court with plane tickets to Paris; she had been that convinced she would be freed . . . the look on her face when the judge held her over for trial!

  It all spiraled downward after that for this woman. She no longer looked like the same smug bitch I’d stared down in the police station. She lost her husband, her million dollar vacation home, and her teena
ge daughter. But it was nothing compared to what she’d taken from me.

  As far as I was concerned, she shouldn’t be breathing!

  I watched her step into the bathroom, watched her reflection in the mirror as she undressed and stepped into the shower stall. Hatred burned inside of me, a familiar sensation. It’d lived there for five years. It would likely continue to live there for the rest of my life.

  I welcomed it.

  My phone rang, the musical tone making me jump. I stepped quickly away from the building, and crossed over to the sidewalk. “Maclean Harris.” I barked, hoping I sounded more business-like than guilty.

  “It’s Cady. The boss wants you in the office.”

  “A case?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I shouldn’t have come here. I knew that. Just like I knew that I should have left town when it was all said and done, and when I had been released from the police department for conduct unbecoming an officer. I should have moved on with my life as Sergeant Michaels had advised when he told me results of the internal affairs investigation. But I couldn’t, not when I learned she would be released from prison and had filed paperwork that would allow her to settle in Walnut Estate.

  I was pretty sure Sergeant Michaels wouldn’t have done things any differently in my shoes.

  I got to my car, parked three blocks away from the apartment building, and pulled the picture from my pocket. Meredith had been such a beautiful woman! Hair the color of the sand on the beach, blue eyes that twinkled just like the ocean water as it reached the shore; she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever known. The way she made me feel with just a look—I had known from the moment we met in junior high that she would be my wife. I knew we’d have a big family, live a good life together here where we both grew up. I knew it like I knew my name, like I knew my reflection in a mirror. And she knew it, too. But then this woman came along and turned everything upside down. How was I supposed to move on with my life when this woman was allowed to continue breathing while my Meredith was lying six feet underground?