And then Marisa clicked twice on the intercom—their code—and he thought, Oh shit. Nora Charles had called on their special hotline, the underground railroad.
And then the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen walked in to his office.
Women were rarely clients of RBK Security, the mainstream, overground part of it, anyway. Mostly the clientele was corporate—something was leaking money and they wanted it stopped. Or they wanted their security system upgraded. He and Sam and Mike mostly dealt with their opposite corporate numbers, heads of security, or with the Big Guy himself—the CEO. Mostly men. And, of course, the odd heiress.
But the woman walking in to his office was definitely not an heiress. Not with those plain, nondescript clothes that were so rumpled they looked as if she’d slept in them. Not with those nails bitten down to the quick. Not with that glorious red hair tumbling wildly around her shoulders. Not with those dark circles under beautiful green eyes that were revealed when she pulled off her big sunglasses.
No, Harry thought sadly as he rose to greet her. She wasn’t a pampered heiress. She was one of the Lost Ones.
Chapter 2
Ellen walked in to the office warily. Her friend Kerry had had dealings with the R of RBK, Sam Reston. So this was the B. Harry Bolt.
Kerry had talked about Sam Reston and hadn’t said anything at all about the other two partners. Maybe Ellen was making a big mistake. Maybe this Bolt would turn her in to Gerald. Maybe she was signing her death warrant right now, she thought, as the door behind her slid silently closed, presenting a smooth expanse. She turned for a second, alarmed that the door had no doorknob and no hinges.
No way to get out.
It took her almost a full minute to realize that the button on the right-hand wall was probably the door release mechanism.
Heart pounding, Ellen turned back just as this Harry Bolt stood up. And up. And up.
He was amazingly tall. Amazingly…big. Huge, strong, unsmiling.
A lot of Gerald’s operators had that look. Intent, focused, dangerous. Trained to hurt.
Ellen started to step back, but stopped herself. If there was one thing she’d learned in this past year, it was not to show fear. Her palms were sweating but she had no intention of shaking hands, so he didn’t have to know.
“Ms. Charles? Please come in. Make yourself comfortable.” Harry Bolt had a deep, calm voice. He watched her carefully, unmoving. Perhaps he realized that his size was unsettling and he did the only thing he could do to reassure her: stay still.
Heart thudding, Ellen walked carefully across the large office and sat down in one of two chairs facing his desk. Client chairs, clearly. If this was for real, if what Kerry had told her was true, and if this Harry Bolt did what Sam Reston did, then a lot of terrified women had sat in this very chair.
Were they all still alive? Had they been betrayed? Were they now rotting in some ditch or at the bottom of some lake, beaten to death?
Only one way to find out.
And yet she was so scared, it was hard to find enough oxygen to speak. She had to wait until she was certain that her voice would be strong and not shake.
This Harry Bolt didn’t seem to have any problems with waiting. He’d taken his seat after her and just sat there, watching her.
His eyes were an extraordinary color. A light brown that looked almost golden, like an eagle’s eyes. Ellen mentally shook herself. Come on, you’ve got more important things to think about than the color of this guy’s eyes. Like your life.
She breathed in and out a few times, gathering her courage. Harry Bolt simply sat and waited, showing no signs of impatience.
Start obliquely, she thought. It would be a little test. If he had no idea what she was talking about, she’d go back outside and wait for Sam Reston, even if it took days.
Though she probably didn’t have days. She might not live to see the sun set.
Deep breath. “The first thing I want to say is that Dove says hello. She says she’s doing fine and she wants to thank you.”
There. See what he made of that.
Harry Bolt watched her face intently, then nodded his head. “I’m glad,” he said quietly, somberly. “Sam told me she’s a good kid.”
Right answer. Okay.
“Dove” was Kerry Robinson, and she was a good kid, but she’d had the bad luck to be married to a violent drunk who nearly killed her. Kerry Robinson wasn’t her real name, and she’d known Ellen as Irene Ball. It didn’t matter that their names weren’t genuine because the danger to them was.
A year ago, Ellen had entered a world where women changed their names because there were monsters out looking for them. Somehow, Ellen had also entered some kind of sisterhood where not much had to be said to understand.
Some time back, Kerry had quietly told her that a man had been asking for her. It turned out he was only looking for a date, but Kerry had seen how scared Ellen was. And knew. So she’d given Ellen the special card with the special number on it that led to RBK.
“Are you in the same kind of trouble?” Harry Bolt asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re going to need to disappear?”
Among other things. “Yes.”
He leaned forward slightly, resting his torso on muscled forearms. Ellen watched his hands carefully. They were large, scarred, powerful. He noted her glance and kept his hands very still.
She raised her eyes to his.
“I’m not the enemy,” he said quietly.
Maybe. Maybe not.
She couldn’t allow her vigilance to drop, not for one second. This man looked just as dangerous as any of Gerald’s minions. More dangerous, even. He was perfectly able to repress those macho mess-with-me-and-you’re-dead-meat vibes all of Gerald’s men had, including Gerald himself.
This man was just as big and strong as the biggest and baddest of Gerald’s men. And he’d been a Special Forces soldier. Ellen had read the thumbnail bios of all three partners in RBK at an Internet café, waiting for her appointment. She was going to place her life in the company’s hands and she wanted to know what she was dealing with. So this Harry Bolt had been a Special Forces soldier and was way on top of the toughness scale, but his vibe was…calm. Serene.
Her intense anxiety went down half a notch.
They looked at each other, dead silence in the room.
Ellen was running possible openings through her mind when he said, voice still calm, “But you do have an enemy.”
She nodded her head jerkily.
Oh God, this was so hard.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.
She drew in a deep breath. Beginning. Okay.
“I, um. I’m an accountant. A CPA.” She thought about it, about the smoking ruins of her existence. “Or was. In another life.”
Chapter 3
She’s scared shitless, Harry thought. Words wouldn’t reassure her, so he did the only thing he could do—stay still and let her open up to him. Exactly as you’d do with a frightened, wounded animal.
Was she wounded? Harry made sure not to move his eyes below her neck, but he had exceptionally good sight and peripheral vision. No broken bones visible, no casts, no bandages. No black eyes, but rather red-rimmed ones.
It was a good thing Harry couldn’t see any visible damage, because he didn’t know if he could have kept so still if she’d been covered in bruises.
It never failed to drive him crazy, how some men could hurt women and children. He had no idea how they could do it, but they did. He’d seen it all—snapped arms, dislocated jaws, black, swollen eyes, pulped spleens…
It was always horrific, but on this woman…bile rose in his throat at the thought of violence to her. She was slender, delicate, with the fair, creamy skin of a redhead that should never carry any kind of bruise, let alone one caused by violence.
She didn’t have any internal injuries, because she’d moved gracefully and swiftly as she entered the ro
om, as if forcing herself into it. Not allowing herself to back away.
If she’d been punched where it wouldn’t show, she’d be moving slowly, carefully. Some women had to breathe very shallowly because someone had cracked or broken a rib. He’d seen a lot of that.
“How can we help you?” he asked, though he knew the answer. By taking her away from the bad guys.
She finally pulled in a deep breath. “Like I said, I was an accountant, a CPA, and a good one.”
A note of pride entered her voice and inside Harry rejoiced. She hadn’t been beaten down to the ground. Not yet. And now that she was here, not ever again. He’d personally see to that.
“I’m sure you were, Ms. Charles,” he answered softly.
Her eyes flickered, because that clearly wasn’t her name. Man, she was a lousy liar. Personally, Harry could lie like a pro. He could say to anyone that his name was Rumpelstiltskin and never bat an eyelid.
“Yes, um.” She clutched her backpack with white-knuckled intensity. “I found a really good job just out of college, with a—a large company headquartered about thirty miles from Savannah. A company that had dealings abroad. It was challenging, but exciting.”
She stopped, watching him. Harry simply breathed, kept his face neutral. She was going to tell this in her own good time.
She looked to the side and winced. “I was actually put in charge of the accounts department. Immediately. Which was a really big deal for someone just out of college with a brand-new degree and the ink barely dry on her license. I thought—I thought maybe the owner of the company had checked my grades, which were straight A’s, and decided to give me a chance even though I didn’t have any experience.”
“And?” Harry prodded when she shut up.
“It wasn’t my grades.” She looked down at her lap then back up again, mouth firm. “My inexperience was a big plus in his eyes. The accounts were a real mess. He hadn’t been paying all his taxes, either. It took me two years to start putting some order into his affairs. I’m surprised the IRS didn’t come down on the company, though it was working mainly for the U.S. government, so he might have had…well, friends in high places.”
By not a flicker of an eye did Harry let on that he felt a slight prickle of unease. The only kinds of companies that worked for the U.S. government and also worked abroad were defense contractors or security companies. And he knew just about every security company in the United States.
“In the meantime, although I was really happy to have the job and to run an office of five and manage the accounts of a multimillion-dollar company, something—something else started happening.” She swallowed convulsively. “The owner started sniffing around me. And he wasn’t taking no for an answer, you know?”
Oh Christ, Harry thought. Here it comes. He consciously schooled his face to blandness. His default expression was a ferocious scowl he’d been told was terrifying, and he didn’t want to frighten her.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.”
Her eyes met his. She made no bones about staring at him, assessing him, and he let her.
It wasn’t a hardship. She had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, even more beautiful than those of Sam’s wife, Nicole. But where Nicole was a stunning, in-your-face beauty, a head-turner, this woman had a quieter appeal. You had to look twice to see how pretty she was, but once you did…wow.
Keep your head in the game, Harry told himself sternly. The woman was in trouble, maybe a day away from getting seriously hurt, or worse, killed. Reflecting on her expressive sea-green eyes and creamy skin and heart-shaped face wasn’t going to help her.
She nodded, suddenly. He had apparently passed some kind of test. Luckily, the lady didn’t appear to be a mind reader, otherwise his little spurt off the reservation mooning about her eyes would have scared her off. She was definitely not in the market for a man, that was clear. She wasn’t dressed to seduce—in fact, her clothes were cheap and rumpled. None of her movements had those unconscious come-hither overtones so many attractive women developed.
He wouldn’t blame her if she were to try a little seduction. She was obviously here seeking protection and he was a man willing to offer it. Throw a little sex into the mix, get him on board, bind him. Made sense.
But the vibes that were coming from her were anxiety and fear and a sort of dogged determination, not Protect me and I’ll make it worth your while.
She breathed deeply. “He, um, stopped by my office a lot, put his arm around me—” Her face tightened at the memory. “Pretty soon the whole company had the impression I was his—his lover, and nothing I could say could convince anyone otherwise. I’d just get these sly smiles and heavy hints that I had been hired for something other than my grades. And I sort of had to watch my words, because he was, you know, the boss.”
“I’ll bet it got worse,” Harry said.
She blinked in surprise. “You’re right.” As if he was this amazing wizard with a crystal ball. He wasn’t. He just knew his assholes. If Asshology were a course, he’d have a PhD in it.
“It was bad enough having people think we were lovers, but pretty soon word got round that we were engaged.” She shuddered. “I heard he was shopping around for a ring. A big ring, because everything he does, he does big. That more or less did it. Much as I hated to leave the job, I started looking around for another one, but in this economy…”
Harry nodded. RBK was doing just fine, but it was the kind of company that thrived in times of trouble. It was thriving now.
“The situation became impossible. He was acting as if we were engaged, and we’d never even kissed! He’s such a powerful personality, though, that the whole company just took it for granted that we were a couple. Then, a year ago, there was this party, this huge corporate do, celebrating a big government contract. The company rented the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency in Savannah and it was catered by this all-star chef.” Her mouth quirked. “There was free booze, and more or less everyone got plastered, except for me. My body can’t handle much alcohol. So I was, unfortunately, sober when one of the employees came up to me and bragged about how smart the boss was. He’d stolen twenty million dollars from the U.S. government and wasn’t I lucky I was going to marry him?”
Harry’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Yes, indeed. And frankly, it made a terrible kind of sense, because a lot of the accounts from the early days of the company just didn’t add up. There was more incoming than could be accounted for. I think the boss knew I was sort of digging around, but I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
Harry frowned. “Did you ask for details from this guy? What was his name?”
She hesitated and he understood she was still weighing how much to tell him. “Frankly, the guy was so drunk he could barely articulate. But—he was actually boasting! When I said I didn’t believe him, he pulled out a cell phone and showed me a snapshot of him, the boss, and two other guys. Soldiers, in Iraq. Standing next to what looked like hundreds of pallets stacked high with dollars wrapped up into bricks. The guy was falling down drunk but the photos were clear. Then he said—all that money was gone the next day, and no one ever noticed.”
“What happened next?” Harry asked quietly.
He had a sense of where this was going. But he was also having trouble focusing on her story. It was riveting, but the quality of her voice was even more riveting. Soft and clear with the faintest tinge of Southern spice in there. It was mesmerizing, and tantalizingly familiar. Which was, of course, crazy, since Harry had never seen her before in his life. He was hallucinating, which was not good.
He needed to sleep at least as much as he trained. A good military rule.
“While he was telling me the story, so drunk he was nearly passing out, my boss noticed us across the room. He looked at me and at this drunk guy, and I’ve never seen a more menacing expression on a human face before.” She shivered at the memory. “It certainly sobered up Drunk Guy. He went ash white, said to forget he’d said anything and
disappeared so fast you’d swear you could see the dust. I was spooked. The boss started coming over and I hid behind a pillar and slid away. I needed to think about it, because the whole story rang really true. And explained all the anomalies I found in the accounts.”
Harry was watching her, trying to concentrate on her words instead of the timbre of her voice, feeling slightly light in the head. Maybe this woman was like one of those sirens in Greek mythology, whose voices alone were so enchanting they made sailors crash into rocks. Jesus, he wouldn’t be surprised. “And then?”
She huffed out a breath and got a closer clutch onto her backpack, nervous system tightening up. “The next day they found that guy’s body. The drunk one who’d talked. I heard it on the early morning news. It was made to look like a mugging, but I don’t think he was the type of man to be caught by surprise like that. They found his body by the side of the road with a bullet through his head and all his money and credit cards gone.”
“What was the caliber of the bullet?”
Her eyes opened wide. “I beg your pardon?”
A lot could be told by the caliber, but she wouldn’t know that. “Never mind,” Harry said. “Go on.”
“It was just too much. I—I guess I freaked. I didn’t go to work that day, didn’t even call in sick. I just—didn’t show up. Which was stupid, because anyone who knew me knew that was unusual for me.”
“Hard worker,” Harry murmured and her head came up with an expression of pride.
“Yes, I am. I’ve never taken a day off sick and I’ve been working since I was twelve.” She shook herself. “Anyway, I thought all night about going to the police, but the thing is, the local police chief is a really good friend of my boss’s, and a lot of the cops practice free shooting on his shooting ranges. My boss makes a point of contributing very generously to the Family Survivor’s Fund. They would never believe me, not in a million years, not without proof, and I didn’t have that. When the news came on about Drunk Guy being killed, I realized right then and there that I was going to have to go to the police or I’d be next. And then I happened to look out the window at a van parked across the street from my condo entrance, and men started pouring out. They were armed and they were Ge—my boss’s men.”