TAMING KNOX (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 3) Read online

  We were to follow new regs whenever we put a client in a safe house, too. No personal cell phones, no leaving clients alone in the bedrooms. I knew that was because Alexander’s girl, Tierney, had snuck out to meet her mother and got herself a solid beating in the process. If not for that, David might still not know that Tierney and Alexander were involved. Hell, I might not know either.

  All in all, the new rules made sense to me. Not so much to Tony though. I could hear him muttering under his breath over at his desk. Poor guy had always struggled with the regulations. But he was FBI, not military like the rest of us.

  I got up and wandered over to Alexander’s desk after I was done reading through the packet.

  “What do you think of all this?” I asked him, flicking a nail against his own packet.

  He shrugged. “I pretty much saw most of this coming.”

  “Yeah, me too, thanks to you and Tierney.”

  He looked up. “You think this is our fault?”

  “Well, I doubt it’s a coincidence that a lot of it has to do with safe house rules and client-operator interaction.”

  He studied the packet for a long moment. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “It’s not a big deal. I think it’s all good stuff. Keeps us safer.”

  “True.”

  Alexander put the packet down and studied me. “Vanessa was asking about you the other day. She was wondering when you were going to come around to see her.”

  “How is she?”

  “Leaving the house to see her therapist.”

  Alexander glowed when he said it. Vanessa, his little sister, was an agoraphobic, stuck in her house since a violent attack left her near death. Ever since she heard that her attacker had been arrested in the foreign country where he fled to escape charges in the attack, she’d been progressing quite impressively.

  “That’s wonderful, Alex.” I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I’m happy for her and relieved for you.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “It’s definitely progress. It’ll still be a while before she returns to the woman she’d been before it happened, but at least there’s hope that that will happen now.”

  “There is.”

  We stared at each other a little awkwardly. Alexander and I had hit it off the moment we began working together here at GWS 2, but then we spent a night together a couple of months ago and things had gotten a little awkward between us. It wasn’t that either of us wanted a relationship. We were both commitment phobic—at least he was before he met Tierney—so it was understood that it was just a one-night thing. But seeing a coworker naked tends to alter things a little in the day-to-day relationship.

  It made me a little sad. Alexander was the closest thing to a friend I’d had in a very long time.

  “Knox?”

  I looked up. David was standing just inside the room, an iPad in his hands. I smiled because I knew what that meant: a new case.

  I needed a new case. I was bored as all hell.

  I followed him down the hall to his office. Kipling was in there—as he always seemed to be these days, a proverbial fly on the wall—along with an older woman. I would guess she was in her late fifties, early sixties, though she’d taken great pains to hide it. I recognized the subtle traces left behind by Botox and, perhaps, more than one face-lift.

  “Mrs. Montgomery, this is Knox Adams.”

  “Knox? A lovely southern name.”

  “My family is from Alabama,” I said, as I shook her proffered hand.

  “I’ll try not to hold that against you.”

  My eyebrows rose, but it wasn’t the first time I’d heard a comment like that. Alabama wasn’t exactly the capital of southern elitism.

  “Mrs. Montgomery has a little problem she’d like us to help her with,” David said, heading off any off-color comment I might have made. “She believes—”

  “I know my son-in-law murdered my daughter. And I want you to prove it.”

  My eyebrows rose. We weren’t an investigative agency. We provided security.

  David cleared his throat. “Mrs. Montgomery has two grandchildren she worries might be in danger.” He handed me the iPad. On the page that was already pulled up was a picture of two adorable little girls. They were toddlers, no older than three or four. And beautiful. “The father is in the process of hiring a nanny because he’s gone back to work and the woman working for him now has been accepted into a graduate program back East.”

  “You want me to apply to be the nanny?”

  “We’ve already applied for you,” David informed me. “You have an interview in an hour.”

  “It’s very important that you get this job,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “I need someone I can trust around the children. I can’t stand the idea of anything happening to those little darlings.”

  I glanced at her, catching something in her tone that didn’t sound incredibly genuine to me. But the grief in her eyes seemed honest.

  “Why don’t you let me walk you out, Mrs. Montgomery,” Kipling said, coming up behind her. “Let David fill Knox in on everything.”

  “Of course.” The woman’s eyes fell on me one more time. “You stay close to those babies. They’re all I have left.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, my accent a little stronger. There was something about being around women like her that made that happen. I think it had something to do with the whole Momma-issue thing I had going on. “I’ll do my best.”

  As soon as she was gone, David led the way to the long couch against one wall of his office.

  “I’m sorry about that. She insisted on meeting the operative we were going to put on this case.”

  I shrugged. “No problem.”

  “So, her daughter, Colby Montgomery-Spencer, died last fall in a drowning. The coroner called it an accident, but Mrs. Montgomery insists that it was more than that. She says that the marriage between Colby and her husband, Dunlap, was going sour, that they’d been fighting like cats and dogs for more than a year. And because he was the only one home, the one who found her…”

  “Where did she drown?”

  “Hot tub behind their home.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Yeah?”

  “Happens more often than you think. The coroner thought that she’d had too much to drink and that combined with the high heat of the hot tub caused her to lose consciousness. She hit her head when she went down and slipped under the water. An accident.”

  “But Mrs. Montgomery believes that the husband knocked her unconscious and staged the whole thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sounds like something you might see on Law & Order.”

  David laughed. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  He scrolled through the iPad for a second, then sort of sighed as he handed it to me. “I’ll let you review the information yourself. Mostly all you need to know is that the husband owns a small construction company that was barely making ends meet before Peterman Construction closed his doors last month. Now he’s getting more business than he can keep up with.”

  “I guess one man’s misfortune really is another’s gain.”

  David got up, crossing to his desk. “It shouldn’t be a difficult job. Just keep an eye on the kids, keep your ears open. If you hear something, great. But chances are good you won’t hear a thing and we’ll simply pull you out of there in a week or two.”

  “Why are we taking this case if you don’t think there’s anything to it?”

  David shrugged. “Mrs. Montgomery was a friend of my parents back in the day. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Which is why you needed me to come in and consult on these matters,” Kipling said from the door.

  I looked over at him, feeling as though I was suddenly in the middle of something I shouldn’t be. Kipling glanced at me, his eyes moving slowly over the length of me as I climbed to my feet. But when I slipped past him, he didn’t do any of the things most men who looked at me that way would do. He didn’t purposely pu
t himself in my path; he didn’t try to touch me or force me to rub against him. And he didn’t look at me with any suggestion in his eyes. In fact, he basically pretended as if I wasn’t there.

  Kipling McKay was a hard man to read.

  I slipped out of the main house, through a back door, and walked to my little cottage. I lived a few hundred yards from Ingram, so the noise of the construction going on at his place was a little bit of a nuisance. Ricki had offered to allow me to move into the main house for the duration, but I’d rather put up with the noise than sleep in a strange bed. I already had to do that more than I liked.

  I let myself in and dropped the iPad on the bed while I threw a bunch of stuff into a duffle. I’d done this so many times in the past—not only in my work here with GWS 2, but with the CIA—that I didn’t even have to think about it much anymore. A couple pairs of jeans, a bunch of t-shirts, plenty of socks and underwear. A bag of toiletries that I kept packed all the time. The novel I was currently reading, and the one I’d picked out to read next. I had it down to a science.

  I settled on the side of the bed and read through the report on the iPad. There wasn’t much, just the police and coroner’s reports on Colby Montgomery-Spencer’s death. A background check on Dunlap Spencer. Birth certificates on the kids. A background check on the prior nanny. A list of employees from Spencer’s construction company and brief background checks on names that had stood out for one reason or another. It was a little surprising how many people Spencer had working for him who had criminal records.

  I’d done jobs with less information, but I usually had a bit more. The fact that this job was probably going to be a quick in and out meant that more information wasn’t really all that necessary. I wasn’t very worried about it, but I shoved the iPad in my bag just the same. It never hurt to have information at your fingertips in any situation.

  My interview was coming up quick. I grabbed my bag and headed out.

  ***

  Spencer Construction was located just south of downtown in a squat building that looked more suited for some sort of city office than a construction place. I checked the address twice on my phone before finally parking and heading inside. I was a little surprised by the number of applicants waiting in the lobby. There were half a dozen women, all somewhere in their early twenties, all dressed as though they were applying for a secretarial job rather than a nanny position. I almost felt out of place in my jeans and Beatles t-shirt.

  I guess I should have put some effort into my appearance.

  I curled up in a plastic chair, my legs twisted like a pretzel under me. I pulled out my phone and played a few rounds of Trivia Crack while the other women chewed their fingernails and frayed the edges of their resumes. Should I have brought a resume? I supposed David had worked that out for me, too.

  One by one, the women made their way into the bowels of the building, some emerging triumphant, some emerging with tears in their eyes. I found myself wondering what kind of a guy this Dunlap Spencer was. To have married into a family that was helmed by Mrs. Montgomery, he must have been a determined sort of fellow. Maybe a little scary, too, by the looks of things.

  When they finally called my name, my feet had fallen asleep. I stumbled a little as I followed the secretary down the corridor, paying attention to the names on the plaques outside each office. We turned into a little alcove at the end of the corridor that housed a small desk behind which sat a woman with hair so blond that it was almost white. She had her hair pulled back into a slick, thin ponytail that reached all the way to her ass. She wore those half-moon reading glasses that my grandmother lost all the time, and she peered at us over the top, her milky blue eyes almost creepy in their intensity.

  “Ms. Adams?”

  “That’s me.”

  She looked me over like Kipling had done earlier, but her gaze was much more disapproving than his had been.

  “We shouldn’t waste the time,” she said with a heavy sigh, “but he insisted that all applicants be sent in. So…”

  I studied her just as intently as she had done me, thinking she reminded me of my mother. Give her some over the top southern manners and a bad perm and she would be my mother exactly.

  “The job is for a nanny, right? Would you prefer a nanny who wears a business suit to work every day?”

  “I’d prefer an applicant who takes the process seriously.”

  “And because I’m dressed the way I am I don’t take this seriously?”

  “That would be the implication.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to judge a book by its cover?”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that first impressions are the most important impressions?”

  I smiled. She was definitely the moral twin of my mother. I should introduce them someday.

  I brushed past her desk and walked into the main office. It was a small office that was so cluttered with blueprints and file folders and books that I instantly felt a sense of claustrophobia overcome me. I took maybe three steps into the room, and then I had to stop…because there was nowhere else to step.

  “Have a seat,” a disembodied voice called out from behind an open door in the left hand corner of the room. “I’ll be right with you.”

  I had no idea where he intended for me to sit. There was one chair, and it was piled high with junk just like everything else.

  If his house was like this, I found myself wondering if he even knew where his kids were from day to day.

  “Sorry,” he said, finally coming out through the door, wiping his hands on a thin, white hand towel. He had his dark head turned away from me, so I couldn’t really form an opinion of him. He was tall and his hair had red and gold highlights that sparkled in the bright sunlight coming in through the uncovered windows high in the walls. There was something familiar about him, about the way he walked, but I didn’t understand until he looked up at me. And then there were these incredible, penetrating gray eyes that seemed to look right through me. Then they filled with recognition.

  “Fuck!”

  Chapter 3

  Dunlap

  This whole interview process was the most tedious thing I’d ever done. I don’t know how Colby ever did it—if she ever did. I was pretty much convinced she’d simply had her mother do it in the past—but it was driving me insane.

  Twelve women and I still hadn’t met one with whom I was comfortable leaving my girls.

  I ducked into the bathroom not for any biological need, but because I needed a second to collect my thoughts. Maybe I could just go back to bringing the girls to the office with me. Janis hadn’t minded having them around all that much. Sure, it was a little bit of an impediment having a six-year-old child and a fourteen-month-old baby running around under foot while we were trying to conduct business, but everyone had been incredibly understanding before I hired Shawna. Surely they would be again, right?

  I heard the door open and sighed. Here we go again.

  “Have a seat. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  I didn’t hear anything. Nothing tumbled over like the first three or four had done, nothing moved intentionally as some of the others had done. No noise at all. Maybe the clutter had finally scared one away.

  I could only hope.

  I took a deep breath, realizing I had no choice but to go out there. I quickly splashed my face with some water and grabbed the hand towel, trying to look as though I hadn’t been hiding. But then I stepped out there, an apology on the lips, when I looked up and saw a face I never thought I’d see again.

  Have one night of stupidity—the first one-night stand ever—and she walks back into my life like a bad penny.

  “Fuck!”

  She cracked a smile despite the shock apparent in her big, green eyes.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, tossing the hand towel into the center of my desk with the blueprints for the building on ninth we were supposed to break ground on in the morning.

  We stared at her other for a long moment, both of u
s a little confused by what was happening. But then memory came back and crawled all over me, touching me in places that her fingers had burned with her subtle caresses. I was getting hard just standing there, just watching her, and that was probably the most humiliating thing that had happened to me since the first time I got down on my knees for Colby and she turned away.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said, “but I guess Austin isn’t as big of a city as people like to imagine.”

  “I guess not.”

  Her eyes moved slowly over me, making my discomfort that much more. I crossed my arms over my chest, biting on the inside of my cheek in the hopes that the pain would bring me back to my senses.

  God, she was beautiful!

  “I, uh, didn’t you tell me you worked for a security firm? What are you doing applying for a nanny position?”

  She shrugged, a look in her eyes that finally broke through the fog the memory of her had created.

  “Fuck,” I muttered again, a little less emphatic than before. “Julep’s behind this, isn’t she?”

  “Julep?”

  “Julia Montgomery. My mother-in-law.”

  She inclined her head just slightly. “I should probably go.”

  For a split second, I let her go. The last thing I wanted was more complication from Julep. The woman had made my life a living hell since Colby died. But then…

  “Wait!”

  She paused, glancing over her shoulder at me.

  “Does she know about us? Does anyone know about us?”

  “Why would I tell anyone?”

  The wheels were spinning in my head. “Do you know anything about taking care of children?”

  She studied me for a long moment. “I was a live-in nanny for a year when I was a kid.”

  “Yeah? For who?”

  She seemed a little embarrassed by the question. She shifted on her feet, staring at the floor—what she could see of it through the clutter—as she answered.