GRAY WOLF SECURITY, Texas: The Complete 6-Books Series Read online

  I approached her, touching her arm lightly to get her attention. She turned toward me, a blush burning on her pale cheeks.

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Michaels, I’m Alexander Garcia. I’m from Gray Wolf Security.”

  Understanding came slowly over her expression as her blush deepened. “You’re the one they sent to help me out?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded, turning to grab her satchel, but then knocking over a carafe of water sitting on the table for the use of the lawyer. I moved around her and righted it, taking her arm as she nearly stumbled into the chair she’d recently vacated.

  She was clearly flustered.

  Despite myself, I was flattered. It’d been a while since I left a woman that flustered.

  Maybe this wouldn’t be such a boring case after all.

  Chapter 3

  Tierney

  Oh, my God!

  I usually know most of the faces that show up to arraignments. It’s usually all the same lawyers, the same prosecutors, the same criminals a majority of the time. It’s all routine, no real surprises. But then I turn and there’s this tall, sexy man…

  He was wearing a suit, a dark suit with a dark blue tie that made his caramel-colored skin stand out like a rainbow against a pale blue sky. He was leaning against the wall, his hands behind his back and his ankles crossed, looking for all the world like a model straight out of GQ. And those dark eyes, a smoky sort of eye that’s fringed with these thick, dark lashes, watching me like I’m not my awkward, clumsy self. For a brief moment, I let myself think that maybe he’s interested. And then he comes toward me and his voice is like hot fudge that flows thickly over vanilla ice cream.

  But then the fantasy was ruined when he said he was with Gray Wolf.

  I was going to have to spend every day and night with this man. He’d find out who I really was, and he’d want to run for the hills the moment the case was over.

  But it might be fun until then.

  He took my arm and led the way out of the courtroom, rushing me toward the ground floor and a side entrance that led to an alley between this building and the next.

  “I’m parked in the garage.”

  “Your car is being moved as we speak. For the duration of our involvement in your security, you will ride with me.”

  He has a slight accent, making me wonder if English was his second language. I knew absolutely nothing about the man leading me through the courthouse, dragging me to a car I’ve never seen before. I was beginning to wonder if I was making a mistake, letting him pull me along like I was some sort of puppy dog, when we burst through the side door and around the side of a large, black SUV. Some of my fears were laid to rest when I saw a small sticker in the back window of the vehicle that read: GWS 2. The logo of the security firm.

  He helped me into the passenger seat, handing me the seatbelt as though his main concern was protecting himself from a traffic ticket. I snapped it on and watched as he crossed in front of the vehicle, seeming unconcerned with the world around him. But I saw him glance toward the mouth of the alley and back around the other side of the vehicle. He was alert to any dangers, and that made me feel even better about my choice.

  I’d gotten death threats before. Everyone working within the criminal justice system got them at one time or another. But there was a different feeling about these threats, a sense that something could actually happen this time. Maybe it was the wording of the emails, the little notes left on my car, or maybe it was the fact that they started arriving not long after my apartment had been broken into. Whatever it was, I was scared. My mom had heard about this Gray Wolf firm that had opened not long ago in the old Grayson mansion outside of town. So I thought, it’s probably silly and a waste of money, but why not? Better safe than sorry.

  He climbed into the SUV and started it up, pausing to check something on his phone before easing the vehicle forward. I found myself watching him, watching his hands on the wheel. He had long fingers, the sort my music teacher had called pianist fingers. If I’d been born with fingers like that, maybe I wouldn’t have disappointed my mother by giving up on music.

  But, again, I probably would have found another way of disappointing her. That just seemed to be the nature of our relationship.

  I was a disappointment from the moment of conception. My mother was an artist, who occasionally took temp jobs as a legal secretary to pay the rent. She had a brief affair with a lawyer she was working for and—surprise!—got pregnant with me. She was twenty-two and had just learned that she was accepted into a prestigious art program in New York. She could have me or go follow her dreams. But then the doctor told her it was a miracle she got pregnant with me because of a previously undiagnosed pelvic inflammatory disease. The doctor told her that she would likely never conceive again. And then my biological father, confronted with all this information, bailed. So my mom ended up having me alone in her crappy, third-floor walkup, working as a freelance illustrator for a magazine she swore she would never stoop to work for.

  When I was three, my mom was convinced that I was a musical prodigy because I could play “Mary had a Little Lamb” on my toy piano. She worked two jobs on top of trying to promote her art career in order to pay for tutors and music teachers. But I gave it up when I was fifteen, bored with the whole thing and preferring to act like a teenager. By that time, my biological father had empty nest syndrome after his kids with his wife moved off to college, so he’d started coming around. He plied me with gifts my mother didn’t approve of and offered to pay for college and graduate school, but only if I went into law. So I did, once again disappointing my mother.

  Yet, my mom still insisted I come home every weekend for a good, hot meal, and she still gave me advice whenever I asked for it, and sometimes when I didn’t. She was proud of me despite all that disappointment.

  That was more than I could say about my father.

  “How is this going to work?”

  He glanced at me, acknowledging my presence.

  “Did they tell you the procedure at the office?”

  “They said one of their operatives would follow me around twenty-four seven until the threat could be identified and eliminated.”

  “You go about your normal, daily routine, and I accompany you.”

  “You come to the office with me? What will you do while I’m working?”

  “I have things to keep me busy while we’re in your office. When you go to meetings or to the courthouse, I’ll stay close by and watch the people in the room in order to quickly identify a threat.”

  “A lot of my meetings involve client-attorney privilege. You can’t overhear anything—”

  “I signed a non-disclosure contract when I joined Gray Wolf. Anything I hear in the course of protecting a client cannot be disclosed to anyone outside of Gray Wolf or the parameters which the client sets.” He glanced at me. “David should have discussed this with you.”

  “He did. But I guess it didn’t occur to me what it really meant.”

  “I’m not there to interfere with your cases. I’m there to make sure no one hurts you.”

  I nodded, wondering if that extended to things beyond bodily harm.

  “I’ll need to know things about you,” he added a moment later. “Mostly about the people in your life and your normal routine.”

  “That’s pretty simple. I go to work. I go home. Occasionally, I go to my mother’s.”

  He glanced at me again, a new interest in his eyes. “What about friends? Boyfriends?”

  “There’s my friend, Sara. And a group of girls from college. There are also a couple of people I went to law school with. But we’re all pretty busy these days, so we only get together maybe once a month.”

  “I’ll need their names and any contact info you might have. We’ll have to check them out as possible suspects.”

  “One of my friends would not have sent those threats.”

  “You never know what people are capable of.�
� He looked over at me as we stopped at a traffic light. “One of my first cases with GSW 2 involved a man who got death threats while he was running for city council in one of these small towns around here. Turned out it was his best friend and campaign manager who was doing it.”

  “Didn’t want him to win?”

  “No, he thought the threat would get him better press in the local paper.”

  I shook my head as I watched an elderly lady cross the street in front of us. “People are funny sometimes.”

  The light turned, and he eased the car across the intersection.

  “What about boyfriends?” he asked, as we approached my office building.

  “There isn’t one. Hasn’t been for a while.”

  “Guys you’ve gone out with? Even casual dates might be important.”

  I shook my head, suddenly feeling very inadequate. What he must have thought of me, this pathetic woman who spent all her time working.

  He pulled the car into the parking garage besides the building, driving to a spot not far from the elevators.

  “Stay in your seat until I come around to you.”

  He got out and walked around the front of the vehicle, once again looking calm and unassuming, but I could see his eyes moving around, taking in everything near us. It made me feel a little more secure, seeing this level of professionalism. But it also made me feel stupid. I didn’t need that level of protection. It was just a couple of notes, just someone playing a game with me. My life wasn’t in danger any more than the average person walking down the street was in danger of getting hit by a bus.

  He opened the passenger side door and took my upper arm firmly in his grip. I grabbed my satchel and followed him to the elevator. It wasn’t until we were in the elevator behind closed doors that I noticed he’d brought a satchel of his own.

  The elevator door opened on the eighth floor, the second of the three floors the law firm leased. I led the way to my office in the back, left corner, not missing the looks my escort was getting from the ladies in the cubicles, the receptionist, and the secretaries we passed. When we got to my little office—it was barely the size of a large walk-in closet—I dropped my satchel on a chair and rounded my desk to check my messages.

  The computer screen was bright in the dark room, forcing me to wait a second while my eyes adjusted. The door opened and my secretary, Jeri, came in.

  “The courthouse called. Your client, Mr. Harmon, made bond.”

  “Already? That was fast.”

  “They called not a minute ago.”

  Jeri sounded a little distracted. I looked up to find her watching my bodyguard who was, in turn, sitting on the small loveseat in the corner and unpacking a laptop computer from his bag.

  “Jeri, this is Alexander Garcia. He’ll be hanging around here for a couple of days.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Garcia,” Jeri said, holding her hand out to him. Jeri was a middle-aged mother of three, but she clearly was not immune to a good-looking man.

  He took her hand and released it just as quick, turning his attention back to the computer.

  Jeri’s eyebrows rose as she glanced at me, but she knew better than to ask in front of the subject of her curiosity. She backed out of the room, looking him over as she did.

  “Back to our previous discussion,” Alexander said when Jeri was gone, “I need names and contact info on your family and friends. Colleagues, too.”

  “That’s a lot of people.”

  “My clients normally find it easier to just hand over their phones.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked that idea. I had a lot of client information on my phone. Names and numbers and the occasional address. That sort of information was golden in the legal business. I tugged my phone out of my skirt pocket and glanced at the call history. Right there I could see a dozen calls from clients, or to clients. But there was that non-disclosure contract he’d signed. And he was only trying to help me.

  Reluctantly, I got up and handed the phone to him. Then I grabbed my bag and settled back behind my desk to begin working on the brief I needed to write for a client. He didn’t keep my phone long, just a minute or so. He set it back on the corner of my desk and went back to his computer.

  “That’s all?”

  “We have a program that downloads the information we require.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “The program looks at the information and runs a general background check on each contact information. If anything hits, it’ll send it to one of the girls who works in our office and she’ll do a more extensive search on the name. Then they’ll send me a report letting me know what they found.”

  “How long does that normally take?”

  “Not long. The average person doesn’t really know that many people with any sort of criminal record. You, on the other hand, seem to have the contact numbers of quite a few criminals, so it’ll take a little longer.”

  “I’m a criminal attorney. Those are my clients.”

  “Which is what makes your case a little more complicated.”

  I sat back, my lawyer head turning on. “And what if the person threatening me isn’t in my contacts or doesn’t have a criminal record?’

  “This is just a preliminary investigation. It just gives us an idea of who the people in your life are and which ones we might need to take a closer look at. That’s all.”

  “And if something surprising comes up, like my friend Sara was arrested in college, what will you do with that information?”

  “It depends on the nature of the arrest. Something like that, we probably wouldn’t even look at her as a possible suspect unless her behavior tips us off to something. Then we’ll have the information we need to either talk to her about her behavior or to set the cops on to her.”

  “What about all that information? What do you do with it when you’re done doing your background search?”

  “We hold onto it in case we need to contact one of these people on your behalf. But when the case is finished, all that information disappears from our hard drives.”

  “What if someone hacks your system and steals that information? A lot of people could be hurt if some of that information gets out.”

  “Our system is very well protected. David and his wife designed the system and the security protocols. They’ve thought of just about anything that could compromise the system.”

  “No one can think of everything.”

  “Well, when you’ve got a former FBI computer division agent and a former hacker-turned-website owner, there’s very little that can be overlooked.”

  I was impressed, but clearly not as impressed as he was. I could see the emotion in his eyes. It was something that was very close to pride. He was very clearly pleased to be working with these people. Job pride. I didn’t know it still existed in this world.

  We both settled back to our work. I was nearly finished with the brief about three hours later when the door suddenly burst open.

  “Where’s the brief on the Anderson case?”

  I looked up, feeling like a child caught playing instead of doing her homework.

  “Here. I was about to email it.”

  “It was to be on my desk an hour ago.”

  I glanced at the clock on my phone. He was wrong. I still had two hours to complete it, but I didn’t point that out.

  “I’ll send it right now.”

  He stared at me for a moment. “How did the arraignment go with the Harmon case this morning?”

  “Great. He’s out on a million-dollar bond.”

  “Good. Make sure it keeps going that well.”

  He turned and strode out of the room, disappearing just as quickly as he’d appeared. I sent the email and then sat back, dragging my hands over my eyes.

  “Who was that?”

  I’d almost forgotten that Alexander was in the room. I glanced at him, more embarrassed now than I’d been a second ago.

  “Ashley Simon.”

  “Simon? As
in the named partner of the firm?”

  “Yeah. The founder, actually.” I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, then sighed. “You should probably also be aware that he’s my biological father.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I lowered my hands and peeked at him. He was watching me, that essence of curiosity in his eyes again. He dropped his eyes the moment he realized I was watching him.

  He was judging me. Probably wondering why the hell my father would talk to me that way. Or why I’d work for him.

  Hell…that was something I wondered a lot of the time.

  Chapter 4

  Alexander

  I stood back and watched as Tierney unlocked the door to her apartment. I didn’t like that the door was situated at the back of a narrow breezeway, separate from the two apartment doors that were situated at the front of the breezeway. There was no escape should someone follow her up the stairs and corner her here. But the fact that it was on the second floor gave her an opportunity to get in the door if she saw a threat coming and kept anyone from easily gaining access to her windows. But that was the only benefit.

  She pushed the door open and stepped inside, dropping her satchel by the front door at the same time she kicked off her shoes. She crossed to the living room, not bothering to look back and make sure I’d secured the door.

  “You’re not very careful with your personal security.”

  She glanced at me. “What do you mean?”

  “You never once looked to see if anyone was following you from the parking lot. Your security light is out. And you didn’t check to make sure I was still behind you to secure the front door.”

  “I just assumed you’d get it.”

  “You should never make assumptions.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned, padding her way across the living room to the narrow hallway tucked behind the dining room. I was annoyed by that, annoyed by the fact that she clearly couldn’t care less about her safety. A lot of my clients were that way, but this really annoyed me.