KIRKLAND: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Read online

  “When did this come?”

  “Just now.”

  He frowned as he stared at it, and I wanted to touch his chin and bring that charming smile back. But then he looked into my eyes, and I was afraid he would see my every thought there. I looked away.

  “I sent it to my phone. I’m going to alert David and Detective Warren, okay?” He touched my chin, forcing me to look at him. “We’ll take care of this. You’ll be okay.”

  There was something about the way he was looking at me that made me want to move into his arms, to feel the heat of his body against mine. I stiffened my spine quite consciously to keep myself from doing just that.

  “Okay.”

  He studied my face a moment longer. “You should go get dressed.”

  Oh, fantastic!

  I was standing there in a t-shirt and a pair of panties. What was I…I wasn’t thinking. Some maniac was threatening to kill me and the hottest guy on earth just took a shower in my bathroom! Who could think after all that?

  I retreated quickly, trying to keep my mind out of the gutter as I showered—his naked body was standing right here just minutes ago!—and dressed as ordered. I walked out of the bedroom in tights, a dark purple skirt, and a white blouse with a high collar and a delicate purple tie. My hair was pulled back into a clip, just a messy bun that allowed little tendrils to fall around my face. I had a meeting with a group of potential investors this afternoon, so I wanted to look halfway decent.

  But then I stepped out of my bedroom and Kirkland could hardly look up from the phone call that he was in the middle of making.

  He was never going to look at me the way he would his other female clients.

  ***

  Carrie was waiting for us in my office with a bag of donuts and coffee. As I unpacked my bag at my desk, she made a show of taking some over to Kirkland.

  “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got an assortment.”

  “Very thoughtful of you,” Kirkland said with that smile.

  Carrie handed him the bag of pastries, her fingers purposely—at least it looked that way to me—touching his. He smiled again, settling back on the couch to look inside the bag. She sat beside him.

  “Do you like being a bodyguard?”

  “We don’t really refer to ourselves as bodyguards.”

  “What word do you use?”

  “Operative. Sounds more covert.”

  She smiled. “Sexier.”

  He shrugged, his eyes shooting to me. I quickly looked away, pretending I wasn’t watching.

  “Well, if I’m ever in trouble, I’ll be sure to call you and your buddies.”

  “You do that.”

  When she got up and started for the door, I was pretty sure he was watching her walk away. But then he caught me watching again, and he shot me a smile that felt like he was telling me to mind my own business because he was never going to watch me walk out of a room.

  Needless to say, I was in something of a dark mood when the day began.

  We were walking to the first meeting of the day—a meeting with the editors from the erotic story section—when he touched my elbow.

  “Detective Warren would like to talk to you later in the day.”

  “About that email?”

  “Yes. And they want to discuss a possible suspects list David helped them compile.”

  I nodded. It made me a little nervous to realize so many people were checking into my life. I understood they were trying to figure out who wanted to kill me, but it was still a little nerve wracking to realize how invasive their investigation was proving to be.

  It was a busy day. We moved from meeting to meeting, leaving the building just before lunch for the meeting with my potential new investors at their lawyer’s office across town. I felt confident as we walked in, Carrie beside me, reminding me of all the points I’d wanted to cover at this meeting before we hammered out the final contract. Kirkland was lagging behind us. He’d been staring at his phone off and on all morning. I thought he might be talking with David, but I wasn’t entirely sure since he hadn’t mentioned anything. For all I knew, he was sexting some girlfriend. Maybe one of the women whose initials he had tattooed to his chest.

  “Gentlemen,” I said as we entered the room.

  “Mabel.”

  Graham Huston held his hands out to me, pulling me in to kiss my cheek. We’d been working on this deal together for nearly six months. I couldn’t have been happier that it was finally coming to a conclusion.

  “How’s your daughter?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Growing like a weed. And your nieces. How many are there now?”

  “Seven.”

  It was something of a joke in my family. My father had five strapping sons and one daughter. Now he was the proud grandfather of seven granddaughters, no grandsons in sight.

  Graham’s smile spread wider. “Tell your father he has my sympathies.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  We settled at the table and the lawyer began reviewing the details of the contract. I was about to interrupt in order to add an exception to one of the first paragraphs when Kirkland came up from behind me and whispered in my ear.

  “We have to go.”

  “What?”

  “We have to go,” he repeated, sliding his hand under my upper arm and literally lifting me out of the chair.

  “Kirkland, I—”

  But he was marching me down the hall without speaking. I turned and saw the baffled look on Graham’s face. Carrie came to the door, just as bewildered as I was. But there was also a little fear laced in her expression. Carrie was the only person, next to Ricki, who knew everything that was going on. And that fear suddenly reminded me that someone was threatening my life and my protector had just pulled me out of a meeting.

  Something bad must be happening.

  We ducked into the back stairwell, Kirkland practically pulling me as he rushed down two flights of stairs without so much as a heavy breath where I was sucking in air by the time we stepped onto the service elevator. Then we were going out a back door where another SUV was waiting, a tall, blond man waiting by the back doors.

  No one said a word as Kirkland pushed me into the backseat and climbed in beside me.

  “What’s happening?” I demanded somewhat belatedly.

  The blond man slipped behind the wheel and maneuvered the car quickly out of the alley.

  “Someone put a bomb under your car,” Kirkland said.

  I jerked back, turning so that I could see his face clearly. He had to be joking. Who in the world would want to put a bomb under my car? But there wasn’t even a hint of amusement in his face as he watched the traffic ahead and behind us.

  Was this really real? Was someone really trying to kill me?

  I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  Chapter 7

  Kirkland

  Ash had thought that someone after Mabel would likely go after her car or her apartment first. That’s why we had a team watching both from the moment we took the case. Therefore, when I got word this morning that someone was spotted walking around her car somewhat suspiciously, I’d been waiting for the news that a move was made. And it came, just as I knew it would.

  A bomb. What a messy way to try to end someone’s life.

  “A bomb?”

  Her voice shook. I turned to her, and I could see the panic beginning to rise in her eyes. I glanced at Donovan, and he shot me that look. Take care of your charge, that look said.

  Like I wouldn’t.

  I put my hands on her shoulders and pressed her back against the seat.

  “Everything is under control. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “But why would someone—?”

  She was slurring her words she was trying to get them out so fast. I cupped her jaw and forced her to look me in the eye.

  “You need to stay calm. You’re safe.”

  “But someone just tried to blow up my car! It’s not even
that great of a car! It’s ten years old and it needs new brakes and—”

  I would have laughed if I didn’t realize just how serious she was.

  “It’s going to be okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you or your car. The police are there now, quietly removing the device. No one will get hurt, no one will be any the wiser. Everything’s fine.”

  She stared into my eyes, the panic slowly beginning to dissipate.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She nodded, the movement causing my hand to move against her flesh in almost a caressing motion. Her skin was so soft, like a baby’s bottom. That need to touch built in my chest, and I quickly pulled back, reminding myself that I’d promised not to do anything I couldn’t tell my momma about in this case.

  Mabel pulled away from me a little belatedly, curling into something like a ball against the car door. She stared out the window a moment, then asked the obvious question.

  “Where are we going?”

  I wasn’t sure myself. I glanced at Donovan.

  “Safe house.”

  Donovan was never a man of a lot of words.

  We drove in silence for a time. Mabel was curled up into herself, as if she was trying to disappear. I wanted to touch her and soothe the tension from her shoulders, but I knew that would be a mistake. Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket, her eyes still filled with fear when she pressed it to her ear.

  “No, everything’s fine.”

  She listened a moment, and then she moved into business mode. I could see it coming over her, the way it lessened the tension in her shoulders and made her sit up a little straighter. She nodded even though the caller couldn’t see her, picking at a piece of fuzz on her tights as she listened.

  “Ask Graham if we can reschedule. Tell him it was a family emergency, he’ll understand that.”

  Must be Carrie. I could have kissed Mabel’s assistant in that moment for giving her something else to think about. I could see the panic washing away, and I knew this was exactly what she’d needed.

  I leaned forward between the two front seats.

  “Did you see it?”

  “Yeah. It was a homemade device that someone probably got the instructions for off the internet.”

  “And the guy who planted it?”

  “Claims someone hired him to do it.”

  Couldn’t be that easy. Of course the perp didn’t do it himself.

  “Then I guess this threat is real.”

  “Warren wants to talk to your target about the list of suspects David compiled.”

  “I know. I talked to her this morning.”

  “Ash has her headed to the safe house. She’ll probably be there when we arrive.”

  I glanced at Mabel. She was calmer, but there was still fear dancing in her eyes when she looked up at me.

  “Could we arrange for Ricki to come out to the house? It might help settle her down if someone familiar was there.”

  Donovan was quiet for a minute. “It’s an unusual request, but I think Ash would be okay with it. You should pass it by David first, though.”

  I nodded. David was quite protective of his fiancée.

  I sat back and texted our tech genius. He answered almost immediately.

  Not on your life, buddy.

  Great. I couldn’t sleep with her. And I couldn’t bring her best friend out to calm her. What the hell was I allowed to do?

  We got to the house a few minutes later. Donovan pulled into the garage and opened Mabel’s door for her. She nodded a polite thanks, actually looking him in the eye. Why was it that she could look all these guys in the eye, but she wouldn’t look at me? I followed behind, as Donovan led her into the house, leading her through the kitchen to where Emily Warren waited in the living room.

  “Ms. Watson,” Emily said, as she stood to greet her. “I’m Detective Emily Warren. I’m sorry for the ordeal you’ve been forced to go through tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Mabel said, accepting Emily’s warm handshake.

  Emily led her to the couch, and they sat side by side while Donovan and I stood back, looking as though we were guarding the doorway when, in reality, we were simply trying to give them a little space.

  “I want to assure you that the explosives found under your car were very crude and most likely would not have detonated had you driven your car today. However, it was good luck that Gray Wolf’s people were watching. We arrested the man who put them under the car, and we’re hoping he might help us identify the real threat.”

  Mabel nodded, taking all this information in. “But it wasn’t the person behind the threats?”

  “No. He was paid by someone to do what he did. He’s actually a drug addict who is well known at the precinct that serves that part of town.”

  Mabel paled a little. Emily took both her hands and held them tightly in her own.

  “We have a list of suspects that David Grayson generated from a search of the negative comments on your website. We were wondering if you could take a look at what we have and tell us if anything pops for you. A name. A date. A comment. Whatever stands out to you.”

  Mabel accepted the file folder Emily handed her and began to look through it. I could see the tension coming into her shoulders again. Instinct told me to go over there and simply sit behind her, reassure her that someone who had her best interest at heart was there. But I couldn’t do that. Not in front of Donovan—and not with David watching over the cameras.

  Mabel shook her head several times.

  “Most of these are typical of the kinds of comments we get.” She touched her finger to one comment. “People submit their amateur videos and then they claim we didn’t have their permission to publish them. But we’re very careful about that sort of thing.” She touched another place on the papers. “And parents claiming that we’re damaging their children in some way, even like this one who claims we drove his daughter to suicide, are common. We usually trace them back to members of religious organizations who infuse websites like ours with comments of all types to frighten people away from using our services.” She looked up at Emily. “As you can imagine, we aren’t very popular with most religious and parent groups.”

  “There’s nothing unusual about any of those?”

  Mabel studied the paper again. I straightened, taking a step or two into the room because I could see by the way she kept staring at the center of the page that something had caught her attention.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Detective Warren is a friend. You can trust her.”

  Mabel looked up at me, actually meeting my eye for a long moment. Then she sighed, a long, labored sound.

  “This,” she said, turning the page so that Emily could see it. “We investigated this claim a little over a month ago. This girl was a student at UCLA when the boy she was seeing sent us a video to post on our website. We sent him the paperwork, and it all came back legitimate. We did our usual checks, made sure the ID numbers checked out and everything. But then she came to our offices, claiming she didn’t sign the form. We pulled the video right away, but then this comment appeared on our site.”

  “‘This website forced our daughter to suicide when they posted a video of our daughter having sex with her boyfriend. The video was posted without our daughter’s permission and she was so humiliated when her classmates recognized her from the video that she hung herself in her dorm room.’”

  Emily looked up from the paper. “Did you call the police?”

  Mabel glanced at me again, her eyes moving from mine to Donovan and then to Emily.

  “We took the forms to the police and told them everything we knew. They even had their handwriting people take a look at it. They determined that everything was on the up and up, that there had been no wrongdoing. It was just a case of a young woman who agreed to post the video, thinking no one she knew would see it. And it didn’t really show her face, but I guess she had a recognizable tattoo on her ankle.”

  She looked
at me again, a slow blush touching her cheeks as her eyes fell to the center of my chest. She’d seen my tattoo this morning. I didn’t really know what to think about that blush.

  Mabel focused on Emily again. “I felt really bad about the whole thing. I saw her parents on the news. She was their only child. But…”

  Emily touched her knee lightly. “We’ll look into it.”

  Mabel nodded, her eyes glued to her hands where they rested in her lap.

  Emily got up and came over, touching my arm to draw me closer to the kitchen.

  “What now?”

  “We check into these comments and try to get our perp to tell us who paid him off to plant the bomb. The guy was so high that he didn’t even attach it to the car. It was lying on the asphalt underneath.” She shook her head, glancing back at Mabel. “She’s seems pretty shaken up.”

  “She’s stronger than she looks.”

  Emily nodded. Then she focused on me, a teasing light in her eyes.

  “So, I’ve heard you’ve been put on a leash on this case.”

  “It’s probably not the tether you think it is,” Donovan said. “She’s not his type.”

  “You have a type?” Emily asked, her eyebrow rising. “I thought everything in a skirt was fair game.”

  “Well, you know, when you look like this…”

  She laughed. Then she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed my jaw lightly.

  “Take care of yourself, Kirkland. Don’t get dead.”

  “You too, Em.”

  I watched her and Donovan head out to the garage, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back. I always wondered if Emily hadn’t been married to Santa Monica’s chief of police if something might have happened between the two of them. But, again, Donovan had been carrying a torch for Kate since high school, so probably not. But in a different world…

  “Hungry?” I asked, as I crossed the room to where Mabel was still staring at her hands.

  “Not really.”

  I placed my hand on top of hers. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Are you a psychologist as well as a bodyguard?” She immediately looked up, her eyes wide with shock at her own words. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t know where that came from.”