Chapter 5

Jack

It was a sunny day, and I was glad to be out of the office finally. I'd only been cooped up at Shadow Security for two days, but it was beginning to feel like a lifetime.

I told myself that my reaction was a result of getting used to being on the move while in the military, but I worried that there might be a more sinister reason at the root of my nervous energy.

Sinister and sexy, someone who's dominated my thoughts, more than I'd liked to admit. For the last two days I’d watched Emma, smelled Emma, and fantasized about Emma. About her skin. About the way her nose scrunched up when she laughed. About the way her tongue peeked out between her plump lips when she was concentrating.

I’d thought about her limbs wrapped around mine, her lips on my hot skin, her breath in my ear. Thought about it enough that I’d had to hide behind a desk or in the bathroom until my erection faded. Shadow Security’s office seemed too small with her in it. Just like my chest felt too small, too tight, when she walked past and I caught a hint of her perfume.

God, she was driving me crazy. Even when I ran in the morning, in the chilly December air, I felt flushed all over with thoughts of her. At night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling and seeing her golden eyes reflected in the flash of headlights past my window. I could have never anticipated being this affected by my best friend’s kid sister.

And that was a huge part of the problem: She was Matt’s sister, and Smith’s daughter. She might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “Look but don’t touch. In fact, don’t even look.”

Even if she wasn’t a Smith, still nothing could come of the raging attracting I felt for Emma. I was broken, a different man than I’d been before I’d left home. I had nothing to offer an angel like her but silence and bad dreams.

She deserved much better than me.

Although existing in the same space as Emma had been a special brand of torment, guarding Dexter Jansen was no walk in the clouds either. The man had no manners and treated his subordinates like garbage stuck to his thousand dollar shoes. He was selfish, neurotic, and demanding in a way only a rich entitled asshole could be. He wanted everything, and he wanted it now.

I’d spent the day escorting him to meetings with a string of distributors while he searched for the best deal, and I’d listened to his version of “negotiations.” His only tactic seemed to be to threaten to walk, and in my estimation, he’d done little to impress the people he was meeting with. Still, he’d walked away with a contract, which only made my faith in Corporate America that much weaker.

Between meetings he’d remained glued to his cell phone, even when shoveling overpriced gourmet food between his greasy lips. I felt pity for women he occasionally spoke to, acknowledged only as ‘babe,’ if she had to get close to that mouth.

Even though I’d seen no evidence of any corporate espionage today, and although Smith had assured me that very little actual danger takes place on security detail, I remained keyed up. Something was off about the whole situation. I’d been told Jansen was rushing a product to market, a top-secret revolutionary gadget that would improve daily lives while making the asshole fistfuls of cash. But so far, I’d heard nothing about said product.

The meetings he’d taken today had involved moving his existing inventory, not plans for the distribution of a new product. Although his phone calls didn’t interest me, my training made it impossible for me to completely ignore them, and nothing I’d heard him say today had concerned anything new or secret.

I had assumed I was probably overreacting, used to the sensitivity of the missions I’d undertaken while in Delta Force. Or maybe it was the...incident that had me on edge. I hadn’t really tackled anything after that fateful day. I’d spent some time in the hospital, then on desk duty while I recuperated, and before I could rotate back to active duty, Matt had announced his retirement. Guarding Jansen was the first real ‘assignment’ I’d had in months.

But as I was driving him back to the four-star hotel he was holed up in to throw corporate agents off his tail, he received a call unlike the others. Although Jansen had been whispering, I’d glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught the word ‘blackmail.’ It’d been too low to confirm by hearing alone, but we’d gone through lip-reading courses in special ops, because communication is often impossible during combat, especially on silent missions, and I could make out the shape of the word on his mouth.

The call had only lasted a couple minutes, and he’d caught me looking and turned his head so I hadn’t been able to see anything else, but something about it put me on high alert. I was right to be suspicious of Dexter Jansen. He was hiding something, and I was determined to find out what.

I’d dropped him off at the hotel, escorting him to his suite as per the protocol he’d established with Smith. He entered the suite before Jansen and swept it, keeping his eye out for anything that looked out of place. The businessman was paying for top-notch service, which meant I had to clear every room of his suite before I left for the night.

There was a camera trained on the entrance to the suite as well, closed-circuit that was piped directly to Shadow Security. Once he dropped Jansen off for the night, the businessman was to remain in his suite, dependent on four-star service to keep him happy. I wondered why he hadn’t sprung for around-the-clock security, if he was concerned enough to require moving into a hotel and having his room swept every day. Just another mystery that made me feel that something was wrong with this setup.

I cleared the suite, let him know I’d be there in the morning to pick him up for his next round of business dealings, and then headed out. Driving back towards the office, I debated whether to tell Smith my concerns. I thought they had merit, but then again, I could be totally off-base about things. Maybe my suspicions were driven by the remnants of trauma I was still processing. I didn’t want to look like I couldn’t handle the job he’d given me, especially after only one day.

Still, if Jansen was hiding something, wasn’t it my duty to report it to my superior officer—er, boss? I knew Smith was busy, his business in the process of an expansion that kept both him and Matt, and the handful of contractors they employed under them, busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. This wasn’t the kind of distraction they needed, especially when I had next to nothing as evidence.

I turned a corner, then noticed the black SUV behind me. I’d seen a similar car exiting the hotel parking lot around the same time as me. Could it be the same one?

There had to be countless black SUVs in Savannah, just like any other town. Hell, I was driving one myself. But in times like these, I fell back on my training. Two blocks up, I made a left turn. It wasn’t my usual route, but I had to be sure.

The SUV made the same turn, just as the light turned red. A couple blocks ahead, I turned left again, and when I saw the SUV follow, I felt a bloom of anxiety in my chest. I was being followed.

To confirm my suspicion, I pulled into a fast-food drive thru. While I grabbed a coffee, I saw the SUV parked on the street outside the restaurant. When I turned back onto the main thoroughfare, it followed, a few cars behind me. There was no doubt in my mind now that I had a tail. Which meant it was time to lose it.

I’d enjoyed the defensive driving courses I’d taken in special ops, and had excelled at escaping pursuit. There was a smile on my face now as I sped up and jumped two lanes to make a jerky right turn. The SUV barely made it behind me, but I was already turning again, heading into a strip mall and racing behind the buildings.

Thankfully I was familiar with the city, having grown up here, and it was an advantage I used in my favor. I hit an alley behind the strip mall, then weaved through residential streets before pulling into a discount car lot. I parked in a line of cars for sale and watched as the SUV drove past me without stopping.

I waited about ten minutes, making sure they weren’t circling back around in pursuit. Then I crept out of the parking lot and back onto the street. I kept my eyes trained on the rearview mirror the rest of the way back to Shadow Security. One thing was obvious, the Jansen detail was not what it seemed.

The whole thing had triggered me, and I curled my hands so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles went white. I couldn’t keep thoughts of the desert out of my mind, of that day when everything had gone to shit.