“Oh,” Jarrod said, standing at the doorway of the closet. He held the towel tight around his waist as he stared at the scene in front of him. “Yeah. Okay,” he said, stunned by what was unfolding.
“I… I…” Mindy stammered, pointing at the dead man on the floor.
“It’s okay,” he said, sidestepping around the man’s body and moving to her. Like him, she was wearing nothing more than a white bath sheet. “Don’t worry about this,” he said, looking down at the knife that still rested in the fat man’s hand. “Are you okay? He didn’t cut you anywhere, did he?”
She seemed surprised, as though she hadn’t even thought to check her body for any harm. She glanced down at her body, inspecting it. “I… I think I’m fine. Just… I don’t know.”
“You’re in shock. This is normal. You have been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours.” He took her gently by the arm and helped her navigate around the body and out of the closet. “Let’s just get you into the shower and then we’ll get out of here.”
There was blood on her hands and splattered over her white towel. In an effort to keep her from being even more traumatized, he moved her through the bathroom and kept her from seeing herself in the mirror. He let go of her and turned his back. “Hand me the towel. Then get in. I’ll get you some clothes. Anything you prefer?”
His question was met with silence. After a moment, there was the click as she opened the shower door, and then she gently handed him the towel.
He walked out of the bathroom, loudly closing the door behind him so she could be more comfortable. He made his way back to her closet and the body.
The dead guy was in his midthirties, obese and starting to bald. His features were familiar, but he wasn’t sure from exactly where.
There was no way anyone from the Gray Wolves could have known where he would be, or with whom, unless they had been following him. It didn’t seem possible. This man had to be here for her.
Which brought him back to the reality that, regardless of any feelings he held for the woman, he couldn’t do anything about them. He had to find out the truth and that was that.
He sent a quick email, with picture, to his people at the CIA and followed it up with an email to Zoey. Between his teams, it would only be a matter of time before he had an ID on this guy. Meanwhile, he had to get her out of this apartment and out of New York.
Only one safe place came to mind—Montana.
The Widow Maker Ranch, his family’s new acquisition, was the safest place he could think of. There, they would be surrounded by family and out of the limelight.
However, if Mindy was more involved in the underbelly of the gun world than he assumed, it might well be like inviting the fox into the henhouse.
There were plenty of people on the lookout for him and his family. There had to be a bounty on their heads.
He couldn’t bring trouble back to his family.
But where else could he take her? She was a somewhat well-known figure in the world, had been in her fair share of magazines as an up-and-coming heiress to the H&K fortune. He had even once seen her on the pages of People at a benefit at the Met. Anonymity would be hard to come by.
She was a major liability no matter where they went or what he chose to do with her.
His phone buzzed with an email from his handler at the CIA acknowledging what had gone down. Thankfully, they would take care of the body and get rid of any evidence once he and Mindy left.
At the far corner of her closet, there was a rack of men’s suits and incidentals. He glanced down at his towel. He had planned on calling out for fresh clothes, but they didn’t need anyone else coming or going from this house.
He grabbed a pair of the suit pants and a white button-up shirt. He’d have to go commando. Even if he found some skivvies around there, putting on another man’s underwear was a step too far. The pants were a size too large and the shirt was a bit snug in the shoulders, but both would work well enough to get them out of this place and onto a flight—anywhere away from here.
He grabbed her a pair of jeans and a comfortable-looking shirt. The top had little blue flowers, bright and cheery but still tasteful—just like the woman it belonged to. Hopefully, he wasn’t way off the mark and she’d like what he’d picked out. He glanced down to the clothes she had dropped on the floor. They were similar. Good. But what if they would remind her of what happened?
He grabbed a floral print dress as a second option for her. It was pretty, and he was sure that she would look beautiful in whatever outfit she chose. And for the first time in his life, he chastised himself for not knowing more about women’s fashion.
He set the clothes on her bed. The entire room was huge, and the bed at its heart reminded him of a sled skating on a gray wooden tundra. At the foot of her bed was a faux fur throw blanket, much like the one that lay under the corpse in her closet.
His fingers brushed against the blanket as he laid out her clothing. It was so soft, comforting…perfect for making love.
No. He couldn’t go there.
He dropped his clothes onto the bed beside hers and started getting dressed. As he did up the last button, his mind wandered to who had worn these clothes before him. Their mere presence meant that she had allowed some guy to have his personal items here, and yet she hadn’t mentioned any significant other. Neither had her file. According to what his handler had given him, her last major relationship had been five years ago to an investment banker who now worked on Wall Street. The guy had grown up with a silver spoon and went to NYU on a full ride, no doubt thanks to his family’s donations to the dean of admissions’ retirement fund.
On the other hand, it was possible that these clothes belonged to a new man, someone that the agency didn’t know about. They certainly weren’t infallible.
He shook his head. This woman and her world were a million miles apart from where he had come from and where he was going. She was an American princess and he only got close to her world by being a hired gun for the American government.
However, if push came to shove, his life seemed better; at least he was free to do whatever he wanted without falling under scrutiny from John Q. Public. Whatever she did, she probably had to answer to her board of directors, the tabloids, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and, until recently, her brother.
He needed to tell her. Or, at the very least, she needed to find out.
She walked from the bathroom, toweling her hair dry. He hadn’t thought a woman with wet hair was sexy before, but with her standing there, dabbing at her water-darkened locks, she looked like something out of a vintage magazine ad. With red lipstick, she could have been a spitting image.
When she saw him, she stopped in her tracks. “Oh.” She stared, no doubt because of the clothes he was wearing. “I… I’m glad you found those. I had totally forgotten I even had them.”
“I was hoping you or your boyfriend wouldn’t mind.” He silently prayed that she would put his nonsensical fears that she was seeing someone else to rest.
“Don’t worry, there’s no boyfriend.”
“Do you have a lover…anyone that may come knocking at the wrong time?” He felt stupid for saying the word lover. Even to his own ears it sounded archaic and laced with Victorian-style prudence.
Her brow arched and she looked at him like she had heard something in his tone she didn’t appreciate. A droplet of water slipped down from her forehead, dotting the edge of her hairline and sliding its way along her neck until it stopped at the perfect V-shaped hollow at the base of her throat.
Hell, he wanted to kiss that droplet away. He could imagine it now, moving closer to her. Pulling her into his arms. Licking away the drop from her skin. It probably tasted sweet thanks to her shower, maybe even smelled of some exotic flower. His body stirred to life at the thought.
He turned away, wishing that he’d had boxers on after all.
“No. No one like that,” she said, walking behind him and moving to her sleigh-like bed. “Don’t turn around, I’m going to get dressed.”
There was the sound of her towel dropping to the floor behind him. Desire dictated that he turn, but respect stopped him from listening to his baser instincts…no matter how badly he wanted to scoop her into his arms and throw her onto the fur on the bed and make love.
He caught a glimpse of her, from her shoulders up, in the glass of a framed photo. If he moved just a bit he was sure that he could have a full view of her, but he forced himself not to. He didn’t need any more reminders of how sexy she was and how badly he wanted her.
“I called a friend at the DOJ. If you want, I think we have somewhere we can go. Somewhere you will be safe,” he said, forcing himself back to the task at hand.
“What about him?” she asked, motioning in the direction of the body.
“Don’t worry. I told them what happened. For now, you aren’t in any trouble, but they may want to question you. In the meantime, they just want you to get somewhere safe.”
“And they put you in charge of that? Ever since I met you, people have been dropping like flies around me. I think I might be safer just getting away from you.”
He snorted. He couldn’t tell her the truth of who he was or why he was here—he’d be directly out on his ass if he did—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hint. “Don’t start looking over here to find the cause of what has been happening. I’m just a simple civil servant. Who would want to come after me?” he lied.
“When that man came at me, he said that I could ‘thank my boyfriend’ or something,” she said, her voice muffled as he assumed she pulled her shirt on over her face. “I think he was talking about you.”
“It’s not likely. No one in the world would think we were in a relationship.”
“Oh,” she said, and there was a twinge of hurt in her voice. “I guess you’re right, but who else could he have been talking about?” She walked close to him on her way to the bureau, where she grabbed a pair of light socks. She slipped them on—but before her feet disappeared, he made out the white tips of a fresh pedicure. This lady must have lived one hell of a life.
He shrugged. “Who knows what this guy was thinking. Until we get a positive ID on him, it’s going to be hard to know anything. He didn’t give you any other clues, did he?”
“Did you pat him down or whatever?”
“Yeah, there was nothing. Would’ve been nice if the bastard had carried a wallet, huh?” He chuckled.
“With whatever it is that you do, do you deal with this kind of thing a lot? I mean dead guys and stuff?”
He’d seen more death than he would ever care to admit. He’d spent more than one afternoon standing on-site at mass graves in the Fertile Crescent. The most recent had been in Syria after a chemical weapons attack by the local government. He could still recall the stench of the bodies, the clouded, shrunken eyes of the dead and the hum of flies…oh, the flies. They alone could have been the stuff of nightmares.
“Are you okay?” she asked, touching his arm with her shower-warmed fingers.
“Yeah, fine. I guess I’m more tired than I thought I was. Hell of a week, this one.” He located a suitcase in her closet and brought it out to her. “Pack what you are going to need.”
“How long do you think we’re going to be away? Wait… You’re going to stay with me, aren’t you, Chief Security Advisor?”
He smiled, and part of the protective coating on his heart chipped away. “You got it. At least, if that’s what you want.”
Her fingers moved down the hair of his arms, leaving a burning trail behind. “There is nothing that I would want more, though…” She paused.
“What?” he asked, touching his arm where her fingers had just been.
“I need to get in touch with my brother before I go anywhere.” She opened her bag, completely unaware of the turmoil within him. “I tried to call him earlier, but it went to voice mail.”
Now he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to tell her about her brother’s death after all. All of his normal interrogation techniques and practices were quickly plummeting out the window. He had to stop breaking the rules when it came to this woman. Though their circumstances were about as unconventional as they were uncomfortable, he had to try to get them back on track.
However, he had a feeling that she was already scared enough as it was, even without knowing that her brother had been gunned down by an agent.
He couldn’t believe he had gotten himself so compromised with this woman, and so quickly. This wasn’t his way. Normally, he was in, out and done. One day, one interrogation, one paycheck, and then shipped off to the next location. It was the way he liked it. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
As it was, they had already spent more than their fair share of time together. He’d hate to think the effect she’d have on him in a week if he did decide to take her to Montana.
“Why don’t you try to call him again?” he asked, feeling sheepish in feigning such deplorable ignorance.
She couldn’t find out what he knew or his role in this. She would hate him forever if she did.
She walked over to the head of her bed, picked up the phone and dialed.
“I’m going to go make some phone calls of my own. I’ll come get you when I’m done,” he said, walking out of her bedroom.
She nodded, but she was distant, no doubt worrying about her inability to get in touch with her brother.
He called his sister Zoey, but she didn’t answer and his mind instantly moved to what Mindy must have been feeling. His gut ached. There was no way, absolutely no way he could be the one to break the news to her. Maybe she didn’t need to know right now.
But if he didn’t tell her, she might not agree to seek safety. They’d be back to square one.
And if she found out, she would be an even bigger wreck. He would have to console her. And as much as he desired to bring her into his arms, he had to stick to his guns and try to keep her in the professional zone.
He texted Zoey a message and instructions. Hopefully, she would come through. If not, they would probably be staying in New York—the heart of the target. If they did, he wasn’t sure he could save her from being taken down if their enemy’s aim was true.