The Alpha Bodyguards Books #1-3

Chapter Thirty-Three

N eil drove north through pricey beachside neighborhoods. He didn’t say anything, because that seemed to be the type of man he was. No words, all action.

I didn’t speak because he intimidated the hell out of me, and I was silently losing my shit over Garrett. I was also garnering the courage to ask Neil to call Talon so we could get an update on Garrett when Neil’s cell phone rang.

He answered the call through the car’s speakers. “Ja.”

“Christensen, it’s Brad Olsen.”

Neil didn’t respond.

“You know why I’m calling,” the man said.

“I presume nothing,” Neil answered.

“Cut the bullshit. I’ve got dead bodies all over the fucking place, including one Nathan Lewis with an entire clip unloaded dead center on his chest and his head blown out. You and I both know my agents don’t shoot like that. Not to mention two of your men were spotted carrying a wounded man off and getting in what I can only assume was one of Luna’s vehicles.”

My heart stopped, and my body froze. Nathan. Dead.

“I do not have any men,” Neil stated.

Nathan was dead .

“You denying you were there?” the man asked.

Shocked, relieved, numb—I didn’t know what I felt.

“Why are you not calling Luna?” Neil avoided the man’s question.

“Because he’s not answering his phone, and one of my agents saw a boat take off after the shooting started, and his description of a seven-foot giant with muscles driving the boat sounded eerily familiar.”

“I am not seven feet.”

“I’m not calling to dick around, Christensen. Lewis is dead. His guards are mostly dead. The few alive aren’t talking, and Brooke Barrone is suspiciously missing, even though we have hours of surveillance footage of her on that estate every day for the past year, with her son. So I am calling, and I am asking. Do you know where Brooke Barrone is?”

“Ja,” Neil answered without hesitation. “She and her son are with me.”

Sheer panic robbed me of air.

“May I speak with her,” the man clipped with forced patience.

“Thirty minutes. The Golden Beach house.” Neil hung up.

“Who was that?” My voice squeaked.

“ATF,” Neil stated as he dialed his phone.

Oh God. “And they want to speak to me?”

“Ja,” Neil answered before his phone was ringing through the car’s speakers with a new call.

“Neil Christensen,” a man answered without saying hello. “I’m assuming this isn’t a social call?”

“The Golden Beach house,” Neil said with zero intonation, like he said everything else. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Client consultation?”

“Ja.”

“Who is it?” the new man asked.

Neil took another turn and kept driving north. “Nathan Lewis’s wife.”

I started to protest, but Neil threw me a look that made me snap my mouth shut.

The man on the phone, however, was not quiet. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, incredulous. “The answer is no. I’m not getting involved in that. I’m not about to—”

Neil interrupted him. “Nathan Lewis is dead. ”

The man exhaled. “Did his wife kill him?”

“No.”

“Then why do you need me at your house in fifteen minutes?”

“She is going to be questioned by ATF.”

“If ATF wants to question her without her lawyer present, they’ll come up with any excuse to keep me out.”

“That will not happen.”

The man hesitated. “And you know this, how?”

“She is not involved,” Neil lied to the man. “You have ten minutes now.” He hung up.

I was plenty involved, but Neil intimidated the hell out of me and I was afraid to outright tell him so. “The last thing you told him…. It’s not exactly true.”

“Are you going to continue to make three weekly money drops?” he asked without hesitation.

Oh God . I glanced at Mav in the car seat behind me even though I knew he was sound asleep. “Of course not.” Nathan was dead. This was my out. This was what I’d been praying for.

“Then you are not involved.” Neil glanced at me. “You are a mother. That is all. That is what you will tell the ATF agent.”

Thinking, I nodded slowly. Could I do that and get away with it? Wouldn’t they have footage of me at the drops and be suspicious? And both Neil and the ATF agent were wrong. “I was never married to Nathan.”

“How long have you been in residence with him?”

Since he’d told me to move out of my father’s house before we took the bank deposits. I’d been with him in apartments, motels, hotels, rented houses and then finally the estate he’d bought without telling me. He’d simply told me one day that he had a surprise and brought me to the house, which was already fully furnished and had so many bedrooms, I couldn’t count. He’d said he’d bought it for us and our “family.” Except he knew damn well it wasn’t his baby I was carrying. He was just manipulating me into staying. I’d stormed off to the pool house in protest and never left. For reasons I would never know now, Nathan had never demanded I move into the main house.

Soul-deep exhaustion weighing me down, I counted the years. “I’ve lived with Nathan since I was eighteen.” My entire adult life. “Nine years.”

“Then you were his common-law wife.”

Emotions and thoughts swam in my head, not the least of which was that I would never see Nathan again. I thought I should feel something about that, something about the way he died, or how it happened, but all I felt was fear at being questioned by the ATF and if I would lose Mav.

Sinking into despair when I should’ve been relieved that I was finally free, I didn’t pay attention to how long we’d been driving, or register the first, then second gate Neil drove through. But when he pulled up a driveway to a house on the beach and there was already a car parked with a man standing beside it, I panicked. “Who is that?”

“Your lawyer.” Neil parked beside the man’s car.

The panic got worse. “I can’t afford a lawyer.”

“You are not paying him.”

I looked at the imposing man behind the wheel who could have passed for an ancient Viking on one of those TV shows. “Then who is?” No one worked for free.

“I am.”

“I don’t even know you. I can’t ask that of you.” I’d never hired one, but I knew lawyers cost a lot of money.

“You asked me nothing.”

I didn’t know if I was infuriated by his cryptic responses or intimidated. “Please. You don’t understand. I’ve spent my entire adult life indebted to someone. I finally have a chance to be free of that. Please don’t pay him on my behalf.” I’d figure something out. Or I’d talk to ATF on my own.

Neil turned to look directly at me. His eyes were the color of ice, and the angles of his face were so sharp, I was torn between thinking he was handsome and truly terrifying .

“I am not paying the lawyer in cash. He will do me this favor. I will do him a favor.”

Oh God. What favor could he possibly do for him? For all I knew, Neil was a criminal who was a thousand times worse than Nathan. “What are you going to do for him?” I dared to ask.

“He is in a rented apartment.”

I frowned.

“I am a contractor,” he added.

“You build houses?”

Barely moving his head, Neil inclined his chin. “Luxury high-rises and condominiums.”

Holy shit. “So you’re going to give him a condo for talking to me?”

“No. I will sell him one at a price he can afford.”

Nathan was dead, but my life was getting more complicated by the minute. “Why would you do that for me?”

Neil redirected his gaze out the front of the truck. “I am not doing this for you.” He pulled the key out of the ignition. “I am doing it for the child.” Pushing his door open, he got out and spared me a glance. “Talk to the lawyer. I will get the child.”