Chapter 3
THREE
She’s scared shitless, Harry thought. Words wouldn’t reassure her, so he did the only thing he could do—stay still and let her open up to him. Exactly as you’d do with a frightened, wounded animal.
Was she wounded? Harry made sure not to move his eyes below her neck, but he had exceptionally good sight and peripheral vision. No broken bones visible, no casts, no bandages. No black eyes, but rather red-rimmed ones.
It was a good thing Harry couldn’t see any visible damage because he didn’t know if he could have kept so still if she’d been covered in bruises.
It never failed to drive him crazy, how some men could hurt women and children. He had no idea how they could do it, but they did. He’d seen it all—snapped arms, dislocated jaws, black, swollen eyes, pulped spleens...
It was always horrific, but on this woman…bile rose in his throat at the thought of violence to her. She was slender, delicate, with the fair, creamy skin of a red head that should never carry any kind of bruise, let alone one caused by violence.
She didn’t have any internal injuries because she’d moved gracefully and swiftly as she entered the room, as if forcing herself into it. Not allowing herself to back away.
If she’d been punched where it wouldn’t show, she’d be moving slowly, carefully. Some women had to breath very shallowly because someone had cracked or broken a rib. He’d seen a lot of that.
“How can we help you?” he asked, though he knew the answer. By taking her away from the bad guys.
She finally pulled in a deep breath. “Like I said, I was an accountant, a CPA, and a good one.”
A note of pride entered her voice and inside Harry rejoiced. She hadn’t been beaten down to the ground. Not yet. And now that she was here, not ever again. He’d personally see to that.
“I’m sure you were, Ms. Charles,” he answered softly.
Her eyes flickered, because that clearly wasn’t her name. Man, she was a lousy liar. Personally, Harry could lie like a pro. He could say to anyone that his name was Rumpelstiltskin and never bat an eyelid.
“Yes, um.” She clutched her backpack with white-knuckled intensity. “I found a really good job just out of college, with a—a large company headquartered about thirty miles from Savannah. A company that had dealings abroad. It was challenging, but exciting.”
She stopped, watching him. Harry simply breathed, kept his face neutral. She was going to tell this in her own good time.
She looked to the side and winced. “I was actually put in charge of the Accounts Department. Immediately. Which was a really big deal for someone just out of college with a brand new degree and the ink barely dry on her license. I thought—I thought maybe the owner of the company had checked my grades, which were straight As, and decided to give me a chance even though I didn’t have any experience. ”
“And?” Harry prodded when she shut up.
“It wasn’t my grades.” She looked down at her lap then back up again, mouth firm.
“My inexperience was a big plus in his eyes. The accounts were a real mess. He hadn’t been paying all his taxes, either.
It took me two years to start putting some order into his affairs.
I’m surprised the IRS didn’t come down on the company, though it was working mainly for the US government, so he might have had—well, friends in high places. ”
By not a flicker of an eye did Harry let on that he felt a slight prickle of unease. Mainly, the only kind of company that worked for the US government and also worked abroad were defence contractors or security companies. And he knew just about every security company in the US.
“In the meantime, though I was really happy to have the job and to run an office of five and manage the accounts of a multi-million dollar company, something—something else started happening.” She swallowed convulsively.
“The owner started sniffing round me. And he wasn’t taking no for an answer, you know? ”
Oh Christ, Harry thought. Here it comes. He consciously schooled his face to blandness. His default expression was a ferocious scowl he’d been told was terrifying, and he didn’t want to frighten her.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.”
Her eyes met his. She made no bones about staring at him, assessing him, and he let her.
It wasn’t a hardship. She had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, even more beautiful than those of Sam’s wife, Nicole. But where Nicole was a stunning, in-your-face beauty, a head-turner, this woman had a quieter appeal. You had to look twice to see how pretty she was, but once you did…wow.
Keep your head in the game, Harry told himself sternly. The woman was in trouble, maybe a day away from getting seriously hurt or worse, killed. Reflecting on her expressive sea-green eyes and creamy skin and heart-shaped face wasn’t going to help her.
She nodded, suddenly. He had apparently passed some kind of test. Luckily, the lady didn’t appear to be a mind reader, otherwise his little spurt off the reservation mooning about her eyes would have scared her off.
She was definitely not in the market for a man, that was clear.
She wasn’t dressed to seduce—in fact her clothes were cheap and rumpled.
None of her movements had that unconscious come-hither overtones so many attractive women developed.
He wouldn’t blame her if she were to try a little seduction. She was obviously here seeking protection and he was a man willing to offer it. Throw a little sex into the mix, get him on board, bind him. Made sense.
But the vibes that were coming from her were anxiety and fear and a sort of dogged determination, not protect me and I’ll make it worth your while.
She breathed deeply. “He, um, stopped by my office a lot, put his arm around me—" Her face tightened at the memory. “Pretty soon the whole company had the impression I was his—his lover and nothing I could say could convince anyone otherwise. I’d just get these sly smiles and heavy hints that I had been hired for something other than my grades. And I sort of had to watch my words because he was, you know, the boss.”
“I’ll bet it got worse,” Harry said.
She blinked in surprise. “You’re right.” As if he was this amazing wizard with a crystal ball. He wasn’t. He just knew his assholes. If Asshology were a course degree, he’d have a PhD in it.
“It was bad enough having people think we were lovers, but pretty soon word got round that we were engaged.” She shuddered.
“I heard he was shopping around for a ring. A big ring, because everything he does, he does big. That more or less did it. Much as I hated to leave the job, I started looking around for another one, but in this economy…”
Harry nodded. RBK was doing just fine, but it was the kind of company that thrived in times of trouble. It was thriving now.
“The situation became impossible. He was acting as if we were engaged, and we’d never even kissed!
He’s such a powerful personality, though, that the whole company just took it for granted that we were a couple.
Then, a year ago there was this party, this huge corporate do, celebrating a big government contract.
The company rented the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency in Savannah and it was catered by this all-star chef.
” Her mouth quirked. “There was free booze, and more or less everyone got plastered, except for me. My body can’t handle much alcohol.
So I was, unfortunately, sober when one of the employees came up to me and bragged about how smart the boss was.
He’d stolen forty million dollars from the US government and wasn’t I lucky I was going to marry him? ”
Harry’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Yes, indeed. And frankly, it made a terrible kind of sense because a lot of the accounts from the early days of the company just didn’t add up.
There was more incoming than could be accounted for.
I think the boss knew I was sort of digging around, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. ”
Harry frowned. “Did you ask for details from this guy? What was his name?”
She hesitated and he understood she was still weighing how much to tell him.
“Frankly the guy was so drunk he could barely articulate. But—he was actually boasting! When I said I didn’t believe him, he pulled out a cellphone and showed me a snapshot of him, the boss and two other guys.
Soldiers, in Afghanistan. Standing next to what looked like hundreds of pallets stacked high with dollars wrapped up into bricks.
The guy was falling down drunk but the photos were clear.
Then he said—all that money was gone the next day, and no one ever noticed. ”
“What happened next?” Harry asked quietly.
He had a sense of where this was going. But he was also having trouble focussing on her story.
It was riveting, but the quality of her voice was even more riveting.
Soft and clear with the faintest tinge of southern spice in there.
It was mesmerizing, and tantalizingly familiar.
Which was, of course, crazy, since Harry had never seen her before in his life.
He was hallucinating, which was not good.
He needed to sleep at least as much as he trained. A good military rule.
“While he was telling me the story, so drunk he was nearly passing out, my boss noticed us across the room. He looked at me and at this drunk guy and I’ve never seen a more menacing expression on a human face before.
” She shivered at the memory. “It certainly sobered up Drunk Guy. He went ash white, said to forget he’d said anything and disappeared so fast you’d swear you could see the dust. I was spooked.
The boss started coming over and I hid behind a pillar and slid away.
I needed to think about it, because the whole story rang really true.
And explained all the anomalies I found in the accounts. ”