Chapter 3
KYLIE
“Would you follow me?”
I gripped the counter. His voice had a pull to it I didn’t trust myself with—low and certain, the kind that made you want to stop thinking. He stood so close I could feel the warmth radiating from his left side, a touch without contact that was somehow worse.
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing's wrong.” His arm brushed past me as he reached for my check. “Let me take care of that, and we can go for a walk. Have you seen the Quadrangle courtyard? It’s pretty impressive at night.”
Every instinct I had trained for was telling me to de-escalate, create distance, and maintain control of the situation. I reached for the check.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He’d already scribbled something on it and handed it to Elizabeth.
“You have a great night.” She glanced at the check, and her smile widened at the generous tip. Patrick had exited and waited for me.
Should I signal to her that I might be in trouble? Would she even care? She worked for them after all. Instead, I stood. My field training prepared me for these situations.
Patrick had one eye on me and the other on his phone. Maybe he knew who I was. I imagine he knew everything about everyone who stepped foot in his hotel. Especially former law enforcement.
Maybe I should come clean first. Like when I was a child, confessing to being bad before getting caught. It would lessen the punishment.
I rolled my eyes at myself.
There was no confession needed. He didn’t know my intentions here, and I had done nothing wrong, unless speaking with the boss’s girlfriend was fundamentally wrong.
It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. But if Kyler and the Grants were who I thought they were, legal precedent was irrelevant.
It was the judicial system of the Quadrangle I should be worried about.
I stepped in front of him, placing my purse strap over my head. I clung to it like a lifeline and waited.
“Right this way.” He stepped to the side and motioned toward the underground pathway.
We walked next to each other in silence.
We were still in the thick of the crowd, but people peeled away as we moved through them, closing back in behind us.
Patrick Carmichael parted them like a prophet.
Which made me what, exactly—a lamb being led to slaughter?
I almost laughed at myself for that. Some other time, some other place, I might not have minded following his lead.
He stopped short, and my nose caught his shoulder. “Oh.” I rubbed it.
“I’m sorry.” He frowned. “We’re cutting across here to get outside.”
“No, it was my fault.” I gripped my purse strap again. “I was distracted.”
“By what?”
It was my turn to be confused. What wasn’t a distraction?
His massive forearms sprinkled with the finest blond hair, or his black t-shirt stretching the armholes on his shirt were two that came to mind.
Did they not have a larger size? Or was it I had finally made contact with the guy that would finally get me closer to the main guy?
We stood still, people moving around us. I realized he was waiting for an answer.
“Oh, I’m fine.” I pointed as if I knew where we were going.
“Outside, right?” I spotted a set of stairs leading to a landing with automatic glass doors.
Patrick remained behind and to my left. We stepped out into the night air.
It was January in Vegas, but it was unseasonably warm.
A perfect square, the courtyard had patches of greenery all around.
The buildings towered over the vast open space on three sides.
The fourth side, much shorter than the other structures, created a strange illusion, as if the other buildings might break in half and close the lid on the ominous outdoor area.
Near the center sat a steel-black structure shaped like an industrial sculpture of a gazebo with railings climbing to the sky and then bending to connect in the center.
Patrick stepped up and helped me up. His warm palm engulfed my hand.
His touch was gentle for such a big man.
Well, bigger than me, I was only five foot five.
Still taller than Rayna and Tinley, but short in most circles.
“Have a seat.” He motioned toward a bench made from the same metal. The whole bench looked as if it had been forged by fire and then bent into an L shape. He sat on the other leg, which brought us close together. He rested his arms on his knees and rubbed his hands together.
I looked up at the sky. I guess there were worse places to be interrogated.
“Kylie Stands.” His voice was quiet, but no less commanding. “What are you doing in my hotel?”
“I’m a— “
“Before you answer.” He held up a hand. “You are not in any trouble yet. But if you lie to me, that could change.” He sat back and stared down at me.
I should have felt like a criminal. I didn’t, though. That was the problem.
“You know who I am?”
“FBI analyst out of New York.” He nodded. “You worked with Agent Stanley on the task force. You quit a few weeks ago, and now you are skulking around my hotel, talking to my staff about Kyler and his family. Showing up in places where Rayna and Tinley might be.”
“This is the first time I’ve run into them.”
“I know, because the other two times, I steered them elsewhere until I could find out what your game is.” He frowned. The lines around his eyes made him look older and tired.
“I meant them no harm.” Moving to lean forward, I then checked myself. “I just wanted to make sure they were okay.”
“Why wouldn’t they be? Is there something Stanley hasn’t told me?”
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum.
There was a version of the truth I could give him.
“My sister, Becca, went missing five years ago.” I watched his face.
Nothing moved. “I thought maybe—I don’t know.
That getting close to Tinley might tell me something.
About surviving. How she did it? My sister, Becca, she may still be out there somewhere.
” I shook my head. “I know how that sounds.”
I peeked up at him. His eyes stared at the ground, jaw set, and I couldn’t tell if what came off him was anger or something that had once been anger and had since gone cold and quiet. I didn’t fear him. I wasn’t sure I should have trusted that.
“I’ll check out today and go.” I rose, but he grabbed my arm. He let go immediately.
“Please sit back down.” He whispered and rubbed his face.
I sat back down, but scooted a little further away. All signs pointed to being wary of him, but my instincts didn’t signal danger.
“You enjoyed your job?”
The question caught me off guard. I opened and closed my mouth, not sure how to answer. “My–Yes.”
“You sure about that?” He leaned back and placed his hands on either side of his thighs.
“I mean, I was good at my job, and most of the time I was helping people, but I never enjoyed it.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure you enjoy that type of work. You are exposed to some horrible things. You see people doing the worst to each other. I think I got tired of doing it from behind a desk.”
“So, are you going private? Or do you have some other career path in mind?” His head tilted.
“I’m undecided at the moment.” I wrung my hands.
“Why don’t you come and work for me?”
My hands stilled in my lap. “What do you mean, work for you?”
“Work on my staff.” He stood up and walked over to the edge of the modern gazebo.
It stood a couple of feet off the ground.
He turned his head up to survey the tops of the buildings.
“You certainly have top-notch training. You know how to handle yourself in the field, weapons trained. And you made head analyst in three years. You’re good at your job. ”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked Agent Stanley.” He turned and leaned back against the gazebo, his arms crossed over his chest. “We do check references at Grant Enterprises.”
“Wait,” I stood up. “You already asked Agent Stanley about me. He knows I’m here?” God, of course he does.
“I was looking to expand our team with more of an analytical approach. We’ve been surviving on tips and dumb luck. I get what you mean. We want to do more. I figured with your skill set, you can help us do that.”
We stared at each other for a moment before I moved to stand next to him, peering over the gazebo railing to the ground below. “I’d be trading one office job for another.”
“Partially.” He pulled on my sleeve. “Have a seat.” We returned to our respective benches.
“I had spoken with Kyler and Josh about adding a woman to our staff. Someone the girls can relate to, but who they would also listen to and respect.” He tapped on his phone.
“You want me to guard the girls?”
“With a team, of course, but it would give you more field opportunities and still allow us to pick your brain on how we can help more people on the other side of it.”
I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Is there more we could be doing?” Patrick wondered aloud. “Are we covering all our bases?” The plea in his voice hit me. This wasn’t just a job for him either. His bright, deep-set eyes held pain he wasn’t ready to share. But this was important to him.
“Yeah, I mean, there’s more that can be done.
” I exhaled. This was it—my in. The Grants had more resources and less bureaucracy than my last job, and it put me closer to the girls.
I pressed my thumbnail into my palm. I was already lying to him.
He had just told me I wasn’t in trouble yet.
“And you want me to guard the girls?” The words came out softer than I intended.
Something loosened in my chest that I didn’t want loosened.
“Yeah, mostly on outings outside of the casino.” His eyes turned down. “What happened in New York to Tinley and Rayna shouldn’t have happened.”
Patrick’s gaze drifted past me; his focus lost somewhere in the past. For a man in control, it was jarring to see anguish flash across his face.
“What happened in New York, exactly?” I touched his arm, but he pulled it away and frowned.
“It won’t happen again.” He exhaled and then stood up.
“Kyler and Josh want to give them more freedom, but there’s a limit to the amount of control they will give up.
It’s my idea to bring you in to spend time with them.
But I want to make sure they are comfortable being around you, too.
So, we’ll ease into that part of your job. ”
He was holding something back—I could feel it—and I was pretty sure I knew what it was. It scared me. “Are they still in danger?”
“The world is a dangerous place, Kylie.”
He walked away before I could ask what that meant, and I stood there with a chilly feeling of having just agreed to something I didn’t yet understand.