Outside The Wire (Owens Protective Services #27)

1. Kavanaugh

1

KAVANAUGH

Shadow.

The last fucking words my father ever said to me.

My father.

Fuck. I sucked in a breath, staring at the casket in front of me as rain drizzled around us, dripping down my face. I hadn’t called him that in years. He was just another man—a scumbag who used everyone around him to get ahead. And yet, in the end, I was pretty sure he was trying to help me.

Maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe he was only trying to help himself. After all, someone was after him. He knew it. He was scared. I saw it on his face and I blew it off, taunted him even. He told me that the moment he let me in on his secret, there would be a target on his back. But they were watching all along. They knew when he met me in the bar that he was going to tell me, and they pulled the trigger before he could tell me everything.

Shadow.

I pushed away the gnawing in my gut. It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe that a man like that could turn on his own son and—I took a deep breath as the ceremony continued. Now wasn’t the time to think about any of this. I had a role to perform, and I didn’t want to let down the senator in his final hour.

It was probably ridiculous for me to care at all about any of this. I hadn’t cared while he was alive, so why the fuck did I care now that he was dead?

I squeezed my eyes closed as his lifeless eyes flashed through my mind. All that blood, his brains scattered across the floor…A hand squeezed mine, grounding me when I thought I would lose it. I gripped her hand tightly, knowing it was only temporary, but I took the comfort while I could.

Isla was here for me, as was Riley. My mother was practically comatose, unable to even come to the ceremony, which left it all up to me. IKE was gracious enough to lend me Isla—though I had a feeling it was more Isla telling him this was the way it had to be.

I stood in my dress uniform, feeling completely out of place as government friends and lackeys surrounded me. They were his people. I barely knew the man anymore. But he was still my father, and in the end, he had turned to me for help.

And I failed.

“Kavanaugh,” Isla whispered, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I turned and frowned as she looked at me with troubled eyes. “Yeah?”

“The service is over. We should go back to your father’s house. People will be waiting. They’re expecting you.”

Right. The food. The gathering of everyone to paw through my father’s things and pretend they knew him. The truth was, I wasn’t sure anyone really knew Alton Kavanaugh. He had so many faces, each depending on who he was talking to and what he needed from them. I only knew him as a child, and even that was tainted by his greed and corruption. I thought I remembered a time as a little kid when he smiled and seemed genuinely happy, but maybe it was a ruse. I guess I’d never know now.

“Give me a minute.”

I released her hand and walked forward as they lowered the casket into the ground. When it stopped, I glanced at the workers and nodded. They stepped back, giving me some privacy. A few people still remained on the other side, still filing out slowly. Removing my hat, I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed as I looked around the cemetery. He would have fucking loved all the pomp and circumstance.

“I guess you still got what you wanted. Even in death, they put on a show for you. Maybe it’s not the way you wanted to go out, but—” I huffed out a laugh. “Then again, it’s probably exactly how you wanted things to end. Your name in the headlines instead of dying quietly in a nursing home somewhere, with no one remembering your name. Mom is a fucking mess. You didn’t do a very good job preparing her for this shit. She can’t seem to function without you telling her what to do.”

Huffing out a breath, I raised my eyes to the sky and wondered what the fuck I was supposed to do now. I wasn’t cut out for dealing with all this bullshit, and I had no idea how to care for my mother, who was so blinded by my father’s fake charms.

“You really—” Something glinted in the distance, just enough to catch my eye. Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it, but my father had just been killed by a sniper, so I was feeling a tad on edge. The last of the mourners filed out of the row across from me, and then the silver glinted again in the distance, and I just fucking knew.

“Sniper! Do?—”

Pain sliced through my neck as the bullet struck. My hand instantly went to the wound as my knees gave out and I tumbled into the grave, falling on top of the casket. Blood flowed freely through my fingers, pumping at a much faster rate than it should. If I couldn’t stop the bleeding, I was going to die right here in this fucking grave.

I pressed hard, clenching my teeth as the pain became unbearable. My vision swam as my pulse slowed considerably. Fuck, this wasn’t good.

“Kavanaugh! Fucking talk to me!”

Red . As the sky spun above me, his voice filtered in and out like an echo chamber. Colors moved in swirling patterns and the sharp points of the tree branches became nothing more than fuzzy blobs of brown. I felt my fingers start to slide down my neck, unable to hold them in place any longer.

My breathing grew ragged, but not so painful anymore. It would be just like going to sleep. I just had to close my eyes and everything would be over.

“Goddamnit! FNG, get the fuck over here now!”

My body jerked as boots thumped on the casket beside me. Red knelt next to me, grabbing my jaw and forcing me to look at him. My eyes slowly closed as sleep overcame me, but with a single harsh slap across the face, I was prying them open and glaring at the man for taking away the last of my peace.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted at me. “Put your goddamn hand on your wound!”

“Maybe…you could…do it…for me…” I said breathlessly.

“Fucking pussy,” he grumbled, already pressing down to staunch the flow of blood. The instant pressure cut off my euphoria of peaceful surrender, reminding me that I was stuck in this fucked-up life for the inevitable future until Red removed his hand from my neck or God decided to take me. Life was a bitch like that sometimes.

“Well, this is morbid as shit,” FNG muttered as he dropped down beside me. “Haven’t had to play medic in quite some time. Gotta say, neck wounds aren’t my favorite.”

“Just fix him.”

“See, if I had my fucking umbrella?—”

“It wouldn’t do a goddamn thing,” Red snapped.

“Maybe I could have blocked a few of those bullets,” he muttered. “Never know. It might have been like baseball.”

I listened to him talk. The utter nonsense of his words made my lips twitch with amusement. It reminded me of when he came back from the dead and told me all those ridiculous fucking stories.

I raised my hand as best I could, brushing my blood-stained fingers across his shirt. “Hey…FNG…tell me a story.”

“A what?”

“You know…one of…your stories.”

I didn’t miss the look he shared with Red. He took that as a sign I was crossing over to the other side. Hell, I just wanted to hear a fucking story to take away the depressing fact that someone shot me at my old man’s funeral.

“Well, did I ever tell you about the time I was in China?”

I shook my head slightly while he worked.

“Well, don’t eat the food. Chinese food is fucking terrible.”

I grinned at that.

“Anyway, I met this little Chinese kid and he was going to help me steal a diamond.”

“Why…did you need…the diamond?”

“You shouldn’t be talking,” Red snapped.

“Well, I needed it to win the freedom of Fang Hua. She was imprisoned for her father’s debts—quite unfairly, I might add. I came across her on my travels and saw her being beaten by a guard on her way to the prison. I intervened and tried to threaten him, but she begged me not to. But then the guard said I could buy her freedom for the right price.”

“Did you…steal it?”

“What do you think?” he smirked at me.

I felt a tight pressure around my neck as he placed a wrap. Then the paramedics were there and FNG was stepping back. “Hey,” I murmured, but he couldn’t hear me.

“Sir, we need you to remain still.”

“Need to hear…the story.”

An oxygen mask was placed over my face, preventing me from asking FNG about what happened. Did he get the diamond? Did he free the girl? Was any of it fucking true? Goddamnit, another fucking story left unfinished.

“His pulse is weakening. We need to get him to the hospital now!”

My eyelids fluttered closed as I swore I felt a hand squeeze mine, but when I opened them, there was no one there.

No one fucking there.

And then it went dark.

I was alive. Barely. That had been way too fucking close.

And I still didn’t know the ending to FNG’s story.

The blinds were closed as my friends officially grieved the loss of their fallen comrade. To everyone outside of our small circle and one very handsomely paid doctor, I was dead. That was the way it had to be until we found out who shot the senator and then tried to kill me.

“Clearly, he shot you because you know something,” Dash argued.

“Obviously,” FNG interrupted. “Obviously is the word you’re looking for. Because it’s obvious the connection is his father and the words his father spoke to him right before he was taken out.”

“And it’s clear that Kavanaugh knows something!” Dash shouted.

“Fuck, would you two shut up?” Lock snapped. “The man is trying to recover. The last thing he needs is the two of you arguing about word preferences.”

FNG snorted. “This is so much more than word preferences. It’s a matter of correct and incorrect word usage.”

Fox kicked up his feet on the edge of my bed and chomped on some Funyuns. “I say they’re both wrong. Supposedly, this has to do with what your daddy said to you in the moments before he was shot. Supposedly . However, we can also assume that there are a few ladies out there that you’ve left broken-hearted. I think it would be unwise to jump to conclusions and assume that this doesn’t have something to do with one of them.”

I stared at Fox for a moment, tired as hell and ready to shove my catheter down his fucking throat. “I think it would be unwise to assume that this has anything to do with me. Maybe they were aiming at you.”

“Why would anyone want to kill me?”

“Have you heard yourself singing show tunes lately?”

“Now, hang on a minute?—”

“How about we all take it down a notch,” Lock said, ever the peacemaker. “The first thing we need to do is get Kavanaugh out of here without anyone noticing. We have transport on the way. Sorry, Kavanaugh, but you’re about to go in a black bag.”

“And I thought landing in a hole in the ground was fun,” I deadpanned.

“Ooh!” FNG jumped up. “Can I play the part of the driver?”

“Sure.”

“Yes! I always wanted to drive a hearse.”

“Goals AF, man!” Fox grinned, fist-bumping him.

“What…what is that?” I asked, confused by the whole thing.

“Oh, it’s this new thing I learned from a kid in the grocery store. See, I was staking out the candy aisle for some new space for my Funyuns candy, and I saw these kids trying to sell some bullshit cookies there.”

“Wait…like GirlScout cookies?”

“How the hell should I know?” Fox frowned.

“Were they girls?”

“Yes.”

“Were they little colorful boxes of cookies?”

He thought about it, nodding his head from side to side. “Yeah, come to think of it, they were.”

“You asshole, they were doing a fundraiser. What did you do?”

“I told them they were taking up good space for my brand new Funyuns candy, and I kicked them out.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Lock muttered.

Fox stood suddenly, shoving his chair back. “Hey, that one girl kicked me in the shin. She was a nasty piece of work.”

My neck throbbed from surgery and the little machine started beeping faster. I needed to stop getting so worked up over stupid shit Fox said. But it was hard when they were constantly in my room. It had been like this for two fucking days. Just this morning, it was announced that I had passed after my heart gave out after surgery. It wouldn’t be long before they would move me.

God willing.

I knew I couldn’t take too much more of this.

“Would you calm the fuck down?” Lock hissed. “The last fucking thing we need is for doctors and nurses to come rushing in here because you made all the fucking alarms go off.”

I raised my hand slightly. “I would really appreciate not losing any more blood. It kind of sucked the first time. Pretty sure my old man took most of it with him to his grave. Not that he deserved it.”

“It’s okay, brother,” Fox said, massaging my shoulder. “I gotcha covered. I donated for you. I was a good match. I just opened my vein and told them to take as much as they needed,” he grinned. “The way I see it, we’re like blood brothers now. What runs through my veins now runs through yours.”

The way he stared at me really fucking creeped me out, and when I swung my gaze to meet Lock’s, he looked just as terrified as I was. “Well…that’s…” What the hell was I supposed to say to that? “I’m…”

“Honored,” Red said, standing up in the corner, finally waking up from his ten-hour nap. “He’s fucking honored to be given such a precious gift.” And then he fucking winked at me.

“Exactly,” I gritted out. “I’m honored.”

Fox beamed in such a way that I actually thought he might burst into tears. “Well, you know… I love ya, man. We’re family, you and I. I just…” He ducked his head, pressing his forefinger and thumb to either side of the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, I just need a minute,” he said, dashing from the room.

Red smirked as he walked over to my side of the bed. “Well, that should not only keep him occupied for a while, but also put on a good show for everyone outside.”

“Can we just get to the part where we move me out of here and get me home?” I grumbled. I fucking hated hospitals, especially ones where there were no cute nurses fawning over me. And they definitely weren’t here because everyone thought I was dead.

“We’ve already hired a private nurse for you at the compound,” Lock started.

“Female?” I asked hopefully.

“Male.”

My hope deflated. “Do you have to take all the joy out of my life? Seriously, is there anything else you want to pile onto the shitstorm that is my life right now?”

“Um…” He frowned as he looked through his plans, which happened to be color-coded and filed by date and time. “Nope, I think that’s it for now.”

“Perfect.”

“Uh…except for the fact that you’re gonna need the catheter for at least another day,” he winced. “Doctor’s orders.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Lock?”

“I’m just the messenger.”

“Someone give me a gun.”

“Not sure that’s good for the muscles in your neck after just severing such a major?—”

I twisted my neck a little too harshly, regretting it instantly. “Are you really fucking arguing with me?” I asked Dash.

“What? Oh, that wasn’t me. That was Eli. Yeah, he—” Dash started looking around the room, up at the ceiling as his brows drew together. “Did you hear that? Yeah, I think he’s in the ceiling. Maybe crawling in the vents.”

“Anyway,” Lock said, getting us back on track. “We’ll move you in a half hour. The ride shouldn’t take us too long and FNG will be in the back with you, monitoring you the whole time.”

“I thought he was driving.”

Lock turned and grinned at FNG. “Oh, that’s right. You have to be in the back of the hearse.” He tskd sadly. “Sorry, man. Looks like you’ll have to do the honors another time.”

FNG’s jaw dropped as he looked from me back to Lock. “But…that’s not fair. You already promised.”

“I did, but you’re our medic.”

He scoffed, bouncing down on the edge of my bed a little too harshly. “Stupid medical training. I should have been a mechanic. Then I could have driven the damn car.”

“Yeah, that’s what would have allowed you to drive the car,” Lock snorted.

We were getting way off-topic. “What about this nurse?”

“He’ll meet us at the compound later tonight. He’s dealt with situations like this many times before.”

“What? Sneaking patients out and treating them in silos after they’ve faked their deaths?”

“No,” Lock said slowly. “Aftercare of near-fatal wounds. He’s being paid handsomely, so don’t piss him off and threaten him. We need him to stick around.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“If you stick your tongue out at me, I’ll cut it off,” Lock said, narrowing his eyes at me.

I waited until he turned around and then I repeated his words back to him silently, mocking him the whole time.

“I saw that.”

I rolled my eyes. The man just couldn’t let me have any fun. I had nearly died and he still had a stick up his ass. All I wanted was to feel alive for five fucking minutes. Maybe eat some chicken and remember what ketchup tasted like. Was that really too much to ask?

“Yes,” he answered as if he heard my silent thoughts.

“Don’t worry,” Red grinned. “In another few hours, you’ll be back at the compound and all the women will be bugging the shit out of you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Better them than Fox. He’ll make you watch musicals with him all day. Then you’ll wish that sniper bullet hadn’t missed its mark.”

Shit. I was gonna have to get one of them on my side to run interference.

“Fuck,” I moaned, grasping the bed rail as Red hit another bump, jolting me yet again.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“Well, I meant it.”

I would twist my neck to look at him if I could. “You know, you could have just fucking let me walk.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

“Fucking doctor,” I griped. “I could have taken a wheelchair. That would have been more comfortable.”

“But a wheelchair isn’t a bed. And it won’t allow you to lay flat and stable.”

I grumbled at that. “I hate to point this out, but I’m not exactly laying flat or staying stable.”

“Would you quit your whining? We’re doing the best we can.”

I highly doubted that. In fact, I was pretty fucking sure they were doing everything possible to make this the most uncomfortable ride I’d ever taken. Why? I wasn’t precisely sure. Maybe it was because they wanted to fuck with me. Or maybe they wanted to remind me I was alive. Newsflash, I already knew that.

I sighed as they finally moved me into the depressing-as-hell room in the silo. Medically monitored, they called it. Glass walls with no fucking privacy. How the hell was a guy supposed to recover when everyone was staring at him like an attraction at a zoo?

“Welcome home,” Red grinned, waving his hand around the sterile room.

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Wow. It’s very homey.”

“Zoe got you a teddy bear,” he said, walking across the room to the bed and snatched it off the pillow. “She said something about everyone needing a teddy when they were recovering. Don’t ask me what that means. I’ll put it away.”

“Hey!” I stopped him, snatching it out of his hands as he passed. “It’s my fucking teddy.”

The surprised look on his face would be comical if it weren’t for the tragically sterile room I was about to live in. “Do you see where I am? This is the only fucking happy thing in this room. I’ll keep the fucking bear.”

“Fine, but if you sleep with that thing, I’m getting pictures.”

“Good, and I want pictures. You think you can fucking tease me and embarrass me? I’m pretty sure I pissed myself as I was dying in a grave. Not sure it gets worse than that.”

He finished wheeling me over to the bed and spun me until the head of the bed was aligned properly. “Seriously, how are you feeling?”

He looked at me so worriedly that I nearly laughed. “Fuck, stop looking at me like I’m about to die.”

“Well, you almost did.”

“Almost. I’m not ready to ghost you yet.”

He shook his head, letting out a long sigh. “How the fuck did you know?”

“I saw a glint.”

“A fucking glint?”

I nodded slightly. “Call me crazy, but after the old man got sniped, when I saw it, I just got this uneasy feeling and knew.”

“You’re fucking lucky you turned. Otherwise, that could have been a direct hit.”

“I’d rather not think about it.”

Lock knocked on the door before entering with FNG and my male nurse. I glowered at the sight of him. Not that he didn’t know how to do his job, but I didn’t like the idea of a man going anywhere near my junk.

Red leaned in close. “Do you really want a chick touching your limp dick?”

“Point taken.”

“Alright, let’s get you into bed,” the nurse said a little too happily.

Fuck, I hated him already. After a grueling five minutes of torture, I was settled into bed and sweating my ass off. The nurse was connecting me to a bunch of wires that I felt were completely unnecessary, but Lock insisted on. I was to be “monitored” until further notice.

I was about to tell him where he could shove his monitoring when he told me it was this or I would not be involved in finding out who fired the shot.

“Alright,” he said as soon as the nurse left the room. “We really haven’t had much time to work the senator’s case since he was shot. There’s been too much security around you. But now that you’ve been released from the hospital?—”

“Declared dead,” FNG clarified.

“—we can continue with our own investigation.” Lock passed around file folders that were color-coded (something he really loved) to Red, FNG, and me. Eli rushed into the room just moments later.

“Sorry, I’m late. Had to see a man about a horse.”

“A what?” FNG asked, scratching the back of his head.

“He had to shit,” I answered.

Lock tossed him a folder. “All files stay offline. We don’t know who’s watching.”

“Shouldn’t we have Rae or Dash in on this?” Eli asked.

“They’ll be looking into this also, but they’re both busy at the moment. Kavanaugh, you said your old man was about to tell you something at the bar.”

I nodded, brushing away the memory of his cold, dead eyes. “We were arguing. He didn’t want to talk in his office. He was paranoid—said someone was listening in on him. I figured it was a campaign worker or an opponent. He said things were leaked that would only hurt him. He was pretty adamant that it wasn’t an opponent or anyone from his campaign. He was scared.”

I remembered how terrified he looked, how nervous he got as I brushed off his worries once again. He didn’t want to tell me, and I was ready to walk. I was tired of him always making excuses. Only this time, he really had something to be nervous about. They really were watching him. And as soon as he opened his mouth, they knew.

How? How did they fucking know he was going to talk? Did they have the bar tapped? Or was someone inside listening to our conversation? If only I had taken him seriously, he might still be alive today. He’d be telling us this information himself instead of me guessing at what he was trying to tell me.

I glanced up and noticed everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to continue. I cleared my throat and got back on track. “Um…he was worried about Mom and he said there was nowhere to hide from them. And then…and then I said some pretty shitty stuff to him. But I got through to him.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so righteous in my anger. I felt like a kid who failed his father. Because as wrong as my father was, he had come to me for help, and instead of getting him somewhere safe when I had the means and ability, I had taunted him, and now he was dead.

I swallowed down the growing lump in my throat and remembered his hand on mine at the table, how he stopped me from leaving. The last time he ever touched me. Fuck, he was reaching out to me and I failed him.

I swiped my hand at my face, shaking away the tears that threatened to fall. “He said…Shadow.”

“Shadow?” Lock asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked out.

When I finally looked up, it was to everyone staring at each other with an uneasy feeling in the room. I remembered thinking the same fucking thing as I stood over my father’s casket. But it couldn’t be. There was no fucking way it could be him.

“You don’t think?—”

“He’s everywhere,” Lock said, his brows furrowed in thought. “He has his hands in everything.”

“He’s Cash’s father,” I pointed out. “He’s Rafe’s father. If…if any of this were true, that would mean that not only did he help a man kidnap his own daughter and hold her for thirteen years, but he also allowed that man to have his own son killed.”

Lock looked around the room at all of us. “And he’s with Cash right now.”

“He has no fucking clue,” Eli muttered.

“No, but Knight is out there, too,” Red pointed out. “He’s the most likely to be objective. He didn’t know Rafe, so he doesn’t have the same skin in the game. We need to get ahold of him and fill him in on what we know.”

“Which is what, exactly?” I asked, still not sure where we landed on this. “Because all the old man said was Shadow. He could have meant anything.”

“He could have, but do you know many Shadows?” Lock asked.

I didn’t, but it also hadn’t felt like the senator had finished telling me whatever the hell he was going to say. And if there was more, we might be chasing the wrong fucking man.

“Just trust me on this. There could be more to this than we know. If Shadow is corrupt, then I know we have to go after him, but if he’s not?—”

“Alright,” Lock agreed. “We’ll talk to Knight. He can get a feel for what’s going on. We’ll take it from there.”

“And if it is Shadow?” Eli asked.

Lock shook his head. “Then I don’t know if we’ll ever get Cash back.”