5. Grayson
GRAYSON
And when I opened my eyes in a bright, sunshine-filled room, one thought rang out in my mind like a gong.
I fucked up.
How badly had I fucked up? Badly enough that instead of going home last night, I had rented a room in a nearby motel. There was no sense in making the near-hour drive back to Vegas when I knew I would only come this way again. I had to. I had to make things right somehow.
The only problem was I didn’t have the first clue what that looked like, making it right.
I had terrified her by being too blunt and forward.
I’d gone into it telling myself to tread lightly, but there was no tiptoeing around shit with a person who demanded truth they only thought they wanted to hear.
Yet another reason to suspect Dominic had more to do with her running away than he wanted to let on.
Sitting up in bed, my back protested after hours spent tossing and turning in a vain attempt at getting comfortable.
I might as well have slept on the floor.
A few stretches helped, and after a stop in the small but clean bathroom, I went through a series of push-ups and crunches to get my blood flowing and my brain clicking.
Dammit, I had fumbled the ball, but what was I supposed to do? It was obvious the girl was guarded, wounded, afraid. She must have left the casino after leaving me in that little café since I stuck around another hour and never saw her again.
By the time I finished my brief workout, it was clear whatever she had seen or been through was enough to scare her shitless. Instead of blaming myself for scaring her off, I needed to start thinking about what would make her run from me.
Not that it was my problem. The realization and the truth behind it made me uncomfortable, but it changed nothing. I had been sent here on a job. I had found my subject. All that was left was reporting back to Dominic. He could take it from there.
I told myself that. I did. And it was the truth.
But why did it leave such a bad taste in my mouth as I got in the shower? It wasn’t the shitty water pressure that left me uneasy. It was instinct.
Dominic had hardened over the years. I couldn’t forget that.
I quickly dried off, pulling on a pair of jeans and a favorite T-shirt.
I always kept a bag of clothes in the car, just in case my work meant spending an unexpected night or two away from home.
Even the comfort of my favorite old clothes didn’t ease the suspicion that had been building in me through the long, sleepless night.
Something about this situation did not sit well.
If Dominic had turned into the sort of guy who could build and maintain his own crew, what else was he capable of?
How much like his father was he? There was a reason he used to come to my house a lot versus me going over there.
Dad was no saint, nowhere close, but his temper was nothing compared to that of Paul Garibaldi.
Vivid memories assaulted me, bringing to mind days when he would roll up in front of the house, and the energy shifted instantly with both Dominic and Mrs. Garibaldi walking on eggshells until they were sure Paul was in a decent mood.
If he were, he would come in whistling, calling out for his family in an almost playful tone.
If not? If the front door slammed and the man of the house shouted rather than calling out playfully for his wife, Dominic would ask if he could have dinner at my house.
He would sometimes sleep over too. Mom always welcomed him and urged him to stay because she knew—people always knew, no matter how hard others tried to hide the truth.
Could I believe the apple fell too far from the tree?
Dominic would hardly be the first person who ever turned into the sort of monster he had grown up fearing.
Even though Paul disappeared when we were eighteen, the damage could have already been done.
Even if it hadn’t been, the following years spent in the company of men who revered their mothers and cheated on their wives right and left could have turned him into the sort of man who would give a woman no choice but to run away.
A beautiful woman too. The sort of beauty I couldn’t allow to work its way too deep into my awareness, or it would be way too easy to forget professionalism.
It was the sort of touching fragility with a hidden core of steel that left me longing to protect her rather than doing my job and walking away.
Admiring her beauty and bravery would lead to nothing good. I had to shut those thoughts down.
Still, I could understand why Dominic was drawn to her.
She was photogenic, but there was something about being in her presence that went beyond any photograph.
There was a light that radiated from her.
Even with her hair dyed a mousy brown that could only have come from a box, she couldn’t hide that light.
What would happen if I handed her over to Dominic?
How long would it take before that light went out?
What the fuck was I even thinking?
I was letting my imagination run away from me, making up stories that might have had no basis in reality.
Even if I were right, I had no business thinking of her as anything more than a woman in trouble.
Shaking myself free, I called the office and got Drake on the phone.
“I have a couple of things to settle out here before I drive up later,” I explained. “Did I miss anything?”
His dry, humorless laugh answered my question before he said a word. “Dominic Garibaldi called in five minutes ago. I was going to let you know, but you beat me to it.”
Closing my eyes, I released a breath. “What did he have to say?”
“For one thing, he seemed a little pissed that he still doesn’t have any way to reach you directly.” With another laugh, he added, “The word ‘policy’ doesn’t seem to mean anything to him.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll buy him a dictionary,” I grunted.
“I’m not about to change my policy for him.
” There was a reason nobody got my personal cell number.
Boundaries had to be maintained. Any other client would receive a number that connected them to my office, and shared history didn’t make a difference.
“I’m sure he doesn’t hand his private number out to just anyone. Was that all he had to say?”
“He’s looking for an update.” He paused before adding, “It has been five days since your lunch with him, and he only mentioned that around ten times.”
He was about as patient as his father had been. A man in his position was used to the rest of the world asking how high when he told them to jump. “I’ll reach out to him.”
The silence on the other end of the call didn’t bode well, even if it didn’t last long. “Can I ask exactly what’s going on with this one? Everybody knows the name Garibaldi. How do we make it out of this clean? I thought there were rules about the sort of clients we took on.”
Yes, there were rules. I couldn’t afford to risk a reputation I’d spent years building, recruiting the best and most reliable security and intel professionals, earning the respect of clients with deep pockets and large, wealthy networks.
There was no room to accept clients without thoroughly vetting them.
There was no need to vet a Garibaldi. As Drake said, the name was a familiar one. “You can ask, but that doesn’t guarantee an answer,” I replied on my way out to my truck. “Suffice it to say Dominic is an old friend in need of a personal favor. It’s my business.” Both literally and figuratively.
“I’m concerned,” Drake replied. “That’s all.”
“Everything’s under control,” I gritted out when my jaw tightened. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about the kind of clientele this is going to bring in. What happens when all of his mob buddies decide they need a little extra help too?”
My jaw was about to crack with all this clenching. “I didn’t know you were such a nervous person,” I replied with a razor-sharp edge in my voice while climbing into my truck. “Maybe this isn’t the right line of work for you if you’re so easily spooked.”
Since when does he question me?
Since when did I allow myself to get involved in a job?
“Sorry,” he mumbled, chastened. “I was out of line.” Somehow, I doubted his sincerity. It was better to let it go and avoid unnecessary conflict—a lesson Jack had managed to drill into my head over the years.
I hadn’t made it easy. Looking back, I often wondered why he’d gone to the trouble.
By the time we met, I was a disillusioned kid who’d had his entire life turned on its head—shitty, argumentative, convinced the straight and narrow was a path built only for suckers.
I might have walked away from the life, so to speak, but so much of the mentality had already been hardwired into my impressionable brain.
A brain I needed to get back in the game by the time I left the rather grim, rundown motel in which I’d spent the night.
I could either wait all day for Scarlet to show up at work—which she might not do if only to avoid my return because it would mean killing precious hours—or I could skip all that and drive straight to her apartment for an honest conversation.
She had moved into a little six-unit building four weeks ago and paid rent on a weekly basis.
The sort of bleak place on the edge of town where the owner didn’t ask many questions.
So long as they got their money on time, it didn’t matter if someone used a fake name.
Somebody like Scarlet would make a perfect tenant. She was quiet, single, and most likely valued her privacy after what she’d been through and what she was running from. It was barely a ten-minute drive there, and I spent the time going over what to say and how to avoid her calling the police.
The first thing I noticed upon entering the small parking area beside the building was her Chevy wasn’t around.
It was half past ten. Maybe she’d gone out to run errands.
Instinct told me otherwise. The girl worked the late shift at a twenty-four-hour business.
She wasn’t used to waking up this early.
Perhaps she had picked up an early shift?
Rather than sit in the truck and allow questions to paralyze me, I took action, stepping out and rounding the front of the building, sizing up my surroundings from behind a pair of aviators.
The small foyer beyond the front door contained six mailboxes mounted along one wall, five of which featured handwritten names on the metal doors.
The other was left blank. It was as good a clue as any.
Jogging up a narrow stairwell to the second floor, I located the apartment in question.
It wasn’t easy imagining someone like her living here, with the light that radiated from her or the beautiful smile she flashed so freely around the casino.
Granted, it was all in the name of professionalism, but knowing that made her no less magnetic.
And she lived in a building whose stairwell and hallways stank of rodent piss and roughly twenty years of stale cooking odors.
Jack might have slowly but surely conditioned me out of my old ways, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten the tricks I’d learned in those days.
Skills, rather, that I still occasionally used in my job.
Skills like breaking and entering after knocking on the door and waiting endless moments for an answer.
It took nothing—bubblegum would have kept her safer than this shitty, old lock.
All it took was a credit card to force the latch aside.
Slowly, I opened the door, cautious in case she was still inside but sleeping deeply. It took nothing but the briefest look around the cramped living room to know what she had done after fleeing the casino last night. Odds were she’d never see her coworkers again.
I searched the place to confirm my suspicions, noting the lingering scent of her floral perfume in the air. Her dresser drawers were empty, the bedroom closet bare, the bathroom free of toiletries.
She was gone.
She ran again.
This time, I had a choice to make. I could either let her go and wish her well, cutting ties with the entire situation, or I could track her down.
It hadn’t taken much to find her the first time.
I doubted she would present much of a challenge now, fleeing out of fear I had clumsily instilled in her.
Looking at it that way, there was no choice.
There was only action.
The moment Drake answered my call, I got straight to the point. “I’m going to need you to access those bank records again. It looks like she got spooked and ran.”