Chapter Four
The second police interview was shorter but no less frustrating. Detective Siegman took one look at the intruder and immediately started making calls to federal agencies. Within an hour, he had been taken into custody Holly had been "strongly encouraged" to find somewhere else to stay.
"I don’t even know where to go," Holly muttered as she threw clothes into an overnight bag.
The police had barely left when her phone rang.
"It's my father."
"You should answer it."
Her father would want explanations, would demand that she come home where he could protect her properly.
He'd use this threat as leverage to pull her back into his world, back under his control.
But she also knew that ignoring him wasn't an option anymore.
Not when people were breaking into her apartment and slashing her tires.
"What are you involved in now?" she answered, proud that her tone came out steady.
“Are you hurt?”
Holly's gaze snapped to Jonah, who had the grace to look slightly guilty. "I’m fine. Thanks to the bodyguard you hired."
"I need you to listen to me very carefully. You're in serious danger. I'm sending a car to bring you home."
"No." The word came out harder than Holly had intended. "You remember how well me living at home worked out last time.”
"Forget about that. That doesn’t matter right now. This is about the Popov case, and these people don't make idle threats."
Holly blinked in shock. "The Anatoli Popov trial? The arms dealer?"
She'd been avoiding news about her father for years, but that case was impossible to miss.
Anatoli Popov ran an international weapons trafficking operation that had supplied guns to criminal organizations across three continents.
The trial had been going on for months, and her father was the presiding judge. Why were they making a move now?
"The prosecution is pushing for life without parole. Popov's sons have been trying to find leverage to influence the outcome."
"Leverage." Holly's stomach dropped into her shoes. "You mean me."
“I had thought our estrangement would have kept you off their radar, but I wasn’t completely sure. That’s why Jonah has been watching you.”
“Yeah, that was a shitty thing to do without telling me.”
“Had you taken my calls, you would have known.”
“Don’t put this on me.”
“I’m not.” Her father sighed. “I don’t want to fight. I want you to come home.”
If the case wasn’t so notorious and if she hadn’t heard a Russian accent in her intruder’s voice, she might have thought this was one of her father’s elaborate schemes to get her back under his thumb.
"I don’t want to live with you," Holly said, even as her words shook slightly. She had barely escaped from him last time. She’d take her chances with the Russians. She hung up.
The silence in her apartment was deafening. Jonah was staring at her like she'd lost her mind.
"That was remarkably stupid," he said finally.
"Probably." Holly shrugged, surprised by how calm she felt. "But I'm sure as hell not going to let my father use this as an excuse to control me again."
"He's trying to keep you alive."
"He's trying to keep me dependent on him. There's a difference."
"What are you going to do?"
“My father hired you to protect me, right?”
He nodded.
“I guess he’s going to get his money worth, isn’t he?”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. I can protect you better in that walled fortress, he calls a home.”
"Over my dead body."
"That might be the alternative."
Holly shot him a glare that could have melted steel. "Whose side are you on here?"
"Yours," he said.
"Then stop trying to ship me off to my father."
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
"And I'm trying to keep my sanity and hard won independence.” Holly zipped up her bag with more force than necessary. “There has to be a middle ground."
"You could stay with me."
Holly's hands stilled on her bag. "What?"
"My apartment. It's next door, so you don’t have to uproot your entire life. It’s fortified, and I can keep you safe."
The offer sent a thrill through her that she had no business feeling. Staying with Jonah would be dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with armed intruders. But the alternative was either her father's house or a hotel room where she'd spend every night jumping at shadows.
"For how long?”
“Until this trial is over.”
“How long will that be?” she said.
“As long as it takes.”
She sighed. It was better than living at her father’s house.
“Okay.”
***
JONAH'S APARTMENT WAS a study in contradictions.
Spartan and functional, but with expensive details that suggested either excellent taste or a very generous employer.
The furniture was minimal but high-quality, the kitchen was spotless but clearly well-used, and the living room contained very few personal items. There was a chess set, a framed photo of a military unit, and a stack of books that ranged from tactical manuals to poetry.
"Poetry?" Holly picked up a worn copy of Neruda and raised an eyebrow. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"
Jonah looked slightly embarrassed. "Helps me sleep."
"Pablo Neruda helps you sleep? Most people would find love poetry stimulating rather than sedating."
"Ode to My Socks appeals to me."
Opening up the book, she flipped through it. “I like his love sonnets.”
“Don’t read them aloud.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t be able to stop myself from kissing you.”
The quiet admission hung in the air between them, loaded with implications Holly wasn't sure she was ready to explore. She set the book down carefully and turned to find Jonah watching her with an intensity that made her pulse flutter.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, though his tone suggested food was the last thing on his mind.
"Starving," Holly said, though she wasn't entirely sure they were talking about dinner anymore.
Jonah moved toward the kitchen with that predatory saunter that she was becoming addicted to watching. "I make a mean pasta carbonara."
"Of course you do. Mysterious bodyguard by day, gourmet chef by night."
"I'm a man of many talents."
The promise in his voice sent Holly’s hormones into overdrive. She followed him into the kitchen, hyperaware of the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt as he pulled ingredients from the refrigerator.
"So what's your story?" she asked, settling onto one of the bar stools across from where he was working. "Military, obviously."
Jonah paused what he was doing. "What makes you say that?"
"My father hires only the best. Besides, you took care of my intruder like someone who's been trained to kill people with your bare hands."
"I prefer not to kill people if I can avoid it, bare hands or not."
She had been joking, but he obviously wasn’t. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, "But you could if you had to?"
"Yes."
That was unsettling. "How many people have you killed?"
Jonah's hands went completely still on the whisk. For a long moment, he didn't answer, and Holly thought he might refuse to. "Enough that I stopped counting."
"Does it bother you? Killing people?"
"Every single one. I’m not a psychopath. The day it stops bothering me is the day I'll know I've lost my soul completely."
Holly absorbed this, trying to reconcile the gentle man who'd brought her coffee with the trained killer standing in front of her. "How did you end up working for my father?"
"I got out two years ago. Honorable discharge, full pension, the whole nine yards. But I didn't know how to..." He gestured vaguely. "How to be normal. How to live in a world where the biggest crisis is whether your coffee order is right."
Holly waited, sensing there was more.
"Your father's people found me in a bar in Virginia. I'd been there for three days straight, trying to drink myself into forgetting what I'd done overseas." Jonah's laugh was bitter. "They offered me a job that would let me use my skills for something other than destroying lives."
"Like babysitting me?"
"Protecting people who need protection." Jonah finally looked at her, and the pain in his gaze made her chest ache. "I wanted to think I could be more than just a weapon someone else pointed at their enemies."
Holly slipped off the bar stool and moved around the counter. She stopped close enough to touch him but not quite daring to. "You are more than that."
"Why are you being so nice to me? All I've done is lie to you from the moment we met."
"You were doing your job."
"No." Jonah turned to face her fully. "My job was to watch you from a distance. Report on your activities, your contacts, any potential threats. What I did was manipulate my way into your life because I wanted to be close to you."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that the moment I saw you through your window, covered in paint and completely lost in your art, I knew I was in trouble.
" Jonah's hands clenched at his sides. "I'm saying that everything I've done since then has been about wanting you, not protecting you.
I've made a lot of choices I'm not proud of, but I'm trying to do better. "
Before Holly could respond, Jonah's phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and went rigid.
"I have to take this." He stepped out onto the balcony, and Holly could hear fragments of the conversation through the glass door.
Sharp, clipped sentences that made her blood run cold even though she couldn't make out all the words.
When Jonah returned, his face was grim.
"What's wrong?" Holly asked, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"There was a shooting at your father's courthouse twenty minutes ago. A security guard was hit in the parking garage."
She staggered backward until her hip hit the counter, her mind struggling to process what he'd said. "Is my father—"