Chapter Three #2
Despite the stress, she still looked like a million bucks.
He could never decide if her fashion style was buttoned-up or slyly suggestive.
He’d never ask. She would knee him in the groin.
They were close, but friendships had a line.
Where would the line be for insisting on a bulletproof vest twenty-four hours a day?
Kevlar would definitely change how she dressed.
Sawyer rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn’t his place to notice how she carried herself in those high heels or that skirt.
They were coworkers. Friends. At times, bodyguard and protectee.
Not to mention, Angela was in a long-distance relationship.
Sawyer swallowed hard. Even if they didn’t have a laundry list of barriers that kept a relationship at bay, Angela was the kind of woman who only did serious, long-term relationships.
That wasn’t something Sawyer was capable of anymore.
He pulled his attention from her and swept the lobby for threats again.
Hagan and Liam stepped to the side as she joined them, subtly blocking Angela from the main reception area’s view.
Like hell they weren’t all treating her like she was under their collective protective detail until they knew what was going on.
Sawyer raised his chin.
Hagan crossed his arms. “Where’s Boss Man?”
“That’s the question of the day.” Angela pursed her lips and then let out a long breath. “I have no idea, and it’s driving me batty.”
“Did you touch base with Parker?” Sawyer asked. Parker, Titan’s tech guru, was based in the United States and led the global tech operations. He was in constant contact with Jared.
“We spoke before the sun was up.” Angela shook her head. “No dice.”
Stress knotted at the base of Sawyer’s neck.
“Maybe Parker knows and isn’t sharing?” Hagan suggested.
“That would be a good thought,” Angela agreed, “except he called me looking for Jared. As did Brock Gamble.”
Brock served as Jared’s number-two man in charge. If the second in command of all Titan’s operations didn’t know where Boss Man was, then Sawyer’s rising stress level was appropriate.
“Well, hell.” Liam frowned. “That’s a little unnerving.”
Her frown deepened. “Just a little.”
Liam’s phone buzzed. “It’s Chelsea. I’ll let you know if she knows anything.” He stepped away to answer the call from his wife.
“Well, I’m going to head upstairs.” Hagan turned toward the elevators. “Hit me up if you hear anything.”
Sawyer rubbed a hand over his face. “Will do.”
Angela wandered toward a couch in an alcove sitting area off the side and scowled at her phone.
Sawyer followed, grateful to get her out of the public’s line of sight, and sat beside her.
His gaze continued to pivot for threats.
She dropped her phone into her lap and, after an exasperated sigh, slumped on the couch.
Sawyer studied her. “Jared will turn up. We’ll get answers.” He pretended to relax. Or, at least, he tried. He repositioned his legs and threw an arm over the back of the couch.
“Jared’s not the only guy giving me a headache.”
He snorted. “Calling Tran Pham a headache is putting it lightly, but it will work out—”
“Not Pham.” She squeezed her eyes shut before giving him a pleading look. “Can I show you something?”
He gave up on pretending to relax. Acting wasn’t his talent, and her head was in a different place anyway. “Yeah, sure.”
“It has to do with Paul.”
Sawyer balked. “The boyfriend?”
They didn’t talk about her relationship.
Sawyer couldn’t remember how or when he learned the boyfriend existed.
Maybe it had been mentioned in Sawyer’s initial safety briefing when he was first assigned to Angela as a security detail for when she left the building.
Sawyer couldn’t recall Angela taking phone calls from Paul or sharing stories about the guy.
Paul never visited, and if he did, Sawyer wasn’t sure he’d like him.
Paul Bane looked like a Washington, DC politician.
Sawyer was confident that Paul would think and act like one too.
“I need a man’s perspective,” Angela prodded. “Please, Sawyer. Don’t make me beg for your two cents.” She pouted, and her pleading face made him laugh. “I can do this all day until you agree.”
Sawyer groaned and relented. “Fine. My perspective”—he gestured for to hit him with her question—“I’m ready.”
Her cute, pouty face melted into a grateful smile. “Earlier this week, for two days, he was blowing up my phone.”
All right, so she and the boyfriend had talked and texted. Sawyer scowled.
“But I was absurdly busy and running around to secure a safe house in Libya.”
He nodded, recalling an incident in Tripoli that called upon their team to haul ass across the Mediterranean Sea.
“I told him that I couldn’t respond.”
Sawyer leaned back. “You think he’s upset you blew him off? He’ll get over it.”
“I told him that unless he was dying or something, I’d call back later this week.” Her gaze flicked to his. They both knew that the Libyan safe house issue took only a few hours to figure out. “That sounds harsh. But it’s sort of how we’ve always operated.”
“All right.”
“Don’t judge. Okay?”
“I’m not judging.” Except he was. At least, he was analyzing. Angela, who was completely involved and invested in her friends and work, didn’t blow off conversations. Sawyer lifted his hands. “This is a no-judgment conversation.”
She picked up her phone and scrolled. “Then yesterday happened.”
“That was a hell of a day for you.”
“Yeah, someone tried to kill me, and I thought, ‘Gee, this is something I should tell Paul.’”
Sawyer had spent all day with Angela. She yelled and cried and decided she wouldn’t let the assassination attempt get the better of her.
Chelsea and Amanda had huddled with and hugged her.
Hagan had organized their teammates and support staff to meet at one of the hotel restaurant bars for a nightcap to top off the crappy day. Sawyer hadn’t seen Angela on her phone.
“I wasn’t dying,” she continued. “But, ya know, one bad shot away from dying. Closer to dying than any other time in recent history.” She didn’t ask a question, but she stared at him expectantly.
He shrugged because what else was he supposed to do? “I’d want to know if someone tried to kill my girlfriend.”
“Exactly.” She forced a laugh. “I tried to get a hold of him. Not like he did the other day with the flood of calls and texts. But I tried, and I made clear it was important.”
“Okay…?”
“I haven’t heard from him.”
Sawyer’s brows furrowed. What did she need that he and Titan hadn’t been able to give her? Then again, there were many things that a boyfriend could give her, even through a long-distance phone call. Pressure ticked in Sawyer’s jaw. “Okay…”
“You’re pausing and thinking a lot before you say anything,” she accused.
“Well… yeah.” He half laughed. “Is this more of a Chelsea or Amanda conversation?”
Her eyebrows reached toward the sky-high ceiling. “Absolutely not.”
His own eyebrows arched. “Because?”
“They each have a lot on their minds, and I don’t want to share my silly burdens. It feels trivial. But I can talk to you about anything. I trust you without reservation.”
He didn’t know what to make of Angela’s choice to avoid her friends. “We’ve never talked about your boyfriend.”
“There’s never anything to talk about. I don’t remember that I have a boyfriend half the time.” She shook her head. “Forget that. What I mean is—I want to know this: do you think he’s not answering because I wasn’t answering earlier this week?”
Damn, there was a lot to unpack in just a few words. “I mean… that would be childish.”
She fiddled with the delicate gold bangles that peaked from the cuff of her blouse. “He’s not childish.”
The tension in his neck tightened again. “So he’s just as busy as you are.”
“Sawyer, I said it was very important.”
“Look…” He sucked in a deep breath that did little to ease the discomfort corkscrewing his trapezoids. Sawyer searched for a diplomatic answer. “He doesn’t know what’s happened. You didn’t say, and, tit-for-tat, you both ignored each other. So…”
Angela’s lips pursed.
What was he trying to say here? Defending Paul wasn’t on his agenda. Then again, Sawyer didn’t have an agenda. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”
She deflated as though he’d punctured the last reserve of hope she’d been guarding.
“There are a million things that could be going on,” Sawyer tried. His semi-defense of Paul ratcheted up the ick factor. He pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no reason to neg on the guy when Sawyer didn’t have both sides of the story. “I don’t think I’m a lot of help.”
She held her phone up to him. “Will you look at this and tell me if it reads as crazy as it made me feel?”
A small picture of Paul Bane was at the top of the message.
The image looked like a corporate headshot.
Or a political one. The type in which the guy smiled as though he was trying to portray his trustworthiness and relatability.
The churning in Sawyer’s stomach double-timed. “You don’t want me to read that.”
“Yeah, I do. I need some perspective.” She shoved the phone closer. “There’s no one else in this entire building that I would ask.”
He cut her a glance. “Talk to Chelsea or Amanda. What about Jane?”
“I already explained that I can’t.”
“They’re your girlfriends.”
“I can’t. Sawyer, come on.” She repositioned on the couch, sliding closer, and made the pouty face that knocked out his defenses. “I’m going to beg again, and no one wants that.”
The faint, familiar hint of her perfume enticed him to steal another glance at her effective pout.
“I almost died yesterday.”
He pulled back and laughed. “I was there, Ange.”
“That’s gotta count for a favor or two. Please?”
Sawyer shook his head but gave in. He browsed her message to Paul. It read like a business email, complete with a subject line.
Important: Need to discuss.
When is a good time to connect?