Hot Contract (2 page)

They reached the open space around Keegan and
the first two stepped back.

“Mr. Dalfrey?” The man in the center stepped
forward and frowned. “I’m Merlin Stalling. We talked.”

“You talked,” said Keegan. He rolled over on
his good side and closed his eyes.

“You have a situation, we have an issue.”
Merlin had a stuffed shirt English accent. Too bad his tight
body-conscious white linen suit didn't match. “I think we can be of
mutual benefit to each other.”

Keegan pushed to his feet, slid the phone in
his pocket, and folded his arms. “StallingCo has security.”

“You’ve heard of us,” said Merlin.

Keegan stood his ground. Now that the game
was done, they could get down to business. “I’m not hearing
specifics.”

“My uncle would like to hire you. Name your
price.”

****

Jen pulled her head out of her folded
arms.

Her father’s on-site security man shrugged,
hands open.
What would you have me do?

Damn Chandler for allowing the Project staff
to treat her like a total nut-job.
Nothing,
she glared.

“They killed her,” she told the PR man at the
far end of the table. “I didn’t imagine it.”

“It’s been a traumatizing experience—”

“I said I didn’t imagine it.”

“Suicide,” murmured the Project Official,
some oily person she didn’t know. “Maybe an accident?” He pushed a
bowl across the table. “These things happen. Would you like an
egg?”

“Not to Terri.” She pushed the eggs back.

The PR man leaned into her face and looked at
the condition of her eyes. A box of tissue was placed next to the
eggs, along with a small bottle of water. She made no response.

He stood up and turned to the man next to
him. “She's obviously in shock.”

Chandler moved from his position near the
door to a different one where he could look out down the hall. He’d
disappeared shortly after depositing her in a small room behind the
security office. She had no illusions. He’d called her father, and
now he was waiting for a response.

She curled her hands down in her lap while
the man from PR scribbled away in a small notebook, eyeing Jen with
the kind of speculative look that made her want to scream.

She gave him a tight smile. “I’m a geologist,
not a liar.”

“I never called you a liar, Ms.
Stalling.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you saw something and might have
misinterpreted it,” he said, obviously aware Jen was beyond
anger.

She swept the bowl off the table. “Get
out.”

“Ms. Stalling?”

Jen surged to her feet, breathing hard
through her nose. “I know I witnessed a murder! Get out and leave
me alone!”

****

Keegan sped down the narrow lane strung out
on nerves and caffeine, but clean—all the funk of his last mission
washed down the drain. He wished he could wash away the guilt. He
had ten days left to earn the price of his brother’s freedom.

According to the built-in GPS, he was in the
right place—up a mountain, freezing his ass off. He turned on the
heat and cracked the window. Anywhere else he’d be filtering
mosquitoes through his teeth. A yellow sign with the international
sign for NO warned off intruders. What the hell was wrong with this
place?

He’d already wasted three days in transit.
According to his bona-fides, he was a miracle worker. He felt like
Death in a wheelchair, rolling up a switchback so new the asphalt
glittered like diamonds. If the StallingCo heiress was at the end
of it, she had no more sense than a howler monkey.

He was in over his head, playing bodyguard to
a rich kid with a knack for being in the wrong place at the right
time. Connor did close-in, Keegan ran tac-ops. If they hadn’t been
over-extended. If Connor hadn’t grabbed the boy. The cheap aspirin
made his gut hurt. His sister had passed him something better, but
he needed a clear head to save Connor. Who was he kidding, running
scared for so long? Fatigue hit him in a dizzying rush—Jesus, the
what-ifs were killing him.

He pulled into a parking lot backed by an
enormous black building. A red and white ambulance blocked the
entrance while a couple of paramedics loaded a dripping body bag
into the rear. They were supposed to seal tight. Guess not.

“Mr. Dalfrey?” A big man in a green polo
shirt and khakis waved Keegan to an unobtrusive door beside the
main entrance. “I’m Chandler. Thank you for coming.”

Keegan shrugged his heavy camouflage jacket
into place and nodded at the ambulance. “Accident?”

“Internal problem.”

He waited until Keegan got right up on him
before sticking his hand out. His teeth were big and white. Keegan
could see them all and nobody had teeth that good.

“Call me Bobby,” Chandler said. “I hope we
can take care of this little issue just as quickly. Mr. Stalling is
concerned about the effect of prolonged stress on his daughter
Guinevere’s mental stability.”

Jesus. “
Is
she unstable?”

Chandler gave him a hard look. “She’s
delicate. Is that a problem?”

“You gonna pay me?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s not a problem.”

Chandler stepped back, and gestured Keegan
past him. “We have her in the rear observation room. She’s been
there since the incident.”

Twelve hours in a rubber room? His week
couldn’t get much worse, stuck in the middle of hick-nowhere with a
bunch of killers and a woman crazy enough to ditch a plum genetic
assignment as a billionaire heiress for the fascinating life of a
geologist. And she wasn’t mentally unstable? Keegan adjusted his
still empty holster. Oh hell yeah.

****

Jen paced back and forth, shivering in the
hot, filtered air. Rain drizzled down the window glass, steady and
monotonous. Her eyes burned, tears stopped up like her
emotions.

We Stallings….

Power to shake the world, and she couldn’t
cry to fill a teaspoon. They hadn’t even pretended to look for
Terri’s killers. Jen’s protected position as Art Stalling's crazy
daughter was the only reason she hadn’t been admitted for
observation. Instead they’d confined her to this dinky room while
StallingCo tried to
fix
things.

Chandler rapped sharply on the door, then
cleared his throat in that officious way he used when trying to
impress someone. The twit.

“Ms. Stalling?” he said. “This is Keegan
Dalfrey. He’ll be staying with you for a few days.”

No one she knew, and not from around here,
not with that coloring. Keegan’s easy to forget face didn’t fool
her for a minute. His eyes gave him away, cold and dark gray. Tawny
hair cut tight to his head and thin, arrogant lips.

“Ma’am,” he said. “Your father sent me to
negate your current threat situation.”

Jen pulled her jacket tight, fists knotted in
the damp yellow fabric. “I’d like to go home.”

“Before we do that,” he said. “I’d like to
talk to you and get a grip on the situation—”

“I want to go home.”

“Ma’am. For your own good—”

“
Now!
” she screamed. “I want to go
home...now.” Her chest heaved and she couldn’t breathe—“I want to
go home now, damn it! Please....”

Keegan saw Chandler roll his eyes, which was
about all he could take. He didn’t play well with others, and
“Bobby” Chandler wasn’t just an ass, but a goddamned idiot. Keegan
shoved him out into the hall and wedged a chair under the doorknob.
He knew they were being recorded, but the window was still a nice
touch; giving the illusion of freedom to what was essentially a
cell. With the door closed the room looked smaller than it really
was. A table and two utility chairs took up most of the space,
although Guinevere Stalling was trying her damnedest to shove
herself through the opposite wall.

He leaned against the door and eyed her
without changing position. “How long have you been in here?”

Not something she’d expected to hear and that
was for damned sure. She stopped in mid-scream and blinked warily.
“I...don’t know,” she whispered, rough and hesitant. “They fed
me.”

“If those eggshells are leftovers, it’s no
wonder you want out.” He waited until she got a good look at him
before he straightened. “I’m here to help you, Ms. Stalling. I
can’t do that with you all crazy on me.”

Her eyes were golden-brown like sunshine
through good whiskey and slightly tipped at the corners. “We
Stallings are all crazy, Mr. Dalfrey. We breed for it.”

“Ma’am, if you’d call me Keegan, I’d
appreciate it. You look like you’re in shock and hungry, but I
don’t think you’re crazy.”

That got him another, much harder look. “You
don’t belong to my father,” she said, abruptly.

“No, ma’am.”

She brushed the hair out of her eyes and a
long black ponytail tumbled out of her jacket, rippling over her
shoulders in a fall of black silk. He’d thought her stocky and
androgynous, but the stocky bit was dead wrong, and her clothes
were the only androgynous things about her.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and
finally nodded at him. “My name is Jen.”

He nodded back. “C’mon, Jen. Let’s get you
out of here.”

****

Jen didn't think they’d escape so easily.
Chandler caught them on the way out, his bland corporate face
intent and serious.

He handed Keegan a heavy canvas tote. “You’ll
need these,” he said.

Keegan looked inside. “That accident—”

“Is under control,” Chandler said smoothly.
“We’re having sporadic personnel issues.”

Jen felt sick. “Security is compromised.”

“We’re working on it,” said Chandler.

“I’ve put years into the geothermal linkage.
Its two months from finalizing—”

Keegan grabbed her shoulder, turning her to
face him. “It's not worth your life.”

“Don't touch me!” She shrugged away from him,
too tired to fight. One hand swept up over her still dry face and
snagged on her tightly held lips, pressing the pain back in.

Chandler went very bland. “We’ll talk later.
For now, do what Mr. Dalfrey says. StallingCo will handle things on
this end.”

Jen stumbled in Keegan’s wake and let him
buckle her in. The ride passed in a blur. Just inside her
subdivision, Keegan pulled his unmarked StallingCo loaner vehicle
off on the side of the road. The engine purred softly. Terri was
dead, and God knew who else. Project security was compromised. Jen
stared down at her clenched fists. Her fingernails were torn and
dirty, and she couldn't remember how they got that way. A watery,
gray sunset slanted through the thick undergrowth. The temperature
was falling. It was warm in the car, but she couldn’t stop
shivering. She rubbed the back of her fists, over and over; down
over her thighs, pressing hard as if smearing dirt over her already
stained khakis would make the blood go away.

Keegan shrugged out of his jacket and passed
it to her. He waited until she took it before loosely curling his
hands around the steering wheel. In the light from the console,
they were big and raw-boned. All scraped and bruised like he’d hit
something.

“I’m no good at this personal protection
thing,” he said. He cleared his throat. He had some kind of
southern accent, a faint drawl that sounded like he’d spent a lot
of time somewhere else. “Can you...put the jacket on? Please? You
keep shivering.”

The heavy fabric smelled like him, and even
having that little bit of another person inside her personal space
made her uncomfortable. Kindness, in her experience, meant people
wanted something. What did he want from her?

Her brows drew down. “Why does it bother
you?”

“Just put it on, okay?”

She hesitated, then slowly drew the jacket up
over her own. The sick feeling in her stomach oozed away and she
rolled her head back against the head rest. “Thank you,” she said
quietly.

He sighed and put the car in gear. “Not a
problem.”

****

Rain crossed the road in visible sheets,
silvery-gray for the second it was caught in the headlights and
death-black behind them. The bodyguard thing wasn’t going well, but
to throw Fallon or Corlis in on an all or nothing contract wasn’t
an option.

Jen’s property just outside Volcano Village
sprawled over five acres at the end of a dirt access road. The
subdivision was sparsely settled, and Keegan left the engine
running while he watched the clearing around her house. He cut the
engine. The car was safe enough. They’d told him it was armored.
Jen’s breathing was still tight and labored, but she’d stopped
shivering.

“No surprises, okay? Let me go first.”

She handed him the keys and he got out. A
quick search turned up no intruders. He opened the car door and
stepped back. “C’mon.”

Jen wobbled from her seat. He’d left the
living room light on and it made the greenish cast to her face look
like paint. She took two steps and abruptly dropped to her knees,
arms locked down over her stomach, shoulders shaking. He pulled her
up into his arms and into the shelter of the half-porch, one hand
sweeping protectively over her back. Nothing came out, but that
didn’t stop her from dry-heaving.

“Don’t touch me,” she croaked. Any other
woman would be crying, but Jen's eyes were red-rimmed and
absolutely dry.

“I thought about that,” he said, still
rubbing, but for a totally different reason now. “I thought maybe I
should let you fall. Maybe I should just back off. Maybe go
inside.” She was pressed to him from head to toe and everywhere
in-between, and didn’t it just figure his body would take the
opportunity to sit up and beg. This wasn’t the time or place,
though, and it sure as hell wasn’t the right person. His hand came
to rest on the small of her back and clenched. “But then I
thought—honey, I need to touch you. If something happens, I can’t
hesitate over your comfort zone.”