Mission: Out of Control (2 page)

“Father?”

“Come in, Veronica.”

Ronie stepped inside the study. A desk lamp puddled orange over the leather blotter on the mahogany desk. His briefcase lay on the credenza, under a family picture, now nearly fifteen years old. Ronie barely glanced at it, not really recognizing any of the four of them.

“You can help yourself to a drink.” He gestured with
a glass of something amber—bourbon, probably—still not turning from the window.

“I still don't drink alcohol, Father,” she said, but moved over to the bar and poured herself a glass of cranberry juice. It helped to have something to hold on to when the senator began his orations.

“Not that anyone would ever know.”

She braced herself.

“Sometimes, I can't believe that is actually my daughter making a spectacle of— No. I promised your mother.” He sighed, turned and, for the first time, let his eyes rest on her. She stifled a tremble, not because he frightened her—well, not much, anymore—but because she saw in his hazel-green eyes such sadness, it filled her throat with something scratchy and hard.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “It's part of the act.”

He looked away, rubbing his thumb along the glass. He nodded. “Have a seat.”

Not a request—it never was, so she slipped into the Queen Anne chair against the wall. Her father settled one hip against the desk, his pant leg riding up to reveal a dark sock. He probably hadn't had to change for dinner—he had simply gotten up that morning and dressed in a suit and tie. But they'd all been hiding inside their own costumes since Savannah's death, hadn't they?

He took a breath, and in the gap of space, she wondered if maybe she should go first—a burst of
Father, I need your help
might detour the dressing-down.

Or not. Maybe it would only add ammunition. She took a sip of her juice and balanced it on her lap, staring at the bloodred liquid.

“I want you to cancel your European tour.”

Her head shot up, but he already had his hand up to stop her words.

“I'm not trying to interfere with your career, Veronica. But the truth is…I've had some disturbing threats lately, and I'm just not sure that you should be parading around in nightclubs across Europe when there are men out there who'd like to see me dead—or worse, at their mercy.”

Her father had always been an epic presence in her life. Even now, he seemed invincible, his hair dark as oil, his face unlined, his shoulders broad. The sigh that shuddered through him shook her again.

“What are you talking about?”

He set his drink on the desk. “As the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I am the one who suggested the embargo on Zimbala. General Mubar has decided that I'm an enemy of his people, and that's putting it kindly. He's made a few personal threats lately, the kind that I should take seriously.”

“General Mubar wants to hurt you?”

“General Mubar thinks I'm standing in the way of the United States recognizing his illegal government.”

She edged forward in her seat. “You know he's starting to recruit child soldiers, right?” She still had the images from her tour imprinted in her head.

“I know, and that's why I recommended that we establish economic sanctions against Zimbala. And why the general's made a very public pledge to hurt me…and I'm worried that will affect you.”

“Why me?”

“After your too-publicized visit there three years
ago, he's convinced you had a hand in influencing my decision.”

“But I went as Vonya. There was no connection to you.”

“Maybe you think this crazy identity as Vonya hides you, but I'm sure Mubar, just like my colleagues in Washington, has figured out who you are. I don't know for sure, but we can't take any chances.” He paused, looked at his drink, then back to her.

His gaze seemed to part her chest, burn it. Finally, “Veronica, no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to sever that connection.”

Right. Somehow, she found her voice, although when it emerged, it cracked, and sounded nothing like either of the women she worked so hard to be. “I'm not trying to sever that connection—”

A knock at the door cut into her words. “Your guest is here,” Marguerite said.

“Give us a moment, then show him in.”

Oh, hallelujah, her father had set her up on a date. Now she could spend the entire evening fighting sleep to the tune of some political discussion or a treatise on a new case before the Supreme Court. Didn't he know by now that she'd never fall for a man he'd handpicked? She wanted a poet, or perhaps a musician—someone who embraced life and wasn't made of stone. “Lawyer or politician, Father?”

He frowned at her, as if he had no idea what she might be referring to. “Business, Veronica.”

Whatever. She hoped her “date” didn't expect a good-night kiss. “Listen, I understand your warning, but I can't cancel my tour. The record label already took a chance
on me, taking me from an indie band to a regular on the pop charts. I need this tour to keep my momentum. Frankly, even if I wanted to cancel, I couldn't. I'd lose all my deposits and end up owing my firstborn child to the record label.”

His face twitched.
Oh, great choice of words, Veronica.
She set her drink on the table. Might as well go for broke, since…she was. “The fact is, I need…I need help.”

His right eyebrow went up.

“I'm a little in the red right now.”

He folded his arms across his chest, and oh, yes, he had her right where he wanted her.

“I lost a lot with the stock market crash, and then, my accountant made some tax mistakes, and I ended up paying back taxes and penalties—”

“Are you still using your Harvard friend for your accounting?”

“—and Tommy D redid the condo for a photo shoot, and it went way over budget—”

“Did I mention I think he has stretched your image a little far? I don't know why you insist on using your college friends to help your…career, or whatever you're calling your flamboyant—”

“Father, please, Tommy D is a great manager, and this is what it takes to stand out.”

“Tommy D'Amico recognized ‘sucker' written all over you the second he saw you serving at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. I think you need to look a little closer at why your money seems to be vanishing.”

“I'm not a fool for wanting to help people, Father.”

“But you've become a fool doing it.”

She stared at her juice, suddenly seeing again her so-called rescuer's disgust.

Her father sighed, turned back toward the window. “So, you need money.”

She fought for her voice. “I'm good for it—you know that. I just…well, we put a lot into this tour already and I can't back out. I was hoping…”

She winced. Okay, really, she felt sixteen, and begging for the car keys. How did she ever talk herself into believing this was a good idea?

But to her surprise, he began to nod, a gleam in his eye, something she'd seen too many times when he knew he had her cornered. Oh, no… “I think we can work something out.”

“Really?” She hated how she nearly lunged at his words.

He got up from the desk and walked over to the door. “I predicted that you would be averse to my suggestion to cancel, so I was prepared with a counteroffer. Which, I think, might be a win for both of us. Veronica, you can go to Europe on my dime, on one condition.”

Her stomach tightened with a sick feeling. “What?”

He opened the door. “Come in, please.” Then he backed away, wearing a smile that she'd seen on his campaign posters. “I'd like you to meet your new bodyguard.”

Her father's henchman stepped up to the door, six-foot-plus of solid muscle, now dressed in a pedestrian suit, his dark, curly hair combed and tidy, his familiar, unforgiving eyes on her, looking serious, powerful and made of stone.

She let a groan escape. “Oh, no.” See? Solid proof that, cosmically, she would never get on God's good side.

“Brody Wickham,” he said, holding out his hand. He smiled, looking nothing like the scowler she'd met in the dark alley outside the D.C. club. Then—and frankly, she should have expected his sarcasm—he asked, “Have we met?”

“H
ave we met?”
Her words, repeated back to him, came out almost like a whisper, her big hazel-green eyes gulping him in as she slipped her hand in his. It took him a second—as her fingers closed around his hand—to realize that she was mocking him. “Very funny,” she said without a smile.

He stared at the girl, short brown hair in tight ringlets around her head, a slim black dress, a cultured strand of pearls at her neck, and tried to place her.

“Uh…I'm serious. You father said we'd met, but I don't remember…” He slipped his hand from hers, casting a look at Senator Wagner. “Sir?”

Senator Wagner embodied everything Brody's father had described—serious, a Harvard lawyer, a three-term senator with a hearty knowledge of foreign policy. He exuded the same aura of power that Brody once had while commanding his squad. Only now, a strange expression played on the senator's face.

“You don't recognize the woman you rescued the other night, Mr. Wickham?”

Brody turned back to his newest client, peering at her even as she stepped back from him. And then, he saw it.
The slight hesitation, coupled with the hint of frown not unlike the one the crazy pink-haired rock star displayed right before she'd left her handprint on his cheek.

“Vonya? Seriously?” Oh, no.

“You're kidding me, right?” She looked first at Brody, then her father, and he couldn't figure out whom she might be talking to. “You want
him
to be my bodyguard?”

“That's right. You two already know each other, and I did a background check. Mr. Wickham here works for an international security firm out of Prague. He's a former Green Beret, and he's got the experience I'm looking for—”

“
You're
looking for? What about me? Do I have any say in this?” She stared back at Brody but his instincts told him to just keep his mouth shut. Not that she would let him speak. “Vonya” had begun to materialize via the sarcastic, exasperated tone. “You're holding me hostage. No wait—this is
blackmail.
” But as she turned to her father, Vonya morphed back into this strange, almost breakable woman with pleading eyes. “Listen, I
will have
a bodyguard. But I want to pick him—especially if he's going to shadow all my concerts.”

“Not just during your concerts, Veronica, but every moment, 24/7. I'm not letting General Mubar—or even last year's crazy stalker, if we really have to go there—find you in the halls of the hostels you and your crew insisted on staying in last time.”

“Nonprofit housing, Father, and everything I do to help them goes to help the homeless in Europe. It was part of the tour hype, and where I got my first fans. I can't desert them. I'm just as safe there as I would be in
a Hyatt. What is he going to do? Sit outside my door as I sleep?”

“If I have to,” Brody said. But to start out, he'd just affix a security system onto her accommodations, and if anyone went in or out, he'd know. A room next door, or across the hall, would be just fine.

And there would be no youth hostels on this pleasure cruise. At least he and the senator agreed on that much.

Even if, right now, everything inside him screamed to turn and run from this room, this mansion, and back to his parents' humble ranch home on the verge of being owned by the bank.

And it happened to be precisely that thought—his parents, homeless, after feeding nine children and working their fingers to the bone—that kept him rooted to the floor.

It was bad enough that Derek planned on joining the military rather than pursuing his basketball scholarship. Who turned down a partial ride to Duke?

Their conversation while they'd been playing a little one-on-one in the driveway—the one that ended with him nearly shouting at his brother—rushed back to him.
“Over my dead body.”
He hadn't been sure where his anger came from, but with everything inside him, and more, he knew his brother wasn't giving up Duke to throw his future away in the military.

Derek had stared at him, an openmouthed gape that Brody probably could have predicted. It wasn't like he'd ever dissed the military before.

And, up until a year ago, he wouldn't have stood in his brother's way. But the days of fighting his fellow man
had vanished. Now, wars were fought against grade-schoolers with guns and idealistic teenagers with bombs strapped to their bodies. In the villages and homes of innocent women and toddlers. No way would he let his brother be caught in the middle of that.

A guy simply didn't heal from those kinds of wounds. “No way,” he'd said.

“You love the military. What's your deal?”

“Join ROTC, become an officer. But no, you're not joining up to be a grunt.”

“It's not up to you,” Derek said, reaching for the ball.

And the only thing that saved them both had been Senator Wagner on the other end of the cell phone, rescuing Brody from losing it at his brother and saving their financial hide at the same time.

Talk about his instincts misfiring.

“You didn't tell me that your daughter was ‘Vonya,' Senator, when you asked me to protect her.” Indeed, Brody had imagined some cultural princess who needed her bags carried as she sashayed down the Champs-Élysées. Maybe he'd done the math too quickly—a hundred grand would keep his brother out of the military, at least in the short term, and give him a head start on his future. The kid could change the world, maybe, someday. And paying off his parents' loan could ease Brody's pain at seeing his father struggling to move around the house, trying to recover from his stroke.

“What did you think? I did mention a musical tour.”

Violins. Beethoven. A gig with a snooty cellist, perhaps. It was possible—right now, Veronica looked like
she could wield a cello while being a spokeswoman for the Daughters of the American Revolution, or perhaps standing next to her father on the campaign trail.

“You didn't mention crazy,” Brody said, and enjoyed, probably too much, the gap-mouthed glare from Veron—Von—whoever.

“My security check suggested you could handle this.”

Clearly, the good senator had checked into his decorations, his medals, his commendations—but hadn't bothered to talk to Chet. His boss would be over the desk, throttling him if he knew Brody had practically cannonballed back into work. Thankfully, Chet had probably turned off his cell phone when he and Mae had escaped for their honeymoon.

And what Chet didn't know wouldn't hurt him, right? Brody would return to the office in Prague after a month, mandatory R & R accomplished, having outfitted his family with a better future. Seemed like the perfect way to shake free of his demons.

Not if Veronica had her way. “Father, how about a female bodyguard? I mean, after all, I'm going to do some shopping—”

“I'm sure Mr. Wickham can shop.”

Um…

“He doesn't even like my music! You should have seen him the other night. He looked like he'd eaten a gourd of
morsick!
”

Nope, he hadn't. African
morsick
—fermented goat's milk in a charcoal-lined gourd—was a lot, or, okay, a little worse than listening to her so-called music.

“He doesn't have to like your music, Veronica. He's getting paid to keep you safe.”

Veronica, Vonya, whoever—Brody was searching for any physical resemblance to the flamboyant sci-fi character he'd seen on the stage in this Miss Culture and Pearls—turned and stalked toward the window. She stared out of it, hard jawed. “I don't want him. Pick
anyone else
but him.”

For the first time since Brody entered the room, Senator Wagner frowned, pursed his lips, and cast a look at Brody as if considering her request. Like Brody might not be a great fit for his daughter, regardless of her wacky persona.

Her words bothered Brody, too. Why
not?

Even if he didn't want to babysit Vonya the Superstar, Veronica the Sorority Girl's attitude was starting to get on his nerves. He'd done close protection on more important subjects than the Chameleon over there. “What's the problem?”

She rounded on him, her eyes flashing. “Because, Mr. Wickham, you are a jerk. Without asking, you decided I needed rescuing—”

“You were hiding underneath a speaker!” His gaze flicked to the bruise on her arm, a bloom of pain that probably hurt when she moved it.

“It doesn't matter. I had everything under control, and when I told you to put me down you ignored me.”

“Because you were being stupid.”

She closed her mouth, opened it, her eyes flashing.

Well, she was. “Sorry, but you were
crawling
across the stage, and then you flung yourself like a Frisbee into the crowd. I had to pluck you out of a
mosh
pit. Of
course you were in over your head, and if you don't see that, then we're in worse shape here than I thought.” Was he yelling? Not yet, but he wanted to. Now he fully recognized Vonya, if only by the feelings she'd churned up in him.

“Says you.”

“Yeah, and about sixteen years of instinct.” And at least one act of poor judgment he vowed never to repeat. “Putting you down would have caused a riot. I did what was necessary.”

“Without a thought to how
I
might feel.”

“So shoot me. I thought you might actually be
grateful
that someone was looking out for you.”

He could agree he'd been a jerk, but right now he just wanted to fold his hands around her delicate neck and throttle her. No wonder her father had called him. She reminded Brody too much, suddenly, of Lucy. If she ever acted like this, he'd throw her in a barrel and nail it shut.

Maybe feed her through the hole. Or not.

Okay, that was a little extreme, but the thought of spending one hour, let alone one month, with this woman had him breaking out in hives.

Her eyes narrowed, just for a second. Then, “I don't need anyone to look out for me.”

“Your father thinks you do.”

She flinched, then looked away, her voice tumbling low. “You don't even like me.”

“I don't have to like you to do my job.”

Her chin quivered, just slightly, before she turned her back to him.

His chest burned, right in the center. What did it
matter if he liked her? He shook his head, shot a glance at the senator, his voice tight. “Maybe she's right, sir. Maybe you should find someone else.”

Maybe he could take out a loan for the house, the tuition…

The senator picked up his drink, considering it for a moment, swishing the liquid in his glass tumbler.

Brody opened his mouth to recant when Senator Wagner cut him off.

“Nope. It's Mr. Wickham or the tour is off.” He directed his words to Veronica, who whirled around, her mouth open just long enough to give her away. Then her eyes went to Brody and he saw something flicker in them. Something that looked dangerously like determination.

Was she hiding something? But in a flash, up went a new mask—not quite cultured Veronica, but too serious to be Vonya. A new, probably more charming, personality. Nice.

“Fine. That's just fine. Mr. Wickham will do. As long as he listens to me and stays out of my way.” She took a breath and moved toward him. Brody held out his hand again, as if to seal the deal, but she brushed past him.

“Staying out of your way might be a little difficult. And, by the way, just for the record, I do like you,” he said, hoping to throw some cool on her steam.

“Save it,” she snapped, and shut the door behind her with a click.

Brody blew out a long breath.

The senator clamped him on the shoulder. “Keep her out of the tabloids, keep her out of trouble, and bring her
home in one piece. I'm afraid this time you're going to have to earn your pay, Wickham.”

 

Her “bodyguard” pre-cut his roast pork into geometric cubes the size of dice. He speared one piece of meat, pushed it through his applesauce, and delivered it to his mouth. He laid down his fork and wiped his mouth between bites, following each one with a sip of water.

Like a robot.

Ronie tried not to stare, but the more he did it, the more she longed to launch across the beautifully attired table and pour something, maybe gravy—which he'd poured into the center of a perfectly indented mound of potatoes—over his entire plate.

Heaven forbid the gravy touch his asparagus. Or the applesauce.

Or one of Marguerite's rolls, buttered nicely on the bread plate.

Her father had sold her out to a cyborg. The Terminator.

A terminator that just might destroy everything if she wasn't careful. She had better figure out a way to ditch him if she hoped to help Kafara.

Found him.
She would reread the text until it gave her the courage she needed.

Brody took another sip and politely answered the senator's questions, in a voice low and rumbly, like an earthquake. “I'm the oldest of nine, sir, and yes, my father worked at the Capitol as a security guard until his stroke three months ago. Nearly did thirty years.”

“I know him—gives away your mother's homemade caramel corn to all the offices every year.”

Another cube of meat, another trek through the applesauce. Chew. Wipe. Drink. Yes, sitting across from him for the next month just might drive her insane.

Except, well, what about that idea? She couldn't exactly fire him, right? But what if he quit? What if she simply played on his disgust and drove him insane?

Sorry, but she just didn't buy the whole “you're in danger” spiel. Did her father think she had lost her brains along with her pride? He just didn't want another go-round with the international tabloids during an election year. And as for her so-called stalker, well, just because a few unauthorized photos showed up on the internet didn't mean the man would harm her.