Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 (13 page)

“I finish at four,” Eva said after Hank had run dry. “Hang around for another twenty minutes and we’ll all go to Zack’s together. We’ll go over what we’ll say to Grayson, and get this whole thing straightened out. OK?”

The two men sat in a painfully awkward silence while Eva cheerily served her final few customers. Hank put up a struggle when faced with abandoning his car, but Zack was absolutely insistent. “If they
are
tracking you, dipshit, there’s no way you’re driving that thing to my place. It puts Eva in danger.” Hank gave Eva an apologetic frown but Zack was brusque and business-like. “You can pick it up once this bullshit is over. Seriously, man, haven’t you thought about
any
of this?”

The ride back to Sutherland was silent and strained. Eva’s brow furrowed with worry.
He’s a smooth, charming date last night, and then he’s this overbearing grizzly today. I swear I could live to a hundred and still never understand men.

***

Apart from deciding some details of their meeting with Grayson, talking a little about money, and making sure there wasn’t anything
else
Zack needed to know about this bizarre and unwelcome state of affairs, the three spent the evening watching TV in a less than companionable silence. Hank excused himself to go to the bathroom, and Eva knew she had to say something to Zack.

“You’ve been so kind to us both,” she began. “You hardly know me, and Hank even less, but you’ve offered us safety and a place to be.”

“It’s OK,” Zack said.

“But you’re angry.”

“How could I not be?” he asked. It was a genuine enquiry, as though any normal human would find beating a woman just as unconscionable as Zack found it.

“He’s within an
inch
of bolting, you know. He’s scared to death of you. Maybe more than he is of those lunatics out there,” she waved to the front door. “And if he
does
run, he’s dead.”

“He won’t be bolting anywhere. Not until I know you’re safe.”

“Zack,” she said, crossing to sit on the edge of his armchair, “look, what can I do, what can I say to get you to go easy on him?”

He looked her square in the eye and said, “Absolutely nothing.”

Eva stood and took the other armchair; she felt tears welling, but found herself unwilling to cry in front of Zack, and shook them away. “I think . . .” she began, thinking as logically as she could, “I think I should stay here tonight . . . I’ll sleep on the big armchair, here,” Eva clarified, patting its soft and surprisingly comfy seat. “I should be with Hank, in case anything happens. Is that OK?” Zack nodded, amicably but without obvious enthusiasm, and then went to find more sheets and a pillow from the cabinets under his own bed.

He handed them to Eva with a courteous but rather formal, “Goodnight, then”, and headed to brush his teeth. The face in the mirror spoke silently, “If she wants to sleep out there and make sure Hank doesn’t off himself in the middle of the night, she’s welcome to. But we
both
know there’s a far more comfortable place. Right next to
me
,” he said, poking himself angrily in the chest.

Hank was carefully arranging his sheets on the sofa when Zack returned. “You got everything you need?” he asked impatiently.

“Yes. Thanks, Zack,” Hank replied with quiet but genuine gratitude.

“It’s fine, but just listen: don’t leave, don’t call anyone, and try not to do anything stupid until morning. OK? I’ve got to go out tomorrow, but no one knows you’re here, so just
stay put
.” Zack stalked back to his room and closed the door.

Hank sat with his head in his hands but gently pushed Eva’s comforting arm away. “It’s all good, Sis. I’m just bone tired.” He bedded himself down, reassured her once more, and was soon very obviously asleep. Eva waited a couple of minutes before gently knocking on the bedroom door.

“Can I come in for a second?”

Wondering if Eva had changed her mind about their sleeping arrangements, Zack opened the door and stepped aside. Eva slid in and stood on his carpet in her bare feet, feeling rather tiny and exposed; thankfully, the huge US NAVY shirt went down even past her knees, so her black, seductive, date-night panties remained hidden. I
f you play smarter cards tonight,
she fumed silently to Zack,
my panties will be hitting your bedroom floor a moment from now, you goddamned numbskull.

“You’ve got to be nicer to him,” Eva pleaded. “He’s hurting and scared. You must know what that’s like.”

“I do,” he countered, “but I’ve never hit a
woman
because of it.”

“That was awful,” she agreed, “just
awful
, but he was so desperate,” she explained, and on and on, downplaying his mistakes and stupidity, trying to protect Hank – ironically enough – from
her
own
protector. There was still a chance, she felt as she patiently argued his case, a chance that he might climb down, make a promise to be more tactful and forgiving, and then enfold her in his arms and kiss her deeply and pull the oversized t-shirt over her head . . .

But on this, Zack simply would not bend. And neither would Eva, not after hearing him slander her brother, calling him a ‘coward’, and an ‘idiot’, and a ‘child in a man’s world’.

Resigning herself sadly to his stubbornness, she felt the flame of her arousal dimming. “I understand. You don’t know him as a person, only as a man who hit me. And I can’t change that.” She looked at him, her eyes still pleading him to reconsider, but all she received was a stony silence and his angered face, glowering back at her in the dark.

Eva curled up on the armchair, listened to Hank’s soft snoring, and was quiet enough that neither man knew that she was crying.

Chapter 9 – A Day in the Life

Patience, Gray had learned long before, was the key to virtually any successful investigation, but he was still pissed to be kept on hold for this long. He sat impatiently in the small, six-man Corpus Christi field office, a cheap ballpoint tapping rhythmically against his teeth.

“Yeah, Jimmy?” he said. “What’s the hold up? I sent everything down to you guys nearly 48 hours ago.” He listened to the usual excuses for a few seconds and then interjected, “Look, you need to see my position here. These two were definitely not shot at the airport, OK? We established that. What I need to figure out is, where
was
it?”

With no bullets found at the scene, and the blood patterns inconsistent with an on-the-spot murder, Gray had to conclude that the bodies had been moved. It was always a key moment, and having gone this far, he was mad at being kept from going further.

“OK, OK, I get it. Just put a rush on it, OK? Anything from those clothes – fibers, particulates, paint,
anything
– will help. Let me know as soon as you have it.” He replaced the receiver on his comfortingly old-fashioned phone and called up his contrastingly high-tech database of recent finds in their ongoing, seemingly endless battle against organized drug crime.

Gray took stock. There was this peripheral
nobody
of a courier – Zack lady friend’s brother – getting squeezed by his Chicago bosses. He had some pretty good leads at the port here in Corpus, although no one was giving him anything concrete. Then there were the two dead, low-level punks at the airport near San Antonio, and the fact that they’d been moved. Six years as a detective, and he’d begun to listen to his gut. And his gut said, very definitively, that these events were connected. He lifted the phone.

“Hey, Zack? Yeah, I figured you’d be up early. Just checking in.” The detective sipped more coffee and listened for a moment. “You sure? Same guy, same car?” This was worrying, and Gray’s mind raced both to slot new data into his mental case file, and to ensure his friend wasn’t wading too deep into muddy waters. “OK, listen to me, Zack. I won’t bullshit you about these people. I need you to accept, right now, that if they were tailing Hank, they know your car and they know where you live. Eva too, probably.” Zack was holding himself responsible, but Gray cut him off. “You did great. These are serious people here, buddy. Look, you can guess what I’d recommend from here . . . Oh, you will? Well, great. Just be careful. I’ll call you once I’m done here and we’ll set up that meeting with . . . what’s his name? Yeah, Hank.” He made some quick notes and signed off. “OK, stay frosty.”

Gray locked the office and headed out to the city’s sprawling port for one more try. Someone was bound to make a slip, and he’d catch it when they did. And if not, he reminded himself, there were always
other
ways.

***

“Hey, Trish, it’s Zack Norcross, from the game at the weekend.” His bedroom door closed, Zack knew he could deliver this necessary lie in private. “Well, I wanted to thank you for having me over, and, well, I’ve had a little bit of luck and I wondered what you guys were doing this weekend? Apart from the game, obviously!” Zack stretched as they talked, planning to hit the gym shortly. “Good, well, here’s the thing . . .”

Once an ecstatic Trish had rung off, Zack called another number. “Hey, Barbara, is Derek there?” It was a voice he’d feared as a recruit, but one whose word he trusted absolutely. “Master Sergeant? . . . Oh, don’t give me that, you love all that shit . . . Well, I’ll be there for the reunion in February, man, and we’ll catch up, but I got a favor to ask . . . Well, you too, buddy, you know that . . . OK, it’s just that I need to borrow your shotgun.”

***

The two men were the new, bright day’s first customers and chose a table near the back of the coffee shop. It was, Vincent observed almost every morning, a dying breed: the traditional cafe, a low-key place with a small selection of perfectly brewed, uplifting cups of old-fashioned joe. It was graced by wood, not plastic. It spoke of individuality, not conformism. It embodied traditions, continuity, the stuff of times gone by. It even offered, one dared hope,
charisma
.

“I wanted to put a fuckin’
hit
on that rat for selling out like that,” Vincent recalled with unconcealed venom as he sat. “I should have. I
really
should.”

Two cups of steaming coffee quickly arrived and Eddie began the process of sweetening his to his precise specifications. “Seems a little extreme, Vincent,” he offered in the Cockney accent for which he was famed. “I mean,” he began, gesturing down the street at the monstrosity in question, “it was a business proposition which made a lot of sense.”

Vincent tossed his spoon down on the saucer with a loud clatter. “You miss the point
entirely
, Eddie. This wasn’t just business. This was the loss of
culture
. And in a place like this, we are hardly blessed a surfeit of culture, now are we, Eddie?”

This, the Briton knew, was hard to argue against. San Antonio was many things to many people, and dearly loved by some, but compared to a typical town in his native land, it had a history of almost vanishing brevity. “Yeah, but it’s not exactly a centuries-old tradition we’re talking about, is it?”

Vincent drank slowly, and then set down his cup. “You’ve been here long enough, Eddie, to know that anything older than a single generation is
old
. Jonah’s Coffee Shop was, by this, and any other definition, an
old
and much respected tradition on this street. And now . . . well, for
fuck’s
sake, look at it!”

Half a block away, the depressingly familiar hoardings of a massive, international coffee chain had replaced the sensitive art deco of Jonah’s frontage, obliterating a local landmark and somehow enraging Vincent almost to the point of violence, despite his having known the cafe – and the city – for less than a year. “I take your point, Vincent,” Eddie knew it best to concede. “It’s sad.”

Vincent pushed his empty cup to the middle of the table and leaned forward on both elbows, his accustomed negotiating posture. “Shall we, as we Americans say, cut to the chase?”

“Only too glad to, mate,” Eddie agreed. “And I have one
hell
of a chase for you, if I say so myself.”

Eddie slid across an envelope containing perhaps twenty pages of notes and three photographs. Giving Vincent time to study them, he considered yet again the pros and cons of doing business with the man. His reputation was blood-curdling; even the local cops had been steering clear of any interference in his operation since that nasty business with the Captain’s wife and daughter. Everyone had been relieved when the hostage crisis had ended peacefully, but a worrying precedent had been set, and few had the stomach to dig deeper into an organization which, as far as the local cops could tell, was impenetrable, left little paper trail and was headed by a ruthless maniac.

“I feel like I’ve been given a fuckin’ CIA dossier here,” Vincent admitted. “This is quality work, Eddie. Your own?” The Brit simply drank his coffee and smiled. “OK, ‘need to know’ and all that.” Eddie nodded. “Well, it looks like you’ve done your homework. Four men?” Another nod. “Just before midnight?”

“I’d be in position by 11.30, if it were me, Vincent. Just to be on the safe side.”

The American slid the documents back into their envelope. “Cautious, well-prepared and smart. I think we’ll find we can do a lot of business together.”

Eddie rose and gave Vincent a smart salute. “They weren’t lying about you. An excellent judge of character. I’ll call you later, confirm some details?”

The two men shook hands and Eddie took his leave. Vincent pulled out his phone and began making calls. It would be, he knew now, a busy and very profitable day.

***