Ace in the Hole (3 page)

“This is Travis Tucker, my head of security,” Lacey said.

A big, silent man stepped forward. His skin was the true black of a person of African descent who spent a lot of time outside. Stone’s in-brief said Tucker was an ex-Marine, had pulled a stint as an embassy guard in the Middle East, and was damned good at his job. Which was a red flag for Wild Cards, Inc. If Lacey already had good protection, why call in an expensive outfit like theirs?

It had apparently been Tucker’s suggestion that supplemental security be hired from a private firm like Wild Cards in the first place. Hence Stone’s presence in Miami this morning, and his curiosity over what prompted his being here.

“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Tucker?”

“We’re getting death threats. Not the garden-variety type. These spout a special brand of hate. They sound more serious than the stuff we get from the usual nutballs. Call it a gut feel.”

Stone made eye contact with Tucker, who was maybe ten years his senior. But they were both ex-military men. Both knew the value of intuition. He nodded once, wordlessly accepting the man’s worry at face value. Tucker nodded back. Yup, they were going to get along just fine.

“I’d like an extra set of eyes on the venues we’ll be visiting this week. If you could help us find security weak spots, pick out potential points of attack, that would be helpful.”

“No problem. I’ll just need a list of events and locations—”

“My aide can get those for you,” Lacey interrupted. He raised his voice, shouting, “I need a copy of the itinerary!”

Didn’t like not being the center of attention, huh? Stone knew the type. In point of fact, many of his clients fit that description. Plenty of rich, powerful people were quiet and unassuming. Didn’t go out of the way to draw attention to themselves. They were the ones who rarely needed his services. It was these loud, blowhard types who just had to be the star of the show who ended up at risk from the crazies.

A flunky walked in from the next room, and Stone glanced over. Stared. Light brown hair, faintly chestnut in tone. Square jaw. Piercing blue eyes. All-American good looks. Perfectly tailored suit. Christian Chatsworth-Brandeis, looking every inch an aristocrat. America might not officially have royalty, but if it did, this man would be part of it.

The silent horror was mutual as Christian stared back at Stone. Oblivious, Jack Lacey boomed, “This is my new bodyguard, Stone Jackson. And this is Chris Brandeis, my main bitch.”

Stone blinked, startled at the senator’s crudeness. For his part, Christian’s gaze hardened into chips of blue ice, cold and hard. The man did
not
like his boss. At all. Stone couldn’t say he blamed the guy.

Christian held out a stapled sheaf of papers, and Stone took it with a mumbled word of thanks while Senator Lacey wandered away and sat down on the sofa with a laptop computer.

“If you have any questions or need me to walk you through the senator’s usual routine, let me know,” Christian said.

“I will. Thanks.” Good God, the awkwardness of it. Last time he’d seen this man, he’d been half-crazed with lust, so hungry to have a lover with intelligence and breeding and class that he could hardly stop himself from coming all over the guy’s backside. Christian Chatsworth-Brandeis represented everything he’d ever craved in life and been denied by the circumstances of his birth.

Farmers were not technically poor people. But all their wealth was tied up in land and equipment and animals. Success and failure were determined by the whims of global warming, and food on the table was often a direct result of grueling, backbreaking labor. He was glad for the work ethic and the physical strength his youth had given him, but he’d always wished for more.

He’d wanted a college education at a top university. Travel. Worldliness. But there hadn’t been money for it. Instead he’d enlisted in the Army, seen the world from the back end of a Humvee, and put himself through college online. He secretly liked to watch Ivy League university lectures online when he wasn’t putting his body on the line to catch bullets for people with the cash to pay for his life.

His boss, Peregrine Cardiffe, founder of Wild Cards, Inc., was upper-crust British all the way, and he had helped Stone file off a few of his rough edges. Taught him how to wear a well-fit suit. How to drink brandy. How to act like a gentleman. “Act” being the operative word, though. It was all learned behavior. A layer of silver over lead. Whereas a man like Christian Brandeis was a gentleman all the way down to his DNA.

And now they worked for the same bastard. Which pretty much took a repeat of last night off the table. Goddamnit. He never mixed business and his personal life. No bodyguard did. It was impossible to achieve the cold, calculating focus necessary in his line of work if feelings of any kind intruded.

Speaking of work, he asked the senator’s security chief, “Is there anything we can do to get cameras in the hotel stairwells on short notice? Anyone can get into or out of this place undetected using the fire exits. And while the hotel is installing cameras, the south end of the loading dock is camera blind also.”

Tucker answered sourly, “I had to change floors when we got to the hotel to even get us hallway cameras. The hotel manager informed me that the Imperium caters to clients who value their privacy and do not want the kind of invasive security I was suggesting they install.”

Great. Nothing like parking a high-profile and controversial politician with a lot of enemies in a hotel that prized secrecy for its customers above all else. Places like this were dens of drugs, wild parties, and underage groupies a certain clientele was willing to pay top dollar to hide from public scrutiny.

“Who picked this hotel?” he asked.

Christian answered that one, irony rich in his voice. “That would be the senator.”

A world of information was packed into that dry answer. Lacey was a player. Had vices he needed to hide from the public. Was using the absence from Washington to indulge. Which geometrically increased his exposure to a would-be killer.

“Poison of preference for the senator?” he asked quietly.

“Arsenic, if I had to choose. But rat poison would be fine if it did the trick.”

Stone grinned. Yeah. No love lost between this guy and his boss. “Does he know you’re plotting his demise? Should I be watching you?”

Christian’s gaze snapped to his, and all of a sudden heat sizzled between them. Belatedly he murmured, “Hell, even his wife is plotting his demise. To know him is to despise him.”

“Well, isn’t this going to be a fun assignment.” And the sexual tension was back, thick and heavy between them. They had unfinished business to tend to, but it was strictly off-limits, and they both knew it. Dammit.

He leafed through the senator’s busy itinerary for the next week. Looked up at Tucker. “Which venue are you the most worried about?”

“Hotel ballroom where the big casino-night fund-raiser will be held. More sight lines than you can count, multiple access points, huge crowd, huge staff. It’s going to be a nightmare. The public is going to have full access to the senator. Not even rope lines to contain the crowd.”

Stone winced. If it was even half as bad as the guy described, barring a full-on Secret Service-style team of a couple dozen guys, no way were they going to be able to guarantee Lacey’s safety. “How many warm bodies can you put on the job?” he asked Tucker.

“I’ve got two security guys from the hotel lined up for Saturday night. And now you. The boss hates bodyguards and refuses to use them most of the time.”

They were screwed. He crossed the living room to address the senator directly. “How bad do you want to stay alive, sir? Bad enough to cancel your appearance?”

“I get a third of all the donations from this damned shindig. It’ll fund my television ads for months to come. I’m not fucking canceling. I’m paying a fortune for you to keep me safe and make this event happen.”

“And I’m giving you my extremely valuable advice. Cancel your appearance. I don’t even need to see the venue to know you will be wide open to an assassination attempt.”

“Isn’t it your job to take the bullet for me?” Lacey asked coldly.

Christian’s jaw clenched so hard that the rippling muscles in the guy’s perfect face actually caught Stone’s attention. He pulled his gaze back to the truculent senator and answered evenly, “My job is to keep both of us alive, sir. I will not have done my job if I have to take a bullet for you. That is the last-ditch act of a failed security detail.”

A shrug. “Not my problem.”

He glanced over at Tucker, who rolled his eyes. The bastard had better be paying Tucker a fortune to put up with this shit. “I’m going to go downstairs and take a look around the ballroom. I’ll report back to Mr. Tucker after I’ve seen it.”

“Whatever.” Lacey looked back down at his laptop, which was emitting the groaning, moaning, and flesh-slapping sounds of hard-core porn reaching its exquisitely classy cinematic climax.

“I’ll show you the ballroom,” Christian volunteered.

Stone swore mentally. He’d told the guy last night that he had no time for drama. He’d meant it. He did not have time for wistful, almost-lover banter in the damned elevator. Irritated as fuck, he spun and headed out. Christian fell in beside him. He lengthened his stride, emphatically not interested in conversation. Christian kept up easily, matching his stride, and he moved with the supple strength of a man who worked out vigorously.
No doubt about it. We would have been a great fit physically.

The elevator arrived and they stepped into the empty space, alone. Here it came. Stone braced himself.

Christian spoke with contemptuous precision. “Lacey’s an asshole. Demands the impossible and throws hissy fits when he doesn’t get what he wants. He’s behind in the polls, and his fund-raising has been dismal this year. The voters are apparently catching on to what a bad joke he is. Don’t kill yourself to save him. He’s not worth it.”

Stone arched one eyebrow sardonically. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

A huff of reluctant laughter escaped Christian.

“I’ve worked for worse,” Stone commented in commiseration as they stepped out into the lobby. He spied an incoming figure moving fast and muttered, “Oh joy.”

“Gentlemen!” Brittnay gushed. “How lucky am I? The two hottest guys in South Beach have graced our hotel with their presence. Call the paramedics—there will be women swooning all over my lobby.”

He traded wry glances with Christian over her head.

“Where are you two off to? Can I help you with anything?”

Christian answered smoothly, pitching his voice with a hint of flirtation guaranteed to make Brittnay’s panties damp. “I was just going to show Mr. Jackson the ballroom where the casino night is going to be held.”

“Oooh! Let me help.” She pushed between their tall bodies, looped an arm through each of theirs, and all but skipped down the yellow brick road toward the bowels of the hotel.

“Are you always this… perky?” Stone asked dryly.

“Oh yes. I was a cheerleader at Florida State, you know. I just missed being a Miami Dolphin cheerleader at my first tryout last year. Which is really great for a first-timer, by the way. Since then I’ve gone gluten-free, taken up hot yoga, and gotten crazy limber. I can get into all sorts of uhh-
maze
-ing positions now.”

“The mind boggles,” Christian commented dryly.

A snort of laughter slipped out of Stone, and he coughed hastily to cover it up.

“I know. Right?” Brittnay chirped.

“Totally,” Stone replied in his best valley-girl imitation.

“Here’s the ballroom. It’s the most famous feature of the Imperium Hotel. Built in the 1920s, the structure has been refurbished, of course, but its original design and architectural details have been preserved. When the hotel was torn down and rebuilt in the 1990s, this part of the building was not touched.”

She must have memorized that speech from a hotel brochure because it contained a number of multisyllable words.

Stone supposed the room was pretty, but he paid little attention to such things. Instead he took note of the many alcove balconies running down both sides of the room overlooking the main floor. The big orchestra mezzanine across the back of the ballroom. The heavy velvet curtains lining the tall windows that could easily conceal a shooter. The row of french doors opening onto an oceanside terrace, every one of which provided an entrance and exit point. A raised theater stage crossed the far end of the room. Oh, goodie. That meant there would be catwalks and lighting rigs to secure.

He turned to ask Brittnay where the gaming tables and buffet lines would be set up, but she was already on her cell phone. Attention span of a squirrel, apparently. Indeed, she wandered off as he strolled the perimeter of the space in silent horror.

He glanced over at Christian pacing along silently beside him. “Gaming tables all over this main floor, I assume. Is there going to be a speech?”

A grimace. “Yup.”

“Podium on the stage?” he guessed.

“Correct.”

“Do me a favor, Christian. Go up on stage and stand where Senator Lacey will so I can check a few sight lines.”

“Sure.”

Stone watched appreciatively for a moment as Christian jogged up the side steps and took his place center-stage front. Stone followed more slowly up the steps, moving around the stage, peering past Christian, who was of similar height to the senator. He moved into the wings, stage right, to see how blind he would be if the senator insisted on his security team standing offstage while he gave his speech.

Jesus. He couldn’t see a thing from back here. He’d be totally blind. Unable to see any threats. He took a few steps forward out of long habit as a bodyguard, scanning the shadows around the edges of the ballroom.

Without warning, a red laser dot blossomed in the center of Christian’s chest.

Stone didn’t think, just reacted in response to a dozen years of training and sprinted forward. He tackled Christian in a flying leap that sent them both to the ground, rolling over and over.

Stone wrapped his arms protectively around Christian and continued the roll, carrying both of them in a tangle behind the curtains stage left.