ESCANTA: A James Thomas Novel (The James Thomas Series Book 1) (12 page)

“I’ll start in the ceiling,” James said, not giving her the plan and not continuing the discussion. He lifted his sweater over his head, and his black T-shirt rode up his waist, revealing a rippled abdomen.

Mak’s cheeks blushed and she moved toward the kitchen—security plan forgotten. She opened the door to the refrigerator, pretending to look for something to eat, but really she was letting the icy air cool the heat in her cheeks.

Christ
, Mak thought.

A moment later she closed the refrigerator door. There was only so long she could pretend to be looking for a snack because if they looked inside they would realize it was empty. Mak didn’t cook, and she barely ate in her apartment. She had two bottles of champagne, a block of cheese, a container of milk and a couple of apples—hardly a menu to justify a long deliberation.

She leaned against the counter, watching the two brothers. Deacon handed James a box, which marvelously pulled out into a mini stepladder. He stepped up onto the top rung and, with his fingertips, lifted the ceiling panel to reveal a manhole. He slid the panel to the side, and then with a hand on each edge of the opening, hauled himself upward and into the ceiling cavity. He did it so easily, a result of his sheer body strength.

Mak’s apartment door opened again and this time Cami walked in.

“Hello, again,” Cami said brightly, spotting Mak in the kitchen. “You’ve had quite the night, huh?”

Mak scoffed. “It’s been interesting, that’s for sure.”

“Things are always interesting when these two are involved,” she said. “So, I’m going to be your new bodyguard, starting tomorrow.”

“Good. That other guy was a bore and a half,” Mak said, taking an apple from the fridge, offering one to Cami at the same time.

Cami’s eyes peeked behind Mak’s body. She grinned. “No, thanks, I wouldn’t want to steal half your food supply,” she joked.

“I don’t eat at home, I’m not even home often,” Mak explained. When she had a big case on, she spent most of her time in her office. And when she didn’t, she spent most of her time out with friends and family.

“You’re lucky,” Cami said without elaborating further. “Alrighty, then, I’m going to help these boys so we can get out of here and leave you in peace. We’ll have two security guys stationed outside your door tonight, another in the lobby and some more outside. And then I’ll be back in the morning. What time do you want to be at the office?”

Mak mentally ran through her day tomorrow. “Six thirty.”

“Perfect, I’ll be here a half-hour before,” she said with a nod of her head, and then walked to stand beside Deacon.

Cami said something to him, something Mak couldn’t hear, and he shrugged his shoulders.

Mak looked around her, unsure what to do now. She really just wanted to shower and go to bed. Instead, she picked up a folder of notes and dropped them onto her bed. She kicked off her shoes, climbed up onto the bed, and settled in for an hour of review work.

“Family meeting,” Deacon said as they exited Mak’s building.

“Why?” James said. He’d stuck to the plan all night—the plan Deacon had approved before he left for Mak’s office.

“Because I saw the way you looked at her when you walked in and now I’m questioning your motives again,” Deacon said with glaring eyes.

James threw his bag in the trunk. “Fine, I’ll meet you in Samuel’s office,” he said, not wanting to get into this conversation now.

Family meetings always consisted of their party of four, and they were always held in Samuel’s office because he was the Switzerland equivalent—he never took sides.

James unlocked his car and got into the driver’s seat. He took one last look at Mak’s apartment, at the window he now knew was the window to her bedroom. The light was on but he doubted it would be for long. She’d seemed tired, and they’d worked as fast as they could and did the install in half the usual time. But she was in the middle of a huge trial, and she didn’t need the massive distractions they had created tonight, but he was not going to leave her unprotected. A distraction tonight was a small price to pay to avoid massive turmoil in the future.

James drove home, his breath the only sound in the car. He never used the radio—it disguised any noise he might need to hear.

When he reached Thomas Security he pulled into his designated parking bay. His car was the final link in the chain of black sedan’s lining the parking lot wall.

Thomas Security had contracted with a luxury manufacturer to design a custom range of armored vehicles for them—the process a highlight of Deacon’s life—but James was not partial to any one brand; he simply wanted whatever was best.

James took their private elevator up to Samuel’s office, where his little family was waiting. He took his seat, waiting for Deacon to voice his concerns.

“I want the honest truth about your feelings for Mak,” Deacon asked.

“She needs to be protected,” James said. “I don’t like that information was leaked to the media, and neither do you, so you can stop pretending that didn’t bother you. I was wrong about my previous decision not to take her as a client, and if we referred them to her, and something happens to her, then that is very bad for Thomas Security.” James folded his hands on the table.

Deacon shook his head and he ground his lip between his teeth. “I don’t believe that’s the only reason.”

“Look, I’m not going to deny I’m attracted to her, but that’s where it will end. I have no intention to pursue her. She’s a client now, and that’s it. You will largely manage her security and I’ll oversee it—exactly how it should’ve been in the first place.”

“Can you stay out of it?” Deacon said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes,” James responded, hoping he wasn’t lying to his brother.

“I’ve never seen that look in your eyes,” Deacon responded.

“That’s because you rarely see me look at a woman.”

“Exactly. Because you were the one who encouraged that rule, the one who has always lived by the opinion that it’s better to not get into relationships at all because it only ends badly. Having her as a client is like dangling chocolate in front of someone on a diet. Sooner or later they will give in. You’ll give in, and I promise you it’s not going to end well.”

“You were fine with this plan a few hours ago,” James said.

“Yeah, that was before I saw the lust in your eyes. Paris has changed you, whether you want to admit it or not. I don’t know what you’re looking for with her, or even if you know, but the only thing that’s going to heal what happened is time. You can’t fill the void of losing your—“

“I didn’t lose anything,” James said. “I killed him.”

“Stop,” Cami said, shaking her head gently. “It was an accident, James. Don’t say it like that.”

“I say it like that because it’s the truth—accident or not, he’s dead.”

“I just wish you would talk to us,” Deacon said. “I wish I knew what was going on inside your head.”

“How much talking did you do after Nicole’s death?” James asked. He didn’t want to bring up Nicole, but there was no better way to make the point.

Deacon looked away, grinding his teeth, but after a few seconds he sighed in resignation. “Okay,” Deacon said, turning over his empty hands in a gesture indicating he was giving up.

Deacon hadn’t wanted to talk about Nicole, and even now rarely did, and James didn’t want to talk about Paris.

“Look,” Cami said, “she’s our client now and we’re going to protect her as we do any other client. And seeing as this conversation is going nowhere, I’m going to bed because I’ve got to be back at Mak’s early.” She put her hands flat on the table, looked at each of them, and when there were no objections she stood up and left.

“I’m going, too,” Deacon said, briefly nodding goodbye to James and Samuel.

When the door closed, James sighed and looked at Samuel.

“They’re concerned. And so am I,” Samuel said.

“Do you think we’re making a mistake taking her on as a client?” James asked.

“Regarding your personal feelings, yes, I do—I agree with Deacon. But from a security angle, no, because I didn’t like her security from the start. I’m not sure how much danger she’s actually in, though. I do think that they’re trying to scare her more than anything.”

“Deacon is really upset by this,” James said.

“Well, he has a right to be. You should not get involved with her, and you know it—
especially
while you’re being hunted by Escanta,” Samuel said. “And Deacon never dealt with Nicole’s death, and I think this is bringing up all those feelings again. It’s probably going to force him to deal with the demons he’s buried for so long, and it’s probably going to get uglier before it gets better. He’s resisting, and he’s going to push back at you because he so desperately doesn’t want to deal with the pain that burdens him. Be patient with him, James.”

“I will,” James said thoughtfully.

When James had found Deacon in that warehouse, he’d taken almost a year to physically recover from his injuries, even with intensive rehabilitation. But he’d never recovered emotionally—they had beaten his soul, searing it to its core.

They were a quiet for a few seconds.

“Can you please display Mak’s surveillance on the screens?” James asked.

Samuel pressed a couple buttons and then the wall transformed into a series of images, the result of their install. All of the lights were off in her apartment and he could see her small body tucked up in bed.

James assessed the surveillance, checking for any blind spots. “Good,” he said, and Samuel turned it off.

“So, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I might as well now,” Samuel said. “You know how I love a mystery, so I’ve been doing a little digging around on Mak’s husband. He was quite the ambitious young man. Started his first company at seventeen, bankrolled by investors. By the time he was nineteen he was a multi-millionaire—without including the money in the offshore accounts. But that’s not the interesting part—this is: Around when he turned eighteen, he began traveling—a lot. Mostly in Europe. I’ve put together a file on his whereabouts over this time, up until the point he went missing.

“He booked the travel through his business, but I’m finding it hard to track any movement from the time he landed on those trips. I’ve got records of his plane tickets, but then nothing—I can’t find any hotel bookings, no car-hire records. It’s like he ceased to exist when he landed. Interesting, don’t you think?” Samuel looked proud, and intrigued.

“Very,” James agreed. “What are the chances that someone like you could delete that kind of information?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think once he landed he became someone else—used an alias. Or several.”

“And this guy had no military training, right? No agency, no Special Forces?” James asked.

“Nope. So if he did assume an alias, he had help,” Samuel said.

“So who was helping him?”

“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?”

“Do you think anything about this connects with Mak’s case?” James asked.

Samuel sighed. “I really don’t. He disappeared thirteen years ago, so if whoever killed him off wanted something, they would’ve come for her. It’s not like she’s been hiding—she has stayed in Manhattan the entire time and taken on increasingly higher profile cases. If they haven’t come for her before, we’d say at this point she’s statistically safe, right?”

“Right,” James said. “But you know what I think of ‘statistically safe.’ I agree, though, it just doesn’t make sense, particularly given that she’s never touched that money.”

Samuel yawned. “I’m not looking into it because I’m concerned from a security angle, I just want to know what happened to him.”

“I hate to admit it, but I do, too. Keep looking into it when you have spare time,” James told him, smiling now. Samuel never had spare time, but somehow he managed to squeeze in these little mysteries—they were Samuel’s version of a hobby.

“Can you please send me all of the intelligence for Mak’s case, and her husband’s? I want to look over it myself,” James said.

“I’ll send it to you in the morning. You need to sleep, James. You’ve had a busy few weeks, and Cami said you barely slept on the flight home. If you want to help this woman, the best thing you can do is be alert and ready when she is awake and moving about. You’re no good to her if you’re tired and making mistakes. Review it tomorrow and we’ll catch up again in the evening.”

“Okay, dad,” James joked. Samuel was sometimes more like a father than a friend, and sometimes he needed that.

Samuel delivered, and James spent the entire next day reviewing the intelligence they’d gathered on Mak and her missing husband. His disappearance was interesting, absolutely, but nothing outwardly concerning.

And since his disappearance, Mak had lived an ordinary, albeit successful life. The notes had only started when she was deep into this case, and the mob certainly weren’t against intimidating people—it was a daily habit for them. But something didn’t sit well with James, an ominous sense of something not quite right but not tangible either. He’d had these feelings before, and he’d usually been right. He hoped he was wrong on this occasion.

But if he was wrong, then something else occurred to him. The case would be over soon, a few weeks tops, perhaps. And then she’d probably have no need for his company’s services, or at the very most she’d have minimum security like Jayce—security he wasn’t involved in at all. She might come back to them, when she took another high-profile case, and James thought perhaps the universe was going to bring her in and out of his life, dangling her in front of him. Maybe this sense of longing for something he couldn’t have was his punishment for all of the bad things he’d done in his life.

The door to his office swung open and Deacon walked in.

“You’re still here,” Deacon said, sitting down opposite James.

“Looking over client reports,” James said, explaining why he was still in his office at midnight on a Friday night.

“Looking over Mak Ashwood’s file?” Deacon rocked the chair back so that it balanced on its two hind legs.