Guarding Raine (Security Ops) (6 page)

Trey’s eyebrows lifted at her use of Mac’s full name. “Sounds like he’s been busy, then.” He climbed the steps toward them. It wasn’t until the two men stood side by side that Raine was struck by an incredible similarity between the two, a similarity that owed nothing to the physical. Oh, they were both tall and broad through the shoulders, but Trey’s hair was black, his thickly lashed eyes a glittering emerald green, and his chin bore a deep cleft.

She observed both men carefully, her artist’s eye charmed even as her mind puzzled over their resemblance. She’d give anything to paint them like this, standing side by side, or, better yet, profile to profile. Both were frankly wonderful specimens of manhood, and she was grateful that such examples were wasted on her. But it was much more than their physical attributes that she’d wish to convey in a picture. There were edges to Macauley that he made no effort to hide, and she thought she could discern such edges in Trey also, although he made attempts to disguise them. Though he was still smiling, amusement didn’t touch his eyes. They remained watchful and alert, and somehow Raine knew that although he was looking at her, his attention was equally attuned to their surroundings.

That intense observation was what reminded her most strongly of Macauley, she decided. Both men gave her the uncomfortable feeling that she’d been sized up in the space of an instant, and neither gave away their reactions to that sum. There were auras of strength and power surrounding them, as if in any crisis these men could be counted on to take control. They hadn’t gained that presence by years in the security business, Raine knew that instinctively. Something much more dangerous, much more lethal had shaped these men, had left indelible marks on their psyches. She wondered why it suddenly seemed so important to her to find out just what those experiences had been.

“Did you come to work or to satisfy your need for amusement?” Mac asked his friend.

“Well, since you’re so rarely good for laughs, I must have come to make myself useful,” the other man answered. “Thought I could use this time to discuss the rest of our cases with you, if you can spare a few minutes?” This he directed to Raine, and she snapped out of her reverie to answer.

“Go ahead, I’m on the way to my studio, anyway. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Garrison.” She turned to walk away but hadn’t gone more than a few steps when she was stopped by Macauley’s low voice.

“Raine.”

Ignoring the way the two syllables of her name took on a life of their own when uttered by him, she turned to look back inquiringly.

“I’ll be keeping your cell with me.”

Her lips pressed together at the reminder, one that had been completely unnecessary. He’d already made it crystal clear in the study earlier just how thoroughly he would be taking over her life. Their gazes clashed for a moment. Then she broke the contact, looking beyond him to address Trey with a brittle smile. “See? Not only do I get around-the-clock protection, I get a free secretary thrown in, too. Your company offers one heck of a deal.”

Both men watched as she turned on her heel and strode into the house, and then Mac let out a sigh. “Let’s go into the house. I’ve got sort of an office set up on the first floor.”

Upon entering the family room, Mac sank down into the desk chair and indicated for Trey to pull up a seat.

“I think I noted a bit of hellcat in that last exchange,” Trey remarked. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a long story,” Mac answered, his voice sour. “Suffice it to say that Simon Michaels did a number on me when he hired me, and his daughter is continuing in the fine tradition of her old man.”

“You think this job was overreaction on Simon’s part? Or was he right to be alarmed?”

Mac rubbed the back of his neck reflexively. “He definitely had reason for concern. From what I can gather, the police aren’t treating it too seriously. There hasn’t actually been a physical threat made, although the tone of the letters was nasty enough. But if the sender escalates? There’s every possibility she could be real danger.”

“So what’s with her attitude?” Trey jerked his head toward the door. “Either you haven’t convinced her of the risk or you’ve failed to bowl her over with your smooth manner.”

It was a long-standing joke between them that Mac’s personality could cause the kind of friction needed to light a match.
Realistic
, Mac called it.
Abrasive
was a term Trey threw around a lot. The humor of it was that the two of them were more alike than different. Trey just knew how to use the pretty words to cover up what he was really after. Mac believed in calling a black one-eyed jack a spade.

“You’d definitely have been better in this job than me,” he admitted without rancor. “I knew that from the start.”

“Not necessarily. That terse, dictating manner of yours might actually be considered by some women as godlike. It just apparently hasn’t convinced Raine Michaels that you have her best interests at heart.”

Mac’s fingers drummed restlessly on the desktop as he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think that’s it, at least not all of it. I actually got through to her a while ago. Despite her attitude, I think this whole mess really has scared her. But she’s determined for some reason to hide that fact from me, and maybe from herself, as well. That’s the angle I can’t figure out.”

Lifting a shoulder, Trey asked, “Does it matter? You can handle things here, can’t you? Raine doesn’t look big enough to give you too much trouble.”

Mac snorted at that, but remained silent. His partner had no idea just how much trouble Raine Michaels could be, and he’d be hard-pressed to explain it to him. She hadn’t actually done anything, after all. It wasn’t her fault that everything about her seemed to bother him in some inexplicable way. No, that was due more to his need for a vacation than anything else.

“You’ve checked out the phone?”

Nodding, Mac fingered the cell he’d dropped in his pocket. “Caller probably used a prepaid cell, a throwaway. No way to track it and the number was blocked, at any rate. I’ll put our app on her cell so if he calls again we’ll have a better chance of getting a trace. How busy are you right now?” he asked his partner. “Have you taken on any more cases in the last few days?”

Trey gave him a rundown of current clients, the approximate length of each case and the manpower and equipment needed for each.

Mac nodded pensively. They were pretty busy, busier than he would have liked at the moment. They had been expanding fairly rapidly in the past year, and hiring more men as needed. It sounded as if every one of them was going to be kept active for a while.

“I spoke to a Detective Ramirez, who’s in charge of Raine’s case.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

Shaking his head, Mac replied, “Got the usual confidentiality runaround. Not that I expected any different. He wouldn’t say what leads, if any, he’s been following. I have no idea whether or not he’s run checks on some of the people closest to Raine.”

“Do you suspect the threats have been made by someone she knows?” Trey asked.

Lifting a shoulder in response, Mac answered, “It’s a place to start. I don’t like not knowing anything about the people who have access to her. I’d like to get some information on a few of them. It won’t be easy. The comings and goings around here resemble a subway station.” He handed the list to Trey.

Trey perused the names, a frown marring his brow. “How many of these people are in and out of here in a day?”

“Lots,” Mac answered dryly. “She isn’t even sure who comes some days. When she’s painting she’s kind of in a world of her own.”

“Okay,” Trey said, pocketing the list. “I’ll get background checks on all of them. Anything else?”

When Mac shook his head, both men rose. “I’ll get on this right away, then,” Trey promised. Walking across the room, he asked, “What kind of artist is Raine Michaels, anyway? Have you seen any of her work?”

Mac shrugged indifferently. “She paints.”

Trey looked at him with mock patience. “Very astute, Mac. I’d gathered as much when you spoke of her pictures. Are these hers on the wall here?”

They moved to examine the paintings Trey indicated. “Looks like these are all hers,” he noted, looked at the signature in the corner. Each was signed simply
Raine
. Each bore the unmistakable stamp of the same artist.

Both men examined the paintings, four in total, in silence. “She’s talented,” Trey said, his voice tinged with surprise. “I haven’t heard of her before. Is she shown anywhere?”

Mac shrugged. He didn’t have the interest that Trey did in the creative world, “She’s got a show coming up soon. She’s been getting ready for that. She has an agent, if that means anything. André Klassen.” He nodded in the direction of Trey’s pocket. “He’s on the list.”

Trey’s eyebrows rose. “He’s no slouch, either. He wouldn’t take her on if she didn’t show promise. And if these pictures are a sample of what she can do, she’ll go far.”

Mac studied each of the pictures in turn. All were done in a similar manner. The scenes were slightly out of focus, as if they were being viewed beneath water. Each painting depicted people, in crowds or as couples. He looked closer at one that showed a man and woman standing side by side in what, at first glance, would seem to be intimacy. It was only upon closer examination that he noticed each had a hand reaching for the other, but weren’t quite touching. That one point seemed to accent the slight distance between the two, adding to the overall effect of incredible yearning. “You can barely make out the features of these people. Why’d she smudge them up like that?”

Trey chuckled. “You’re a philistine, you know that? It looks as if Raine Michaels favors a form of Impressionism. An artist who does it really well doesn’t need everything in the picture to be clear in order to convey emotions and a message.”

Taking one last look at them, Mac wondered if the almost surreal view of reality in the pictures was indicative of Raine’s grasp of the world. If so, it depicted almost perfectly the person described by her family, a woman who saw things differently, who reacted to events with a maddening naiveté. He couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the technique in her paintings. He was no art patron, but even he could feel the emotions she’d captured there. Such a viewpoint in her personal life, however, could be downright dangerous.

He turned away from the pictures. He couldn’t afford to think of Raine as more than a client. This glimpse into her perception of the world around her made her seem too human, more than a case. Emotionless objectivity was the quality he brought with him to each job, the quality he was paid handsomely for. Somehow that element receded in the presence of her talent. He made sure to avert his gaze from the paintings as he walked Trey out of the room and through the front door.

Raine woke up, her heart pounding, chills chasing up and down her spine. Panting, she pulled the sheet closer around her, scooting up to lean against the white wicker headboard.

The nightmare was back.

Her body was trembling with the aftershocks, her mind still frantically reassuring itself that it had only been a dream, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening all over again.

Wrapping her arms around herself, her eyes went wildly to the window, latching with desperation on the full moon, the bright stars. It was always easier when she could concentrate on the night’s natural light, when the sky was bright despite its blanket of darkness.

She concentrated fixedly on the brilliance of the moon. It lit the sky with almost dusklike shadows. It wasn’t really dark at all. Not really. She needed to believe that, had to believe it to quiet the pounding of her heart. It hadn’t been a night like this one that she’d been dreaming of. No, then the sky had been utterly black, and she’d had to depend on the streetlights’ artificial glow to guide her way.

That night had given her a lasting fear of the dark, but she’d since learned plenty of ways to compensate for that fear. She was using one now. If this didn’t work, the switch to the lamp at her bedside was within easy reach. The night-light she’d long relied upon was still in the drawer of the table next to her bed.

She didn’t reach for either. Already deep breathing was calming her, the chills chasing over her skin were lessening. Before the letters started, it had been years since she’d had the nightmare. Now it was coming with increasing frequency. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what had triggered its return. Reality had an ugly taint to it these days.

Raine propped herself wearily against the headboard. Though the effects of the nightmare eventually faded, she knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not yet. After a time, she clicked on the lamp and slipped from her bed. Padding to the door in bare feet, she flipped a switch that turned on the light in the hallway. Some fears could be faced and conquered. But such feats took time, and she hadn’t been willing to wait until her fear of the dark disappeared before she’d bought her own home. She’d simply hired an electrician to wire the space so that she’d never have to walk into a dark room.

Reaching the end of the hallway, she turned the light on inside her studio from a switch mounted outside the door. She pushed open the door and strode quickly to the painting she was working on. It was the second to the last one she needed for the show, and overall she was pleased with its progress. She went to a table in the corner of the room and selected some paintbrushes. A flash of movement at the window caught her eye, and she was drawn slowly to it, peering into the darkness. At first she saw nothing but shadows, and then she could discern a figure moving. Her throat went dry and her breath seemed trapped in her chest. Who was out there? Was it the same person targeting her for a mind game of cat and mouse? Would she wake in the morning to a new sick message in her mailbox or elsewhere in her home?