Guns and Roses (2 page)

     - Toni McGee Causey

Roxanne St. Claire

P
ICK
Y
OUR
P
OISON

A Bullet Catcher Novella

Chapter One

“You’re firing me?” Benjamin Youngblood looked up from the paperwork his boss had just slid across a polished mahogany table and started to laugh. “Are you fu—”

“Don’t.” Lucy’s hand shot up, silencing him. She cut a glance toward her adjacent office, the door between that sanctuary and this war room wide open. “Little ears. And, yes, this time I’m serious.”

He blew out a breath and stabbed his fingers into his hair to drag back the locks, way too smart to defy Lucy Sharpe and drop an F-bomb within hearing distance of her toddler daughter. Also way too stunned to tease her about how much motherhood had changed the Bullet Catcher’s fierce and fearless leader.

Because it sure as hell hadn’t
softened
her.

“Lucy, this is ridiculous. I saved that son of a…” He caught himself, pausing to choose each word carefully. “I made the only decision I could make under the circumstances and I’m very sorry if that… that…” How could he describe Governor Roy McManus in childproofed words? “That self-involved, ego-maniacal, hypocritical blow-hard missed a photo op.”

“That blow-hard was our client.
Was
.”

“And there
was
a breach in security and a credible threat to the principal, so I called the shots the way I have been trained since the day I walked into this place.” He gestured to include not just the war room, but Lucy’s whole Hudson River valley mansion and the international security firm it housed.

“You made a very costly decision, Ben.”

“To hold him on the tarmac while we assessed the situation, and not allow him near the fence-line where I believed an assassin was waiting? Would have been a helluva lot costlier if he got off that plane and got a bullet in his chest.”

Lucy crossed her arms and regarded him silently, the dramatic upward sweep of eyes that hinted at her Polynesian ancestry only adding to the air of Zen calm that always settled over the woman who’d built the Bullet Catchers into the most elite protection organization in the world.

“What?” he asked when the silence lasted a beat too long.

“You know why you’re in this office at least twice a year having to convince me not to let you go?”

He grinned. “You love to see my pretty face?”

“Your face isn’t your problem, your gut is.”

Like hell it was. “The same gut that’s kept me alive on a daily basis?” He leaned forward, determined to make his point before she cut him off. “The gut that’s kept a few high-powered ambassadors, senators, and European princes alive, too? The gut that screamed ‘trouble’ when Governor McManus landed in Tampa and that last threat came through
my
private phone line, untraceable and containing personal information about the travel schedule that no one but his damn wife could know? That gut, Lucy? The one I need to do my
goddamn
job?”

“Your gut and your short fuse.” All the Zen evaporated as she pushed back from the conference table and power-strode across the room. At the entrance to her private office, she peeked in and then closed the door without making a sound.

“They help me do my job,” he said. “And you are the queen of instinct calls.”

“Your job and an ‘instinct call’ have to be done without interfering with our client’s work. That’s why politicians and CEO’s and legions of other world-beaters hire the Bullet Catchers—because we don’t hinder their success or stop their campaigns while we keep them alive.”

“McManus’s re-election campaign would have come to a screeching halt if the bastard was dead.”

She didn’t answer, slowly crossing the war room, a sea of computer monitors blinking non-stop behind her, all broadcasting the whereabouts and assignment status of every Bullet Catcher on the planet. Those screens tracked easily over forty bodyguards, investigators, weapons experts, and the occasional reformed thief.

His light, he noticed, had been snuffed out. Shit. Ben had been with this company for almost six years, taken off the mean streets of L.A. at twenty-two, a little Comanche, a little Cree, and a lot of trouble. He’d been saved by one of Lucy’s top men and trained to be a key player in her organization.

His life had purpose now, and he’d do anything, absolutely anything, to keep this job. But when Lucy made up her mind, Heaven and Hell had to move to change it.

Then he’d move Heaven
and
Hell, damn it. He just wasn’t entirely sure how.

Lucy let out a slow sigh, sinking into the leather chair across from him and resting her elbows on the table. “We lost the client, Ben. Even
you
have never cost me a paying account before.”

“McManus is a loose cannon.”

“Don’t make excuses,” she fired back at him. “He’s the governor of Florida, well-connected, vocal, and pays a small fortune for private protection on his campaign.  A small fortune that is now being paid to a far-less capable competitor, I might add.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine why he’d settle for that operation.”

“Well, they’d better be on their game because someone’s gunning for that guy.”

He expected an argument, but Lucy drew her brows together. “I trust you’ve triple checked every lead to the incoming threats?”

“Quadruple checked, and the bitch of it is they have to be coming from someone close to him. They know too much.”

She glanced down at the files spread out before her. “But you didn’t find a weapon at the fence-line, and you were certain there would be one, based on the content of the text.”

“I did find some things.”

She arched a brow. “Yes, I saw the unaccounted for items after you cleared the area. Let’s see…” She fluttered a piece of paper, pretending to read. “We have a jar of homemade pepper jelly, a notebook of handwritten poetry, and a bouquet of roses. Not exactly the tools of a trained killer, or does your gut think the assassin makes jelly and pens poetry?”

He ignored the sarcasm. “All those items are in the lab now, being broken down to their last molecule. It might interest you to know that the poetry book had been wiped clean of fingerprints.”

She nodded, obviously appreciating how unusual that was. “And the jelly?”

“A little spicy, but not toxic,” he admitted. “However, the roses intrigue me.”

“How so?”

“They were black, symbolizing death if you follow those kinds of things. I happen to think that’s a very strange thing to give a politician on the fence-line of a rally.”

“Black roses? Dyed or natural?”

“According to the lab, they were a rare genetically engineered breed of red so deep, they appear black. They’re known in the trade as Black Cherries, and only a few horticulturalists in the country grow them.  The closest grower in four states happens to be in the governor’s backyard, not an hour from the state capitol.” He let his tone make it clear that couldn’t be a coincidence. “If that grower can supply the names of every florist who purchased those roses in the last week, we could trace those sales records and, maybe match one of the rally attendees.”

“That’s a long shot.”

“The best kind.”

“He’s not even our client anymore, Ben.”

As if he needed to be reminded of that. “Look, I don’t want to lose this job. I know my decision cost us this client, but…” But what? He couldn’t bring McManus’s business back, could he? “I’d like another chance.”

Inhaling slowly, she divided her gaze between his face and the termination paperwork. After a moment, she pushed the papers closer to him. “I’m sorry.”

Shit. Desperation squeezed his chest. He would not pick up that pen and sign. “Let’s make a deal, Lucy.”

She laughed at the suggestion. “How long have you worked for me?”

“Not long enough,” he admitted. “Look, if I can find a credible threat to McManus and prove someone is trying to kill him, can I keep my job?”

She hesitated a nanosecond, just enough to give him hope. “That’s just—”

“If he re-hires us for security?” He threw that out there with the same force he’d use on the shovel to dig his own grave. How the hell could he get McManus to do that?

She surrendered a smile. “You know I like your style, Ben, but—”

“Lucy, come on. Give me this chance.” He stared her down, the weight of hopelessness pressing on him, making him add one more word. “Please.”

The office door popped open. “Mommy!”

Instantly, all of Lucy’s features relaxed, her eyes lit up, and both arms shot out to a wee girl with black ringlets who toddled across the room.

“Gracie! There’s my pumpkin!”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Lucy.” A fair-haired young woman followed in Grace’s wake, picking up speed to catch up with the child.

“Not a problem, Sveta. C’mere, you.” Lucy swooped her daughter onto her lap with a kiss for both cheeks before returning her attention to Ben. “All right, you have a deal,” she said, tenderly caressing her daughter’s head.

So the rumors were true after all. Motherhood
had
softened Lucy Sharpe.

Ben stood quickly, giving a wink to the little girl. “Thanks for the assist, kid.”

Lucy ignored the comment, but let go of Gracie’s hair long enough to point a finger at him, the nail precisely the color of those Black Cherry roses down in the lab.

“You are on a leave of absence,” she said. “That means you do not have a single Bullet Catcher resource at your disposal.”

What? No vast database, no private jet, no brotherhood of back up, no instant access to top secret government information?

“No problem, Luce.” He punctuated that with a confident smile that didn’t exactly match what he felt inside. “I got my own resources. Here.” He touched his temple. “And here.” And his gut.

“Use them wisely, Mr. Youngblood, because this is your last chance.”

~*~

Callie Parrish dropped to her bare knees and swallowed a curse that probably had the devil doing a happy dance in Hell. But right that minute, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but the dozens of bare-naked rose bushes that stood like beheaded little soldiers in the middle of the flower farm.

Mud squished and stones stabbed her skin, but she didn’t even notice the discomfort as she touched the raw wound of a hastily cropped rose bloom.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered, peering down the row in the hopes they’d missed a bush or two. But no, the entire bed—at least four dozen healthy rose bushes—had been snipped and stripped.

Her
entire
crop of Black Cherries had been decimated. Misery crushed her chest, as strong as that morning she’d held Granny Belle’s hand and listened to a shocking, heartbreaking, and truly amazing story. She’d made her great-grandmother a promise that day… a promise that someone had just stolen along with a whole bunch of rare roses.

Who would do this to her?
Why
? So few people even knew that she grew Black Cherry roses. Yet someone had marched over five acres of flowers to clear out the only blossoms worth a hundred bucks a dozen.

Injustice rocked her right down to her rubber muck boots. Without this source of extra income—the only dime not accounted to the wolf at the door with a mountain of unpaid bills in his teeth—she couldn’t even dream of granting Granny Belle her one and only final request.

Those ashes weren’t going into the Seine anytime soon. And as far as the answers Callie longed to have… well, looked like any chance of finding them got clipped away with the roses.

Just as tears welled, she heard a car engine and the growl of tires digging into the gravel drive. God, let that be a customer who’d seen her homemade sign on the highway. But, the way things were going today, it was probably some misplaced tourist trying to find their way down to Disneyworld.

She swiped a stray hair off her face and stuck it into her baseball cap, streaking her cheek with mud. Taking one last look at the chopped and naked bushes, she hitched her cut-off overalls and started across the farm, trying not to think about how long it would take her to make that money back.

She cocked an ear toward the shed that doubled as a storefront, expecting someone to call out, as the occasional retail customer did when she was in the field. When she didn’t hear anything, she picked up her pace, plucking at the thin tank top that already stuck to her skin in the brutal Florida sun.