Heller's Revenge (7 page)

“We’ll have a little chat about
it tomorrow,” he said mildly and his glacial blue eyes melted a
little as he looked down at me. He stroked my cheek gently with the
back of his hand and then nudged me towards the stairs. “Goodnight,
my sweet.”

I was too tired to argue, so
stumbled downstairs to my little flat, brushed my teeth, jumped
into pyjamas and as soon as my head hit my pillow, I fell asleep.
But looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t lie awake all night
worrying about that ‘little chat’ we were going to have the next
day.

Because knowing Heller as well
as I do, I really should have.

Chapter 4

Naturally after all my carnal
activities that evening, I had a great sleep, but was woken at a
ridiculously early hour by the sound of men’s voices in my flat.
Too groggy to be alarmed, I stumbled out to my open-plan living
area to find Heller, Daniel and two workmen doing something noisy
in my kitchen.

“Morning gorgeous,” smirked
Daniel. I gathered from that smart comment that I looked an
absolute fright, but the two workmen eyed off my thin singlet top
and boxer shorts pyjama combo with wide-eyed appreciation. I
staggered over to Heller to lean against him.

“What are you doing? It’s too
early to be doing things,” I complained blearily, trying to force
my eyes open, but giving up and leaving them shut.

“It’s not early,” Heller
admonished gently. “I’ve been up for hours and even managed to fit
in a couple of meetings with clients.”

“But you like getting up early
and I don’t,” I mumbled into his chest.

He slid one arm around my
shoulders and led me over to the kitchen to show me what the men
were installing in the space under my counter where I kept my
rubbish bin. It was a shiny black button.

“What’s that?” I asked,
clueless.

“It’s a panic button,” said
Heller. “I never thought I’d need to install one in this flat
because I planned on it being occupied by my new client manager –
someone who would never need a panic button. Someone who wouldn’t
get themselves involved in tricky situations. Someone elegant,
personable and professional.” I puffed up at his compliments. “But
then I hired you instead.”

I deflated. “What will happen if
I push the panic button?”

“It will alert me, Daniel and
the twins in our flats, me in my office and the security team
downstairs. We’ll all come crashing through the door, armed and
ready to kill someone.”

I looked up at him. He was
serious. “So it’s not to be used to summon some help when I can’t
open a jar?”

He closed his eyes briefly. “No,
it’s not to be used for that.”

I contemplated the button.
“Well, I can’t imagine ever needing it then.”

“Let’s hope not.” He smoothed
down my feral hair with one hand. “Your hair looks like you’ve been
out in a cyclone,” he said with amusement. “How on earth does it
get in that state while you sleep?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just
really active in bed.”

The workmen sniggered, Daniel
smothered a smile with his hand and I could feel the low rumble of
Heller chuckling through his chest.

“You’re a man’s dream come true,
my sweet,” he said, grinning.

I woke up properly then. “I
didn’t mean it like
that
! Is that all you men ever think
about?”

“No, we think about work too.
Sometimes.”

“And speaking of work,” spoke up
Daniel. “Don’t you have a staff meeting in the security section at
ten?”

I checked the clock – 9:58 AM.
Shit!
Clive was a stickler for punctuality.

Abandoning everyone, I ran to
the bathroom and took a one-minute shower. I dashed to my bedroom
wearing only a towel, all four men’s eyes following me. Slamming
the door, I threw on a clean uniform, pulled on my socks and picked
up my boots and utility belt, haring out my front door and down the
stairs to the ground floor, nearly slipping in my socks. I skidded
into the security section, hopping and pulling on one boot as I
did.

The meeting had already started
and Clive was speaking. Unfortunately, my planned inconspicuous
entrance was spoiled by me tripping over a rubbish bin as I hopped,
sending me careening into a group of men, violently pushing one of
them up against a desk and knocking a coffee mug to the ground,
which shattered loudly on the dark hardwood floor. Everyone turned
around to look at me.

Clive made a pointed show of
glancing at his watch, before slowly moving his cold, hard gray
eyes back to me. He wasn’t one of my biggest fans. Cheeks flaming,
I quickly picked up the broken pieces of mug, threw them in the bin
I righted, mouthed “
sorry
” to all the men I’d disturbed and
settled myself on a nearby desk to finish pulling on and lacing up
my boots.

Clive resumed, advising us of
various changes in office procedures and legislation in his gruff,
blunt manner. The security business was highly regulated and Heller
was scrupulous in ensuring that all his staff were properly
screened, licensed and kept up-to-date with any legislative
changes. In fact, he was so scrupulous that I often wondered if was
trying to avoid any scrutiny from the regulators, which made me
wonder yet again if he ever took on any assignments that were a
little . . . under-the-table. But I wasn’t really sure that I
wanted to know either.

The men grew restless as Clive
continued, shuffling feet, clearing throats, one repeatedly
clicking a pen in and out, another drumming a beat with his fingers
on a desk. Fortunately, he didn’t speak for much longer. But just
as we thought we’d all be dismissed to find our assignments for the
day, his second-in-command, Rumbles, pushed a plasma TV on a
wheeled trolley to the front of the room.

We all groaned.

“Put a sock in it!” ordered
Clive, raising his voice. “Judging by that enthusiastic response,
you’ve already guessed that we also have a video to watch this
morning.”

The groans grew louder. Three or
four times a year, we were forced by the regulators to watch some
waste-of-time ‘educational’ DVDs for professional development
purposes. They were usually of poor quality with wooden acting and
a stilted script. The actors re-enacted scenarios that we
supposedly might encounter as security officers, with each scenario
showing the ‘right’ way to manage it versus the ‘wrong’ way. The
DVDs were meant to engender lively debate and discussion amongst
security staff, but in reality left us all silent, unresponsive and
as desperate to escape the room as a crowd of wharfies at a
Glee
concert.

“This one’s particularly
instructive and I’m sure you’ll all learn some new moves,” Clive
informed us in his flat voice. Rumbles pressed the play button and
dimmed the lights and we all unwillingly settled back to watch,
leaning against anything that didn’t move. I sat on a desk,
swinging my legs, prepared to be bored.

The title flashed up on screen –
The City’s Foxiest Fighter?
And there I was again – bum and
boobs hanging out of that bloody lingerie, seemingly beating up an
ageing and inebriated former celebrity. The joke was on me.

The men started laughing and
glancing in my direction, the ones near me nudging me teasingly,
and a couple even wolf-whistling.
Okay, so maybe the mask wasn’t
such a great disguise, after all.
I was grateful that the
lights were low so nobody witnessed my blazing red face.

When it was over and Rumbles
turned the lights back on, the men applauded and cheered. I had a
couple of choices – I could take umbrage and stalk off in a huff at
being ridiculed in front of my workmates like that, or I could take
it on the chin in the good-humoured spirit it was meant.

I chose the latter and stood in
the middle of the room to give them all a sweeping theatrical bow
of thanks and said with a sassiness I wasn’t feeling, “Hoped you
enjoyed the view, guys, because that’s as close as any of you are
ever going to get.”

And that provoked a rowdy
response of laughter, booing, catcalls, groans of disappointment
and joking. In the middle of it all, Heller slipped into the room
unobtrusively and positioned himself against the door, watching,
his face expressionless. As men noticed him, they fell silent, and
a stream of silence undulated around the room until we had all
quietened.

His eyes moved from one of us to
the next, regarding us, assessing us. Judging us?

“You, you, you and you also,
Matilda,” he demanded coolly, pointing as he spoke. “In the gym,
now.”

I exchanged nervous glances with
the three men who’d been on the lingerie job with me as we made our
way to a door on the far side of the security office. The other men
scattered, pretending to be busy, but discreetly craning one ear
and one eye towards us.

The gym was dedicated for the
use of the security men and smelled of dirty socks, sweaty armpits
and hard work. Heller waited at the door until we had all entered
and then followed us in. Clive moved in behind him and closed the
door, standing in front of it with his legs apart, arms crossed and
face blank, in what I considered to be a very menacing development.
There was no escape for us.

Heller towered before us,
controlled and motionless, blasting us one by one with arctic
chill. His face was unreadable. None of us dared to breathe. My
heart thumped so loudly that I was sure everyone could hear.

His voice was quiet. “Yesterday,
the four of you made my business – made me – look bad. Incompetent.
Easily distracted. Unprofessional. Not able to handle a minor
altercation without creating a spectacle.”

I swallowed hard when his eyes
fell on me. I hoped that he wasn’t going to yell at me – that’s
never a pleasant experience. And not for the first time, I was
disconcerted by his ability to appear flirty and affectionate
towards me while all along planning to give me a royal bollocking
later at his convenience. It was as if he was able to clinically
separate his relationship with me as my boss from his relationship
with me as my . . . whatever he was. I found it cold-blooded.

“Tell me what happened,” he
demanded.

I automatically opened my mouth
to speak.

“Not you, Matilda. You.” He
pointed at Tony.

His face mottling red, Tony
stammered and stuttered for a painful couple of minutes. His
version of events was so disconnected and incomprehensible that
Heller would not have been any the wiser by the time he petered
out, flushing, with sweat glistening on his top lip.

“I have no idea what you just
said,” Heller dismissed coldly and turned back to me. “Matilda?
Speak please. At least you can string two words together.”

I dared a quick glance at Tony,
who was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched and body stiff
with shame, and proceeded to explain to Heller why I was up on the
stage in the first place, obviously not mentioning the canapes. I
downplayed the men’s inattention and played up the crush of the
crowd, the loud music and how my vantage point on stage enabled me
to spot the fracas before they did. But I wasn’t sure that I
convinced him of anything.

“Why did that man suddenly
become so aggressive with you? What did you say to him? Were you
polite and calm when you approached him as you’ve been trained to
be?”

“It’s not what it seems, Heller.
He wasn’t being aggressive and I wasn’t fighting with him. He
became tangled up in my chains and we were trying to free
ourselves.” He stared down at me unblinkingly. “That’s what
happened. Honestly. I
was
polite and he left quietly and
willingly when we untangled.”

He contemplated me for a long
moment before speaking again. “With anybody else I would consider
that explanation to be completely implausible, but with you . . .”
His eyes raked over my face. “You’re fortunate you weren’t in
uniform, Matilda. There’s no reason why anyone watching that clip
should connect you to my business.” Heller turned his attention
back to all of us. “It may interest the four of you to know that I
met with Ms Mackenzie and Monsieur Roux this morning. At their
request. They wanted to discuss the show with me personally.”

Oh shit
, I thought, my
eyes flitting around the room for an escape route. But with Clive
guarding the door and the room’s only window barred with thick iron
rods for security, there was none. There were no options for me –
I’d just have to brave it out.

“They were very grateful to you
for filling in during the show, Matilda. And for dealing with the
gatecrasher.”

“Really?” I blurted out in
disbelief, not thinking.

“Yes. The entire situation has
garnered them extensive media attention. Far more than the show was
generating by itself.” Those thoughtful blue eyes on me again.
“They couldn’t be happier. And that means that the organisers
couldn’t be happier, either. I received a very generous gratuity
from them.”

He shifted his gaze back to the
three men. “You’re very fortunate, gentlemen, that Matilda was able
to make herself useful to the client yesterday, otherwise this
would have been something other than a little chat.” He let the
threat of that sink in. “You can go.”

We gladly trooped out, relieved,
but before we reached the door Heller spoke up again.

“Oh and by the way, none of you
will be receiving a bonus from that assignment.”

His usual practice was to allow
us to keep any tips we received from clients, earning more than
enough income himself from the steep fees he charged to run the
business comfortably. It was a good incentive for us, because the
better our service, the better the chances were that a client would
throw a big tip our way at the end. And of course, the better our
service, the better the
Heller’s
reputation became. Usually
Heller would have handed over the gratuity to the four of us to
share, so to be stripped of that privilege was unmistakably a
punishment. But he hadn’t finished with us.