Making Angel (Mariani Crime Family Book 1) (20 page)

Her joy was worth every mile we’d driven, worth risking Father’s anger to see. We had time to kill before our meeting, so Bones and I checked our rooms, dropped off our bags, and grabbed jackets. Markie changed and then waited for us in the hall, bouncing on her toes like some kid on her first Disneyland adventure. We had to hurry to keep up as she led us out the doors and onto the beach. Then she removed her sandals and dug her toes into the sand.

“Feels like the sandbox we had in our backyard as kids.” She glanced around before adding, “Except there’s no cat poop.”

Bones chuckled. “You’re even more awkward than Angel.”

She was, and I loved it.

The temperature was in the low seventies. There weren’t many people walking the beach and even fewer braving the water. Markie walked between me and Bones, her eyes round with wonder. “It’s so beautiful. Do you guys have your swim trunks on under your shorts?” she asked.

Bones and I shared a look. He chuckled and shook his head.

“What?” Markie asked.

“Uh, no. That water’s like sixty-five degrees. I’m not going near it without a wetsuit on,” I said.

“Me either,” Bones added.

“Really? Sixty-five degrees, huh? Back home we had swimming holes that were colder than that in the middle of summer. I think I can handle it. Will you hold my stuff?”

“Yep. Knock yourself out.” I held out my hands expectantly.

“Thanks!” She tugged her blouse over her head and slipped off her skirt. Then she handed everything to me.

I tried not to stare, but Markie was gorgeous. A modest lavender one-piece swimsuit hugged her hourglass figure, perfecting the balance of soft curves and hard lines. She spun around, giving me a view I would never turn away from as her perfectly toned legs sprinted toward the water.

“Damn,” Bones whispered.

Markie ran until the waves crested above her knees, and then she dove under. Bones nudged me. Then he gestured toward my hand—the hand tugging the collar of my shirt away from my neck—and chuckled.

I released my collar and rubbed at my hairline. “Damn, indeed,” I breathed.

Markie surfaced, gasping for air and visibly shivering from the cold while she pushed her hair out of her face. She splashed her way out of the water and ran back toward us.

“No way that’s sixty-five degrees!”

I took off my jacket and held it out to her. She ran straight into it, her lips turning blue.

“Okay, maybe the time in Africa spoiled me, because that water is f-f-freezing.”

I rubbed her shoulders, feeling the cold of her body seep through the fabric of my jacket.

“We tried to tell you,” Bones said.

“Yeah, well I’m going to try out that huge jetted tub in my bathroom while you’re at your meeting.”

I swallowed back the fantasies that visual invoked, took deep breaths, and fought to keep my body from physically reacting. All of which would have been easier if I’d given Markie a trench coat instead of a jacket that barely passed her ass.

Bones and I saw Markie into her room, where she promised to wait until we got back, and then we went to our own room to dress and get ready for our meeting. Before we got into the Hummer, I scanned it for devices, pausing when something unexpected popped up on the screen.

“What is it?” Bones asked, leaning in to study the scanner.

I reached under the back bumper and pulled out a quarter-sized polycarbonate disk, flipped it over in my hand a few times, and handed it to Bones.

“What the hell is this?” Bones asked, examining it.

“It’s sending a signal and it’s not a bomb, so my guess is some sort of tracking device. I’d have to take it apart to verify that, though.”

“Not one of your father’s?” Bones asked.

“Not unless he’s keeping tech secrets.” Father usually brought me in on his new technical toys, but he also liked to test me. I wouldn’t put it past the old man to plant foreign tech on my vehicle and see if I caught it.

Bones leaned back, his mind probably spinning in the same circles as mine. “Did you do a scan before we left the apartment?”

I’d been mentally retracing this morning’s steps since the anomaly beeped on my device finder, but I couldn’t remember. My excitement over picking up Markie and beginning our trip had made me sloppy, and that was dangerous. “I’m not sure.”

Bones stared at me and then looked at the device. “If you scanned it this morning, then someone followed us here. Or…” He looked up at the hotel.

Markie. Was she alone with the Hummer? When would she have put it on?
It was barely under the bumper, and she could have popped it on when nobody was looking. Maybe when she went to the restroom at the diner.

“No.” I forced my mind to stop convicting her. “I must not have scanned it.”

Bones slipped the device under the bumper of a nearby minivan, and we climbed into the Hummer.

“I could have used that,” I said.

“For what? If you take it offline they’ll know you found it. This way, maybe they’ll keep tabs on someone else for a while.”

He had a point, so I resisted the urge to steal back the tracking device and make it my next project. “Yeah, but they already know we’re here.”

He shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that now.”

By the time we pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto the street, my stomach was twisting into knots. Anyone tailing us would have seen Markie with us, putting her in danger. I called her cell.

She answered and I realized the flaw in my plan. How could I warn her that she might be in danger without revealing my identity or the fact that I’d found a tracking device under my vehicle?

“Angel? Is everything okay?” she asked.

Anything I said would only confuse her and put her in more danger. I’d been stupid to bring her along on the trip, and even stupider to think I could get away from my life for even one weekend. Now I was on the phone with nothing to say, instead of driving like I had a possible tail to lose. Turning my brain back on, I flipped a u-turn and checked my rearview mirror.

“Markie? Oh, crap. I must have butt dialed you. Sorry about that. We’ll see you soon, okay?”

She hesitated before replying, “Okay.”

“Enjoy the tub. ’Bye.” I hung up.

Bones shook his head. “She’s still in the lead, but you’re plenty awkward.”

I told him what he could do with his opinions.

He turned on the back camera and watched for a tail as I gripped the steering wheel and turned down an alley. I sped through it and merged onto a street, going the opposite direction.

“All right, Bones, help me. What would you do?”

“I’m a bodyguard. I’d call in security.”

Security. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?

“You’re a genius, my friend.” I drove through two connecting parking lots and then made another turn.

He tilted his head to the side. “Yeah, I get that a lot. You want me to call someone to keep an eye on your girl?”

“My friend,” I corrected. “She’s just a friend. And do you know someone in the area who’s trustworthy, but not loyal to my family?”

Bones threw his hands in the air, snorting at my ignorance. “Sometimes it’s like you don’t even know me.”

It was all too easy to forget that my bodyguard doubled as a social butterfly, which, in turn, helped to make him even better at his job. Bones had contacts everywhere, in every industry, probably around the globe. Where my passion ran to gadgets, his ran to relations.

“Sorry, sorry. Please work your magic and get protection for Markie.”

Bones multi-tasked, making calls while he studied the rear camera. He hired out Markie-watch and confirmed we didn’t have a tail. Then he powered up the navigation and we headed for the agreed-upon meeting place: a warehouse in La Jolla. After we parked, I called Father to let him know about the tracking device. He swore a few times before warning us to be careful and hanging up.

Bones and I climbed out of the Hummer and followed Father’s associates into a warehouse where we inspected a load of new computer processors. I made the opening offer and, as the old man had predicted, they hemmed and hawed about it being too low. I shrugged and started walking away. They countered. The cycle repeated a few times before I gave them my final offer. They told me they’d need time to see if they could find a higher bidder. I gave them twenty-four hours.

Once we were back in the Hummer, I checked my phone and saw that I had three missed calls from the hotel.

“Everything okay?” Bones asked.

“No clue.” I dialed the hotel, only to find the manager—who was the one trying to reach me—had stepped into a meeting. Worried, I tried Markie’s phone. No answer.

Bones dialed his security hire. No answer.

We burned rubber back to the Hotel.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Markie

T
HE JETTED TUB called to me, but before I could melt into it, I needed to handle business. Eager to do so, I threw a sundress over my wet bathing suit and headed down to the hotel office. I told the front desk lady my room number and handed over my credit card. She punched in a few keys on her computer and blinked.

“Uh, this room has already been paid for.”

So Angel had put my room on his card. Well, that wasn’t going to work for me. “My friend used his card to hold the room, but this is the card my room needs to be billed to.”

She looked at the card. Then she looked at me. It was like I was speaking Hebrew or something.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t bill your card.”

I inched the card closer to her. “Sure you can. Just credit the card on file and put the charges on this one.”

We weren’t exactly talking about astrophysics, but she still didn’t seem to understand me. She called the manager. He wasn’t much taller than me, with brown skin, a round face, straight black hair and eyes, and wearing a suit. The manager and the front desk lady put their heads together for several minutes, casting glances my way. Then he held up a finger in the universal gesture of asking someone to wait, and disappeared into his office. When he re-emerged several minutes later, his expression was tight and worried.

“The room is taken care of,” the manager said like he was giving his final answer on some old gameshow rather than discussing my room charges.

I took a deep breath and tried again. “Yes, I know. I was in the restroom, so my friend paid for it. Now I need to get it off his card and put it on mine. Easy-peasy.”

The manager cleared his throat. “It’s not that easy, ma’am. Angel is a good friend and he gets a discounted price.”

So that’s what the hold-up was about? “Okay. Well, you can either charge me the full rate or the discounted rate. Either way, it needs to go on my card, not Angel’s.”

He shook his head. Sweat glistened across his forehead. “No, you’re not understanding. Angel and I have an agreement. He doesn’t pay for his rooms.”

“He doesn’t pay
anything
for his rooms?” I asked, certain I’d misunderstood. We had suites, after all. Nice suites, right on the ocean. Why would the manager put Angel up for free? And why would he give me so much grief about paying?

“You should really discuss this with Angel,” the manager said.

That did my patience in. “Look, this is none of your business, but since you’re hell-bent on arguing and keeping me from jetted-tub bliss, Angel and I are just friends. That’s all. He’s not going to pay for my room, because that could cause confusion about the status of our relationship. You understand?”

He gave me a barely perceptible nod.

“If you want to give me a discount, hey, I won’t complain. But whatever it costs, I will be the one paying for my room. So charge me now, or I swear I’ll walk up there, pack my things, and find a different hotel. Understand?”

His eyes widened. “No, please don’t do that.”

He stepped up to the computer and hit a few keys before charging my card a whopping fifty dollars for two nights. I could have argued for a bigger victory, but I had a tub to get to. Besides, it seemed kind of stupid to ask him to charge me more.

I got a weird vibe on the way back to my room—like someone was watching me—but the hallway was empty. Still, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I hurried to my room and threw the deadbolt behind me. Then, I sneezed. I sucked in a fragrance and turned, searching for the source as I sneezed again and again. Sure enough, a vase of red roses sat atop the bar. Still sneezing, I picked up the vase—keeping it as far from me as possible—and rushed it out into the hall. I placed it outside my door and returned to the suite to search for some sort of spray to break up the lingering allergens. After dousing the air with Lysol, I headed for the bathroom to find the perfect balance of bubbles and jets.