Protect Me Read online

  PROTECT ME

  BY SELMA WOLFE

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for review purposes.

  Copyright © 2013 Selma Wolfe

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  "If the man doesn't want a female protection detail, he can kiss my lily-white butt," the man behind the desk swore. When Steve Winters got irate, his face went red and he puffed up like an angry goose. It would have been hilarious on someone that wasn’t 300 pounds of pure muscle. “When I started this business, I did it so I wouldn’t have to answer to all those lackwits that are more trouble guarding than they’re worth. If the man doesn’t want the best in the biz, he can go somewhere else. I’ve only got you for a limited time, so you better believe I’m gonna use you while you’re here. I can tell you right now…”

  Hope Lasser bit back a grin and raised her hands in surrender. "Alright, alright, cool your jets. I was just asking.”

  She leaned back in her chair and checked the view behind her using the reflective glass of a picture frame. It was good luck that there was any decoration in the office at all; the few employees of Winters Protection Agency tended toward spartan tastes. It made sense for Winters to set himself up to see the door, but having her back to it made her feel uneasy, even in the safety of a nice California town.

  She’d adjust, Hope thought, and then immediately wondered if she wanted to.

  Winters fixed her with a squinty-eyed glare from across his desk. Hope took that as her cue to pack up. She grabbed a slim manila folder off his desk and headed for the door, resisting the urge to open the folder and flick through its contents on the way out.

  “Call if you need backup. And Hope?” Winters said. She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder.

  He stared at her, his normally stoic expression somehow even more serious than usual. “Do good work. There’s a reason I assigned you to this. Things might get dicey.”

  Hope blinked.

  “You got it, boss,” she said, controlling her surprise. Her eyebrows wanted to fly all the way up her forehead. This would be her fifth job for Winters, and this was the first time he’d made any comments. It gave her pause - if Winters knew the kind of gigs that would be cakewalks, he probably had a pretty good idea of which ones would be combat zones.

  Winters nodded, his face still grave. He drew a hand over his chin and rubbed at his five o’clock shadow. His eyes grew distant, looking somewhere past her.

  “I want to be frank with you, this might be a rough one,” he said. His hand dropped down to fiddle with the plain watch that was always buckled around his wrist. More reliable than a cell phone, he insisted, and very little was more important to a bodyguard than timing. “I don’t like to send any of us out into situations where all the backsides that need kicking haven’t already been kicked, you know that, but the guy needs protection. He says it’s important, and he swears he’ll listen. So do your best.”

  “Will do.” Hope nodded and lingered for another second, but Winters looked back down at his desk and grabbed a bunch of paperwork, apparently done with the odd little conversation.

  She strode down the hall, the thick soles of her boots making almost no noise against the tile floor. The fluorescent bulbs overhead flickered and cast odd shadows against the plastic barriers that divided up the open floor plan. It was all a bit bare, admittedly, but Hope didn’t mind that. None of the people that worked for Winters did. Most of them had seen worse.

  Hope rounded a shoulder-high corner and headed for her desk. A dark-skinned man with dancing black eyes and thick hair threw himself back in his chair and waved her over before she could sit down.

  “Don’t just pass me by, Lasser! What’s the word from the bossman?”

  She smiled in spite of herself and paused for just a moment. Javier was the youngest and least experienced of anyone who worked for Winters, and Hope privately thought he might have been hugged too much as a child. It was difficult not to like the young man; equally difficult not to dread the day that reality blunted the edge of his enthusiasm.

  Mentally she weighed her options and decided that a tiny bit of office gossip couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t Hope’s usual procedure, but Javier was part of the team. Hope was still getting used to trusting a team with her thoughts, and not just her life - nobody in all her previous experience had had much use for her opinion. But she wasn’t in either a war zone or military training anymore.

  “Remember the Rick Stone case that Winters bid on?” Javier’s widened eyes were answer enough. Hope’s own interest was much fainter and more self-centered, but then, she didn’t watch as much TV as Javier seemed to. “Right, well, he - er, we got it.”

  The kid almost bounced in his seat, his big brown eyes open as wide as they’d go. “Awesome!” he enthused. Hope watched him with amusement and he visibly tried to rein himself in a little. “Uh, any idea who’s going to get the…”

  He trailed off. Hope stared at him. Javier made a face.

  “Yeah, of course, you’re gonna get it,” he grumbled half-heartedly, slumping back down in his chair. “Stupid combat experience. Not my fault I haven’t been in any firefights.”

  “Of course I’m gonna get it,” Hope agreed with a small smile. "So - you, uh, you know anything about Mr. Stone?" She gave Javier a light shoulder punch and the kid perked right back up at the show of camaraderie.

  "Yeah, well, you probably know most of the stuff I know. Rich, pretty, stupid..." Something seemed to occur to Javier and he frowned before shooting her a nervous look. "Uh, and don't google him with the safety filters off."

  Hope sort of regretted bringing this up.

  "Oooookay," she said. "I'm just going to leave that alone and go over to my desk to do some research. Non-google research."

  Javier valiantly fought off a blush and rolled his eyes. "Where else are you going to look? Entertainment Weekly? Even Rick Stone probably doesn’t do everything they write about in there."

  "I'm sure there's something," Hope said firmly. She started to walk away

  Behind her Javier said, "When the guy gets drunk and grabs you at a party, I want your invitation. You know, once you're done punching him."

  Hope looked skyward and prayed to the ugly tile ceiling for patience.

  "For God's sake, I'm not going to punch a client," she told him. “Believe me, Rick Stone won’t be anything I haven’t seen a hundred times before.” Then she escaped to her desk.

  “Is this right?” Hope leaned into Winters office several hours later and waited for him to look up from his reams of paper. She wondered if Winters missed fieldwork. His huge hands and shoulders looked odd signing and checking off endless forms.

  Winters tipped up his balding head and gave her a rare half-smile. “I thought you’d be in here.” He settled back in his chair and rolled his shoulders, wincing at the pull on his neck.

  “Well, this assignment is a little irregular, sir,” Hope said, trying not to sound criti
cal, but unsure how else to sound. “He won’t give us a schedule, he won’t tell us the details of this invention that apparently ‘terrorists’ of some kind are after, and… I’m going to be the only guard on the detail.”

  She hoped desperately that Winters wouldn’t take this the wrong way; wouldn’t think she was complaining, or worse, scared. But doing a good job - protecting this stranger - was more important than her pride. And none of the details of the case were at all usual. By now Hope had been in this business long enough to know what normal looked like, and this wasn’t even in the same zip code.

  It was strange - Hope hadn’t unthinkingly trusted anyone since she was fourteen. And she didn’t trust Winters without reservation, of course not. That would be beyond stupid and possibly suicidal besides.

  But when Hope’s contract in South Africa had ended, she’d been a little lost. She’d flown back to the States, close enough to her hometown to feel uncomfortable but far enough away to be able to pretend it didn’t exist. Her entire life Hope had fallen into one thing after another: the military, Secret Service, a bodyguard detail, and then another. She knew how to take care of business, but she wasn’t entirely sure what to do when business didn’t come to her.

  She’d been sitting at a bar nursing a beer and keeping an eye on a drunk in the corner whose volume kept increasing when Winters walked in.

  In a Hollywood movie, the drunk would have gotten violent, and Hope would have had to spontaneously cooperate with Winters to subdue him. In reality, the two of them had looked each other over and noticed all the subtle signs of the trade: a neat black suit, relaxed and ready posture, eyes that never quite stopped scanning the room.

  He’d offered her a job and Hope had been pleased to accept, though she was a little doubtful the work could keep her interest. Winters seemed to be of the same opinion, because he’d given her a wry grin and said, “Well, I’ll keep you busy while you’re figuring things out, anyway.”

  So maybe that was why Hope couldn’t suppress a quiet confidence within herself that there was a good reason Winters would want to send her on a mission with this many irregular aspects.

  “I mean, according to Javier,” Hope felt a little weird using Javier as a credible source, but that was teamwork in action, or something, “the guy barely knows how to tie his own shoes. Are you sure this isn’t just paranoia, or…”

  She trailed off, feeling foolish. After all, the agency had to make money and paranoia would cash checks as well as a team of ninja assassins. But paranoia would be a waste of her skills and they both knew it.

  Winters glanced across the table at her with a crooked half-smile.

  “I can probably guess what you’re thinking. And I can’t tell you much, because I don’t know much that you don’t. But I asked around and those incidents Stone reported really did happen. There’s video footage of people trying to break into his mansion. Just couldn’t exactly stick it in the file.”

  Hope leaned back, intrigued despite herself. “Could have just been attempted burglary,” she mused out loud.

  Winters nodded and then shrugged. “So?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Excellent point, well made. Hope gave him a small smile of her own. Then she gathered up the folder and clicked it decisively against Winters’ desk.

  “Alright then,” she said. Winters nodded approvingly. “Guess I’m off to the beach.”

  The seaside town was bright. As soon as Hope stepped out of the car, unbearably strong light assaulted her eyes and made her scramble for sunglasses. The heat was strong but dry. It reminded her a little of Africa, except when Hope glanced around she noted there was a lot more water and a marked decrease in crocodiles.

  Africa also didn’t have a whole lot of yachts.

  “You Hope Lasser?” A white guy of average height and nondescript build strode down the pier toward her. Hope tried to downplay her immediate assessment and the way her shoulders wanted to pull back defensively.

  “I am.” She gave the man a firm handshake, taking in his carefully gelled hair and expensive clothes. “Are you Rick Stone?”

  The man barked out an incredulous laugh. “I wish, lady!” He tilted back his own sunglasses and stared at her. “You don’t know what Rick Stone looks like?”

  Hope resisted the urge to roll her eyes, even hidden behind her sunglasses. Not professional. But honestly, was she really supposed to be able to tell apart a bunch of rich white guys with overstyled hair and loafers?

  “Just checking,” she said, which was usually vague enough to make people worry they’d said something stupid. “Sorry, didn’t catch your name.”

  The guy wavered, like he was thinking about informing Hope that he hadn’t told her at all. But in the end he blinked and said stiffly, “I’m Grant Burstein. An old friend of Rick’s. We go way, way back.”

  Potentially useful. “Oh, really? How far back?”

  Grant brought his hand up to run through his hair and then obviously thought the better of it. With that much gel, it would probably stick.

  “You know. Back. Want me to take you over?”

  Hope side-eyed him through her sunglasses. “Sure, thanks.” Suspicion confirmed: Grant was just a wannabe flunky.

  The man walked her down the pier. He’d gone silent, which Hope didn’t mind, though she did wonder why. Maybe it was because she kept her own counsel. For a second Hope tried to imagine being talkative and cheery. She racked her brains, trying to think of a single thing to say to this coiffed, huffy man.

  Nope, she had nothin’. Hope mentally shrugged her shoulders and enjoyed the scenery.

  It was undeniably beautiful out here. As Hope’s footsteps echoed under the wooden pier, she gazed out at the ocean, which stretched on for seemingly endless miles of pure blue waves. The beach that Rick Stone owned was an unspoiled crescent of white-gold sand that slowly slid into the water. The pier reached over the waves several meters to a huge, sleek white boat. Or was it a ship? Hope knew nothing about boats, but rich people always seemed to own yachts, so she was going to go ahead and guess it was one of those.

  Grant stopped at the end of the pier and climbed up onto the yacht. Why it was necessary to have stairs connecting your boat to a pier was a little beyond Hope - wasn’t the whole point of a boat that they weren’t connected to land? Or were people actually this lazy?

  “Hey Rick, your friend’s here!” Grant called as he made his way toward a group of men clustered at the front of the boat next to a huge and likely superfluous wheel. Hope automatically counted them off (six), judged their probably capability in a fight (low), and threat level (also low, unless they decided she wasn’t well-dressed enough to be on their boat).

  The man leaning up against the center of the wheel, clearly the leader of the group, lifted his head and looked over. Hope’s first impression was of sun-bleached brown hair and an easy smile.

  “Oh hey, great,” Rick said. He gestured Grant toward the group in a way that managed to be both casual and commanding at once. “Why don’t you come over here and take over the entertainment while I say hello, yeah?”

  Grant nodded happily and headed into the center of things while Rick broke away and walked over to Hope.

  Rick was a shade above your average kind-of-tall guy and had the chiseled good looks that a certain class of young businessmen seemed to grow as part of their job. There was a line of stubble traced along his jaw and he had on an expensive-looking pair of aviators. His tousled hair was at odds with his impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit, but somehow it worked for him.

  With his sunglasses and sun-tanned skin, Rick looked like a man who spent a lot of time with his sleeves rolled up on the decks of yachts. It was hardly a quality that Hope admired, but she found it difficult to look away from him all the same.

  Hope tried to keep her once-over as professional as possible. He was just another man in a suit, she reminded herself. No need to be intimidated, or worse, interested.

  As soon as he reached her, Hope st
uck out her hand, though she kept the glasses on. Clients always seemed reassured by the glasses.

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Stone,” she said. She liked the way that Rick reached out without hesitation and shook her hand firmly. “I’m Hope Lasser, from Winters Protective Agency.”

  Rick nodded and glanced around. “Yeah, I know who you are, but keep the whole bodyguard thing on the DL, okay? This black on black clothes thing you’ve got going on is fine, little dour, but that’s cool.” He spoke rapid-fire, clearly expecting her to keep up. Fortunately Hope was good at understanding just about anyone after years of translating hundreds of dialects into comprehensible Zulu, Afrikaans, or English.

  That didn’t mean that she understood his slang. “DL?” she asked.

  Rick rocked back on his heels and Hope couldn’t see it happen, but she swore he rolled his eyes. He definitely sighed. “The down-low. Under the radar. Just between the two of us… we can make it if we try?” And now he was singing. Poorly. “Comprende?”

  “I understand,” Hope said, biting back a very different comment, “but you should know that’s not standard procedure.” Normally she would have protested a lot more, but this assignment was already warped beyond repair. Since there was only one of her, she might actually do better by staying undercover than she would through open intimidation.

  The man waved it off airily - Hope noticed with some interest that dotted over his hands were old and new scars crisscrossing through his tan. They looked blurry, like burns or chemical scars. She wondered where he’d gotten them.

  “Standard procedure is for standard people,” Rick said. He grinned with very little warmth. “What use do you think I have for that?”

  Hope tilted her head and pretended to consider it.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose it depends on how serious you are about staying alive.”

  There was a pause where all Hope could hear was seagulls and Rick’s posse chortling in the distance. She stood her ground. In this business, there was a trade-off for being the best: sometimes you lost a client to tough love. It was that, or lose them to carelessness.