Protecting The Boss

Bobby Bayleaf, who was big, black and had played tackle in college, offered up a string of profanity that ended with Seth sticking the sun where it wouldn’t shine.

“Now, now,” Seth said. “Isn’t your department working on better relationships with its citizenry?”

“You’re not citizenry. You’re the guy on the bus who used to pick fights with me, even when I got big enough to pound on you.”

For a long while, he’d solved a number of problems with his fists. But then he’d started to fly and everything had changed. “I was just preparing you for your future,” Seth said. “Listen, do you have anything on the shooting last night?”

“Nope. I talked to the detective who snagged the case. Officers canvassed the area where the shots were thought to come from but nobody saw nothing. And there weren’t any other shootings in that area. They’re writing it off as an isolated incident.”

Was that what it was? Hard to know. “And what about Megan North?”

“Found her in Carmel, California, just like you said I would. No police record with the exception that her name came up in connection with a traffic accident that occurred recently where the other driver got a ticket for blowing a stop sign.”

“Okay. That’s it?”

“There was just one other thing. I was able to find a report where she’d made a 911 call, indicating that there were intruders in her apartment complex.”

“In her apartment?” Seth clarified.

“No. In the complex. She lives on the second floor and she said that there were people having a threatening conversation under her window.”

“A threatening conversation? Two people threatening each other?”

“I don’t think so but there’s not a lot of detail. The cops responded to the 911 call, evidently had a conversation with Megan but didn’t see anybody. I think you’re going to have to ask her if you want more information.”

That would go well. She’d want to know what the hell he was doing looking into her background. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

“I’ll be in touch if I hear anything else about the shooting,” Bobby said. “Other than that, I guess I’ll see you when you get back from your shopping trip.”

That’s what Bobby had called it when Seth explained the assignment the night before. The idea that anything he was doing being in the same sentence as boutique had seemed to tickle Bobby.

“When I get back, I’m going to take some money off your hands in cards,” Seth said, ending the conversation.

He put his luggage into his vehicle and drove back to the office. He had work to do before leaving town. When he got there, he studied his desk. Then the two tall windows behind his desk.

He liked those windows. They had a western exposure that offered spectacular views of sunsets. But there was something wrong with them this morning.

They didn’t face Megan’s boutique.

He started gathering things up, taking them to the small conference room. It was all cleaned up; no one would ever guess that there’d been a party there the night before. He spread everything out on the table. He’d been there about an hour when Trey walked past his door. “Morning,” Trey said. “What are you doing in here?”

“Clearing off my desk,” he said.

“How much did you have to drink last night? Because that’s not your desk.”

“Funny guy,” Seth said. He had his chair at just the right angle that he could see the front door of Megan’s building. He was confident that Megan had not yet arrived.

Trey walked over to the windows. He sipped the coffee that he carried. “I’m glad we were able to help Abigail and Megan. That means a lot to Kellie. They both seem very nice.” He turned to look at Seth. “And Megan is really gorgeous.”

“I guess,” Seth said. “But she may get me killed.”

The amused look left Trey’s face. “What?”

“Last night when I took her back to her hotel, shots were fired in our direction as we exited the cab.”

“Holy hell. Did they get the shooter?”

Seth shook his head. “Nope. And Megan said there was absolutely no reason that anybody would be shooting at her.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

He’d wrestled with that question during the night. “I don’t know. For one thing, the reason I was hired was because of concern about a competitor—J.T. Daly’s—wanting some revenge for North and More Designs besting them. But it doesn’t feel right. I did some research on them. By and large, they are a reputable company. There was a suspicion that they might have been involved in a questionable fire of another competitor but it wasn’t proven. And even if it’s true, burning down an empty warehouse is different than taking potshots at the executive team.”

“So if not them, then who?” Trey asked.

“I don’t know. And Megan claims not to, as well. But she said a few things that were kind of odd and it makes me think that there’s a story there.”

“You going to initiate a background check on her?”

They did that sometimes with new clients. A clause in their standard contract gave them that right. Bobby had done the quick check on her recent criminal history but Wingman Security had contacts who could dig deep. With a few clicks of his computer, he could initiate a background investigation that would tell him everything from her grammar school teachers to her shoe size.

He’d know everything there was to know about Megan North. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “She has meetings today at the boutique. Made it clear that my services were not needed until we leave town late this afternoon.”

“Yet you’re going to sit here all day and watch the street.”

Seth shrugged. “I’m going to sit here until about two and then I’m going to go see my mom. And then swing back about four to get Megan.”

“I’m going to be here all day,” Trey said. “Kellie has a girls-only baby shower. Come get me when you leave and I’ll work out of this space.”

“I appreciate that,” Seth said.

“Here’s what you’ll appreciate even more. I’m calling in a pizza order at noon.” Trey turned to walk out the room.

“I would marry you if Kellie hadn’t beaten me to it,” Seth said, calling after him.

Trey’s pithy response echoed back into the quiet conference room, making Seth smile. He really had the best partners in the whole world.

A half hour later, Seth saw a car pull up and park in the no-parking zone in front of the boutique. He recognized it as the same one that Evan Chevalier had been driving the night before. He got up to get a better look but stayed back from view. Megan got out of the back seat. Her dress was a pale-yellow-and-white print that reminded him of his favorite lemon dessert. Her hair, which she’d worn long yesterday, was pulled up and in some kind of fancy bun on the top of her head.

Evan Chevalier got out of the car, walked around the front, and opened the front passenger-side door. He helped his wife out. Then Abigail and Megan waited while Evan opened the trunk. The first bag he pulled out was a big suitcase that would never have fit into an overhead compartment. It was a rich-looking buttercream. The second was a matching garment bag that zipped up the front and had a wide leather strap. Classy. It was going to make his black same-as-everybody-else’s look almost shabby.

Seth smiled when he saw the last thing that Evan removed from the trunk. Megan’s umbrella. She had said that she was going nowhere without it. Now she reached for it and tucked it under an arm. They were expecting rain today but it likely wouldn’t start until the afternoon. She reached for her other bags but Evan waved her away and grabbed for both.

He watched as Megan unlocked the door and held it for her sister and brother-in-law. Then disappeared.

Seth waited. Shallow breaths. Knowing that he was crazy but really unable to stop himself. He did not believe those gunshots last night were random. Regardless of the story that Megan was spinning.

He didn’t breathe easy again until Evan came back outside five minutes later, got into his car and drove away. He sat back down to work. Twenty minutes later, a cab pulled up. Out got two men, both with gray hair. One was carrying a cardboard tube, like what an architect might use to carry around rolled blueprints. The other carried a laptop computer.

Old school, new school.

Old school knocked on the glass door. Megan opened it and shook both men’s hands. She was smiling. Then they were all inside.

She was safe. She knew these people. He sat back down. Tried to work. Fifteen minutes later, he dialed her number.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“Yeah, uh, I was just checking on the time that I should pick you up? Was it four?”

“Yes. At the boutique,” she said.

She sounded fine. Certainly not under duress. Maybe a little puzzled that he’d forgotten.

“Great. I’ll be there.” He hung up.

He got busy. He had a lot to do. When Trey came in with pizza later, he pushed the paperwork aside. After his first piece, he sighed. “This is great. Thank you.”

“All’s well across the street?” Trey asked.

“Yeah. Megan and Abigail are inside meeting with two men. Architect. General contractor. Something like that.”

“You want me to make up some excuse and go knock on the door, just to make sure everything is okay?” Trey asked.

“I already called her.”

“I knew it,” Trey said. “You can be such a mother hen.”

Seth accepted the criticism. He didn’t care about things or that many people. But those he did care about, he protected fiercely.

Megan, by virtue of signing that contract, fell into that category. That’s all this was.

By two, his desk was clean. He left an out-of-office message on his desk number and also on his business email. Told Trey he was leaving and waited until his partner was settled in the conference room. Then he got in his Jeep and drove to Everpark to see his mom.

When he arrived, she was sitting on her porch. Everpark was massive and provided all levels of care. His mom, at almost seventy, required no nursing care and maintained her own small stand-alone condo. But there were neighbors close by who kept an eye on one another. They also played cards frequently, and on nice days could be found on the Everpark golf course. She had access to a dining room, where she could have a meal once in a while when she wanted company.

It gave Seth peace of mind. “Hi, there,” he said. “It’s pretty hot to be out here.”

“Yesterday’s rain cooled it off a bit, I think,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you. I just had lunch.”

“No worries. Trey and I had pizza at the office. Hey, I got an assignment yesterday that’s going to take me out of town for a while so I wanted to see you before I left.”

“Is it taking you somewhere fun?”

“Sedona, Arizona, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Also Colorado Springs. I’m providing security services for an executive who is opening a line of women’s boutiques.”

“Are you looking forward to it?”

Oddly enough, he was. Megan was sort of fun to spar with. Of course, he didn’t want to get shot at again. But now he’d be more vigilant. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again. “It will be fine. But you know you can always call me if you need anything.”

“You. Any of your partners. I’ve got the whole list. But I’ll be fine.”

She likely would be. After her fall, she’d remained fiercely independent. But she was alone. “You need anything done around here before I go?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I also know how to call maintenance,” she said gently.

“Well, you let me know if they don’t respond and I’ll break some arms for you.”

She kissed his cheek. “I can always count on that.”

He stayed another hour, had some tea and some really great chocolate chip cookies, and finally, stood to go. “I’ll call you,” he said. “I’ll be on the road for about ten days and then back in Vegas for a couple to finish up the assignment.”

“Don’t worry about me. Go. Be safe. I’ll be anxious to hear about your trip when you get back.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

He drove back to Wingman Security and parked his Jeep. Before he got out, he called Trey. “I’m back,” he said.

“Okay. The two guys left about a half hour ago. Then Abigail’s husband came and picked her up. No sign of Megan.”

“Okay. I’m on my way.” He hung up, made sure his vehicle was locked and walked across the street. He tried the door of the building. It was locked. Good girl.

He knocked and cupped his hands around his eyes so that he could see inside. A wide corridor ran down the middle of the building. The boutique was off to the left and there was a furniture...no, that wasn’t right...an antiques store to the right. It looked like there might be other storefronts toward the back but the corridor was too dark to see much.

He pounded on the door. Hard.

And within seconds, Megan exited from the boutique. Looking...gorgeous. When she opened the door, he stepped in. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem.”

He walked in a few steps and looked inside the open door of the boutique. “Wow.” Walls had been torn down to the studs and the old tile floor was half ripped up. A stack of hardwood flooring sat in the corner.

She laughed. “I know. It doesn’t look like much now but we made a lot of progress today. It will be ready by the time we get back to do the opening here. I’m confident. The same team has been working on our other three stores and I saw pictures today that were awesome. Can’t wait to see these places in person.”

She looked excited and happy. And now that he was close, he could see the multiple necklaces around her neck and her gold earrings that dangled down, almost reaching her shoulders.

His fingers itched to reach out, to touch. Give them a little jingle-jangle. But he resisted. He caught a whiff of her perfume and breathed deep. He’d expected something light and floral, but it had a sharper edge and he liked it.

“So your day went well?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, as if she couldn’t imagine anything else. As if bullets hadn’t been flying the night before.

“So that means no one has shot at you today,” he said. “Yet,” he added, deliberately goading. He wanted her sharp, aware.

“That’s right.” Her voice remained pleasant but there was a flash in her deep blue eyes that she wasn’t quite so successful in hiding.

“These your bags?” he asked.

“Yes.” She walked over and grabbed the handle of the large rolling bag.

He’d used restraint before but now, he just had to say it. “It’s kind of weird, you know. That we met under the awning of the pizza place.”

“What do you mean, kind of weird?”

She knew exactly what he meant. “Weird in that you were already headed for my office later that afternoon.”

“Yes. I suppose it was,” she said.

No supposing about it. But he didn’t press her on it.

“Let me get that,” he said. He grabbed her bag in one hand and his suitcase in the other. She carried her garment bag, her umbrella, and a purse that was on one shoulder and crossed over her body to rest on her hip. It was yellow like her dress with a big white daisy for the clasp. Her shoes were white sandals with a high heel that did very nice things for her calves. And, of course, he was pretty impressed by her pink painted toenails that were clearly visible.

She was perfect in a cotton-candy kind of way. Except he didn’t think she was fluff. And that made her such a fascinating contradiction.

She had one weakness, for sure. Her love of her sister. Hard to hold that against a person.

She opened the door and they were on the sidewalk. She locked it behind them. “We’ve got a big drive ahead of us to Sedona.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Looks as if I missed a call. I had my phone on vibrate. But they left a message. It’s probably the car rental company. I thought they’d be here by now.”

She put the phone up to her ear to listen to her message. But almost immediately, he sensed a change, knew that something was wrong. Her shoulders tensed, her jaw became rigid. Her eyes... Was that panic? Distress?

“What?” he said, looking around. He felt open and exposed and motioned for her to get closer to the building.

She held up a hand. He could tell that she was starting the message again. And at the end, she drew in a deep breath. “Well, that wasn’t the car rental company,” she said finally. “At least I assume not,” she added, and then laughed with what sounded like nervousness.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What was it about?” He could feel his patience rapidly evaporate. He was worried about her. Her face had lost all color. “Maybe we should go back inside,” he said.

“Sure.” She unlocked the door. Held it so that he could pull their luggage in. Then she leaned up against a wall. She was very still. Very quiet. She was staring straight ahead.

“I’d like to help,” he said. “But you’re not making it easy.”

She nodded, as if in a trance. “That was a message from someone claiming to have information about the plane crash that killed my parents.” She looked up at him. “Yes, my parents were killed in a small plane crash. Sort of like your dad. And I probably should have said something last night when we were talking about your dad. But their crash was different. They weren’t flying the plane. They were the only passengers.”

He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d known about their deaths. “What about the pilot?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He survived the crash.”

She spoke so slowly, so distinctly, that he could almost hear a drumbeat between each word. “So he was able to tell you what happened.”

“Not really.”

They weren’t getting anywhere quickly. “Can you tell me what you do know about the crash?”

“It was a clear day. They’d been flying in the morning and had taken a break over the lunch hour. The crash happened shortly after they took off in the afternoon. Witnesses said they were banking for a turn and suddenly the plane went nose-down. They were able to issue a Mayday call but this was a small airport, with no air traffic operators on duty. The distress call was picked up by a regional airport but by the time help could be summoned, the plane had already crashed. The NTSB found no evidence of mechanical malfunction, although—” she paused “—I’m not sure how they could have. The plane was ripped apart.”

He knew what that plane had looked like. Probably had been a debris field that stretched for hundreds of feet.

“The finding was pilot error,” she said.

That was generally the finding if there were no mechanical issues. “What did the pilot have to say about that?”

“Not much. He couldn’t dispute the findings. He suffered a serious head injury, along with other very serious injuries, and has never been able to provide much detail.”

None of what she was telling him was super surprising. Commercial aircraft almost never crashed but with smaller airplanes, those in the general aviation category, it was a different story. There were plane crashes literally every week and, unfortunately, way too many fatalities. And more times than not, the reason was pilot error. It was no different than a guy who might miscalculate how slick a wet Vegas street was and slam into the back of a line of stopped cars. Pilots, many with limited time in the air, made bad decisions, generally as a result of not being familiar with the plane, the terrain they were flying over, the weather conditions, or the airport they were landing at or taking off from.

“And now somebody is calling to tell you that there is more information. Can I hear the message?”

“I guess.” She picked up the phone. Put it on speaker. Played the message.

It was a man’s voice. He spoke quietly, as if there might be the potential that he’d be overheard. There was no obvious regional or ethnic accent. “Your parents were killed. It wasn’t an accident. You better wake up and start smelling the roses.”

“Play it again,” Seth said.

She did.

“Again,” he prompted, thinking he might have picked up a little background noise the second time.

“No,” she said. “We’ve heard it enough. The words aren’t going to change.”

He didn’t want to push her. She looked very fragile. “You don’t recognize the caller’s voice?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Is it possible that it’s the pilot? You said he had head injuries. Maybe he’s... I don’t know, maybe he’s delusional.”

“It’s not the pilot,” she said.

“How can you know that for sure?” he asked. It was the most likely person to have information about the crash. The only person who had been there.

“I would recognize his voice,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I would think so,” she said. “Given that I almost married him.”

Chapter 5

Seth scratched his head. “Come again?” he said.

She sighed. She so rarely ever talked to anyone about this. “We were engaged. At the time of the accident.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty. We’d been dating since I was seventeen.”

“But suddenly you had responsibility for Abigail.”

“She was fourteen. It was devastating for her.”

“You’d lost your parents, too. And your fiancé was flying the plane. Couldn’t have been a walk in the park for you, either.”

She said nothing.

“So what happened between you and...the guy?”

“He recovered. A couple surgeries, so much physical therapy. But he was young and healthy and he worked really, really hard.”

“Who ended the relationship?”

It was a very personal question but she wasn’t surprised. She got the feeling that Seth considered very few topics as off-limits. “I did.”

“Because you couldn’t forgive him?” he said.

“Sort of,” she said, looking at her shoes. “Not for the crash. That was an accident. He adored my parents.”

“What then?” he asked.

“I couldn’t forgive him for continuing to fly planes.”

Now, it seemed, Seth had nothing to say. He just stared at her.

“Seth Pike speechless,” she said gently. “Why do I think that doesn’t happen very often?”

He shrugged. “You gave him an ultimatum and maybe he came back with the only answer that he could have. A pilot, somebody who loves to fly, can’t just give it up.”

“I understand. But for me, that was the wrong answer.”

“It might have been easier for him to give up a kidney. Or both kidneys. Throw in a spleen.”

He didn’t say it unkindly. More so just knowingly.

“We should go,” she said.

“What was your fiancé’s name?”

“Logan Lewis.”

“And you’re a hundred percent confident it’s not him?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should call him. See if he’s gotten a similar message.”

She had not spoken to Logan in over ten years. Once their engagement had ended, there had been the intermittent card or brief conversation for the first couple of years, as if neither one of them could completely cut the cord. But then even that had stopped. Her college roommate had married his best friend. And while Megan was still friends with Didi, and made a point to see her when she was in New York, where the woman had moved after college, by some tacit agreement they never discussed Logan.

What would he say if she called him out of the blue?

But perhaps not out of the blue? Not if he’d gotten a similar message.

But surely if there was something new, Logan would have called her. He’d been a nice guy. That was likely to still be true. While she and Didi never discussed it, she was confident that he’d moved on, probably had a wife and kids and a pretty house in the suburbs.

“I don’t want to call him.”

“Where does he live?”

“I have no idea.”

He stared at her. “Would you know how to reach him if you wanted to?”

She nodded. “We have a mutual friend. But I’m not going down that route.”