Christmas Guardian
Kinley chose her words carefully. “I knew Shelly.”
He drew his arms back in, clicked off his PDA. “Did you have something to do with her murder?”
“No.” But Kinley knew she didn’t sound very convincing. “Did you?”
For the first time, she saw some emotion. For just a second, there was something in his eyes. Not pain, exactly. But some sentiment that he quickly reined in. “No.” He didn’t sound any more convincing than she had.
They stared at each other.
“You knew Shelly,” Kinley accused.
He nodded. “She was a former business associate. I fired her because she was embezzling from me.”
Yes. She’d read all about that. “And she was your lover. I saw a picture of you two in the newspaper.” In the photo, Shelly hadn’t been able to conceal the attraction she was feeling. It’d come through even in a grainy black-and-white image. Not for Jordan, though. In that photo, he was wearing the same poker face he had now.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“The truth. Among other things, I want to know who killed Shelly and why.”
For just a second, his mouth froze around the syllable he’d been about to say. Then, he obviously rethought his response. “What other things?”
Kinley blinked, because that’d been a slip of the tongue. “I was her client. And her friend.” She had to pause and take a deep breath. “I left something important with her.”
Mercy, had she stuttered on the word important?
Her nerves were so raw now that she didn’t know. “I tried to retrieve the item,” she continued, “but then I learned her office was destroyed and that she was dead.”
She didn’t think for a minute that Jordan was just going to accept her explanation. No. The question came immediately. “What kind of item?”
“That’s personal.” And she’d had more than enough of this intimidation. Kinley straightened her shoulders, tucked her purse beneath her arm and started for the door.
She didn’t make it far.
Jordan stepped in front of her, blocking her path and sending her straight into him. He was solid. She learned that the hard way when her breasts landed against his chest. If he had any reaction to the contact, he didn’t show it. He merely stepped back so that he was right in front of the door.
“Who sent you here?” he demanded.
“No one.” That was the first real truth she’d told tonight. “And I’m leaving.”
“Not now, you’re not.” He blocked her again when she tried to go around him. When Kinley tried again, he caught her, whirled her around and pinned her against the door. “Who knows you’re here?”
It wasn’t a question she’d anticipated, and now it was her turn to study his eyes to see what had prompted him to bring up one of her biggest concerns. “Obviously your people know.”
“Just Cody. And he doesn’t know your real name. He thinks you came because I wanted to have sex with you. So, who knows you’re here?”
“No one. I’ve been careful.”
He gave a slight eye roll and tipped his head toward the PDA where he had pictures of her. “If I saw you, someone else could have, too.”
True. And that terrified her. It had terrified her from day one, but even that wasn’t enough to make her stop this search. She had to know if Jordan had the answers she needed.
Well, one answer in particular.
“What’s this really all about?” she asked, hating that her voice was shaky. Heck, she was shaking. And the full-body contact he was giving her wasn’t helping. She felt trapped. Threatened.
“I want to know the same thing,” he countered. “What item did you leave with Shelly?”
She shook her head. “I can’t say.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Can’t,” she insisted. She met his gaze. “What do you know about this?”
He stayed quiet a moment. “I figure if you take what I know and what you know, we’ll have a complete picture. So, you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. You first.”
Kinley considered that and then considered the alternative. She couldn’t afford a stalemate. Nor could she afford the consequences of what would happen if she spilled all. So, she took it slowly. “I honestly don’t know who killed Shelly.”
“But you know who was after her and why,” he snapped.
“Maybe.” She groaned. “Look, I can’t think like this. Just back up.”
To her surprise, he did, and then made an impatient circular motion with his right index finger to signal her to keep talking.
Best to start at the beginning, she thought. That was the easy part. Too bad she didn’t know if she could trust him with the ending.
“Shelly’s death could be linked to what happened at the Bassfield Research Facility where I worked,” Kinley explained. “Secrets went missing. Illegal deals were made. The authorities have caught some people responsible, but since there might have been others involved in the illegal activity, they thought it best that I be placed in witness protection in another state.”
“Yet you’re here,” he pointed out. “Not in witness protection but at my company’s Christmas party.”
Kinley was certain she couldn’t keep the emotion or the heartbreak out of her expression. “Finding the item I left with Shelly is critical. It’s worth the risk of leaving witness protection.”
“And you think I know where this…‘item’ is?”
She closed her eyes a moment, shook her head. “I don’t know. But I made a list of all of Shelly’s friends, family members and enemies. I’ve made it through that entire list—”
He put her right back against the wall. It happened so fast that it robbed her of her breath. “You asked these people questions?”
That urgency and his stark concern didn’t help her breathing. “No. I didn’t want to raise any suspicions so I followed them the way I followed you. I watched them, looking for any signs that they might know something.”
His eyes turned even darker. “Because if someone got this item, they’d be able to draw you out of hiding. Why? What do they want?”
“Information about the last project I was working on.” It was a guess. But a good one, since she hadn’t been able to think of another reason. She hadn’t been privy to all top-secret data used in the project, however.
“You were working on antidotes for chemical weapons.” Again, it wasn’t a question.
She nodded, not surprised that he knew about the project that’d nearly gotten her killed and had cost her everything. “The formula for the primary antidote went missing. Someone may think I know where it is. I don’t,” she quickly added. “That’s the truth.”
“For a change.” He turned on his PDA again, scrolled through some pages and stopped on one. Not a picture. This one had some kind of code in it. “That’s your DNA. Day before yesterday, I had Cody collect your cup from the coffee shop, and I ran the test myself. No one but me has seen the results. Or compared it to anyone else’s.”
Oh, mercy.
Her breath shuttered, and there was no way to hold back the flood of emotion or what she had to say. She touched her fingers to her necklace and waited until Jordan’s attention went to the stone. “It’s a red ruby.”
She saw it. The recognition in his eyes. Just a split second. It was all she needed to continue.
“My son would be sixteen months old by now. Brown hair. Brown eyes.” Kinley swallowed hard. “You have him, don’t you? Shelly left him with you?”
Jordan calmly placed the PDA back into his jacket pocket. “Yes.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I have him. Your DNA matches his.”
A helpless sound left her mouth. She lost it. Her legs turned limp. Her breath vanished. And if it hadn’t been for Jordan catching her, she would have fallen to the floor. “Thank God.” And even though she knew she sounded hysterical, Kinley just kept repeating it.
“Don’t thank God just yet. The child was safe. Now he’s not. By coming here, you’ve placed him, you and me in grave danger.”
She fought to regain her breath so she could speak. “I never meant to do that, I swear.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he mumbled. Then cursed. “We have to sanitize this situation and do some damage control.”
She shook her head. “How?”
But before he could answer, the doorknob turned. Kinley tried to brace herself for anyone and anything. It was almost second nature since she’d been living in fear for months.
“This is damage control,” Jordan whispered to her.
He shoved his left hand around the back of her neck, dragged her to him and kissed her.
Chapter Two
While he kissed her, Jordan drew his gun and used their bodies to hide the Sig Sauer.
He wanted the gun ready in case the pretense didn’t work. And in case they were about to be met by someone who’d followed Kinley.
The door opened and from the corner of his eye, Jordan saw their visitors.
Cody and Burke.
Despite his instant relief at seeing nonenemy faces, Jordan didn’t break the kiss. In fact, he took it up a notch and made it look as if he was groping Kinley’s breasts when he reholstered his gun.
“Sorry for the interruption,” Cody drawled.
Only then did Jordan jerk away from her. He tried to look surprised, which wasn’t very difficult since that damage-control kiss had sent a coil of blazing heat through his entire body.
Hell.
Nothing like reacting like a red-blooded male instead of a security specialist in the middle of a potentially dangerous situation.
“Something wrong?” Jordan asked the men. Beside him, Kinley was breathing hard. Hopefully from the danger and not the blasted kiss.
Jordan made a mental note to figure a different form of damage control. Something that didn’t involve her mouth or her breasts.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Burke assured him. He smiled. Cody didn’t. He had a puzzled look on his face. “It’s just that some folks have to leave to go to other parties, and I want to make a toast to celebrate your new semiretired status.”
“Of course.” It couldn’t have come at a better time, because a toast and then an exit was the fastest way to get Kinley out of there.
Kinley smiled and fixed her lipstick. Her mouth was trembling a bit, and she looked as if she’d been popped with a stun gun. Again, he hoped that was from the fear. He took her by the arm, and they followed Burke and Cody.
“I give you a week,” Cody said, looking over his shoulder at Jordan. “And you’ll be so bored you’ll be begging Burke to sell you back the company.”
“I doubt that.” There wasn’t a chance of boredom now that Kinley had arrived with her dangerous baggage. Not a chance, either, of his wanting to buy back Sentron. He didn’t intend to go back to working an eighty-hour week.
Well, maybe not.
He’d made that plan when he thought he would have to devote more time to protecting the child that’d been left on his doorstep. Now that Kinley was here, though, his life was in major limbo.
And so were his emotions.
Jordan slowed his pace and hated that ache in the pit of his stomach. But from the moment he’d run that first DNA test, he had known the child wasn’t his. Biologically, anyway. He’d also known that perhaps one day someone would show up and want the baby back.
He just hadn’t counted on it being tonight.
Part of him had hoped it would never happen. He wasn’t one to wish a person harm, but after fourteen months, he had adjusted to the idea that the baby’s biological parents weren’t coming for him. Or that they were dead, killed by the same people who’d murdered Shelly. And then he’d seen Kinley Ford’s DNA he’d pulled from the coffee cup.
She was the biological mother, all right.
Now the question was, what was he going to do about it?
All eyes shifted in their direction when the four returned to the party. To speed things up, Jordan grabbed two glasses of champagne from the waiter, handed one to Kinley and then slid his arm back around her waist. He even gave her a lusty, long look that he figured everyone could interpret.
Burke lifted his glass into the air. “Ten years ago Jordan Taylor created this company from scratch. He trained every agent in this room. Now Jordan’s company and mine, Burke Securities, will be merged to form not just the best, but the biggest personal security agency in the state. I only hope I’ll earn the same loyalty and support that you’ve shown him over the years.” The glass went higher. “To Jordan. Thanks for creating the benchmark of security services. And thanks even more for selling it all to me.”
That brought a few chuckles, and the room echoed with “Hear! Hear!” and applause as others joined the toast.
Jordan took one last look around the room. “I’ll miss this place and all of you.” He shrugged. “Well, maybe not when I’m tossing back shots of Glen Garioch on a private beach somewhere in the Pacific, but I’m sure there’ll be moments when I’ll miss you…a little.”
Jordan forced a smile, took the master keycard from his jacket and handed it to Burke. A symbolic gesture, but one that tugged at his heart. “Don’t run the place into the ground, all right?”
“I won’t,” Burke assured him.
They shook hands, embraced briefly, while some photos were snapped. But Jordan had no intentions of lingering. He’d already said goodbye to his key agents, including Cody, Desmond Parisi and Alonzo Mateo, and he nodded farewell to two of his newer employees, Chris Sutton and Wally Arceneaux. Then, he took a final sip of the champagne, and he set Kinley’s and his glasses aside so they could head for the door.
Cody stepped out of the gathering to hand Kinley her coat. “You might need this,” he added. Still no smile, not even a phony one. He was obviously riled that Jordan had sold the company. One day Jordan might be able to explain to him why he’d done it. “Enjoy your evening.”
Jordan seriously doubted there’d be anything enjoyable about it. He only hoped it didn’t turn deadly.
He helped Kinley with her coat and tried not to rush to the door. Jordan got them out of there and headed to the adjacent parking lot. It was cold, near freezing, and the wind barreled out of the north right at them. He kept her close, snuggled intimately into the crook of his arm, and he kissed her. This time it was on the corner of her mouth in the hopes that it wouldn’t carry the punch of a full-mouth kiss.
It did anyway.
She was attractive. There was no denying that. But he reminded himself that everything about her was a facade. Well, except for the fear. She was trembling, but he was almost certain it wasn’t from the cold.
Kinley looked up at him. “Where’s my—”
Jordan pressed his lips to hers so she couldn’t finish the question. Still walking, he kept his mouth over hers a second and then drew back slightly. “Lip readers,” he mumbled.
Her smoke-gray eyes widened, and she gave a shaky nod, understanding that if someone were filming them, a lip reader would be able to determine anything they said.
Including a question about the child.
They reached his silver Porsche and got inside, behind the bulletproof custom-tinted glass and into a space that would not only conceal them, but was also sound-proof. They could see out, but no one could see in. And an alarm would beep if anyone tried to scan the vehicle with thermal or sound detectors. Since Jordan heard no beep, it was safe to talk.
But not necessarily smart to tell her everything he knew.
For now, he couldn’t trust her. Yes, Kinley was the birth mother, and she also knew the code word, but that didn’t mean her maternal instincts had been the reason she’d come to him. He needed more answers about her motives, and while he was finding those answers, he had to continue with more damage control.
“Now can I ask my question?” she wanted to know.
He settled for saying, “It’s safe.”
She didn’t waste any time. “Where’s my son?”
Jordan didn’t waste time, either. “You had to have known the risks of coming to me. So why did you?”
She didn’t get defensive. Thanks to the security lights in the parking lot, Jordan could see her clearly. The light bathed her troubled face and danced off the red crystals on her dress.
“I just needed to know he was alive,” she whispered. “That he was okay. I couldn’t live not knowing.” She scraped her thumbnail over the red polish on her right index finger and flaked it off. “I knew there were risks, but I thought I’d minimized them.”
“Obviously not, if I figured out who you were and what you wanted.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think you had him. I only thought you’d have information. Or rather I hoped you would. I wasn’t very optimistic because I’d read that Shelly and you were enemies, that she embezzled from you.”
Jordan sighed. “That was Shelly’s version of damage control. She didn’t want anyone to be able to link me to the child.”
Still, that hadn’t stopped SAPD and even a federal investigator from questioning him. It also hadn’t stopped three different P.I.s, who’d been hired by God knows who to find out what’d happened in the last minutes of Shelly’s life. Jordan figured all three P.I.s had probably worked for the same person, but he’d never been able to dig through the layers of security and paperwork to come up with a name. Or a reason why the baby was so important.
But that was something Kinley could perhaps tell him.
He used the car’s mirrors to glance around the parking lot. “You’re a cautious woman,” he remarked. “Would you know if someone had followed you?”
“I thought I would. But I was obviously wrong.”
“Other than me, would you know if someone had followed you?” He wasn’t being cocky. He was just better than most at that sort of thing.
“People have followed me in the past, but after I left witness protection this last time, I haven’t noticed anyone.”
That didn’t mean someone wasn’t there. Jordan had another look at those mirrors.
“You gave up your company for my son,” she said. Not a question, nor an accusation. Her voice was heavy with emotion.
He glanced at her and decided to change the subject. “I’m going with two possible theories here. First, that the child’s father is behind all of this danger.”
She was shaking her head before he even finished. “No. He’s dead. He died trying to murder me and my brother.”
Okay. That was a story he knew a little about but wanted to hear more of later. “Second theory. Someone wants the baby for leverage. The people after you want information, and they believe if they have your child, they’ll be able to manipulate you into giving them what they want.”
Kinley stared at him so long he wasn’t sure she would jump on to this subject change, but she finally looked away and returned to chipping off her nail polish. “The research facility where I was employed was working on several projects. One was the chemical weapon antidote that I told you about. Several researchers were working on it, and occasionally, I assisted them.”
“Assisted?” He latched right on to that and mentally cursed when he spotted something he didn’t like in the mirror.
Hell.
“Usually I was just a consult for a particular facet of a project,” she explained. “For instance, I only worked on a portion of the formula for the primary antidote. I never got to see the finished results. None of us did. That was the way the facility maintained security.”
Jordan calmly started the car, put on his seat belt and kept his eyes on the mirror. “But even though you don’t have the big picture, you have pieces. Others have pieces. And you have the names of those others.”
“Yes.” That was all she said for several moments. “Brenna Martel was one of the top lab assistants at the research facility. She’s in a federal prison serving a life sentence. But there are others who disappeared after the facility was destroyed and the federal investigation started.” Another pause. “I’ve written notes about the research, and I’ve gone over them a thousand times, but I just don’t know why someone would still be after me.”
“Notes?” he questioned.
“They’re encrypted,” she huffed, obviously noting his concern. “I wouldn’t just leave information like that lying around for anyone to see.”
But someone would look hard for info like that. “And these notes are where exactly?”
“Hidden in my apartment.”
Jordan didn’t even have to think about this. “I want to see them.” In fact, he wanted to study them and then interrogate Kinley and put anyone in those notes under surveillance until all of this finally made some sense.
“I can show you what I have,” she answered. “But I want to see Maddox.”
He glanced at her, frowned. “Who the hell is Maddox?”
“My son,” she said as if the answer were obvious. “That’s what I named him. You didn’t know?”
“No. Shelly didn’t get around to that when she left him on my doorstep.” Jordan had been calling him Gus. “And I couldn’t exactly go digging for his name or paternity, now could I?”
“No.” Despite the fear and the seriousness of their situation, she smiled softly. “Do you have a picture of him?”
“Not a chance. And as for you seeing him, that’s not gonna happen until you can convince me that you’re here as a mother and not as someone who wants to use him as a pawn in some sick game.”
The smile vanished, and her mouth opened in outrage. “I wouldn’t do that. God, what do you think I am?”
“You’re a woman who left her baby with a bodyguard because it was too dangerous to keep him with you. The danger’s still there.” He glanced in the mirror again.
“I know that,” she snapped. “Shelly had been my friend since high school. I trusted her. And she died protecting my son. If I could change that I would. But I can’t. And I’ve searched and searched, and I can’t make the danger go away.” The minitirade seemed to drain her, and she groaned and rested her head against the back of the seat.
Jordan huffed, glanced in the mirror again and tried not to let her emotion get to him. He didn’t want sympathy or pity playing into this. “This isn’t convincing me that you should be mother of the year.”
That brought her head off the seat. “I don’t want to be mother of the year. I simply want my son.”
“And then what?” he challenged.
“I take him and I find someplace safe.” Her voice grew softer. “If necessary, we’ll live our lives in hiding, but we’ll do that together.”
Not anytime soon, she wouldn’t. Maybe not ever. Jordan didn’t intend to hand over Gus until he was damn sure that it was safe to do so, and Kinley hadn’t done anything to convince him of that.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“Soon, we’ll go to your apartment and get those notes.” However, he also had a more pressing problem. “But for now we’ll just drive, and we’ll see if that guy parked up the street plans to follow us.”
She snapped toward the side mirror and stared into the glass. “What guy?”
“Black sedan near the intersection.”
Her breath suddenly went uneven. “How long has he been there?”
“He arrived not long after we got in the car. It could be nothing,” he admitted. But Jordan didn’t believe that.
It was likely a huge something.
“Put on your seat belt,” he instructed. As he eased out of the parking lot, Jordan kept his attention fastened to his rearview mirror so he could watch the other vehicle.
It pulled out just seconds after they did.
Hell.
Jordan drew his Sig Sauer and got ready for the worst.
Chapter Three
Kinley’s heart dropped.
This couldn’t be happening. She’d been so careful and so sure that no one had followed her. Yet, the black car was there and made the same turn Jordan did when he drove away from the Sentron building.
She felt sick to her stomach. And she was terrified. She had to do something to stop this.
But what?
What she couldn’t do was call the police. That would likely alert the wrong people, and it’d be impossible to explain everything that had happened. That kind of explanation could get her son hurt.