Beck: Hollywood Hitman (14 page)

“Doll, the favorite part of your bathtub for me is the TV.” Stacia placed her ball cap on Natalie’s head. “I can’t believe you’re breaking out of your own house.”

“Not breaking, sneaking. Reminds me of when I was sixteen.”

“Just take one of these guys with you. It’s not like Beck’ll have to see you with Rico. Besides, if he can’t handle you talking to your ex, then he’s not the type of guy you want in your life. Although after what Rico did, I kind of want Beck to kick his ass.”

“It’s not that.” Natalie turned to the mirror and adjusted the T-shirt and shorts. She bit her bottom lip. She and Stacia weren’t even close to looking the same. “I mean . . . I know Beck wouldn’t want me to see him, but he’d understand if I needed to. Beck wouldn’t be jealous, it’s—”

“Then why the whole subterfuge? This is cray-cray and there is still some whack job out there trying to get close to you, and now you’re making it easier for them by leaving the house without security.”

“I just . . . I don’t want Beck . . . I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t want him to see Rico.”

“Embarrassed of your past?

“I don’t know. Maybe. Kind of. Yes. I mean, when I think of who I was when I was seeing Rico and how I’m in such a different place and I just . . . wow, I hurt for that seventeen-year-old girl.”

“And yet you’re sneaking out to see him just like you did when you lived with your parents.”

“Stop. Not the same.” Natalie adjusted the cap on her head and tucked strands of hair up into it. “Good thing we have the same color hair.”

“But different skin tone. I don’t know
how
you think you’re pulling this off.”

“Because Remi isn’t here, the tattooed one is on perimeter check, the other one, Hudson, just left the house to grab food.”

“Hudson, wow, that man looks just like Chris Pine.” Stacia swooned.

“Remi isn’t due back for another three hours.
That
is exactly how I’m getting out. Pretty easy since your car is parked just outside the front gate and I have a key.”

“Girl, when they catch your ass . . .”

“What? What will they do?”

“Not them, the studio.”

Natalie shivered. That was the only thing that scared her. Not security, not the weirdo trying to get to her, not even how pissed Beck might be, but the idea that the studio might fire her from the sequel.

“Good thing the numbers for the movie are tracking so high,” Natalie said, and turned away from the mirror. Stacia crossed her arms and shook her head.

Natalie glanced at her phone. “Okay, back before eight.” She pulled open the French doors that led to her private deck.

“You text me, do you hear me?” Stacia whispered. “When you get there, when you leave, every five minutes.”

Natalie grasped the bougainvillea vines and hoisted her leg up over the balcony rail. Her stunt training came in handy sometimes in real life. “Back in an hour,” she whispered, and slowly hand-over-hand shimmied down the vines and dropped to the ground.

Her heart raced. With a quick peek around the yard she dodged the camera next to the pool house and ducked around the corner. The side gate was locked and she slid in the key, turned, and was out the door and down the hill to Stacia’s car.

Her fingertips tingled. She hadn’t felt this excited . . . in since . . . her toes curled . . . since she’d slept with Beck. Beck—oh God, he would be so disappointed and pissed, but he wouldn’t know. She didn’t need to tell him. Not now, not ever.

Natalie unlocked Stacia’s car door. Scanned the driveway up to her house. Cresting the hill was the black Greystone SUV. She ducked into Stacia’s car and slid down the front seat. Hudson pulled the black SUV onto Natalie’s drive. Shit. She started Stacia’s car and pressed the accelerator. She cruised down the hill, and on her way to Rico she went.

***

Beck opened the door to Estrella’s office. End of day sunlight flooded the room as though she were allergic to the darkness. She sat beside her desk in profile and a smile curled over the right side of her face. “Beck, come in. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Waiting for him? More like he’d waited for Estrella all damn day.

Pearl sat beside her mistress and Estrella rested her hand on Pearl’s head. Always alert and yet relaxed, the dog could rip out a man’s throat before he reached for his gun.

“Sit.” Estrella waved toward the loveseat to her right. “You’ve been with Natalie for close to three months.”

Beck took his seat and willed his face to neutral.

“I want to hear your thoughts on the assignment.”

“We’ve settled into a good routine. Aside from the intel Remi provided me yesterday, there’s been no new threats.”

“Unsettling, wasn’t it? The pictures of a person in the backyard. That night . . .” Estrella’s brow furrowed. “Can you tell me what happened? Why wasn’t the perimeter monitored per protocol?”

He clasped his hands together. What to tell Estrella? Would she yank him off Natalie’s detail? He needed to tell Estrella, he put Natalie in danger by not.

“Ms. Leone—”

“Estrella, always Estrella to my operatives.”

Beck paused. Hard for him to call his boss by her first name. “Estrella.” He cleared his throat. “That night . . . that night was unusual.”

“How so?” She stroked her hand over Pearl’s head, but her gaze remained locked onto Beck.

“Natalie wanted to visit her mother.”

“A challenging relationship, to be sure.”

“When we returned to Natalie’s home, she talked and I listened. The perimeter check didn’t take place per protocol.”

Could he stop here? Could he end the story now? He’d thought that he’d tell Estrella all about him and Natalie. Come clean.

“And your post? You weren’t at your post for transfer. An hour late, I think the report states.”

Heat flamed through Beck’s chest. Fucking Jax just had to put that in there, didn’t he? Couldn’t let the sixty minutes slide. “I . . . I was otherwise engaged.” Beck shifted in his seat.

Heaviness settled in his chest. There was a reason . . . a nagging feeling that he needed to tell Estrella the truth. Things would turn out better this time if he told the truth, if he were transparent, if he . . .
this time
? The muscles in his skull tightened. Pain slid through his temple. Beck squinted his eyes and pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead.

“Headache?”

“Started about a week ago.”

Estrella nodded. A knowing look flickered across her face. “We are concerned about a specific threat to Natalie.”

Beck’s stomach tightened. The pain in his head took second position to his concern for Natalie.

“We have reason to believe that she’s the target of a specific group.”

“A
group
that stalks women? Like a cult?”

“Similar to a cult. Their leader is a sociopath.” Estrella turned her head so that Beck might see her entire face. The crisscross of scars jagged across her face. Her skin with the melted wax look from acid scars. The discoloration and her inability to move that portion of her face.

Anger pounded through him. Rage. Disgust. Pain. Sorrow. He ignored his emotions. Pushed them deep into his core. His face remained neutral.

“We’ve been tracking this group for a while. They call their leader Palook. We believe Natalie may be their latest target.”

Beck’s heart went cold. A cult? Targeting Natalie? Adrenaline surged through his body. “Remi and Hudson—”

“—and Jax know as well. There’s been activity outside the United States, but a local group has formed. Their calling, according to their leader, requires the abduction and partial destruction of high profile women.”

His nostrils flared. “That’s a fucking calling?”

“An insanity as well as an obsession that their leader has.”

Beck’s heart stalled. His gaze locked to Estrella . . . their leader . . . high profile women . . . fuck, was this the same psycho who’d hacked up Estrella’s face and slowly killed her lover one day at a time? The shadow in the yard, the car, the guy in the parking garage, the pictures of someone in a hoodie . . . and God, there could be more than one person trying to get to Natalie?

Pain pounded through Beck’s skull and he closed his eyes. Something else, something more, as though a memory floated just below the surface in his brain.

“Beck, is there . . . is there something you need to tell me about that night? The night protocol wasn’t followed? The night that this unidentified person got into Natalie’s yard? Something that happened between you and Natalie?”

Damn, what a softball pitch, but yet so direct. If he didn’t tell Estrella now about his relationship with Natalie, then he was lying.

“Excuse me.”

Both Estrella and Beck turned toward the voice coming from the office doorway. A complete view of Estrella’s face lit by the setting sun. Deep breath. The damage to Estrella and the thought that the same sociopath might be after Natalie made him want to curse and jump up and pound his fist through a wall. What kind of psycho did that to a woman?

Instead Beck gripped his hands together and looked toward Remi, who stood at the far end of Estrella’s office.

“I need Beck.” His voice was somber and his expression serious. “We have a situation.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Babe, you’re looking good.” Across the table from Natalie, Rico leaned back and threw an arm over the back of the booth.

She couldn’t say the same for Rico. Gone were the sharp good looks that years before had drawn Natalie to him, replaced with the lean, sad face of a man surviving on the edge. Shadows hooded his eyes, and even though he smiled, an anxious air surrounded him.

Natalie sipped her coffee. The greasy spoon on the edge of Culver City was the perfect place to meet without being followed or seen. “How’s your program?”

“Yo, honey, can I get more java?” Rico called to the waitress, and snapped his fingers. He glanced back to Natalie. “One day at a time, babe, one day at a time.” His gaze raked over her body.

No attraction. No heat. No desire. Nothing. Instead tiny hints of revulsion laced with disgust trailed through her body. Had Rico always been this . . . smarmy? And kind of a douche?

“You said you needed to see me.” She lifted her coffee cup and looked into Rico’s eyes, where she’d thought she’d once found love. “How can I help?”

“Help?” A slick grin decorated his face, and he leaned forward and reached his hand across the table and clasped her fingers. “You could let me come by your house and slide between you and those jeans you’re wearing.”

Did he think she was the same girl he’d dated before he went to jail?

Natalie pulled her fingers from his grasp. “I . . . I can’t—”

“Oh, so that’s how it is now?” His tone held an edge and he cocked his head to the side. “I take a rap, go to the house, and now you don’t want nothing to do with me?”

“You took that rap for you, not me. Come on? What are you really after? I’m pretty sure it’s not a stroll down memory lane. What do you want?”

The corner of his mouth lifted as though she’d seen right through him. About time. She’d fallen for all this bull when she was young and dumb, but now she was older and she hoped wiser. She felt bad for her seventeen-year-old self, who’d needed attention from a man so badly that she’d fallen for a guy like this.

“We had some good times together, though, didn’t we?”

Why not give him that? She remembered some fun. Late nights. Car rides. Movies. “The ocean was always good. Santa Monica was a good scene for us.”

The slimy bravado dropped and a sincerity entered Rico’s eyes. “I missed you.” His voice was smooth and soft and not in an I-want-to-get-in-your-pants sort of a way. A true hint of longing was in Rico’s voice, as though she’d been a life raft he’d held onto all those days he’d been in jail. “I haven’t called . . . well, because . . . I mean, I’m clean, but I’m not . . . I’m not one hundred percent. I’m living with my grandmother. I’ve got a job that sucks. I mean, I can buy your cup of coffee, but that’s about it.”

A sad sort of smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. Shouldn’t have taken that rap for them. But baby, I was young and stupid and I guess felt guilty as hell that I couldn’t stop what happened.”

“That night wasn’t your fault.”

“You had no business being at a place like that. You know that? No business. You wouldn’t have been there without me.”

She shivered. The party had been out of her league and beyond her depth, but she’d felt alive and excited when Rico took her places that she’d never go on her own.

“Diaz kept me safe on the inside. Did me a solid.”

“I’d think so. For fuck’s sake, you took the hit for the assault and the possession.”

Rico dumped more sugar into his coffee. Shifted in his seat and finally looked at Natalie. “I need some help.”

“How much?”

“Why do you think—”

She lifted an eyebrow. “What else could it be?”

“You’ve always been sharp.” He clasped his hands together. “Enough to get my ass out of hock.”

“You’ve been out less than a year—how deep in hock could you be?”

“There was this sure thing and I thought for certain the dough I’d win would set me and Grandma up for a while. Give us some breathing room.”

“And instead the heat is on.”

“You know me so well.”

“How deep?”

“Just a hunny, babe.”

Natalie reached for her purse. She had that right now. “That’s not bad—”

“No, doll.”

Natalie looked up from her handbag. Rico’s lips were tight and the color had drained from his face. “A hunny as in a hundred
thousand
.”

She dropped her purse and pressed her palms to her cheeks. “Rico—”

“It’s not like you don’t have it.”

Deep breath. No, she did have it, and that was the problem. Rico knew she had the money, and if she caved to him tonight how many more calls, texts, emails, meetings in dives and greasy spoons would there be, with him always asking her for cash because he was in a jam? More. There would be more. A continuous stream that would last her lifetime or his.

“Rico, I can’t.”

His jaw tightened and he leaned forward. A mean look settled into his eyes. “I
know
things about you, Natalie. Things that you might not want your public to know.”