Bulletproof Princess (3 page)

Every light between Eli and Bex’s house and the Bellagio conspired against him. The smooth ride up to the house was more than compensated by the less than stellar ride back to The Strip. It wasn’t just slow traffic, it was the fact he was going at all. No clue what he was rolling into except that it involved Grambling, and he had no plan. Grambling was horrible to deal with when there was a plan in place, and without a plan, Mack shuddered to think.

Then there was the tiny detail about him being
off freakin’ duty
, but that was something he and his boss would discuss shortly in person. “If this light ever changes!” he hollered at the last red light with the hotel in sight. Taking a deep breath and flexing his hands on the wheel, he worked hard to dial his rage back to a manageable level as he cruised through the intersection. It wouldn’t do for him to show up foaming at the mouth. Poor form, and all that.

He wheeled the Challenger into the parking lot, past the valets toward the loading docks in the back where all the flashing lights were bouncing off the building and into the night, only to hear his phone chime that he had a text. The sinking feeling that had started when his boss called him at dinner only got worse as he read it. Instead of the hotel, he was now needed at the Vegas PD headquarters, back in the opposite direction. Taking a moment to rest his head on his steering wheel, he left the obvious crime scene for the PD.

When he arrived, he found several members of the media milling around out front, setting up cameras and mics and doing stock scene footage. Media generally didn’t show up unless it was really bad. “
Esto va terminar en lágrimas
,” Mack muttered as he grabbed his badge and gun and got out of the car.

Grambling looked up as soon as Mack arrived and moved to intercept him on his way to the bullpen. His boss was short, at least by his standards. He was six feet even, and his boss was nose height. Chief Grambling also bore a striking resemblance to a weasel, both in the face and his overly lithe frame, and Mack knew an ice cube wouldn’t melt in the other man’s mouth.

“What took you so long?” he said by way of greeting.

Mack bit back his first answer about the last minute change of venue and showed his teeth in response instead, mimicking a smile. “Traffic was horrible getting out of the titty bar, quite the backup at Amber Sunset’s stage.” Something about the other man, in his suit sharp enough to draw blood, made him want to be as big a prick as possible, just to compensate. Still, Mack loved the way Grambling’s eyes almost bugged out of his head at his comment.

The shorter man strode over to stand right in front of him, well beyond what could be considered polite personal space. “You were at a strip club?” he hissed before he inhaled deeply as if he was trying to detect the presence of glitter. “Have you been drinking?”

For a hot second, he considered saying yes, telling his boss he’d driven across town at his bidding, three sheets to the wind, solely because he was asked to do so, but alas, he wasn’t drunk, and the honorable part of him couldn’t make that lie pass his lips. “A beer. Even you can’t call that compromised.”

Grambling’s eyes narrowed for a moment like he was making a decision and then looked over his shoulder for confirmation. When he looked back at Mack, he sighed and took a step back. “Are you familiar with Cassie Witt?”

Mack felt his eyebrows rocket up his forehead. He’d have to have been living in an underground bunker with no television or radio to not know who she was. Every magazine cover from Cosmo to Maxim to Rolling Stone, commercials, awards shows, Cassie Witt was an entertainment enterprise, not just a singer of questionable talent who sang bubblegum country music. His eyes travelled over his boss’s shoulder to the glut of people congregating on benches in the hallway, and then he saw her.

She appeared, in a word, bulletproof. Surrounded by an impenetrable wall of people, she was a cosseted princess in the tower, who was both strangely inviting yet coldly untouchable with her brassy blonde hair curling from a ponytail down her back and light green eyes like beach glass.

“I know of her.” It was all the answer he felt like he could give without betraying his thoughts.

“Good,” Grambling nodded, oblivious to the dark turn of his musings, “then you can understand how important it is that you take care of this.”

The last part of his sentence brought Mack back to the present. “I’m sorry? Take care of what, precisely?”

His bossed hummed in impatience and damn near stomped his foot. “I need you to put her in your car and meet Gonsalvez at the airport. I took the private jet in, and you’re gonna take it back to Phoenix and put her in a safe house. It’s all arranged.” Edict issued, he turned on his heel to head back to rejoin the group on the benches.

Mack’s thoughts whirled in every direction as his mind quickly did the math on Grambling’s pronouncement. Whatever was going on had to be huge for him to have just hopped on the jet and brought his partner, Angela Gonsalvez, with him. There was no way he was going into this blindly. He took a step forward and grabbed the other man’s wrist and yanked him back. The look of utter shock on his face was priceless. “We’re not finished.”

His boss’s lip curled in disdain as Mack dropped his wrist. “Are you confused, Jefferson? I gave you an order.” He rubbed his wrist where it had been gripped like he was nursing a bruise.

Stalking over until he was bare inches from him, Mack towered over the shorter man, bringing to bear all the menace he could without courting insubordination paperwork. “I heard you,” he whispered. “But I don’t think you understand the ramifications of this situation.”

Clearly, no one had ever spoken to Grambling like that before, if his startled blink was anything to go by. He rallied, though, bringing the mantle of his authority around him like a cloak. “What’s there to understand? You pick her up, you take her to a safe house, and
you do what you’re told.
”

Though he fought like a champ, Mack lost the fight against the snicker he had at hearing the attempt at forcefulness in his boss’s voice. “Not when what I’m told makes no fucking sense.” He waited for signs his barb hit the mark before continuing with the line of logic that escaped his boss. “She is on every radio, every television, and every magazine stand in the country, hell, the world! Her music is loved by millions, regardless of their questionable judgment. She is a multi-platinum recording artist and a multi-billion dollar enterprise. How do you plan to put a woman whose face is better known than POTUS into WITSEC? Where are you gonna hide her? On the moon? Because I don’t think the Martian colony is quite ready yet.”

Austin Grambling was many things, but a capable leader and an astute planner were not part of his resume. Mack could tell he hadn’t gotten that far in the logistical math. Finally, his boss merely snarled and turned on his heel to return to the group. A single evil eye over his shoulder was the only indication that Mack should follow.

Mack grudgingly joined the collection of people, two detectives—the requisite old priest and young priest, a bruiser of a guy who was probably either their driver or personal bodyguard, and two young women, one of whom he’d know in his sleep due to the Maxim issue in his bedroom. He was the first to admit she was pretty, like an antique vase: beautiful to look at, but nothing inside so far as he could tell. Her friend who hovered over her was equally pretty in a shorter, curvier way.

Watching her interact with everyone was like viewing pictures of a heliocentric galaxy. Everyone seemed to orbit around her center and be pulled to her by gravity to a degree. Surrounded by her minions, her
people
, it seemed to him she should have been shielded from whatever tragedy she may have come across. Instead, the real world, his world, had reached out to take a swipe at her, and it was his job to pick up the pieces.

“Miss Whitfield,” Grambling started in his most cajoling tone. Mack wondered if he should be handing out insulin syringes.

“Chief Grambling.” Her tone suggested she liked his boss as much as Mack did.

“This is Inspector Jefferson, and he will be taking you someplace safe.”

For a job that was predicated on secrecy, Deputy Chief Inspector Grambling apparently had no problem outing him. He stepped forward into the fray to offer his hand to his new charge. “You can call me Mack. It’s nice to meet you.”

It has hard to tell under the flickering fluorescents of the precinct hallway, but he could have sworn she was blushing when she shook his hand. “Cassie, likewise.”

Her saucy little friend in the rolled up jeans that glittered like a disco ball had no compunctions and a suggestively flirty smile. “Trista Mayfield, Cassie’s assistant. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Mack nodded and stepped back, more comfortable in the shadows than center stage for this part of his job. He quietly introduced himself to the detectives and the driver, because regardless of how he’d been raised, ‘the help’ were real people to him.

Grambling clapped his hands, drawing all eyes to him. “Okay, now that we’ve got that unpleasantness out of the way, Miss Whitfield, do you have bags with you or do we need to send someone to get your things?”

The petite blonde straightened away from the guitar she’d been clutching like a lifeline. “My things? I’m sorry? I thought I was just going back to my room.”

The unpleasantness coughed to cover his chuckle. His boss was horrible at this; maybe he’d be better working in a federal court. “Yes, what Chief Grambling meant to say was I’ll be taking you to the airport, and my partner and I will be taking you someplace safe. I’m sorry that wasn’t more clearly conveyed.” It took some doing, but he deliberately avoided acknowledging his boss’s death glare.

Physically inserting herself in front of Cassie, Trista had gone from flirty party girl to barracuda with a kinked tail. “And just where will you be taking us?”

Regardless of how much Mack appreciated her friend’s display of protectiveness, he knew he was going to have to be the bad guy here. Maybe that had been Grambling’s plan all along, to make him do all the asshole heavy lifting. “I wasn’t speaking in the plural, Miss Mayfield.”

Rushing to fill in where he’d clearly been caught lacking, Grambling supplied, “And I regret any confusion on that part. She witnessed a crime, and given the circumstances surrounding the crime, the
people
surrounding the crime—”

It was exhausting watching his boss tap-dance around the details of a crime he’d yet to hear in full, but the longer they stayed at the police station, the more likely the perceived danger would come to fruition. Tired of his boss’s encroachment on his personal time and his subsequent ham-fisted handling of the incident, he cut right to the bottom line. “He’s saying, Miss Witt,” he used her stage name deliberately since she seemed to prefer it, “witnessed a crime and is probably in danger.” Mack let that sink in to the crowd as he looked Cassie up and down. “Now, do we need to go get your bags, or can we leave?”

Trista shook her head even as he spoke. “Cassie can’t just leave her life. Her CD drops in two weeks, there’s promos and concerts and tours to plan, and all of that is light years away from the fact that she still has to grieve the man who brought her this far. Cassie Witt does not have a life she can just arbitrarily put on hold indefinitely. That’s not how this works.”

Bless her pragmatic heart, Mack fought against nodding as the young woman listed every reason why this was a horrible idea. She wasn’t wrong, but the one lobbying hardest was the one with the stony mask of implacable idiocy, also known as Chief Grambling. However, the final decision fell, as it should, to the one whose life would be most inconvenienced. “Cassie, what do
you
want to do?”

In her normal life, having fifty thousand things to do at once and only three hours to get them done was de rigeur. Trista kept her running on schedule, and Clint made sure that schedule was full to the brim. Her father had done the same thing, but the one thing that differentiated Clint from her old man was the question: what did she want to do? Everything in her life after her father was her choice, and she liked it that way. Cassie wasn’t Type A; she was more like Type B+. A- on a bad day.

The fact that this Marshal, whom she didn’t know from Adam, asked her that said a lot about him. His boss, Chief Ferret-face as she called him in her mind, wanted to use her to bolster his career. She had a sixth sense for users after her dad—and her ex, she thought absently—so she was wary of putting her faith and trust in him.

Inspector Jefferson, however, was another matter entirely. Mack had stomped into the station, and she could see the irritation radiating off him in his walk, the way he carried himself. He’d been none too happy to come to his boss’s aid, but he’d come nonetheless, which spoke of loyalty. To the job if not the man. He didn’t talk a lot, preferring to be watchful and act when necessary. And now his light eyes watched her for her answer, but never pressed. It was refreshing.

Trista shifted by her side, waiting for her answer, as well. She was her best friend, and never had anything but Cassie’s best interests at heart as far as the business was concerned. Cassie knew what was at stake, but at the same time, she also knew if the guy she saw hurt Clint got to her, there’d be no more Cassandra Whitfield, much less Cassie Witt. “What do you think, T?”

Trista eyed the Marshals before taking Cassie by the wrist and leading her a short distance away. After a quick glance over her shoulder, she asked in hushed tones, “Cass, what do you wanna do? This is all up to you. I know we have a lot of stuff coming up, and your new single comes out tomorrow, but none of that matters compared to your safety. I say this as your best friend, not your employee. If you need to go with them, go with them. I will figure something out. Don’t stay just for me.”

Her friend’s selflessness was incredible, and exactly what she needed to hear to steady her. “I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

Trista’s silver eyes widened in alarm. “You’re not going away forever, are you?”

They were both talking like her leaving with the Marshals was a foregone conclusion. “I wouldn’t think so, but I don’t know how this kind of thing works.” In all honesty, the idea of being in limbo terrified her almost more than the guy who may be after her, but she didn’t want to voice that fear to her friend.

Trista looked over her shoulder at the men and then down at their joined hands. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll buy us some time and tell the world you’re taking some time off to mourn your manager who you were very close to. That’s not a lie, and hopefully this will all be over before I have to think up a new story. Work for you?”

Cassie smiled at her best friend and hugged her tightly. “Tell me we’re gonna be okay.”

“We’re gonna be okay,” Trista responded without hesitation. Plan in place, they rejoined the men who were milling around the hall, with Mack and Tim the driver discussing the Maybach avidly.

Mack seemed to sense their return, and Cassie could feel the second his eyes were on her. “What’s the word, ladies?” His light tone belied the seriousness of the situation. She liked that he didn’t seem entirely dependent on her acquiescence or willing to twist her arm to make her go.

“My stuff’s up in the penthouse suite at the Bellagio. I figure if I go up and get my stuff, I can be back in ten minutes, tops?” She figured being low maintenance would work in her favor since she had no problem lugging her own stuff around, and did so frequently before she was in the limelight.

He glanced back at his boss who looked like he could finally exhale, and who nodded stiffly. When he turned back around, he walked over to stand beside her. “
We’ll
be back in ten minutes.” He offered her his arm as they walked down the hallway of the precinct, looking for a media-free side door. “Wheels up in thirty!” Grambling called after them.

“Whatever,” they muttered at the same time, then looked at each other and grinned.