Jigsaw (Black Raven Book 2) (27 page)

“Will do.”

Zeus had a ground team in place, headed by Agent Small. ITT participants, judges and lawyers alike, were to use the same entrance. It was different from the entrance where the bombing had taken place the day before, which remained a crime scene. The new entrance was on the north side of the building, and media was there to showcase the arrivals. The rationale was that they were going to show the world that the ITT participants weren’t scared. That the terrorists weren’t winning.

Bullshit on that.

The Amicus team was no longer part of the dog and pony show. They were going to enter through a side door. Their path and the entrance had been cleared in advance by a ground team of Black Raven agents. An exterior security team, consisting of French military officers, awaited them.

As the car pulled to a stop, Zeus said, “Small. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

He opened the door, and turned to help Samantha out the car. In a few seconds, they were in the building, without incident. “Ragno. Ready for Samuel.”

“Okay. I’ll find him. Give me a sec.”

After clearing interior security, he ushered Sam into the courtroom, took her coat, handed it to Agent Jenkins, and waited at her side while she opened her briefcase. Lawyers were filtering into the cavernous courtroom. Abe and Charles took their seats. The gallery was filling with press and onlookers.

He pulled her chair out for her. As she settled into it, he leaned down, inhaling the scent of jasmine as he bent to whisper in her ear, “Need to go to the bathroom before the proceedings start?”

It was a question that didn’t need asking, because Sam sure as hell knew how to let him know she needed to go to the bathroom. The beauty of being her bodyguard, though, was that no matter how cool she was towards him, she couldn’t get rid of him. Even to pee.

When the month ended and the verdict was reached, he’d lick his wounds and shake her out of his system. For now, though, he watched her back stiffen as she absorbed his tone and question. He was going to enjoy the hell out of being near her. Even if all he did was manage to irritate her and get blue balls for his trouble.

She gave him a cool glance, shook her head no, and powered up her iPad.

Turning to find a seat in the gallery, he walked past the American defense team, led by Brier, as they entered the courtroom. Brier’s sharp brownish-green eyes held Zeus’s for a second. The charismatic attorney gave Zeus a nod, then his second-chair attorney, a long-haired brunette with large blue eyes, said something that captured Brier’s attention. She wasn’t as striking as Sam, but, like Sam, the brunette managed to exude feminine grace while looking professional and intelligent.

After finding a seat in the front, Zeus shrugged out of his overcoat and handed it to Agent Jenkins, who took it and proceeded up the crowded aisle. His gaze was on the table of lawyers for the United States. Brier and his team of three attorneys were now sitting across from Samantha. His pretty brunette associate was seated to Brier’s right. Not much space separated the two of them as they bent their heads and talked. Brier’s hand lingered between her shoulder blades. In reply to something Brier said, she moved even closer.

A fling? Maybe. Or two business associates trying not to be overheard? Probably.

Zeus guessed that Brier’s associate was at least fifteen years younger than him. Even if they were having a fling, was it relevant to anything? Doubtful. Interesting, though. His eyes slid to the prosecution team, made up of four men with grim faces and look-alike dark suits, sitting at the end of the table, heads together in conversation. Sam, facing Zeus’s direction, was talking to Charles.

Samuel’s voice boomed through Zeus’s earpiece. “Zeus, this call isn’t about business. It’s personal.”

“Okay.”

“Got a call from Samantha’s boyfriend last night. Senator McDougall. Fine man. Says he’ll see her this Sunday in London.”

“I’m aware.”

“It’s an interesting turn of events.”

Ragno had informed Zeus of the dinner plans the night before, based on a conversation that had taken place between Sam and McDougall. Zeus sank into the aisle seat. When Ragno had broken the news to him, he hadn’t focused much on the full implications of what it meant that McDougall was showing up for a dinner date with Sam. Eyes on the American flag behind the now-empty dais and the black leather, tall-backed chairs, where the judges would sit when proceedings commenced, he now wondered what he’d done wrong to deserve having to bodyguard Sam while she was on a dinner date with McDougall.

Don’t have to wonder for long.

He fully deserved this express shipment of reciprocal, suckass payback. After all, he’d delivered an abrupt message that he was marrying someone else within hours of spending days in bed with Sam, making love to her as though he meant the words behind the deed. He shrugged, rotated his neck a bit as he shifted in his chair, and let someone slip past him to a seat down the row.

Embrace the suck. Dinner with her boyfriend is nothing compared to what you did to her.

Awww. Fuck. Whether they planned an open marriage or not, McDougall flying across the Atlantic for a dinner date sure as hell meant McDougall expected to sleep with her. And guess who the fuck is going to be standing on the wrong side of that bedroom door?

Raging jealousy—the likes of which he’d never felt before—burned a hole in his gut.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Embrace the fucking suck.

He exhaled, when he didn’t even realize he’d been holding his breath. “We’ll work it out. She told us they were having dinner. We’re coordinating the logistics with the Senator’s security detail. Don’t worry, she’ll be safe.”

“For the moment, it isn’t her security I’m worried about.”

Refocusing across the courtroom to Sam, who now had both Charles and Abe leaning into her for a discussion, he said, “Okay?”

“Do you remember the conversation you and I had the evening before you took that bullet for me?”

As Jenkins reappeared and slipped into the seat on Zeus’s left, Samuel’s question transported him for a moment to the night before the Dixon protective detail had gone to shit, when Dixon had confronted Zeus in the library and told him to stay away from Sam. It had shocked the crap out of Zeus that the man had even been aware that something was developing. The man was eagle-eyed when it came to his granddaughter, and clearly the many long evenings of hushed conversations in the library between his bodyguard and his granddaughter hadn’t been lost on him. “Glued in my memory.”

“You were the first, and so far, the only person who told me to fuck off.”

His heart did a stutter beat. “Did you ever tell her about our conversation?”

“No. Not that conversation, nor the same conversation I had with three other men with whom she became involved. In case you’re wondering, two before you. One after. Seemed to me she fell the hardest for you, though.”

Zeus felt blood coursing through his veins as his blood pressure ratcheted up. “Have you had that conversation with Senator McDougall?”

“Saw no need. I approve of him.”

The meddling son of a bitch.

“Good to know,” he spoke through a clenched jaw. “But why is any of this relevant to my job now?”

“Because the way I see it, my granddaughter has a choice coming up. She can either choose McDougall and enter into an important marriage that will clearly facilitate the career for which I’ve groomed her all her life.” He paused. “Or she can follow her heart, and choose you. That is, if as I’m assuming, there’s at least a possibility that you two have picked up where you left off seven years ago, before you decided you needed to marry your pregnant girlfr—”

“Sam told you what happened between us?”

“Of course she did, though I could have figured most of it out on my own. But that was years ago. Somewhere in the intervening seven years, our relationship has become less open. More strained. Now, I don’t always know what she’s thinking, like I once did. And this week, I’m sure as hell out of the loop. We usually talk every morning, when she’s on her second cup of coffee. As you damn well know, she hasn’t spoken to me since our argument, when she refused to resign.”

“Something tells me the argument started before her refusal to resign.”

“Yes, and I bet you damn well know you’re the reason for it.”

Zeus drew another deep breath, trying to tamp down the anger that roiled up from his gut. “Samuel, you hired me. Understand? I’m not the one who set the wheels in motion on this. And by the way, don’t even bother asking me to name my price to stay away from her. Answer would still be to go fuck yourself.” Glancing at Jenkins, he realized he was talking loud enough for the man to overhear. His agent was doing a damn good job of looking straight ahead and pretending that he hadn’t gotten an earful of personal shit he had no business hearing. “Just like it was the night before I took a bullet for you.”

Samuel chuckled. “I know that. Don’t you understand? I approve of you as well. I wouldn’t stand in your way. As a matter of fact, by the way the charges are adding up for the protective detail and the bounty hunt, seems to me I’m doing just the opposite of paying you to stay away. I’m paying you to be in her face and make her realize she’s at a fork in her personal road and for this she’s giving me the silent treatment. She’s that pissed off that I hired you. You’re a different matter entirely. If there is anything between you and my granddaughter, I want her to give it some thoughtful consideration.”

“Dammit, Samuel,” he muttered, “You can’t play people like this. People’s lives aren’t a game. Hers especially.”

He watched Sam lean back in her chair, pause for a moment with her eyes resting on Brier, whose head was still bent to his second chair attorney. He’d seen that look in her green eyes before. She was thinking. Weighing options. Assessing the situation, trying to gain control. She pushed her chair back, walked around the counsel table, and leaned down at Brier’s chair, interrupting the head-to-head conversation between him and his associate.

Brier rose to his feet. His associate rose to her feet as well. Brier was about Sam’s height. Maybe, at most, five eight. He seemed larger, though, due to his considerable brawn. And his loud voice.

One of the prosecutors from the United States joined Samantha, and the four lawyers, heads shaking and fingers pointing as they talked, looked like they were engaged in a verbal schoolyard brawl.

The teams of lawyers from France—prosecutors, defense attorneys, and Amicus counsel—were at the counsel table next to the United States counsel table. They turned to watch the argument among the American lawyers. Zeus couldn’t make out Sam’s words, but over the other voices he heard her low voice, and could tell from the way all the lawyers were looking at her that she was holding her ground. Zeus assumed she was trying to persuade the lawyers, including Brier, of the need to interview Stollen. She wasn’t backing down, even though from Zeus’s vantage point he read skepticism on their faces.

That’s my girl. Give ’em hell. Win.

“There is real danger,” Samuel continued, “and that’s why you’re there. You’re the only person I trust with her life. Circumstances and timing beyond my control have put these personal matters into play now. I’m good.” He chuckled. “But not this damn good.”

Samuel fell silent. Zeus, irritated, dumbfounded, and generally wishing he could wrap his hands around Samuel’s neck and throttle the smug cockiness out of the man, decided not to say anything.

“Call it a game if you want,” Samuel continued. “Doesn’t much matter to me how you view it. Just wanted to give you a bit of perspective about McDougall. If what I’ve done is create a game where the three of you are players, I think you’re the kind of man who damn well plays to win. Thank me later. Or not. Act on it. Or not. Up to you. Goodbye.”

“What the hell was that about?” Ragno asked in the split second after Samuel ended the call.

“You heard it, just like I did.” Across the courtroom, Sam and the other lawyers were still talking and arguing. A couple of lawyers from the counsel table of the Colombians had joined the argument. Out of respect for the courtroom, their tones were hushed, but Brier’s face was flushed. Samantha looked as cool as ever. Over the inaudible hum he heard Brier say, “I will oppose,” “Stollen,” and, “fishing expedition disguised as expansion of record.”

At Brier’s last comment about a fishing expedition, the French Amicus counsel, Sam’s counterpart for France, stood, his head shaking. Another lawyer from the French table joined in the argument, standing firmly at Sam’s side.

“Sorry,” Ragno said. “I’m just a bit lost on the part of the conversation where you and Samuel talked about his offering money as a bribe for you to stay away from her. Jesus H. Christ. Really?”

“Yep.”

“Holy hell, Zeus. That kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation is what isn’t
showing up in the information on her that I’m pulling together.”

“What do you mean?”

Ragno provided details on Sam’s life and in particular, the relationship she had with her mother and father, before they died in the car accident. She summed it up with, “Her father, handsome charmer that he was, was a loser, with a capital L. An alcoholic, and arguer. Prior to marrying Elizabeth Dixon, he had serious financial problems. He was ultimately considered a liability by the review committee that considered Elizabeth for a federal judgeship, and that is why her mother was denied the position. The tragedy that ended Elizabeth Dixon’s life started the minute she met him and fell in love.”