RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1) (8 page)

RYDER

              I managed to pull her together enough to convince her that we had to go back to the house. The police were going to want to interview everyone before anyone was clear to leave. Her taking off would lay suspicion at her feet, as would statements like the one she’d just made. I did my best to convince her of that before I took her back. Once at the pool house, I had to intervene and shield her from Branson’s wrath over her leaving, and on top of that the detective was there interviewing every person one by one.

I felt like I was holding my breath when it was her turn to be alone with him. I wasn’t sure what she’d say or how the detective might take it. She was gone for about twenty minutes, and I didn’t breathe easy until she came back out, not in cuffs.

“How did it go?” I whispered.

She shrugged. Looking like she was on the edge of tears again, she whispered back, “I didn’t him them the truth. I didn’t tell him this was my fault.”

“Good, because I’m sure that’s just grief talking.” She was sitting away from the family, and that was where I wanted her for now. “Stay here, okay?” She nodded, and I went over to talk to the detective. “Any ideas?”

He looked around the room. “Nope, but I doubt blowing up the garage was perpetrated by men who are only interested in kidnapping the child. Branson vehemently denies that he or his wife have any enemies, but I have to beg to differ. The last time one of my cases involving a good friend blowing up a garage and killing the chauffeur was…well, never.”

I nodded. “I agree. This is not about the baby.” The detective looked over at Alicia.

“What about the nanny?”

“What about her?”

He shook his head. “She just seemed so nervous when we spoke in the kitchen. She was barely holding it together. She’s Russian, and the men who have been caught on the property so far are Russian as well…”

“I’m watching her closely,” I told him. I felt another wave of guilt. Was I overlooking things that I should be noticing because I was watching her too closely and not as a suspect?

“Good,” he said. “I get a feeling in my gut that she knows something.”

I had the same feeling in my gut, but I was still convinced that by holding back she thought she was protecting someone. I just had to figure out who that was. “Maybe,” I said, non-committedly. “I’ll stay on her.”

“Detective!” Matt Branson’s annoyed voice boomed over the low chatter in the room. Celia began to fuss, and Alicia automatically got up and went to her. Matt looked relieved to hand her over.

“Yes, Mr. Branson?”

“Are my family and I free to go back into our house now?”

“I’ll have to check with the fire department, sir.”

“Can you do that? Sooner rather than later, please?” Even this guy’s “please” sounded like an order. “We have packing to do.”

“Packing?”

“I’m getting my family out of here.”

“This needs to be run by Blake…”

“Because he’s so interested in my family’s safety? He hasn’t even been around for over a week now. He’s too busy…” I think he was going to say something about Blake going to see Celia’s biological mother, but changed his mind as he looked around the room. Instead, he said, “He’s not even here when we need him. I’m taking my family to our villa in Italy. I have security there, too. They couldn’t do a worse job than these fools here have.”

While Matt was mouthing off, the detective stepped out.

“So are you letting our firm go?” I asked him.

“Go, stay, I don’t care. We won’t be coming back until this is all sorted out.”

Julia stood up then. “Do I get a say in this?”

As she was saying that I heard Alicia say in a soft voice, “I can’t go to Italy.”

Branson ignored his wife and turned to Alicia. “What?”

“I can’t go to Italy.”

“Why not?”

“I’m here on a visa…”

“So we get you a visa for Italy. I have a friend that will push it through. It won’t be a big deal. Now go start packing Celia’s things.”

Alicia looked down at the baby with tears in her eyes and whispered, “I can’t.”

I should have been worrying about what Blake would say about me losing this job while he was out of town. Instead, my heart was breaking for Alicia. I could see how torn she was, and I couldn’t help but wonder why she wouldn’t just agree to going with them. Matt Branson, however, was feeling no sympathy, and he proved it by practically jerking the baby out of Celia’s arms and saying, “Fine then, pack your own things. We’ll take Ezra with us.”

“Wait now, everyone’s emotions are running hot right now. I don’t think this is a time to make snap decisions.”

“Guess what?” Branson said. “I don’t care what you think. My job is to protect my family. I thought I was doing that by hiring security and your firm. Apparently that wasn’t the case, so now I will do what I think is right.”

“I can understand that, sir, and I respect it, but if you fire us and leave, you might never find out who it is that wants to harm your family.”

“Maybe, but I won’t sit here either and let us be targets for them.”

The detective came back in then.

Matt looked at him and said, “Well?”

“Go ahead,” the detective said. “If you need anything or you think of anything, my number is on that card I gave you earlier. I’ll keep you updated on the investigation as things come up.”

“Thank you,” Matt said. “Come on, Julia.” He stormed out of the pool house with the baby in his arms. Julia followed him with a long-suffering look on her face.

Alicia stood rooted to her spot as everyone else cleared out, one-by-one. Once they were all gone including the detective, I moved in front of her so that she was forced to look at me.

“Alicia, sit down with me for a minute.” She followed me numbly to the couch and slowly sat down a few feet away from me. “I need to know what you meant by Charles’s death being your fault.”

She shook her head. “None of it matters now. You’re not working here any longer—and neither am I. You’ll move on to your next case, and I’ll be deported and….” She broke down again then. Her sobs wracked her whole body, and I couldn’t stand it. I moved over close to her, and for the second time that day, I took her into my arms. She buried her face in my t-shirt and I heard her say, “I’ll never see her again.”

I had one arm around her. I brought the other one up and ran my hand through her silky hair. She smelled so good, and she felt even better. Once again I was at war with myself. Holding this beautiful woman that I was so incredibly attracted to was not part of my job. I was using that fine line of professionalism like a jump rope, and I wasn’t proud of myself. She sucked in a shaky breath, and I felt her whole body tremble. It was enough to chase away my self-doubts, for now. “It’ll be okay. We’ll sort this all out and they’ll be back in no time. You know they won’t be happy with Ezra. They’ll let you see her again, I’m sure of it. She loves you.”

She pushed against me with both hands to separate us, and as she wiped the tears off her face she said, “You don’t understand.”

“Tell me, Alicia. What is it I don’t understand?” She didn’t say anything, so I switched back to my original question. “Alicia, why do you think Charles’ death is your fault?”

She sighed and got to her feet. “I need to go pack.” She only made it two steps before I was on my feet and had her shoulders in my hands.

“You need to tell me what is going on.”

“Why? Why should I trust you? Of all the men I’ve known in my life, there has only been one that didn’t want to use me for something.” She sobbed again and said, “And I’ve probably ruined his life now too.” She may as well have been speaking Greek for all I understood of what she was saying. I cupped her face in my hand and tipped it up toward mine.

“Alicia, if Charles is dead because of something that is going on in your life, do you really think you can handle it yourself?”

Her face was covered in tears, and I could see fear in her eyes. What was she so afraid of? “It’s me, okay? They don’t want Celia. They want something from me, and they’re trying to hurt people around me to force me to give it to them.”

********

              Alicia made that announcement and then refused to say anything else. I was standing in the doorway of her room in the mansion now, watching her pack. She’d stopped crying but the tremble in her hands as she folded the clothes and lay them in the suitcase was obvious. “Do you have a place to go?”

              “I’ll go to a hotel,” she said.

              I almost asked about her brother, but something told me it wasn’t the right time. I wanted to run all of this past Blake first. As if he’d read my mind, my phone rang. It was Blake. I walked out in the hallway before answering it. Blake’s first words were, “What the hell is going on out there?”

              “I’m sorry I haven’t called. It’s been…busy, to say the least.”

              “Vince said there was an explosion in the garage and at least one person is dead.”

              “Yeah, Charles—the chauffeur—was in the car. They didn’t find any other bodies, thank God. I have some other slightly disturbing news though.”

              “Lay it on me.”

              “Matt Branson is taking his family to Italy until this all blows over. He didn’t exactly fire us, but his exact words were “Go, stay, I don’t care.”

              Blake snorted. “Did he say exactly how he thinks this will blow over if no one is working on finding out who these people are and what they want?”

              “No, that was about it. I guess he’s assuming the police will stay on it, especially now that there’s a murder involved.”

              “They’ll do their best to find the arsonist no doubt, but so far these guys have been invisible. I don’t think Branson has any idea how long it might take if he waits for the police.”

              “Yeah, I think this is more of an impulsive thing because he’s afraid for his family. I don’t like the guy, but you can’t really hold that against him. There’s more though.”

              “Of course there is.”

              “He’s let Alicia go because she refuses to go to Italy with them. Something’s going on with her. She made a statement about Charles’s death being her fault, and when I pressed her on that she finally broke down and admitted to me that it wasn’t the baby these guys want…it’s her.”

              “Did she say who ‘these guys’ are and what she has that they want?”

              “No. I don’t think she really even meant to say that much. She clammed up, and now I can’t get anything out of her.”

              “If she knows they want her, she knows who they are. Stay with her. Where is she going from there?”

“She says a hotel. I’m wondering about the brother in Mississippi. She’s never even mentioned him to me. Do you know anything more about him than what was in the file?”

“Abrahem did surveillance on them for about a week while I was running the backgrounds. Aleks is the only brother Alicia has without a criminal record. He works in the research lab at the university and goes home to his wife. The wife is a stay-at-home mom. According to Abrahem, they have a little girl who’s about two years old. For some reason, that didn’t come up in the background, but sometimes the system can miss birth records unless you do a specific search for them. The wife doesn’t have any arrests or convictions, and the only red flag raised about either of them was with Immigration and Naturalization when they applied for a marriage license. It was just before the cutoff for Aleks to leave the country, so they questioned it. It turns out they dated for four years all through college so the license was granted and Aleks is now a U.S. citizen.”

“Alicia has to know he’s so close. Why wouldn’t she go to him? According to every conversation we’ve had, she’s close to her brothers.”

“That would be a good question for her.”

“Yeah, if only she’ll answer it.”

“Are you okay to stay wherever she’s staying so you can keep watching her?”

“I can do that.” I wanted to do it. Part of me was glad that she’d refused to go to Italy—no matter what her motives were.

“Good. I’ll talk to Branson in the meantime and see if he wants us to keep at this while he’s out of the country.”

              “Okay. How did things go with Belinda?” Blake had been in California for a little over a week. Since he got there, Belinda Garner had been making one excuse after the other not to talk to him. Last time we talked, he told me she’d finally agreed to sit down with him.

              “It was interesting. She’s young, but she’s not stupid. She knows how powerful the Bransons are and she doesn’t want to piss them off. If I had to guess, I’d say she was waiting to get ahold of Matt and get his blessing before she talked to me. Her career is beginning to take off, and I think that she’s worried about her past coming back to bite her.”

              “But not worried at all about handing her baby over to a power-crazed man and a woman who can’t stand to look at her? What the hell ever happened to being a mother?” Blake was quiet for a second. He knew me well enough to know these occasional outbursts about people’s lack of maternal instincts came and went quickly. This one had been building for a while, and although I was still feeling it, I stuffed it down for now and said, “Sorry, go on.”