The Omega Team: Keeping Karen (Kindle Worlds Novella) (2 page)

“I keep telling myself I was being thorough, but I was also curious. It could have been a genuine clerical error or a missing account. Sometimes people move and they don’t close out their accounts or family members pass away.” She seemed to warm to the subject, and the enthusiasm chased away some of the unease in her voice. “People get married. They open a joint and leave a few bucks in their solo account, and then they forget about it. It happens. I’ve done work trying to track down the owners of missing accounts or lost funds. Once they’re flagged, they can sit there for years before anything can be done about them. So, I dug a little deeper, that’s when I realized the deposits into these accounts weren’t minute amounts. They were huge ones, and they were being paid out to other numbered accounts… And they were all attached to names.”

“The accounts or the payments?”

“The payments.”

He nodded, tracing his thumb against the back of her hand. She gave a little start, her attention dropping to where their fingers connected. Had she forgotten he was holding her hand? Bracing himself for her withdrawal, he relaxed when she didn’t. “What was it about the names that got your attention?”

“To be honest?” She exhaled then moistened her lips. He tracked the glide of her tongue over the fullness of her lower lip. “Nothing. They were names. Well, names and dates, but that doesn’t mean anything, except one of the names really bugged me. I recognized it as one of the first ones on the list. When I realized where I recognized it from, I called the cops.” Her dark lashes lowered as she closed her eyes. “I thought it was me overreacting a little, but I wanted to report it, anyway.”

“Go on.”

“The name was Giles Anderson.”

He knew the name. “The aide to Senator Kensington. His body was found outside a club. He’d passed out in his vehicle.” The aide froze to death during one of the snowstorms, or at least that was the supposition based on his blood alcohol levels, the temperature and the lack of physical evidence indicating an assault.

“Exactly. The other amounts were similar, even if the names were different, but the first one? It looked like a hit fee.”

“A hit fee?”

She ducked her chin, as though to hide her eyes, and her face flushed a deeper shade of pink beneath her natural darker tone. “You know what someone might pay to have someone else taken out.”

“I know what a hit fee is. I’m wondering why that’s the first place your mind went.” What happened to the sweet girl from high school? The one who didn’t even like violent games.

“I don’t know. I look for patterns. It’s what I do all day. I saw his name and the amount was close to sixty-seven thousand dollars—that’s a really specific amount and far higher than what the skimmer had been taking. The others were also similar amounts. They were paid into numbered accounts with no identifications on them, just codes. Whoever paid them and whomever they were paid to did not want to be known. I called the cops, reported it, and then… I finished my work, submitted my report to the bank, took a shower, and went to bed. I’d been on that job for more than forty-eight hours, and I was exhausted.”

Neither the image of her under a hot shower with water sluicing over her naked body nor the one of her sprawled in bed, with her hair spread over a pillow, were images he needed to entertain. “So, what happened next?”

“Nothing, at least that I know of, happened. I think the cops may have done their own investigation, and I—I tried not to think about it.” She avoided looking at him directly. He’d have heard the lie without the body language to confirm it.

“Karen.” To emphasize the warning, he tapped her wrist lightly with two fingers. “What did you do?”

“I did searches on the other names.” Her dark hair fell over her shoulder and hid half her face before she raised her chin to meet his gaze. “I know I should have left it alone, but I was curious.”

His gut clenched. Curiosity could do more than kill a cat. “And?”

“And I found out the second name on the list also passed away from…accidental circumstances. She slid on some ice outside of her brownstone in Georgetown.”

“That didn’t warn you to stop digging?”

“A Detective Reynolds came to see me. He had some questions. When I walked him through what I’d found and how I found it, he had me come into the station and make a statement.”

Which painted a giant bullseye on her. “Tell me you left it alone after that.”

She bit her lower lip. Of course she hadn’t.

Swallowing his own impatience, he nodded. The grim sensation sinking in his gut promised him he wouldn’t like the rest of the story. “What happened next?”

“They took two of the other names into protective custody, but they couldn’t the find the third.”
Five names. Two bodies. Two in custody
. “And I may or may not have helped Detective Reynolds find Casey Birmingham in Canada.”

“How did you find her?”

“I tracked her money.”

Ethan wasn’t sure whether to be proud or frustrated. “Then?”

“Then my car blew up.”

E
than hadn’t been
happy when he told her to wait there before he stepped out of the room. If anything, his expression had grown stonier and stonier as she told him her tale. Not once had he opened the folder he carried in with him, nor had he released her hand while she related the series of mishaps which began with her car blowing up and ended with the shorted wires in her apartment. If she weren’t paranoid about her equipment, she might have trigged a fire. Detective Reynolds had taken the threats seriously, dispatching uniformed police officers to stay with her. Then the marshals came.

Now—Ethan.
Oh, Ethan.
Aware that they could be monitoring her, she didn’t want to rest her head on the table. Yet, she couldn’t shake the connection sizzling through her from the moment he touched her. The years melted away. He was her Ethan all over again. They’d had so much fun in high school. When he’d told her that he planned to enlist in the Marines, she’d alternately hated and supported the idea.

She’d never admitted to hating it, at least not to him. Her mother had understood and even pointed out the dislike was directly related to her worry. Ethan planned to pursue a career in a field which could get him killed. The idea of losing her best friend and the man she loved left her gut in knots. Still, she respected his very real excitement and dedication to the idea.

Using words to make him feel bad wasn’t in her. Two months after he’d graduated high school, and three weeks before she started her senior year, he’d left for basic. She was in Sage Creek, Texas, and he’d headed off to Parris Island. For the first few months, they’d written religiously and kept in touch. She told him what was happening at home, and he told her about the military. Then her college acceptance letters rolled in…

Don’t rehash it.
Karen shook her head and pushed up from the table. Ethan had been gone for several minutes. Who knew when he was coming back? She paced the room. If she sat still too long, she started shaking again or got cold—or both. Maybe she should have asked for coffee.

On her fourth pass, the door opened and Ethan returned with another man. Older than Ethan, he had a paunchy appearance and ruddy cheeks. He’d also nicked himself shaving and his suit didn’t fit him well. “Miss Harkness, I’m Deputy Jackson, field office supervisor.”

She accepted his perfunctory handshake before retreating to fold her arms.

“I need to go over the terms of our relocation. This is not a permanent move.” The man’s words hummed in her ears. “We’ll be keeping you secure until the case has been resolved, pending whether or not you will need to testify…”

“I’m sorry, what?” So what if she interrupted? “What are you talking about?”

“Protective custody,” Ethan answered instead of his boss. “Based on the threat assessment and previous incidents, the marshal service has been asked and we agreed to take you into custody. We’ll see that you are relocated to a safe house. We’ll also be monitoring you and providing twenty-four hour protection…”

He said more words, but she’d stopped listening. One moment she was standing, the next she was seated and a warm hand rested on her nape as she sucked in noisy breaths. She had her head down and Ethan was there, kneeling before her. She could feel the heat of his presence against her like a balm. The stars decorating her vision passed, and she met his concerned gaze.

“You okay?”

Was it a panic attack? “I’m fine,” she lied, but couldn’t drum up any guilt over the untruth. “I don’t want to be in protective custody.”

“That’s fine, darlin.’ You don’t have to like it; you just have to cooperate for a few weeks.”

“Weeks?” The squeak in her voice grated on her own nerves. Sitting up abruptly, she ignored the way the room wobbled and the concerned look on Deputy Jackson’s face. “Are you serious? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“We’re not saying you did,” Jackson began, but Ethan raised his hand.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. No one is accusing you of wrongdoing. What you did was uncover a murder-for-hire plot and everyone needs time to investigate it. In the meanwhile, we need to keep you alive. Someone blew up your car and they tried to burn your apartment down. Chances are those were not the only attempts, but the most obvious ones.”

“Isn’t this…overreaction? I mean, couldn’t I stay in a hotel? I can pay in cash, go off the grid.” Not that she could stay off the grid. She had work to do.

As if reading her mind, Ethan’s expression firmed. “Can you really? Doesn’t all of your work require you to maintain some kind of connection to the grid?”

“I could take a vacation.”

“That’s what you can call this. We’ll drive down to Florida, get a place on the beach, and you can be out of sight and out of mind. Meanwhile, we let the cops do their work.”

Wait.
We?
“You’re going with me?”

“Miss Harkness, that’s what I was explaining. Marshal James will be accompanying you and leading your team. You have no connections in Florida, no business or family, correct?”

Still trying to wrap her mind around the idea of Ethan going with her, she shook her head. “No, Mama moved to California about three years ago, and I don’t have any family back in Texas anymore.” The girls were scattered all over the country, but none lived in Florida. Maybe Maigen, if she were still on her vacation, but she didn’t live there. “Where in Florida?”

“That’s need to know,” Ethan said. “Right now you don’t. You’re going to have to travel with the bags you have.”

“I don’t have any…they pretty much got my laptop and Luthor and made me leave everything else.”

“Luthor?” Jackson raised his brows, and she glanced at the cat carrier.

“Not to worry, we’ll make do.” Ethan gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll travel light, and keep the presence of other marshals to a minimum.”

His boss considered him. “You need backup.”

“I’ll have it. The less we leave on a paper trail here or anywhere, the better.” The two seemed to be communicating on a nonverbal level. It took a moment for the reality to sink in…Ethan didn’t want an electronic trail. That made sense. Scary sense.
And he’s going with me.
No matter what else had happened, she trusted Ethan. He was a man of his word.

Except, they were going somewhere in Florida. Alone. Together.

“Miss Harkness, we can’t force you to accept these terms but, for your safety, I’d recommend following Marshal James’s plan. He’s one of our best, and we’ll do everything in our power to keep you safe. But you still have to agree to cooperate.”

Ignoring the other man for the time being, she looked up to meet Ethan’s gaze. “Say yes, Karen.” He’d said something similar to her years ago when he’d wanted her to go to school near to his base, to follow him to his assignments. She hadn’t said it then. “Let me protect you.”
Let me take care of you. Trust me, darlin.’ I’ll never let you down…

“Yes.”

K
aren’s acquiescence
wouldn’t last. He hadn’t missed the shocky appearance to her dilated pupils or the way she simply agreed to leave for Florida with him. His boss didn’t like the speed Ethan moved at, but he couldn’t argue with the police reports Ethan dropped on his desk. Reports which left Ethan’s blood cold. He’d seen a lot of violence. The bomb, which ripped through her car, would have left nothing of the beautiful women next to him staring out the window.

Only dumb luck had set it off before she got inside. The wires in her apartment, if not for the safety switches she’d used for her computers—he pushed the thoughts away. No, maybe fortune favored her long enough to get her under his protection. He didn’t want anything else to touch her.

His phone buzzed, and he checked the message from Grey. Two words,
On it.
Since the man offered him a potential job and told him about the Omega Team, he’d called in a favor and texted him about Karen’s situation. Sliding the phone away, he spared another glance for his silent passenger. Her cat in the carrier in the back seat was as silent as the woman herself. He’d checked twice, just to make sure the animal was actually in there. No cat he knew had ever been that quiet in a carrier.

“Are you sure that’s a real cat?” It wasn’t the best attempt at starting a conversation, but maybe it would distract her.

“Hmm?” She twisted in the seat and looked at the carrier in the back then at him. “Luthor’s not a social creature. Well, he is, but only on his terms. I think he’s plotting my demise, since he’s been subjected to one indignity after another.”

“So, we should pick up some bribes for him when we get to Destin.”

“We’re going to Destin?”

“Yep. Nice place just outside it, near the beach. Quiet. Pretty. Isolated. You can relax and keep your head down, and I’ll keep you safe.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“White beaches. Good shopping, or at least that’s what Tammy always says.” He hadn’t spoken to Tammy in a while but, the last time he’d checked, she was back in New York.

“You still talk to Tammy?” Surprise kindled in her voice.

“Sure, we have lunch when we’re in the same city.” His relationship with his former stepmother surprised a lot of people, but Tammy had been a rare gift in his life. She hadn’t tried to replace his mother and worked hard to earn his respect and friendship. “She and Mom are still friends, too.”

Karen laughed then shook her head. “I always thought that was weird.”

“Me too. But Tammy met Dad after he and Mom divorced. Mom always thought she should know who was in my life.”

“Yeah, but then she and your dad got divorced, and she stayed friends with your mom?”

“You know, Mom always said Tammy was good people, and they
are
a lot alike.” Except Tammy wanted to be a playwright and his mom was a florist. “Funny. Straightforward. Never needed men types.”

Twining a lock of hair around her fingers, Karen grinned. “Never needed men types? That’s a type?”

“Sure. They aren’t helpless, and they never relied on Dad to do things for them. I think it drove Dad crazy. He wanted to be the big hero, to bring home the bacon and take care of everything. They didn’t need him.” Odd, he’d never really considered it that way before. “Too independent.”

“Is that why they divorced?”

“I never asked.” It wasn’t his business. “Mom and Dad are still friends, though, and he’s been dating Constance for a couple of years.”

“Wife number three?” No judgment existed in her question, just frank curiosity.

“I don’t think so. My parents got married right out of high school and stuck it out until I was ten. He met Tammy when I was eleven and married her six weeks later.” They made it all the way to his graduation and divorced after he’d enlisted. “Dad always said you just know when you’ve met the woman you want to marry.” He fixed his gaze on the road. When he met Karen in high school, he’d believed he understood what his dad meant.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

For his parents? Or for them? Did he really want to know the answer to that question?

Ethan shrugged. “You know, all three of them are happy…”

Silence followed his statement for a long stretch then she shifted in her seat, and he glanced from the road to her again. Her quiet eyes were on him, and he felt the heat of her gaze. “Are you?” The soft question weighed on him.

“Am I what?” He knew what she was asking, but somehow he doubted it was a conversation they should be having, much less in the car on their way to help her disappear.

“Are you happy?” She’d twisted to sit sideways, stretching her seatbelt to allow her to pull a knee up to hug.

“No, Karen,” he said, deciding on honesty. “I’m not happy.”

Instead of replying, she chewed her lower lip—a habit he recalled her using when she was torn between acting and refraining. Shutting down her line of inquiry was probably a dick move, but until they’d been on the road, he hadn’t really allowed himself to consider his choices. Protecting her wasn’t even a question. Having her show up in his life out of nowhere with a death threat hanging over her head? It didn’t matter what it did to his life, he’d make sure no one hurt her. Beyond that, he had nothing.

“Are you married?” Her soft question hung in the air between them, and he held up his bare left hand. Not even a mark marred the skin where a ring would go on his tanned finger. “Not all married men wear rings.”

Slanting a look at her, he frowned. “Karen, I’m the guy who wanted to put a ring on your finger. Do you really think I wouldn’t wear one?” Annoyance flared in his gut. What kind of an ass did she think him?

“No, I think you were absolutely that guy.” An apology hung in her tone. “But I haven’t known that guy in twelve—thirteen years. I don’t know who you are now, and you don’t know me. A lot happens in a decade.”

Thirteen years, two months and four days
. He kept that accuracy to himself. “If you say so.” She would always be his Karen, too honest for her own good. The same girl who discovered the answer key to a test and turned it in rather than take advantage. When he asked her to marry him, she hadn’t kept him on a hook or made a promise she couldn’t keep. She’d told him the truth.

“Now you’re pissed at me.”

Was that chagrin in her tone? Or a challenge? He couldn’t tell, so he said, “Didn’t say I was mad.”

“You don’t have to. A little muscle in your jaw begins to twitch when you’re angry, and you get this glacial look in your eyes.” Her observation felt eerily accurate.

“That was true thirteen years ago, what makes you think it’s true now?”

“Ethan?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t be a dick.” Despite the decade apart, the knowledge someone had tried to kill her and a declined marriage proposal between them, she still managed to sound all southern girl and proper.

“Fine. I’m annoyed, not pissed.”

“Fair enough.”

When she didn’t add anything more, he wanted to snarl. “Fair enough?”

Laughter erupted, and the sweet throaty femininity of it went straight to his cock so he glared. At least the laughter put some sparkle back into her eyes and eased the lines of tension from around her mouth. “You are still predictable.”