Filthy Liar (Forbidden Bodyguards Book 5) Page 2

  And the third and final element on the three-dimensional chess board for our firm is the growing public acknowledgment that the current administration has lost the trust of its closest NATO allies. It’s been a long two years with an incompetent casino king position as the leader of the free world, and global relations are getting frayed at the edges. This is my area of particular interest. It’s why I was at the French Embassy. It’s why I’m concerned about Mack’s agenda.

  I’ve narrowed my target to three vectors of interest. The French Ambassador, the principal secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, and the newly exiled Belarusian opposition leader. Tracking their movements over the next week will show me the path that the world’s power brokers are setting us upon.

  Which brings me back to the socialite.

  A week after our drink at the Kennedy Center, I make sure she bumps into me at her favorite coffee shop, and now tonight—just like that, because pretty young socialites love danger and a warning is better than an endorsement—I’m a fill-in at her Friday night dinner party because someone else got food poisoning at the last second.

  On the one hand, it’s not ethical to deliberately make someone sick. On the other, the loser I bumped off her guest list is a fucking asshole and I won’t lose sleep if he spends the night turning himself inside out into his toilet bowl while I listen to the tipsy ramblings of the French Ambassador’s very young wife—who just happens to be the socialite’s best friend.

  That’s the plan, anyway.

  But plans tend to go out the window when the rubber hits the road.

  Also, I’m getting too fucking old for this.

  Seven years ago, I lived for this shit, good or bad. It was all the same to me, a jaded ex-special forces operator who had lost his moral compass somewhere on a mountaintop in Afghanistan. I found it again a few years later. Well, it wasn’t mine, exactly. I’ve had to borrow one from Cole, who managed to re-grow his personal ethics when he fell in love in the most unlikely of places: right in the middle of the snake den.

  Hailey Dashford Reid was the thorn in our side, the problem child who refused to play along as we—The Horus Group, Washington’s highest paid fixers—tried to rehabilitate her parents’ reputation. Cole fell head-over-heels for her, and now Hailey is also Mrs. Parker.

  She remains a bit of a thorn in my side to this day, but it turns out she was right to refuse, and us cutting ties with a certain set meant we weren’t overly exposed when Amelia—her snake of a mother—was toppled.

  Few people know that’s what happened, but then few people know anything about the truth of Amelia Dashford Reid’s life, her bizarre family relationships, her attachment to Gerome Lively, and the strings she was pulling in the most exclusive halls of power.

  I don’t even know if I have the complete picture myself.

  What I do know is that change is upon us. Seismic shifts on a geo-political level, and when the rumbling finally stops, everything will be radically different.

  I intend to be standing on the rubble when it’s over. Everything that happened in the past is done, over. All that matters is what comes next, and who benefits from it.

  But first, I have a dinner party to infiltrate. The French Ambassador is in my sights. Or rather, to start, his pretty young wife.

  “Jason was a Navy SEAL, you know.” The hostess drops her hand to my forearm and squeeze. I flex against her touch and she giggles.

  If I wanted to fuck her bareback tonight, I could. Jesus Christ, this was like taking candy from a baby.

  And her friend, the ambassador’s wife, is no different. As soon as our hostess moves on to the next cluster of people, Camille leans in. “The special forces? The ones who catch all the bad guys?” Her smile widens. “We have such men in France as well, but we don’t make movies about them.”

  From behind me, I hear a small snort of laughter, but when I turn my head to the side, I can’t see where it came from.

  “That’s what I like the most about the French,” I murmur. “Your discretion.”

  “I’m very discreet.” Her tongue slides daintily across the inner edge of the corner of her mouth. A subtle, non-verbal invitation. “You know, I have free time every so often. When my husband travels for work.”

  Candy. From. A. Baby. “Any chance you might be free next weekend?”

  “I’ll be all alone from Thursday evening until Monday.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.” I wink at her and give her my card. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Camille.”

  “And you.” She glances over her shoulder. “I should mingle, yes?”

  “We both should.” I make it clear that I would rather be alone with her, but social duty calls.

  As I move around the pool, I wonder who overheard that conversation. It doesn’t matter, really. If someone interferes, more the better. I have no intention of actually having an affair with Camille. She’s not my type. Too young, too absolutely unaware of op-sec.

  My goal here tonight was threefold.

  First, for my own reasons, I wanted confirmation that her husband would be out of Washington for those precise dates.

  Pulling my out my phone, I text Wilson the update.

  Jason: The Ambassador will be at the summit.

  Wilson: Acknowledged.

  Second, I wanted to create the impression for all curious observers that I am actively looking to get cozy with his wife. Misdirection achieved.

  My third goal was the first thing I did when I arrived—I dropped two micro drones along the back wall of the property while being given the grand tour.

  I quickly check the tracker app on my phone, to see that they haven’t been detected. The GPS trackers show them exactly where I left them.

  Excellent.

  As I put my phone away, I catch sight of a heart-shaped face from my past. Bee-stung lips, dark eyes with thick, sooty lashes. Black hair—that’s new—but there’s no mistaking who it is.

  Ellie. She’s dressed as waitstaff, in black pants and a white shirt, wearing an apron, and in the split second it takes for me to register the familiarity, she pivots and disappears inside. I dart around the pool, following the woman who ghosted me five years ago.

  The woman who was once my receptionist, and then disappeared without a trace.

  Heart pounding, I stop inside the main hall of the Rock Creek mansion and listen for the direction of the catering noise. Clatters lead me almost to the kitchen, but I duck into a dark powder room as I catch sight of her in the doorway.

  “I’m really sorry to do this.” Her voice drifts towards me. “Are you sure it’s okay if I go?”

  “Yeah, we’re good. Thanks for your help tonight. You actually make a pretty good waiter, you know that?”

  She laughs, but there’s a tightness to her voice. Does she know I’m this close?

  The next beat of the conversation is obscured by another clatter, then there’s silence. I chance sticking my head back into the hallway, just enough to catch sight of the kitchen, but it’s empty.

  She’s gone.

  I sprint to the front door, not caring if I’m seen. She’s already made me, disappeared into thin air. Again.

  The gate on the far side of the circular drive is closed, but of course she didn’t valet park her car.

  She was here posing as the help. The little con artist.

  “A waitress dropped this on her way out,” I say to the valet approaching. Despite the growing furor inside me, my voice sounds calm. I show him my phone. “Did you see her?”

  3

  Melinda

  Fuckity fuck fuck. I really wanted access to this catering gig to last a few weeks longer.

  As soon as I’m around the corner of the house, I kick it into high gear and sprint through the side gate. I’m not sure I can outrun Jason, even if I’m wearing clothes more suited to a foot race than he is.

  He looked good in that suit.

  Truly, absolutely not what I should be concerned with right now
.

  I can’t risk trying to cut across properties in this neighborhood. Too much money, too many connections. Guaranteed security systems that police would actually respond to alarms from. My bike is three blocks away, because there wasn’t enough parking at the hoity-toity residence for guests and the hired help.

  Can Jason find me in three blocks? Jesus Christ, why did I not grin and bear the discomfort of tracking him while I’m in town? Being caught off-guard like this is completely disruptive to—well, everything. Did I not think I might run into him?

  I knew I could at some point, but tonight? The chances were low. When I worked for him, the socialites were always someone else’s job.

  I could have handled running into Cole or Tag. I would love to see Wilson again. But Jason? I repeat, fuckity fuck fuck.

  I need to get to the next block, then make a decision.

  Left or right.

  I risk a glance behind me, and I don’t see him. I don’t hear his footsteps, either, but those could come any second.

  Which block is shorter?

  Left.

  The sticky summer humidity isn’t making this fun. My kingdom for a breeze, holy shit. A car’s engine growls to life a block away, and my pulse jacks up again. I force my breath out as steadily as possible while sprinting at top speed.

  I get around the block and the tucked-away parking lot is in sight. I sprint the whole way, ignoring my protesting lungs, and don’t stop until I’m on my bike and roaring towards Georgetown.

  It’s not that I’m afraid of Jason, exactly. I’m not afraid of anyone. But I don’t have time to deal with the mistakes of the past right now. I have enough on my plate with the mistakes of the present.

  It doesn’t take me long to get to my new apartment building on the edge of Georgetown, conveniently located right between the Russian Embassy and the Naval Observatory where the VP lives.

  Nosy girls like to be in the middle of the action. You never know when you’re going to overhear a grumpy staffer say the right/wrong thing while getting coffee.

  I pull into the parking garage, quickly decelerating. A quick glance in my rearview mirrors as the secure door rolls up, then I pull through and wait until it closes behind me.

  Once I stash my bike in the storage unit I got instead of a parking stall—one of the main reasons I picked this building—I head upstairs to my second-floor studio.

  I don’t need a lot of space. Room for a bed, a desk, and a window for my aloe vera plant. Her name is Monica, and I bought her because she reminds me of California. The sun, the salty air.

  The distance between me and my past. Jason.

  Monica—being a plant—is unfamiliar with that complicating factor. Lucky Monica.

  I set my helmet on its spot next to the aloe vera, under the window that overlooks the Naval Observatory, and I go to the kitchenette to get an extra-stiff drink.

  What was Jason’s interest in crashing the party tonight? Because I have no doubt that’s how he got there. He looked cozy with the French Ambassador’s young wife, which had to be strategic on his part.

  He had never been interested in playing the bull. But maybe he’s changed in the last five years. It’s none of my business. Whatever his business is—at least personally—I burned any claim to that man’s flesh when I ghosted him and his firm.

  But politically…maybe there’s a story there.

  I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like the idea of Jason As a Story. It’s why I left. But that was in the before times. Before the last election, before everything changed, before Lively killed himself. Before Amelia Dashford Reid went off the deep end.

  And now I live in an empty studio apartment while I try to hack the time-intensive process of finding sources in a city I’ve done my damnedest to ignore for half a decade. Hence the catering job that I can’t go back. Fucking Jason, what a party-pooper.

  I snicker to myself and toss back half my drink. He’d have liked it if I called him that. He’d find it cheeky.

  The tequila burns, so I set the glass down and fire up my computer to check my encrypted email addresses. A few messages from sources for long-game stories I’m working on back burners, one weird lead idea that doesn’t sound like it will go anywhere—yes, all the rich old men in this town are pedophiles, almost certainly, but I’m not going to fall for a variation on the pizzagate story. I run a trace and sure enough, that email address has been used by a semi-infamous loser asshole who will do anything to make women look bad.

  Delete.

  The final note in my inbox makes me sit up a little straighter. It’s from an account inside the DC police force, and I recognize the name. Detective Kendra Browning. Ex-wife of Tag Browning, one of Jason’s partners in The Horus Group. What are the odds?

  I’m not the type to believe in coincidences. My skepticism has driven me to sometimes find patterns and stories where none exist. Early in my career, that was drummed out of me. I had to learn that sometimes, a coincidence is just that.

  But still…

  I flip over to Twitter. Does Detective Browning have an account? Not that I can tell. I do, albeit an anonymous one.

  There aren’t many people in this world who know anything about me. There are no photographs of me as Melinda Gray, Intrepid Girl Reporter. Anonymous author of Private Jet, Private Hell. I have social media accounts and by-lines, but they’re all dead ends as far as finding a real person behind them. So the chances that Detective Browning knows that I know her through a different channel are slim.

  My pulse thumps heavy at the base of my throat as I read the subject line for a second time.

  From: Detective Kendra Browning

  To: Melinda Gray

  Subject: Request for an interview (background information)

  I click into the message.

  In the course of an investigation, some of your articles have popped onto my radar…

  I scan the rest of the message and type a standard reply.

  From: Melinda Gray

  To: Detective Kendra Browning

  Subject: Re: Request for an interview (background information)

  * * *

  I never reveal my sources. I don’t think I can be of any help to the police in this matter.

  But I don’t hit send. I read her message back again, then scowl at the blinking cursor. I drain my glass, go to the kitchen for a refill, then come back.

  The cursor flashes at me as if to say, this isn’t the right reply.

  Why not?

  What am I missing? What is my instinct pinging on, and why can’t I see it? I dig out my burner phone, the one with only one contact—Caroline—and fire off a cryptic message. Then I close the laptop. I don’t need to reply right away.

  Maybe it’s that I don’t want to reply without disclosing that we know each other from another time, another life. I can picture the good detective from her visits to the Horus Group offices.

  I could disclose that prior connection, if need be, but not in writing. I have before, to Taylor Dashford Reid, a former client of The Horus Group and a fellow absconder to the west coast. In the year since I printed her story, I’ve never had any reason to think she told anyone who I am. But a third brush with that past life, and on the same night as a near run-in with Jason?

  It’s enough to make an already paranoid investigator think something was definitely up.

  A glow of headlights out my window catches my eye. A slow-moving caravan of vehicles is driving down one of the lanes on the property of the Naval Observatory. There’s a story there, in the comings and goings of the property’s most famous residents—and the visitors they get.

  D.C. is full of stories, though, and I don’t know if I want to tell them anymore.

  Maybe my next project will be my swan song in journalism, and I can silently fade into the night. I’ll reinvent myself as a barista in Kansas or something similarly wholesome.

  Maybe one day I’ll even find someone to share all of this with.

  I can’t imag
ine how that would even go. Funny story…

  Laughing to myself, I reach for my glass—but I freeze before I pick it up. Why on God’s green acres did those two words pop into my head like that? Jason Fucking Evans.

  “Funny story…” is how we ended up crossing the line between employer and employee in the first place.

  Jason

  Five years earlier

  I should close my door and leave her alone.

  Alone.

  That’s precisely the problem.

  Cole is on vacation—fucking his beautiful girlfriend on a beach in Hawaii, I’m sure—and Tag and Wilson are doing a security system walk-through with a client in Arlington.

  Which means Ellie and I are all alone in the office, and any second, I’m going to get up from my desk and go find her. I’ll invent a problem. Ask if there’s coffee—which there isn’t, because I’ll have already dumped the pot on the way to reception.

  She’ll get up and lead the way, her pert, round ass bobbing in front of me like a matador’s red cape.

  Which makes me the bull.

  Fuck, yes.

  Except…no.

  For one thing, it would make me a hypocrite. And for another, I’m pretty sure that if I give in to my base need for her, this isn’t going to end well.

  I’m not the upstanding SEAL I once was, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I covet my employee’s ass.

  And her tits.

  And her soft, wet mouth.

  A knock at the door interrupts my fantasy and I snap my shit tight. “Yep,” I say coolly, clipped.

  Ellie marches efficiently up to and around my desk, leaning her hip against the side of it. “There are six schedule conflicts on your calendar next week. I’ve flagged them all in bright red so you can go in and fix them.”