Bare Facts (12 page)

He stood up and straightened his suit jacket to make sure he could reach his gun in his shoulder holster.

“Justine brought the Jaguar up to us. All you have to do is go out and get in. I’ll drive, since I’ve had evasive and defensive driving training.”

Daniel shook his head. His first job in the Yakuza had been as a driver—he knew better than anyone how to evade tails bullets. Plus, he knew the city like the back of his hand, and Charity would be limited by whatever knowledge she’d gleaned from maps.

“Daniel—”

“There isn’t a single thing you can say that will sway me. I’m driving.”

“Why did you hire us if you were going to be like this?”

Why
had
he hired them? At the time he thought it would be great to have Liberty Investigations doing the legwork for him. But that was before he’d realized the extent of Sekijima’s anger and how he was gunning for everything in Daniel’s life.

Before he realized that he’d now made three more people vulnerable to attack from an Oyabun who’d always been the most ruthless man that Daniel knew. Ruthlessness was the one thing he’d understood from earliest memory. That and survival. Somehow, no matter what, he always survived.

There had been times when he’d expected he’d die, but somehow he never did. It gave him a feeling of invincibility and he still had it. He didn’t know what Sekijima believed, but Daniel knew when he confronted his old Oyabun, he was going to make damn sure he was the only one who walked away.

“That’s not relevant now. Will Justine or Anna be following us?”

“Um…no. Anna’s already at the high-rise condo building and Justine’s going to hang back here until the flight crew leaves.”

He liked the way her team operated. They covered everything. “I’m beginning to think I hired you because you are the best in the business.”

She gave him a cheeky, flirty grin, which made him want to kiss her and let his hands wander all over her body.

“Well, you’d be right about that. Are you sure you won’t let me drive you?”

“Yes. It has nothing to do with my confidence in your abilities, Charity. I’m sure you’re a top-notch driver.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Then why can’t I drive?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t going there. Not now and probably not ever. He led the way off the plane and down to his Jaguar.

C
harity’s aptitude had always been a knack for reading people, even before she’d turned her grief into vengeance. The quotes running through her head gave her a semblance of balance. It was something that her mother had begun when she had first started going to school—giving her a little thought to ground her day. And it had never left her.

Right now she wasn’t reading much from Daniel. One of the traits she really admired in him was his ability to be completely null, to keep his energy low and move through life almost unobserved.

His driving was exactly the same. He wove effortlessly through the traffic with an ease she wouldn’t have had because she didn’t know the streets of Seattle the way he obviously did.

“You’re staring at me,” he said.

“Am I? Maybe I’m just trying to pick up some tips.”

“I doubt it. You already know everything about how to drive.”

“Maybe I have some room for improvement.”

Daniel took his eyes from the road for a second. “You’re perfect.”

Before she could respond, he was back to concentrating on the job at hand. She wasn’t even sure what he meant. Maybe she’d misunderstood him.

“I’m not perfect. I missed the hit man in D.C. I should have gotten her.”

“We already covered this,” he said. “Why do you keep returning to it?”

She didn’t like to talk about the way she learned because she had to see her mistakes over and over in her head. She slowed them down and changed her actions in her mind. Tried different scenarios until she got a better understanding of herself and the problem she was struggling to solve.

“It’s just what I do. I’ll never make that mistake again.”

“I don’t doubt that. Why did you get into this business?”

She nibbled on her lower lip. “I have an aptitude for weapons and self-defense. It was a natural thing for me to do. After Mom and Dad were gone, I wasn’t interested in modeling anymore.”

“I’m not surprised by that. You have too much energy and smarts for modeling.”

“It’s harder than it looks,” she said, defending her former profession.

“Is it?”

“Are you teasing me?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? You run a multinational corporation—I expect a firmer answer than that.”

“How do you know what to expect? Been around a lot of CEOs?”

“Yes, I have. We guard them a lot.”

“In situations similar to mine?”

“No. You’re different, Daniel,” she said. Dammit, her voice softened and she hadn’t meant for it to.

“I’ve always been different.”

Given his background, she wasn’t surprised he felt that way. It fit with who he was and it was one of the things that drew her. “Different isn’t bad. I’m not exactly like anyone else, either.”

“You can say that again. How did Sam find the three of you?”

Charity thought about her team. They all fit together so well that it made a certain kind of sense that they’d work together. They functioned so seamlessly she honestly couldn’t imagine not working with Justine and Anna, though when they were first brought together she didn’t think they’d last through their assignment.

“I’m not sure how he found us all, but he does have a knack for putting the right people together. We’re like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit anywhere else. Anna used to be with MI-5 and Justine is a street fighter.”

“And you?”

“Me? I was a…it’s not pretty.”

“I told you I grew up on the street. I can handle ugly.”

She put her hand on his arm, squeezing gently because she had to touch him. She still wanted to comfort him and pull him into her arms, letting him rest there until the scars of his past healed and melted away.

He took one hand from the wheel and squeezed her hand on his arm. “Tell me.”

“I was a vigilante. I used my anger to keep myself alive. I mean, I wanted to die after my parents were taken from me.”

“Vigilante? Who’d you go after?”

“First was Kinkichi—he’s the man who killed my parents. When he was no longer walking the earth, I thought I’d be able to breathe easier but that wasn’t so.”

“Vengeance is a hard thing to live with.”

“Who did you take revenge on?”

Daniel didn’t say anything, but she knew his silences didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t going to tell her. After a few minutes he said, “Sekijima.”

“Do you want to tell me why?”

“If I do, you’ll be disgusted.”

She shook her head. “No, I won’t. Whatever is between the two of you is fueling what’s happening now.”

“It involves a woman.”

“Most feuds between two men do.”

Daniel glanced over at her, his green gaze hard. “Have you ever had two men fight over you?”

“Of course not. Men don’t see me the way you do,” she said.

“I highly doubt that.”

She thought about it for a moment. “Well, I don’t see them the same way I see you.”

Charity had never let fear rule her life and she wasn’t about to start now. She knew that she couldn’t build anything permanent with Daniel, because his life and lifestyle were both in perpetual motion. He wasn’t the kind of man who was going to ask her to give up her career and be a stay-at-home mom.

He seemed to have no designs on a little slice of domestic bliss. And to be fair, she didn’t, either, but there was something about the man that just made her want to find a way to be with him forever. Forever? Who the hell was she kidding? She knew
forever
didn’t really exist.

“So you were both fighting over a woman?”

“Not really,” he said. “Yuki wasn’t the type of woman to look at more than one man.”

“You loved her?” Charity asked, surprised because Daniel wasn’t the kind of man she would have guessed would let himself love anyone.

He shrugged. “What is love? I cared for her. We started living together when I went legit.”

Went legit? She wanted to question him on that but knew better. Right now she needed to know about Sekijima, and for once he was willing to talk.

He shook his head. “Yuki was smart and funny. She was capable of holding her own with men. She didn’t know about my past, that I came from the street.”

“I’m sure that wouldn’t have mattered to her,” Charity said. She knew that his past made her admire him even more than his success in the business world. That kind of background made a man solid. She wouldn’t have to worry about Daniel calling her a wannabe or expecting her to dress up and play a part in public.

“I’m not. Her family was wealthy and we were introduced by a very powerful man. Later I found out that she’d been ordered to continue seeing me.”

His tone was completely flat and she couldn’t tell if he felt no emotion or had just learned to hide it deep inside. She didn’t exactly like hearing about this woman. No matter his tone or what he said—she was still jealous of Yuki.

And jealousy was a useless emotion. Besides, the woman clearly wasn’t in his life anymore. But a part of her was jealous of the suppressed emotion in his voice. Whatever he’d felt for Yuki, a part of him still clung to it.

“She did what her family told her to?” Charity asked.

Daniel’s lips twitched. She hoped he hadn’t picked up on her envy, but she’d always had a hard time keeping her stronger emotions to herself. The only time she ever was able to completely disengage was during combat.

“Yes. But then she fell for me. It seemed like I was riding high. The business took off and was growing. I finally had money. A nice place to sleep each night. A woman to call my own…”

“What happened?” she asked, because from the beginning this story hadn’t had a happily-ever-after feel. She tipped her head to the side and studied him, realizing that neither of them had found happily-ever-after. Granted, she wasn’t exactly searching for it and she suspected he wasn’t, either. But it had remained elusive for both of them.

“She…she wasn’t what she appeared to be. She’d been sent to investigate the Yakuza by the U.S. government. Sekijima found out and warned me.”

There was no good way for this to end—she knew Daniel wouldn’t handle betrayal well. “At the time I wasn’t doing anything illegal, so she’d come to me simply to get to him. Sekijima was like a brother to me. Closer, really, because our bond wasn’t random but one we both chose and honored.”

Charity was tense as she listened to this story. She hated where she knew it had to be going. Hated that every time it seemed like Daniel had a shot at real happiness, it seemed to elude him. She knew what that felt like. Understood that kind of loneliness in a way she wished she didn’t.

“So you turned her over to him?” she asked when he didn’t continue. It was the logical thing to assume, but he would have felt torn in two. Having to choose between his loyalty to the man who was like a brother and the woman…the woman he’d hoped to build a future with.

She thought about the philosophy that one couldn’t move forward without letting go of the past and realized that Daniel was still mired in his past.

“How’d you guess?”

“It was logical. She betrayed you.”

He shook his head. “She was only doing her job. I should have…but that’s in the past.”

“What did Sekijima do with her?”

“Well, the government had been pushing hard to infiltrate the Dragon Lords at that time and he had to send a message to them. To let them know that he wasn’t going to give any ground.”

Daniel reached for a remote in the center console and hit a button. The gates to an underground parking garage parted and he turned neatly into the drive. He waited until the gate closed, making sure that no one had followed them before driving down a ramp and pulling into a vacant parking spot.

“So he killed her?”

“Yes. I tried to think of it as street justice. She knew the risks when she took the assignment. Yuki was Japanese-American, so she knew the kind of men she was dealing with.”

But Daniel would still have felt guilty. She had seen it in the way he cared for the people around him. He’d called both his housekeeper and Alonzo from the plane. He didn’t look at people as expendable.

That would have been a liability in the life he’d led. She wondered how he’d survived it.

“So you and Sekijima split after her death?”

“No. I understood what he did. But he went after her family, and that I couldn’t tolerate.”

She reached out to him. He did feel emotions, she thought. They were just so deeply buried. He evaded her touch and she felt like he had slapped her. He wasn’t touchy-feely—she knew that—but the rebuff still hurt.

Focus on the job, she thought. Focus. On. The. Job.

She opened her door and scanned the shadows before coming around to Daniel’s side. He exited the car and came quickly to her side. They walked together to the elevator station. There was a bare bulb hanging there, making them stand out in the dark, underground garage.

She didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She positioned her body behind Daniel’s to cover his back. Her microphone was voice-activated and she spoke quickly to her team. “We’re in the building. Is the elevator secure?”

“Affirmative,” Anna said. “Justine is on her way to meet you.”

“Thanks.”

“Are we going up now?” Daniel asked, sidestepping her. “Don’t put yourself between me and a bullet.”

“I’m your bodyguard,” she said, blocking him once again. “That’s what I’m here for.”

She repeated the words to herself because she was sick of forgetting and treating him like a guy…a guy that she wanted and thought could be more in her life.

Daniel heard the footsteps a split second before Charity pushed him against the wall, knocking him off balance. The bullet hit the wall where his head had been a second earlier. She dropped to a crouch and returned fire, but the shooter was impossible to see.

He palmed his Sig Sauer and moved into position. He started to reach for her to get her out of the way, but he realized he’d just get her killed. She needed to concentrate, and he needed to trust that she’d get the job done.

He heard her talking softly, probably alerting Justine of the situation in the garage.

Daniel tuned Charity out and focused on the sounds in the garage, sifting out the ones that were natural and belonged there and finding the ones that would give away the shooter.

He heard the minute scrape of shoe leather against concrete coming from the two spaces left of where he’d parked his car.

Charity touched his arm and nodded in the same direction. She motioned for him to cover her and moved off before he could stop her.

Was there only one shooter in the garage? From past experience he guessed that there would be only one—an assassin to hit him here while the arsonist hit him clear across the country. If it wasn’t Sekijima, then the man blackmailing him would have to be one of his brothers. That family knew him very well. And they knew the way he operated.

Having Charity was something they wouldn’t expect. The way she looked was the best kind of camouflage for the job she did. But he wasn’t taking a chance with her getting injured or killed in the line of duty.

She’d left him in the best position in the garage, protected on three sides by solid walls. One of them housed the elevator, so he’d have to keep an eye on that.

He edged closer to the opening, hearing no sounds. Charity had been wearing boots that looked sexy and lethal at the same time, boots that had a hard heel. He would have expected them to give her away, but her training must have including silent entry.

The elevator door opened behind him and he turned, gun leveled. Justine calmly stepped out and then ducked as the shooter fired two rounds at her head.

“Where’s Charity?”

“Out there. Isn’t she checking in with you?”

“No. She went silent. Come on.”

“Come on?”

“I’ve got to get you secured and then I’ll come back and help her. Not that Charity needs it.”

“We’re not leaving her,” he said.

“Yes, we are. She can draw out the shooter once we know that you are safe.”

Daniel hated this, but he had hired Liberty Investigations to protect him. That didn’t mean that he had to like it. “I can’t leave her out here alone. I know she’s highly trained but it goes against the grain. Let’s fan out and corner the shooter.”