Beck: Hollywood Hitman (15 page)

Natalie’s chest tightened. She’d been young and angry and stupid when she dated Rico. He’d been her first taste of freedom and adventure. She’d been wild and on the edge and she’d tried and done a lot of things with Rico that she wouldn’t ever do again.

“That’s how you want to play this?”

“I’m just saying, pictures of you? They go for a lot of dough. And naked movies? Even more.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Am I? Remember Cabo after you booked your first big movie role?”

She did remember Cabo. She remembered days of sex and blow and booze and more sex. God,
that
had been good sex, or what she thought was good sex at the time. But really, now that she knew what good sex was? Not so great.

“Footage for days,” Rico said. “Good footage.” His voiced dropped into a low whisper, and he leaned back and relaxed against the booth. “The kind of footage that can keep a man busy for a long while.”

A sick feeling coiled through Natalie’s gut. He jerked off to their sex tape? The idea made her ill. Plus, if Rico sold that footage, a million other dickwads would jerk off to the tape too.

“You told me that footage was destroyed.”

“Babe, that movie was way too good to destroy. Besides, I knew you’d want to see it too when I got out and we started dating again.”

“We aren’t going to date again.”

“I get it. Some other dude is riding you. Fine. I can handle that, but what I need is a hundred thousand in lean mean green or I’m gonna have to sell that footage to get my ass out of a bind. We clear?”

“We’re clear. If I give you this money, I want the footage. Got it? Every damn frame. And the other bullshit stops. The letters, the following me around, coming to my house. Extortion is ugly, Rico.”

“Babe, extortion? Such a mean word. And that other shit? Babe, not my M.O. Besides, Nat, this is capitalism. I have something of value to you that I’m willing to sell. You’re lucky I still have feelings for you. Could have sold the footage
before
I placed that bet on my sure thing and then would’ve never been in this shit storm.”

“Fuck you Rico.” Natalie grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “This’ll take me a couple days. I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t take too long, doll. You know, those boys I owe money to, they kind of want their dough. Either that or the footage.”

“I have no idea what I saw in you when I was seventeen.”

“You saw a guy who loved you and paid attention to you and cared about you, and babe, you’d never had a man do any of that before.”

An ache threaded through Natalie’s chest. Rico was right. She’d fallen for this now-obvious scumbag because her father hadn’t been much better. In fact, didn’t Daddy pull the same sort of shit with her, just minus the sex tape? He did, he absolutely did.

Rico didn’t stand, he didn’t move. Instead he picked up his phone and started to scroll, as though he’d found something much more interesting than extorting money from his ex-girlfriend.

She straightened her trucker hat and walked out of the diner into the night. Where were her keys? Fuck. Would she never learn? She didn’t have her keys. Natalie opened her purse and started to dig. At least she was standing close to the door and under a light. She grabbed them, turned, and walked toward Stacia’s white convertible Bug.

She stopped. Her heart careened through her chest. Heat burst up her neck and flooded her cheeks.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

There, beneath the light, leaning against the front bumper of Stacia’s convertible, was a gorgeous man who was shockingly pissed.

Chapter Nineteen

“Give me the keys.” Beck’s voice was deep and tight with restraint. She’d be less worried if he’d yelled.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, and threw her bag up higher on her shoulder. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Greystone all night?”

“The keys.”

He wasn’t rising to the bait. He wasn’t going to be thrown off, no matter how hard she might try to rattle him or get him to engage in an argument that didn’t involve her slipping her bodyguards and meeting a scumbag ex-boyfriend for a cup of old coffee.

She tossed the keys, and with quick reflexes he reached out and snatched them from the air. He walked to the passenger side and opened her door.

“Are you kidding?” Rico called from behind them. “Is that the hoorah Marine goody boy you threw me over for?”

Rico walked toward a dilapidated Chevy at the far end of the parking lot. Beck’s body tensed. And his mouth . . . God was that a snarl? Oh shit . . . he . . . Beck didn’t know about Rico taking the rap, that Rico hadn’t really hit her.

“Is that—”

Natalie reached her hand to Beck’s forearm. “Please. Don’t. I’ll explain in the car.”

His gaze flicked from her to Rico and back to her. The rage in his eyes pummeled her, and the ability to kill flashed in Beck’s eyes.

Her heart jumped.

“Damn, got your boy all riled up, didn’t I?” Rico flipped his keys over his finger and got into his beater.

She got in the car and Beck shut the door. In the rearview mirror she watched Beck pause at the back of Stacia’s car. Was he going to jet across the parking lot and kill her ex-boyfriend?

The driver side door opened and Beck got into the car. Put the keys in the ignition and without a word started to drive.

***

Rage wasn’t Beck’s friend. Rage could throw off his instincts and blind him, but intense, focused anger could be helpful. The adrenaline hit, focused on an intense and myopic goal, was like pressure, creating a hard-edged diamond.

Where did jealousy fit? Jealousy was the wild-eyed stepsister to focus. And Beck didn’t have the luxury of losing his focus when there was a sociopath stalking Natalie. Fuck. He was jealous.

Not a word in the car. He didn’t move his mouth, didn’t utter a word, didn’t trust himself to make any comment. The nighttime lights flew by the windows as he drove.

Like a knife to flesh, fury slid through his body. Why would Natalie jeopardize her safety by ditching her security? She’d put herself at risk to meet with a guy who’d smashed her face and gone to jail.

He glanced toward the passenger side and Natalie’s gaze locked with his. Worry. Pain. Was that fear? All directed at him. Was she so fucked up that she thought he’d take out his anger, his jealousy, on her?

What the hell?

She’d never been with a good man. He knew her story. Jerry Warner was a tick sucking off his daughter’s success and the Rico dude was bad news too.

“He didn’t hit me.”

Beck’s jaw flinched and his nostrils flared. Discussing Natalie’s former lover wasn’t on his bucket list.

“The photos are real and I did get hit that night, but . . .” Natalie shook her head. “We were somewhere we shouldn’t have been. A party.” She took a deep breath. “This guy . . . this really bad dude, his girlfriend got jealous and she hit me. Rico took the rap.”

“I’m guessing one of Rico’s buddy’s girls?”

Natalie nodded. “Friends from way back. They said either Rico took the rap or they’d kill me, because this guy’s girlfriend wasn’t serving time.”

“He shouldn’t have taken you somewhere he couldn’t protect you,” Beck gritted out.

“We were young and I was”—a long, weary sigh—“I wasn’t particularly smart back then.”

She wasn’t very smart tonight either, but Beck bit back his words. He didn’t try to tell her that he understood her mistake; he was way too pissed off to be understanding.

“I didn’t want you with me tonight.” Her voice was low nearly a whisper.

Heat edged around his heart.

“And it’s not because I still care for Rico.” Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed her turn toward him in the passenger seat. “It’s because I care for you.”

“I can handle it.”

“I
know
you can handle it,” she said, her voice sad. “But I can’t.” She shook her head. “Now that I’m with you, it’s hard for me to understand how I dated someone like him. I’m almost . . .” She took a deep breath, as though building up the courage to say the words. “It’s . . . I’m embarrassed that I dated him. I’m ashamed of the girl I was, the people I thought I needed. How I behaved, the things I did.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I just . . . sometimes I hardly recognize that girl, you know? And I really didn’t want you to see in real life one of the biggest mistakes
that girl
made.”

Beck pulled to a stop in front of Natalie’s house. Worry filled her eyes.

“I can understand the type of mistakes you make when you’re young that years later don’t seem to fit the person you’ve become. We all have those.” He pulled the keys from the ignition and turned to Natalie. “But what I can’t understand is not trusting my feelings for you. Thinking that the mistakes in your past would cause me to judge you and love you less than I do in the present.”

“Beck, I just—”

The front door opened and light fell from the house. Remi stood in the doorway.

“Beck—”

“We need to go inside.” Beck got out of the car and opened Natalie’s car door. Relationships weren’t his thing, and tonight was the perfect example of why. He was compromised. He was vulnerable. And he was out of control. He followed Natalie up the front steps toward the Greystone security team that waited for them, unsure what either of them would find inside Natalie’s home.

***

“What a welcome committee.” Natalie tossed her purse onto a couch. A hard energy rolled from her. Gone was the vulnerability in the car, replaced by a cold, calculated nonchalance. Back to her old trick of throwing people off with her own anger. “Waiting for me?”

Remi, Jax, and Hudson stood in the living room. All three men tense and all business.

The desire to bust Jax in the nose throbbed through Beck. That guy really tripped his trigger in a bad sort of way.

“We need to talk.” Remi’s stance was grim-faced badass. He nodded toward Jax and Hudson, and they disappeared down the hall and deeper into the house. Beck wasn’t leaving unless asked.

Natalie crossed her arms over her chest. Hard jaw, nonchalant eyes, a cocky tilt to her head. “So talk. What do you need to say? I didn’t realize that
security
meant I was under house arrest.”

“We can’t protect you unless you’re honest with us, and slipping your security isn’t honest. Look, if you want to remain secure and unharmed, you can’t think of us as the adversary—you have to think of us as the good guys. The guys who’re here to keep you safe. You’re treating this risk as though it doesn’t exist.”

“That’s because I’m not sure the risk
does
exist.” Natalie walked toward the bar on the far side of the living room. “Tonight I met with the guy that’s been doing all this crazy stuff and now I know why.”

“Really?” Remi squinted. “Your theory is that Rico’s your stalker? Following you around, sending notes, breaking into the house? Maybe even tried to run you down in the parking garage?”

With each word, the color drained from Natalie’s face, but she kept that cocksure look. She nodded.

“I see.” Remi crossed his arms and his gaze rolled toward the ceiling. “I wish you would’ve let me in on your theory.”

“Why? So I could do your job for you?” She poured whiskey into a glass and lifted it to her lips.

“No, so I could tell you that your theory is
wrong
.”

“Wrong?”

“We’ve been tailing Rico since his release.”

“But why would you—”

“You’re a big investment for Worldwide Studios. And while
you
refused security, the studio wanted to maintain surveillance on known threats.”

“Known threats?” Natalie whispered.

“We don’t believe that Rico is the person or person
s
stalking you.”

“Persons?” The whiskey shook in the glass. “As in more than one?”

Remi nodded.

Natalie slowly set the drink onto the bar. The cocksure grin dropped from her face and her gaze flashed to Beck.

“You’ve been targeted by a cult.” Remi walked toward her and pulled a picture out of his suit coat. He dropped the photo onto the mahogany bar. “Palook Murad is their leader. Wanted in the US, Argentina, the EU, Greece and parts of Asia for kidnapping, torture, and homicide.”

Natalie’s bottom lip quivered. Beck’s gaze flashed over the photo and pain pounded in his skull. Familiar? Bald head. Sharp nose. Eyes that seemed to grab you with their crazed intensity. How was Palook Murad familiar to him? He hadn’t met this guy, hadn’t worked on a case involving Palook or the cult . . . had he?

“We believe Palook’s in Thailand, but he has a host of followers here, in L.A. That’s who’s stalking you.”

“But . . . why? What? How come—”

“Their calling involves the capture and torture of women who have offended Palook, who they believe is their god.”

“Offended? How could I have—”

“Beautiful. Famous. Outspoken. Successful. Unmarried. These seem to be the key offending traits. According to the cult’s teachings, you’ve turned your back on the necessary subservience of women in a public fashion and because of that you need to be punished.”

Natalie shivered. “Because I’m a woman?” She ran her hand over her arms. Beck fought the urge to walk over and wrap her in his arms.

“Because you’re a woman, on your own, and thinking for yourself. We’re still working on intel for the cult, but this guy?” Remi dropped his pointer finger onto the center of Palook’s face. “Is a sociopath preying on the mental weakness of his acolytes.” His gaze flashed up. “Not a calling, but a sadist who wants nothing more than to fulfill his own personal pleasure by torturing women.”

“How . . .” Natalie’s voice quivered. Fear flashed in her eyes. “I had no idea.”

“Now you do.” Remi locked his gaze onto Natalie. “You have to work with us. That’s the only way we can protect you from this threat and any others.”

Natalie nodded. Her eyes remained on Palook’s photo that lay in front of her.

“He prefers to abduct women either before or during big public events. That’s been his M.O. to date. With
Shemax
tracking so high before opening and the premiere in three days, we think you’re his next target.”