Bulletproof Princess (5 page)

Nothing about this situation had sat right with Mack since the urgent call at dinner. The Vegas Marshals would have handled it since it was their turf, and they never go into a situation without a plan or at least a little bit of foreknowledge. It was dangerous enough without not knowing who they should guard against. That was the problem with having a pencil-pusher as a chief, no practical understanding of the job and how it’s done. That was going to stop today, though.

Grambling had a collection of goons in blue Marshal jackets stationed around the house like they were keeping a federal prisoner and not a pop princess. There weren’t guys Mack knew or recognized by face, but their presence solidified his thinking that this threat was much greater than what he’d been led to believe.

One look at Ange and she nodded. “Cass, do you wanna go lie down and go back to sleep? Have a snack? A glass of water?” It was good to have a partner who knew and understood him, who shared in his desire to keep their witness away from any bloodshed, no matter how necessary.

The young woman nodded, and the bright recessed lights in the ceiling made the shadows under her eyes stand out starkly against her skin. “Yeah, a snack might be good.” They headed in the direction he presumed would be the kitchen, accompanied by one of Grambling’s troops, leaving Mack and Grambling more or less alone, not counting the one or two who stood watching dutifully out the back window.

“What’s with the Bulletheads?” Mack asked, dispensing with the niceties outright. One who had been dutifully stationed by the window looked over at him with the raised eyebrow, but he was in just bad enough of a mood to chance it. He hadn’t even had a chance to change clothes from dinner, having passed out in the recliner in the living room after checking the locks and alarm. He was feeling grungy, mean, and most of all—lied to. Maybe not quite that far, but definitely kept in the dark, and sins of omission were still sins in his mind.

Grambling sniffed and wandered into the kitchen, returning with two steaming mugs of coffee. He set one down on the wooden side table next to where Mack paced and took a sip of his own brew.

“We’ve run into a few snags, and I didn’t want those to compromise Miss Whitfield’s safety while we sort them out.”

Mack watched the man perch delicately on the edge of an armchair that, with the couch and end tables, formed a sort of blockade around the coffee table. “Sort it out, like it’s a mix up on a take-out order.”

His boss shrugged and sipped, as carefree as a sorority girl on vacation. “Just a small snafu, infinitesimal, really.”

The breezy way the younger man dismissed his sarcasm immediately had Mack’s back up. “How about you let me judge the severity. What did you do, Austin?”

The use of his first name had Grambling’s eyes narrowing. “We ran into an issue with putting Miss Whitfield into the program.” His pause and shifting in his seat told Mack the DOJ had the same misgivings about her entry to the program as he did, and Grambling got to hear all about it. In lurid and painful detail.

“So, I take it your plan to advance your career on her back flamed out spectacularly. That about right?” It was three in the morning, and Mack’s ability to be deferential had long been in bed asleep. “What does that mean for her exactly?”

“That is a specious accusation! I was concerned about her welfare and safety!”

The look of feigned indignance and shock made Mack want to vault the back of the couch and pound his superior’s face in, obviously a Career Limiting Move. Still, he thought about it. “Can you even spell ‘specious’?” he asked slowly, actively fighting to rein in his temper. “You still haven’t answered my question. Since she’s not allowed to be in the program, what do we do from here?”

Grambling set his mug on the table—on a ceramic coaster naturally—and turned to face him primly in his chair. “Well, we have to return her to Vegas. I’ve already cleared it though her people and—”

“I’m sorry?” Mack’s shock spoke before he’d fully collected his thoughts. “She was determined to be in so much danger in Vegas that you had her spirited away several hundred miles, and then, when your funding fell through, we’re just going to throw her back to the wolves?” He didn’t like the way his voice was rising as he spoke, but his temper was rapidly approaching critical mass. Grambling’s trained monkeys apparently heard him and moved a little further out of the way, just in case.

His boss stood and brushed the wrinkles from his pants in a fluid, practiced motion before raising his hands in a gesture Mack assumed to be placating. “She will have extra security twenty-four-seven, she will be accompanied at all times—”

“You made a promise,” Mack growled, stalling the chief’s clearly-prepared speech. “
You
made a promise and conscripted me
and my partner
into said promise. Now you’re just going to walk away because she’s no longer useful to you. That is un-fucking-acceptable!”

The other man took a step back at the vehemence in his tone, stumbling into the chair behind him and taking an unceremonious seat. His hands were still up. “Now, Mackenzie, I know—”

“You know nothing,” he spat, turning on his heel. Ange came out of the kitchen in a way that indicated she was ready to rumble if he was. “All that vacation time you’ve been on me to take? I’m gone, effective immediately. Ange is coming with me.”

“I…don’t understand.” The look on Grambling’s face would have been comical in any other situation, now it was just infuriating.

“What’s to understand?” He looked to Ange, who nodded in comprehension, and could see Cassie peeking over her shoulder from the kitchen. To her, he inclined his head toward the door through which they’d entered. “We’re leaving.”

Grambling was up with wild eyes and scrambling around the couch. “You…you can’t! I have to—”

When the younger man reached for him, Mack could feel all his muscles tightening for a fight. “It’s no longer your choice. You made a promise on my behalf without my permission. A promise I intend to keep, regardless of your feelings about it. Since she’s officially not in WITSEC, she’s free to do as she pleases, and she will be coming with me.” His slow grin dared his superior to disagree with him.

Ange was already hustling Cassie toward the door when one of the Bulletheads stepped in front of them. “I don’t want to go through you, but I will.” Her silky voice in combination with her slight step back into a defensive position was all the warning the man was going to get before she used his teeth to open a fresh can of WhoopAss. He’d seen bigger men try her and fail, usually ending in humiliated and bloodied heaps at the toes of her expensive shoes.

“I wouldn’t test her.” Mack sauntered over to her side and looked over his shoulder at Grambling, who merely growled into his coffee mug and dismissed them with a wave. The giant boulder in the Marshal jacket moved aside with a grunt, and out they walked into the night.

Ange slid behind the wheel as Mack and Cassie resumed their positions in the back seat. “So, where to?”

Mack looked from her to Cassie, who looked as strung out as a crackhead on a three day bender. “My place. I need to change clothes, pick up my truck, and make a couple phone calls.”

Tires squealing as they streaked off into the night, Ange turned on the radio. “Case de Jefferson, it is, then.”

Austin Grambling had not gotten this far in life without three things: brains, adaptability, and help. And it was those three things that were going to get him out of this situation now, if he could just slow down and think. With Cassie gone, and able to ID the killer, it posed a great deal of concern to his benefactor, and he was not a man who would be pleased with failure.

That was why he’d been chosen for this unpleasantness. Clint Buckholt’s death was supposed to be a quick affair, the result of unpaid and growing gambling debts, and Cassie’s protection—with her being under his control, and the subsequent rooting out of the killer, was supposed to be his fast-track ticket to an office in DC. Now he was stuck, in the desert, with no witness, and two of the finest law enforcement officers off on what was sure to be a hunt to find the killer to keep Cassie safe.

Mack Jefferson was the key. Austin could see the protective streak that had served him so well on the job now encompassed Cassie. Where he went, she was sure to be with him, and it would be just like she was still officially in his grasp. If he could keep track of Jefferson’s movements, contacts, then he could stay one step ahead of him and hopefully plant enough breadcrumbs to lead them to the appropriate outcome. The one where he doesn’t go to jail for conspiracy to commit murder, among many, many other things.

Austin had chosen him for this assignment for a couple reasons, his integrity being one. Knowing he would faithfully guard Cassie without question or complaint was a damn good thing when he was playing a game with so many moving pieces. The other reason…well, that was a moot point, now.

The problem was Jefferson was very much his own man. Coming to the Marshal Service after several years on the Phoenix PD, he’d arrived with exceptional recommendations. Still, whispers of discontent followed him, snippets of gossip about an officer’s death and a cover-up. That would be where he’d start, learning everything about his prey before he could mount a proper hunt.

“What do we do now?” Chambers, the goon at the front door, inquired. He was very lucky Gonsalvez was in a forgiving mood, or that encounter would have been very difficult to explain to the housekeepers.

“I need anything and everything you can find about Mackenzie Jefferson. All of it.” When his flunky only looked at him with ill-disguised bemusement, he slammed his empty mug on the table, breaking the ceramic handle. “Now, dammit!”

Cassie had never been so glad to come to a stop in her whole life. Ange’s driving was like the never-ending rollercoaster ride from hell. All she could do was hold onto the handle above the window and pray. She thought about reaching out and holding Mack’s hand again, but that seemed both childish and possibly more dangerous than the car ride with the dark look on his face that had yet to abate.

Listening to and later watching the potential brawl in the living room of the safe house had her holding her breath the whole time. She knew at some point tempers would be lost, fists thrown, and furniture demolished. Somehow she just didn’t think Chief Grambling would be the one to come out on top unless he managed to enlist the aid of his brute squad. If she’d needed convincing that Mack was dangerous, she had it now in spades.

His condo was cute, though. A two-story stucco, the overwhelming presence of which reminded her a great deal of her hometown, with a two car garage and a gravel front yard with a saguaro growing in the middle of it. Everything about it screamed ‘ordinary’ in the most appealing way. The garage door came up after he entered the code, and parked in the middle of the two car space was a massive black truck with streaks of dried mud on the tailgate.

His partner helped her collect her hastily gathered things from the back of her car and transfer them to the truck before everyone went inside. Ange went straight to the fridge and pulled out two beers while she took a seat at the breakfast bar in the middle of the kitchen. “Here,” she murmured as she pressed an open sweating bottle of beer into Cassie’s hands.

“Thanks.” It was a local IPA, and not bad, really, though Cassie generally preferred Bordeaux to Budweiser. Sipping the beer, she toured the surprisingly well-stocked kitchen and adjoining dining room. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but this was not like her old boyfriend’s apartment in college. That was all eclectic pieces and thrift store finds, this was all matching and coordinated. It was incongruously elegant, which was not how she saw Mack at all.

He wandered down the stairs then, conjured from her thoughts, shrugging into a faded blue button up with one hand while toting a hefty-looking duffle bag in the other. Though it was difficult to tell in the recessed light of the ceiling, it appeared for a second that his left arm was covered in tattoos, and he’d exchanged his shoes for well-worn cowboy boots. “So it looks like we’re all set.”

Ange set her half-empty bottle on the counter next to her and leaned back with her arms crossed. Damn, but she cut an imposing figure against the granite center island. “How’s this gonna play, Mackenzie?”

He dropped his bag at the entrance of the kitchen and dipped into the fridge for a beer of his own. “Well, I’m gonna take Cassie up to Jefferson Peak while we figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Up the mountain? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

He looked between them, taking a moment to stare a hole in the ceiling before he answered. “I figure we have at least a month before they get home and I have to explain anything. Conchita’s on board and expecting us.”

She looked like she wanted to protest more, but decided against it at the last minute. “Okay, you need me to come with?” She picked up her bottle and took a sip before dangling it from between her fingers next to her side.

He shook his head and killed his beer. “I need you to head back to Vegas and meet up with Eli. He’s politely and professionally inserted himself into the case. I need you two to hunt this guy down.” Meeting Cassie’s curious gaze over her barely touched beer, he amended, “Quickly.”

“I can do that,” his partner answered without hesitation. Cassie was jealous of her calm under pressure and her self-assuredness, two traits that had always managed to elude her, regardless of her fame. “Grambling?”

He finished his beer and opened a cabinet to toss his bottle into a recycling bin. “Out of the picture. You and I are off the radar as far as he’s concerned. I switched to the other phone, to keep it that way.”

Ange hummed and tossed her bottle in after his. “He’s got an agenda. He’ll know we’re not ‘on vacation’.” She pulled out her phone and tapped on the screen.

Mack sniffed and rolled his shoulders. “And I don’t care. While I’m gone, I’ll prep a formal complaint to be filed with his boss about the way he handled this. His agenda doesn’t concern us, but she,” he tilted his chin at Cassie, “is not going to be a casualty in his scramble to the top of the pile. I won’t allow it.”

Ange looked over her shoulder at Cassie and gave her an enigmatic grin. “Then we’re all set.” Grabbing her keys from the counter, she hugged her partner and started out the door.

“Wait!” Cassie hollered, feeling like she’d just discovered her voice. Both Marshals looked at her expectantly. “Don’t I get a say about any of this?”

“Nope,” they answered simultaneously as Ange skated out the door to the garage and Mack turned off all the lights in the house.