Passing His Guard (Against the Cage #2)
Read Passing His Guard (Against the Cage #2) Online
Authors: Melynda Price
ALSO BY MELYNDA PRICE
Against the Cage Series
Win by Submission
The Redemption Series
Until Darkness Comes
Shades of Darkness
Courting Darkness
Braving the Darkness
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Melynda Price
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503945517
ISBN-10: 1503945510
Cover design by Jason Blackburn
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
D
id anyone follow you?” Axel Andrews demanded as he shut the stall door and slid the wobbly lock into place.
“No. I got here early, just like you asked me to. Mind telling me what this is all about? Haven’t heard a word from you in ten years, and now you’re calling me out of the blue like we’re cloak and dagger.”
“You’re better off if you don’t know the details. Let’s just say I’ve fucked up—pissed off the wrong people and I’m trying like hell to make things right before it’s too late.”
“Seein’ as how you and I are in the john talking through a wall, I’d say that ship has already sailed for you, my friend. What kind of trouble are you in?”
“The mob kind.”
“Shit . . .” Henry hissed, exhaling a sigh. “What about Ryann? Does she know?”
“No. And I want to keep it that way if I can help it.”
“Fair enough. What do you need me to do?”
“Hang on to this.” Axel passed a credit-card-sized envelope underneath the divider to his friend. “If something happens to me, I need you to make sure Ryann gets it. I gotta go. I’m pretty sure I’m being followed. Wait here a few more minutes and then go out the back when you leave. Thanks for doing this, Henry. I owe ya one.”
“It’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me. You’ve helped me out of more than one tight spot back in the day.”
A nostalgic chuckle rumbled in Axel’s chest as he thought back to the antics of his childhood friend and all the trouble they used to get into running the streets of Brooklyn as kids. Life was simpler back then. It was a tragedy how quickly time seemed to slip away. He was thankful for the bond youth had forged between them, an unbreakable tie that Axel had no choice but to lean on right now. When this was over, once he put the mistakes of his past behind him, they’d have to sit down together at O’Lunney’s and have a beer.
“Take care of yourself.” Axel unlatched the flimsy lock, anxious to keep moving so as not to arouse suspicion. The hinges squeaked in protest as he opened the door.
“You too, man.”
Axel left the bar and headed down the street. Zipping his coat, he tucked his chin into the collar and shoved his hands into the pockets, burrowing in for the six-block walk back to his car. He’d made every attempt to lose his tail before entering the bar, but the man following him was a professional—too good to be seen—but Axel knew he was there . . .
His skin prickled with unease, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck rising. He quickened his steps, the brisk clip accelerating the tempo echoing off the vacant buildings as he ducked down an alley, taking a short-cut back to his car. A fresh coat of snow blanketed the streets—snow was still falling, but not fast enough to cover his tracks. The cold snap had come on fast and hard, driving many of the people who were usually out at this time of night to seek either the shelter of their homes or the transportation of cabs.
How had his life spun so out of control? The question haunted him almost as relentlessly as the man following him. He heard it before he saw it—the roar of the engine, followed by the blinding headlights as the car turned down the alley, its tires grappling for traction as they struggled to meet the demand of the accelerator.
Axel glanced behind him, adrenaline flooding his veins as he broke into a run for the intersection, dashing to the finish line in a life-or-death race. He had nowhere to go, trapped between two brick walls with space barely wide enough to fit the Escalade barreling down on him. It drew closer. He ran faster—legs feeling like they were stuck in quicksand as the vehicle sped toward him. The road ahead was near, yet so far. He swore he could feel the heat of the headlights burning the back of his neck. Oh, God! He wasn’t going to make it!
Bracing for impact, Axel squeezed his eyes closed, one thought resonating in his mind:
I’m so sorry, Ryann . . .
CHAPTER
1 
M
s. Andrews?”
“Yes?” Her grip tightened on the receiver at the sound of that all-too-familiar voice. Dread took up residence where her heart used to be, which now beat wildly in her throat.
“Twenty days, Ms. Andrews.”
“I’m well aware of how much time I have left,” she snapped. “And like I said before, you’ll get your damn money.”
“All seventy-five-thousand of it.”
Okay, so that could be a problem.
“I umm . . . might be a little short.”
“How short?”
“Ten thousand.”
He chuckled, that insidious rumble chilling the blood in her veins.
“You’re going to have to suck a lot of cock for ten grand, sweetheart.”
Revulsion sent a surge of bile burning up her throat. God, she hated this man—this faceless stranger who’d played a starring role in her nightmares for the past month. The calls began the day after her father died. Not a day had gone by since where she wasn’t reminded that time was running out.
“You’re being unreasonable. This isn’t even my debt.”
“Sins of the father, Ms. Andrews. It’s unfortunate the life insurance policy wasn’t large enough to cover what he owed. We’ve been more than patient with you.”
That was debatable. If by
patient
he meant hounding her day after day and threatening her with bodily harm if she didn’t pay, then yes, he’d been patient. The line went dead, and she willed her clamoring heart to calm so she could think. Ten thousand dollars . . . How in God’s name was she going to come up with that kind of cash? It might as well be a million. There was no way she could earn ten grand in two weeks—not even if she did take that prick up on his less than helpful suggestion, which she’d rather die than do.
Between her father’s life insurance and exhausting her credit with the bank, she was still short. The only thing she had left was her father’s business, Andrews Private Investigation Services, and now even that was slipping through her fingers. The house, the business—all of it, mortgaged to support her father’s secret gambling addiction.
She’d known her dad had a penchant for cards, but he’d hidden his vice well—too well. She had no idea he’d squandered it all, or that he owed seventy-five thousand dollars to Vincent Moralli, the don and patriarch of the infamous Moralli family. Not until a man approached her at her father’s funeral last month with a pile of debt notes, all bearing her father’s indisputable signature.
She knew the “accident” that claimed her father’s life was no accident. She’d spent the last month doing her own investigation because New York’s finest certainly weren’t trying very hard to find her father’s killer. Unfortunately, she’d found little evidence to support what she knew in her heart to be true—Vincent Moralli had murdered her father. His enforcer had all but admitted as much, but proving it was another matter entirely, and the police weren’t interested in hearing what they called her “conspiracy theories.” She’d spent the day at the precinct—again—trying to light a fire under someone’s ass and running into roadblock after roadblock.
After an exhausting eight hours of senseless paperwork and being shuffled from one detective to another, it was obvious that Moralli’s reach extended deep into the pockets of the police department. Her suspicions were confirmed when an officer pulled her aside as she was leaving today and told her, in no uncertain terms, that unless she wanted to end up like her father, she’d better let it go.
The thought of giving up, of letting her father’s killer get away, went against every fiber of her being. But after today, it was glaringly evident the police weren’t going to help her. At this point, she saw little alternative than to just pay the debt. Which brought her around full circle to one blatantly obvious problem—she didn’t have enough money. What was she going to do? Desperation clawed up her throat, suffocating her as she fought to stave off the rising panic.
“Excuse me.”
She startled at the unexpected voice, letting out a surprised yelp. Her head jerked up to meet the impatient scowl of a woman standing in the doorway of her office, flanked by two guys who looked like the Men in Black. Before she could greet the fifty-something brunette, who was dressed in a calf-length fur coat, the woman snapped, “I’m looking for the private detective Ryan Andrews. Is he here?”
Her dangling diamond earrings weighed heavily on her lobes, stretching the skin unnaturally taut. A matching necklace, easily worth the remainder of Ryann’s debt, encased the woman’s long, slender neck, drawing her gaze to the fine lines and wrinkles apparently no amount of money could erase.
“I’m Ryann,” she replied, silently cursing her father for giving her a boy’s name. How many times did mistakes like this happen?—every freaking day, it seemed. It might have been cute when she was younger, but now that she was an adult it wasn’t funny anymore. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, because the look on this woman’s face right now was pretty freaking hilarious.
Disdain oozed from the woman, as potent as her heavy floral perfume. “There must be some mistake.”
“I assure you, ma’am, there is no mistake. I am Ryann Andrews—two
n
’s,” she added with mirroring crispness.
The woman’s disapproving scowl deepened, putting all that Botox to the test.
“What can I do for you?” Ryann asked, forcing a smile and sweetening her tone as she grappled for patience. The office had been closed for well over an hour. Since she’d lost the day getting the runaround at the police station, she’d come in after hours to work on a few cases. She must have forgotten to lock the door behind her. Her assistant usually took care of those things, but since Andrews Private Investigation Services was nearly bankrupt, she’d unfortunately had no choice but to let Joyce go, and now she was running a solo operation here—and apparently not very well.
She held the woman’s bold stare as she waited for the aged diva to state her name and business. Something about her pricked Ryann’s memory, giving her the distinct feeling she should know who this woman was. She stepped into Ryann’s office like she owned the place—which immediately tap-danced on Ryann’s last nerve, considering how close she was to losing it.
“I was told Ryan Andrews specializes in missing-persons cases.”
The woman spoke her name as if she were still unwilling to accept that “Ryan” had a vagina and was sitting across from her right now.
“Oh, Ryann does,” she replied, referring to herself in the third person. “In fact, Ryann is very good at what
she
does. What can I do for you, Ms. . . . ?” Ryann waited for the woman to supply her name, but she declined to answer, and instead glanced back at one of her heavies, as if undecided whether or not to proceed.
Agent J nodded his approval.
“But she’s a woman,” she hissed under her breath.
“Then perhaps she’ll have better luck than the last man you hired,” Agent J replied, a mumbled response probably not meant for her to hear. “It’s unlikely he’ll put this one in the hospital.”
And
that
was definitely not for her ears.
Seriously? In the hospital? Oh, hell no!
“Very well.” The woman exhaled an exasperated sigh. She turned back toward Ryann, opened the snap of her Louis Vuitton clutch, and pulled out a photo. “I need you to find my son.” She set the photo on Ryann’s desk and, with one perfectly manicured nail, slid it toward her.
Ryann picked up the photo and studied the glossy pic. The man appeared to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. He was dressed in a dark blue suit that would probably pay her mortgage for a couple of months. His tawny hair was tamed by a product to ensure every strand remained perfectly in place. His square jaw drew her eyes to the grim set of his mouth which appeared to be the masculine version of the pursed one frowning at her right now.
The man was breathtakingly gorgeous. Even from the picture, Ryann could see he exuded discipline and rigidity. He gave off an air of tempered control—except for the eyes. They didn’t fit, and damn if that wasn’t the most stunning thing about him. Dark amber with flecks of brown and gold, the closest color she could compare it to would be a tigereye stone. How utterly fitting, because the eyes staring back at her held an undercurrent of untamed wildness and caged discontent.
Gauging the man’s size in reference to the park bench he stood beside, she’d put him at a few inches over six feet and just shy of two hundred pounds—not exactly the kind of missing-persons case she was expecting.
“If you don’t mind me saying”—Ryann handed back the photo—“in my experience, a grown man that looks like this isn’t
missing
. If you don’t know where he is, it’s because he doesn’t want to be found. There’s a difference.”
“Hardly,” the woman scoffed with enough disdain to officially put her on Ryann’s bitch list.
“How long has he been
missing
?”
“Officially? Fourteen months. But it was going on long before that, disappearing for days, missing important meetings—”
“It sounds like he’s on drugs,” Ryann interjected.
There, mystery solved. You can go now.
“It’s not drugs,” the woman snapped.
She seemed awfully sure of that, giving Ryann the distinct impression there was a hell of a lot more to this story than Ms. Stick-Up-Her-Ass was telling her. Considering what she’d overheard, Ryann wasn’t the first person hired to track down this woman’s son. And by the sounds of it, he didn’t want to be found.
“Listen, Ms. . . . ?” Again Ryann waited for the woman to supply her name.
“Madeline Kruze,” she said with all the haughtiness of a woman dressed to the nines and trailing two bodyguards behind her.
Shit.
Now the face connected with the name. This woman was Senator Kruze’s wife. And she was every bit the hell on wheels in person that she appeared to be on camera. So the senator’s son was missing, huh? Interesting . . . And she wanted to hire Ryann to find him. Well, this day just kept getting better and better.
“So, do you want the case or not?” she said impatiently.
No. She most certainly did not. But before Ryann could tell her as much, the woman continued: “I’ll pay double your fee.”
“Why me? There must be plenty of private investigators in Manhattan you could hire.”
“Not with your specialty. Your knack for finding missing persons is . . . impressive.” The woman spit out the compliment as if it had been distasteful on her tongue. “As I said, I’ll pay double your fee, plus a five-thousand-dollar bonus if you can deliver him to me within two weeks.”
Wait. What? “Deliver” him? She wasn’t the freaking UPS. Her job was locating missing persons, not returning them home like little lost pets—and Ryann had the distinct impression that was what this woman wanted. There were missing children, runaways, desperate parents that needed her help.
This
was definitely not one of those cases, and would no doubt turn out to be a big waste of time. She’d been around this block enough times to know there was a hell of a lot more going on here than that woman was telling her.
But she was offering Ryann a lot of money to retrieve her son—enough money for Ryann to pay off the remainder of her father’s debt and get herself out from under Moralli’s strong arm. Coming to grips with the fact that she was going to have to take this case, she sighed and leaned back in her chair. She pulled her cheaters off and dropped them on the desk. Closing her eyes, she pressed her fingers into her throbbing temples.
After a moment, she lifted her head and met the woman’s determined stare. “Two weeks, you said?” That was a short amount of time to track down someone who obviously didn’t want to be found and bring him home—short of kidnapping, that is. And this guy didn’t exactly look like the abductable type. “What’s the rush? He’s been gone more than a year. What is happening in two weeks?”
“His wedding.”
