Salvation (The Protectors, Book 2) (5 page)

Ronan

To keep myself from reaching for Seth again, I went around the island and retrieved the few remaining dishes from the table. Seth had turned his back to me by the time I got back to the sink and I was glad, because I needed both the physical and mental distance. I’d already made myself more vulnerable than I wanted to admit by revealing my aversion to being touched to Seth. It would have been easier to let him believe I didn’t want him but it was one lie I just couldn’t stomach.

“You said you were attacked in your office building’s garage – were you coming or going?” I asked.

“Going. I was on my lunch break.”

“Is the garage secure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are there security guards or parking attendants?” I clarified.

“Um, there’s an attendant but I guess anyone on foot can technically get into the garage.”

“You’ll want to talk to your boss about adding extra security. If the owner of the building isn’t willing to do it then your boss should foot the bill,” I said. “The other companies in the building might be willing to go in on the cost together.”

“Okay…” Seth responded non-committedly.

“Seth, if you want me to talk to someone for you-”

“No,” he said. “I mean, that’s not necessary. It’s my building. I’ll make the call tomorrow.”

I was caught off guard by his admission. “Your building?”

“Yeah, well, it’s the company’s technically. My dad bought it just before…just before he died. The business was growing so fast that he wanted to make sure he had enough room to keep expanding.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “You took over your dad’s shipping company?”

“I’m still learning but yeah, it’s mine. My father’s business partner is teaching me the ropes.”

Seth’s father had started a global shipping business several years before Trace was born and within a matter of years, it had become one of the top companies in the industry, netting millions in profit every year. At the time of their deaths, Trace and Seth’s parents had amassed a personal fortune of nearly a hundred million dollars. Seth and Trace had inherited the bulk of the estate, but Trace had never shown any interest in running the company and Seth had been so young that I hadn’t considered he might one day take it over. God knew he had enough money to do whatever he wanted with the rest of his life. Of course, then again, so did I since Trace had left his entire inheritance to me. At first, I’d been horrified by the prospect of profiting from Trace’s death, but when I’d realized I could use the money to get justice for Trace and so many others like him, I’d been grateful for it.

“I didn’t know that was something you were interested in,” I said to Seth.

He cast me a look that didn’t need words. I didn’t know because I hadn’t made an effort to find out. In the years that I’d been checking on Seth after Trace died, I’d been too lost in my own grief and hate to really focus on what was happening to Seth beyond making sure he had the basics covered. I hadn’t even realized the extent of his grandmother’s declining mental health until one of my last visits just before she died. Seth had only been sixteen at the time and I hadn’t had any idea what to do for a guardian for him after he called me to tell me she’d passed, but by the time I’d arrived for the funeral, he’d taken care of the situation by getting himself emancipated.

“I’m sorry Seth, I should have done a better job of knowing what was going on after Trace-”

“Anything else?” Seth cut in, refusing to look at me. Beyond the hurt in his voice was anger.

“Who was the guy this afternoon?” I asked. The question had nothing to do with trying to figure out if Seth was in danger but the curiosity of what the man meant to Seth was driving me crazy.

“Barry?” Seth asked. “A friend.”

“He said you were his patient.”

Seth turned around, his hands clenched into fists. “Are you done?” he bit out. “Because I am. I want you to leave.”

He walked past me but I grabbed his arm. I expected him to fight me but he didn’t. He just stood there, completely still except for the slight tremor in his body but I couldn’t tell if it was anger or something else.

“He wanted you,” I said, hating the jealousy that took over me.

Seth looked at me and for once, his expression was unreadable. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it one bit. Then he did something unexpected. Instead of pulling away from me, he stepped into me and his free hand came up to close over the fingers I had wrapped around his wrist. I automatically let go of him and stepped back until I hit the island behind me.

“At least someone does,” Seth whispered and then he left the kitchen.

* * *

Seth was gone by the time I got up the next morning, so I pulled up the tracking app on my cell phone. I’d placed a tracking device on his car the day before, so I wasn’t overly concerned about missing him leaving. The app showed that he was in downtown Seattle, presumably his office. Since it was barely seven o’clock, I figured he’d had to have gotten up pretty early to catch one of the first ferries from Whidbey Island to the mainland. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was his normal routine or if he hadn’t wanted to risk running into me this morning.

I hadn’t slept well after my encounter with Seth the night before and for the first time since my arrival, I’d started to wonder if I was doing more harm than good. I’d known Seth would be angry with me for the way I’d cut him out of my life after he’d kissed me three years ago, but I was starting to realize that I’d started the process of cutting him out of it much sooner than that. I’d gone through the motions of being there for him but I hadn’t really been what he’d needed.

After the death of their parents, I hadn’t expected Trace to return to the military and I’d been fully prepared to ask for a transfer to a military hospital in Washington state so I could be with him and Seth. But when he’d shown back up on the base in Afghanistan less than two months after he’d left, I’d been stunned. We’d had our fair share of squabbles over the thirteen months we’d been together, but Trace’s decision to choose the military over his own brother had caused a massive rift between us. And I hadn’t even known at that point the full extent of Seth’s trauma as a result of being used as a pawn to get information from his father.

From the moment I’d met Trace, I’d known that being in the military was in his blood. He’d thrived on every aspect of it, the comradery, the danger, the intense conditions. But it wasn’t until he left Seth in the care of his grandmother that I’d realized it was something more…it was a need he couldn’t give up…not wouldn’t,
couldn’t
. I’d argued over and over with him that Seth needed him more, but he’d assured me that their grandmother would look out for him and that Seth himself had told Trace it was okay for him to return to the front lines.

A surge of anger went through me at the realization that Trace hadn’t just left Seth when he was vulnerable; he’d left him when Seth would have needed his big brother the most. There was no way in hell Seth would have been able to recover on his own from the brutal attack and knowing now what I knew about his grandmother’s health, I had to wonder if he’d gotten any kind of help.

The realization hit me suddenly and I pulled out my phone and typed in
Barry Fields
into the search engine of the browser and hardened my jaw when I saw a picture of the young, smiling man next to a short bio saying he was a psychologist specializing in anxiety. I closed the browser and then hit a speed dial button.

“Hey boss.”

I didn’t bother telling the man on the other end not to call me that because he’d do it anyway.

“Mav, get me everything you can on a psychologist named Barry Fields,” I said.

“Is he a mark?” Mav asked in confusion as I heard him typing in the background.

“No,” I said but didn’t offer any further explanation. Mav had been one of the first guys I’d hired when I’d started my pet project, and while he did his best work with a gun or knife in his hand, I’d relegated him to an information gathering role since I’d had to get rid of Benny, the analyst who’d been working for me for nearly just as long, but had sold me and all my men out for money to pay off years’ worth of gambling debts. Benny had begged and pleaded with me to show him mercy, but I’d saved that for the young man whose life Benny had nearly taken when he’d accepted a contract to kill him and tried to use one of my own men to do it.

Luckily, Mace Calhoun had been smart enough to realize something was off with the assignment and hadn’t taken Jonas Davenport’s life, despite all the concrete evidence Benny had faked to prove the young artist had committed unspeakable crimes against several children. I’d taken care of Benny, as well as the men who’d put the contract out on Jonas, and then I’d spent weeks combing through all of Benny’s information to see if Jonas and Mace were his first victims or if he’d used my group for his own financial gain before. I’d been more than relieved to find out it was the former because I doubted I would have been able to live with the guilt of knowing an innocent life had been taken because I’d trusted the wrong man.

“I’m on it,” Mav said.

I was tempted to ask Mav to run Seth’s name too, but didn’t and not only because he would have figured out my connection to Seth and learned more about me, but because I didn’t want to find out everything I’d missed – no, ignored – from a computer; I wanted Seth to be the one to tell me. Because I needed more than just what was on paper.

“Thanks,” I said before hanging up on Mav. I grabbed my shoulder holster and dragged it on before tugging on my suit jacket. I gave Bullet, who was lying outside my bedroom door, a quick pat before I went downstairs and swallowed down a quick cup of coffee that I’d had to microwave since Seth hadn’t left the machine on to keep the coffee that remained in the pot warm.

I ended up stuck in morning rush hour traffic, so it was late by the time I made it to the city. I searched out Seth’s building and discovered that the parking garage where he’d been mugged was open to the public, which wouldn’t help in terms of improving the security. I found Seth’s car easily since it was in a reserved spot near the elevator and parked a few aisles over. It was only ten o’clock in the morning and since I didn’t know what time he took lunch, I knew I could have a potentially long wait and that was assuming he even left the office for lunch today. But an hour later, I saw him step off the elevator. He hesitated as he cleared the bank of elevators and looked all around him. I was oddly proud of him when I saw him straighten himself, despite the look of abject fear in his gaze. He walked quickly to his car and kept scanning his surroundings but he remained calm. I kept my distance as I followed him out of the garage and east out of the city, but it wasn’t until he began crossing the bridge over Lake Washington that I realized where he was going.

I didn’t need GPS after that but I had to keep my distance as the traffic grew lighter as he made his way to a quiet community on the eastern side of the island. Just like the Whidbey Island house, the house Seth pulled into sat on lush acreage right up against the water. I’d only been to the Nichols’s main residence a couple of times since the family had been vacationing at the Whidbey Island house the majority of the times I’d visited with Trace. Their vacation home was much larger and more remote, but that wasn’t to say the Mercer Island house wasn’t beautiful because it was; it just had a more sedate look to it and actually looked small and quaint compared to the mansions on either side of it. Which was why it seemed less likely that the men who’d burglarized the home had chosen it at random when there’d been much more secluded and well-off homes to choose from in the area.

I parked across the street from the house and watched Seth as he sat in his car in the roundabout driveway. I couldn’t actually see him up close but I could see that he hadn’t gotten out of the car. He sat there for a good twenty minutes before putting the car in gear and leaving the house again. I ducked down in my own car so he wouldn’t see me but didn’t follow him. Instead, I got out of the car and walked to a neighboring house across the street and a few doors down where I saw an older woman working on a garden bright with colorful flowers.

“Excuse me,” I said.

She looked up and smiled, her floppy hat covering her brow from the glare of the warm Spring sun.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“The house across the street,” I said pointing to the Nichols house. “I heard it was for sale,” I said, mustering a charming smile that I wasn’t feeling.

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think that boy will ever sell it,” she added.

“Boy?” I asked.

She shook her head and chuckled. “Well, I suppose he’s not a boy anymore. Seth’s all grown up now but I still remember him from when he used to mow my lawn and help me in my garden,” she said as she motioned to the flowers in front of her.

“So this Seth, the house belongs to him?”

She nodded. “Inherited it after his parents passed. Poor thing,” she added.

“Yeah, the realtor I was talking to mentioned there’d been a robbery and some people died,” I said quietly, trying to keep as much emotion from my voice as possible.

She shook her head. “So sad. It could have been any one of us,” she added and then looked around the neighborhood. She lowered her voice and said, “That boy and his mama weren’t even supposed to be there that night. Bonita – that was their housekeeper at the time – she told me the next day that Seth and his mama were supposed to visit his grandmother up north but she hadn’t been feeling well so they canceled their trip last minute.”