When she’d strolled closer, Dad had wrapped his meaty arms around her and they’d danced in the living room, stepping over his little brothers’ trucks and spinning around his sisters’ dolls.
Tony had never really understood what his dad had meant…until this moment. His pulse kicked up and his senses lasered in on the woman before him. With the upward lift of her jaw and the determined tilt to her head, Sylvie Bissette looked every inch a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
Under different circumstances, he’d like nothing more than to find out just how dangerous they could be together. But he had his secret mission to consider. No way could he get involved with her. And hell, she had enough risk in her life right now—namely, a stalker who’d apparently made the move from the cyber world to the real one. Whether she liked it or not, she needed a bodyguard to neutralize the threat.
She needed him to keep her safe. Just as much as he needed to find Keith’s killer.
As of this moment this was officially his case, and she was his responsibility—and he didn’t sleep with clients. Especially not ones he’d screwed over before he even knew them. If she found out the truth about his secret investigation, so would her fathers. And then it would be impossible to avenge Keith.
A man broke out of the crowd that was still milling around gawking. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Sylvie looked over at the other man and part of Tony growled its displeasure.
“I’m okay.” She slid her fingers with their short red nails from his. “Thanks to Tony.”
“Still, miss, you should stay here and wait for the ambulance—you both should. That was a close one.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “The nine-one-one operator said the police are on their way, too.”
The words had barely left the man’s mouth when a cruiser pulled to a stop in front of them, followed by an ambulance. The paramedics jumped down from the bus just as Anton and Henry burst through the throng, making a beeline for their daughter’s side.
Stepping back to give the paramedics space to do their thing, Tony scanned the crowd. Growing up in a family of cops and spending ten years on the job himself had taught him that just because the guy in the Mercedes was long gone, it didn’t mean Sylvie was in the clear. Someone had it in for her enough to attempt a hit-and-run in broad daylight, which told him three things.
One, the perp had lost patience.
Two, he—or she—may not have been the driver, but instead could be one of the rubberneckers crowding around them.
And three, the stalker knew Sylvie’s whereabouts well enough to anticipate she’d be at Coffee Grounds this morning.
Any one of those possibilities meant she needed 24/7 protection.
His phone was in his hand in the next heartbeat. “Cam, change of plans.”
“Fashion diva dissed you, eh? Can’t say I blame her. You should have sent me. I’d have charmed the pants off her. Literally.”
“Cut the shit.”
The subject of their conversation was showing her inhaler to the female paramedic while also soothing her parents with soft words he couldn’t hear over the crowd’s noise. Tony would have figured Anton for the one to go to pieces. But it was Henry whose skin had turned ashen.
“Our guy escalated big time,” Tony told Cam. “He tried to mow her down on a crowded street.”
The paramedic stuffed her equipment back in her black duffel and started to search the crowd. For Tony, no doubt. His ulcer woke up and pinched him hello. He’d need a limb hanging by a tendon before he’d cheerfully chat with another medical professional. Ever. Emergency surgery followed by months of agony-inducing physical thera
py tended to do that to a man.
“Well, shit. She okay?” The easygoing vibe faded fast on Cam’s end of the line.
Sylvie’s gaze found him in the crowd and he could only think one thing: dangerous. “She’s good. So how’s the Thompson case going?”
“Ryder’s got it handled. It’s the MacKenzie cluster that has me reaching for the Tums. That woman is hot enough to melt the sun, and mean enough to peel paint from the walls.”
Tony’s ulcer started doing the conga.
Maltese Security had finally started making a name for itself in the insular world of fashion. It was a niche market, but in a community where everyone knew everyone else, one good—or bad—word whispered in a friend’s ear could make or break his company, which already was hanging on by a thread. If either MacKenzie’s or Sylvie’s cases went south, he’d be filling out applications to be a mall cop.
“Please tell me you haven’t done anything stupid, Cam.”
“Nah, you’ve got nothing to worry about with me.”
That would be the day. “Good, because I’m going to be tied up on this case for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how to work it quite yet, but she’s going to need full-time surveillance. Get someone out here with a kit. I have a go-bag in my car so no worries about clothes.”