Once Upon a Friendship

He hadn’t even known Williams had two kids. He’d met Mary Ellen a time or two, at Christmas parties. Knew the couple had kids. Just not how many. Or their names or ages. Williams’s specialty had been buyout acquisitions—hostile takeovers, putting people out of work, stripping them of businesses that had been in their families for a generation or more—not a part of the business that interested Liam. He thought there should be another way.

It was an area he and Walter had never agreed upon. Which was one of the reasons he hadn’t mentioned the purchase of the Arapahoe to his father.

“I’m Elliott Tanner.” The bigger man held out a thick-fingered hand. “I’m licensed and bonded as a PI and also as a bodyguard, here to offer you my services.”

“Your services?” He didn’t need a thug. Nor could he afford a payroll at the moment.

“I’m in the business of knowing things that technically I don’t know. I hear them from sources who pay a lot of money to be nonexistent.”

“And you want to tell me that you’ve heard something that leads you to believe I have personal security needs?”

“Your father has Williams.”

“My father received threats.” Chin high, Liam studied the man, assessing not only what was being said but what wasn’t. And why.

“You had a visit from the FBI yesterday.”

“How do you know about that?”

Tanner shrugged.

He wasn’t going to hire him. Wasn’t even considering it, but because he wanted to find out as much as he could about Tanner—namely who had sent him and why—he asked, “Just what is it you think I need?”

“I think that until you find out what’s going on with your father’s company, there are a lot of people out there who you can’t trust. People doing things you can’t see.”

“But you see them?”

The man was right about one thing—there was a lot Liam couldn’t see. Good guys and bad guys and criminally bad guys. So who did Elliott Tanner work for? The good side or the bad? Was Williams a suspect? He was one of the five Walter had named.

But at the moment, Liam wasn’t even sure about his own father. A gambling man who’d been adamantly against playing games of chance—to the point that his son, in order to rebel against the old man to the fullest extent, had chosen to play the tables during college—was now playing for dangerously high stakes.

“I’m trained to be the eyes in the back of your head.” The man looked at him without blinking.

He was trained for something, that was for sure. Another thing was pretty clear to Liam—if this man was somehow involved in this mess with his father, he wanted to know where the guy was and what he was doing, as opposed to meeting up with him unexpectedly in a dark alley. He wanted a reason to keep tabs on him without seeming suspicious.

“Since you know so much, you must also know that I no longer have access to Connelly finances.”

Maybe that was it. This guy was an undercover fed—trying to find out if Liam would somehow find funds to hire him. Funds that Liam had already told them he didn’t have.

“I’m aware of that, yes.”

“Then you know I can’t possibly afford to pay for personal security services.” He had a sizable trust, but some of it was designated for Threefold. It was now his only retirement account since his father had taken away his stock options and written him out of his will. It was the money he had to live off for the foreseeable future. Until he could support himself with his writing. He was in the process of doing renovations to his new home—on a much more modest scale than he’d originally envisioned. And bodyguards di

dn’t come cheap.

“I’m here as a favor. I’m willing to take you on, just until this Connelly issue gets settled, for a discounted rate.”

He named a fee that Liam could easily afford, but which was ridiculously low for the services Tanner was proposing.

“Someone else is paying you.” Liam didn’t ask a question. He stated the obvious.

“I’m not denying that fact.”

“And you aren’t going to tell me who.”

“No, sir. And you can trust me to be as discreet in my dealings with you.”

“While you report back to whoever is paying you.” He hadn’t lived with his father his entire life without learning how the man’s world worked.