Vengeance (Master's Protege 1)

“Her place?”

“Yeah.”

“She know about those cameras?”

He scowls at me. “What do you think?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but I want in on this case, so I jump right in as if he really wants to know what I think. “I think you need to talk to her roommate and get everything she knows. Find out where she was last, who she was seeing, if she had plans. And I think you need to call the police.”

The last suggestion was a test.

“You were spot on until you got to the police.”

He passed the test. Still, I need to needle him a bit to get to more of the truth.

“You’re not going to report a missing person?” Le gasp. Oh, my, Mr. Master, are you above the law? Don’t trust our criminal justice system? ::Hand to brow::

“Lottie already did,” Joe says with a scowl. “Police say she’s not a missing person until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours and wouldn’t listen to her impassioned plea about why this was a special case.”

“Right.”

He scrubs a hand across his brow and shoots Cain a furtive glance before he looks back at me. “And if you’re working with us, you might as well know as soon as they find out who she is, they won’t touch it anyway.”

I exhale. They don’t know Candi, but something tells me I should tell them. “Just so you know, my best friend’s an officer.”

Again, no register of surprise. Either the man has an ironclad poker face like nothing I’ve ever seen before, or he already knows what I’m telling him. Great. Not a big fan of either of those options.

He’s back on his laptop, swiping at the board. “I’ll fill you in as quickly as I can. There will be time for more questions later, but we don’t fuck around with this.”

“Understood.”

“Skylar was my mother’s youngest child. My mother remarried when I enlisted in the army.”

If he enlisted right out of high school, that puts him probably somewhere in his mid-thirties. My instincts tell me that if he’d reached seventeen or eighteen years of military service, he’d be almost untouchable, and very unlikely dishonorably discharged.

He pushes up from the table and stalks over to a large, framed print on the wall. He moves it to the side magically, like it’s cast beneath a spell, before he punches in a code.

“Under normal circumstances, we’d have a training period, then initiation. No time for that, so you’ll work with me and I’ll fill you in as we go. We have an armory here at the house, but I keep some things personally locked up. My team knows I have this here and has the code. No one else knows and I’d like to keep it that way.” He pauses, glancing at the ragged, soaked tee that clings to my body like plastic wrap. I nod and will myself not to be embarrassed by my total lack of clothing. I need gear.

He spits out words like they’re bullets. I know he’s concerned about his sister but I can’t help wondering if I bring out his anger, too. “You’re part of the team, but you’ll have to earn your place. Going forward you’ll keep a change of clothes on site. Am I clear?”

That gets my hackles up, and I inwardly cringe. Earn my place, like a dog begging for his table scraps? We’ll see about that. I play nice, though. “Yes, of course.”

I watch as he slides a handgun into a concealed holster at his waist.

“Do you know how to use a gun?”

Shit. My silence is response enough. He curses under his breath.

“You may be a skilled fighter, Miss Price, but you’ll need something to keep you safe at long range. For now, you’ll stay with me and have a guard on you, but you’ll join me at the shooting range when they open tomorrow morning.”

“Which is…?”

“Five o’clock.”

“In the morning?”

He gives me a withering look and doesn’t reply.

Five in the morning?

“How did you get here?”

I have a sneaking suspicion he knows but wants everything out in the open.

“I got a ride.” I bite my tongue so I don’t snap back to remind him it’s his employee’s fault I don’t have a car.

“Right. I’ll make sure you get one back, and you’ll need a car.”

Wow, okay then. “You don’t have to give me a car as part of our arrangement—”

“I do. All my employees need reliable transportation. It’s for my own peace of mind more than anything.” His voice sharpens. “I won’t have people that work for me taking a fucking Uber to work.”

Ouch.

I need to remind him of something, though. “I’m not your employee, Mr. Master.”

He purses his lips and doesn’t reply, but I can feel the judgy judgment in the air. Grrr.

We’re walking at a good clip, and he shouts out commands as we go. He tells one guy to run surveillance at the college (I’m guessing the one his sister goes to?), another to load “Goldie” with ammo (Who is Goldie and why does she need ammo?), and a third to keep a watch on all video surveillance of Skylar. Joe takes off.