Relentless

For the first time since he took his seat, Gary stared across the desk at Colin Grange, the man who had served as his security manager for over two years. Fifty and suffering from the syndrome where his pants got lower and his stomach got thicker every year.

But his credentials, first in the military and then with a defense contractor, made him the perfect choice for this position. So long as he didn’t go soft or fail in his planning. Unfortunately, this time he had.

“How hard is it to grab a woman who lives alone and maybe weighs a hundred and thirty pounds?” Gary asked.

“There was a man there.”

“I am aware.” Gary had been receiving reports all night. He’d gone home and come back because the phone kept ringing. An attempt to remove the woman from her house, then a second attempt at some other residence in Annapolis.

Turned out Ms. Jocelyn Raine, reported loner without many friends or any family, had a savior. Finding that out after the fact ticked Gary off.

“Then you understand how we couldn’t—”

Gary blocked the excuse with a simple raise of his hand. “I was told she was single.”

Overprotective boyfriends tended to muck up everything. The body count was already two too high.

Gary had spent the past hour retracing every step and making sure nothing could tie the dead men littering the houses of Annapolis to him or Worldwide.

He’d been careful and neither man knew about Gary or the reason they were being paid, other than to grab the woman. Still, that left a loose end or two. And from Gary’s experience, someone always tugged on them.

“Explain.” That was all he said. Colin had been with him long enough that he should have been able to pick up on the fury behind the word.

“At the apartment...this guy came out of nowhere.”

Apparently Colin thought it was his job to sit in a car and watch. “And why didn’t you step in and subdue him? I assume he wasn’t so large that he was immune to a bullet.”

Colin touched the two pens lined up at the edge of Gary’s desk blotter and rolled them between his fingers. Even picked one up and twirled it around. “It was a losing battle.”

When he toyed with the more expensive of the set, Gary slapped his hand against the pen and flattened it on the desk again. “Maybe I’ve failed to impress upon you how important this job is.”

Colin jerked and withdrew his hand. “No, sir.”

“I have two men down and another in police custody. Independent contractors, yes, but you can see where that might be a concern for me.”

“I can get her.”

The clock was ticking and Colin picked this time to be incompetent. Gary figured he’d need to handle that problem, but he wanted this job done first.

They had three days. Exactly three.

“There was nothing in the apartment?” he asked even though he’d watched the video surveillance of the search.

“No.”

“Then first, take care of Jacobsen before he talks. Make it look like a suicide while in police custody or whatever will call the least attention to his death. Use our contacts for that. Clean up after. Delete files. You know the drill.” Not that Gary trusted this sort of thing to his staff. He’d erased what he could find. He doubted anything else existed, but he needed Colin to think it was a matter of life and death—his own—if anything was found.

“He won’t talk,” Colin said.

“Not once he’s dead.” And that better happen soon or Colin would be next. “Then we need to come up with a solution for grabbing Ms. Raine that isn’t a direct attack.”

“Sir?”

The lack of common sense infuriated Gary. He felt his temper rise, but he strained to wrestle it back again. “We’re trying not to raise suspicion, though I’m not sure how that’s possible now.”

“Why?”

The urge to kill him surged. “Because there are people involved with this job who are not going to be happy with the way you’ve bumbled your way through this so far.”

Colin nodded and lifted his hand as if he was going to take another run at the pens, but stopped. “Right.”

“And get me intel on the boyfriend.”

Gary had names for the town-house ownership but there was surprisingly little to find. Looked like a dummy corporation of some sort.

That meant there was more digging to do. He wanted everything from credit reports to the second cousins’ medical records on this guy. Every stone would be turned over, scrubbed for information and dumped.

Colin checked his phone then looked up again. “I don’t have a name for the boyfriend.”

And that fact intrigued Gary even more. If Ms. Homebody was seeing someone, people would be talking. Find the right nurse or neighbor, or even on-scene policeman, and this would all be resolved. Good thing Gary had an “in” there.