Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) Read online

  Chapter Two

  Tony Gerard was good. Really good. Alluring, focused eyes, wide shoulders, an almost military stance. A man who knew how to control a situation, as he’d proved by corralling the media.

  He inched closer to her, crowding her a tad too much. “You know what the Justice Team does, right?”

  “I…well…yes…”

  She’d scanned the files on that tablet, finding nothing seemingly important at first. Receipts from a bed and breakfast in Virginia, a restaurant in the same town, and some ethics mumbo jumbo about previous cases the Supreme Court had ruled on involving military personnel.

  After what she’d seen clients store on tablets, her sister’s inventory was downright boring. One client was keeping a detailed diary of his multiple affairs on a tablet when he died. The diary, discovered when the tablet was retrieved from a secret safe deposit box, devastated his wife and three kids.

  “I understand your apprehension,” Tony said, “but you asked for help with the password and we came through. Decoding these files requires a little more time, but Teeg can do it, and anything on here is safe with the Justice Team. This is the team that exposed a crooked Attorney General and solved the murder of the Supreme Court Chief Justice. Grey has the highest security clearance possible.”

  “Heather wasn’t just a senator. She’s—she was—my sister.”

  “Even more reason to figure out why the tablet was in her safe.”

  “But…”

  “What?”

  Something about this code and the fact her sister had stored the tablet in the safe made the red flags in Fallyn’s brain snap to attention. This was top-secret stuff, she’d bet her Louboutins on it.

  But was it a diary or classified documents?

  Her brain spun. She’d dealt with actors, playboys, spies, military leaders, political pundits, and even a few holy rollers over the years. Everybody had a secret. Everybody had something to hide.

  Could Heather, her squeaky-clean sister and possible future president of the United States, have been hiding something too?

  Never in a million years. Heather didn’t keep secrets and if she’d ever made a mistake in her entirely perfect life, she would have shown it to the whole world. Thrown herself on her own sword.

  So what’s with the coded files? The secrecy?

  Jordan hadn’t even known about the tablet.

  Could Heather have been a spy?

  The thought made Fallyn chuckle and rub her eyes. She needed less tea and more vodka. A good night’s sleep wouldn’t hurt either.

  A diary would give her insight into her sister’s world, though. Maybe even insight into why the two of them had never acted like twins.

  It could also be damning if it exposed some deep, dark secret, or classified information that should have never left the office.

  She pressed her lips together before huffing out a breath. “Okay, look. Like you said, the fact that it was in her safe leads me to wonder why. I know my sister. She’s the goody-two-shoes, always doing everything right. Everyone loved her.”

  “And?”

  “And what’s on that tablet could be bad. She’s not here to explain it and that’s not fair to her. My job right now is to protect her.”

  “You’re worried you’ll destroy her reputation by letting Teeg decode the information? You saw the kid. It’s not like he’s going to go on social media and broadcast it to the world.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just…” She paused to collect her thoughts. “I spend fourteen hours a day watching a morsel of information snowball and wreck people. I’m good at controlling a story, but I don’t know what I’m controlling here and, frankly, I’m emotionally invested. I’m grieving. It’s not a good combination. For all I know, this could be Heather’s journal. Something extremely personal. So, the answer is no. Teeg is not taking that tablet. I need him to decode it, with me and only me present, so I can figure out what I’m dealing with. If it’s bad, I’ll figure out how to handle it. My sister’s secrets will not be for public consumption.”

  There. If he didn’t understand that, they had bigger problems than this tablet.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting privacy. I’d want the same. But if you want Teeg, he’ll have to take the tablet.”

  Fallyn massaged her temples with shaky fingers. She needed someone to decode that file, ASAP. But with Dani, her tech girl in New York, and the potential shitstorm the tablet could unleash if it fell into the wrong hands, Fallyn’s options were limited.

  Work the case. Heather is no longer my sister. She’s now a client. I have to figure out what’s on this tablet and prepare for damage control.

  “I have someone on my staff who can help me. She’s in New York. I’ll just take the tablet to New York and have her do it.”

  “Not advisable. Teeg is here. He’s up to speed. Grey is up to speed.” He stepped closer, touched her arm, let his fingers rest there. “Trust us. Please. We won’t hurt you. Or your sister.”

  She glanced down and slowly drew away. “I’m sorry. I can’t risk it.

  * * *

  He’d touched her.

  A complete, overbearing, lughead of a stranger had touched her.

  Sliding over to the front window, she brushed aside the lace curtain and watched him hail a cab.

  Forget the fact fireworks had gone off when he’d rested his hand on her arm. Little pulses from her head to her toes went zinging through her body like she’d grabbed a live wire with her bare hands. Honest to God, she’d felt her ovaries damn near explode.

  Tony Gerard was a no-go. A nonstarter.

  Except from the moment he’d showed up on the front lawn, Fallyn had known she was in trouble. A woman would have to be dead not to feel that man’s magnetism.

  Captivated. That’s what she’d felt. Drawn to him like no one she’d ever encountered.

  At the curb, he hustled the tech geek into the backseat of the cab, said something to the driver, and shut the door.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone, Gerard watched the cab drive off. He was tall, the streetlight spotlighting his dark hair. Dark hair, Fallyn noticed, that curled right behind his ears. Her fingers itched to touch those curls.

  Sticking his hands in his coat pockets, he dipped his head and started walking. Was he parked nearby or did he live in walking distance of Heather’s place?

  Fallyn had to shift closer to the window and push the curtain farther aside to keep him in sight, his big strides eating up the sidewalk.

  Don’t look back. He’d catch her gawking if he did.

  He moved with an uncanny grace for such a big guy. No, not grace. That was too feminine of a word for him. Finesse? Still not right. Fallyn wracked her brain. Stealthiness. That was closer.

  At the corner of the block, he slowed, checking traffic before he crossed to the other side of the street. The lights of a dark SUV—an Explorer maybe—parked in a “no parking” zone flashed and then he paused at the driver’s door.

  Don’t look back…don’t look…

  His chin came up. He glanced over his shoulder and…

  Bam. Right. At. Her.

  Fallyn jumped back, letting the curtain fall. Dammit.

  She rubbed her arms, letting her fingers linger on the spot where he’d touched her. Scooting away from the window, she laughed at herself. Too much stress. Her brain and her emotions were on overload. That was the only explanation for the way he’d affected her. Pissing her off and making her horny all at the same time.

  Heather had always been the affectionate one, hugging everyone, touching him or her on the arm or patting his or her back. While Fallyn loved social situations like parties, she never felt comfortable with any contact beyond a handshake. She used body language and words to convey intimacy, never a hug. It wasn’t her style.

  There was no underlying reason why she didn’t like being touched. She’d never been hit or sexually molested—unless you counted the ass grabs Joey Polawski swiped whene
ver he passed her at the steam table at her father’s restaurant. She’d worked there all through high school, chained to that damn steam table while Heather glided around out front as hostess, laughing and hugging the regulars and making damn healthy tips. Fallyn had begged her father to let her waitress. She’d been good with people even back then and Joey had been asking for a fat lip. Plus, she needed the tips, just like her twin, for college.

  It wasn’t until one of the normal waitresses ran away with a biker that Fallyn got her chance. She didn’t ask her dad if she could work Tiffany’s tables that night. She simply lifted Tiffany’s apron from the back room, dug out the woman’s order pad, and went to work, flipping off Joey on her way out of the kitchen. By the end of the night, she’d amassed more tips than anyone, including the tip jar at the hostess station.

  Bonus, no one had grabbed her ass.

  Back in Heather’s small kitchen, she stared at the tablet on the table. If she hadn’t needed to be at the top of her game tomorrow, she would jump in her car and drive to New York and put Dani, her tech guru, to work.

  But dealing with the funeral preparations, her father, Heather’s myriad of friends and political counterparts, as well as the press, Fallyn needed to be rested and at her best come morning. After the funeral, she’d go home. Her home. Back to New York and Pasche & Associates. She had six open cases on her desk alone, never mind the dozens on Tabitha’s and Niles’s desks. Six clients who needed her there, personally managing their crises with her flare and expertise.

  Dani she could trust to work on the tablet. The whole P&A team handled secret and damning information all the time. David Teeg and Tony Gerard? Well, no matter what Caroline said, no matter how much she vouched for the Justice Team members, Fallyn didn’t trust anyone she hadn’t vetted, and even out of those she did vet, she trusted few.

  Upstairs, she drew a bath, and while the tub filled, she placed the tablet back in Heather’s closet safe. She hoped she didn’t end up blindsided tomorrow by whatever was in those coded files, but there was nothing more she could accomplish with it tonight.

  After stripping down, she sank into the big clawfoot tub and rested her head on the edge. The warm water and bubbles loosened her tight muscles and she sighed. On the wall, an antique clock ticked off the seconds. Tick-tick-tick.

  She didn’t try to shut down her brain—a useless exercise—but let it meander where it wanted. Heather, the funeral, their father, the tablet…her mental list of to-dos grew with every item. The day’s events spun in ever tightening circles until her brain landed on the last thing she wanted to think about.

  Tony Gerard.

  She preferred intellectuals. Men who engaged her brain and kept up with her quick wit and preponderance for logic. Not meatheads whose brain was smaller than their dick.

  Professors, scientists, doctors and lawyers were all in her collection of past relationships. They’d provided mental stimulation even if they had, at times, left her lukewarm and indifferent in bed.

  Intellectuals were safe bets. They were too wrapped up in their latest case, research, or discovery to want to dig into her psyche and figure out what made her tick. That was the way she liked it. She didn’t need a soul mate. In fact, she wasn’t sure she needed a man at all these days.

  The more prominent and famous she grew with her business, the less time she had for anything else. She barely had time for a lunch date with friends once a month, much less a romantic relationship.

  The men in her life wanted to cling to her or compete with her, those big brains accompanied by big egos. They tended to be too needy and demanding of her time and they were always trying to prove they were her equal. She often felt like she had an invisible dick between her legs they were constantly comparing theirs to.

  Maybe that’s why the bodyguard’s touch, his very maleness, had affected her so much. She hadn’t been touched by a lover in months. Hadn’t been sexually satisfied in forever. Just thinking about Gerard and his long, muscular legs, broad shoulders, deep voice…

  The way he’d dealt with those reporters.

  Hot.

  Hot.

  Hot.

  Fallyn shivered in the warm water. And those hands. Big, strong hands that could probably make her a very happy woman.

  Damn. She glanced down, and yep, poking up through the bubbles, her nipples stood at full attention. The tightening in her lower belly confirmed her ovaries were once again awake too.

  “Well, girls, this isn’t the time or the place, so settle yourselves back down,” she told them. “There is no Tony Gerard in your future.”

  Once she dried off and put on her nightgown, she slipped into Heather’s bed. Her twin had a boatload of vitamins and supplements in her medicine cabinet, but nothing other than melatonin to help Fallyn asleep.

  For half a second, Fallyn considered downing one of the natural supplements in order to help shut off her brain, but she knew better. She’d tried way harder stuff than that…sleeping pills, vodka, you name it. Nothing worked at calming her mind and they all left her hung over the next day. Not acceptable. She had to be on her game one hundred and ten percent all the time.

  She pulled the framed photograph off the nightstand and hugged it to her chest. “I miss you, sis,” she said as she closed her eyes.

  The muffled sounds of traffic drifted through the window, lulling her along with the soft lilac and vanilla scent drifting up from the sheets. The bathroom clock ticked along, counting the seconds, the minutes, of her new life without her sister. The picture frame weighed heavy on her chest.

  “You may not have always liked me much—and I know I never said it out loud—but I loved you fiercely,” she whispered to the shadows.

  Chapter Three

  Sometime later, Fallyn woke with a start, heart racing. She’d actually fallen asleep.

  A noise—a soft rustle—came from downstairs, so faint, she wasn’t sure she’d heard anything. Maybe she was confusing it with the traffic noise outside.

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to blink away the fog in her brain. The clock read 2 a.m. Maybe she’d been dreaming. Imagined the noise.

  She was about to get up and hit the bathroom to pee when she heard it again—the rustle. A stair tread groaned.

  Shit! Someone was in the house, coming up the stairs.

  Fallyn flew off the bed, a crash sounding at her feet. Pins and needles stabbed her big toe and ankle.

  The picture frame. She’d fallen asleep with it, then sent it crashing to the floor.

  At the noise, she froze, and so did whoever was coming up the stairs. Silence hung in the air, thick and suffocating. Not even a hint of traffic noise drifted up from the street.

  Tick-tick-tick. Fallyn’s heart thumped to the beat of the bathroom clock as she strained her ears toward the hall.

  Reaching out, she felt for the nightstand. Where was her cell phone? Her fingers found a book Heather had been reading, the TV remote, the lamp.

  No phone.

  She’d left it downstairs.

  Fight or flight?

  Flight meant going out the second story window and down the fire escape. Smart, but no way she was running away.

  Find a weapon.

  The lamp. The base was fat, making the lamp heavy to hold, but it was all she had. She ripped the cord from the wall socket.

  “Whoever you are, you better be prepared for a fight,” she yelled as she wound the cord around the lamp base so it didn’t trip her. Her voice sounded strong and sure even though she was shaking. “I’m armed and—”

  She was in mid-turn, mid-sentence, when something struck the back of her head. She pitched forward, stepping in the broken glass, her body slamming into the chest of drawers and then ricocheting backward.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a shadowy figure right before a fist connected with her ribs. Off balance, she still managed to throw the lamp and heard a grunt when it glanced off his body as she fell sideways.

  Her triumph was sh
ort-lived. In the next second, he slammed the side of her head into the nightstand. Pain exploded behind her right ear and a buzzing filled her ears.

  Then everything went black.

  When she woke, the room had lightened. She was lying on the floor, broken glass scattered around her. The room spun as she pushed upright and she had to cling to the edge of the nightstand until her vision cleared.

  Her tongue felt thick, her body moving in slow motion as she shifted her position. The drawers of the dresser had been yanked out, the contents sent flying. The closet door was open, her sister’s conservative suits lying helter-skelter on the floor.

  The safe.

  Forcing herself up onto the bed, she focused on breathing and not passing out. She rubbed the back of her neck and concentrated on that damn ticking clock just so she wouldn’t cry. After a minute, she felt strong enough to make her way to the closet.

  Someone had tried to move the safe, she could see from the indentions in the carpeting now showing. But the steel fire safe weighed over three hundred pounds. It would take the Hulk or a small army to move it.

  She was pretty sure there had only been one man.

  One man who’d been searching for something.

  Was he a common thief who’d heard about Heather’s death and expected the place to be empty? Or was he someone far more sinister? Someone who wanted what was in that safe?

  It took too long to get downstairs because she had to sit on her butt and scoot down each step one by one, but her stomach was rolling and her right eye refused to focus.

  She didn’t need 20/20 vision to see the mess the intruder had left in the living room. He’d been thorough after knocking her out, upending furniture, removing the pictures from the walls. The books on the bookcase—a collection of history and political biographies—lay scattered over the floor. Her sister’s meager DVD collection of romantic comedies had joined them.

  At least the front door was shut. Fallyn stumbled over and sent the deadbolt home. The locks still worked; the burglar hadn’t damaged them. He’d disabled the security system—or had he? She couldn’t remember if she’d set it before she’d gone to bed.