Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) Read online

  A government, off-the-books unit that operated on good faith? More like they didn’t want anyone tracing them or their clientele. “Tell Caroline and Mr. Greystone thank you. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, including the coffee service.”

  She was also impressed he’d done his homework on her business.

  “Caroline sends her regrets that she couldn’t make it to see you yet.” He hooked a right. “Says she’ll catch up with you as soon as she’s back in town.”

  “No problem. Where are we headed?”

  “Thought I’d get you settled at a hotel first. Grey suggested one.” He looked over, shot her a grin. “They have excellent breakfast.”

  That grin made her think of a different kind of breakfast she wouldn’t mind having. But he obviously had other commitments. Family ones. “Once you drop me at the hotel, you’re free to go. I won’t hold you up all weekend. You should be able to make your mother’s party without issue. You can call Amber back and let her know.”

  They rolled down the road, fighting morning rush hour. Tony’s driving skills were as impressive as everything else. “She’s been cancer-free for three years, my mother. Every birthday is a milestone.”

  “Definitely. You should attend. You’re lucky to have a mother. I’ll be out of your hair, so there won’t be an issue.”

  “Grey wants me to stay with you until we know what’s on that tablet and that you’re not in danger from it.”

  Until we decide?

  Fallyn chose her words carefully. “Whatever is on the tablet, I’ll be okay. I don’t need a bodyguard.” Need and want were two different things, of course. She might not need a bodyguard, but having one in her bed hit all of her I want buttons. “I’ve got your number. If I have trouble, I’ll call you.”

  Tony didn’t respond, continuing to drive in silence. He made a few more turns and they ended up in front of a 5-star hotel. “Teeg made reservations. You should probably avoid the restaurant and order room service, just to be on the safe side.”

  Efficient. She liked that. “I’m grateful for everything,” she said, unlocking her seatbelt and grabbing her briefcase where the tablet nestled. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t drop her off at the front where the bellman waited. No, he drove around to the back and parked.

  “Did you see anyone out on the lawn yesterday that looked even remotely suspicious?” he asked as he undid his seatbelt and climbed out.

  What was he doing? He came around and opened her door. “Why? You think my intruder was casing the place yesterday in all the commotion?”

  He helped her out of the car and motioned her toward a back door. “Just a thought.”

  He took a keycard from his pocket and slid it through the security reader, ushering her inside after the door unlocked.

  “Wait,” she said, stopping him. “You have a key to the hotel?”

  “Teeg dropped it off earlier while the cops were talking to you.”

  More efficiency. “And where do you presume you’re going?”

  “Upstairs with you.”

  “That’s not necessary. I told you, I’m fine. You can leave.”

  “Afraid I can’t. My orders are to stick with you until further notice.”

  Hardship there, but she didn’t want him or anyone else to feel obligated. He had other people depending on him. “Well, if I’m your client, I say when the job is done. Your job is done, Mr. Gerard.”

  He smiled a patient smile like she was a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Like I said, it’s Tony, and you, Ms. Pasche, have a bodyguard whether you want one or not.”

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened to the concierge floor. In this case, a good upgrade from a regular room because guests needed a coded key to get off on this floor. Fallyn’s briefcase in hand, Tony held his arm out, keeping her on the elevator until he checked the hallway.

  Maybe the added security was overkill, but after the break-in at Heather’s, why take a chance? If the chief’s death had taught him anything it was that random situations weren’t always random.

  Now, in every event, he saw potential problems. Not necessarily a great way to live, but who the fuck cared about that? He needed to focus on a dead senator and keeping her sister safe until they determined what the intruder had been after.

  Still on the elevator, Fallyn sighed. “Tony, it’s a locked floor. Relax.”

  Never. When he relaxed, when he got distracted, people died. He’d learned that at twelve when he’d been outside shooting hoops while his father dropped dead of a heart attack in their kitchen. If Tony had been inside…

  “No,” he said. “Thanks for the advice, but I’d rather make sure you stayed in one piece. Kinda my job.”

  “Blah, blah, macho man.”

  He pointed left. “Your room is this way.”

  From his suit pocket, Grey’s voice blared. Damned ringtone. Teeg, thinking he was funny, had randomly recorded Grey’s conversations and then assigned team members clips of those conversations as ringtones. Tony’s ringtone? Dumbass, drop whatever the fuck you’re doing and call me back.

  In Tony’s mind, that should have been smartass Justice Team member Mitch Monroe’s ringtone.

  “Crap,” he said, digging the phone out. “Hey, boss.”

  Fallyn’s mouth hung open, her face stretched wide and clearly entertained. Not exactly the ringtone he wanted going off in public.

  “Where are you?” Grey asked.

  “Just got to the hotel. Heading to her room. What’s up?”

  “I’m here. At the hotel. I need access to her floor. We gave you the keys.”

  Ho-kay. If Grey hauled his ass over here, he had news.

  Or an issue.

  “Problem?”

  “Heather Pasche’s autopsy report.”

  Grey always sounded serious, oftentimes irritated. Tony was learning the subtle differences in those tones. This one said there something bad in that autopsy report. Shit. “Let me get Fallyn squared away and I’ll come down. Two minutes.”

  Fallyn stopped in front of suite 845, pointed to the number posted on the wall. “Home, sweet, home. What was that about?”

  “It’s Grey. He’s downstairs.”

  “I gathered that. Why?”

  Tony popped the key into the door and pushed through, letting Fallyn step in behind him. The door swung closed and he set her bag down, again holding his arm out to block her. “Stay by the door a second. Let me clear the place.”

  She rolled her eyes, but stayed put. The nice thing about hotel suites was the time it took to clear them. Inside of a minute, he checked the closet and bathroom. Shower curtain. Check. Miniscule linen closet. Check. But hell, it’d be some kind of miracle if anyone could fit inside that bastard. Bathroom cleared, he strode to the window, shoved the curtains back. No locks. Windows inoperable.

  Satisfied there were no breach points, he turned back. “You’re good.”

  “Thank you. You didn’t answer my question about Grey.”

  “Caught that, did you?”

  “I did indeed. Now spill.”

  He met her gaze, held it for a second. He could say he didn’t know, throw his boss under the bus and get himself out of a potentially awkward conversation. But, nah. When had he ever run from conflict?

  Twisted bastard that he was, he got off on it. “He needs to talk to you. Your sister’s autopsy report came back.”

  “Mr. Greystone has my sister’s autopsy report? Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t know. All he said was he had it and wants to talk to you.”

  “But he came here rather than calling.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Alright then. I guess you’d better get down there so we can see what the problem is.”

  She bent to pick up her bag and he strode toward her. “I got it.”

  “Tony, I can lift a Rollaboard suitcase.”

  “I know you can. Doesn’t mean you should.”

  “And who sa
id chivalry was dead?”

  “Not my uncle. He’d whip my butt if he saw me letting you pick anything up.”

  And, dammit, the second it left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake. If he’d learned anything in the last day about Fallyn and her ability to analyze a situation, she’d ask him about it, about his uncle, which would lead to his father not being around and they didn’t have time. Not with Grey waiting on him.

  “Your uncle?”

  Bingo. If only he could predict the stock market that well.

  He headed toward the door. “My dad died when I was twelve. My uncle took over the how-to-be-a-man lessons. Stay here. Throw the safety when I leave.”

  Tony found Grey standing at the entrance to the private elevator bank, as usual messing with his phone. He wore his typical federal agent uniform of a dark suit and white shirt, but his tie? That baby had some flair to it. According to Brice Brennan, another member of the Justice Team, Grey’s fiancé had been systematically upgrading his ties.

  Without his knowledge.

  “Hey,” Tony said. “Nice tie.”

  Grey grunted. “Swear to God, she’s gonna kill me. Between this wedding crap and throwing out my ties, it’s a war every night.” He held up a manila envelope, waited for a couple to pass and leaned in. “Autopsy report. After the break-in at the senator’s I got curious. Media reported she had a heart attack, but figured I’d check if there was anything suspicious.”

  “And?”

  “Heart failure, for sure, but she was on medications to prevent that. However, she had prescription drugs in her system that don’t mix well. A new drug called Perisoladol was one of them.”

  Tony rolled his bottom lip out. “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. The ME gave me the basics about the drug, but it looks suspicious. Figured I’d ask Fallyn about it.”

  Tony gestured to the elevator. “Then let’s roll.”

  * * *

  Grey pulled the autopsy report out of the envelope, slid it across the coffee table and spun it so Fallyn could read it. In an effort to not crowd her, to give her space while she read a report containing the details of her sister’s death, Tony watched from his spot near the windowsill. Considering Fallyn and Grey had just met, they’d gotten right to the extremely personal business of Heather’s autopsy report.

  “I’ve worked with the ME on several cases,” Grey said. “Told her you were my client and she released a copy of the autopsy to me. I hope you don’t take offense at me overstepping boundaries, but I felt it was important.”

  For whatever reason, Fallyn looked up at Tony, still leaning on the windowsill, hands resting at his sides. He held her gaze a second, felt the energy in the room shift. He just wasn’t sure what it had shifted to. The woman was a total puzzle. What did she need? Support? Reassurances? Privacy?

  Hell if he knew. She just sat there, looking at him, her facial expression blank. Zippo.

  A long few seconds ticked by and nobody moved. Having seen and sensed enough, Tony boosted off the windowsill, took three steps closer and held out his hands. “What do you need right now? You want us to go? Give you a minute?”

  She shook her head and pointed to the open spot next to her. “Sit. Please. I need to read this and I’m guessing Grey is about to tell me things that may or may not surprise me. Since I’m not sure, I’d like another neutral person to read this with me. Will you do that?”

  He nodded and sat down beside her.

  She glanced back at Grey. “Give me the summary version.”

  “She had a heart attack.”

  Fallyn’s shoulders dropped half an inch. Relief maybe. Hard to tell with her total freaking lack of facial expression.

  “Okay,” she said. “We knew that. Why are you here showing this to me as if there’s more?”

  “Were you aware she had a heart condition?”

  “A heart condition?”

  Tony met Grey’s eyes—tread carefully, my friend—and his boss scratched the side of his face.

  “It’s in the report, but it’s called Long QT Syndrome. It’s a rare heart disorder that causes arrhythmias. Usually brought on by exercise or stress. Your sister was on medications for it, so she must have known she had it.”

  “Oh my God, she never told me that.” She dipped her head, scanned the report. “And this QT thing caused a heart attack?”

  “I’m not sure. I have a call into the ME because there were high amounts of Perisoladol found in her system. I was hoping you might know if she was taking it for her heart condition or not?”

  Fallyn shook her head. “I had no idea my sister even had a heart problem.”

  Chapter Five

  Fallyn had always excelled at processing bad news and finding a way to spin it into something positive.

  Always. Until this moment.

  Heather had suffered from a rare heart condition? Since when?

  Why hadn’t Heather told her? How did she not know on some deep, sisterly level that her twin had health problems?

  Fallyn’s own heart bounced around in her chest like a Mexican jumping bean. She put her hand over it for a moment, wondering if that’s what Heather’s had felt like before it stopped beating forever.

  The words on the autopsy report blurred. Grey pointed at a section with various drugs listed in it. “With her condition, Heather should never have taken Perisoladol. And definitely not with the other drugs she was on. The ME has referred the case to Metro, so be expecting a call from a detective. The Capitol Police will get involved, too, since she was a Congresswoman. They’ll be looking into it to see if the prescribing doctor was negligent or perhaps the pharmacy that filled the prescription got something mixed up. However, the ME pulled her medical records and there are no notations from her heart physician about giving her a prescription for this. Do you know if she had more than one physician?”

  “I think she was still seeing our family doctor, Allan Thymes, but that’s all I knew about. I had no idea she was seeing a specialist. Jordan, her assistant, might be able to tell us.”

  “You should talk to her, find out if she can shed some light on this because Heather either went to a second doctor and got the prescription, or she got it by some other, less traceable, means. Even for someone who should have been taking that drug, the amount found in her system was way more than normally prescribed.”

  “Less traceable means.” Fallyn sat back. “You mean like a drug dealer?”

  “Perisoladol is prescribed for some cardiac patients and has a side effect that stimulates food to move through the digestive tract, thus making things easier on the heart. That side effect is attractive to dieters. They’ve hailed it as a diet pill and there’s a growing black market for the drug.”

  “My sister didn’t need to diet.” But even as she said the words, she remembered how depressed Heather was about the weight she’d gained while on the campaign trail. It was hard to eat right and exercise when you were making speeches and shaking hands sixteen hours a day. Heather had turned into a health nut. Vitamins, supplements, protein powder—she tried anything and everything if it would improve her health.

  Grey’s cell phone rang, blaring in the quiet room and making her jump. Tony touched her shoulder as Grey, seeing the caller ID, stood and walked into the bedroom to answer it.

  Tony’s presence next to her felt solid and reassuring, yet she shifted away from his hand and stood. This time it wasn’t because she didn’t like being touched, she simply couldn’t sit still.

  Did her dad know? Had he and Heather kept the heart problem from her for some bizarre reason? Since it was genetic, wouldn’t they tell Fallyn so she could be checked for it, too?

  “You would think twin sisters would share everything,” she said, marching over to the window and staring out at the sky. “Especially something like a heart problem.”

  “I don’t know anything about twins,” Tony said, kicking back in his chair as if this were an everyday, routine event for him. “But I got a passe
l of sisters and, yes, ma’am, they share everything. Hell, they’ll send five-hundred texts to each other over what color outfit to wear to our mother’s birthday.”

  Was that supposed to make her feel better? “Heather never texted. She never called. If I wanted to check on her or even just chat about Dad or something in the news, I did the texting and calling. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t talk to me, she simply never initiated communication. If I got her on the phone, we’d talk until our cell batteries were dead, but I guess calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, sis, guess what? I have a heart condition’ probably wasn’t at the top of her list.”

  Tony gathered up his long, muscular body and joined her at the window. “The thing about my sisters, is they’ll talk for an hour about what color to wear, but they won’t even mention having a cold. Amber had a fender bender last month and never bothered to tell us. She didn’t want to worry us. I’m guessing Heather felt the same. Unless they’re butting into my business, my sisters don’t tell me squat. Probably because I go apeshit when one of them gets sick or hurt. I’m guessing you have a protective streak like that.”

  How right he was. “I’m younger by a minute, but I’ve always felt like I had to protect her. I can’t stand to read criticism about her as a senator. I couldn’t even be there the night she was elected because I was freaking out that she might lose. After she was elected, whenever there was the slightest drop in her popularity polls, I felt like tearing someone up.”

  He smiled at that. “She didn’t want to worry you.”

  Grey emerged from the bedroom, sticking his phone in his inside jacket pocket. “Gotta run. Brennan needs backup and Monroe is still out of town with Caroline.”

  He turned to Fallyn. “As soon as I get more info from the ME, I’ll be in touch. Tony will stay with you tonight to be on the safe side. You need anything, have him call me. Got it?”