Purrfect Protector (23 page)

The man closed the distance between them and crouched down in front of him.

“Are you talking about Frank George Kelvin, who targeted Kale Andrews?”

“Yes.” Hearing about his brother’s death had actually been a relief. That model wasn’t the first to be victim of Frank’s obsessive nature.

“How are you connected to him?”

George swallowed painfully. “He’s my brother.”

To give the man credit, he didn’t flinch. He put firm hands on George’s shoulders and shook him gently. “Who is the person trying to kill you?”

His eyes stung. “My father.”

This time the man’s eyes did flare in surprise, but he quickly smothered his reaction. “My name’s Scott and we’re going to help you, okay?”

“Thank you.” This time George gave in to the need to cry. He sat back on the floor and hoped that the man was right. If not, he probably wouldn’t live to see the end of the day.

Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

Out of CTRL

SA Welsh

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Are you coming home for Dad’s sixtieth?” Andrew Finley’s eldest sister Sara nagged down the phone line. His family had hounded him constantly for two weeks. Why couldn’t his relatives take the hint or act like a normal family and avoid each other?

“I told you, Sara, I don’t know if I can get the time off—” Something told him this wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped.

“Andrew Norman Finley! Don’t you dare try to feed me that line of crap again. The first time I let it go, but no more. If you don’t come, I’ll tell Mom why,” Sara threatened.

Sara and her boyfriend Steve, and his other sister Jenifer-Annie—Genie for short—came for a visit every few months and stayed a week, and they talked often enough in between. Why couldn’t they just continue doing that?

“I don’t know what you mean…”

She might let it go. Nope. His luck just wasn’t that good.

“Cut it out, little brother. This is because of Teddy, isn’t it?”

Even hearing the man’s name made him catch his breath, sit back in his chair then push away from the desk. There was no way he could deal with physically seeing
him
.

What could he say to that?

“Angela’s boyfriend is none of my concern,” he replied coldly.

This was a dangerous subject for him and he wasn’t about to spill his guts to anyone. Not even his overprotective big sister.

“Don’t even bring that little trollop into it, Andrew. It’s not what you think. They’re not together. They never were, really.” She sighed.

But Andrew wasn’t listening.

He was successful, in his own way. He’d made a name for himself in computer coding and encryption programing. And nothing was going to make him turn back into his former self.

Nothing. Especially not that town.

Christmas and Thanksgiving were fine. There was no pressure and he could come and go as he pleased as long as he rang. So he chose not to go at all and just dropped them a holiday message when he knew the family would be too busy to answer the phone.

Genie and Sara came a few weeks a year and he admittedly loved spending time with them but he never returned the favor. He never went home. Not since he’d left for college nine years ago.

“You have
no idea,
Sara, so just drop it.”

“Andrew. Drew, I didn’t mean to—” Sara desperately tried to backpedal but it was too late.

Usually she backed off long before now.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Andrew let out a harsh breath. “It’s fine. Just don’t go there, okay? Why is this so important to you, Sara?”

“I can’t tell you but I really need you to be home this weekend. Please, for me and Steve?”

So they were on to the emotional blackmail part of the conversation.

“We need you here for this,” she pressed.

“Enough. I’ll come
if
I can but if Angela comes near me then—”

He felt guilty enough for not wanting to go to his dad’s sixtieth birthday, even though he wasn’t close with his parents. But his mother had sounded so tired the last time she’d called him and that played on his mind.

“Then I’ll sic Mom on her. I’ll tell her the reason the nice Robinson couple down the street had a ‘difference of opinion’. Mom loves Mrs Robinson and will be out for blood if she finds out the family slut was the one to break up a happy home.”

“Come on, it couldn’t have been that happy—” he started.

He’d seen too many friends go through hell after their other halves had cheated on them. Some had even been the cheater but most of the time there had always been underlying problems in the relationship. Either that or the cheater was just a rat bastard—male and female alike.

In his mind, there was no excuse for cheating.

If you wanted someone else enough to risk what you had at home then you needed to be honest. Make a decision and have enough respect for the person you’re with not to betray them.

But then he’d never actually been in a relationship, so what did he know? Maybe it was more complicated than that. Andrew picked at a piece of lint on his trouser leg as he thought about his love life.

There had been a few dates here and there over the years but no one special. There was no risk of being hurt if a person didn’t care to begin with. That’s what he told himself anyway.

“No, really, they were happy,” Sara assured him. “Angela got him drunk and slipped him something. I heard her talking about it with the bimbo twins. The man was so distraught after it wore off that he packed up and left the city. He was a good guy.”

“Holy shit. That’s date rape, Sara,” Andrew was at a loss as to what else to say.

He fiddled with his glasses, bouncing the frames on his nose. The forth bounce had him snatching his hand down. He’d worked too hard for old habits to resurface now.

“I know. I’m trying to track him down and see if he wants to press charges. If he does, then I’ll report to the police as a witness to a confession. I taped the bitch on my phone too but I don’t want to do anything without speaking to Mr Robinson first.” Sara seemed outraged that someone would do such a thing. In fact, his sister sounded disgusted but determined nonetheless.

“Again I repeat—holy shit. Are you any closer to finding him yet?”

“No. I can’t find him but I’m going to keep trying.” Sara sighed.

Andrew realized just how much this was affecting his big sister.

“Email me whatever information you have on him. Friends, family, where he used to work, everything, and I’ll see if I can help.” Hell, he could probably track the man down simply from his name alone but his sister didn’t need to know that. Andrew just didn’t want to answer the questions that would follow if he did. After all, his family still thought he worked as an IT tech for some admin company. And that was the way he wanted it to stay for now.

In reality, he worked as a freelance hacker or rather a reformed hacker who now only hacked for the ‘good’ guys. At least that’s what he told himself. There was some shady information he came across on the job sometimes but it wasn’t his place to judge the CIA’s actions.

Just because he wasn’t the moral police didn’t mean he wasn’t storing information away in case there came a time he could do something about it. Some of the stuff gave him nightmares. Well,
more
nightmares. He had feelers out searching for anyone who was high enough up the food chain to take action but wasn’t corrupt as well.

It was an unsurprisingly hard task.

“You can help? But I thought you only fixed computers and stuff.” She obviously realized how disbelieving she sounded and Andrew almost smiled when his sister started backpedaling again.

“I… I mean great. Any help you could give me would be awesome,” Sara gushed before pausing to see if he’d take the olive branch.

“No problem. I think you’d be surprised at what I can do with my computer, sis,” he teased, for once enjoying the secret that was his life. Sara wasn’t stupid by any means, so he would probably have an inquisition in his near future.

“Okay, little brother. Thank you but don’t think you’re getting away with being evasive for long. Love you.”

With that, she hung up leaving Andrew smiling. At least until he remembered why she’d called in the first place.

The severity of the situation dawned on him.

He had to go home.

The noise of his phone handset smashing against the wall wasn’t nearly as satisfying as he wanted it to be.

* * * *

Andrew stomped on the welcome rug to knock the dirt from his boots before slamming the door to his large two-bedroom apartment closed. The heavy door made quite a nice thwack and he only felt a little guilty that he might disturb his neighbors.

Only a
little
guilty, though. His neighbors weren’t that nice and he was pretty sure one of them was following him and spying on him for Andrew’s boss.

He threw his keys into the glass bowl on the counter. Andrew walked past the kitchen and into the sizeable living area where he set his laptop on the glass coffee table.

This little beauty was a work of art, if he did say so himself. The second a digital device touched the table surface or came within a foot of it, the tiny computer-bots he’d created started to download the information on that device.

The information was stored under multilayer encryption he’d written himself then he sent it to two secret portable hard drives he kept in safety deposit boxes at train stations on opposite sides of the state.

Andrew guessed he might be paranoid but when working with the CIA—and not entirely willingly—one could never be too paranoid.

It only took a few seconds for the information transfer to complete. Falling into the beat-up chair, he sighed and closed his eyes.

What a hell of a day.

Between his sister calling, tracking down Mr Robinson and explaining what Sara had overheard, then doing his actual job, he was exhausted.

Tracing funds related to terrorist organizations and following the money to a secret bunkers and bank rollers was harder than it sounded, and he was certain he’d worked twenty hours straight on that alone.

Lifting his wrist, he squinted at his watch. Yep. It had been too fucking long since he’d had a break. Perhaps going home wasn’t the worst idea in the world after all. It was definitely top three but at least he’d have his mother’s cooking and a break from work. Being isolated from the city could give him time and freedom to sift through the information he had on his boss as well.

Would it really be worth it?

Probably not.

But it did mean he’d get to see Genie’s new restaurant.

Digging his cell phone out of his pocket before he changed his mind, he shot off an email to his boss saying he was taking the weekend for himself and going off grid.

Off grid meant he didn’t want to be contacted unless aliens descended. Okay maybe not aliens but there had to be a definite threat of impeding Armageddon unless his boss wanted to be flooded with Viagra and penis enlargement spam ads for the foreseeable future.

Amazing how fast word spread when you did that to an asshole agent, who took the fact that he had a badge as a license to bully everyone he considered to be under him. A few little pop-up bombs to set off a flurry of porn sites, to take over the home screen every time the computer booted up, was kid’s play.

The bastard couldn’t prove he’d done it, though.

And as it had turned out, the guy’s higher-ups hadn’t liked his boss either, so the case had never gone any further than the asshole shouting at him. Andrew had even received a gift basket from the man’s co-workers.

Smiling at the memory, Andrew dragged himself onto to his feet and stumbled tiredly into the master bedroom, undressing as he went. In only his underwear, he entered the attached bathroom and started the water running.

“God, I really need a hot bath,” he moaned as he stretched the cramping muscles in his neck and back.

This was one luxury he’d let himself splurge on.

He had a glass-walled shower with the largest showerhead he could find sitting in one half of the bathroom and a separate claw-foot bathtub in the other. He dimmed the lights to a slightly less offensive brightness and stripped off his boxers before getting into the steaming tub.

As soon as he sank into the warm welcome of water, he could almost feel the day’s stress starting to leave him. Andrew removed his glasses before carefully putting them on the glass shelf behind him.

Sinking in the water so it sloshed over his shoulders, he took a breath and submerged completely. This tub was old-fashioned but the perfect size for his five-foot-ten-inch frame, allowing him to slip under the water and not spill the contents all over the floor.

There was just something about being underwater that was peaceful. Everything was silent. Calm. Like the outside world couldn’t touch him.

Sooner or later, he had to come back up, though. He winced as the water and bubbles ran into his eyes. Even though the soapsuds stung like a bitch, he seemed far less stressed than when he’d first come home to his apartment.

Home.

The day he’d packed up his stuff and started for college, he’d sworn he’d never go back to a town full of busybodies and assholes. If he ever saw most of them again, it would be too soon. He especially never wanted to see Angela.

The Omen child had nothing on his sister. She was evil to the core but for some reason or another, their parents had always been blind to it. Every time she’d screwed up, or had screwed someone up, his mother had believed whatever lies Angela told.

Sometimes he thought his father might see his daughter for the person she really was but he never spoke up, just shook his head and hid behind his newspaper.

What had happened with Mr Robinson was going to break his mother’s heart.

Perhaps it might be the step his parents needed to knock them back into reality. It might seem harsh but he wasn’t feeling particularly generous after a lifetime of hell at Angela’s hands.