In a fix torus intercess.., p.2
In A Fix: Torus Intercession Book Two, page 2
I planned to argue with my boss, immediately following the requisite mocking, of course.
“Being a bodyguard in Vegas is the worst,” Locryn assured Rais. “You never leave the Strip. You walk all day, every day, and it’s an endless loop of watching people drink, gamble, vomit, buy crap they will never use, eat, then vomit again because they drank too much, go to shows, and, obviously, hook up with anyone with a pulse.”
“That is so very accurate,” Shaw complimented Locryn.
“Thank you,” Locryn said, smiling at him in a moment of levity.
Rais returned his focus to me. “I’m sorry you have to go, then. I thought it sounded good when he told me.”
Newbie.
I exhaled sharply, already dreading the rest of my week.
“Take extra clothes,” Locryn cautioned me. “Because you never know when someone’s gonna puke on you.”
“And you’ll smell like smoke, goin’ in and out of all the casinos,” Shaw reminded me, trying not to smirk. “Your suits are gonna reek.”
“Thanks,” I said under my breath.
I made my way to Jared’s office, on a cackle of laughter at my back, and called him from the phone on his desk.
“Esca?”
I cleared my throat. “Good morning, Mr. Colter, how are––”
“Spit it out,” he demanded.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know you want to argue, it’s why you’re calling, so g’head. Don’t beat around the bush, make your case.”
My exhale was sharp. “Sir, don’t you agree that Locryn would be far better suited than I to a bodyguard assignment?” I said quickly, hopefully, praying that he’d have an epiphany right then and there and say, “Holy crap! I never even thought of that! I mean, he looks the part more than the rest of us, and he’d definitely fit in with—”
“The client doesn’t want anyone to suspect he’s hired a bodyguard, so he requested someone less obvious. Not to mention I felt you to be uniquely suited to this assignment, given your background.”
Well, I was definitely the less obvious one. All the Torus agents, including our boss, came off as menacing without trying. I’d been told I looked more like a GQ model. Not that I was slight or lithe or any of those other things. I worked out, I ran, I swam, but whereas the rest of the men at Torus, and Rais as well, carried a lot of heavy muscle on their frames, I was leaner, longer, more runner than linebacker. What he meant about my background, I was sure I’d understand soon enough.
“It’s a short assignment,” Jared explained. “You’ll only be in Vegas from Wednesday to Saturday, home early Sunday morning.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re guarding the eldest son of Baker Stanton who, as you know, founded Stanton-Downey, which owns more than sixty different companies, from insurance brokers to restaurant chains to laundry detergent manufacturers. The Stantons are one of the wealthiest families in this country, but the man isn’t a diplomat or a rock star. He’s not someone people would know on sight.”
And there it was, the reason I was well-suited for the job. They needed someone who could blend in with the blue bloods. I remained quiet, because I knew from experience that he wasn’t done explaining.
“You’ll be there because he’s received some threatening emails, as well as physical letters delivered to his loft in Bridgeport. There are also security feeds, at his office and at his loft, that show suspicious cars parked for extended periods of time on the street outside both places.”
“Has he had protection before?”
“Baker’s son, Brigham, Brig, is assigned a detail when traveling abroad, as are most senior executives, and a driver at home who also functions as his caretaker, or whatever the PC term is now, as well as a maid and personal chef. But no, he doesn’t have a designated bodyguard,” Jared told me and then sighed. “He needs one. I told his father that he should hire someone full-time to guard his son, and he’s looking into having a person in place by the time he returns from this trip. I also suggested he hire a bodyguard for his other son, Nolan, but he said that only Brigham, the one you’re watching, is high profile enough in financial circles to merit the expense.”
“I’m sure the spare feels really loved.”
“Spare?”
“There’s the heir and the—”
“Oh yes. That’s clever.”
From the derogatory tone, he hadn’t actually thought so. “May I ask, sir, is Mr. Stanton certain that he doesn’t want a larger security presence for his son than just—”
“I’m sure he would, but it’s not Mr. Stanton’s call. Brigham specifically asked for someone who wouldn’t stand out in his posse.”
I swallowed down my knee-jerk response.
The silence ticked by, second by second.
“Well?”
“Posse?” I repeated dryly.
“Is that not right?”
“Was that the word the man actually used?”
“No,” he admitted in his usual rumbling growl. “But I thought that was what young people called their group of friends these days.”
Oh dear God.
It was one of Jared’s quirks, and I’d thought at first that he was being sly, that he was self-deprecating on purpose, fishing for praise, but it turned out I was wrong. In all seriousness, the man thought he was old.
Him. Old.
It was ridiculous.
In what realm of the imagination was a strong, powerful man of fifty-eight considered a fossil? He might even be sixty, I’d only heard Nash say he thought Jared was fifty-eight, but really, that wasn’t the point. His slate gray eyes glinted like ice, and his rugged looks emphasized the fact he was built like a brick wall, yet moved with the grace of a fighter. Altogether, it made him breathtaking. Even better, though, was his heart. He was the best person I’d ever met, utterly selfless and kind. He was also, interestingly enough, the quietest. I had never heard Jared Colter raise his voice. Ever. I had to wonder if they taught that to all CIA operatives, and if they knew how sexy it was.
Of course, I had no idea if the man was straight, bi, gay—and there was no way in hell I was ever going to ask.
“Esca?”
“Boss,” I said, touching the weird snow globe on his desk. It was the oddest thing. It looked like Cinderella’s castle in the winter. It was so out of place.
“Four days in Vegas, Esca.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get it done.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everything you need is in the file.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I want a status update on Thursday,” he ordered and then hung up.
It was lucky I didn’t crave communication or anything.
And now, on the tarmac, waiting, I was certain that this was going to be the longest four days of my life. If the damn plane ever left the airport.
I closed my eyes and prayed for a freak blizzard.
Two
Brigham Stanton had booked the Chairman Suite at the Bellagio, which sat atop the Spa Tower and had two bedrooms, one for him and his girlfriend and one for me and his friend, the guy who’d just made partner, Chase Baldwin. The rest of his crew, as he called them, were staying in the three-thousand-square-foot Entourage Suites on the same floor. His brother, Nolan Stanton, was staying in the Presidential Suite one floor below.
When I reached the front desk, after I was given the VIP access card and an entire folder of information, I was informed that there was another person going up to the suite with me.
Waiting for the concierge, shouldering my garment bag on my left and my duffel and laptop bag on the right, a bellman appeared and asked if I would like to set my things on the cart already overflowing with luggage.
“Thank you, no,” I assured him as a stunning redhead stepped around the cart. Her chunky chartreuse wool topcoat came to mid-thigh and had a wide lapel that highlighted the delicacy of her features, making her appear fragile in a porcelain-doll sort of way. She was wearing torn jeans and black heels high enough that I had to wonder how she walked in them without falling and breaking body parts. “Good morning,” I greeted her.
She turned to me and didn’t speak, but deigned to raise her Jackie O sunglasses, looked me up and down, and did something with her face that I guessed was supposed to be a smile, but came off more like she smelled something distasteful. “Good morning. You must be Brig’s mysterious friend.”
Her tone was flat, stilted, and downright cold. Okay. That reaction usually didn’t manifest until people were around me for a few days.
“Not so mysterious,” I said, shrugging and slipping into my cover story. “We went to Choate together, and then he went off to Harvard while I went west, to Stanford.”
She nodded slowly.
“I got sick of the cold, which is funny since I ended up in Chicago.”
There was a pause before she put her hand over her heart in mock surprise. “Oh, you’re planning to speak to me?”
“Pardon?”
Her chuckle as she reached for my arm was surprising. She used me as a brace as she took off first one Christian Louboutin heel and then the other. “They don’t all speak to me, you see,” she rushed out, her limpid cornflower blue eyes lifting to mine as she set the heels carefully on one of the hanging bags, between the straps. I understood her caution; they were expensive after all. “Not to me.”
What she was saying clicked in my brain then. “His other friends, do they not speak to you much?”
“Only Lan, who’s going to be family, so he doesn’t count. He has to be nice to me.”
She meant Nolan Stanton, of course, Brigham’s younger brother.
“It’s lovely that Brig knows at least one nice person. I wish you’d been on the ski trip in December. You would have made Vail less of a horror.”
“How do you know I’m nice?” I asked, watching in amusement as she dug a pair of flats out of the top of her tote bag and, leaning against me, put one on, and then the other.
“Well, I can already tell you’re not one of his douchey frat friends who have absolutely squat to say to me.”
I grinned at her. “That’s because it was supposed to be a bro weekend, and so why were you, the fiancée, there?”
“No, no,” she said quickly, clarifying, wagging her finger at me. “Not the fiancée. We’ve never had that conversation, and I don’t have a ring.”
It was interesting how she felt the need to make that clear for me. Not that she seemed heartbroken or sad or angry. More…wistful. She wanted it, that was obvious, but it was like she was coming to terms with it never happening.
And this was what Jared meant, I suspected, when he said I needed to practice empathy. If I was being honest, I was less interested in why she seemed wistful than if I was right that that’s how she felt.
“Girlfriend, then,” I amended, gesturing for her to step in front of me as the concierge announced that it was time for us to go up. “The others will still wonder why you’re along on this weekend of debauchery.”
“Is that what it’s going to be?”
“One assumes,” I said tiredly.
She chuckled softly. “Don’t sound so excited.”
“I’d prefer to stay home and read.”
Her smile was wide as she nodded. “In comfy clothes, with a cup of tea, on a window seat with a blanket, am I right?”
“I see we’re of a similar mind,” I said, charmed by her. “Perhaps you’d like to come home with me now, to Chicago.”
She giggled. “Oh, I like you,” she said with a sigh, following the man in the black suit onto the elevator. “But Brig was adamant that I come, so”—the gallic shrug spoke volumes—“what was I supposed to do?”
I nodded.
“I mean, who says no to Brig Stanton?”
No one, apparently.
As the elevator began its ascent to the thirty-third floor, I realized she was staring.
“Something wrong?”
“No, I just can’t get over how—I mean, you really don’t at all look like any of his other friends,” she said, brows furrowing, like I was a puzzle that needed to be solved.
I got that a lot. Even Rais, roughly three minutes into his new job at Torus, knew who I was before he’d actually confirmed who I was.
“You’re Croy, right? Mr. Colter said I’d know you ’cause of your hair.”
I squinted at him. “Because of my hair?”
“He said it was an odd color.”
What was odd about platinum blond? I’d been the towheaded kid when I was little, and the white became silver as I got older, with some pewter streaks thrown in, but remained mostly white.
“It’s not odd,” I muttered defensively under my breath.
“He didn’t say he was short?” Cooper threw out.
I shot him a look that should have melted the skin from his skull. At six feet, I was nowhere near short, except in comparison to him and the rest of the giants.
“Or puny?” Locryn offered. “You sure he didn’t say puny?”
Barnes got the same death glare.
Rais’s chuckle was low and warm. “Nope.”
“He had to have said albino,” Shaw teased me, his whiskey-rough voice soothing me even though he was being a dick.
“I’m not—it’s platinum blond, Shaw,” I told him for easily the billionth time. “It’s an actual permutation of blond.”
“Big word for so early in the morning,” Nash informed me, his grin wide.
I really didn’t want to get into yet another hair color discussion with her, so I deflected. “That’s because you only know the frat boys, and I’m not one of them.”
“No, it’s definitely your hair. Do you know how much some women pay to get, and keep, their hair that color? Has anyone ever told you, you look like a GQ model?”
The sigh, if I’d allowed it to escape, would have been eloquent. Thankfully, she was on a roll.
“And not that there’s anything wrong with Brig’s other friends, mind you,” she apprised me, as though worried someone might overhear her speaking ill of them. “I was in a sorority, after all, so I’m not casting aspersions on Greek life, but his friends are just a bit loud and boorish.”
“But all captains of industry,” I volleyed back.
“Working for their fathers,” she added snidely, eyes flicking sideways to me, her grin sly.
I scoffed. “But not Chase, right?”
“Yes,” she said, and I heard it, the sudden freeze in her tone, and all the teasing was gone. “Chase Baldwin. He went out on his own, refused to work for his father at the investment firm. He became a lawyer instead, and now, at thirty-one, he’s made partner.”
I was betting, in spite of her defense, that his family’s business, as well as those of their friends, had helped him on the express track. No one made partner at a law firm that young, not unless they were bringing some serious money, in the form of prestigious clients, to the table.
“Well, good for him,” I announced, grinning at her, offering her my hand. “And my name’s Croy Esca, by the way.”
“Oh my goodness,” she gasped, taking my hand in both of hers, laughing. “I’m such a spaz today. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right; it’s still early where we’re from, and we were both at the airport before sunrise.”
“I still didn’t—what you must think,” she groaned. “I’m Astor, Astor Finnel.”
I couldn’t help but smile, because really, she was a charming person. She seemed fun, didn’t take herself too seriously, and by all appearances, was laid-back and down to earth. I had not expected that when I read the file.
Astor had a degree in the history of art and architecture from Brown University, was a socialite who sat on the board of directors of several charities, and she lived lavishly on her trust fund. Her parents wanted her to marry; she wanted to see the world. She met Brigham in Barcelona, and they’d been together ever since. It must be nice for him to know that his money was of no interest to her since she had millions of her own. Brig Stanton won big when he snared her.
The elevator dinged, finally, and the doors opened into the foyer of the four-thousand-square-foot suite overlooking the Las Vegas Strip. If the day had not been so overcast and gray, I was certain the view from the arched windows that bracketed the fireplace would have been even more impressive, especially when night fell and the neon glow of the city cast its spell.
“Look, it’s Ass.” Someone drawled out the first syllable of her name, and when Astor did a slow pan to me, I gave her a wink.
“Courage, dear heart,” I whispered, and she gave me a nod, recognizing and appreciating that I was quoting C.S. Lewis for her.
When the man called her name again, she turned from me at the same time that he rushed across the room, arms open wide to receive her.
There were no pictures in the file; there never were. Jared didn’t like us to make snap judgments about people based on their appearance. The thing was, though, when people were rich or famous, all it took was an image search in Google to get what you needed.
This was not Brigham Stanton.
Nolan Stanton looked a bit like his brother, but whereas Brigham stood at six-three, Nolan was shorter at six-one, and didn’t have his brother’s perfect swimmer’s build. Every picture I’d found of Brigham, whether in a tuxedo, cargo shorts and a T-shirt, board shorts, or jeans and a sport coat, showed the same defined, sculpted physique. The man put as much time into his body as he did the other areas of his life, which was why he could have walked the catwalk in Paris or Milan if he hadn’t decided on business instead. Nolan, on the other hand, would not have been given the option. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t a fine-looking man, with the same russet and mahogany-brown hair and dark sapphire blue eyes, but the difference was in how the two men carried themselves. Nolan didn’t cut an imposing figure. Brigham, in all the pictures I’d seen, carried himself like a king.
