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Dear god. There wasn’t enough Scotch in the world. “I think we can skip the drumming.”
Lara nodded. “It makes Lincoln howl and then my next-door neighbor yells at me. He’s a very unhappy man.”
Oddly, Connor didn’t like the thought of someone yelling at her. She would never yell back. She would likely try to “understand” the man. He pushed those thoughts out of his head. He wasn’t here to protect her from herself. “Let me put this to you as straight as I possibly can. Do you two understand that someone tried to kill Lara this afternoon?”
Tom’s eyes widened and he slumped down on Lara’s love seat, making a place for Kiki to sit beside him. “The radio said they thought it was random or maybe some form of drug deal gone bad.”
He would be honest with them—to a point. “It wasn’t. The gunman stopped right in front of where we were sitting and pointed straight at her. There’s no doubt who his target was.” He turned to Lara. “My first question is, who knew where you were going to be this afternoon?”
It was time to start getting some real answers. Sure, the whole bodyguard thing was a cover, and once he found the information he needed, she would be on her own, but he had to look like he was doing his job.
“I met Lara at the coffeehouse, but I had to leave before you got there,” Tom admitted. “I don’t think she told anyone about it but me and Kiki.”
“She just wanted company in case you turned out to be creepy,” Kiki added. “Of course then she got a look at you and she dumped my ass really fast.”
“I did not. I just realized that I was late. You totally could have come along.” Lara sent her friend some seriously pleading looks.
This would be a tough group to keep on task. “So, Lara, no one else knew where you were going to be this afternoon?”
She turned to him and shook her head. “No one. I just told Kiki and Tom and only because a woman on her own can’t be too careful. Anytime I’m meeting someone, I always make sure one of my friends knows when and where the meeting place is.”
Something about the way she’d hesitated over the word always made him think she was lying.
He would bet half his fortune that her friends didn’t know she was meeting Deep Throat.
“All right. I’m going to need to figure out who’s tracking you and how. I need access to anything you were carrying with you today.” Most likely, someone had traced her cell phone. He’d run a few programs to see if someone had tampered with her device.
Tom held up his phone. “Or you could just look on Facebook. She told all 3,274 friends of hers exactly where she was at. See? She checked in at Ebenezers.”
He would always have to remember that he wasn’t dealing with a polished operative. He was dealing with someone more like Miley Cyrus, and if she’d been shot, she would likely have taken a selfie of her bullet wounds and posted it on Instagram before bleeding out. He turned to Lara, who gave him a sheepish smile.
“Yeah, I forgot about that. I do little check-ins through the day. You know, in case there are any friends who happen to be in the area.”
“Yes, I understand. Social networking is so important for your generation. It’s how you let assassins know where to find you. Lara is . . . enjoying a latte. Please come murder her.” He crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a stare assured to send the most seasoned operative into a fetal position. “You will shut down all social media today.”
Lara just stared back at him. Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinning, and he wondered if she was making fun of him. “Won’t that send out the wrong message? We told the press this attack was random. Shouldn’t I act all normal and stuff?”
Freaking hell, she was right. “All right, but I’m in charge of your social media now. You don’t put a single word out there unless it goes through me.”
She coughed, but he could have sworn it sounded like Gestapo.
He ignored her. He wasn’t the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s infamous state police. He was so much fucking worse, but she would find that out on her own. So he had narrowed down his suspects to roughly 3,200. Thank you, Internet.
He turned to Tom and Kiki. “I’ve been told you two know about Lara’s website.”
Kiki sighed. “You really think this is someone Capitol Scandals burned? Do you think those people would follow her social media?”
“If I’d had my life trashed by a tabloid and found out who ran it, you can bet I would use everything I had to track that person down,” he explained.
“I told you that site would get you in trouble,” Tom complained.
Lara sat on the couch, apparently expecting Connor to take the single chair since she spread out. “You didn’t hate the site when I ran that article on the circuit court judge selling verdicts.”
Tom shrugged. “He was a total asshole and his clerks were jerks. They kept me out of the fantasy football league. They deserved it.”
It was good he had his priorities. Connor shook his head. “Your opinion of the site is irrelevant. All that matters is figuring out who’s trying to kill Lara.”
“Isn’t this what the police should be doing?” Tom asked.
Kiki rolled her eyes. “As childish as he made that question sound, it’s valid. Why aren’t we letting the police handle this? I’m not questioning Connor’s ability to protect you, but the police have resources he just doesn’t have.”
She had no idea what resources he could call to his fingertips, but he couldn’t explain to her that he could count on both Langley and the executive branch to aid him. “I’m good with investigations and I’m excellent with a computer.”
“But the police . . .” Tom argued stubbornly.
“Connor and my dad think that’s a bad idea,” Lara explained.
“Since when do you do what your dad tells you to?” Tom shot back.
“Since he ganged up on me with him.” Lara was pointing his way. “They’re surprisingly immune to my arguments.”
Those big blue eyes were killing him. Fuck. She was cute. He didn’t do cute. He wasn’t the guy who liked cute intellectuals with great asses. He definitely wasn’t buying into her bullshit. Professional. That’s how he had to stay, which meant getting some distance between them. Except when he went to sit down, he found himself on the couch, plunking down right beside her so she damn near fell against him.
“Hey. I left that seat for you,” she said, scrambling to right herself and Lincoln, who was growling again.
“I think it’s best if you got used to me being on top of you,” he said, settling in. “In a nonliteral sense, of course.”
She would look pretty riding his cock.
Fuck, had he just thought that? He could sleep with her for the sake of the mission, but he would be in control. He would never again be vulnerable like he had with Greta.
He forced his head back in the game. “If we bring the police in, we have to tell them our suspicions.”
Kiki groaned. “And then they find out about Capitol Scandals.”
“The police could keep that quiet,” Tom insisted.
He was as naive as Lara. “Maybe the cops wouldn’t mention it, but if the press got wind of an investigation, they would start digging and it wouldn’t be long before they found her out. She’s got a good setup. While I’m here with her, I’ll strengthen her firewalls and put some more layers of protection in, but she’ll always be vulnerable.”
