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Sawyer had no idea whether or not he hit his target, but he heard sirens, and confident that at the very least Jay Turner wasn't going to get a chance to get to Kinsley, he rested his head back against the grass and closed his eyes.
* * * * *
1:03 P.M.
Ashley set a file in the filing cabinet and closed the drawer. She loved when they finished a job, and could put the file away. There was just something about that sense of completion that gave her a little rush.
Yeah, she was that much of a geek.
It wasn’t that she was OCD about everything. She just liked that little burst of adrenalin when she could tick off a completed task from a list. And these days with two toddlers at home, she didn't get to finish off a lot of jobs. Most of the time it was like spinning in a circle, barely treading water. Dirty dishes stacked up so there was almost enough to fill the dishwasher by the time a load was done, and she didn't even want to think about the laundry, that was just a losing battle. Then there was the mess of toys that littered the floor, her house was pretty much a disaster zone.
But work was different.
At work she had a bit more control over her environment, so she kept her desk spotless. And maybe the rest of the offices too.
When she and Sawyer officially became a couple, she had wondered if it would be weird the two of them working together as well as living together. It wasn't like they had the same roles at the firm they worked for, Sawyer did bodyguard and security work, and she was the receptionist. Still, spending a lot of their days together as well as their evenings and weekends could have been a problem.
Thankfully, it hadn't turned out to be.
She loved spending all her time with Sawyer and now with their kids as well. She had missed him so much the last two days while he’d been working around the clock as little Kinsley Turner’s bodyguard. As soon as she put the twins down tonight, she was going to call him, maybe even give him a little peek at what he was missing while spending his nights away from home.
Ashley was smiling as she sat back down at the computer and didn't notice when one of her bosses walked in.
“Hey, Ash,” Brady said.
Immediately the smile faded from her lips. There was something in his tone that she didn't like. She got along well with her boss, she and his wife Aurora were great friends, and their kids were pretty close in age, Aurora’s daughter was only seven months older, so they often got all the kids together for play dates.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Can you come into my office for a minute?”
Fear filled her.
She wasn't worried that she was about to be fired. Not only was she good friends with Brady and her other bosses, but she was good at her job, reliable, prompt, and smart. Had something happened down in the daycare? She loved being able to bring her kids to work with her and pop down in her lunch break to see them. It was so much better than putting them in daycare somewhere else where she wouldn’t be able to see them all day long.
On shaky legs she stood and came out from behind her desk, crossing the room and following Brady into his office.
“Sit down,” he said, pulling out a chair for her.
She did.
He perched on the desk in front of her.
Her anxiety rose quickly.
Something was wrong.
Really wrong.
“Now, there’s no need to panic, okay?” Brady started.
Ashley shot to her feet. The only time anyone ever said that was when there was indeed something to panic about.
“I said there was no need to panic,” Brady repeated as he stood as well and took hold of her shoulders, gently pushing her back down into her chair.
“If you don’t tell me what's wrong in the next thirty seconds I’m going to explode,” she warned Brady.
He gave her a small one-sided smile that actually went a little way to calming her down. If Brady was smiling, then things couldn’t be too bad.
