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“What, he’ll send another owl?” I asked. “I’ve already got one death threat, so I assume I can’t get any more since they probably lose their effect after that. So, I don’t understand how it makes any difference whether I investigate the story or not. I’ll only be more bored and less likely to get a promotion while doing whatever we do to deal with this.” I paused. “What do we do? Call the police?” I screwed up my nose at the thought. Even though I didn’t doubt the seriousness of this, I didn’t envision much safety at the thought of the police.
Sitting in that room, in the offices of Greenstone, crisp and pleasingly cool, I felt safe.
Duke grinned at me. “I like her,” he told Keltan.
Keltan glared at him. Then me. “What we do is catch this motherfucker,” he gritted out. “And we end him.”
I tilted my head at him. “I thought you were a security company, not assassins,” I said blandly.
He stared at me. “This has shit to do with my business. This has to do with someone threatening my woman, and when that happens, I’m anything I fuckin’ need to be.”
I swallowed, then glanced to Heath and Duke. “And you two are down with the whole ‘killing a Columbian drug lord’ thing? I imagine it wouldn’t be just him. Moustache man obviously has to go too,” I said, trying to be helpful and more than a little sarcastic. Trying to hide my fear at these men doing something like this. Trying to hide my complete and utter panic at the thought of Keltan being in danger because of me.
Heath grinned. The first I’d seen on his blank face. And it wasn’t a happy grin; it was depraved and little scary.
And a lot hot.
“I was getting bored with all these posers here, anyway. It’d be good to spice it up,” he said.
Duke grinned too. “Agreed, brother. And I couldn’t think of anyone more worthy. Especially considering the shit we’ve already uncovered on him. Plus, our client would likely give us a hefty bonus if we did this.” He looked at Keltan.
“Killing for revenge or for breathing is one thing. Getting paid for it is another. We gotta draw a line,” Keltan informed him.
Duke pouted like a little kid getting refused ice cream before dinner. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I guess I don’t need that new boat anyway.”
So that was how it was planned that my man, the one who I’d only finally got my shit together with, was going to seek out and kill the Columbian drug lord who had threatened to kill me with an owl.
And he said we were simple.
One Week Later
Keltan’s fury at the small figurine and the subsequent war council had me believing the threat was imminent. I expected some death squad to march up to me on the street the entire week.
But that was my movie knowledge working. And life rarely worked like the movies.
Good editing chopped out the long spaces between the action where real life happened. Where nothing happened.
That’s what the week had been. Nothing. Well, not nothing if you counted either Heath or Duke being with me at all times.
Even while shopping.
Heath loved that.
But I was technically back on my old beat, that being all things fashion and beauty, so shopping was mandatory.
Technically being I was trying, to the best of my ability, to still investigate the story without Keltan finding out.
I’d told Roger about what I could.
“Makes it a better story,” he said.
I raised a brow. “What, the prospect of my death?”
He raised his own. “Well, no one ever got a fuckin’ Pulitzer for writing stories that promised they’d stay breathing in their mundane fuckin’ life.”
So, Roger wasn’t exactly overly concerned with my survival when I told him I was still investigating. Plus, I had a pretty solid piece as it was already. It was technically publishable, since my facts checked out, but it was a lot of coincidences and conclusions made by me. That was not good journalism.
And I wanted to be more than good.
I wanted the fucking Pulitzer.
Hence my staying late and telling Keltan it was on a shoe story.
He’d grumbled about it on the phone but said he’d pick me up and take me “home.”
Another thing that happened in a week—his apartment had become “home.” And not just him saying it in his firm and forceful tone like he had earlier. And not just because I was being threatened by a drug lord notorious for chopping the heads off his enemies and controlling large amount of the cocaine trade that had him at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list—I’d Googled him. And not just because he was strong, had a gun and was likely to protect me with his last breath if his frenzied promises were anything to go by.
