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Hopefully, my hearing is all I lost. Guess I’m about to find out.
CHAPTER2
Draven Blaze
“What the hell, Damien? You can’t just hire someone to work with me and not involve me in the process. You know I work alone. Just like you do.” If I’d have pulled this shit on him, I’d never heard the end of it.
“There wasn’t time. While I was in Boston, I happened to mention to Logan that we were thinking about taking on another person,” Damien tried explaining.
“Thinking. Not actually hiring. I don’t know anything about this person and I’m the one who is stuck working with her. And Logan is a doctor. He has no clue how to do what we do.” I wouldn’t tell him how to perform brain surgery, so Logan should stay the hell out of our business too.
“Draven, I know you’re not happy--.”
“That’s an understatement. Pissed is more like it,” I snapped back. It was a good thing we were having this conversation on the phone.
“Well, either way, she’s on the jet and will be arriving in Tabiq early morning tomorrow. I expect you to play nice. She’s…been through a lot,” he stated.
“Great.”A fucking babysitting job!“Just what I needed,” I snarled. It was bad enough that I had no clue what her qualifications were, but now I must tiptoe around her too.
“If you’d actually read the emails that I send you, then you’d see that Brian recommended her. She worked for the FBI for several years.”
Which to me meant she was going to be full of herself and would try to run me instead of my being her boss. “Why’d she leave? Or did she get fired?”
“I didn’t ask. Brian didn’t divulge. If you’re not a total ass to her, maybe she’ll share that information with you,” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Whatever. I’m going back to bed and will call you when she arrives in the morning.”And this way I’ll be waking you up in the middle of the night.
I ended the call, but I knew sleep wasn’t happening. Opening my email, I scanned for the one from Damien marked urgent. As I read through it entirely, I had to agree, Kinsley did sound perfect on paper. But the fact that she’d left the FBI, even if it was of her own accord, didn’t sit well with me. It was a connection that we didn’t need. Even Brian knowing just a little of what we were doing here created problems here and there. Loyalty to the bureau trumped friendship. Bringing Kinsley in and sharing even more with her was dangerous.
No longer did I feel as though I was babysitting Kinsley. It was more like protecting everything I knew about Tabiq’s past and making sure Kinsley only learned what I wanted her to.
A fucking profiler? How the hell am I supposed to pull off lying to her?
Lying was something I’d mastered going undercover as a PI in New York. I’d bagged many cheating bastards and not once did they ever suspect it was me. But that was easy because they were so busy trying to cover their tracks that they weren’t watching mine.
There was a photo attached in the mail. She looked so damn serious. Not a hint of a smile on those lips. And her hair slicked back into some tight bun. She even wore a black suit with a white blouse buttoned up high. If she was even half as stern as the picture made her out to be, this was really going to suck.
What I didn’t know was what Logan had to do with any of this. He was the piece that made no sense. It wasn’t like Kinsley was working for Logan. I found out from her information, that she wasn’t even from Boston. Maybe Brian and Logan were friends.
God knows Brian could use a neurosurgeon. Someone needed to find that guy's sense of humor.
This was no laughing matter. I was completely out of the loop, and I didn’t like it. Damien went around me to hire Kinsley, so he couldn’t be pissed when I went around him for the answers I needed.
It wasn’t a number that I had because Brian was Damien’s friend. But anyone can call the FBI. I pulled up the number and dialed.
“Hi, I’d like to speak to agent MacGregor.”
“Sir, I will need more information than that. Do you have his extension?” the woman who answered the phone asked.
“No. His first name is Brian.”
“Sir, I cannot transfer you, but I can take a message and ask him to call you,” she stated.
If I gave my true name, Brian was only going to call Damien to find out what was wrong, and I wouldn’t get to speak to him. And here comes my lying. “Jack.” I rattled off the number to a second cell phone I had which I reserved for personal use. I never gave any ladies I dated my business cell. The last thing I needed was for any of them calling me to talk or telling me off when I was on a case. Hadn’t used it in a while, but I always had it handy.
Ending the call, I walked over to my nightstand and pulled out the other cell phone. Turning it on, I was glad to see it held some charge. Now all I could do was wait for him to call.
Surprisingly I didn’t need to wait long. My phone buzzed once, then twice, and then again and again. These weren’t incoming calls. They were voicemails. I retrieved one and it was from a woman I took out once and then never called. She had made it clear that she was looking for marriage and I sure in hell wasn’t. The next several voicemails were very similar. As I listened to them all I realized that they all had one thing in common. They weren’t a fan of my lack of interest or commitment. One thing I never did was lie to any of them. I made it clear that I was a bachelor and planned on remaining one. Somehow that just seemed like a challenge to them. One they had lost. All of them.
