‘Lucinda?’ Nick said, his mouth falling open in shock. ‘What the fu –’
‘Nick, let’s go,’ Lila’s shaky voice begged as she pulled frantically on his sleeve. Lucinda simply looked past the couple in front of her and jerked her chin at someone behind them. Nick spun round just in time to see a large figure at the end of the alleyway make some sort of signal to Lucinda and jog away. ‘Nick, come on,’ Lila pleaded. Nick made a step towards Lucinda, and the dog now sitting at her side growled, its lip curling to reveal the lower half of its sharp teeth.
‘Salem, enough,’ murmured Lucinda, resting her hand on top of the dog’s broad head. He immediately stopped growling and allowed his lip to drop over his teeth, but Nick got the impression that he wasn’t happy about it. Now that he was really looking, he realized that this was the dog that had been hanging out at the ground floor reception for the last four weeks; Nick had just assumed it was a new part of the office security.
Lucinda glanced behind her, then stared straight at Nick. ‘We should go,’ she told him, and started walking towards them. Lila gasped and flung herself back against the wall of the alley as Lucinda went by, but this didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. She swept past them both, the dog padding silently in her wake, and it was only when she was a few feet away that Nick managed to shake off his shocked stupor and start after her, pulling Lila along behind him.
‘Do you mind very much telling me what the fuck is going on?’ he clipped, tucking a shaking Lila under his arm.
‘We need to get back to your car,’ Lucinda told him, turning onto the busy street and starting to wind her way through the crowds, back in direction of Nick’s office. ‘Once we are at your apartment complex, then you’ll be secured and we can debrief.’
‘I am not going anywhere with you and neither is Lila,’ Nick shouted after her, drawing to a halt. Lucinda and the dog stopped in their tracks and turned to him. It was almost imperceptible, but he could have sworn she rolled her goddamn eyes.
‘Sir, I’m sorry but we do need to move,’ a man’s voice said from behind Nick, and he turned to see the man Lucinda had been signalling to standing there, his arm out to indicate that they must move forward. He was tall, even taller than Nick, who was at least six foot two, and his frame was heavy-set. He had dark hair, just a shade lighter than Nick’s, and dark eyes, but the most striking thing about his appearance was the scar that ran from the corner of his eye, down his cheek and into his neck. Nick’s mind flashed to the small crescent-shaped scar at the corner of Lucinda’s eye, and he frowned.
‘Listen, mate, unless someone starts explaining to me what the fuck is –’
‘No,’ Nick heard Lucinda’s voice clip from his other side. ‘We will explain at the flat. We need to be off the street now.’
‘I –’
‘Listen for once in your life, you arrogant son of a bitch,’ Lucinda spat out at him. ‘Maybe you don’t give a shit about your life, or hers for that matter,’ she said, indicating towards Lila, ‘but it would be helpful if you let me do my fucking job, get you to a secure location, and be able to make enquires about Mr Southern’s well-being, okay?’
‘Ed? You think something might happen to Ed?’
Lucinda just stood her ground, glaring up at him.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ he said, and she spun on her heel to make for his car.
*****
‘Okay, Susan,’ Nick gritted out into his phone, still pacing the length of his bedroom, ‘take me through this again. You agreed not to tell me – your employer – that one of my staff was there under false pretences. The member of staff in question is not actually a receptionist at all, she’s … well, I don’t bloody know what she is, but she’s certainly not a goddamn receptionist. Am I right?’
‘Well, Nick,’ Susan said, her nervous voice shaking down the line, ‘you see, you had gotten rid of the last two sets of protection officers assigned to you. Everyone just thought that maybe if you didn’t know you were being followed, you wouldn’t get so annoyed by it, and then your father –’
‘Dad?’ Nick exploded, his temper on a knife-edge. ‘Dad knew I was being followed by some crazy woman?’
‘Well … your father doesn’t actually know who’s providing the protection, only that it’s being sorted, and those government chaps really were quite insistent that –’
‘Fine, Susan.’ Nick cut her off, pinching the bridge of his nose and huffing out a breath in frustration. He couldn’t really blame her if his father was involved. Dad may not have worked at the company for the last ten years but he was still considered The Big Cheese, and it wasn’t as though anyone would have felt able to refuse a request from him, least of all Susan. She was still bumbling on to him down the phone when he tapped it off and shoved it into his back pocket.
‘Right,’ he said as he pushed through the door from his bedroom out into the vast living space of his flat. His interior designer had wanted to go ultra-modern with acres of granite and hard, gleaming floor tiles, but Nick asked for something to remind him of home; hence the wide, oak floorboards, squashy, beaten-up leather sofas and Shaker-style kitchen. ‘Now that I’ve established that you are not random deranged psychopaths, would you mind very much telling me who you are and what the fuck is going on.’
Lucinda turned to face him from her position at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. She had totally dropped the fake smile now, and for once the rest of her face matched her eyes. Although Nick had always sensed the smile was a front, the difference in her appearance without it was quite startling. She looked hardened, cold, and had a strange air of being in total control of herself and the world around her. Nick was beginning to realize the extent of her acting skills. The dark colours she sported now were a stark contrast to her usual pinks and purples. He also remembered her voice. In her guise as Receptionist Lucinda, she had spoken with a Worsel Gummidge, country bumpkin accent. The voice she used in the alleyway and out on the street was nothing like it. If anything she sounded slightly Russian. Lying at her feet was the massive dog. Its head had been resting on its paws, but as Nick burst back into the living space it came up and both ears swivelled forward.
After agreeing to go with his newly discovered security detail, Nick and Lila had been hustled to his car, at which point it became clear Lucinda intended to travel with him, complete with the hair-shedding dog. The information that his upholstery was Italian leather and might not be the best surface for a huge and no-doubt-unwashed dog was met with stony silence from Lucinda and a brief display of sharp teeth from the dog, so he decided to grin and bear it.
Lila, having come down from her adrenaline rush of fear in alley and realizing that her potential date with Nick was not going to go the way she had planned, asked to be dropped at her own flat. Lucinda told her that ‘would not be advisable’ in a tone that suggested it was not going to happen, and so they’d all driven straight to Nick’s underground car park, trailed by the other man, who was driving Lucinda’s car (yes, it turned out that Lucinda did have a car, and much to Nick’s annoyance it was one he recognized from frequent sightings over the last month – she had, evidently, been following him for some time).
‘My name is Goodie,’ she told him. ‘And this is Sam Clifton.’
‘Right …’ Nick paused to take a deep breath and run his hands through his hair as he let it out. ‘Okay.’
He walked across the room until he was standing in front of ‘Goodie’ and she was looking up at him with those cold eyes, her arms crossed over her chest. Nick could feel the animosity pouring off her but didn’t back away. ‘I’ll start by saying thank you.’
Goodie blinked and for a nanosecond her face registered surprise before she masked it.
‘Thank you for saving my life in that alleyway.’
She held his eyes for a moment, a small frown of confusion pulling her brows together; then she nodded, and after another few seconds she took a step back. Her dog followed her, and both female and canine eyes watched him with their heads cocked slightly to the side. Nick smiled at her, causing more confusion to cloud her features, but she remained silent. It would seem that this woman was a lot less chatty than his receptionist of the last month.
‘Right,’ he said, turning back to the rest of the room. ‘Now that we’ve got that out of the way my next question is: who do you work for?’
‘I run the security company your father hired with my partner Rob Davis. Our offices are based in Wales but take jobs all over the world,’ Sam told him. ‘Most of our operatives are ex-Special Forces. I believe that since MI6 took an interest in your protection they referred your father to us.’
‘So you work for him?’ Nick asked Goodie, who rolled her eyes but kept her mouth shut.
‘Goodie’s freelance,’ Sam said. ‘She works for herself.’
‘If you were concerned: Mr Southern is secure, sir,’ Lucinda a.k.a. Goodie cut in.
Nick rubbed the back of his neck mumbling, ‘Right, yeah, great.’ How had he forgotten about poor Ed? ‘Can I ask you both to stop calling me sir by the way?’ he asked as he crossed the room to his open-plan kitchen area. He took down a crystal glass, reached up for his brandy on the top shelf, and poured himself a healthy measure.
‘No problem, Mr Chambers,’ Sam said from the sofa. Nick glared over at him, then slammed back the shot before stalking over to the living area.
‘It’s Nick, okay; everyone calls me Nick. Mr Chambers is my father.’ Sam took another sip of tea and didn’t respond either way. Nick sighed. ‘So can you both tell me what your roles are? Is it just the two of you or are there more?’
‘I’m your close protection officer,’ Goodie told him. ‘Sam is the far guard. He does most of the route planning, IED checks, counter-sniping monitoring. We have another team for background checks and research.’
Nick sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and his mouth fell open.
‘Right, Nicky darling,’ Lila said, putting her cup of tea down on the coffee table and pushing up from the sofa. Nick started slightly – he’d forgotten she was even there. ‘I think that talk of IED checks might be my cue to go.’
‘I’ll take you home,’ Nick said, getting up from the chair.
‘No,’ Lila practically shouted, her eyes wide. ‘I mean …’ she continued in a more measured tone, ‘those nice police detectives from earlier are meeting me downstairs. They’ll take me. Then I need to start booking in all the therapy I’ll need to get over this.’
‘Right, sorry about everything, Li.’
‘Not your fault, honey,’ Lila muttered, giving him a distracted kiss on the cheek. ‘If you will go and try to save the world you’ve got to expect a few bumps in the road. I think us mere mortals will attempt to stay out of the firing line though.’ She glanced around the room and caught Goodie’s eye. ‘Thank you.’
Goodie gave her another short nod and Lila turned to leave.
‘Should my friends have protection?’ Nick asked as he watched the door close after her.
‘As far as we can ascertain, Mr Chambers, the threat is to you and Mr Southern alone. There is no advantage in the murder or kidnap of your family and friends; it’s you two that are in danger.’
‘How much “danger” are we talking about exactly?’ Nick asked Sam; but it was Goodie who answered.
‘You know how much,’ she said, her voice hard. ‘You were approached six months ago about this by government agents. There are multiple highly motivated, extremely well-funded organizations to whom the development of unlimited alternative power is not a popular turn of events. Those monitoring these organizations have known for a long time about the significant threat to your life and that of Mr Southern. Yet you still refused to comply with their request for a protection team to be put in place.’
Nick shrugged. ‘I thought it was over the top. Made me look like a bit of a twat to be honest, having security guards trailing round after me.’
‘I hope,’ Goodie said, her voice now even harder, ‘that today has demonstrated the need to put up with being made to look like “a bit of a twat” in order to stay alive.’
Nick leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. It seemed that Goodie might be right, and that irritated the hell out of him. He eyed the slight build and average height of the blonde standing by the window, and he felt his shoulders starting to shake. He tried to hold it in but, with the adrenaline coursing through his veins, it seemed that was impossible. Eventually the smile broke out across his face and a chuckle escaped.
‘You know what I just realized,’ he managed to get out through his now full-on laughter as he stared at Goodie. ‘I’m Whitney Houston to your Kevin Costner. Brilliant.’
Nick wouldn’t have thought Sam’s face capable of it, but at this remark it broke out into a wide smile. Goodie just stared at him like he was a creature from another planet.
‘I had a background check done on you,’ he told her once he had managed to get a handle on his laughter. ‘How –?’
‘Your security staff work for you and your –’
‘My fucking father.’ He cut her off, frowning with annoyance.
Goodie shrugged. ‘Even if you had hired an outside company they wouldn’t have found anything out that I didn’t want them to know. I have many backgrounds and cover stories to choose from. My past is buried deep, no amount of digging will ever uncover it, no matter how much money or how many people were on the job.’
Nick cocked his head to the side. As Lucinda this woman had been annoying, a little creepy (given that he knew she was fake smiling, fake giggling, fake everything in fact), and definitely a whole lot less interesting. ‘What’s Goodie short for?’ he asked.
Goodie pressed her lips together but this time Sam answered for her: ‘Goodnight.’
‘Is that your last name?’
‘No.’ This from Goodie.
‘Well, what is your name?’
‘Lucinda Wilson,’ she replied without skipping a beat.
Nick narrowed his eyes at her. ‘That is not your real name.’
Goodie raised an eyebrow and he noticed her dog push up from the floor to sit on its haunches next to her, focusing on him. ‘My passport says otherwise, Mr Chambers.’
‘Listen up, mate,’ Sam said, and for the first time his voice was edged with annoyance. ‘Her real name is not your concern. She is not your concern, right? All you need to know is that she’s good at her job and for the moment that involves keeping you in one piece.
‘If you want to know her credentials or have someone vouch for her ability, I have a list of numbers here. One of those numbers is the Assistant Director General of MI6. Happy?’
Nick noticed Goodie scowl across at Sam before she blanked her expression; having someone fight her battles for her was clearly not something she appreciated. Sam was too busy staring at Nick to notice, a muscle jumping in his scarred cheek.
‘Sam,’ Goodie called, and he reluctantly tore his eyes from Nick’s. ‘Shouldn’t you be meeting the others outside?’
‘Right, fine,’ Sam said, slamming his cup of tea onto the coffee table with a little too much force and getting to his feet. He jerked his chin at Nick before stalking to the door. Goodie followed him and they exchanged a few terse words; unfortunately the words were in rapid Russian and Nick couldn’t understand a bloody anything. The fact that Sam’s voice did not carry even a slight hint of a Russian accent confirmed to Nick that it was a deliberate attempt to shut him out of the conversation. After Sam left, Goodie walked back across the room and to her bag, from which she extracted a whole host of black electrical equipment and some earphones.
‘What’s that?’ Nick asked, leaning forward to watch her set up whatever it was with quick efficiency, then extend a wand-like structure.
‘A non-linear junction evaluator,’ Goodie told him.
‘A what?’
‘A bug detector.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m doing a sweep of your flat,’ she explained, slapping some earphones over her ears. Nick huffed in frustration and pushed himself up off his chair.
‘I need to get back to the office – this whole thing has made me a bit twitchy about the meetings tomorrow. I should connect with some of the key players,’ he told her once he’d walked over to her and lifted up one of her earphones. She jerked her head away and pushed them down to her neck herself.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible tonight, Mr Chambers,’ she told him, and was about to pull the headphones back up over her ears when his hands covered hers to stop her. Anger clouded her perfect features for a moment before she switched rapidly to a neutral expression. Her hands were small and cold under his; she felt almost fragile; yet he’d already seen that she was anything but. After a moment she jerked away from him and stepped backwards before crossing her arms over her chest and glaring up at him. ‘I am sorry, Mr Chambers,’ she forced out, sounding anything but. ‘We cannot leave your flat today. I know this is an inconvenience, but it’s not just you that would be put at risk. The people posing a threat to you are determined and they are persistent; they will not stop.’
Nick rubbed the back of his neck for a moment before pulling a hand through his hair in frustration. She was actually right, he conceded to himself. He would be a selfish bastard to put the security team at risk as well as himself; he hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. He shrugged. ‘You’re right,’ he told her. ‘I’ll just have to work from here.’ He jerked his head towards his home office. ‘Christ, I might actually have to ask Bertie to do something for a change. Are you … um … do you have to stay? The night I mean.’
‘I’m sorry but yes.’
‘The spare room’s all set up, so …’
‘Thank you,’ Goodie returned, pulling the earphones back up and resuming her sweep of his flat.
*****
Goodie stopped when she heard the office door close, and then lowered her earphones down to her neck again. Salem, sensing her unease, as was his way, padded up to her side and nuzzled her hand. She stared at the office door for a moment as she stroked Salem’s head. She could not make sense of that man, and for Goodie that was highly unusual. She’d been relying on her innate ability to accurately judge people since she was a child, when her survival depended on it. For a man of Nick’s power and arrogance to make a joke about something many men before him had found emasculating was … odd.
For once Goodie had found herself on the very edge of smiling. It wasn’t as if she never smiled, but usually it was to play a role, sometimes to intimidate or sometimes to hide her anger; she hardly ever found something genuinely funny. Shaking her head to clear it and dragging her eyes away from the office door, she pulled her earphones back up and carried on with the sweep.
He’s an arrogant zhopa,* she reminded herself. He thought he was so indestructible that he could just dismiss his security team. He’d made her job ridiculously hard over the last four weeks. Remembering all the manicures she’d had to endure, not to mention the hair extensions, the clothes, and above all the lipstick called Fuchsia fucking Fusion, she pushed any thoughts of finding him amusing out of her head.
Safer that way.
* zhopa – asshole
