Justine Davis - Backstreet Hero

But Tony Alvera wasn’t a man who was easily intimidated.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Taylor Hill,” Draven said mildly, “meet Tony Alvera. Pay attention, you may have to work with him someday. I hear it’s an adventure.”

Tony had heard that Draven was bringing in someone new, to fill in now that Samantha Gamble, married to Redstone’s resident genius, Ian Gamble, was visibly pregnant. Sam might grumble about being tied to a desk, but her work instincts were trumped by newfound maternal ones, and she’d ruefully agreed that going into the field on assignments that could turn risky was not in her best interest just now.

For a moment Tony thought of Ian, that brilliant, creative mind that had put Redstone on the map in so many new fields that not even Josh could keep track of them all. As had most at Redstone, Tony had marveled from the beginning at the unlikelihood of Ian and Sam’s relationship—the man some teasingly called the absentminded professor and the stunning, leggy blonde.

He’d been even more bemused by the easy way Ian seemed to accept the differences between them, accept Sam’s sometimes dangerous job and the fact that she was one of the best at it. He often joked he was the brains while his wife was the brawn with brains. Tony wasn’t sure he could so blithely accept his woman working in a traditionally masculine role.

At the same time, he utterly and totally respected Samantha Gamble and her skills and would gladly have her at his back in any tough situation. The conflict niggled at him, but he didn’t dwell on it much, preferring to see it as a hangover from days past that he tried not to think about. When he did think about them, it was usually with a rueful jab at himself and the street gang culture of machismo he’d grown up in.

The woman in the office was standing now, studying him less than subtly as she held out a hand. He took it—her grip was solid but not overly so—and automatically assessed her in turn, a habit ingrained in him during his years with Redstone Security.

Taylor Hill was an ordinary-looking woman, with straight, medium brown hair pulled back rather severely at the nape of her neck. She was average height and build, her features regular but not striking. She was neither unattractive nor beautiful, but fell in the unremarkable category.

The perfect person for security work, Tony thought. She could probably blend in anywhere.

“Nice to meet you,” she said politely, and his opinion suddenly changed. That low, husky voice would stand out in any man’s mind. And make him wonder, if she sounded like that now, what she might sound like in more intimate circumstances.

But he had no time for speculating about other women at the moment.

“You, too,” he replied, aware it was a disconnected nicety but unable to help it.

“I was about to send Taylor off on her first assignment,” Draven said in a casually chatty manner completely unlike him. “Nothing like starting out doing a favor for Josh himself.”

That snapped Tony to attention. Was there something else going on at Redstone besides what he’d come here about? “Josh has a problem?”

“One of his people has a problem, so yes, you could say that.”

Tony felt the adrenaline spurt ebb a little. He looked his boss in the eye, a task more easily said than done to almost anyone who had to deal with the steely, tough John Draven.

“Lilith,” he said.

Draven’s brow rose again. “You know?”

“Beck,” he said briefly, knowing that would explain; Logan Beck, the newest—well, now apparently second newest—member of the security team, was engaged to Liana Kiley, Lilith Mercer’s assistant.

He was also Tony’s partner in situations that required a twoman team; they’d worked well together on Logan’s case, and although he generally preferred to work alone—as did Logan—Tony was now amenable to the pairing when necessary.

“I’ll handle it,” Tony said.

Draven lifted a brow. “What?”

“This one’s mine.” At Draven’s expression, Tony turned back to Taylor, who was watching this exchange curiously. “Would you excuse us for a minute, please?”

The woman’s glance flicked to Draven, who, after a split second, gave her a barely perceptible nod. She didn’t miss the signal and left without a word.

“She’s going to be good,” Draven said when Tony didn’t speak right away.

“Yeah,” Tony muttered.

He began to pace the small room. Now that he was here and had his boss’s attention, he had no idea what to say. He should, he realized, have thought about this a little more before he’d burst in.

He should have thought about it a little more, period, he thought. Had he learned nothing from Lisa? Had he forgotten standing in the morgue, looking down at her lifeless body, knowing she was there because of him?

I’m trying to stop something like that from happening again, he told himself as Draven continued to speak of the woman who had just left.

“She did some good work at Redstone in Toronto. She was ready to move up.”

“Yeah.”

Silence seemed to echo in the room while Tony continued to pace and tried to figure out what to say.

“You got back last night?”

“Yeah.”

He left it at that. The Hawk IV that had picked him up in Caracas had actually touched down a little after 1:00 a.m., so technically this morning, but he knew Draven already knew that. And he’d already filed his report in flight, so he knew Draven knew the final result of his investigation into the local kickback problem as well.

“You know,” Draven said at last, “I’m told I talk more than I used to these days, but I’m in no way comfortable carrying on a whole conversation myself. What do you want, Alvera?”

Tony stopped mid-stride and spun around to face his boss. “I want this job.” There, he thought. It was out.

“What job?”

“The one you were going to give her,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the door where Taylor had exited.

Draven frowned. “I don’t think this is anything that requires your…unique skills, Tony.”

“Nothing does, at the moment.”

Not really his decision to make, but he knew it was true. Lucky for him, Draven was in a flexible mood this morning.

“There may not even be a real problem,” his boss said. “It could just be a fluke, coincidence. Accidents and pranks do happen.”

Not to Lilith, Tony thought.

“It’s probably nothing, but Josh wants to be sure,” Draven said. “You know how he is about his people.”

“Yes. I do.”

No one knew better than he did about Josh Redstone. Tony doubted there was another man on the planet who would have done what Josh did after an angry, scared, knife-wielding gangbanger had tried to mug him outside an L.A. hotel. Tony hadn’t even realized he was trying to rob the wunderkind whose Redstone Aviation was beginning to soar, had seen only a man headed toward a limo, which to him had meant money and made the man a target.

He hadn’t expected that the man would fight back, and well enough to have his sixteen-year-old ass on the pavement in less than ten seconds.

And he never would have dreamed that that man, not even ten years older than he himself, would see something in that angry kid, something that, instead of calling the cops as he should have, made him give Tony the chance of a lifetime. The chance at a life.

A life he would always owe to Josh Redstone.

“This is probably nothing a couple of days of simple investigation can’t close,” Draven said, looking at him with growing curiosity, the last thing Tony wanted.

“Then I won’t be tied up long,” he said, more sharply than he liked.

Draven’s mouth quirked slightly. “You really want this?”