Kat Martin - Against the Storm

“On the house,” Betty said. “It’s the least I can do.”

Maggie smiled. “Thanks.”

“You new in the neighborhood?”

She nodded. “I just bought one of those town houses they built a few blocks away. Vaulted ceiling upstairs. Good north light, great place to work, you know?”

“Welcome, then. Maybe we’ll see you again.”

“If it’s always this much fun in here,” Roxanne said, “I’m sure you will.”

Betty just laughed.

Maggie put her Nikon back in its case and slung the straps of the camera bag and her purse over her shoulder. Roxanne tossed a couple bills on the table for a tip, and the two walked out the door.

“You know that trouble you been having?” Roxy said.

Maggie paused. “What about it?”

“That cowboy…he’s in the security business and he’s an investigator. He might be able to help you.”

Maggie started to argue, to say she didn’t need any help. Then she thought of the way Trace Rawlins had handled those three men. “I hope it doesn’t come to something like that.”

But it might and both of them knew it. For more than a month, someone had been following her, phoning her and hanging up, leaving messages on the windshield of her car. So far it hadn’t been more than that, but it was frightening just the same.

When she got home, she was going to look up the number for Atlas Security.

And write it down beside Trace Rawlins’s name.

Trace returned to the Atlas Security office on Times Street. He lived in a house in the University District not far away, a place with a yard for Rowdy, his black-and-white border collie, with big shady trees and an old-fashioned, covered front porch. When his dad died, Trace had inherited the house along with the business, a company his father had started when he first got out of the army.

Seth Rawlins had been a Ranger, a tough son of a bitch. Following in his footsteps, Trace had also enlisted and become a Ranger, figuring on a career in the military. Then six years ago, his dad had been killed in a car accident and Trace had come home to take over the business as he knew his father would have wished.

He slowed his dark green Jeep Grand Cherokee, pulled into the parking area in front of his office and turned off the engine. Recently, he had purchased the two-story brick structure—or rather, he and the bank owned it together until he paid off the mortgage. Which, since his profits were up and he was making double payments, he hoped wouldn’t take too long.

In the years since he’d taken over his father’s business, he had doubled the size of the company and opened a branch in Dallas. As a kid, with his dad gone much of the time, he had been raised on his grandfather’s ranch, a place where hard work was expected of a man. Trace still owned the ranch, but it was leased out to a cattle company now. He only went out there once in a while, to check on the old house and the acreage he’d retained around it, but he always enjoyed the time he spent in the country.

He wiped his feet on the mat in front of the office door and stepped inside. The walls were painted dark green and the place was furnished simply, with oak desks for his staff and oak furniture in the waiting area. Framed photos of cattle grazing in the pastures on the ranch hung on the walls.

He looked over to the reception area. “Hey, Annie, what’s up?”

Seated behind her desk, his office manager, Annie Mayberry, glanced up from typing on her computer.

“You got a couple of calls, nothing too exciting.” Annie was in her sixties, with frizzy gray hair dyed blond, and a rounded figure from the doughnuts she loved to eat in the morning.

“Maybe you could give me a hint,” Trace drawled.

She pulled off her reading glasses. “You got a call from Evan Schofield. He says Bobby Jordane is threatening to sue you for assault. Evan says not to worry about it. Bobby couldn’t stand for anyone to find out he got his—I’m quoting here—‘ass whipped’ the way he did.”

Trace chuckled, but Annie’s penciled eyebrows went up. “So you got in a fight with Bobby Jordane?” Disapproval rang in her voice. “I thought you’d outgrown that kind of thing.” Annie had worked for his father before Trace had taken over. She had mothered Seth Rawlins, who had lost his wife when Trace was born, then mothered Trace, since he didn’t have one.

“It wasn’t exactly a fight. More like a discussion with fists. Mostly mine.” Absently, he rubbed his bruised knuckles.

“You know you’re getting way too old for that rough stuff.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She was a small woman, but feisty. She didn’t take guff from anyone, including him, and that was exactly the way he wanted it. “What else have you got?”

“The Special Olympics called looking for a donation. I phoned the bookkeeper, told her to send them a check.”

“Good. What else?”

“Marvin’s Boat Repair called. Joe says he’s finished working on your engine. Ranger’s Lady’s running like a top.”

Trace nodded. “I think I’ll go down to Kemah for the weekend.” As often as he could manage, Trace made the forty-mile trip to where he docked his thirty-eight-foot sailboat. He loved being out on the water. There were times he wondered if being a SEAL wouldn’t have been a better fit than being a Ranger. But then he wouldn’t have met Dev Raines and Johnnie Riggs, two of his closest friends, and guys like Jake Cantrell.

“Jake called,” Annie said as if she read his thoughts, which she seemed to have a knack for doing. “He’s taking a job down in Mexico for a while. He’ll be gone at least a couple of weeks, maybe more.”

Jake had come to Houston with Trace after they’d finished a rescue mission with Dev and Johnnie that took them into Mexico. Cantrell, a former marine, mostly freelanced, hiring himself out as a bodyguard for executives who worked for big corporations. He had worked in the Middle East but specialized in South America. Jake did pretty much anything that wasn’t illegal and paid him plenty of money.

“That it?”

Annie handed over three more messages. “One’s a potential client. You’ll need to call him back. And Hewitt Sommerset called.” He was CEO of Sommerset Industries. “He wants to talk to you about that report you just finished.”

Hewitt believed one of his employees was embezzling funds. The surveillance equipment Atlas installed had proved he was right.

“I’ll call him right now.”

“The third message is from Carly. If I were you, I’d lose that one.”

He scowled, stared down at his ex-wife’s name scrolled on the paper. “Anything important?”

“The usual. Said she just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

Trace crumpled the note and tossed it into the trash can beside Annie’s desk. For some strange reason he was a magnet for needy women. It was no surprise he had married one. He’d been divorced from Carly nearly four years, something the petite redhead had a way of forgetting.

Trace walked past Annie’s desk into the main office area. Sol Greenway was working away at one of his three computers. At twenty-two, Sol was Atlas’s youngest employee and a near genius when it came to electronics. Sol handled background security checks, security problems, information retrieval, online forensic services, and just about anything else that had to do with computers.

In the middle of the office, Ben Slocum and Alex Justice, both freelance investigators, sat behind their desks. Ben had his cell phone pressed against his ear. Alex was cleaning his Glock 9 mm.

“How’d it go with Arnold Peters?” Trace asked Alex.

“I took him the photos. His wife was seeing some oversexed football player. Peters took one look, broke down and cried like a baby.”