Mike nodded. “Okay. Just keep up with your mindfulness meditation exercises, and if you feel like you need to talk, come find me.”
“I will,” Carter promised.
Hale would have asked what all of that meant, but Mike chose that moment to push back his chair. “I’m going to see if they’ve been able to get that guy to say anything. You two should head home to get some rest.”
“Sure you’re not going back in there to spend some more time with Chief Leclair?” Hale teased. “Don’t think the Pack hasn’t noticed the way the two of you are always together. When are you going to ask her out?”
Mike gazed at him, his expression blank. “I’m not interested in dating the chief, or anyone for that matter, so you can tell the Pack to stop betting their hard-earned money on how long it takes me to ask.”
He walked out of the room before Hale even thought of a snappy comeback, the door leading to the interrogation room down the hall clanging shut behind him a few moments later.
“I really thought Mike had a thing for the chief,” Hale said. He’d caught Mike gazing at Shanette Leclair more than once with an expression that had nothing to do with her outstanding leadership abilities. “But what do I know?”
Carter grunted in reply as they left the room and headed for the exit.
“Hey,” Hale said, glancing at Carter as they stepped outside. “I just wanted to echo what Mike said. If you need someone to talk to, about anything, I’m here for you.”
Carter didn’t say anything, but then, after a moment, gave him a barely perceptible nod.
Hale figured that was the best he was going to get from his pack mate.
Chapter 4
“You’re Mr. Patterson’s new bodyguard?” the burly security guard at the front gate of the new assembly plant asked, clearly dubious. “Seriously?”
From where Karissa stood in front of the small guard shack, she watched from the corner of her eye as several other guards stared at her as covertly as they could. They’d obviously heard the rumors that she was the high-priced talent brought in to protect Patterson. Going by the skeptical looks on their faces, they didn’t seem to believe it, either.
“Seriously,” she told him with a soft laugh. “I prefer personal protection expert,though given the obscenely large amount of money he’s paying me, I suppose he can refer to me as his bodyguard if he wants to. Though I’m not sure what he’s going to think of paying me all that money just to stand outside the gate of his fancy new assembly plant, staring at the place.”
The security guard flushed. “Right. Of course. I have to call the head of security first. You’re not on the access list they gave us.”
Karissa nodded, not surprised.
She moved a little away from the small building to allow them to do whatever it was they werepaid to do. She didn’t miss the way most of the men continued to regard her with a mix of curiosity and doubt. She was used to those looks. She was well aware that she didn’t exactly fit the mold of the typical bodyguard. While she was fit and toned, she was barely five seven. She came off more as the girl next door than as a kick-ass superhero. Then again, maybe that’s why she’d received Athena’s gifts when others hadn’t.
From where she stood by the perimeter fence, Karissa took in the clean lines of the buildings beyond the immense parking lot of freshly laid asphalt. For a place that should be the definition of utilitarian, Patterson’s automotive assembly plant was strangely beautiful, with sweeping architectural features that were there for no other reason than to make the facility look like more than a simple collection of metal boxes. In her limited reading on Patterson, she’d learned that this grand design style was somewhat of a signature for him. He liked to go big.
She’d come here this morning for several reasons. The first was to sit down with the man she was protecting and get him to understand that he couldn’t continue to treat this like a joke. Next, she needed to get a feel for the people closest to her employer to see if any of them might be involved in this murder attempt. Lastly, she needed to look into his schedule and make sure she knew where he’d be and when.
Karissa didn’t work like a typical bodyguard, staying in her client’s hip pocket 24/7. Instead she depended on her Paladin instincts to tell her when her client would be in danger. One look at Patterson’s schedule and she’dknowwhen the hit man would strike again. She didn’t try and understand how that particular gift worked. It simply did, and she trusted it.
Normally, she would have taken care of all this stuff within the first few hours of meeting her client. This job was anything but normal. She’d been in Dallas for three days now and hadn’t even met Patterson yet. It bothered the crap out of Karissa that she had to work so hard to get the bare minimum information she needed to do her job. Seriously, if Patterson didn’t want her to protect him, why didn’t he tell her? She’d gladly leave.
Okay, maybe not, she thought, a spike of anxiety rippling through her at the notion. A supernatural predator was hunting Dominic Patterson. Her gifts wouldn’t let her leave before she confronted that threat and dealt with it. The downside of being a Paladin was that sometimes it took on responsibilities that she’d rather have no dealings with.
As five minutes became ten, even the guards in the shack grew bored of gaping at her. While she waited, Karissa found images of Hale popping into her head. She hadn’t been able to sleep much last night, her head spinning with mentalGIFs of her encounter with the man she’d known ten years ago.
She couldn’t help thinking about how much bigger he’d gotten since high school. Yeah, it had been a decade, but while she remembered her ex-boyfriend being pretty good in the muscle department back then, it was nothing compared to now. He had to be well over six feet tall and was probably two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle. And while it didn’t seem possible since he’d been super cute back when she’d known him, he was even better looking now. Simply put, he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen.
Those thoughts led inevitably to the one area Karissa had been avoiding like the plague—her feelings for him. Willing or not, Deven had dragged a lot of the story out of her last night. He’d wanted to know everything, including how they’d met, how they’d fallen for each other, and then how they’d fallen apart. It was probably an exaggeration, but she swore that last night’s convo with her brother had been as painful as the original event. It felt like she’d torn open old wounds that had healed over.
But no matter how painful those memories were, there was no denying the reality that Karissa had been in love with Hale Delaney. Or at least she’d thought it was love in her naive and idealistic teenage mind. Even now, ten years after the fact, she could remember quite clearly how she’dthought the two of them would be together forever. The memories of how badly it had hurt when he’d dumped her still felt like acid pouring through her soul.
Seeing Hale last night, and then talking about him with Deven for hours, had brought back nearly all of those old feelings. The ones she’d thought long gone, buried, and dead. This morning, and even now, her heart was still aching. Part of her desperately wanted to see him again, but there was another part that simply didn’t want to put herself through any more pain.
Karissa was relieved when she caught sight of a dark-haired man in a suit walking across the parking lot toward the entry gate. His stride was quick and efficient, with military precision.
“Jerome Guerrero,” the man said the moment he stepped through the gate, approaching her with a hand outstretched. “I’m chief of security for the Patterson Group. I’m the one who insisted on bringing you in for the protection detail, along with the boss’s son, Glenn. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to meet you in person. All I can say in my defense is that the boss is a proud man. Admitting that he needs help is difficult for him. And accepting that help from outsiders isn’t his way.”
