Or maybe he just needed to get laid more often. That was entirely possible too, considering how desperate he was to get right in the middle of those two men.
The waitress arrived with their drinks: a tall beer for Raiden, a vodka tonic for Lawrence, and a Manhattan for Cash. Lawrence slipped her a couple of bills, then raised his glass in the air. “To an evening without any black eyes,” he said cheerfully.
Cash snorted. Raiden threw a serious fucking punch, and he came far too close for comfort to smashing Cash’s nose. But he ignored his aching back, and the bruises the concrete surely left, and raised his glass anyway. “No black eyes,” he agreed with a smile. “Just sparkling smiles for you, sweetheart.”
Raiden tensed with a growl when he called Lawrence a sweetheart but raised his own glass anyway. Cash straightened his back, ready to flirt with Lawrence a bit more, if only just to keep antagonizing the bodyguard. But then he remembered the research he’d pulled on the guy, and his sympathies kicked back into gear.
“You from around here, Raiden?” he asked, knowing damn well the answer.
“Pennsylvania. Why do you ask?”
“Just small talk,” Cash answered. “You know, favorite movies? Childhood pets? That sort of thing.”
“Legally Blondeand a beagle named Roxanne,” Lawrence chimed in.
“North by Northwestand a cat named Elma,” Cash replied, and they both turned to Raiden.
He took a drink of his beer. “Charlie’s Angels,” he said flatly. “And a bunch of hamsters.”
“See?” Cash teased. “That’s not so hard.” Cash had even given his honest answer, as he found he tended to do when talking to Lawrence. Sure, it felt a little odd to use a fake name and lie about his purpose, but something urged him to be as honest as possible anyway. “AndCharlie’s Angels, hey? You looking to join an elite private force? With a punch like yours, you could probably pull it off.”
“Who says I’m not already part of an elite private force?”
That wouldn’t actually characterize Raiden and his friends, considering they didn’t get beyond robbing local criminals and corrupt, minor politicians. But then again, Cash fancied himself a bit of a hero sometimes, so he wasn’t one to judge.
“Raiden is a member of Kaiser Security,” Lawrence said with some pride, resting his hand on his bodyguard’s bicep.
Cash felt a pang of jealousy at their touch, which he shook away. “A family company?” he asked. “Are you one of the Kaisers?”
“Not exactly,” Raiden answered. “My father died years ago. But Kaiser treats each other like family, in our own way.”
“Sorry about your father,” Cash said quickly, scolding himself for having missed that information.
“Like I said, years ago,” Raiden answered. “And we didn’t come here to talk about my father’s heart attack, or the shitty town I grew up in.”
“To moving on,” Cash said, raising the glass again. “Now if you’ll excuse me for just a moment…”
He exited the booth and hurried to the bathroom, his head spinning. Although he’d missed the information about Raiden’s father dying in his research, he hadn’t missed what town the guy grew up in. It wasn’t very different than his own hometown, with a factory owned by a Horizon Zed subsidiary right in the center and environmental pollution up the wazoo.
Cash locked the small bathroom door behind him and tried to gather himself. He’d been seeing Raiden as a foil, someone he could play with while he got closer to Lawrence. The bodyguard seemed to be only a minor adversary, at best. But, Cash wondered, did Raiden understand that Horizon Zed was most likely responsible for his father’s heart attack? Many people wouldn’t link the particulate matter in the air from that factory to a heart condition, but Cash knew better, and he knew the corporation went above and beyond to break the regulations meant to prevent such a thing.
Cash was well aware who he should blame for the death of his own parents. What did it mean if Raiden had faced the same loss?
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he frowned when he saw the name that popped up, “Grumpy No-Fun.”
“Hello, Reed,” he said, his voice loud in the tiny bathroom. “So lovely to hear from you this evening.”
“Cut the crap, Cash. You got anything for me on this job yet?”
“I told you, I’m spinning my web. It takes a little time to do these things right.”
Reed snorted. “I hired you because you’re fast, Cash, not because I like your style. The money behind this job is getting impatient. Got it?”
Cash sat back on the edge of the sink. He didn’t trust Reed, not at all, and he certainly wasn’t going to hand Lawrence over to him, not now that his affections were growing. “Next week,” he said. “Or maybe the next. I’ll deliver my first full report straight to your office, I promise.”
“Fast, Cash,” Reed barked. “Or else I’m pulling the trigger.”
The phone went dead. Cash sighed, then turned to the mirror to fix his hair. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” he muttered, then returned to the bar.
