Before going to Reese’s hotel, they swung by JT’s place so she could pick up some clothes for work the next day. She also grabbed her mail, and was in her kitchen going through the stack when an envelope from one of the financial institutions she dealt with caught her eye. Opening it, she read:
Dear Bitch! Get out town. Lamont Keel let you live. I won’t.
Reese walked in from the patio, and seeing her blanched face, hurried to her side. “What’s wrong?”
She handed him the letter and then sank to the floor. “Lord,” she whispered. She could feel herself shaking.
Reese read the note. A second later he was on the phone with Mendes, who turned him over to the FBI.
The local office sent two agents to view the note and to talk with JT. After she gave them the background on the Lamont Keel incident, she told them about the virus and what Bryce had said about it being targeted specifically at her. In response to the agents’ questions about who the perp might be, she shrugged. “The only person on my list is Bobby Garrett,” she said, then told them about the history between them, the vandalism to her car and the running feud he seemed intent on waging. “As a lawyer, I know it’s all circumstantial, but he’s the only one giving me any kind of grief.”
One agent, a redheaded woman named Brenda Tate, raised her green eyes from the notes she was taking and agreed. “It is circumstantial, but if he’s the one responsible for this letter, he’s crossed the line.” She then asked about any other people who might also have issues with JT, like old neighbors, former or present clients, old boyfriends. JT answered as best she could.
When Tate seemed satisfied that she had enough information, she and her male partner stood. “Okay, we’ll be in touch. In the meantime, you be careful. If anything else happens, or Mr. Anthony’s brother gets a line on that virus, call.”
“I will.”
JT walked them out, then looked over at Reese. His face was set like stone. “Why don’t you leave town for a few days while the Bureau works the case?”
“No.” Now that the initial shock had worn off, she was angry.
“Jessi—”
“No. I’m not going to be intimidated, at least not yet, and besides, I can’t leave. The preseason starts this weekend, and if I don’t show up, my people might start believing I really am in rehab.”
“What if whoever this is makes a move?”
“I have my nine-millimeter, the FBI, and I have you.”
He smiled. “Yes, you do.”
“I’m not dumb enough not to be scared, Reese, but I want to know who’s threatening me. If I leave town, I might never know.”
That made sense to him, but the urge to wrap her in cotton and keep her safe in his pocket was strong. “Okay, but you need to let those mountain men of yours know what’s going on so they can have your back too.”
That was already on her list of things to do in the morning. She’d call D’Angelo and Jason first thing. They’d pass the word to the others. She yawned and stretched. It had become an even longer day.
“So do you want to go to the hotel or stay here?”
She didn’t know, but she did know she didn’t want to be alone. “You choose.”
“Hotel. Better security.”
“Once a cop, always a cop.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Jessi.”
“And neither do I.” She lived in a gated community. No one could enter without the proper codes, and there was a valet on duty 24/7, but there were no armed guards patrolling the place. The idea that she might be at risk in her own home was a reality. “Let me throw some stuff in a bag and we’ll go.”
Reese nodded and with concerned eyes watched her head to her bedroom.
He was angry too. The sight of her ashen face as she’d handed him the letter would stay with him a long time. He never wanted to see her that way again. He also wanted to get his hands on the perp. Could Garrett be behind it? In reality, it could be anyone. But who? And why was the big question. Was the perp just trying to scare her, or intending to go through with the threat? There were too many unknowns for his liking.
She returned with a fancy designer satchel in hand. “When are you flying back to L.A.?”
“Supposedly tomorrow evening.”
His reply seemed to catch her off guard. “Okay. Are you taking the shuttle to the airport or do you need a ride?”
Leaving her was the last thing he wanted to discuss. “I don’t know. I may stick around for a few more days.”
“No. You go on back to L.A. and do your job. I’ll be fine.”
He walked over and lifted her chin so he could study her mesmerizing face. “You trying to get rid of me?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
He kissed her for a long moment, then held her tight against his heart. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, and if I’m not here, I’m going to worry.”
He leaned back so he could see her eyes.
“My great-great-grandfather was a Texas Ranger. His brother was one of the baddest outlaws in the West. I have good genes. I’ll be okay.”
He grinned and eased her back into his embrace. “If you put it that way.”
There was silence for a moment as they savored each other. She whispered, “You’re a great knight, Reese.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Just trying to protect and serve.”
They went back to the hotel and made love with a passionate possessiveness that further strengthened their bond, then they slept.
JT told Carole about the threatening letter first thing the next morning, and her secretary and friend was appalled. “Did you call the police?”
“And the FBI. They took the letter and said they’d be in touch.”
The worry on Carole’s face was plain. “Lord, JT. What next?”
“No idea. Let’s just hope they catch whoever it is.”
“Amen. In the meantime, we should turn the light back on.”
JT nodded. The red light had been installed inside JT’s office above the door after the Lamont Keel incident. The switch was located on a small wireless box on Carole’s desk. If there was trouble, Carole would hit the switch and the light would blink in JT’s office, hopefully giving her time to be armed and ready before the trouble burst in. The light hadn’t been needed since its installation, but it was now.
The new computer equipment was delivered, and as JT and Carole began unpacking it, Misha arrived, accompanied by Bryce carrying an armload of folded packing boxes. The two techies said their good mornings then went into the conference room to get the old computer and its parts boxed up. When they were done, they began configuring and setting up the new stuff.
After touching base with her lawyer about the previous night’s scary letter, and getting an update on Francine’s gelding of the sports network’s execs, JT spent the rest of the morning helping Misha and Bryce. The phones kept ringing, however. She’d called D’Angelo and Jason earlier to tell them about the mailed threat, and as a result every athlete she knew, client or not, had called to pledge their support. Some offered to camp outside her office, others volunteered their services as personal bodyguards. All of them wanted the perp’s name so they could grind the person into salt. Although she had no name to give, it made her feel good knowing they were willing to be her linemen in this ugly game she seemed to be playing.
Before taking a cab to JT’s office, Reese had spent the morning at the hotel’s business center waiting on faxes from various people like Mendes, Commissioner McNair, and his police contacts in Detroit. All the faxes had to do with Garrett. Now, after reading Garrett’s rap sheet and reviewing the names of the athletes he represented, he had an even truer portrait of the man, and it was getting uglier and uglier.
As JT had noted, on paper Garrett was an American success story. From gang member to the elite halls of one of the finest schools in the country, he seemingly had the world by the tail, but his client list had thinned in the last two years. His biggest cash cow, former Heisman Trophy winner Jermaine Crane, was serving a fifteen-year sentence for ties to illegal gambling and organized crime, and his big money contract had been voided. Reese wondered how much that had affected Garrett’s cash flow. With only six athletes on his roster, and none of them upper echelon, things had to be tight. He knew from talking to Jessi that she and Garrett had been after Keith Owens and that she was now representing the phenom. Had Garrett been angry enough about that to do something as stupid as threatening her life? More questions he didn’t have the answers to. He hoped she’d let her clients in on the letter, because the only way he’d sleep at night was if he knew that she had a bunch of gladiators standing between her and danger if he wasn’t around.
He entered the office and found it piled high with boxes. He gave the smiling secretary a smile of his own. “Morning, Carole. Is the boss lady in?” He glanced over at Jessi’s closed office door.
“Yep, she’s talking to some clients at the moment. She said you were to go on in when you arrived.”
Reese was surprised by that. “Okay.” He wondered who she was meeting with.
Bryce came out of the back carrying a box. Misha was behind him.
Reese asked, “Hey, you all set to fly home?”
Bryce set the box on the floor. “Yeah. Misha’s going to take me to the airport. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. JT’s great. Probably make an even greater sister-in-law.”
Misha grinned, as did Carole.
Reese knew better than to touch that. Instead, he said, “Safe flight,” then headed to JT’s office.
He knocked, and when she called for him to come in, he did. But when he opened the door, the sight of what had to be twenty-five men big enough to be sons of Atlas packed in the room like a bunch of sardines froze him where he stood. Not one of them looked happy.
“Hey, babe,” JT said.
Her smile seemed to free his feet. He closed the door behind him.
“Everybody, this is Reese Anthony,” she said. “Take a good look because you’re going to see him with me for quite some time, I hope.”
Grinning inside, he met the hostile stares of the men. “Nice meeting you.”
A few guarded mumbles were offered by some of them in response, and then came, “Doesn’t he work for Commissioner McNair?”
She replied easily, “Yes, he does.”
Somebody else cracked, “You sleeping with the enemy now, Lady Blake?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yep, but anybody dumb enough to think that’ll make me sell them down the river should get a new agent right now.” She looked around the room. “Anybody?”
No one moved.
“Good. Reese, these are my clients and my friends. I called them and told them about the letter.”
Reese nodded, but inside he was still reeling from the declaration she’d made to them about their relationship. He’d had no idea she was prepared to put her agency on the line for him. “Anything from the Bureau?” he asked.
“No. Reese is a former Detroit cop, everybody. Just so you’ll know.”
He saw the demeanor of some of the men change. A few stopped shooting daggers his way and others seemed to be checking him out in a new light. The big linebacker D’Angelo Nelson was one of them. He gave Reese an almost imperceptible nod and Reese replied in kind. His buddy, Jason Grant, the blond-haired Viking, did the same, and Reese acknowledged him too. He wasn’t naive enough to believe they’d all come around, but he didn’t need their approval, and JT had made that clear.
D’Angelo said, “Now that we’re all one happy family, let’s get back to business. I say we throw Garrett off the Golden Gate and see if he can swim.”
“You think he’s the one behind the letter?” Reese asked.
“Of course. Everybody knows he’s got it in for Lady B. Has for years.”
There were rumbles of agreement.
“Can we prove it, though?” she asked. “If I was Garrett’s lawyer—and thank God I’m not—I’d argue circumstantial evidence, because that’s all there is.”
Reese agreed. There was nothing tangible tying Garrett to anything other than being an arrogant jerk, and there were no laws on the books against that.
D’Angelo countered fiercely, “I still say we toss his ass off the Gate.”
His companions roared with approval.
In the end they all agreed that the only sensible and
legal course of action was to let the police handle the matter. Her gladiators weren’t pleased with the decision, but they knew the spine twisting and head bashing they wanted to inflict would only bring them up on charges.
They were getting to ready to leave when Jason looked her way. “Make sure you check in with somebody three times a day.”
“Three?” she protested loudly.
“Be glad it’s not every hour on the hour,” a big man Reese recognized as pro wrestler Death 2 U told her. “We’re worried about you, Lady B. Since you won’t let anybody crash at your house, except my man over there—” he gestured brusquely toward Reese.
“Don’t hate,” D’Angelo cracked.
Death dropped his head. Male laughter filled the room. Everyone knew he’d been hopelessly in love with JT since the day he signed with her. He regained his composure and stated, “My point is, if we can’t be with you 24/7, we need to know you’re okay.”
She nodded. “Point taken. I’m not going to do it three times a day, that’s out, but I will check in with somebody a couple times a day until this is over.”
“By phone, so we can hear your voice,” prompted all-pro defensive lineman Big Daddy McCoy. At six-foot-eight and 325, he was the most imposing figure in the room. “Anybody can send an e-mail claiming to be you.”
JT didn’t like all this cotton they wanted to wrap her in, but recognized that their hearts were in the right place, and she had no problem with that. She also knew that if she tried to argue, they most definitely would move in with her, Reese or no Reese. “Okay, I’ll check in by phone. I promise.”
That pleased them.
Now that they were satisfied, she was too, and so took a moment to give each of them a kiss on the cheek for their TLC. As she’d told Reese, the big men were more than clients, they were her friends. “Thanks, you all.”
They nodded, then D’Angelo led the troops out.
Once JT and Reese were alone, he told her, “I thought I was going to get eaten when I first walked in here.”
“They only eat people on Sunday, so you were safe.”
They shared a smile. He added, “Liked the way you stood up for me.”
“It’s the truth. I hope you do stick around.” And she did. For how long, she didn’t know, but she was enjoying taking it day by day.
He walked over and gently locked his arms around her waist. He thought she looked good in the black suit she was wearing. “Whatever the lady wants.”
The kiss that followed was soft, potent. When it was over they embraced silently while the unspoken words flowed. He placed a kiss on her forehead above the perfectly arched brows and stepped back. “I have time to grab a quick lunch, then head to the airport. Can you go?”
“Yes.”
On the drive to the airport after lunch, JT was already missing him, and he hadn’t even gotten out of the car. The threatening letter she’d received flitted across her mind, but she pushed it back down. “When do you think you’ll be able to visit again?”
“Saturday afternoon. The commissioner is flying in for Sunday’s opening game, and I’m part of the entourage.”
She liked the sound of that. “I’ll be there too. I’m sitting in the owner’s box.”
“Really?”
“I’ve a couple of clients on his team with contract issues, and Kyle’s trying to sweeten me up so I’ll stop beating up on his GM, Pete Landers.”
“Kyle?” he asked, looking her way.
“Kyle Miller. The owner of the Oakland Earthquake?”
Reese knew Miller’s name from newspaper articles and from the orientation files Tay McNair had faxed him when he first hired on. “Fifty years old. Owner and CEO of the largest minority software firm in the world.”
“That’s him.”
“I don’t remember hearing about a Mrs. Miller.”
“Because there isn’t one.” She laughed and glanced his way as she switched lanes to head into the airport complex. “You aren’t one of those crazy jealous men, are you?”
He shrugged. “Never had anybody to be crazy jealous about.”
Her eyes reflected her mirth. “Kyle has tried to hit on me, but he’s not my type. He’s one of those ‘want to put a sister in a cage’ kind of brothers, and I wasn’t doing that.”
“Good to know.”
She chuckled and merged into the traffic.
A few minutes later she slowed the Lex to a stop in front of his terminal. Because of the security edicts, they knew the airport police wouldn’t let her idle longer than a few minutes at the curb, so he leaned over and gave her a kiss good-bye. “I’ll call you later. Keep yourself safe.”
“I will.”
She watched him grab his bags out of the trunk. He waved and she waved back, really missing him now. The policeman whistled her to get a move on, so she took one last look at Reese going into the terminal and drove off.
She was on the highway when her phone rang. It was Reese. “I thought you said later,” she said, laughing. Who knew one man could bring so much delight?
“It is later.”
While she drove to the office they talked about everything and nothing, like two teenagers playing at love, until he boarded the plane.
The rest of the week was uneventful; no drama in the mail, with the newly installed computers, or with any more rumors about rehab visits. The FBI called to check on her and admitted it might be weeks before the letter came back from the lab. She was disappointed, but they promised to keep her posted. Neither she nor Misha heard from Bryce, but they assumed he’d call when he had something.
She missed Reese, though, and talked to him as often as their schedules allowed, which was mostly after dark. As promised, she checked in regularly with Jason and D’Angelo, but at the end of the day it was Reese’s rich mahogany voice that sent her off to sleep.
Reese was driving in an area of L.A. that could have been any urban neighborhood in the country. The sidewalks were filled with young bloods hanging out, kids on their way home from school, men and women standing at bus stops waiting to go to or from work. Beauty parlors and nail shops shared the blocks with dollar stores, heavily armored dry cleaners, and abandoned buildings that butted next to small convenience stores with signs out front reading,
WE CASH CHECKS.
As Frankie Beverly sang about a ”Southern Girl,” he parked his nondescript rental car in front of the small yellow building that sported the address he’d been looking for and got out. This would be his fifteenth pawnshop of the day. He knew how stretched thin the local police were, so with Mendes’s blessing he was canvassing on his own.
The clerk behind the desk was White and wearing a tattered red T-shirt so faded and old you could barely read the slogan:
SAVE THE WHALES.
He was big enough to be one of JT’s clients. Intricately rendered tattoos flowed up his massive arms like living things, swirling around his throat, totally obscuring his skin. The clerk checked him out with wary suspicion in his brown eyes, then asked, “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for one of these.” Reese showed him the ad he’d downloaded with the picture of the brand of music player given to Gus Pennington by his grandson, Chris.
The clerk glanced at it, then back up at Reese. “You looking to buy one or looking for something specific?”
“Specific. The word ‘Pops’ is engraved on the front.”
“Belong to you?”
“No. My father. It was stolen off his body at the funeral home.”
The big man stared. “Damn.”
Reese nodded. “One of my nephews is a crack-head.”
“Gotcha. Well, nothing like that’s come in. You got a number just in case it does? Stealing from the dead is whack.”
He slid one of the store’s flyers across the counter, and Reese put his cell number on it, saying, “We promised the old man we’d bury it with him so he could take his jazz to heaven, but evidently my nephew had other plans.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Reese slid the flyer back. “Appreciate the help.”
“Any time.”
Reese stepped out into the sunshine and drove to the next address on his list.
By the time he walked into his hotel room at the L.A. airport, he was dog tired. Dropping down onto the sofa, he rolled his head back and just sat. After visiting what seemed like a hundred pawnshops and resale stores, he was no closer to the whereabouts of Pennington’s player than when he first set out that morning. In reality, the pawnshops were a shot in the dark. A device as hot as the digital clip music player was more likely to be kept by someone than pawned, but sometimes shots in the dark paid off. Not today.
He walked over to the small fridge and pulled out a cold can of cola. Neither he nor Mendes had been able to get an audience yet with the Grizzlies owner, Big Bo Wenzel. According to his office, he was still out of town. Rather than believe the man was avoiding the interview, Reese decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Wenzel would be at the game on Sunday, and so would he. Being part of the commissioner’s crew guaranteed that. He wouldn’t be able to quiz Wenzel about the Pennington case, of course, but he would at least get a good look at him, and for a cop, sometimes that had to be enough.
He picked up the room phone and ordered dinner from the room service menu. While waiting, he thought about JT. He wanted to call her and hear her voice, but she was doing her thing in New York City at a basketball game and he felt he had no right to disturb her. One of her former clients was having his jersey retired during halftime, and she’d flown out to participate in the celebration.
Although it had only been three days since he’d seen her last, it seemed like months. The sheer depth of the feelings he had for her scared him to death. A man was never supposed to get so taken with a woman that he wanted to see her every second of every day, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to tell her. He hadn’t, but he sensed she knew. Back in the day, he’d considered himself seriously in love with his ex, Suzanne, but in hindsight? Puppy love. Play love. None of what he felt during his marriage came even close to his need to have the Lady Blake in his life.
He was eating dinner when Bryce called. “Hey, baby brother. What’s up?”
“You, man. How’s your lady?”
“Good.”
They talked about what was happening at home. Jamal and Pops were back from their world travels and were getting Pops’s garden ready for spring.
“I called to tell you that somebody put a hit on JT.”
Reese froze. “A hit! When? Give me a name!”
Bryce went silent for a moment, as if hearing himself, then said, “Wait. Back up. Not a gun hit. I’m talking about a virus hit on her computer.”
Reese let out a long sigh of relief. “You’re killing me here, Brain.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay, start over.”
“I found the info in the Underworld.”
“Where?”
“Underworld. It’s what we call the underbelly of the Internet.”
“The Internet has an underbelly?”
“Yeah, deep down the rabbit hole. Lots of action down there too. Boards full of messages for hacking bounties on unreleased software, patches, corporate data bases. Somebody aboveground contacted one of the trolls and he took the job.”
“What the hell is a troll?”
“An underbelly dweller.”
Reese shook his head. “I feel like I’m in Middle Earth, but go ahead.”
“Trolls make their living hacking, and some of their brains make mine look like yours.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just joking,” he laughed.
Reese wasn’t. “Go on.”
“Anyway to make a long story short—”
“Thank God.”
“Somebody put out a call for a hit, and a kid in Seattle answered. I talked to him. He said the hit was posted on one of the boards. The customer sent him two hundred dollars up front and another two hundred when the job was done.”
“Does he know the person’s name?”
“Of course not. Nobody has a real name down there.”
“Silly me. So how do we find this customer?”
“We don’t. The kid never asked for a name, and the payments were cash. Snail mail. Unmarked envelope.”
“You think he’s telling the truth about not knowing more?”
“I do. Freaked him out that I found him. I could tell he was scared.”
“So JT lost all of her data for a lousy four hundred dollars? How old is this kid?”
“Fifteen, and that’s a fortune when you’re that age.”
Reese sighed his frustration. “Okay. You did good, Brain.”
“Thanks. You’re not going to tell the FBI about him, are you? My boys and I are trying to seduce this kid over to the light.”
“No, Skywalker. He’s safe from the emperor’s Death Star. At least for now.”
“Good.”
After they ended the call, Reese went back to his now cold dinner, but his mind was on the threats hanging over JT.
JT loved the perks of her job, and being able to sit in the owner’s box with its plush seats, perfectly chilled champagne, and fancy appetizers was one of the best. Better still was the car Kyle Miller had sent to bring her to the stadium. Not having to deal with the traffic had been a blessing. This was the first game of the World League Football preseason. The regular season ran from mid-spring to late summer. During the first two years of the new league’s existence, it tried to compete with the old league by playing in the fall, but it took such a financial beating that four of the original ten teams folded. To save the rest of the fledgling franchises, the games were switched to the spring, with good results for both the owners and players because the upstart WLF teams played old school football, and fans like JT loved it.
“More champagne, JT?”
She looked up at her host and smiled. “No, Kyle, I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
As he walked back up the stair to the top of the suite where the sumptuous buffet was spread out, she had to admit that he wasn’t a bad looking fifty-year-old man. He had polish, a dry sense of humor, and dressed very well, but he wore a rug on his head that looked like it had been purchased in a back alley at night. How on earth he could believe anyone would think it real never ceased to amaze her because he wore it every time she saw him. He’d even worn it in a photo that ran on the cover of
Forbes
last winter. She smiled to herself and sipped.