Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) (3 page)

He flashed a smile, a rarity these days, and entered the foyer, glancing at the immaculately tidy living room of the late Senator Heather Pasche.

“I’m Fallyn.” She held her hand out. “You must be Tony Gerard. Caroline told me you’d be here.”

He shook her hand, a brief clasp before letting go.

Her resemblance to her now deceased sister unnerved him. “Uh, Grey wanted me to let you know Teeg is on his way.”

“Teeg?”

“Yeah. He’s the Justice Team’s techie nerd. Grey said something about a tablet you needed help with.”

“Oh, that’s great. Thank you.”

Tony shrugged. “Don’t thank me. I’m the messenger. As far as the press, I’ll keep an eye on them, but I gave them the spiel about private property and they backed off. The cops at the corner helped.”

“There are cops at the corner?”

“As of ten minutes ago, yeah.”

Looking at this woman would never be torture. Her deep green eyes had a depth to them. Intense yet bright. Playful. Her light brown hair had lighter streaks and it accentuated her eyes, bringing out the green. Something told him she knew that. Knew that people, men particularly, would be drawn to them.

And the way she stared at him? The scrutiny. Hell, he could see the gears shifting. Like Grey, the Justice Team’s leader, she didn’t just look at you, she analyzed, mentally peeling back layers and figuring out how to extract what she needed.
Goddamn headshrinker.

Last thing he needed now was a psychological exam. What she found inside his head would scare the crap out of her. Send her screaming from the fuckup and wondering why Grey even trusted him.

“So you work with Caroline?” she asked.

Small talk. Great. “Um…Sort of.”

Three weeks ago Grey had approached him about full-time employment that entailed…well…whatever the hell they did in search of justice. At the time, it’d been a lifeline. A reason to leave the Supreme Court Police because without the chief, the man who’d been a father figure to Tony, the job was torment. Flat out horrendous. A daily bloodbath into the reminders of his failings.

But, of course, Tony’s boss at the Court, fearing the resignation had been a rash decision, one born of grief over the loss of the chief justice—ya think?—wouldn’t let him quit. Something Tony couldn’t rationalize since they should have strung him up for blowing his assignment. His sole job that morning had been to keep the chief safe. Instead, the man bled out on a bridge.

All that crap about it not being Tony’s fault? Who believed that?

Definitely not him. He’d lost control of the situation on the bridge, of the
chief
, and now the man was dead.

Period.

His boss though? He’d flat out refused his resignation. Made the argument that the chief’s death was too fresh to make such a radical decision.

Instead, they’d reached a compromise. Tony would take his three weeks banked vacation, go to an island, get some rest, get laid
,
and at the end of that time, if he still wanted to resign, they’d throw him a great going away party.

Except Tony hated the beach and he hated being idle. The getting laid part he could live with. That was a plan he could get behind, but that first night, sitting alone in his apartment, even picking up the phone to call a woman was too much work. Even if female company could fill the void, she’d eventually have to leave and he’d be alone again.

Boredom and his own looping thoughts terrorized him. Sleeping didn’t help. Between the dreams and his hyperactive brain, he’d relived the judge’s death a thousand times.

By the third day of his vacation, he’d called Grey and damned near begged him for a temporary assignment until he figured out what the hell to do with his life.

And how to stay sane.

Justice Greystone to the rescue.

“Sort of?” Fallyn teased. “You don’t sound too sure about that. You work for Mr. Greystone in what capacity?”

Still probing. But Tony had already diverted his eyes away from her and her analysis.
Nothing doing, lady
. He walked to the window, checked his peeps on the lawn. All good out there.

A cab pulled up and out hopped Teeg, the Justice Team’s wunderkind of hackers.

Saved by Geek Boy.

He strode to the door. “Teeg is here. Mind if I let him in?”

“By all means. I’ll get the tablet.”

Three minutes later, introductions and the uber-polite can-I-get-you-anything formalities were complete and Teeg plugged the tablet into his computer.

“This’ll take me a couple minutes,” he said.

Fallyn’s gaze came back to Tony.
More studying. Great.

“So, Mr. Gerard, how long have you worked for Grey?”

Yeah. She wasn’t gonna give up. He’d have to deal with her straight away. Tony looked back at her, made direct eye contact. “Not long. For the last five years I’ve been on a protection detail for the Supreme Court.”

“You work for Grey
and
you’re a bodyguard at the Court?”

Tony shrugged. He hated that term. But hell, if she’d shut up about his life, he’d let her call him anything she liked. “Yes, ma’am. Consider me a contractor for the Justice Team.” He smiled. “Moonlighting. Caroline was worried about your…situation.” He went back to Teeg who clicked a file, apparently making progress. “What have you got?”

“Not sure.”

He typed in a passcode and the lock screen morphed into a background of colors with a set of file folders lined up along the bottom.

“Neat and orderly,” Fallyn said. “Just like Heather. Can I take a look?”

Teeg turned the tablet toward her and she scrolled through a couple of folders, brought up two images of what looked like receipts.

Then she hit a folder with multiple files. She clicked one. A spreadsheet with columns appeared.

“I’m not sure what this is.” She angled the tablet back to Teeg. “It looks like dates and times, but this other column is a jumbled mess of letters, numbers, and special characters. Almost like passwords.”

“Yeah,” Teeg said. “But some have spaces in weird intervals, like a list of names, but the groupings don’t make sense.”

Tony had seen stuff like this. Classified documents. Hell, based on what Grey had told him, Fallyn probably dealt with shit like this on a daily basis. This was a woman who manipulated sensitive information for a living. Made it go her way.

Spin-doctor.

A job she was damned good at, from what he’d been able to find from his phone on the drive over.

She looked over Teeg’s shoulder. “You can’t figure it out?”

“I can figure out anything, just not in five minutes. The files are all coded with something I haven’t seen before and I don’t have a legend. It’ll take me some time. Couple days maybe.” He looked up at her. “I could take it with me.”

“No,” Fallyn said. “Absolutely not.”

In the weeks since Tony had met Teeg, he’d learned a few things. The first being that Teeg had zero interpersonal skills. A nice kid, but there was a reason he sat huddled behind a computer all day. He simply did not want to deal with the bullshit that came with talking to people. Give him a computer, a keyboard, and some action figures and Teeg was a happy guy. Which was no doubt why Teeg swung back to him with that
help-me
stare.

Hell.
Teeg wanted no part of this. Tony went back to Fallyn. “Ma’am—”

“Jesus,” she said, “will the two of you stop calling me ma’am? I can’t stand that.”

Tony nodded. “Of course. Sorry.
Ms. Pasche—”

She held up her hands. “Fallyn. Please.”

“Okay. Fallyn, Teeg is good. The best in DC, but we’re not talking about the Romper Room of hacking here. This tablet was locked in your sister’s safe and my guess is a United States senator doesn’t do that unless the device contains classified information. And classified information is hard to decode.”

Fallyn rolled her eyes. “I get that. Believe me, I’m not stupid about classified government documents.”

And, whoa, sister.
What was up with the attitude? Forgive him for trying to be helpful.

Whatever. He’d cut her some slack. He understood the grief and irritability that came with the loss of a loved one. “Never said you were. Just not sure what you expect him to do in ten minutes. Because, no offense, if he could decode a senator’s passcoded files that quickly, I want to move to Neverland and drink beer all day. At least there I’ll be safe from terrorists who can hack our government’s top secret files in three-point-five seconds.”

Fallyn’s head snapped up and those sharp eyes nearly took him apart.
Eeee-doggies
. Yeah, he’d been rude. Would probably get his butt chewed out for it, but miracle workers they weren’t.

“Fine.”

The word fine should have been obliterated from the English language. Fine never meant fine and it sure as fuck didn’t mean fine right now.

Teeg swiveled his head to Fallyn then to Tony, eyes wide with panic. Clearly, the kid hated conflict.

Tony let out a mental sigh. If they were gonna get this tablet into Teeg’s possession, Tony would have to be the one to do it. A job he didn’t much mind because he was stubborn enough to wear Fallyn down, to convince her to let them take the tablet.

Unlike Teeg, Tony wasn’t afraid of conflict. He, in fact, thrived on it, hungered for it. Fallyn Pasche, he was quickly figuring out, would be a worthy opponent.

He faced her, met her gaze head on. “Fine what?”

“Fine you should move to Neverland because you are not taking this tablet anywhere.”

Nice.

She grinned at him and that grin ignited a fire that got his junior brain—the one in his crotch—ready for all kinds of action.

Hello, Fallyn Pasche.

“Oh, crap,” Teeg said.

Tony set his hand on the kid’s shoulder, gave it a pat. “Take a break. Go have a smoke or something.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Then go outside and breathe. Give your lungs a treat so Fallyn and I can talk a minute.”

The kid stared up at him with some kind of weird hero worship and Tony snorted again. Total pisser, this kid.

Teeg leaped from his chair and headed for the front door, closing it gently behind him. All the while, Fallyn kept her eyes on Tony, still analyzing.

Chess.

The two of them on opposite sides strategically maneuvering, trying to capture the other’s king. And anything else that got in their way.

For him, checkmate meant walking out with that tablet.

Damned if it wasn’t twisted, but for the first time in five weeks, he got off on the anticipation. The battle.

Time to get to work.

But Fallyn wouldn’t be easy. He saw it in her rigid stance. Add to that the sharp curve of her cheekbones in contrast to her full, sexy lips and he might be done for. All that intensity mixed with feminine softness might just knock him to his knees. Again, something she was more than likely acutely aware of.

A burst of adrenalin roared into his brain and he breathed in. Enjoyed the high. Sick. That’s what he was.

Oh.

Well.

“Talk to me,” he said.

Her head dipped forward. “Talk to you?”

“Yep.”

She laughed. “About what?”

“About why you don’t trust us to take this tablet.”

Chapter Two

Tony Gerard was good. Really good. Alluring, focused eyes, wide shoulders, an almost military stance. A man who knew how to control a situation, as he’d proved by corralling the media.

He inched closer to her, crowding her a tad too much. “You know what the Justice Team does, right?”

“I…well…yes…”

She’d scanned the files on that tablet, finding nothing seemingly important at first. Receipts from a bed and breakfast in Virginia, a restaurant in the same town, and some ethics mumbo jumbo about previous cases the Supreme Court had ruled on involving military personnel.

After what she’d seen clients store on tablets, her sister’s inventory was downright boring. One client was keeping a detailed diary of his multiple affairs on a tablet when he died. The diary, discovered when the tablet was retrieved from a secret safe deposit box, devastated his wife and three kids.

“I understand your apprehension,” Tony said, “but you asked for help with the password and we came through. Decoding these files requires a little more time, but Teeg can do it, and anything on here is safe with the Justice Team. This is the team that exposed a crooked Attorney General and solved the murder of the Supreme Court Chief Justice. Grey has the highest security clearance possible.”

“Heather wasn’t just a senator. She’s—she
was
—my sister.”

“Even more reason to figure out why the tablet was in her safe.”

“But…”

“What?”

Something about this code and the fact her sister had stored the tablet in the safe made the red flags in Fallyn’s brain snap to attention. This was top-secret stuff, she’d bet her Louboutins on it.