Protector for Hire (23 page)

She held the phone in her palm, considering it. Schwartz had deemed it safe to use before. It was supposedly untraceable. Fingers trembling, she dialed her sister’s number. The phone rang once, twice, three times, then clicked over to Anna’s voicemail.

Hi, you’ve reached Anna Keebler of Anna’s Wild Weddings. I’d love to help you plan your big day, so leave your name, number, and a message, and I’ll get back to you right away. Have a great day!

Janelle closed her eyes, not sure if the wave of sadness that hit her came from missing her sister or the thought that the odds of ever having a big day with Schwartz were about as high as her odds of winning a Nobel Prize.

She waited for the beep, then cleared her throat. “Hey, Anna. It’s me. It’s Saturday, so I’m guessing you’re in the middle of a wedding. Anyway, I’m sure Grant told you the police made the arrest, so, uh—looks like this might be all over.” She gave a hollow little laugh that sounded ridiculous, but she couldn’t erase the message now. “Things were getting weird with Schwartz and—well, anyway, I’ll tell you all about it later. I think this stupid phone is about to die, but I wondered if I could crash at your place for a day or two until I figure out—”

The phone made a weird clicking noise, then went silent. Janelle pulled it back from her ear and looked at it. Yep, dead as a doornail. She had a charger, but the bus was pulling up and she’d have nothing to plug it into for at least a few hours.

No matter. She had enough cash to get from the bus station in Portland to Anna’s apartment, or maybe to the Wild Weddings office. She didn’t have Anna’s schedule memorized, but her sister almost always did wedding work on Saturdays. If Grant had gone down to surprise her, she must not have any out-of-town weddings this weekend.

The bus rolled up to the front of the convenience store, and Janelle got on. She paid the driver and picked a seat near the back, wondering if she could take off her wig now. It was itchy and hot, and it seemed pointless anyway. She tugged it off and shoved it in her purse, making sure none of the other passengers noticed. Running her fingers through her hair, she took a shaky breath. Jacques and Bernie were both behind bars, and the rest of his men weren’t likely to keep hunting her without him. She could relax a little.

She must have relaxed more than she realized, because somehow she nodded off. She woke to the bus driver calling out that they’d reached the main terminal in Portland. Rubbing her eyes, Janelle stood up. She probably looked like hell. She’d been traveling for more than a dozen hours now, and hadn’t changed clothes since she’d left Schwartz’s cabin the previous afternoon. When had she showered last?

Oh.

The memory came flooding back, soapy hands on bare breasts, her face buried in the hollow of his chest, his tongue moving between her legs.

Damn. Was that really less than twenty-four hours ago? It seemed like a whole lifetime had passed since then. Janelle sighed and stood up, her road-weary legs carrying her to the front of the bus. She spotted a cab idling at the end of the curb, and she ambled over and peered in the window.

“Where you headed?” the driver asked.

“Anna’s Wild Weddings. It’s in the Pearl District.”

“You getting married?”

“No.” Janelle swallowed hard. “Definitely not.”

She got in the cab, thinking this was a better choice than starting with Anna’s apartment. Her sister always worked on Saturdays, so she’d surely be there at some point today. Janelle had helped out with a few weddings before Jacques’s threats drove her underground, so she still knew the code to the alarm. She could wait there for her sister, maybe even help out with tidying and organizing. It was the least she could do after all the strings her sister had pulled to keep her safe.

She watched the trees and buildings swish past as the cabbie made his way along city streets bustling with cars and people and a thick Portland drizzle. It felt weird to be back in a city. Stifling somehow, and she found herself looking around for tamarack trees.

“Here you go,” the cabbie said, pulling up in front of the building. “That’ll be sixteen-twenty.”

Janelle thrust a twenty-dollar bill at him. “Keep the change,” she said, pushing open the door of the cab. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, shivering a little in the misty Portland morning.

She walked up to the front door stenciled with tasteful flowers and the name of her sister’s business. A
NNA’S
W
ILD
W
EDDINGS
. She traced the lettering with her finger, missing her sister so fiercely her belly ached.

What had it been like for Schwartz being separated from his family for ten years? Janelle couldn’t fathom it. Losing contact with her sister was the worst sort of agony Janelle could imagine.

That’s why he chose that,
she thought, running a finger over an etching of a daisy.
Cutting himself off from his family. Schwartz picked the worst punishment he could conceive of for himself.

The thought made her want to weep. She had to get inside before she turned into a silly, sobbing mess right here on the sidewalk in the trendy Pearl District.

She tried the door, but it was locked. Knocking a couple times just in case, she turned and flipped open the cover for the security PIN-pad beside the door. She punched in her own birthday, followed by their mom’s birthday, followed by their dad’s birthday, and then Anna’s.

The PIN-pad beeped, and Janelle breathed a sigh of relief, grateful Anna hadn’t thought to change it. Pushing open the door, Janelle breathed in the scent of flowers and vanilla cupcakes. She shut the door behind her, not wanting any hopeful brides to mistake her for the wedding consultant. The last thing she needed right now was a beautiful, jubilant woman gushing to her about love and happiness and plans for her happily ever after.

She was flipping the lock into place when she heard the voice behind her.

“Hello, Janelle. I’ve been looking for you.”

A frozen spear of terror pierced the space between her shoulder blades. She pivoted slowly, her stomach dropping to her knees as she turned to face her ex-husband.

…

“I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve flown on a private jet with a wolf.”

Schwartz looked up to see his sister, Sheri, scratching Sherman’s ears. Mac’s wife, Kelli, slid her palms over the big dog’s neck and peered at the shaggy beast with apparent clinical interest.

“He’s handling the flight surprisingly well,” Kelli said, looking every bit the veterinarian Schwartz knew her to be. The prognosis earned Kelli a lick, which also earned her a rare smile from Mac. “Heart rate’s good,” Kelli continued. “He’s not showing signs of stress from takeoff or unfamiliar surroundings. Nice to see he’s been neutered.”

“That’s more than we can say for Sam.” Sheri frowned. “The ability to handle stress, not the neutering. Obviously, that’s not an issue.”

Everyone looked at Sheri’s husband, who was seated just a few feet from his wife. He was a big guy, a marine —a sniper, if Schwartz remembered right—but at the moment, he looked positively green.

Sam folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the seat. “What? Is it wrong that I’m not nuts about the idea of my pregnant wife flying off to track down some idiot drug lord and his thugs?”

Sheri sighed. “I told you I’ll stay out of harm’s way. I still don’t understand why they don’t make maternity Kevlar vests. Seriously, there should be a market for that.”

“Relax, sweetie.” Stella Patton gave Sam a firm pat on the shoulder before turning back to the slimline Glock she’d been cleaning since shortly after takeoff. Schwartz stared at the weapon in his mother’s hands, wondering if it was the same one she used to oil while breastfeeding him. “I was still flying fighter jets when I was pregnant with your wife,” Stella told Sam. “Sheri comes by it honestly.”

“Could you all stop talking about testicles and pregnancy for a minute?” Mac looked up from his laptop and regarded each of them with a steely stare. “I’m trying to get a location on the bastard stalking Schwartz’s girl.”

“Right.” Sam saluted him. “Grant’s meeting us at the airport?”

“Yes.” Mac punched a few more keys, and Schwartz studied the furrow in his brother’s brow. It was the same one Grant had, the same one he saw every time he looked at himself in the mirror.

He’d been looking at himself a lot these last few hours. Not literally, of course—this wasn’t the time for gazing at his fucking reflection in an airplane bathroom. No, he’d been thinking about history and family and all the things Janelle had said before she walked out of the room.

And it was time to address the elephant in the room. Or on the plane, as the case may be.

Schwartz cleared his throat. “Look, guys—I appreciate you all coming together like this on short notice. I’m kind of amazed we could pull it off.”

“I’ve ceased being amazed by my husband’s ability to pull off weapons deals and terrorist negotiations on short notice,” Kelli said, beaming proudly at Mac. “Now if I could just get him to put the toilet seat down.”

“Let me know if you figure it out,” Sheri said. “Or if you have any tips to get them to stop reading
Guns & Ammo
to the twins as a bedtime story.”

“What?” Sam asked. “They like the pictures.”

Schwartz felt his chest tighten at the fond familiarity swirling among the members of his family. How long had it been since he’d felt this? Since he’d been a part of such a tight-knit group that shared bad jokes and DNA? A decade. Maybe longer.

“Look, I feel like I owe you an apology,” Schwartz said, hoping to bring them all back around to the subject at hand. “I know I haven’t been around much the last ten years.”

Sheri raised an eyebrow. “‘Haven’t been around much’ would be an apt description if you dodged a few family reunions, Schwartz. You purposefully dropped off the face of the earth. No one but Grant even knew how to reach you.”

“I appreciated the flowers for my birthday, though,” Kelli offered. “Even though we’d never met.”

“Right,” Schwartz said, raking his hands through his hair. “The thing is, I had a hard time after what happened in Anbar Province.”

His mother set her gun down in her lap and looked at him. “Sweetie, you were in a coma for over a month. Any of us would have had a hard time.”

“But that’s just it,” Schwartz said. “We have this whole family history of military achievements. Of bravery and honor and valor and courage, and I fucked it all up. Men died because of me. Because of my mistake.”

“That’s not true,” Stella snapped. “Men died because they were in combat. That’s the way it works, Schwartz. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I misread a map and—”

“No, you listen to me, young man.” Stella folded her arms over her chest, and it occurred to Schwartz that his mother was still fully capable of turning him over her knee. The thought made him sit up straighter in his seat.

“A lot of us in this family—Mac, Sam, your father, myself—we’re well-acquainted with the sort of demons you’ve been fighting,” Stella said. “We all have regrets, Schwartz. Things we might have done differently in our lives or on the battlefield. But we’ve all made the best decisions we could in the moment. Our ability to live with that is what unites us as a family—not some goddamn code of honor.”

“But I screwed up.”

“We’ve
all
screwed up,” she said, softening her tone to one that sounded achingly maternal. “You think I don’t still wonder about the gunner I lost to a roadside IED or fret about my poor wording in the next-of-kin letter I wrote for a private we lost in Somalia, or kicked myself over the time I mixed up the gun oil and the diaper cream when I was changing the baby?”

“Been there, done that,” Sam muttered.

“My point,” Stella said, “is that the choices you make—for better or worse—are part of what makes you a soldier instead of a robot. They’re what make you human. They’re what make you a Patton.”

“You’re one of us, Schwartz,” Sheri said, reaching out to touch his hand.

“Fucking get used to it,” Mac growled, his eyes much warmer than his tone, though it was tough to tell behind those damn sunglasses.

“But how can you ever forgive me?” Schwartz asked. “For what happened ten years ago, or for how I handled everything after that? I’ve had a decade of making one wrong decision after the other—not calling when I should have, and isolating myself from you so I wouldn’t have to see your disappointment.”

“We could never be disappointed in you, baby,” his mother said.

“And we forgive you because you’re family,” Mac said. “And also because you’re bigger than us.”

Stella swatted at her eldest son, and Mac dodged out of the way.

“It’s not our forgiveness you need,” Stella said. “It’s your own.”

Sheri nodded and squeezed his hand. “One of my colleagues at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai heads up a national PTSD support group. A lot of people I know have found it really helpful. If you like, I can put you in touch with him.”

“Thank you,” Schwartz said, meaning it. “I appreciate that. I promise to look into it as soon as we get through this.”

“Right now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Sam agreed, working a cleaning rod into his .45-caliber Colt close-quarter battle pistol.

“We’ll get your girl,” Mac said. “Don’t worry.”

Sam offered him an encouraging smile, and Schwartz thought how nice it was to finally interact with his sister’s husband.

“I feel like I owe you one, buddy,” Sam said. “Thanks to you, I’m no longer the only person in the family to fall for the person I’m supposed to be protecting.”

Schwartz looked at his sister and smiled. With their mother’s fierceness and marksmanship, it was hard to imagine Sheri needing protection from anyone or anything. But wasn’t that the point of having people around who loved you? They protected you from more things than bodily harm. They guarded your heart, too.

“I love her,” Schwartz said, overcome by the urge to say it aloud. “Janelle, I mean. I love you guys, too, but I love her in the other way.”

“The naked way,” Kelli said, nodding.