Without looking, Rosie placed the personnel folder she’d just finished checking on the stack piled in the middle of the dining room table. When her fingers brushed across a set of knuckles, she looked up. Fire burned in the back of Sam’s eyes as he left his hand beneath hers.
Ever since the fundraiser, Sam had made good on his pledge to romance her. It had started when three- dozen long stemmed roses were delivered first thing the next morning. It continued when she’d gone into the office and opened her locker in the gym changing room and discovered the tennis bracelet she’d worn to the fundraiser. John Lake arrived mid-morning and plonked a brand new laptop with all the bells and whistles on her desk and told her it was hers to keep. Later that afternoon, she’d gone to the firing range, and discovered a new Sig Sauer in her gun cabinet. It was when she’d gone to the parking lot to run an errand, and found a brand new Lexus in place of her ten-year-old Honda that she’d marched into Sam’s office. Slamming the bracelet, gun and car keys on his desk, she’d informed him that she couldn’t be bought, bribed or otherwise purchased.
Grudgingly, he’d taken back those gifts, but insisted she keep the laptop and gun-somehow convincing her that she’d need them as his lead op. And the flowers continued to arrive each morning until every room in the apartment now contained a vase and Andy couldn’t stop sneezing.
She forced herself to pull her hand back, moving it to the pile of unchecked personnel folders. No matter how much she told herself she could resist him, the electricity between them crackled and hissed like a living entity and she knew the barriers she had erected would soon crumble.
Would their affair burn bright but fast, ending quickly? Or would it be a long, smoldering fire?
As if sensing her disintegrating walls, Sam stood, “I’m gonna go get a drink.” As he walked by, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Chicken.”
Each night since the party, he’d made a point of coming to the apartment to help wade through the folders of potential suspects. They’d divided the files into five piles. Scott flipped through the bodyguards’ records from the Hauberk Protection section while she and Kris cleared the employees who worked in the Security Services unit. That pile had been huge, since they had hundreds of security guards in the various apartments and businesses around D.C. Two smaller piles of the alarm systems technicians and the Information Technology geeks still had to be tackled. They ruled out as suspects any employees who were not in town when the photos or phone calls had been made, but gotten into quite a discussion about whether to exclude those who hadn’t had bad reviews. Meanwhile, Andy and Sam examined Hauberk’s client files for someone who might want revenge.
“Here’s a guy who could be a suspect,” Scott said. “Barry Germaine-he got fired about six months ago. Anyone know anything about him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. He only worked here about six months, if that.” Andy looked up from the chair where he’d draped one leg over the arm. “But Sam didn’t fire him, Chad did.”
“Might not make a difference. To most people, Sam’s Hauberk. What did he do?”
“Chad caught old Barry smokin’ up with one of his principal’s teenage sons and hauled him into the office. After he’d reamed him out, he escorted Barry to his locker to clear out his stuff. That’s when they found a crap load of marijuana, ecstasy, crack. You name it, he had it. Bastard had been dealing on the side. Chad called in the police who took Germaine away in handcuffs. Last I heard he was still awaiting trial for possession with intent.”
Rosie had to agree when Scott put Germaine’s file in the “suspected” list, commenting that Germaine made a damned good suspect.
“Would Barry have had access to Sam’s home phone number when he was here?”
“No, he didn’t,” Sam added from the doorway. “Besides Mr. Germaine is currently residing in the Eastern Correctional Institution for the next few years, courtesy of the State of Maryland.”
When she glanced over at Scott, she saw the elevator doors opening on the monitor. Mrs. O’Mara stepped off, her brown and white fox terrier jumping in circles around her. Though Scott had turned the sound down, she could hear the dog’s exciting yips echo down the hall.
Kris pushed away from the table. “I need a break. Who’s up for pizza?”
Four sets of hands went up. “But no anchovies this time, Kris,” Rosie insisted and Scott argued over the addition of pineapple to the ham Andy had requested.
Sam was in the middle of adding his request-extra feta cheese and hot peppers-when the phone they’d linked to Sam’s line rang. “Got a number-says it’s a pay phone.” He read off the number slowly as Andy typed it in to his computer, before he hit the connect button. Within five seconds, he raised his hand and pointed to the receiver, mouthing, “It’s him.”
While Andy traced the location of the phone box, Kris ensured the recorder had started, and Rosie listened in on the extension, scribbling the text of the conversation into her notebook.
Less than a minute later, Sam hit the button and disconnected the call. “Same guy-usual threat.”
“Looks like it’s another payphone in Chevy Chase.” Andy shook his head. “I’ve texted the location to Chad- he’s sending a team to that location, but the guy’ll pro’ly be gone.”
Rosie patted him on the shoulder. “Maybe there’ll be some witnesses or a security camera this time.”
A voice echoed through the room when Kris replayed the recording. A raucous background noise of laughter and country music made the message hard to hear, especially since the speaker spoke very quietly. “Did you think those four CPOs you have can stop me? You can surround yourself with all the armed guards in the world, but I’m better than any of them. They’ll not be able to stop me. I’ll be there when you least expect it.”
“So we know he’s watching you still,” Rosie said after they’d replayed it a half dozen times. “But there’s nothing unique about that voice-no unusual phrases. No accent. Nothing that would identify him.”
“He could be using a spoof card,” Andy suggested. “Make us think he’s in one place when he’s somewhere else.”
“Except the phones are wiped,” Scott counted. “Which means even if they didn’t use it to make the actual phone call, they’d have to clean the receiver at some point right before hand and someone might see whoever it was.”
While they waited for Chad’s team to get back to them, Kris ordered the pizza. When it arrived, they took it into the kitchen, where Rosie perched on a stool at the breakfast nook beside Sam. Andy ate standing so he could monitor the hall cameras at the same time. Scott plated a couple slices and disappeared into the bedroom.
“He’s got to be one of us,” Kris said suddenly. “Or a client at the very least, someone who knows how we work.”
Rosie felt some relief when Sam looked just as confused as she felt.
“The caller,” Kris explained. “He called us CPOs. Not bodyguards the way a normal person would.”
Andy tossed away his third crust of the meat lovers’ pizza he’d insisted upon, having won the pineapple debate. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Skippy. Any one reading the Hauberk website knows that’s what we’re called. Besides, most companies call their employees CPOs these days.”
“Okay,” Kris persisted. “So how about when he said he was better than us. Maybe it’s someone who wants to make Hauberk itself look bad to future clients? Maybe we should be looking at Hauberk’s competition.”
“Could be. Or maybe it’s an ego thing,” Andy suggested, grabbing another slice. “You know, like that movie where Clint Eastwood is a secret service agent and John Malkovich is out to kill the president.”
“Man, Rene Russo was hot in that movie.” Kris shook his hand as if he’d been burned.
When Kris and Andy started debating which movies got the details of bodyguards and police work wrong, Sam shoved his plate away and stalked out.
Rosie hurried after him out of their apartment and down the hall toward the elevators. “Sam, wait. You agreed you’d not go out without one of us with you.”
His fists clenched and unclenched before he faced her. “Look, Rosebud, I’ve played this game for over a week now. I’ve cancelled appointments that I shouldn’t have, I let you guys answer my door like you’re my goddamned butlers, and I’ve been driven around in the limo like I’m Miss Freakin’ Daisy. Christ, when we’re out somewhere, Campbell and Phillips even follow me into the bathroom when I have to take a-” he swallowed what he was going to say, “-leak. And where’s it gotten me? Nowhere. That sonovabitch is still out there laughing at me. Well, no more. If he’s watching, I’m damned well going to draw him out.”
“How? You going to stand on the sidewalk and put a target on your chest and yell shoot me?”
“If that’ll end this, I’m willin’.”
She grabbed his arm, feeling the tenseness of the muscle beneath her fingers. “You aren’t seriously going out there, are you?”
He ran a hand back and forth over his head and heaved a sigh. “No. But damn it…” His hand moved from his
