working for Luther didn’t mean she should trust him.
He groaned at her hesitation and reached for his cell. “I’ll call the chief—”
“That’s not it,” she said with a glance at the closed door. “I can’t just walk out of here with you in the middle of the night.”
Her father was bound to have questions if they left the house now. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised to open her door and find him waiting in the hall outside. She had never been a very good liar, so she was already pushing her luck with all the lies she’d already told.
“We’ll go out the way I came in,” Hart told her as he headed toward her open window. After slinging one leg over the sill, he held out his hand to her.
Wendy was scared. Not of falling out the window. She’d climbed out that window a time or two in her youth, but not with a boyfriend. Not even to meet a boyfriend. She’d just climbed out to go to movies that had opened after her midnight curfew. She knew it was a short drop from the window to the porch roof below. Then it was an easy climb down the trestle at the end of the porch to the ground.
No. She wasn’t scared of falling.
She was scared—of spending too much time with Hart Fisher. She suspected she was in almost as much danger from him as she was from Luther Mills.
“You’ve definitely got a problem,” Hart told Chief Lynch as he and Wendy joined him in the conference room at the Payne Protection Agency.
The chief arched a gray brow over blue eyes that were bright and alert despite the late hour. “Did something happen at Ms. Thompson’s home?”
Besides her not waiting outside for him like he’d thought she would be? Besides his making the risky move of breaking in and nearly getting shot?
Hart shook his head. “But that’s the problem. Nobody noticed me sneaking in and out of that house.”
“My father did,” Wendy chimed in with a slight smile.
Hart shuddered as he remembered the older man throwing open the door and training that gun barrel on him. “It’s good that he can protect himself and your mother.” He turned back to the chief, who stood at the end of a long conference table. “Because I don’t trust that unit you have stationed outside their house to protect them.”
The chief flinched.
Hart felt a twinge of regret that he had offended the older man even though Woodrow Lynch shouldn’t have been offended. He hadn’t had much to do with the existing police force. He hadn’t hired or trained them. He’d just recently taken the position of River City police chief after giving up his role as an FBI Bureau chief.
Wendy must have been offended, too, because her elbow jabbed his ribs. Now he felt a twinge of pain—from where her elbow had jabbed him earlier when he’d tried helping her out of the bedroom window. After elbowing him aside, she’d easily slipped over the sill and had moved silently across the roof to the trestle. He’d insisted on going down first, to catch her in case she fell and to make sure nobody could grab her on the ground.
That had been a mistake because, from the ground, all Hart had been able to see was her ass as she’d scrambled down the trestle. She had moved so quickly that she’d slipped. When he’d caught her, his hands cupping her ass, she’d elbowed him again.
That time might have been an accident. This time was definitely not. But Hart wasn’t out of line—not with lives at stake.
“Somebody should have noticed us leaving,” he insisted. What if he had been one of Luther’s crew?
Neither the chief nor Wendy could argue with him now. Lynch sighed. “That’s why I brought in Payne Protection.”
“Why Parker’s team?”
The question came from someone other than Hart. His former coworker Tyce Jackson. The bearded man sat at the table beside Judge Holmes and his daughter, Bella. In the same way Luther had threatened Wendy’s family, the threat he’d used to try to influence the judge was that his daughter was in danger. Woodrow Lynch had been right to call in the Payne Protection Agency. Whatever other motives the chief might have had were beside the point.
Lynch answered Tyce. “I figured Parker’s team had a vested interest in making sure Luther Mills was finally brought to justice.”
Hart winced with regret, frustrated that he hadn’t taken down Luther himself. Tyce might have winced, as well, but with as bushy as his black beard was, it was impossible to tell. When they’d worked Vice—with Parker—they’d all tried for years to bring down Luther. But the drug dealer had been too powerful then. Would he prove to be too powerful now?
“Where is Parker?” Hart asked.
Parker had been in his office earlier, but maybe he’d left to look for some of the others. Not everyone was here yet.
Even as he thought that, the door opened. The assistant district attorney, Jocelyn Gerber, walked in, her bodyguard, former vice cop Landon Myers, behind her.
Then the door opened again and Detective Spencer Dubridge entered midargument with his bodyguard, Keeli Abbott. They appeared to be arguing over who should walk first through the door. The detective might have been trying to be a gentleman, but Keeli, the former RCPD cop, would undoubtedly be offended. When they’d all worked together in Vice, the very capable female officer had accused Dubridge of being a male chauvinist.
What the hell had Parker been thinking when he’d made these matchups? Landon and Keeli might not mind if someone harmed the people they were supposed to be protecting.
“Parker was checking on someone in his office,” the chief told Hart with a smile. He must have known about Felicity.
Hart’s usual babysitter had got sick and had dropped the little girl off at his work. It was a good thing Parker had been here then and that he was good with kids. The backup sitter should be arriving soon if she hadn’t already.
“Then he was going outside to consult with the perimeter guards,” Lynch added.
Parker and the chief had been smart to have extra security for this meeting. If Luther Mills had learned about it, the opportunity of having everyone associated with the trial in one place would have been too great for him to pass up.
Since they had no idea who and where his informants were, Mills might have heard about it. He could have ordered a hit…
Hart tilted his head and listened. But he heard no sound of gunfire.
“The eyewitness isn’t here,” Assistant DA Jocelyn Gerber said, her voice rising with alarm as she looked around the conference room. “Where is she?”
“Parker is checking on that, too,” the chief said.
The woman’s already pale face lost the little bit of color it had had. “This is bad…”
“This is ridiculous,” Wendy said. “We don’t need extra protection. Not even Luther Mills can take out everyone associated with his trial.”
“He
