Into the Whirlwind

Book 2: BOSS, Inc.

by Kat Martin

Genres: Mystery; Contemporary Romance; Thrillers

Synopsis

A bodyguard, a bounty hunter, a private investigator, no one can handle the heat like the men of BOSS, Inc.

Megan O'Brien is at her wit's end. Her three-year-old son has been kidnapped. No police, says the ransom demand. Fearing for her son's life, Meg has no choice but to turn to her former bodyguard, Dirk Reynolds.

Dirk's never forgiven Meg for the way she left him after their brief affair. But with bounty hunter Luke Brodie on his side, Dirk knows he's got to help Meg rescue her son. The few clues they've gathered send them spiraling into a murky world of high-stakes gambling and international crime.

Meg may be way out of her depths, but she's seeing a side of Dirk she never suspected--one no woman could possibly resist.

Release date: June 1, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

“Ms. Megan, thank God you’re home! It’s . . . it’s Charlie. I can’t find little Charlie.”

Meg’s heart took a leap as she stepped into the house, nearly colliding with her housekeeper, Rose Wills.

“He probably woke up and wandered off somewhere. He has to be here someplace.” But even as she said the words, worry jolted through her. Telling herself not to panic, Meg hurried toward the stairs.

“I put him down for a nap an hour ago,” Rose said, hurrying along behind her. “When I went back to check on him, he was gone.”

“You know how he likes to hide. He’s just found a new place.” But fear had her pulse kicking up, and her stomach started to churn. At the top of the landing, she turned and ran down the hall to her three-year-old’s bedroom, the housekeeper close behind her.

Charlie wasn’t in his small, white youth bed. “Charlie! Mama’s home. Charlie! Where are you, sweetheart?” Meg ran to the closet and pulled open the door, searched through the stuffed toys and games on the closet floor, but found no sign of her son.

Her heart was hammering now, her stomach balled into a fist. Meg told herself to stay calm. There were dozens of places a little boy could hide in a two-story house.

“Charlie! Charlie, where are you, sweetie?”

Rose’s higher-pitched, worried voice chimed in. “Charlie! Come out now. Your mommy wants you.”

They searched upstairs, but he was nowhere to be seen, went downstairs and searched the floor below.

“God, Rose, where could he be? You don’t think he went outside?”

“I always keep the doors locked and the chain on. There’s no way he could have gotten out.”

They checked all the doors, but Rose was right. No way could her little boy have gotten out of the house.

Meg ran back upstairs. She returned to his room, walked over to the bed to see if the covers still held a trace of warmth. Reaching down, she touched the soft blue blanket with the sailboats on it, but none of Charlie’s heat remained.

Instead, she spotted an envelope protruding from the folds, her name in ink on the front.

“What did you find?” Rose came up beside her.

“It’s a letter.” Her hands shook as she tore the envelope open.

“I didn’t see it before,” Rose said. “Oh, dear Lord.” She started to tremble, her breasts heaving as the implication sank in. She was a big woman, nearly as tall as Meg’s five-foot ten-inch frame. “What . . . what does it say?”

Meg read the note and her heart clutched, then turned to stone. “‘We have your son. He’ll cost you ten million in cash. You’ve got three days or he’s . . . he’s dead. No police.’”

Meg swayed on her feet. She gripped the headboard, afraid she might faint. Dear God, my baby! She turned, let Rose pull her into a hug, and her eyes welled with tears. They clung to each other, both of them crying.

The housekeeper straightened away. “We have to call the police. They’ll know what to do. They’ll get Charlie back.”

Meg shook her head. “No police. If we call them, they’ll kill him.”

Rose crossed herself. “What are you going to do, Ms. Meg?”

Meg closed her eyes and prayed for strength. Her dad was extremely wealthy. He loved his grandson. Her father could get the ten million dollars they needed to pay the ransom.

But her dad was also extremely controlling. And he believed money was the solution to everything. What if the kidnappers took the money and still killed her baby?

She thought of Charlie’s father, Jonathan Hollander, the man she had married to please her dad. Yes, he was handsome. She couldn’t deny she’d been attracted to his dark good looks and charming smile. Her father hadn’t been able to see past Jonathan’s impressive Harvard education and his family’s lofty position in society.

Meg thought what a no-good, lying cheat he had turned out to be.

She couldn’t go to Jonathan.

Another man’s image came to mind. Smart. Loyal to a fault. Strong. Tough. Reliable. The one man she would trust with her precious son’s life.

“I know someone.” Strength seeped through her as determination set in. “I know a man who can bring Charlie home.”

Megan O’Brien parked at the end of the gravel driveway and quietly got out of her white BMW compact SUV. Through the trees, she could hear the roar of a chain saw, hear hammers banging away, see two-by-fours going up to form the sides of the house under construction.

The garage was already finished, undoubtedly full of Dirk’s toys, including a Harley and a custom Dodge Viper. In the summer, he kept a boat docked on the lake below the house.

Though two other men were hard at work, her gaze went straight to Dirk. Hammer in hand, carpenter’s belt dangling low on his waist, he was shirtless, though the January air was chill.

Hard muscle flexed across his back and shoulders as he pounded in a nail with an ease that said how many times he had done it. Long, sinewy muscles outlined by the soft fabric of his jeans stretched and moved as he worked on his house.

Meg’s gaze went over the familiar dragon tattoo that wound over one shoulder and inched up the side of his neck. The colored ink seemed right with the sexy, short-cropped horseshoe mustache that framed his mouth and curved down to his jaw, making him look like the hard, tough man he was.

Even her terrible fear for her son couldn’t block the memories of how it had felt to lie with him. Couldn’t lessen the yearning that burned through her body just at the sight of him.

Meg had met Dirk Reynolds five months before when she had been preparing for the La Belle fashion show tour. Meg, one of their top models, worked for the chain of expensive lingerie stores.

She glanced back at Dirk. He and his friend, Ethan Brodie, did private investigation and personal security for Brodie Operations Security Services, Inc., the company that had been hired to protect the models after one of them was murdered.

Dirk had been her bodyguard, and though every instinct had warned her not to get involved with him, the fierce attraction between them had been impossible to resist.

Once the models returned home, Meg had ended the affair. She and Dirk weren’t right for each other. Dirk lived fast and hard. He rode a motorcycle, drove a car that could go two hundred miles an hour. Dirk Reynolds was wild and fierce, while she was a single mother with a son to raise.

She couldn’t have Dirk Reynolds. She had a responsibility to her little boy. With a failed marriage behind her, she couldn’t risk failing again.

But she had never gotten over Dirk.

Meg steeled herself and headed along the gravel driveway toward the house Dirk was rebuilding after the fire that had nearly killed him five months ago. One thing she knew, Dirk Reynolds was a hard man to kill.

Which was the reason she had swallowed her pride and her heartache and come to him. She needed him, trusted him as she never had any other man. Her little boy’s life depended on gaining this man’s help. This man she had loved and rejected.

She stepped out of the foliage-covered driveway into the open area around the house he was rebuilding. She had called his office looking for him. Nick Brodie, one of the other PIs at BOSS, Inc., had reluctantly told her where to find him. Maybe it was the tears he heard in her voice when she had said how important it was. That it was a matter of life or death.

With Dirk’s usual keen senses, he turned, alert that someone was there, though the buzz of the saw had hid the sound of her footsteps.

For several long moments, he just stared, watching as she walked toward him. He was six-two, his body lean and sculpted. Wavy, dark brown hair curled at the nape of his neck. She forced herself to keep walking, even as his jaw locked and a fierce scowl darkened his face.

Dirk grabbed a faded blue work shirt and shrugged it on, covering most of his amazing chest. He didn’t bother fastening the buttons, just strode toward her, blocking her view of the house.

He stopped right in front of her. “What are you doing here, Meg?”

“I need to talk to you. It’s . . . it’s urgent.”

“You’re trespassing. What do you want?”

She swallowed, fought to stay strong. He didn’t want her there. She had known he wouldn’t. Known he thought of her only with contempt. She wished he would hold her the way he used to when she was afraid. “I . . . I want to hire you.”

The corner of his mouth edged into a ruthless half smile. “What for? Stud service?”

She wanted to cry. She wanted to beg his forgiveness. Tell him she had never forgotten him. That she never would. She knew it wouldn’t matter to Dirk. Not anymore.

All that mattered now was saving her son.

She looked into those hard hazel eyes and for the first time wondered if she’d been wrong to think he would help her. Dear God, what would she do if Dirk refused?

A sob wedged in her throat. She fought desperately to hold on to her courage. “It’s Charlie. He’s been kidnapped. They left a note. It says they’ll . . . they’ll kill him if I go to the police.”

Something shifted in those hard, condemning eyes. For a moment, the old Dirk appeared. Concerned for her, determined to protect her at any cost, even his life.

“I’ll take you down to the office. Ethan’s out of town with Val. I’ll get Nick to work with you. Or Luke. They’ll help you find your boy. They’ll help you get him back.”

They were all private investigators and they were the best. But they weren’t Dirk Reynolds. Meg started shaking her head, couldn’t stop the tears that leaked onto her cheeks. “It has to be you. I know in my heart you can save Charlie. Only you.”

His jaw went iron hard. “Jesus, Meg.”

“Please, Dirk. Please help me.”

“Do you know what you’re asking?”

She knew. There was a time he had loved her. He had begged her to stay with him, give them a chance. Meg had refused.

“He’s just a little boy. I know you can save him. You won’t give up until you do.”

“Jesus.” He raked a hand through his heavy, dark hair. She remembered the exact silky feel of the strands between her fingers.

“The note says they want ten million dollars,” she said. “They’ll kill him if they don’t get it.”

He took a deep breath, released it slowly. “How much time did they give you?”

“Three days.”

“Ten million. That’s a helluva lot of money.”

“My father can get it.”

His gaze remained on her face. “But you don’t trust him to get your boy back. That’s smart, Meg, because money doesn’t always work.”

She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Will you help me?”

His eyes went dark. “You knew I would when you came here.”

“I prayed you would. I wasn’t sure anymore.”

He gazed over her shoulder through the trees, spotted her small white SUV. “You okay to drive?”

“I’m all right.”

“I’ll follow you back to your house.” His mouth barely curved. “I think I can remember where it is.”

Meg turned away from him. Three days. In three days Charlie would be safely returned. Dirk would go on with his life and she would go on with hers.

Three days.

The pain didn’t matter. Charlie was all that mattered. Meg had no other choice.

Dirk pulled his metallic-orange Viper to a stop in front of Megan O’Brien’s gray, two-story house. Five months ago he had walked out her front door and never looked back.

Meg had meant everything to him. He’d meant nothing to her.

She needed him now. She trusted him. But Dirk didn’t trust her.

Still, he knew how much she loved her son and he would do everything in his power to see her little boy safely returned to her.

She parked in the garage as he grabbed his Browning nine mil out of the center console and clipped the holster beneath his shirt at the back of his jeans. Climbing out of the car, he walked up on her front porch. Just standing there made his chest feel tight.

The door opened. “Come on in.” Meg stepped back so he could walk past, then turned toward a stout, heavyset older woman with iron-gray hair. “This is Rose Wills. She’s my housekeeper and Charlie’s nanny. She discovered Charlie missing just a few minutes before I got back from grocery shopping.”

He could see the fear in the older woman’s round, lined face, the same fear Meg tried and failed to hide. “I’m Dirk Reynolds, Mrs. Wills. What time did you last see Charlie?”

“I looked in on him about two o’clock. He was napping. I went up again at three to check on him and he was . . .” She covered her mouth with trembling fingers, dragged in a steadying breath. “Charlie was gone.”

“I thought maybe he had just ... you know ... climbed out of his bed and ... and wandered off,” Meg said. “We looked all over, but . . .” Her voice broke. Meg was hanging on hard. Dirk crushed the urge to comfort her. “We couldn’t find him. The doors were locked so we knew he couldn’t have gone outside. I went back upstairs and that’s when I found . . . I found the note.”

“Where is it?”

Meg turned, hurried off to get it. She was just as beautiful as the last time he’d seen her. She was one of La Belle’s top models, a blue-eyed redhead he’d been drawn to the moment he’d spotted her standing next to her best friend, Valentine Hart, the model Ethan was engaged to marry.

Dirk wasn’t the type to fall for a woman, but he had fallen hard for Meg.

She returned downstairs with the note, holding it by one corner. “I touched it when I took it out of the envelope. After I realized what it was, I tried to be careful. I thought there might be fingerprints or something.”

“There might be. We can always hope.” He motioned for her to set it and the envelope on the dining table, looked down and scanned the words on the single sheet of paper.

We have your son. He’ll cost you ten million in cash. You’ve got three days or he’s dead. No police.

“I need to look at Charlie’s bedroom.”

Meg nodded, led him up the stairs. Though a La Belle model made plenty of money, the house wasn’t extravagant; just a four-bedroom family home with comfortable, overstuffed, easy-to-care-for furniture in the living and family rooms. Her home’s Madison Park address, however, put the house over the million-dollar mark.

They walked into a room decorated with pale blue walls, one of them papered in miniature sailboats. The blanket on the bed had a similar design. Meg walked over to the youth bed, stared down at the blanket, and her eyes filled with tears.

Dirk remembered how the blue always seemed brighter when she talked about her son. The little boy was her world. There was no room for Dirk anywhere in it. Meg had refused even to allow Dirk to meet him. The memory sliced open the old wound in his chest.

His resolve strengthened. He wasn’t going there. Not now. Not ever again.

He ignored the way the light gleamed on the fine strands of her long, fiery red hair and turned to examine the room. There were pictures of the boy on the dresser. Dirk walked over and picked one of them up, a fairly recent photo of mother and son. The boy had the same red hair and blue eyes as his mother, the same wide, exuberant smile. Meg wasn’t smiling now.

“At least now I know what he looks like,” Dirk said.

Her head came up. She knew what he meant. In Meg’s eyes, he hadn’t even been good enough to be in the same room with her son.

“I was afraid if he got to know you, he would get attached to you. I didn’t want him to be hurt.”

“Right.” He held up the three-by-five photo. “I need this for identification.”

“Of course. Take it.”

He slid the picture out of the frame and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He wished seeing the little boy’s face didn’t make things even more personal. He continued to survey the room. The kid had only been alone in the bedroom for an hour. How had the bastard gotten in and out without being seen?

“What about your alarm system?” Dirk asked, turning back to Meg. “How did they get past the system without setting it off?”

“We don’t keep it on in the daytime. It’s a very secure neighborhood. Good for a family. That’s why I picked this house in the first place.”

Made sense. “All right. What about security cameras? You got them, right? After I mentioned you needed to get some?”

She glanced away. “Once the tour was over and the police caught Delilah’s killer, it didn’t seem important. I wasn’t in danger anymore.” She looked up at him, guilt sliding into her pretty blue eyes. “I should have gotten them like you said. They could help us find Charlie now. I should have gotten them, but I didn’t.”

He caught her shoulders, wished he hadn’t as soon as he felt the zip of awareness roll through him. “Nothing about this is your fault. We’ll use what we’ve got, okay? We’re just getting started, yeah?”

She swallowed, nodded. “Okay.”

He left her and walked over to the window. The screen was missing. He spotted it lying on the grass in the yard below. The paned sash window had been raised and not completely pushed back down. A trace of cold air whispered past the pale blue curtains. Beyond it, the hip roof was easily accessed by a latticework trellis climbing up from the back of the house.

Damn. He should have taken a better look at the security in the home when he’d been there. Would have insisted she make changes if he’d been around longer. As it was, he’d only been here a couple of days after the tour ended before Meg punted him out.

“Looks like they came in from the backyard. I need to know who’s been out there. I need a list of people, anyone with access to the house. Repairmen, the guys who mow your lawn, cleaning people. Everyone.”

“Okay.”

“Get Mrs. Wills to help. She might think of someone you miss.”

“All right.”

He walked back to the little boy’s bed, bent down toward the boy’s pillow, recognized the pungent sweet smell. “Chloroform. That’s how they got Charlie out without him making any noise.”

“Oh, God. It won’t hurt him, will it?”

“He’ll be okay. Odds are he’ll sleep a couple of hours before he wakes up.” He didn’t mention the possibility of an overdose or the headache the kid was going to have when he regained consciousness. She had enough to worry about already.

“I’ve got a fingerprint kit in my car. I’ll grab it and be right back. Don’t touch anything.”

“I won’t,” Meg promised.

“I need to take a look outside, see if I can find some footprints or any other trace of these guys.”

“You think it was more than one person?”

“As Rose said, it seems to have been well planned, so yeah. I think several people are involved.”

Meg said nothing. The fear in her eyes said it all.

“I need to move my car,” he said. “You got room in your garage?”

“You think they might be watching the house?”

“Might be, might not. Might just be doing an occasional drive-by. I’d rather play it safe. They’re going to call eventually. Give you instructions. If they know I’m here, we tell them I’m the one who’s going to negotiate the deal.”

“There’s room for your car. I’ll open the garage door.”

Dirk nodded, turned, and headed downstairs. He needed facts, information. Once he had a lead, he’d bring Sadie in to help. Sadie Gunderson worked as a computer expert at BOSS, Inc., where he was a private investigator/bodyguard/pretty much jack-of-all-trades.

He was ex-military, Special Forces, a former Ranger. He had extensive weapons training. Working as a PI with Ethan Brodie, once a Dallas homicide detective, Ethan’s brother, Luke, a bounty hunter, and their cousins, Ian and Nick, both ex-cops, had given Dirk invaluable experience.

Along with the training he’d had in the army, he seemed to have a natural knack for sniffing out clues. He’d find the bastards who had taken Meg’s boy. She was right about that.

And he would see they got exactly what they deserved.

It felt strange having Dirk in the house. Like having something wild and untamed prowling the hallways. He had always seemed out of place, like an animal that needed to be released from its cage.

He’d only been in her home a few days after one of the La Belle models had been murdered. Dirk had accompanied her to the funeral as her bodyguard. Then she and the other girls had flown to Texas to begin the fashion show tour. Dirk Reynolds and Ethan Brodie had been part of the security team. Charlie had stayed in Seattle with her parents.

Throughout the tour, Dirk had stuck by her side, determined to protect her. She could feel that same determination now, directed toward the safe return of her son. Somehow it soothed her.

Just watching him stalking through the house searching for clues seemed to steady her. Dirk would bring Charlie home. No matter what it took.

She found Rose Wills at the dining table, a box of Kleenex on top, a tissue clutched in her pudgy hand. She dabbed it beneath her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay, Rose.” Meg sat down beside her, not completely sure if she was saying the words for Rose or for herself. “Dirk’s going to help us find Charlie.”

“Mr. Reynolds . . . he isn’t what I expected.”

Under different circumstances, Meg might have smiled. “No, he isn’t. But he knows what he’s doing.”

“It was him, wasn’t it? He was your bodyguard on the tour.”

“Yes.”

“I heard you and your friend Val talking about him once. You said he was an amazing man.” Valerie Hartman was one of Meg’s best friends, also a former model. She was engaged to Dirk’s best friend. Val had been brave enough to risk loving Ethan Brodie.

“Dirk is amazing.”

“I think he has a tattoo.”

“There’s a dragon on his shoulder.” A very sexy dragon, but now wasn’t the time to remember that. “The dragon’s head climbs up to the base of his neck. Sometimes when he moves, part of it shows above the collar of his shirt.”

“I see.”

She wondered what Rose Wills did see when she looked at Dirk. The same thing her father would have seen: a man who would never fit in at the country club or among her dad’s high-society friends. One of the reasons she had ended their brief affair.

“We need to make a list of anyone who has or had access to the house in the last few weeks.” She pointed to the notepad she had retrieved from the downstairs study she used as an office. “I’ve written down the gardener, the cleaning lady, the part-time babysitter.” A young woman who filled in on weekends if she was needed, or when Rose had time off. “Oh, and the window washers.”

“The carpet-cleaning people were in last week.”

She wrote it down. “Anyone else?”

Rose pressed a hand to her forehead, rubbed a spot in the middle. “It’s hard to concentrate. All I can think of is little Charlie. Is he okay? Is he scared or hungry?”

Meg’s chest clamped down.

Rose plucked a fresh Kleenex out of the box and dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just ... I feel so responsible.”

Meg swallowed against the tightness in her throat. She had to be strong for Charlie. For all of them. “This was well planned. There’s no way you could have known something like this would happen.” She reached over and gripped the older woman’s hand. “We have to stay calm. We have to help Dirk.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right.” Rose took a deep breath. “It does seem to have been well planned. Maybe whoever took Charlie knew your schedule. Knew you would be gone this afternoon. On Wednesday you always go to the gym, then do your grocery shopping after. Who would have known that?”

Meg looked up as Dirk walked down the stairs and strode toward her. “No prints. The room was wiped clean.” He paused in front of her, hands on his narrow hips, looking like a woman’s erotic fantasy. Meg knew firsthand, Dirk was exactly that.

“Rose is right about them knowing your schedule. Like I said, maybe they’ve been watching the house. Or maybe—”

He drilled her with a glare. “Are you seeing someone, Meg? Dating someone you’ve only recently met?” The edge in his voice hadn’t been there before. “Has he been to the house? Maybe the two of you are sleeping together?”

“No! I’m not seeing anyone! I’m not interested in dating.” She didn’t add she hadn’t been remotely interested in any other man since she had met Dirk.

“You sure?” he pressed.

“I’m not a liar. You know me better than that. Do you really think I’d keep something important from you when you’re trying to save my son?”

His hard look softened. “You’re not a liar. And I know how much you love your boy.”

She glanced away from the unanswered question in his eyes. So why hasn’t there been anyone else?

He pulled out a dining room chair and sat down next to her. She forced herself to ignore the heat radiating off his hard body.

“All right, who knows your schedule? Your trainer, maybe? Write down his name and where I can find him.”

She wrote it down.

“Who else? Rose said you go grocery shopping every Wednesday. Anyone there you talk to? A clerk? Someone who seems to have more than a passing interest in you?”

“No. I’m always in a hurry when I’m there. I bring my list, buy what I need, and get back home.”

“Have either of you noticed anyone hanging around the house? A car, maybe, you only noticed just lately?”

Rose just shook her head.

“Not that I can think of,” Meg said.

“Let’s talk about your ex-husband, Charlie’s father. Hollander, right? You mentioned him once on the tour.”

“Jonathan Hollander. I went back to my maiden name after we divorced. Charlie uses my name, too.”

“He have visitation, partial custody of his son? How did the divorce end up?”

“Jonathan didn’t want anything to do with Charlie. I was thinking about divorcing him when I got pregnant. It was one of the last times we were together. Shortly after I filed, I found out he’d been cheating on me with several different women. He wasn’t happy when he found out I was going to have a baby. He was hardly interested in being a father.”

“What about now? He been calling, asking to see his kid?”

“No. He never wanted children. As far as I know, that hasn’t changed.”

“What about money? He in financial trouble, anything like that?”

“Jonathan is the president of Seattle State Bank. The Hollanders are a very influential family in Seattle. That was the reason my father was so determined I should marry him.”

“Okay, we’ll leave it for now. We can always look at him later. In the meantime, I need the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the people you’ve put on your list, and anyone else you can think of who knows your schedule, anyone who knew you’d be out of the house at least part of the day.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to call the office, see if one of the guys can do a little reconnaissance, see if anyone’s out there watching the house.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“You need to call your father, Meg. Unless something breaks, we’re going to need that money. If we do, your dad’s going to need time to get it together. I doubt he’s got ten mil sitting in his checking . . .