Gabriel West: Still The One

Tyler rubbed at her temples. Her mind was still fuzzy, her head throbbing despite the painkillers she’d had with breakfast. “Leave it, Richard. The guy was Asian, that’s a fact. I was mugged, that’s another fact. At this point there is nothing to connect the mugging with the theft of the jade. As for the phone calls, and being followed…” Her own frustration welled, sending a fresh stab of pain through her skull. “All of that started happening before the robbery, so how could any of it possibly be connected?”

She could feel the consensus of opinion. The theft of the jade had sent shock waves through the world of artifacts. The mystery of who had taken the jade, and how it had been stolen, when to all intents and purposes Laine’s security system had not been breached, was disturbing enough. No one wanted to believe that the theft could be more complicated than simple larceny.

But if she was cynical enough, and right now it was hard to be anything but cynical, the police, and everyone present in the room, had to be examining the possibility that she was using last night’s incident to implicate the Chinese in the jade theft. The jade was, after all, Chinese in origin.

Although why would anyone, let alone Chinese people, attack her when they already had the jade? A renegade bubble of humor surfaced. Unless, of course, she had somehow stumbled onto the set of a “B” grade movie, and the bad guys wanted to cut her out of the money, bump her off and dump her body.

Abruptly, the implications were too much—especially if the press decided there was a connection.

She met Richard’s gaze coolly. “If I had any idea who it is that’s been following me and doing the heavy-breathing routine over the phone, I would have tracked him down and dealt with him the same way I dealt with the guy last night.”

Richard looked momentarily perplexed.

Cornell rose to his feet and slipped his notebook in his briefcase. “She broke his jaw.”

The moment when she’d swung that punch replayed through Tyler’s mind. She hadn’t made a conscious decision to hit him—that punch had burst from deep inside and she couldn’t have pulled it if she’d tried. Even now, just thinking about it made the fury well up and sent adrenaline pumping through her veins.

“You broke his jaw?”

The question was soft, clipped. Harrison.

She had never called her adoptive father Dad, and he had never asked her to—by the time the Laine family had adopted her she had been eight going on thirty. She and Harrison had compromised with his first name.

She met his dark gaze. Surprise jolted her when she saw tenderness there. She let out a breath. “I felt the bone give.”

There was an odd silence as the new tidbit of information was digested. It was the kind of blank silence she hadn’t faced since she was eight and Louisa had found her food stash moldering in her closet, along with the wad of money she’d accumulated from selling the clothes and shoes she’d been showered with and didn’t need—which had amounted to most of them. In the world she’d come from, cash was more important than a Barbie doll wardrobe.

Harrison nodded, as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence that his daughter should break a mugger’s jaw.

“Could the other offender have been female?”

The voice was husky, female. Tyler met Farrell’s gaze. For a split second she wondered if Farrell was playing with subtleties and trying for a guilt reaction that might connect her to both crimes, then the no-nonsense tone in her voice registered. Cornell was working the tactics; Farrell was simply being thorough. It was a valid question—plenty of women committed crimes—and Farrell hadn’t etched out a career in a hard-ass, male-dominated profession by pussyfooting around unpopular issues.

She saw again the flash of a male jaw and slanted cheekbone, felt the steely grip on her arm. A memory surfaced. “They smelled male.”

She caught the instant respect in Farrell’s eyes, felt the recoil that went around the room.

Amusement caught her off balance again. So, okay, noticing the scent of the people attacking her might not be a habit cultivated in the best circles, but she had smelled them, and it was a relief to remember something else definitive when the attack had happened in a blur of shadows and adrenaline.

“They were both male,” a dark, cool voice affirmed. “That piece of information was in the statements we both gave last night.”

Tyler’s head jerked up. She winced, her eyes squeezed closed, but not before she’d glimpsed West leaning against the doorjamb, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a sleek black jacket hugging his shoulders.

West’s gaze briefly touched on each of the people filling Tyler’s room. Anger stirred through him at the inquisition that was taking place. He knew the police had a job to do, but her family could damn well back off. Tyler was tough, a real fighter, but she was tired and practically crawling out of her skin with pain.

He didn’t know what time she had got to sleep last night, but it had been ten-thirty before a doctor had been free to stitch the cut on her head, and after midnight before the statements had been completed. West had left the hospital at around one-thirty, after Tyler had been settled in her room.

“Who in hell are you?”

West ignored the GQ mannequin asking the question. He knew a number of the people in the room: Ray Cornell and Elaine Farrell, Richard and Harrison. He recognized Ashley James, who had been Richard’s right-hand man forever, but the woman and the suit with the question were strangers. They weren’t cops, that was obvious. They were too manicured—too nervy—which meant they had to be two of Harrison’s newer employees.

Ray Cornell nodded briefly. “West.”

Amusement at Cornell’s wariness took the edge off West’s growing fury. “It’s been a while.”

West bumped into Cornell occasionally. Ray was ex-SAS, now a detective at Auckland Central. The most recent occasion they’d hooked up had been a year ago when West’s friend Ben McCabe had been shot at, and they’d spent a couple of hours at Central giving statements.

Harrison acknowledged West, as he always did, with neutrality and politeness.

As out of place with the Laine family as he’d always been, West had never felt antagonism from his father-in-law, simply a void that had shown no sign of diminishing. The gap in life experience had just been too broad for either of them to breach. Richard, on the other hand, had no problem with the void; his cold gaze said just how much he liked it, and the bigger the better. West had never had a problem with his brother-in-law’s attitude, except that it had always hurt Tyler.

West had few people in his life he had ever been able to care for, but his feelings were clean-cut and simple: he would die for them. The way he’d grown up had narrowed his perceptions to absolutes, leaving him with a bedrock that alienated most people. The way he was wasn’t easy or comfortable, but his friends understood him.

West’s gaze touched on Tyler’s tangled hair, her utter stillness claiming his attention. As hard as he’d tried to make Tyler understand how he felt, how he was inside, how difficult it was for him to change and adjust, she hadn’t wanted to listen.

Harrison softly ordered his people from the room. As James, the pretty lady executive and the suit, who answered to the name of Kyle, filed past him, relief loosened some of West’s tension.

He wanted these people out of here, ASAP, and he wanted Tyler out, too. When he’d arrived the press had been gathering downstairs. Maybe they weren’t hunting for Tyler, but he wouldn’t place any bets on it.

Farrell offered him a hand, her gaze speculative.

West recognized the look, and the curiosity. Down under, the military world meshed closely enough with civilian forces that the gossip spread. A number of Auckland detectives were ex-SAS. It was a recognized career path for military personnel to slide sideways into civilian law enforcement. A lot of them ended up on the Special Tactics Squad, or the AOS, the Armed Offenders Squad. He also knew that Farrell was one of the few women who had served on the AOS, and that she was a current member. She would know he’d resigned from the SAS, and why.

Farrell lifted a brow. “Heard you turned to the dark side.”

“Private enterprise pays more than the military.”

Cornell snapped his briefcase closed. “How long have you been out?”

West glanced at Tyler as she zipped her overnight bag closed and straightened. “Three weeks, give or take a day,” but his mind wasn’t on conversation.

Tyler’s face was white, her gaze glassy. He recognized the way she was moving, the way she was feeling, because he’d been there a couple of times with head injuries. It was a good act, but he’d seen drunks with more coordination.

He stepped around Harrison and Richard. His fingers curled around the grip of the bag. “I’ll take that.”

Her gaze locked with his, shooting green fire. He logged her almost imperceptible flinch—as if the emotion, and the light, had hurt—felt her internal battle. Tyler had always been as independent and solitary as a cat despite the satin cushion of the Laines’ wealth, and all the company that that money attracted.

Her fingers remained locked around the grip.

“Let me.”

He felt the moment when she gave in, and grimly acknowledged that this was how it was going to be. He’d always known trying to get Tyler back would be tough—he just hadn’t realized how tough.

For the past few days, he’d made it his business to be where she was around the apartment complex whenever possible. It hadn’t been easy because she’d been working long hours, and each time she’d simply walked past him, barely making eye contact. The only break he’d had had been when he’d stepped out of the elevator while she was being attacked.

Right now, Tyler needed his help, and he was ruthlessly using every advantage that came his way, but she was making it more than clear that while she did need help, she didn’t need him.

Brilliant light flashed through the room, followed by the motorized whirr of a camera.