had tagged along because at the last minute she had decided that she would agree to some advertising deals. Since the full amount of income from the ads would go to dog-related charities, her agent and manager were coming to lay the groundwork and take advantage of the media coverage that would already be present.
“Just as long as you know that everything under my pants belongs to my wife,” Ivan, a stocky black man, countered with a good-natured laugh.
Greg, Kayla’s brother, had been playing some video game obsessively since they’d boarded. He sat in the first row, keeping out of the conversation.
Tsini was gently snoring in the middle of the aisle, not impressed by any of the grand plans for Sin City that were being hatched by the humans. Tom, Tsini’s professional handler, was watching an action movie, pretty much ignoring everybody.
Nash was currently running background checks on each of them, plus on the staff who had stayed in Philly: Kayla’s secretary, her stylist, everyone she met with regularly, even her uncle. He should have the results by the time the day was out. Her immediate environment seemed like a good place to start looking. Then, as he uncovered more clues, he could widen the circle.
“Semi-pro football,” Dave put in, resuming their conversation once the flight attendant passed. “Same as war. Man-to-man combat.”
Nash thought of some of the fights he’d bled through where he’d cut people’s throats without a second thought and put more bullets through more hearts than he’d cared to count. “I’m sure.”
Kayla slept in her window seat next to him in the back. Since he was the newest member of the team, he’d wanted to spend some time with her going over concerns and questions, which they had done for the first hour or so after the plane had taken off. Then she’d passed out from exhaustion.
He would have thought she’d overdone the partying the night before, but her manager had mentioned a late meeting with some business partners.
Her laptop stood open on the beverage tray in front of her. From the corner of his eye, Nash caught a small window opening on the screen. You have a new message.
“Civilian life is different than the military.” Mike puffed his chest out. “Just watch what we do and you’ll be all right.”
“Thanks.”
“And don’t push her.” Dave nodded toward Kayla. “She doesn’t like that. She has plenty of other stuff to deal with. She needs her staff to be in her corner.”
“She needs her staff to protect her,” Nash put in.
She looked too young and more innocent than perhaps she’d ever been. If the tabloids could be believed, she’d had enough lovers to fill a football stadium. But right now she looked like a little girl who’d gotten into her mother’s makeup and her older sister’s closet. If that older sister were a pole dancer.
“She ever get threatening messages?” he asked the men.
“Just the dog. All she gets is fan mail,” Mike said.
Dave rolled his eyes. “Tons of it.”
“Who processes that?”
Mike gave him a narrow-eyed look that transmitted a clear back off message, but did answer his question. “Her secretary.”
Next to Nash, Kayla shifted in her sleep.
He turned his head to get her out of his peripheral vision.
He didn’t need another flash of those long legs, or creamy thighs. Hell, creamy everything. Enough of her breasts were uncovered for him to bury his face between them. He tamped down the heat that was beginning to tingle to life in the bottom half of his body.
Her stylist should be strangled. Or given a bonus. His opinion on that flip-flopped about once a second.
She was hot. Scorching. There was no denying that. But there was more to her than showed on the surface.
He had a feeling that what he’d thought she was, what he’d seen of her on TV, was going to turn out to be her organization, a persona made up by a full staff. Her organization—the people around her, her schedule, her image—was like a machine. Since they’d met yesterday afternoon, he’d caught glimpses of the woman inside that machine, and was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t trapped in there.
Don’t get sucked in.
He took a drink of mineral water as Mike and Dave returned to their favorite subject and went on about the bloody combat that football really was, and how they were all warriors. Part of him itched to set them straight—if only to distract himself from Kayla—but another part of him knew it wasn’t worth it.
Stick to the job, Welkins had said.
Trouble was, she was the job. And he would have liked only too much to stick real close to her.
If he had any brains, he would leave her to Dave and Mike, walk on back to coach and ask the first pretty woman he saw if she wanted to join the mile-high club with him. He had to get this restlessness out from under his skin.
Except, with Kayla Landon next to him, he didn’t feel like walking away.
“I’m thinking the threats to the dog might have something to do with her. Could be someone wants us distracted while he goes after Kayla,” he told the two men, interrupting a playoff story.
There was a brief pause as they gave him some hard looks.
“We protect her. You stay out of the way and keep your eyes on Tsini,” Mike’s eyes flashed as he issued his warning at last, the true reason for their coming over.
The two had been eyeing him since he’d shown up at the apartment last night. They obviously didn’t like the idea of anyone sticking his nose in their business.
Nash ground his teeth, but somehow managed a nod, silently cursing his latest assignment all the way to Hades. Ivan prevented further friction by calling the two bodyguards to the front to settle some dispute between him and Fisk. Then Nash was finally able to turn his attention to the e-mail.
He’d seen her type in her password earlier and had no trouble getting in now. She had only one unread message.
The sender field was blank. The subject field said: Did you like my gift?
He could have waited until she woke and asked her to open the message and let him look at it. Instead, he reached over and clicked.
No text, only an attachment. He had to wait until the program ran a virus scan before he could open the picture file.
The image was grainy, but good enough to make out what was important. The picture showed Kayla’s living room with her sitting in her pod chair and Nash on the couch, holding up the blue fur coat.
Could have been taken with a cell phone. By someone who’d been in Kayla’s apartment yesterday when he’d arrived. Which meant all the people who traveled with them in first class right this minute. The cooking-show crew had stayed in the kitchen the whole time. Her staff had been coming and going from the den. And this picture had been taken from there.
By one of her people. One of her friends.
Oh, hell. She was really going to hate him for telling her that, he thought as his blood heated. If there was one thing he couldn’t forgive, it was betrayal. In his eyes, maybe because at the core he would always remain a marine, betrayal of a teammate was the ultimate sin. He couldn’t stand the thought that a member of her own staff would betray her.
And he couldn’t even talk to her about this right away. He needed a chance to observe her interacting with the staff first. Once she realized that whoever was harassing her was one of them, she would relate to them differently. He wanted to get a fair assessment of her relationship with each and every person before suspicion hit her and she pulled back.
He looked at the people in first class. Nobody was watching