On the Run with His Bodyguard
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Tara Taylor Quinn
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Harlequin🏙️ Contemporary
HarlequinChapter 1
“I know you. You’re the guy who beat that huge fraud rap in California.”
Securities fraud, tax fraud, money laundering. Crimes for which he’d been found not guilty. They’d become the nightmare from which he couldn’t wake.
He’d had to give his driver’s license to check in.
Keeping his expression completely neutral, Joe Hamilton asked, “Is lot nineteen available? I’d like to rent, with full hookup on a week-by-week basis.” He paused, and when an immediate rejection didn’t come immediately, added, “And I’ll pay you extra to keep my identity between the two of us.”
The older man eyed him with a mixture of cloaked fascination and obvious mistrust. “We’re a quiet community here,” he said. “No offense, but we’d like to keep it that way.”
He’d specifically chosen the desert RV park for its remote location. “I keep to myself,” he said, and then, because he really needed a place to hole up undetected, added, “If word gets out to the press that I’m here, you have my word that I’ll leave immediately. And I’ll trust you to keep your residents away from lot nineteen.”
He didn’t quite hold his breath. But pretty damned close.
“I’ll need a money order or cashier’s check.”
Joe reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out his wallet. “I can do one better than that. I have cash.” Retrieving bills, spreading them out, he laid down the advertised weekly rate with full hookup, adding in a hefty tip.
And saw the big, balding, slightly hunched manager shaking his head. “Sorry, man, but I’m not touching that. We’re a small operation, just my wife and I, and this is all we’ve got. I can’t afford to be passing bad money...”
The man’s words were, in one sense, almost comical, in a dark sort of way. While Joe had been accused of ultimately stealing millions from unsuspecting investors, some of whom lost retirements, there’d been no counterfeit money charges in the long list of grievances against him.
“It’ll have to be cashier’s check or money order,” the man behind the small, scarred counter said.
“How about I unhook my car, park my rig in spot nineteen and then drive the forty miles I’ll have to go to get either one of those?” He didn’t want to take a chance on losing the spot. He’d chosen the small year-round RV park specifically for its location just over the California border in Arizona, which was a good forty miles to even anything that could be considered a full-out grocery store. The area was known for its natural minerals—and once a year hosted an international gem show that brought in thousands of recreational vehicles—but was mostly just a small gas exit off the remote six-hour stretch of desert highway connecting Phoenix to Los Angeles.
The man wouldn’t look him in the eye. Joe didn’t back down. He stood there, a good several inches taller, with broader shoulders, and waited. Spot nineteen was in a secluded spot in the park, separated from view by a couple of paloverde trees, and the farthest spot from the park’s recreational center that housed a couple of card rooms and an ancient outdoor swimming pool. Most of which he knew from the hours’ worth of online perusal he’d done the night before, mapping out sites across the Southwest and finding out everything he could about Sierra’s Web, the Phoenix firm of experts he’d hired by phone that morning while on the way to Quartz Landing—his current location.
When a guy was in hiding, he had to have a good, thorough plan. One that came with contingencies in case of default.
And when he was all alone in the world, with enemies and death threats on his trail, he could start to feel a little desperate. If he’d let himself.
“Please, I just need a place to find a little peace.” The words broke out of him.
“Park it,” the man—Bob, his name tag read—said with a single nod, handing Joe a key card to get through the security gate. But he still didn’t meet Joe’s gaze.
Joe pretended not to notice as he thanked the man, leaving his cash lying on the counter. He had to get the rig in place and hooked up before Bob changed his mind.
“You want me to what?” McKenna Meredith screeched quietly into her phone.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but the guy’s in real danger, Ken,” Glen Rivers, forensics expert and partner in the nationally renowned firm Sierra’s Web, came back immediately. “He hired the entire firm this morning, and in less than two hours, we’ve determined he’s being traced, by what looks like multiple sources, but he has, thus far, moved before anyone actually found him. He’s living out of one of those recreational vehicles and has no known address. Hud and I looked at video surveillance from areas he’s stayed most recently, and yesterday someone was tailing his car. He managed to lose them before returning to his rig and was gone from the area, driving the rig and towing the car, within the hour.”
“Yeah, but come on, Glen, Joe Hamilton? The Joe Hamilton? I thought Sierra’s Web was in business to see that justice is done. To help good people out of hard places. Hamilton’s a crook of the worst kind.” Because he’d pretended to be anything but. He’d lived among, socialized with and appeared to care about the people he’d been robbing. “You want me to protect him?”
“He says he’s innocent. That’s why he hired us—the entire firm of experts if that’s what it takes—to help him prove that he didn’t inflate earnings or falsify reporting records. He says he didn’t commit any of the crimes he was charged with. Which, by the way, is probably why there wasn’t enough evidence to get a guilty verdict.”
Walking around the staked-off and newly cleaned desert lot her dad and half-brothers were checking out on a mountain ridge overlooking Shelter Valley—the small Arizona town where she’d spent her happiest childhood moments—she hated the thought of leaving so soon.
“He was Bellair Software’s chief accountant, Glen.” She didn’t follow crime cases in the news all that much, but the Bellair one...she’d been hearing about it for months. “And I don’t expect he’s going to want me on the case,” she added then. “My grandparents hadn’t invested, thankfully, but some of their friends did, and they lost millions.”
“He’s given us complete carte blanche, and you are our best choice for this one by far.” Glen wasn’t backing down. “Not only because you’re one of the best bodyguards we’ve ever had on board, or because you fit the undercover portion of the plan perfectly, but because of your wealthy upbringing...you grew up in this world, Ken. You understand the inner workings. You’ll see and hear things, pick up on things, that others might not...”
“I don’t like him.” At all. She’d chosen long ago to stay as clear as she could from people who thought that money mattered most.
“You’ve met him?”
“No. But the choices he’s made, fraud aside...money clearly is what drives him.” It had been all over the news how the man’s entire life had consisted of making money, from his social interactions to the mansion he’d purchased in an elite neighborhood. Hamilton didn’t seem to do anything, attend a party or play a golf game, unless he was there for moneymaking purposes.
The perp who’d kidnapped and killed her mother had been solely driven by greed for money, too. A fact that, many years later, Glen had helped her to prove.
“You seriously want me to find someone else?”
Of course not. She was going to take the job, assuming Glen still wanted her to have it. She’d known that, the second she’d heard Glen had an assignment for her—regardless of the fact that she’d just come off a five-week job for him. Sierra’s Web hired and worked for the best of the best. She was proud to be one of them.
And she needed the money.
“You know better than that,” she said, glancing across to the three dark heads bent over a site plan. “I just want full disclosure. And you also have to know...if I discover something that proves his guilt, I won’t continue to work for him.”
“We told him the same thing this morning—had him sign paperwork to that end, before we accepted his down payment.”
When her father glanced up, his brow raised in question, she smiled, letting him know that everything was okay. But he’d know, too, that she was leaving. She might have only lived with him full-time for the first two years of her life, and then just for weekend and summer visits, but the man could read her like a book.
“What does he know about me?” she asked Glen.
“Only what you tell him. Or what he can find on the internet.”
She had no social media presence. Kept a very low profile in general.
“Shouldn’t he be told I could be perceived to have a conflict of interest?”
“I’ve talked to the partners, and we agree that your past is a help to this particular job, not a hindrance. We see no conflict of interest in terms of your assignment. We all agree that you’re the best we have to offer for the task, and we have complete confidence you’ll do it well. If you see a need to make him aware of any similarities in acquaintances between the two of you, that’s up to you.”
Seeing her father and brothers nodding in unison in their huddle over construction plans, she told Glen, “I’ll be in Quartz Landing before dark,” and rang off.
The men in her life were standing on the big break they’d been working toward for so many years—transitioning from construction workers to company owners. The years of training, sweating under the hot Arizona sun hammering boards for others, of certifying as electricians and plumbers, license applications, insurance payments, job bidding, and finally...a winning bid.
At the moment there was only a two-lane paved road from the end of Shelter Valley’s Main Street up to the ridge on which the four of them all stood, but a developer had plans in place to grow the town right up the mountain. And wanted her family’s new company to build the first phase. With an option to continue with phases two and three, assuming everything played out to the developer’s satisfaction.
Her brothers both had wives. Toddlers.
She’d promised Meredith and Sons Construction Company financial help. They hadn’t asked. Had actually refused. Several times. Until she’d had a hissy fit about family, about being a full-fledged member of the family, about wanting to invest in the family...but she knew they’d only capitulated because they thought she was using inheritance money that she hated.
Money that could have been her mother’s.
What they didn’t know didn’t hurt them as long as they didn’t find out. Which meant she was going to work.
“A new job call?” her father asked as she approached the threesome in their jeans and lightweight button-down cotton shirts—long-sleeved even in the nearly one-hundred-degree temperature—work boots, and Meredith Construction baseball caps.
“Yeah.” She didn’t bother to hide her disappointment at another visit cut short. But she was eager to go, too. And not just because she wanted to ensure that they’d have whatever money they needed whenever they needed it. But because she truly loved what she did. Protecting others from lives lived in fear gave her a rush of adrenaline like none other.
Because she was good at it. And being good at it reminded her that she was trained, qualified, licensed in nearly half of the US states to bear arms and protect, which meant that she no longer had to live her own life afraid of whatever evil could be lurking close by.
The new job, though...protecting a man she was certain was guilty...that put a whole new spin on things.
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