Page 59 of The Money Man
“Our third team member, Ray,” Pam responded.
“So what are we going to do until Derek, er, Mr. Killion gets here?”
“Keep moving.”
Alice sank back against the leather seat, trying to sort through the tangle of thoughts spinning in her brain. She suddenly sat forward. “I’m not going anywhere without my cats.”
She thought she heard a choke of laughter from the front seat.
“You can talk to Mr. Killion about that,” Sara said, turning off the main street onto a road that led to the highway.
Alice subsided again. Despite her alarm about Peters, her heart was doing a little dance because she would see Derek again. Not only that, he was coming to personally escort her to a safer place.
She thought of what Natalie had said, that this was supposed to be a meaningless fling to help her confidence. It was the height of stupidity to attempt to make it into anything more, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Nothing she told herself stopped the excited anticipation from alternating with the genuine dread.
Sara and Pam were not chatty, so Alice stewed in the back seat as they cruised along the parkway until a call came in on Pam’s phone. Then they were discussing lines of sight and handoffs and all kinds of things Alice couldn’t follow. However, she shifted forward and said, “Don’t forget my cats. I’m not going to leave them in case Peters decides to blow up my house.”
Whoever Pam was talking to wasn’t happy when she threw the cats into the conversation, but Alice didn’t care. She had been worrying about Sylvester and Audley ever since she heard about Peters lurking around her place. She’d read enough thrillers to know that villains sometimes tortured and killed their target’s pets as a warning. The possibility made her stomach heave.
Pam turned around in her seat. “Okay, we’re going to return to Cofferwood and set up a perimeter around the house with our team and Mr. Killion’s driver, who’s also trained in personal security. You and Mr. Killion go into the house, get the cats, and leave as quickly as possible.”
“Right. Got it,” Alice said, resisting her slightly hysterical urge to say, “Roger that.”
“In and out fast,” Pam repeated. “Mr. Killion says you can buy whatever you need for yourself and the cats when you get to the city, so no packing clothes or anything.”
The city.So she was being taken to New York. A hotel maybe? Or did KRG have such a thing as a safe house? That was another thriller thing she wasn’t sure was accurate.
Fifteen minutes later they arrived in Alice’s neighborhood. Now Pam and Sara were speaking almost nonstop into the earpieces they were wearing. As they approached Alice’s house, they passed another dark SUV. When they pulled into Alice’s driveway, a limo glided up to the curb in front of her sidewalk.
“What’s your garage-door combination?” Pam asked.
“1-1-2-3-5-8,” Alice said, thinking that Derek would have recognized the Fibonacci series and gotten a kick out of it.
Pam evidently didn’t or else didn’t feel the need to comment as she got out of the car to punch in the code.
After they pulled into the garage, Sara twisted around to say, “Stay in the car with the doors locked until we come back. If we don’t come back, get the hell out of Dodge.” She handed Alice the keys, which freaked her out more than everything else that had happened so far. Sara didn’t seem like the sort who would trust a rank amateur with keys if she didn’t think there was a real possibility that she wouldn’t return.
Alice nodded and managed to croak, “Okay.” Then she climbed into the driver’s seat, just in case, and sat in the locked car alone in the dark garage, wondering what she would do if John Peters suddenly appeared beside her door. “Have a heart attack and die,” she muttered. “Which would be exactly what he’s hoping for.”
But Sara and Pam returned and escorted her into her own kitchen. Alice stopped short in the kitchen doorway, her pulse doing a slow, sensual tango.
Derek stood in her tiny foyer, the tall, muscled body she now knew every naked inch of clad in jeans and a maroon polo shirt. His arms were crossed and his face was tight with worry. When he saw her, he exploded into motion, striding over to wrap her in his powerful arms, so that her fear melted away. “Thank God you went out tonight. I can’t imagine ... if you’d been home ...” He inhaled deeply. “It’s all fine now.”
“The cats,” Sara prodded.
“Right,” Derek said, although he was slow to release Alice. She loved the fact that he didn’t complain about her concern for her pets. “Where are their carrying cases?”
“Oh ... in the garage,” Alice said. She’d been so nervous that she’d forgotten to bring them in.
“Lead the way,” he said.
Alice noticed that Sara and Pam positioned themselves strategically as she and Derek moved. After they retrieved the cases, their little squad traipsed upstairs since Sylvester and Audley were not on the first floor. “Let me go alone,” Alice said. “Otherwise they may hide from all the commotion.”
Pam nodded. “Ray’s got eyes on Peters so it’s safe.”
Alice checked in her office and found Audley on his favorite perch on the cat tree. She scooped him up and carried him out to where Derek already had the carrier open. Audley only put up a mild yowl of complaint at being confined. She discovered Sylvester in the laundry room, enjoying the nest of towels in the laundry basket. Since he hated going to the vet and assumed the cat carrier meant that was their destination, she wrapped him in one of the towels to avoid being scratched.
Even then, Derek had to help her wrestle the squirming kitty into his case, grabbing the cat’s flailing hind legs in his big, capable hands and giving Sylvester a shove through the opening. “If you ever need a second career, you’d make a great vet tech,” she joked, surprised at his willingness to get up close and personal with the hissing cat.
