Special Assignment Read online

“And whenever a door closes, a window opens,” she said, matching his cliché. “I need someone who is honest. Someone I can trust.”

  “For what?”

  “A very sensitive case. There’s a briefing at our offices tomorrow morning. I’ll give you the details then. If you can’t make it, Cassie will fill you in. You’ll be working with her.” Evangeline watched his expression as though she knew full well how much the prospect of working with Cassie would appeal to him.

  He looked past those knowing blue eyes and focused on Cassie’s warm brown ones.

  Cassie shook her head with a snap of frustration. No doubt she’d read Evangeline’s lips and had her own thoughts about the assignment. Her hands flew, signing her thoughts behind her boss’s back. She wants you to be my bodyguard. The poor little deaf girl’s babysitter. A babysitter I don’t need. Feel free to turn her down. It’s not a good use of your time.

  Mike frowned at Evangeline. It didn’t add up. None of it. Even if Cassie was right, and Evangeline merely wanted someone to look after her cute little computer whiz, that didn’t explain why she would pick him. “You shouldn’t believe all my recent press. I’m no hero.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t believe everything I read.”

  “Then why me?” He gestured to his face. “I’m a drunk.”

  “One night of drinking doesn’t a drunk make. I know more about you than you think, Detective Lawson.”

  “Then you know that half the police department hates me. You know I’m suspended for losing my gun. Surely you can come up with a better bodyguard prospect at PPS.”

  “I’m sure I can. But not for this case. I trust you. You’re honest and I know you’ll remain honest…even when it’s inconvenient.”

  Inconvenient? If only that was all betraying fellow cops was, an inconvenience.

  “But that’s only part of it.”

  He waited for her to go on.

  “You’ve worked with Cassie before. You’re able to communicate.”

  You can talk to the poor little deaf girl. Cassie’s fingers stabbed the air. Really, I don’t need you. I can handle this myself.

  “I know some sign language and I can imagine the rest.” Evangeline glanced at Cassie. One side of her lips tilted up in a knowing smile. She turned her focus back to Mike. “What Cassie doesn’t realize is that I would provide a bodyguard for any technician I had working on this particular case. Hearing or not. It just works well that the two of you can communicate. And that you worked well together in the past.”

  Working with Cassie wasn’t his concern. That part sounded great. Too good to be true. And that’s what worried him. “I come with a lot of baggage.”

  “We can work around that.”

  “I don’t think you quite get the picture. The Denver Post might think I’m a hero, but half the police department would like to see me fall on my face.”

  Evangeline waved away his protest with a manicured hand. “I know you’re no longer in a position to be my go-between with the Denver PD. That’s not what I’m hiring you to do.”

  “You don’t get it. Some are so eager to see me fall, they’re waiting in line to give me a shove.”

  “Then you’ll have to keep your balance. I’ll add that to your job duties.”

  It was impossible to argue with this woman. But then she and her late husband, Robert Prescott, hadn’t gotten where they were by taking no for an answer. It seemed there was a lot of that going around. “What are my duties? If I were to accept, that is.”

  “Cassie will be working on deciphering an encrypted disk. It’s very important. Very sensitive. I want you to provide security while she does the work.”

  See? Babysitter, Cassie signed. Tell her to forget it.

  He tried to keep his expression neutral. He had a bad feeling about this. He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said a good portion of the Denver PD would like to make him pay for blowing the whistle on the Dirty Three’s racket of stealing profits from drug dealers. Not to mention the Dirty Three themselves. He doubted they would be satisfied with one friendly little beating. They’d find any way they could to make his life as miserable as he’d made theirs. And he sure as hell didn’t want Cassie to get caught in the crossfire. “I still don’t understand why you don’t deal with this in-house. Why hire freelance bodyguards?”

  “Not bodyguards. Just you. Just this case.”

  Cassie shook her head. There’s going to be nothing for you to do but sit and stare at me while I work.

  He stifled a smile. The only way that argument would succeed was if she was trying to talk him into taking the job.

  Tell her no, Cassie signed.

  “I can arrange for someone to fill in if you need a day or two to clear your schedule,” Evangeline said.

  His schedule? What a laugh. Though he supposed he could fill a lot of hours drinking and feeling sorry for himself. “It’s not that.”

  “I’m prepared to beat your salary at the Denver PD.”

  “It’s not money, either.”

  Evangeline stepped forward so Cassie was fully behind her. “We need you, Detective. Cassie needs you. If I can’t rely on you to protect her, I’m going to have to find someone else to decode that disk.”

  “If the damn thing is so dangerous, that might not be a bad idea.”

  “Okay. You tell her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can tell Cassie she’s off the case. You can tell her her inability to hear makes it too dangerous for her to do this job without someone to watch her back. You tell her.”

  A lump the size of a fist tightened in his gut. During the past cases he’d worked with Cassie, he’d come to understand how important her work was to her. How vital it was that she was treated like everyone else. How much she deplored being singled out or coddled for her disability. And how much the news that she was being taken off this obviously important case would kill her.

  But being killed figuratively was better than being killed for real.

  He eyed Cassie and formed the words with his hands. If this case is so dangerous, maybe you shouldn’t take it on.

  She shook her head. I’m decrypting the disk. I’m the best at PPS when it comes to decryption. I’ll be careful. I’m not stupid.

  No, she was definitely not stupid. He gave her a smile.

  “Take the job, Detective,” Evangeline prodded. “We’ll work around the problems with those few officers at the Denver PD. Cassie needs you.”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t need me.”

  “Okay, maybe she doesn’t need you. But you can’t argue with the fact that right now, you need this case.”

  The macho cop inside him wanted to say he didn’t need this case or any other. That he didn’t need anything…or anybody. But Mike knew that was a lie. He’d been struggling since he’d informed Internal Affairs about the Dirty Three. Struggling with guilt, with his damn conscience, with the fantasy of drinking his problems away. Last night proved that. The only thing that had kept him together was the job. And now that he didn’t have that, he didn’t have anything.

  He looked past Evangeline and focused on Cassie. He’d been attracted to her curly auburn hair and sassy little body since he’d first laid eyes on her. But it was more than that. The whole act of talking to her, using his hands to form letters, watching her convey her thoughts with gestures and expressions…being around her took him back in time. Before the horrible mistake he’d made that summer day when he was seventeen. Before the guilt and self-loathing. She made him feel that he had a chance to rewrite the past.

  And how could he pass up an opportunity like that?

  Chapter Three

  “Who’s that?”

  Cassie watched Angel’s black-lipsticked lips form the words between chews on her ever-present wad of gum. It was amazing the gum didn’t get caught on the silver ball piercing her tongue.

  Cassie shrugged and brought her attention back to the copy machine Angel had managed to break for the third ti
me this month. She had an important case to attend to, protocols to decipher, algorithms to test. She didn’t have time for fixing machines and speculating about the face on the reception area’s security monitor. Knowing Angel, she could be talking about the UPS man and had just forgotten what he looked like since the delivery he’d made the day before.

  “I’d sure like to meet him. He’s hot.”

  Not the UPS man. He was cute, but at five-foot-nothing and prematurely balding, Cassie doubted Angel would call him hot. Of course, if he traded in his brown shorts for black and threw in multiple piercings, who knew?

  Angel grabbed Cassie’s arm, long black talons poking through her cotton sweater. “You got to look, Cass. Tell me what you think.”

  Cassie sighed. There was no use ignoring Angel at times. The PPS receptionist was a force. A force that broke copy machines and had apparently decided Cassie was her buddy. Probably because Cassie didn’t talk back.

  Abandoning the copier, Cassie stuck her head around the cubicle wall separating the copy/fax area from the rest of reception.

  Mike Lawson peered from the security monitor. Purple bruises covered his jaw and crept up one cheek. One eye was ringed in black and purple like a cartoon cliché. And other than the purple and black and angry red scrapes, he was pale as the snowcaps on the mountains. He looked like the undead. No wonder Angel found him hot.

  Not that Cassie did or anything.

  She tried to ignore the warm tremor that danced in her stomach seemingly every time she saw the tall, dark and serious cop. There was only one explanation for his presence at PPS this morning. He must have decided to take Evangeline up on her job offer.

  Great.

  Evangeline wouldn’t be this concerned about a hearing technician deciphering a disk. William Leonard, or Lenny as everyone called him, the senior technician at PPS had worked on countless intricate cases and never once had Evangeline insisted he have a babysitter.

  A flush of anger heated her cheeks. Would she never be allowed to show what she was capable of doing? Would well-meaning people always insist on coddling the deaf girl?

  She glanced at Angel. She didn’t know what the receptionist was waiting for, but she hadn’t taken a step out of the copy area. She set the toner cartridge she was holding on a nearby countertop and turned to Angel, making her signs so simple and clear that even Angel could understand. Why don’t you greet him?

  Angel shook her head hard, her black, spiked do so stiff with spray not a single hair moved. “Me?”

  Angel picked the damnedest times to start being shy. It’s your job. You’re the receptionist.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Angel ducked out of the printing and fax area and scampered to her desk.

  As soon as Angel left, Cassie made her way down a short hall to the glassed-in area that protected the servers and most of the tech equipment at PPS from the dust and hustle of the offices and cubicles where the agents worked. She slipped behind a bank of servers.

  She wasn’t ready to face Mike Lawson. Just one glimpse of him in the reception desk monitor made her feel as jittery as a teenage girl. Not the feeling she was after. This was the first case she’d worked on solo, the first time Evangeline had trusted her with something really big. She needed to prove she could do as good a job as any hearing person. A better job. And being around Mike Lawson, having him babysit her, didn’t make her feel exactly capable.

  A gentle hand tapped her shoulder.

  She whirled around to face Lenny, her brilliant coworker who all but ran the technology department. His fire-red hair stuck out in several spots, as if he’d slept at his desk last night instead of going home. Again. No one was as dedicated as Lenny.

  “Who are you hiding from?” Lenny’s lips formed the words.

  My bodyguard, she signed.

  He gave her an odd look. Lenny might be brilliant, but he wasn’t as well versed in relating to humans as he was relating to computers. He probably thought she really was hiding from her bodyguard.

  Well, wasn’t she?

  She stepped out from behind the servers. Just kidding, she signed.

  Lenny nodded as if he still didn’t understand. “It’s cool you have a bodyguard. I mean you work to protect other people’s bodies, it’s about time someone protects yours, right? You’re lucky.” He shrugged a skinny shoulder.

  Lucky? Her fingers raced. I don’t want to be lucky. I want to be respected.

  The grin fell from Lenny’s freckled face and he stared at her blankly.

  She took a deep breath. Whenever she got upset, she signed too fast for anyone at PPS to keep up. Even poor Lenny the genius couldn’t keep track of her flying fingers. But she hated speaking out loud. Just the thought that other people could hear her voice and she couldn’t made her feel uncomfortably out of control.

  She let out a sigh. Never mind. I’m just blowing off steam.

  Lenny offered her an awkward smile, as if he still didn’t understand her but didn’t want to be rude enough to say so, and shuffled back to his workstation.

  Cassie watched him go, guilt clamping down on her shoulders. Of course Lenny would think having a bodyguard was cool. He was working on sensitive projects, too, yet he had no bodyguard. Further evidence Evangeline was going out of her way to take care of the deaf girl.

  The change in air flow alerted her to the open door. She glanced over to find herself face-to-face with Mike Lawson.

  Angel was right. Even with the battered face and swollen eye, he was hot. A fact that only made this moment all the more awkward.

  Don’t look so excited, he signed.

  She gave him a frown.

  Which way to the large conference room?

  The briefing. Of course. She’d been so shaken about Mike Lawson’s appearance, she’d all but for gotten the case. Her first big case. Her chance to prove what she could do.

  She marched to the conference room, feeling Mike’s presence behind her even though she couldn’t hear his footfalls on the terra-cotta tile. She pushed through the conference room’s double doors. The large conference table stretched in front of them, empty chairs ringing its circumference.

  Where were the other agents? Had she gotten the wrong conference room?

  Evangeline breezed through the door behind them. “Shall we get started?”

  Cassie frowned in her boss’s direction. Where is everyone?

  “The disk’s decryption concerns only the two of you. Please take a seat. We need to get started.” Evangeline focused on Mike. “Glad you decided to take me up on my offer, Detective. After yesterday, I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

  “Funny. I got the feeling you were far too sure.”

  Cassie tore her gaze from Mike’s lips and slipped into the closest chair. Mike folded himself into the seat next to her. Evangeline strode to the head of the table and punched a few buttons on the laptop. An image materialized on the screen in front of them. Movie star Nick Warner gazed from the screen with fierce determination in a famous scene from his action film Sayonara, Baby.

  Cassie felt Mike shift beside her.

  Evangeline gave Mike a pointed look. “I’m sure the two of you have heard about Nick Warner’s death.”

  Mike glowered.

  Cassie didn’t know what was going on, but it was clear Mike wasn’t expecting Evangeline’s reference to the deceased movie star. And he wasn’t happy about it.

  His lips tightened as they formed the words. “Is that why you wanted me on this case? Something to do with Warner?”

  Evangeline returned his gaze unfazed. “I wanted you on the case for the reasons I gave you. Of course, any knowledge you have about Nick Warner will be appreciated.”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “I heard he came to the Denver film festival at least partially to meet with you.”

  “I never spoke to him.”

  “You did talk to people who worked for him, though.” Evangeline’s expression made it clear she was not askin
g a question but stating a fact.

  It seemed there was more to Evangeline’s selection of Mike as her bodyguard than his knowledge of American Sign Language. Much more. Cassie watched Mike for an answer.

  “I talked to them long enough to tell them I was not going to let them option my story, no matter what they paid me.”

  “Who did you talk to? Specifically?”

  Mike shifted in his chair, as if the answer made him uncomfortable. “Mitchell Caruthers.”

  Evangeline nodded. “You know, Caruthers set Nick Warner up to be killed?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “He endangered Nick, his wife and their four-year-old daughter.”

  Cassie had heard the talk about Nick’s wife and little girl. Even neck deep in computers, she couldn’t miss that story. Especially the gossip about the budding relationship between the widowed Mrs. Warner and PPS agent Jack Sanders.

  “Specifically, Detective, do you remember Caruthers mentioning anything to you about a list?”

  “A list? A list of what?”

  “That’s what we need to know.”

  “Listen, I don’t know anything about Caruthers beyond the fact that he said he worked for Nick Warner. He said nothing to me about a list.”

  Cassie eyed Evangeline. How did you hear about this list? she signed.

  “Caruthers told Jack.” Evangeline glanced at Mike. “Agent Jack Sanders, that is. He referred to it as a list of names. Jack thinks it has something to do with investments Caruthers made with money he stole from Nick Warner. Unfortunately that’s about all we know. We have no idea if this list contains the names of investors, or the names of companies or what exactly. But I aim to find out.”

  Is that what is on the disk? Cassie signed the question.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps it’s something else entirely. The disk showed up at our office after Nick Warner’s death. But we don’t know who sent it. Or what data it contains. I guess you’ll have to decipher it to find out how it’s connected to this list. Or if it’s connected at all.”

  “But you think it is connected,” Mike said.

  Evangeline nodded. “The timing was too much of a coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”