Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

“Your five minutes starts now,” I growled as I walked around the large but plain office.

“Cass…”

Fuck. I knew that tone. I hated that tone. It wasn’t a command or plea. It wasn’t disappointment or anger. It was… well, it was Sully.

Only it was the real Sully; the one he rarely let anyone see.

“Damn it,” I muttered underneath my breath. I’d already spent too much time in the company of the man I’d once considered my best friend.

I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure that the door leading into the office was wide open. It was, but that didn’t prevent the itch that was spreading beneath my skin.

Funny that I’d never felt that sensation while I’d been locked up. The need to keep moving was new too. I’d spent two years in a cell that had been less than half the size of the office I was currently in and yet the plainly furnished room with boxes, file folders, and mountains of paperwork scattered everywhere wasn’t big enough. It took every ounce of energy I had in me to stop moving and turn to face one of the many people who’d let me rot in my own personal hell for two long years.

“Four and a half,” I said simply. I’d made a deal with the man, so my only obligation was to see it through.

Sullivan “Sully” Ferguson was standing behind his desk, his head uncharacteristically hung. The man was built like a tank and pretty much behaved like one too by rolling over anyone or anything that dared to get in his way, but not today. Today he looked… tired.

I’d known the man since we’d been a couple of dumb fifteen-year-olds who’d both had to grow up fast. Sully had basically raised his younger brother and I’d been trapped in a world filled with wealth, power, and every other perk that had come with being born into a family with the right last name. Two worlds that had been as different as night and day and yet, in our own ways, we’d both been trapped within our own little prisons.

Ironically, Sully’s family had been the reason I’d been able to escape my life as an Ashby and the pre-stamped future that had come with it. Turned out, I hadn’t escaped—I’d just made a trade.

One prison for another.

One title for another.

Murderer.

That was my title now. It didn’t matter that my rich family had finally gotten around to scrounging up a fancy lawyer smart enough to get me out of prison… on a technicality, no less. Now I carried the mantle of two titles that would always be linked together no matter where I went or what I did. The Ashby heir turned murderer.

“You still do it,” Sully murmured before dropping into the worn desk chair behind him. His hard-ass, unyielding side was back.

“Do what?” I asked as I forced myself to move closer to the desk. There were a couple of chairs in front of the desk, but I didn’t want to sit. I didn’t want to be inside, either. I didn’t want walls or silence. I wanted to walk and just keep walking.

“Run your hands through your hair when you’re trying to get yourself under control,” Sully said around a cigar he was in the process of lighting.

Whatever brief lapse that had allowed me to see that my former friend was dealing with some heavy shit of his own was gone. He was once again the Sully the world needed him to be. Tough, cold, detached.

As teenagers we’d been nothing alike. Different social circles, different economic means, and very different personalities. I hadn’t understood what tough meant until I’d met Sully, but I also hadn’t aspired to be like him when it came to the way he’d held himself apart from the world.

Who knew that being locked in what had essentially been a coffin for two years would turn a man so far beyond hard and unyielding that it was like comparing a pebble to a boulder. Only now Sully was the pebble and I was the boulder.

“Three and a half,” I said. I didn’t have a watch on, but mental counting while doing ten other things had been required reading as part of my Introduction to Surviving Prison manual. “I wanted to keep it shaved but Hutch said it would look better for all my future court appearances,” I murmured absently as I once again toyed with my hair. I’d kept it shaved in prison because lesson two in the manual had been that long hair in prison was a weapon that could be used against the owner of that hair.

“There won’t be any more court shit,” Sully responded. “Those prosecutors would have lost to Asa Hutch the first time around. He would have spotted⁠—”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “What the fuck do you want? You want reimbursement for picking me up even though I didn’t ask you to? You want gas money, cash for that shitty coffee and that breakfast that actually made the slop they fed us in prison taste like a gourmet meal?” I held my arms out. “You should have said something before I tossed my granddaddy’s Rolex into the trash when I was given my personal possessions back.”

Sully fell silent and then reached for a glass and a bottle of scotch sitting on the corner of his desk. The sight of the alcohol made a strange sense of calm wrap around me like the warmest of blankets.

“I assume your taste for cheap whiskey hasn’t changed,” I said.

Sully practically growled as he began pouring the amber liquid into the glass. “Cheap scotch,” he automatically returned.

Since Sully’s father had been Scottish, the rule in their house had been to never ever refer to the alcohol as whiskey. It was scotch or nothing. And if you’d had the misfortune of calling it anything else, you’d have gotten a speech longer than your arm about how scotch and whiskey were not the same thing.

“‘Them blasted Americans are the ones who…’” I said, Sean Ferguson’s loud, booming voice still ringing in my ear.

“‘…started muckin’ it up when they got the two mixed up,’” Sully responded, completing the phrase.

“Where is he? Your father even know I’m here?” I asked. It was all I could do not to ask about the third member of the Ferguson family.

“Dad died last year,” Sully muttered before downing the scotch. He started pouring himself a second round without waiting for the first one to kick in.

For the first time since I’d walked down the steps of the police station, I felt something besides hate and fury. Sean Ferguson was gone. The man had been more of a father to me than my own, and I hadn’t been there as he’d been laid to rest. God, the last time I’d seen him had been when I’d been led out of the courtroom in shackles after the four guilty verdicts had been handed down. Despite the judge’s warning for silence, the audience had burst out into applause and cheers.

That was the memory of me that he’d taken to the grave with him; not any of the ones where he’d welcomed me into his family as a son.

As I tried to absorb the fact that the man who’d taught me what a real father was supposed to be like was dead, I looked around the bare, badly painted white walls of Sully’s office. I could see dozens of spackled-over holes. The only thing hanging on the wall closest to his desk was a framed certificate. From where I was standing, it looked like a business license.

Targes Executive Protection.

I didn’t need to look at the certificate to know that was the name of the business. I’d seen the same words gleaming as fine as the Ashby family silverware above the reception desk in the lobby. That space, compared to Sully’s office, had been pristine and looked like not a penny had been spared to turn it into the same kind of welcome lobbies the big guys in his industry had. The Targes was there too.

A flash of the night Sully and I had come up with the name of the company we’d planned to build together the second we were old enough flashed through my mind. I hadn’t had a clue what a targe was and had told him he was nuts because it’d sounded ridiculous.

Then he’d told me what it meant. What it had meant to his family.

A targe was a shield Scottish warriors had used in battle. Sully had always hoped he’d be able to use the family’s ancestral symbol in any endeavor he pursued. It was a symbol of who his parents had been and the battles the Ferguson family had faced from the moment Sean Ferguson had met his future bride and they had left behind the rural highlands of Scotland so they could travel thousands of miles to the country where everyone supposedly had the same shot at living the great American dream.

Building a business together may have been a naive dream between two kids who’d watched a few too many television shows about detectives and such, but Sully was clearly going for it.

“Executive protection,” I muttered. “Please tell me my father isn’t one of your clients.”

I’d stopped the timer in my head because hearing about Sean Ferguson’s death had rattled me.

Everyone knew my father never would have done business with a fledgling company like Targes. Even if things had been different and his own son had been part of the business, Chandler Ashby III always went with the best and most expensive of everything. Cars, clothes, women.

The comment did what I’d intended it to do, even though I had no idea why I was making the effort considering the circumstances.

It had been meant to make Sully smile, which he may or may not have done since his mouth only moved for a split second.

“Have you talked to your—?” Sully asked after a few moments.

“No,” I said simply.

I waited for Sully to ask me why I hadn’t been in contact with my family from the moment they’d hired the attorney who’d gotten me out of prison on a technicality.

The question never made it from Sully’s lips because the sound of approaching footsteps had me instinctively reaching for the gun at my back and pointing it at the door. What if something had changed in my case and the cops were coming to take me back to prison? Would I let them take me back? If not, how would I stop it? The weight of the weapon in my hand held the answer.

You’ll never see him again.

The taunting voice that occasionally managed to push through my defenses was a cruel distraction, and yet its reminder of what I’d truly be giving up if I chose to let the cops take me out in a hail of bullets was enough to sway me. It didn’t matter that the chances of seeing him again were slim to none. Thankfully, it wasn’t the SWAT team I was expecting. No, the young man who appeared in the doorway couldn’t have looked less like a cop if he’d tried.

He was tall as a reed and nearly as thin as one too.

“Mr. Ferguson, sir, I came in early to—” the guy began before he saw me. The kid, who barely looked legal and had probably been stuffed into every school locker he’d ever had the misfortune of standing next to, froze and dropped the papers in his hand.

Sully was already stepping between me and the kid before I even had a chance to lower the gun. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest, and it was all I could do not to puke up the shitty diner food on the floor of Sully’s office. I didn’t need to wait to hear Sully’s command or plea or whatever to put the weapon away. I was so caught off guard by my own behavior that I barely paid attention to anything else.

Despite what all of California and the rest of the country believed, I didn’t kill innocent people. Hell, the only time I’d taken lives had been while I’d been a Marine.

“You okay, Mikey?” I heard Sully ask, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

“I’m fine, Mr. Ferguson,” the young man responded crisply.

I’d caught enough of my own breath to turn around just in time to see the kid kneeling to collect the papers that had fallen. Sully knelt too. I could hear the pair speaking but couldn’t make out the words. One of the pieces of paper was closer to me than them, so I picked it up. Once Mikey had collected the papers, he steadily walked up to Sully’s desk and carefully laid out the papers into three perfect stacks. He began reorganizing the pages.

“Sorry,” I began, but the kid waved me off.

“It’s fine,” he murmured. His back was stiff as a board and his jaw twitched now and again, but he didn’t try to steer clear of me or ask any questions. He was pretty damn calm for someone who’d just had a gun pointed at him.

“I know better than to enter a room without making myself known.” The young man’s refined way of speaking took me by surprise. His voice was even, and there were no tears, no shaking hands. Other than the moment when he’d dropped the papers, he behaved as if nothing had happened.

“You sure you’re okay, Mikey?” Sully asked from the doorway. He actually sounded… concerned?

To my surprise, I heard Mikey whisper under his breath, “Michael,” before he covered whatever he’d really been feeling with the widest, fakest smile I’d ever seen.

“Fine, Mr. Ferguson. I apologize for interrupting your meeting. May I get your guest any coffee?” he asked as he turned around and dropped his arms to his side.

For a few brief seconds, my presence seemed to have been forgotten because both men stared at each other. Sully with that determined “I’m going to figure out all your secrets” look and Mikey—nay, Michael—defiantly daring the man to try. Electricity crackled between them.

Interesting.

Since it felt like I was eavesdropping on something, I glanced at the paper I’d picked up off the floor. The bottom of my stomach dropped out when I saw the name at the top of what looked to be an invoice.

What the fuck?

“What is this?” I asked in disbelief as I held the paper up. I hadn’t noticed Mikey leave, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he’d still been in the room.

“Cass,” Sully began.

“What the fuck did you do?” I shouted. “What the fuck did you do?”

I had to turn the paper around again so I could confirm that it was what I really thought it was. The name “Hutch” was in bold print across the top of the page along with a slew of other last names.

“It’s not something you need to concern yourself with,” Sully bit out. He tried to snatch the invoice from my hand. I didn’t let him, though it didn’t matter if I had. My slow-to-catch-up mind was caught up.

The invoice was from the law offices of Asa Hutch, my appeals attorney. The total amount paid to the criminal defense attorney had been in the low six figures and the balance on the account was zero.

I slowly dropped my ass down in the chair. I ran my fingers through my hair as I processed what the invoice meant. “Why?” I asked angrily.

The disbelief and shame of how I’d behaved toward Sully was quickly followed by the stunning and undeniably painful realization that it hadn’t been my own family who’d paid through the nose to hire the best attorney money could buy to get me out of prison.

Sully didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the bottle of scotch again. I managed to get to it before he did and threw it against the wall, not caring about the resulting mess the broken glass and amber liquid made.

Not surprisingly, he didn’t react to my show of anger. The only time Sully Ferguson did react to anything real was when it involved someone he cared about.

Like—

I cut the thought off because there was no fucking way I could go there right now.

“You paid Asa Hutch to get me out,” I said. “It wasn’t my family.”

I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t connected the dots sooner.

Sully had been the one to pick me up from the police station early that morning after I’d been processed out. It’d still been dark out, so there’d been no press to deal with. Seeing Sully waiting for me on the steps that led up to the police station had been the last thing I’d been expecting.

It hadn’t taken too much effort on his part to get me to agree to talk to him for five minutes in exchange for a shitty breakfast and access to some of my personal belongings he’d held on to for the two years I’d been gone.

I’d figured the return on investment was pretty good. Giving my former best friend a few minutes to provide one or two pathetic explanations for why he’d done what he’d done and maybe an apology was worth getting to tell him to his face what a piece of shit he was and then getting my hands on whatever remained of my personal possessions that weren’t already in my pocket.

I hadn’t been prepared for this.

“Fuck,” I snapped. “Where did you get the money? Unless you won the fucking lottery, I know you don’t have that kind of cash just lying around.”

“It’s not important⁠—”

“How?” I demanded, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. Problem was, I didn’t know where to direct my anger.

Sully was still standing by the open door. He came toward me but instead of going behind his desk to sit down, he grabbed the other guest chair and turned it so he could talk directly to me. I’d angled my chair so I could still see the door, but it didn’t get me out of Sully’s pointed gaze. “I took out a mortgage on the house.”

It took me too much time to understand. God, had I always been this slow or was it a result of being stuck with only my own thoughts to keep me entertained for two years?

“That house,” I said with a shake of my head. “It was paid off. Your dad worked so fucking hard to pay it off⁠—”

“And he would have been the first one to tell me to mortgage it to do what needed to be done. He loved you like you were his own, Cass. I know it may have seemed like he was one of the ones who… who turned on you, but he didn’t. He just… he didn’t know how to be on both sides at once.”

I sighed because I understood what Sully was saying. Sean Ferguson hadn’t been at my original trial, so I’d just assumed he would have been sitting on the other side of the courtroom rather than behind my sad excuse for a defendant’s table.

“I’ll get the money to repay you,” I said firmly. “My grandmother⁠—”

“No fucking way are you going crawling back to that place. I may as well have left you in prison, you asshole.”

Sully returned to his chair. “Cass, I know you love your grandmother, and she always treated you well, but you’d be stepping into a den of vipers, and you know it. Your grandmother’s what… in her seventies now?”

“Seventy-seven,” I responded.

“If she could have helped you two years ago, she would have, but your father pulls the strings now. He never would’ve let those bullshit charges stick if he’d given even the tiniest bit of shit about you. Even if he had believed any of it was possible, a real father with plenty of money to throw around would have hired as many Asa Hutches as could squeeze around the defendant’s table to protect his kid. I’m sorry to say it⁠—”

I dismissed him with a wave. I’d known from the moment the cops had put the shackles on my wrists that I’d lost the protection of the Ashby name. Hell, I’d lost it much sooner than that. I’d been left with a public defense attorney who’d sat on his ass more than he’d gotten off it from the moment he’d been assigned my case. At the same time, my father had managed to get access to the sizable trust fund my grandmother had established for me in case of her death or until I turned twenty-one. I’d long ago passed the twenty-one mark, but I’d never touched a penny of the money. When I’d finally needed it, the cash had conveniently disappeared, so I’d had no choice but to rely on the public defender.

“Tell me what you need,” I said simply.

“Cass, that’s not why I⁠—”

“I know, buddy,” I told him as I stood and rested my hand on his shoulder. “Could be fun training some of your new recruits in exchange for paying off my debt,” I added with a forced laugh.

“I don’t need you to train my guys,” Sully said as I began to leave the office. His voice sounded grim.

I turned around. “You aren’t seriously thinking about putting me out in the field,” I said in disbelief. “Sully, you might as well set this place on fire now because the second anyone associates my name with your business, you’re done. Not to mention I don’t have a license to⁠—”

“I need you to shadow someone,” Sully interjected.

I shook my head. “Sully, there’s got to be something else you need. If your client or the cops found out I’m working for you⁠—”

“It’s JJ.”