Special Assignment

“Whoever is trying to kill you won’t know you’re no longer working for PPS. And they might not care even if they do.”

“What are you saying? That I should run off to L.A., where I’ll be safe?” Cassie hadn’t realized it, but she’d been counting on Mike to back her up, to agree that staying and working with the team was the best course.

“No. It might be selfishness on my part, but I want you to stay.”

Cassie let out the breath she’d been holding. Mike wanting her in Colorado, especially for selfish reasons, meant more than she could say. Since that morning when she’d lost her hearing, she’d dreamed of finding a man who would treat her as a partner. A man who believed she was his equal. “I guess I need to figure out where I’m going to stay.”

“I have an idea. And since my original assignment with PPS is over, I might be in the market for something new.”

“Or something old, like protecting me?”

“I have the feeling protecting you will never get old.”

Special Assignment

Ann Voss Peterson

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ever since she was a little girl making her own books out of construction paper, Ann Voss Peterson wanted to write. So when it came time to choose a major at the University of Wisconsin, creative writing was her only choice. Of course, writing wasn’t a practical choice—one needs to earn a living. So Ann found various jobs, including proofreading legal transcripts, working with quarter horses and washing windows. But no matter how she earned her paycheck, she continued to write the type of stories that captured her heart and imagination—romantic suspense. Ann lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, her two young sons, her border collie and her quarter horse mare. Ann loves to hear from readers. E-mail her at ann@annvosspeterson.com or visit her Web site at www.annvosspeterson.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Detective Mike Lawson—Mike bleeds blue. A cop from a long line of cops, confronted with widespread corruption tainting his beloved Denver PD. Choosing personal ethics over loyalty, now he has to pay….

Cassie Allen—An overachiever all her life, Cassie was a computer whiz and an accomplished classical pianist before she graduated from high school. But after losing her hearing, Cassie set out to prove she is just like anyone else.

Evangeline Prescott—Evangeline likes to give Prescott Personal Security employees the opportunity to prove themselves. But when Cassie’s life is threatened, Evangeline pulls out the stops to make sure she’s safe.

The Dirty Three—Trio of Denver PD officers arrested for stealing from drug dealers. Now they want revenge.

Deputy Chief Wade Lawson—Mike’s father can’t forgive his son.

Detective Tim Grady—Mike’s partner is the only cop he can trust.

Milo Kardascian—The CEO has an old grudge against Mike.

James Durgin—Is the millionaire afraid for his life or playing tricks?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

No amount of booze could wipe a conscience clean. Not that Mike Lawson hadn’t given it one hell of a shot tonight.

He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling in the direction of the fleabag motel next door to the Beer-ly Alive Tavern. Gravel crunched and scuffed under his boots, the sound brittle as breaking glass in the cool April night. Not that he could feel the temperature. His nose and lips were numb as a plastic mask.

He groped in his pocket and pulled out a room key on one of those old-fashioned plastic paddles. No key cards at this place. At least he had brains enough to check into a room before bellying up to attempt to suck the worm out of a bottle of mescal. He sure as hell didn’t need to risk driving back to the ranch. As a cop, Mike had seen what happened when booze and cars mixed. He didn’t need to add vehicular manslaughter to his list of sins. That list was long enough already.

“God, I was hoping you’d climb behind the wheel, Lawson.” A voice ground out from the shadows. The light from a nearby post gleamed off a shaved scalp. “I’d love to watch the boys slap the cuffs on you and jam an intoximeter tube down your throat.”

Even in his inebriated state, Mike recognized the voice. His ears started to pound. “Aren’t you in prison yet, Fisher?” He tried to hold his head steady and squinted into the shadows.

Three men stood next to his pickup truck. Fisher, Stevens and Rodriguez. The Curly, Larry and Moe of the Denver PD. If Mike had been sober, he’d have noticed them the moment he stepped into the parking lot.

“You think you’re such a goddamn hero, don’t you?” Stevens swaggered forward. He balled his hands into fists. The tendons in his wiry arms stood out with iron-pumping definition. “You didn’t even wait for us to go to trial before trying to sell your rat-bastard lies to Mr. Movie Star.”

The pounding in Mike’s ears grew louder, making his molars ache.

“Mr. Dead Movie Star,” added the Moe of the group, Rodriguez. “Too bad for you.”

Mike inhaled cool, dry air. He hadn’t approached Nick Warner. It had been Warner who’d come up with the idea of putting Mike’s story on the silver screen. Mike had told Warner’s people to forget it every single one of the half-dozen times they’d called. Unfortunately, Hollywood megastars weren’t used to hearing the word no. And when the film festival rolled around, Warner had shown up in Denver, as if challenging Mike to say no to that famous face in person.

Nick Warner had been shot to death before Mike had gotten the chance.

Mike turned away from the cops the Denver Post had dubbed “the Dirty Three” and kept his feet moving toward his motel room. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Hollywood and the Post might think he was a hero for cleaning up corruption in the Denver PD, but he sure as hell didn’t. He was more inclined to agree with his old man’s assessment.

Traitor.

Not that he’d had much of a choice. Not if he wanted to uphold the law. Not if he wanted to do the right thing.

Either way, he had spent the night striving to forget everything that had happened in the past few months…hell, everything that had happened in the past twenty years. And the last thing he wanted was to ruin a good drunk by strolling down memory lane with the dirty three.

“Trying to run away? Can’t face us without Internal Affairs by your side?” Rodriguez taunted. He nodded to the others.

On cue, Fisher stepped into his path, his line-backer shoulders blocking sight of the motel. Stevens and Rodriguez positioned themselves on either side.

Run away? If only he could. “Going to bed. Been a long day.”

“Not as long as it’s going to get,” Fisher said.

Mike tipped his head back to meet Fisher’s eyes. The parking lot seemed to sway under his feet.

“How much did you get for selling your story?” Rodriguez again.

“Who says I sold it?”

“The kind of money Hollywood throws around? You sold it.”

Mike shook his head. Mistake. The whole world swirled around him. Of course they didn’t believe he’d turned down the money. That’s what had gotten them in trouble in the first place. Money. Greed. That’s why they couldn’t resist ripping off drug dealers. Easy cash, no victims. Not victims who didn’t deserve what they got, at any rate. If it wasn’t for greed, Fisher, Stevens and Rodriguez would still be on the job instead of on suspension awaiting the outcome of an investigation.

“We want a piece of that Hollywood cash.”

“Can’t help you.”

Fisher balled a bus-sized hand into a fist. “You will.”

“Or what? You going to assault me? You going to beat me to a pulp?” He was in a bad enough position already without taunting them, but he couldn’t help it.

White teeth glowed against Fisher’s dark face. “I don’t see any witnesses.”

True enough.

It was too late for traffic, yet still two hours shy of bar time. Mike was screwed. Not that he didn’t deserve a beating. Hell, he’d deserved it since that afternoon when he was seventeen years old.

He focused on Fisher. He might as well get it over with, and the man mountain seemed most likely to end things quickly. Swaying slightly, he fisted a hand and smashed it straight into Fisher’s nose.

The big man stepped backward, a bellow breaking from his lips.

Mike stumbled forward, carried by his own momentum, and ran smack into Fisher’s return punch. He struggled to keep his balance, just as Rodriguez landed a punch to his kidney and Fisher thrust an elbow into his eye.

He hit the ground.

A boot connected with his mouth. Another slammed above his eye. Blow after blow bruised his ribs, his gut, his legs. He gasped for breath, taking in nothing but dust. Blood flooded his mouth, turning dust to mud, sticky and hot.

Ironic that his beating came at the hands of brothers he had betrayed. Brothers he’d let down.

Fitting.

Another kick landed square, reverberating through his head, making his brain flicker to black.

Chapter Two

The whistling twitter of a bird cut through Mike’s aching head, loud as a police siren. He considered lifting his head, then thought better of the idea. Every muscle in his body hurt. Gravel gouged his cheek and his mouth tasted like something had crawled in and died.

Maybe something had.

Gritting his teeth against the pounding in his skull, he forced his lids to open. Well, one lid. The other wouldn’t budge, his eye swollen and aching to high hell.

The soft light of dawn glowed over the parking lot. Memories from the night before filtered through his sluggish mind. The argument with his dad. Shot after shot of mescal. The pummeling at the hands and boots of the Dirty Three.

A lovely evening all around.

Summoning what courage he had, he lifted his head from the gravel. Agony shot down the back of his neck. His stomach swirled in protest. But finally, breathing as if he’d just run ten miles, he worked his way to his feet and wobbled across the remaining ten feet to his motel-room door. Leaning against the jamb, he groped his pockets.

No key.

He’d had it after he left the bar. He was sure of it. He remembered holding the plastic key fob in his hand. Before he ran into his not-so-good buddies on the force, before they beat the crap out of him.

He swayed, brushing the door. It swung inward. Open.

Mike tensed. Darkness veiled the room’s interior, but he could still make out the dark shape of his duffel, lying on the bed where he’d left it. A pair of jeans trailed from the open bag and draped onto the floor. If some bum had found the key in the lot and let himself in, he might still be inside. What Mike wouldn’t give to have his weapon right now. Too bad he’d left it in the duffel. The duffel that someone had obviously ransacked.

He flattened himself against the door jamb and pushed the door wide.

He waited for a beat. Two beats. Three. No sound came from the room. No movement.

Here goes nothing. He moved into the doorway and peered inside.

The place seemed vacant enough. But the evidence that someone had gone through his things couldn’t be more clear. The change of clothes and toothbrush Mike had shoved in the duffel were strewn across the bed. His razor glinted from where it lay on the worn carpet. And he didn’t have to search through the shell of the duffel to see the worst of it—his service pistol was gone.

“UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, you’re on administrative leave pending investigation. I’m sorry, Lawson.”

Mike squinted at Tim Grady’s face through his swollen eye. Suspended for losing his gun. Stuck in a damn hospital room overnight for observation. Sorry was the right word. As in Mike Lawson was one sorry-assed son-of-a-bitch. “I suppose a lot of guys are finding this pretty funny.”

“Well…” Tim Grady grinned, exposing the wide gap between his front teeth.

Mike suppressed a chuckle, afraid it would hurt his face, his head, his neck. Even though he’d worked with Grady for nearly three years, that gap in his partner’s smile still cracked him up at the oddest times. It was endearing. Disarming. And it had come in handy more than once when they’d had to play good cop, bad cop with a suspect. Once Grady flashed that grin, he was everybody’s friend. “Did the lieutenant think to ask the Dirty Three if they happened to come across my gun? Say, after they got tired of beating on me and let themselves into my motel room?”

“I don’t know about the LT, but I did a little nosing around. Off the record.”

Mike tried to raise an eyebrow in silent question, but the gesture turned into more of a flinch and groan. “And?”

“They say they didn’t touch your key. That some lowlife must have come across you at bar time, taken the key and let himself into your motel room.”

“And you believe them?”

“Like hell.” Grady canted his head to one side. “Still, I don’t see that taking your Sig buys them much.”

“Makes me look bad.”

“You did a pretty good job of that without their help. Why were you trying to drown yourself last night anyway? And what made you stupid enough to throw the first punch?”

Mike rested his head back on his pillow. “Damn. What the hell am I doing stuck here? All I need is a few stitches and a pack of ice.”

Grady shook his head. “You don’t want to talk about it? Fine with me. Take the time the lieutenant gave you. Get your head straight. God knows the time I took after Janey died sure helped me. Besides, I don’t want some messed-up cop with a death wish watching my back, thank you very much.” Grady smiled, but even that gap couldn’t mitigate the hard ring of his words.

Mike closed his aching eyes. Grady had been through hell with his wife’s illness and subsequent death and yet he’d pulled himself together. So why couldn’t Mike seem to manage it?

Suspended from the job, Mike had nothing but time. Too bad all the time in the world wouldn’t change anything. He’d had twenty years to try to chip away at the guilt that calcified inside him, and if anything it had grown harder, despite his best efforts to always do the right thing. Time might have helped Grady, but for Mike a few weeks of vacation wasn’t going to make a dent.

“Excuse me. Detective Lawson?” A mellow female voice cut through Mike’s thoughts.

He opened his eyes.

An elegant blonde stood in the doorway, her long wavy hair falling over the shoulders of her light gray business suit. She skewered him with a cool blue gaze.

“Mrs. Prescott.” Mike hadn’t seen Evangeline Prescott since he’d last worked as liaison between the Denver PD and her company, Prescott Personal Securities, on a protected-witness case over six months ago. She was a classy woman who ran a classy organization. And although she had suffered the loss of her husband, Robert, in a plane crash two years before, she, too, had managed to pull her life together after tragedy.

“Please, call me Evangeline.” She stepped into the room. Behind her, and five inches shorter, a woman with curly auburn hair that just brushed her shoulders followed. A concerned look flashed across her pretty features as she took in his battered face.

Mike’s adrenaline spiked.

“You remember Cassie Allen, Detective?” Evangeline said.

As if he would forget Cassie. As if he could. He forced his aching face into some semblance of a smile. Raising his hands, he formed his stiff fingers into the shapes that were still second nature to him, even after all these years. Hi, Cassie.

She returned his smile for a split second, then pressed her lips tight and studied the pattern of tile on the floor.

She didn’t look happy to be there, that was for sure. A fact that bothered him more than it should. It wasn’t as if they’d had anything beyond a working relationship on the occasions he’d dealt with Prescott Personal Securities. But still… “Evangeline and Cassie, this is Detective Tim Grady.”

“I’m sorry if we’re interrupting.” Evangeline glanced at Grady.

Grady thrust himself free of the wall. “Nah, I gotta get going. Bad guys wait for no one and all that. Nice meeting the two of you.” With a gap-toothed grin, Grady was gone.

Evangeline focused on Mike. “I don’t want to waste your time or ours, Detective, so I’ll tell you why we’re here. I want you to work for me.”

Surely the pounding in his head had interfered with his hearing. “Work for you?”

“The grapevine has it that you’re on leave from the police department.”

“Bad news sure travels fast.”

“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.