Knave (Masters of Manhattan #1) Read online

  I pulled at my wrists, trying with all my might to break free. I'd never felt so utterly helpless in my life. Jesus, having a criminal with a gun restraining me wasn’t even the worst freakin’ thing I’d been through this week. My dad was dead—killed in prison like he was some kind of thug, rather than the balding, middle-aged, workaholic real estate broker I’d always believed him to be. And considering my mom had died nearly twenty years back before providing me with a single sibling, that meant I was pretty much alone in the world. I’d come here tonight to make my peace and maybe snag a memento. To say my goodbyes, since I’d figured my dad’s spirit would probably head back here if it could. And now even Curt, the sweet security guard who’d always called me Miss Sabrina, had been shot.

  I couldn’t do anything about the rest of it, but I knew who was to blame for that part, at least.

  “Fuck you! Where’s Curt?” I demanded, still trying to wriggle free, grunting with the effort but getting nowhere.

  “Curt?”

  “The security guard! The man you shot!” I screamed. “Where is he?”

  White-gloves blinked. “Big, burly guy, cheap suit, red tie?”

  My stomach clenched in foreboding as I could only nod. I stopped struggling. “Where is he?” I whispered. “Is he okay?”

  White-gloves shook his head, and something shifted in his eyes then, as he looked at me with both sadness and determination. His voice sounded as if he was trying to be cold or detached but couldn’t quite make it work. “Curt is dead. And if you want to stay alive, we need to get out of here now. You get me?” A pause, then, “Walker, am I clear?” It took me a minute to realize he was using a communication device in his ear, and I couldn’t hear the reply, but I saw anger flash in his eyes as he replied. “You got another brilliant idea, X, you tell me when I get back. Safe is empty. This woman is the only one who has any idea what happened tonight. And I’m not gonna stand here and interrogate her, because if she didn’t have anything to do with it, and my gut says she fucking didn’t, whoever did might be on their way back.”

  His lips thinned as he listened, still pinning me to the floor while glaring me into submission. “Spare the fucking lecture and tell me if I’m clear to scale, yeah?”

  He got to his feet and yanked me up roughly with him. I shoved him for good measure, the bastard, and when he righted himself, he spun me around so that I was in front of him, pressed up against his flank and his mouth came to my ear.

  “I have no idea who you are or why you’re here, but I just stepped over the body of a man whose blood is still hot in his veins. Did you kill him?”

  Curt. God. I shook my head mutely.

  “That’s what I thought. But that means whoever killed him might come back for you, and that isn’t happening on my watch. You get me?”

  Held in his tight grip, I could only nod as I closed my eyes and swallowed.

  They’d killed him. Curt was dead. They’d killed him.

  “You’re coming back with me to safety, and I won’t hurt you, but Jesus if you try to fight me again, I swear to God I’ll spank your ass and tie you up. You fight me now, you put us both at risk. You get me, babe?”

  I didn’t reply, and he didn’t wait for a response as he was moving us back to the window. Oh my God. He was moving us to the window. Last I checked, there were no parking garages that went straight to the fourth floor. Without even conscious thought, I struggled against him, frantic, needing to get free, needing to get away, when he spun me around and smacked my ass, hard. “I warned you. Don’t test me. You won’t like the results.” I gasped and froze in shock, which was apparently exactly what he wanted me to do, for the next thing I knew, he was tying some rope thing on me, and had one foot on the ledge of the window that had a circle cut through it like a scene out of fucking James Bond movie. He wrapped his arms around me, secured a line on us both, and leapt into the darkness. My screams were swallowed in the humid summer air.

  “If she’s so innocent, why isn’t she talking?” a dark-haired man demanded. He was talking to White-gloves, but looking at me.

  “I make my living reading people, and I’d bet everything I have, that chick was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But whether she killed the guy and emptied the safe or not, I wasn’t just gonna leave her there. So shut the fuck up and let’s figure out what we’re doing from here on out.”

  They’d been standing in front of me, sparring back and forth for a few minutes, while I sat huddled on a massive couch in what looked like the living room of a penthouse. A room my father would call the parlor. From the lights outside the window, it looked like we were still in Manhattan. Where in Manhattan, though, I didn’t exactly know. Though I’d never let on how scared I was, our plummet to the ground from the fourth floor, tethered to whatever rope-thing White-gloves had with him, had terrified the hell out of me. The past half hour or so had passed in a blur as I still shook in fear. I hugged my mug of hot chocolate to me, before taking a small sip. I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten it, but it was sweet and warm, laced with alcohol, and comforting after the night’s events.

  “You all right?”

  I looked up… and up… and up. Standing over me was one of the largest human beings I’d ever laid eyes on. His head was shaved bald, but he had a full, black beard and piercing blue eyes. He wore a t-shirt and sweats, but his feet were bare. In one hand he held a thick paperback, while the other carried a steaming mug with a tag hanging over the side labeled Earl Grey.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I guess.” I mean, I was still alive. After the past week—what had happened to my dad, and then to Curt—that seemed like a win.

  He stared, then folded himself into a huge leather armchair to my right, swung his legs over the arm, settled his mug on the coffee table, and flipped his book open.

  Alrighty then.

  “He doesn’t say much,” came another voice to my left. I looked to find a much younger-looking redheaded guy standing with his hands tucked into his pockets. He looked friendlier than the rest, but something warned me not to trust him. He nodded to the big guy and shrugged. “But a guy that strong comes in handy on your side, you know?” He winked at me.

  White-gloves turned and shot a glare at the redhead, but before I could process the meaning of that glare, a third guy entered the room. When he did, the atmosphere changed. The tea drinker sat up straighter, the redhead took his hands out of his pockets and sat down, and White-gloves and Dark-haired Dude shut up.

  “Tell us what the fuck is going on.” The new arrival came from a back room somewhere and looked as if he’d just stepped out of a business meeting on Wall Street. His blond hair was cut short, chiseled jaw clean-shaven and hinting at Russian descent, and he wore a pair of navy pants and a white shirt, loosened at the collar. White-gloves turned and gave one curt nod, then pulled over a sturdy, straight-backed chair with a plush, burgundy seat and straddled it. The blond grabbed the chair next to it, and sat down with his back erect, as if he were about to flick out a napkin, sit at a table, and eat an eight-course dinner. “Anson?”

  So White-gloves was Anson.

  “Pretty sure you were on the comm with everyone else, X,” Anson said. “I brought Buttercup here back with me because we need to figure out who she is and how much she knows.” I bristled at the Buttercup. Asshole.

  The Russian-looking guy looked at me like I’d just slashed his tires.

  Great. Curt, the innocent security guard, had just died, I’d been abducted from my dad’s office, forced to plummet down the side of the office building tied to some guy with a rope, screaming myself fucking hoarse in the process, now these guys wanted to interrogate me, and the Russian hated me.

  Just. Fucking. Great.

  I clenched my jaw and narrowed my eyes at him. Fine. He could hate me, but two could play that game.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  I decided continued silence was the best method. Who were these guys, anyway? And why the hell did I have to coop
erate?

  Anson sighed. “She knows something. Hell, my gut says she knows a lot. So, X, you wanna start this nice, or you wanna start this bitchy?”

  Russian narrowed his eyes.

  “Right then,” Anson said. “You don’t tell us about you. Yet,” he said, with a pointed look. Clearly, I wasn’t off the hook. “The dead guy in the office. Tell us about him.”

  I couldn’t help it. I shivered, trying to squelch the tears that threatened to take over. I needed to cry. That wasn’t just a dead body. That was Curt, a sweet old man who’d laid down his life for mine, and it killed me that we’d left him there, just left him. My hands shook so badly, the hot chocolate spilled all over me. I swore, and the redhead immediately left the room. He came back carrying a kitchen towel and handed it to me without a word. All eyes on me, I stuttered an apology.

  “It’s fine,” the big guy with the tea said. His voice was soft and soothing, and it calmed me. “It’s okay.”

  Anson looked at me from where he sat, his eyes softening a little. “You’re safe here. But you need to give us some answers, so we can protect you.”

  I shook my head, willing my voice to stay calm. “You go first. I won’t tell you anything until you tell me.”

  Anson looked at the Russian guy, who shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way,” Anson said. “And, babe? You’re seriously outnumbered here. So I suggest you cooperate.”

  Or what? My mind said. And babe? The fucking nerve.

  But would they hurt me? They didn’t look like the type who would, but… well, after the past week, I didn’t know. I was pretty sure there was no one left I could trust.

  “You first,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Yes!”

  “No.”

  “Enough!” The Russian looked fit to kill. “As if we have time for banter.” He glowered at me. “Your name.”

  I said nothing.

  Anson sighed. “We can’t help you if you don’t cooperate,” he said. “Let’s start here. Who was Curt Lang?” He pulled out a wallet I didn’t recognize and flipped through it. I noticed Curt’s picture I.D. A lump rose in my throat and fucking tears filled my eyes. I swallowed, hard, and didn’t reply. I wasn’t stonewalling them this time, though. I was afraid if I spoke I’d lose my shit and I would not lose my shit.

  “You can tell just by looking at her she cared about him,” the redhead said quietly. He looked at the Russian. “And that she didn’t fucking kill him. God.” He leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees. “Listen,” he said to me. “You can trust us. We’re not the bad guys here. But if you’re in any way linked to the recent death of the man whose office you were in, or the man who was outside the door of the closet, then we need to know. So why don’t you tell us?”

  The black-haired guy who’d been arguing with Anson spoke up for the first time from where he sat perched at a sleek desk in the corner of the room. His voice was laced with a Spanish accent, deep and commanding. “No need, boys. I started running facial recognition as soon as we got back here and I’ve got a hit.” He had a tiny silver laptop perched on his knee. “Not rocket science. This woman is Sabrina Fowler. Stuart Fowler’s daughter. She owns her own business, A la Carte. She’s a personal chef. And the man whose body you found? Curt Lang. A security guard for the office building. Worked there for twenty-five years.”

  My jaw dropped and my spine prickled as low whistles and murmurs went up from his pronouncement, and the whole thing pissed me off. Suddenly, I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to hurt someone.

  “Sabrina,” Anson began, his blue eyes softer now. It was the first time he’d spoken my name, and despite my anger and sadness, I liked hearing him say it. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone “My condolences on the loss of your father.”

  I didn’t respond, and the Russian dude leaned in and whispered to Anson. They spoke like that for a moment, their whispered voices going up and down before Anson turned back to me. “How about we start by telling you a little about who we are.” The Russian guy clenched his jaw and got to his feet, but Anson overrode him. “Sit down, X.” He pointed a finger to the man standing. “This is Xavier. He likes to consider himself our fearless leader. Likes to play by the rules. You know the drill.”

  No, I didn’t know the drill, but whatever.

  So the Russian looking guy was Xavier.

  Anson pointed to the redhead. “This guy over here is Ethan. Don’t trust him.” His eyes twinkled and all but Xavier laughed. I had a feeling there was some truth to what Anson said, and it confirmed my earlier suspicion. Whatever job Ethan did, it wasn’t an honest one.

  He pointed next to the huge guy with the shaved head, still holding his book and his tea. “Caelan. Resident bodyguard.” I flinched at the reminder of the security guard who’d laid down his life for mine, and sympathy played in Caelan’s eyes. “Don’t let him fool you. He may look the part of the gentle giant, but you don’t wanna cross him.”

  “And over here,” Anson said, gesturing to the black-haired guy with the computer, “we’ve got Walker, our tech guy.”

  “Okay, fine. Great. Pleased to meet you, gentlemen,” I bit out. “I’m supposed to shake your hands or something? Take your business cards? Now why don’t you tell me more than your names. Tell me why you were in my father’s office and why I’m supposed to trust you.”

  They sobered then, even redheaded Ethan, the goofiest of the bunch. Anson leaned over on his chair and met my eyes. “We’re tech guys. Professional hackers and security testers. People hire us to make sure their systems are working as well as they possibly could.”

  Now they had my interest. But if they were a professional security company, why had he been sneaking around? Wearing gloves and a pulled-up ski mask?

  He continued. “Your dad was killed in prison recently.”

  I nodded reluctantly, but this was common knowledge. Front-page news and all. “Some kind of fight with another inmate. He got… stabbed.” Even now, I could hardly believe it. My dad wasn’t the type to even raise his voice, and I had no idea how he’d gotten into a fight. But then, ever since he was arrested, I’d realized there were a lot of things about my dad that I didn’t know.

  “What if I told you it wasn’t just a random fight? What if I told you that he was killed because of…” He looked at the other guys briefly as tension crackled in the room, and then back to me. “Because of some people he associated with, and some things he might have known?”

  “What?”

  He nodded. “The same dealings that landed him in prison in the first place. We don’t believe the fight was random. We believe it was a cover for murder. And we have a vested interest in taking down the guys who killed your dad. If you cooperate, we’ll help in bringing them to justice.”

  Now they really had my attention. And a bunch of things clicked into place, like my dad’s insistence that I not visit him in prison.

  The atmosphere in the room changed, and I was suddenly aware of Caelan’s massive strength, Anson’s sharp intellect, Xavier’s cunning. These men were powerful. Skilled. Driven. And if I trusted them, they’d bring those responsible for the death of my father to justice.

  Could I trust them?

  What else did I have to lose?

  “Fine,” I finally breathed out. “What do you need to know?”

  We talked late into the night, until my eyelids drooped and my stomach churned with hunger. I must’ve fallen asleep as their voices mingled and rose up and down.

  Everything blurred, and when I felt my shoulder being shaken, my eyes fluttered open, and I stifled a scream. I sat up on the couch, ignoring an uncomfortable crick in my neck, and blinked. The room had darkened, and the only one left was Anson.

  “Hey,” he said, his rough voice taking on the softest tone I’d heard from him yet. “You fell asleep.”

  “No shit,” I grumbled.

  He continued patiently. “Listen, it’s time we get you to bed. Tomorrow, we can figure things out, but
you’re exhausted.” He rubbed a hand over his brow. “So am I.”

  “Then take me home,” I said. Having fallen asleep in the presence of all those guys I didn’t know made me irritable, and I felt like I wanted to toss one of the expensive-looking throw pillows straight across the massive room.

  Anson’s lips thinned, and his jaw hardened. “Listen, Sabrina, you seem like a smart woman. After what happened tonight, there’s no way we can take you back to your place until we know it’s safe. For now, you’ll have to stay with us. We’ll figure out sleeping arrangements tomorrow, but for tonight, you can sleep in my room, and I’ll take the couch.”

  I sat in silence, and my stomach growled audibly. I shifted, trying to get it to shut up, and I didn’t respond at first because I was trying too hard not to cry. My hands shook from the effort, and I knew if I said one thing—even one little thing—I would lose it.

  I wasn’t a crier, damn it. But tonight, I was wrecked. The combination of grief, hunger, and exhaustion nearly killed me.

  They’d killed my father.

  They’d killed Curt.

  Who even were ‘they’? And was I in danger?

  We sat for a moment, not saying anything, and my stomach growled again. I pushed my hands against it to try to stop it.

  “Are you hungry?” Anson asked. Brilliant guy.

  “No,” I lied.

  He raised a brow and sat up on his chair, tilting back a little with his arms across his chest, and shook his head.

  “What?” I snapped. Why was he looking at me like that?

  He shrugged a shoulder. “I just don’t know exactly what to do with you. You look like you wanna rip me apart with your bare hands, even though I had nothing to do with the shit that went down. You need food, and rest, and protection, and I can give all that to you, but you’re not making my job easy.”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” I said, and to my horror, my voice cracked at the end. I was gonna cry. God, I hated when I cried. I hated him. I hated this place. I hated everything.

  “I can see that,” he said, his voice dropping to nearly a whisper. “You know, Sabrina, usually I know exactly what I’m going to do. In my line of work, I move from one thing to the next. I need to move fast. And I’m trying to be nice, but—”