Cocky Protector - Kat Mizera Page 0,6
I dropped to the floor to look under the bed.
Empty.
Heart still racing and a light sheen of sweat on my upper lip, I looked behind the sofa, on the small balcony, and even double-checked that my front door was locked and bolted. The apartment was empty and I was losing my mind.
With shaking hands, I unlocked my phone and called my mother. I needed her to talk me off the ledge because I had no idea how I was ever going to sleep again.
Chapter Three
Ace
Under the guise of working to hinder the development of a Limaji intelligence agency, I was busier than I should have been since I really wasn’t doing any such thing. In fact, I was working on helping them start it up. It probably wasn’t the most ethical thing I’d ever done, but I knew Erik and the royal family intimately. We were friends and I’d been involved in helping him stay alive during his years in hiding. He was a good man who had the best interests of his country at heart, and while I didn’t know what the CIA’s issue was with him wanting his own version of an intelligence agency, I literally had no way to stop him. I’d told him what was going on, but as I’d suspected, Erik had laughed. So now I bopped around Europe doing some reconnaissance here and a little intelligence there, but mostly I was hanging out in Limaj relaxing.
I’d just gotten to the airport in Hiskale after one short but intense CIA mission in early December, anxious to head back to my room at the palace and get some rest, when my phone rang. I’d been up for nearly two days, but when a name I hadn’t seen in years flashed on the screen, I answered it briskly. “Mrs. Barrow?”
“Andrew. Thank goodness I found you.”
“What’s wrong?” I knew that sound, the panic in a person’s voice, telling me something was going on.
“I need your help.” She was a normally stoic-sounding woman but that wasn’t what I heard right now.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s Shannon.”
“What?” My heart nearly stopped, memories of a sweet, soulful kiss a long time ago shuttering through the windows of my mind like one of those old-fashioned flip books. “What’s going on?”
“She’s a teacher now at a school in Germany. She’s been in Cologne about a year and has been really happy there, but something weird is happening. I think she has a stalker.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, no, but I know my daughter and she’s worried. There’s nothing concrete, but there have been a lot of little things, and they keep happening. She’s been trying to make light of it, but she was freaked out earlier today and now I’m scared, Andrew.”
“I’m not sure what I can do, but tell me everything.”
“I need you to go to Germany and find out who’s tormenting her.”
“I can’t just pick up and go—”
“After her divorce, she moved to Germany to get away. It was messy and…embarrassing. I… That’s probably my fault, for being so hard on her, but I’m truly worried now and you’re the only person I could think of that might help us. We don’t have anyone else now that her father’s gone. Please. If not for me, then for Wayne.”
I sighed, though it was probably more on the inside than outside. I had a lot on my plate and didn’t have time for a rich, beautiful damsel in distress. Not even one whose kiss still haunted my dreams.
“Andrew? I have money. I’ll pay you anything you want. Just please, don’t let anything happen to her.”
I made an impulsive decision even though I’d probably regret it. “I don’t need or want money but you have to text me everything you know about her life in Cologne,” I said after a moment. “Phone number, address, email, the name of the school where she works, names of other teachers, bosses, boyfriends—anything and everything. A recent picture. I need as much detail as possible, especially if she’s denying there’s a problem.”
“I’ll send everything right away.”
“I’ll be in touch.” I disconnected and made a call to my buddy Darryl “Chains” Carruthers, who ran Westfield & Carruthers Security in Las Vegas. I’d worked with them on occasion and trusted him implicitly. “Hey, it’s me. I need any information you can dig up on a woman named Shannon Barrow. Approximately thirty-one years old, daughter of the late Senator Wayne Barrow. It’s important.”
I got to Cologne that night and checked into a hotel. I