Pick Your Poison Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

  PICK YOUR POISON

  A Bullet Catcher Novella

  Roxanne St. Claire

  Copyright @Roxanne St. Claire

  ISBN: 978-0-9883736-0-0

  Editor: Charlotte Herscher

  Proofreader: Amy Eye

  Cover Design: Kim Killion

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the copyright owner.

  Chapter One

  “You’re firing me?” Benjamin Youngblood looked up from the paperwork his boss had just slid across a polished mahogany table and started to laugh. “Are you fu—”

  “Don’t.” Lucy’s hand shot up, silencing him. She cut a glance toward her adjacent office, the door between that sanctuary and this war room wide open. “Little ears. And, yes, this time I’m serious.”

  He blew out a breath and stabbed his fingers into his hair to drag back the locks, way too smart to defy Lucy Sharpe and drop an F-bomb within hearing distance of her toddler daughter. Also way too stunned to tease her about how much motherhood had changed the Bullet Catchers’ fierce and fearless leader.

  Because it sure as hell hadn’t softened her.

  “Lucy, this is ridiculous. I saved that son of a…” He caught himself, pausing to choose each word carefully. “I made the only decision I could make under the circumstances and I’m very sorry if that… that…” How could he describe Governor Roy McManus in childproofed words? “That self-involved, ego-maniacal, hypocritical blow-hard missed a photo op.”

  “That blow-hard was our client. Was.”

  “And there was a breach in security and a credible threat to the principal, so I called the shots the way I have been trained since the day I walked into this place.” He gestured to include not just the war room, but Lucy’s whole Hudson River valley mansion and the international security firm it housed.

  “You made a very costly decision, Ben.”

  “To hold him on the tarmac while we assessed the situation, and not allow him near the rope-line where I believed an assassin was waiting? Would have been a helluva lot costlier if he got off that plane and met a bullet in his chest.”

  “Your job is to take that bullet if need be.”

  “My job is to make sure that bullet isn’t ever fired.”

  Lucy crossed her arms and regarded him silently, the dramatic upward sweep of eyes that hinted at her Polynesian ancestry only adding to the air of Zen calm that helped her build the Bullet Catchers into the most elite protection organization in the world.

  “What?” he asked when the silence lasted a beat too long.

  “You know why you’re in this office at least twice a year having to convince me not to let you go?”

  He grinned. “You love to see my pretty face?”

  “Your face isn’t your problem, your gut is.”

  Like hell it was.

  “The same gut that’s kept me alive on a daily basis?” He leaned forward, determined to make his point before she cut him off. “The gut that’s kept a few high-powered ambassadors, senators, and European princes alive, too? The gut that screamed ‘trouble’ when Governor McManus landed in Tampa and that last threat came through my private phone line, untraceable and containing personal information about the travel schedule that no one but his damn wife could know? That gut, Lucy? The one I need to do my goddamn job?”

  “Your gut and your short fuse.” All the Zen evaporated as she pushed back from the conference table and power-strode across the room. At the entrance to her private office, she peeked in and then closed the door without making a sound.

  “They help me do my job,” he said. “And you are the queen of instinct calls.”

  “Your job and an ‘instinct call’ have to be done without interfering with a client’s work. That’s why politicians and CEO’s and legions of other world-beaters hire the Bullet Catchers—because we don’t hinder their success or stop their campaigns while we keep them alive.”

  “McManus’s re-election campaign would have come to a screeching halt if the bastard was dead.”

  She didn’t answer, slowly crossing the war room, a sea of computer monitors blinking non-stop behind her, all broadcasting the whereabouts and assignment status of every Bullet Catcher on the planet. Those screens tracked easily over forty bodyguards, investigators, weapons experts, and the occasional reformed thief.

  His light, he noticed, had been snuffed out. Shit. Ben had been with this company for almost six years, taken off the mean streets of L.A. at twenty-two, back when he was just a little Comanche, a little Cree, and a whole lot of trouble. He’d been saved by one of Lucy’s top men—when he should have been killed by the guy—and trained to be a key player in her organization.

  His life had purpose now, and he’d do anything, absolutely anything, to keep this job. But when Lucy made up her mind, Heaven and Hell had to move to change it.

  Then he’d move Heaven and Hell, damn it. He just wasn’t entirely sure how.

  Lucy let out a slow sigh, sinking into the leather chair across from him and resting her elbows on the table. “We lost the client, Ben. Even you have never cost me a paying account before.”

  “McManus is a loose cannon.”

  “Don’t make excuses,” she fired back at him. “He’s the governor of Florida, well-connected, vocal, and pays a small fortune for private protection on his campaign. A small fortune that is now being paid to a far-less capable competitor, I might add.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine why he’d settle for that operation.”

  “Well, they’d better be on their game because someone’s gunning for that guy.”

  He expected an argument, but Lucy drew her brows together. “I trust you’ve triple checked every lead to the incoming threats?”

  “Quadruple checked, and the bitch of it is they have to be coming from someone close to him. They know too much.”

  She glanced down at the files spread out before her. “But you didn’t find a weapon at the rope-line, and you were certain there would be one, based on the content of the text.”

  “I did find some things.”

  She arched a brow. “Yes, I saw the unaccounted for items after you cleared the area. Let’s see…” She fluttered a piece of paper, pretending to read. “We have a jar of homemade pepper jelly, a notebook of handwritten poetry, and a bouquet of roses. Not exactly the tools of a trained killer, or does your gut think the assassin makes jelly and pens poetry?”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “All those items are in the lab now, being broken down to their last molecule. It might interest you to know that the poetry book had been wiped clean of fingerprints.”

  She nodded, obviously appreciating how unusual that was. “And the jelly?”

  “A little spicy, but not toxic,” he admitted. “However, the roses intrigue me.”

  “How so?”

  “They were black, symbolizing death if you follow those kinds of things. I happen to think that’s a
very strange thing to give a politician on the rope-line of a rally.”

  “Black roses? Dyed or natural?”

  “According to the lab, they are a rare genetically engineered breed of red so deep, they appear black. They’re known in the trade as Black Cherries, and only a few horticulturalists in the country grow them. The closest grower in four states happens to be in the governor’s backyard, not an hour from the state capitol.” He let his tone make it clear that couldn’t be a coincidence. “If that grower can supply the names of every florist who purchased those roses in the last week, we could trace those sales records and, maybe match one of the rally attendees.”

  “That’s a long shot.”

  “The best kind.”

  “He’s not even our client anymore, Ben.”

  As if he needed to be reminded of that. “Look, I don’t want to lose this job. I know my decision cost us this client, but…” But what? He couldn’t bring McManus’s business back, could he? “I’d like another chance.”

  Inhaling slowly, she divided her gaze between his face and the termination paperwork. After a moment, she pushed the papers closer to him. “I’m sorry.”

  Shit. Desperation squeezed his chest. He would not pick up that pen and sign. “Let’s make a deal, Lucy.”

  She laughed at the suggestion. “How long have you worked for me?”

  “Not long enough,” he said. “Look, if I can find a credible threat to McManus and prove someone is trying to kill him, can I keep my job?”

  She hesitated a nanosecond, just enough to give him hope. “That’s just—”

  “If he rehires us for security?” He threw that stipulation out there with the same force he’d use on the shovel to dig his own grave. How the hell could he get McManus to do that?

  She surrendered a smile. “You know I like your style, Ben, but—”

  “Lucy, come on. Give me this chance.” He stared her down, the weight of hopelessness pressing on him, making him add one more word. “Please.”

  The office door popped open. “Mommy!”

  Instantly, all of Lucy’s features relaxed, her eyes lit up, and both arms shot out to a wee girl with black ringlets who toddled across the room.

  “Gracie! There’s my pumpkin!”

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Lucy.” A fair-haired young woman followed in Grace’s wake, picking up speed to catch up with the child.

  “Not a problem, Sveta. C’mere, you.” Lucy swooped her daughter onto her lap with a kiss for both cheeks before returning her attention to Ben. “All right, you have a deal,” she said, tenderly caressing her daughter’s head.

  So the rumors were true after all. Motherhood had softened Lucy Sharpe.

  Ben stood quickly, giving a wink to the little girl. “Thanks for the assist, kid.”

  Lucy ignored the comment, but let go of Gracie’s hair long enough to point a finger at him, the nail precisely the color of those Black Cherry roses down in the lab.

  “You are on a leave of absence,” she said. “That means you do not have a single Bullet Catcher resource at your disposal.”

  What? No vast database, no private jet, no brotherhood of back up, no instant access to top secret government information?

  “No problem, Luce.” He punctuated that with a confident smile that didn’t exactly match what he felt inside. “I got my own resources. Here.” He touched his temple. “And here.” And his gut.

  “Use them wisely, Mr. Youngblood, because this is your last chance.”

  ~*~

  Callie Parrish dropped to her bare knees and swallowed a curse that probably had the devil doing a happy dance in Hell. But right that minute, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but the dozens of bare-naked rose bushes that stood like beheaded little soldiers in the middle of the flower farm.

  Mud squished and stones stabbed her skin, but she didn’t even notice the discomfort as she touched the raw wound of a hastily cropped rose bloom.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered, peering down the row in the hopes they’d missed a bush or two. But no, the entire bed—at least four dozen healthy rose bushes—had been snipped and stripped.

  Her entire crop of Black Cherries had been decimated. Misery crushed her chest, as strong as that morning she’d held Granny Belle’s hand and listened to a shocking, heartbreaking, and truly amazing story. She’d made her great-grandmother a promise that day… a promise that someone had just stolen along with a whole bunch of rare roses.

  Who would do this to her? Why? So few people even knew that she grew Black Cherry roses. Yet someone had marched over five acres of flowers to clear out the only blossoms worth a hundred bucks a dozen.

  Injustice rocked her right down to her rubber muck boots. Without this source of extra income—the only dime not accounted to the wolf at the door with a mountain of unpaid bills in his teeth—she couldn’t even dream of granting Granny Belle her one and only final request.

  Those ashes weren’t going into the Seine anytime soon. And as far as the answers Callie longed to have… well, it looked like any chance of finding them got clipped away with the roses.

  Just as tears welled, she heard a car engine and the growl of tires digging into the gravel drive. God, let that be a customer who’d seen her homemade sign on the highway. But, the way things were going today, it was probably some misplaced tourist trying to find their way down to Disneyworld.

  She swiped a stray hair off her face and stuck it into her baseball cap, streaking her cheek with mud. Taking one last look at the chopped and naked bushes, she hitched her cut-off overalls and started across the farm, trying not to think about how long it would take her to make that money back.

  She cocked an ear toward the shed that doubled as a storefront, expecting someone to call out, as the occasional retail customer did when she was in the field. When she didn’t hear anything, she picked up her pace, plucking at the thin tank top that already stuck to her skin in the brutal Florida sun.

  Don’t leave, don’t leave, she pleaded silently. Every penny counted now.

  As she rounded the pine grove, she spotted a sleek gray sedan, worth more than the mortgage on the farm. Definitely lost tourists, then. Make a pity sale, Granny Belle would say. Today, she needed a sale and the pity.

  The car was empty, so she brushed more dirt off her hands and face and grabbed the rusted handle of the storefront door, opening her mouth to call out a greeting—the breath instantly trapped in her throat.

  Her mouth stayed open, hanging in shock at the sight of a man behind the sales counter digging through her coffee can of receipts like it was a cookie jar and he was starving.

  Another dang thief?

  “Can I help you?” she demanded, her hand still on the door in case she had to bolt to the house and get her rifle.

  “Jesus Christ.” He flipped a yellow slip of paper, tossing it aside without looking up.

  “Last I checked He wasn’t in there.” Wow, he was a big guy. Six two, and an easy hundred and ninety. She hovered in the doorway, ready to run, but oddly mesmerized by his audacity and size.

  “These are the shittiest files I’ve ever seen.” He smashed a bunch of her handwritten receipts on the counter and dug for more. “It’s the twenty-first century. Who keeps records like this?” He finally lifted his head.

  “I do.” It was a small miracle the words even came out at all because in the span of one second and one good look, every cell in her head darn near flatlined. Shock and dismay at the intrusion would have been enough to throw her, but… that… face. He was like no man she’d ever seen. Certainly not in the rural stretch of agricultural purgatory known as Madison County, Florida.

  His hair, black as midnight, fell around his face like handfuls of sin. His eyes, blacker still and fringed with coal-colored lashes, bore a hole right through to her soul. Harsh, unforgiving, angular features were dusted with a day or two’s worth of whiskers and slashed by a mouth that surely wasn’t put on this earth to do anything but… some real
ly bad things.

  He drew thick, sinister brows together, his gaze dropping over her and lingering a moment too long on her threadbare cutoff overalls, the sweat-stained tank top, and, of course, manure-splattered boots.

  “You own this farm?” Impatience tinged his question, which took some nerve from a man breaking and entering and rooting through receipts.

  “Yes and do you mind telling me what on God’s green earth you think you’re doing?”

  “I need information,” he said, shaking a lock of that hair back and giving a jolt to something low and warm and female in Callie’s body. “And don’t even think about not giving it to me.”

  The threat was all she needed to lift her chin and flatten him with a threatening gaze. “If you don’t want me to get my .22 and shoot your face off, get your cotton-pickin’ hands out of my receipt can.”

  He smiled, and, of course, the devil had dimples. “You’re cute, Daisy Duke. But, just for the record, you’re the one who stuffs ‘confidential information’ in a coffee can and leaves it on top of an unattended counter in an unlocked place of business with no proprietor in sight.”

  “Still doesn’t make rifling through my stuff legal or right.” She crossed her arms as if that could offer some protection against him. “Who are you?”

  He went back to the receipts. “Government.”

  Government? A tax man? Shoot. Did she owe some stupid export duty on that batch of orchids she sent to that lady in Mexico? “Show me an ID badge.”

  Without even glancing up, he flipped the hem of his black T-shirt, just enough to reveal a leather holster and something that made her rifle look like a BB gun. That would be… enough ID badge for her.

  “What do you want?” she asked harshly, refusing to let him know how much he intimidated her.

  For a second, he didn’t answer, riveted on a receipt. “Oh, yes. Now we’re talking.” He snapped the slip at her, rounding the counter to come closer. “Who bought two dozen Black Cherry roses?”

  She looked at the paper, but all her still-stalled brain could process was Black Cherry roses. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Intimidation evaporated, replaced by that burn of injustice.