Anything He Needs: Serve and Obey (#2) (Anything For Him) Read online

  To put money on a person’s books meant that you gave money to the prison store, which was credited to the prisoner, who could then use it to make purchases within the store. “A hundred bucks is a lot in jail.”

  “Who you telling?” Sal asked. “Listen, I don’t like this too much, this smells awful rotten to me. You got no problems with the cops, I know, I asked around. It sounds like you got a vendetta brewing here Danny, and if you need help I’m here.”

  “I think it may be my Meghan’s family, the Lowry’s.”

  “Nah, “Sal said. “I checked into it. See how I’m way ahead of you? You got no issues there; they can’t buy groceries, much less a war. They ain’t behind this, this is something else entirely.”

  Danny’s teeth clenched. He had known sooner or later the past would come knocking and while he had a sterling reputation he knew that none of that would matter if any of his old crimes got dredged up, regardless of the fact that he had never gotten caught at anything.

  “You have any ideas of what that might be Sal?”

  “No, but I know where the guy lives.” There was a smug satisfaction in Sal’s voice.

  The last thing Danny wanted to return to his old ways. Growing up the way he had had given him a large appreciation for the finer things, and a driving ambition to have them. He had started his legitimate business on money he had earned honestly and without help from any of his former acquaintances but he had gotten into college thanks in large part to the money he had earned from hustling.

  But deep in his heart he knew he had to nip this thing, whatever it was, in the bud quickly. He had not just his future in his hands, but Meghan’s. He was teaching her about her own companies even as he was keeping up with his own and it was exhausting. If there was one hint that he had done something wrong it could cost them both everything.

  The responsibility was a heavy one and he sighed. “Give me the address.”

  “You don’t want me to handle this?’

  “No, your idea of handling things involves baseball bats and kneecaps sal. I just want to talk to the guy.”

  Sal gave him the address. “You be careful Danny.”

  “I will.”

  ~ * ~ * ~

  It was after three am when Danny stepped out of the musty smelling mouth of the bus and headed up the avenue. He had left Meghan sleeping and he hoped to be home before she woke.

  He wore plain black jeans, a black tee shirt and a thin jacket to ward off the evening chill but also to help further disguise his body. He wore heavy engineer boots and deliberately slumped over so that he looked to be several inches shorter. The black hat on his head covered his hair and shielded most of the upper part of his features. When he got to the building he had been looking for he pressed a dozen buzzers until a laughing voice yelled, “Man, we thought you got lost! Bring that beer up here before these girls go home!” Danny shook his head at the foolishness of the young man who had buzzed him into the building even as he climbed into the rickety elevator and made his way to the apartment owned by the detective who had been prying into his life.

  He wasted no time, he knocked and when the door opened to reveal a sleep rumpled face he shoved his way inside.

  “Hey!” the other man protested, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I could ask you the same,” Danny said casually as his gloved hands riffled through a stack of papers on the coffee table. “It seems you have been looking for me.”

  Fear crossed the detective’s weasel-like face. “Shit, you’re Sullivan!” He reached for his jacket but Danny had already seen the shape of the gun in the pocket, the telltale hang and bulge of it, and he yanked the other man’s arm up and behind his back.

  “Now we are going to play nice,” Danny said in a low voice, “Isn’t that right…what the hell is your name anyway?”

  “Calvin Brooks! I’m just a fact checker for hire dude! Come on, don’t kill me! I’m just doing my fucking job here!”

  “Who hired you Calvin?” Danny asked in a deceptively soft voice as he pressed Calvin closer to the filthy wall.

  “Gregory Peak, your file is over there!” Calvin yelped as he used his chin to point to a small desk whose surface was cluttered with piles of greasy paper and a laptop with a beaten up case.

  “What are you supposed to be getting on me?”

  “Anything, everything.” Calvin babbled out.

  “Did your client tell you why he wanted me checked out?”

  Danny was thinking hard even as he asked the question. Brooks was obviously low rent. None of his business enemies would have hired him, they could have found out plenty about him by asking around but in a world where business was often unsavory men who shared the same position and wealth he did often did not want to know who they were dealing with so they could refute liability later if need be.

  “No, at first I thought maybe you were banging his wife or something but he didn’t want to know who you fuck, he said he could read the papers and get that.”

  “He sent you to the prison?”

  “Yeah, right after I met a guy who said that he heard you were a mob dude. I wanted out then! I swear I don’t need any shit with the mob, man!” Fear made Calvin’s voice as thin and high as a reed. “But he’s a lunatic! He almost killed me when I said I was out! Shit now you’re going to kill me,” he added in a sorrow filled moan.

  “Oh calm down.” Danny let the hapless detective go and went to the des, riffling through papers until he found a file with his own name on it. “Gregory Peak. Why do I know that name?”

  “I guess you pissed him off pretty bad man. He said something about you made his folks lose their farm before he blacked my eye and stormed out of here.” Calvin pointed to the thin blue crescent under his left eye. “I need a drink.”

  Danny said, “So have one,” before the rest of what the detective had said sunk in.

  Gregory Peak had been the son of the farmer who had been his foster parent. He had been the kid who had led the other kids in a brutal beating and Greg Senior had been the man who had locked him into a root cellar. Despite that the thought that he may have cost the family their farm made his stomach clench, he knew just how far someone who had lost their family was willing to go to seek revenge.

  “How much did you tell him?”

  “Everything that’s in the file.”

  It was a thick file and Danny frowned as he saw pictures of himself coming out of the restaurant where he had had dinner with Sal earlier in the evening.

  “Meghan,” he thought, “I left her alone and this guy knows where I live.”

  The fact that there was a large amount of security around the apartment did nothing to ease his worry. If Greg had decided to check him out… that thought cut off in favor of a question.

  “Why now?” He asked.

  Calvin shrugged as he sucked half a beer out of a fingerprinted bottle. “I don’t know. You have been on the news a lot, he did say he couldn’t believe it when he saw you on television smiling and staring at the camera like a big shot.”

  So that had been it. Greg had not noticed him, likely because he was not exactly involved in business or interested in the society pages. But the furor surrounding him and Meghan since he had been kidnapped by her pitiful excuse for a family had subjected the two of them to media attention the likes of which he had never known before and Greg had seen him.

  “Where is the extra copy of this file?”

  Calvin gave him a goofy grin and twisted his face into what he obviously hoped was an innocent expression, “Copy? Oh I don’t have but the one… Ouch that hurts!”

  Danny had learned early on the secret of fighting was not to be bigger or even stronger; it was to know where a person’s pressure points were and how to apply pressure to them. Calvin, positive his finger was about to be utterly broken, relented quickly.

  “Over there,” he panted. “All my files are over there.”

  The place he was pointing to turned out to be his sofa. D
anny ripped up a cushion, pulled out the loose foam and yanked out an accordion-file. He tabbed through, located his file and yanked it out as well.

  After deleting every file on the detective’s laptop then smashing it Danny left. Calvin was yelling about suing but Danny merely said, “No worries, you will get a new one.” On the way out he made himself a mental note to have a new laptop brought to the detective.

  He was no longer concerned that the other man might be legit and call the cops, everything about Calvin said he was used to not doing that. Furthermore Danny had caught sight of a card tucked into a frame of the dry erase board in Calvin’s apartment; it had the name of his probation officer on it. No, Calvin didn’t need any trouble and he wouldn’t be any.

  Peak, however, was a totally different matter. He was still musing on that fact when he slid open the door to his penthouse to find Meghan sitting on the sofa sipping herbal tea.

  “I’m not sure where you went but I know what I used to wear dark clothing and go out in the middle of the night for,” she said in a calm voice that could not disguise the worry in her eyes.

  Looking at her Danny realized that he had every reason to fear Peak. When they had been kids the older, heavier boy had killed a stray dog that Danny had made friends with. He had torn up Danny’s books, and other possession Danny had seemed to care about. Looking at Meghan he felt a sense of fear he had not felt since he had been a defenseless child.

  “Are we hurting for cash flow?” Meghan asked in a falsely cheerful voice, “Because if we need to go knocking over joints I could help you know.”

  I have to send her somewhere safe, Danny thought, but I can’t bear to see her go. He didn’t know what to say so he simply turned and walked away, leaving a confused and hurt Meghan to stare after him.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Meghan was becoming increasingly worried. Danny had grown more distant over the hours, through the entire day he had barely spoken to her and once, when she had looked up from the desk he had had brought into his office for her, she caught him looking at her with a frown creasing the skin between his brows so deeply it looked as if that flesh had been gashed.

  She kept wondering if she had done something wrong, or if that behavior of his was a test of her. More worrisome was the thought that perhaps he had simply tired of her.

  No matter how hard she tried to shove that concern aside it kept rearing its ugly head. Her loveless childhood and her one failed attempt at romance had left her pessimistic and as she watched him from below her lashes she found herself thinking of how fast the relationship had happened, and how little he had known about her. Fear and insecurity kept painting her thoughts and by the time they got into the limo to go home she was on the verge of tears.

  Danny knew that she was upset but he could not figure out how to tell her what was going one without revealing the painful and naked truth about himself and his life. He had learned early that confiding in others made a person vulnerable. He had only ever confided how afraid he had been once while living in a home where being afraid was not something that was comforted but something that was twisted into a weapon that could be used against the person who had admitted to being afraid. That lesson had never left him.

  He wanted to trust Meghan, he was simply afraid that if she knew he had fear, that he was not as impervious to emotion and doubt as he seemed to be that she would lose faith in him. More than anything else he wanted to see that light in her eyes when she looked at him, it was the expression of faith and unquestioning trust that her eyes held for him that had soothed away so much already. She had helped to heal large pieces of him without even being aware that those parts existed and he knew it and was grateful, even if he would never express it out loud.

  Greg Peak was an issue that was weighing heavily on his mind. On the one hand he was certain his security team and measures would protect them, on the other he was terrified that Greg would get to Meghan. Earlier that day he had gotten a thick file on the other man and it had not eased his mind at all.

  Greg Peak had gone into the Army and while he had obvious and frequent disciplinary issues he was also a gung ho soldier who had advanced rapidly through the ranks. His love for fighting had not been dimmed by repeated tours throughout Afghanistan and Iraq; he had been demoted for fighting in bars state side even after he had been decorated for combat. He had been taught everything from stealth fighting to open hand to hand; he was an expert marksman and had been involved in capturing several very wanted men, which meant he had learned a lot about how to get around hi-tech security systems. It was that last that worried Danny the most. He knew if Peak showed up he could hold his own against him, he was not a scared kid anymore, but Peak would use Meghan to get to him, maybe even kill her.

  That thought was what frightened him the most. He could not imagine life without her. He knew he would likely rarely if ever utter the words but he was in love with her, fully and unconditionally and he was terrified she would be taken from him for that very reason and none other.

  The file had put together a disturbing picture of a violent man with no sense of consequences whose personal life consisted of domestic abuse charges that had been covered up, two failed marriages, alcoholic tendencies and a self-destructive turn that had escalated until the military could no longer condone his behavior and bounced him out. The words dishonorable discharge had been followed with a letter from a commanding officer that read, “It is with great regret that we do this Sergeant Peak, we feel that if you had attempted to control your temper and habits, and perhaps sought counseling for those issues, we would have been able to allow you to remain. You were one of our best.”

  Hastily scrawled in black ink form a pen that had been pressed down so hard it left a tear in the original paper had been the words Go Fuck Yourself You Assholes, which was Greg’s answer to the end of his career and paycheck.

  That answer had not surprised Danny. Greg had once fallen down a hill because his shoes had had slick soles. He had insisted on wearing those shoes despite his having several other pairs and he had grown up on that desolate little farm so he had known the ground was slick in the winter, especially on that hill where the snow left a rotten thin rime along the gravel and red clay edge. When Greg fell he went down with a yelp and an incredibly funny expression on his face that Danny had made the mistake of laughing at.

  Greg had beaten him nearly senseless and none of the other boys had dared to intercede, they had all learned not to antagonize Greg in any way in order to avoid most, if not all, of his beatings. In true form when they got home Greg told his father Danny had pushed him and so he had gotten a second beating and he had not been allowed food for two days as an added punishment from Greg’s doting mother.

  Greg’s father was dead but his mother was still alive. She worked as a cafeteria worker in an elementary school, a fact that made Danny feel a kind of creeping horror he did not even want to examine. Mrs. Peak had been a hugely fat woman with steely black eyes that were as cold and dead as the eyes of the fish they had to catch in the algae covered little pond and bring back for dinner twice a week if they expected to eat. Her hair had always hung straight down her back in long strings and she would sit in the corner of the living room watching as the boys stood waiting in line for the nightly beating administered by her husband.

  Peak, Senior had believed that even if he had not seen them doing anything wrong they certainly and surely had at some point, and so he beat them to ensure that they got the proper punishment despite their having not been caught.

  The limo pulled up in front of their building, jolting Danny out of the past. Looking across the car he saw again the concern and fear in Meghan’s eyes but he said nothing. He simply got out of the car, helped her out and walked into the building without a word.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  After a silent meal that neither of them tasted, Danny went into his study while Meghan helped the night maid clean the kitchen. The maid did not attempt to dissuade her; she had learned a
long time ago that rich people did just what they wanted.

  After the kitchen was cleaned and the maid gone home, Meghan wandered through the living room then the library. She plucked a book down, opened it and tried to immerse herself in the words but she was too restless. She put it back, sat on the long and comfortable chaise for a few minutes, went back to the kitchen to make herbal tea that did not calm her nerves and then she paced the floor, stopping every once in a while to peer out the long windows.

  She was pacing when the idea suddenly hit her. It halted her in her tracks and a naughty grin crossed her lips. She rushed to the bedroom and dug around in the dresser that was her own, searching for the beaded and studded bra, the decorated belt and the long sheer skirt that she used when she practiced belly dancing.

  She went into the bathroom, took her hair down from the elegant French twist and brushed the long waves until they shone. She put two lines of heavy kohl around her eyes, elongating them and turning them up at the corners before slicking a glossy crimson across her lips. She deliberately exaggerated the bottom lip, making it look pouty and heavy.

  Next she put on the bra, adjusting it so that her firm breasts sat up even higher. Then she put on the flimsy and almost sheer skirt and added the belt, making sure that both skirt and belt hung low, exposing her pale belly and the bones of her slim hips. The emerald green of the costume was enhanced by gold accents and silver beadwork and the belt had long swaying fringe that would tinkle when she moved. Next she put on a set of bracelets that had chains running up to a small ring that rested directly on her middle finger. The bracelets were comprised of dozens of coins that made a musical jingle as she lifted her arms. An armband that was strictly decorative and two anklets covered in small bells completed her costume.

  Appraising herself in the mirror she was pleased at what she saw: a dangerously sexy and confident woman. Although she felt far from confident she was determined to win Danny’s attention back and so she grabbed the zils, small cymbals worn on the fingers, and headed for his office.