Sneak Peek of Without Warning

SNEAK PEEK OF WITHOUT WARNING

Harrison

“Who sent them?”

“I don’t know,” he lied, and he wasn’t sure why, but the thought of his uncle finding out how much he’d been duped didn’t sit well. And god, had he been duped.

“That’s it! I’m hiring you a bodyguard!” his uncle bellowed.

“Don’t, please. A bodyguard is the last thing I want or need.” His childhood from the age of ten had been filled with security, off and on.

Uncle Dean looked troubled. “Harrison, I must.”

“The last time I had a bodyguard, he was killed,” he said faintly.

“I know how hard this is for you.”

Really? He gazed down blindly at his hands and then lifted them, palms up, to his uncle as if the man could see how much blood had once covered them. Then he pressed his trembling fingers to his lips and the room blurred.

“I don’t think you do.”

Dean hadn’t been present when someone tried to kill him. Mitchell, his bodyguard, had been there, though, and had been killed.

In the end, Mitchell had killed the gunman but not until two people had been wounded and Mitchell had lost his own life.

“I gotta get to work.” He hurried from his uncle’s office.

“Harrison! I’m calling a trusted friend!”

Wiping at his face, he struggled to push the memories away. To his uncle, it seemed so cut and dry, but it wasn’t. Harrison longed to feel safe without putting others in harm’s way, was that too much to ask?

Reaching his office, he met Toby coming down the hallway.

“Everything okay?”

“No, shit can’t get any more complicated.”

He hurried into his office and shoved his fingers between his neck and tie to loosen the noose a bit and tossed his briefcase onto his desk. Fumbling with the top drawer, he took out several bottles of pills.

“Complicated how?” Toby asked, following him into his office. Seeing the bottles, Toby grabbed a water from the small personal fridge in the corner and handed it to him.

Harrison twisted the cap off the bottle and the pink, disc-sized pills spilled on the desk. He snatched up several and chewed them to ward off the nausea and then noisily twisted the cap off the ibuprofen to ward off his pounding headache. Swallowing a few in one gulp along with the water, he drew in several deep, noisy breaths.

He couldn’t get Mitchell’s dying smile out of his head. No matter how much he’d screamed at Mitchell to hang on, it hadn’t mattered in the end.

Shutting out Toby’s concerned face, he turned abruptly to the row of windows that looked out over the city and took in a long, shaky breath.

The people of Denver, Colorado, looked like little ants from the twenty-sixth floor of his office building, but even a view he normally enjoyed disappeared.

“What’s the matter?”

Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he turned. What’s the matter? Try everything.

Could he let his overprotective loving uncle win this battle and potentially have another death on his hands?

He lowered slowly into his office chair and lifted his favorite pen. Carefully, he tapped it against his very full desk calendar. Work, he needed to work.

“Harrison?” Toby frowned.

“It’s Uncle Dean.” He gnawed at his lip. But it wasn’t Dean’s fault. He wasn’t the one that messed up. I brought this into my life.

“Is he interfering again?” Concern etched the big guy’s face.

“Of course he is, and he’s throwing money at the problem like usual, thinking that will fix it.”

He knew that was an unfair statement, Dean cared about his safety above everything else, but his uncle was throwing money at something that couldn’t be fixed. Nothing was going to fix this, he was flawed, and there was no fixing that.

Toby’s brow creased. “How?”

“What?” He frowned having lost his train of thought.

“How did he throw money at it?” Toby pressed.

“It’s too long to go into.” There was no sense in worrying Toby. Harrison spun the chair around to the window, not really seeing anything.

The first threat had been a small, typed note with the words “you’ll pay” written on it delivered to his office in a sealed envelope.

Harrison knew with certainty that Edward had sent it. Bastard. His back spasmed and he reached behind to rub at the soreness, willing the pain meds to kick in.

It wasn’t that he’d opened his heart to Edward, thank god. He’d done something much worse, he’d trusted him.

Embarrassment over bad choices had kept his mouth shut about the previous note, but the hatefulness behind what was delivered today left him feeling concerned. So much so that when the dead flowers and the same sick note arrived in his office this morning, he’d made the mistake of showing them to Marty.

His assistant, never any good at not interfering, had immediately taken the ominous items to his uncle.

Pressing his lips together, he swiveled back around to his desk and Toby. His friend had squeezed his large frame into one of the small office chairs in front of his desk and sat quietly, looking over a printed report. The man worked in his video feed department and had his face buried in a report more often than not.

What Harrison needed to do was come up with a plan to thwart his uncle, because he didn’t have it in him to deal with putting another life at risk. Call him a coward, but he just couldn’t do it. Mitchell’s life had ended over death threats from an unhappy employee. This time, the threat was a bitter ex-boyfriend playing a stupid and childish game with notes. Nobody was getting hurt or killed this time, not over a few stupid notes and dead flowers.

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