Beck: Hollywood Hitman Read online

  Ari grabbed her arm. Heat flashed through her belly. She jerked her arm from Ari’s grip. No one grabbed her. No one. Not ever again.

  “If you want to keep your most profitable client, don’t ever grab me.”

  Ari’s mouth dropped open, but no words came from his lips. His hands fell to his sides. “Natalie, doll, you know I think of you like my daughter.”

  “Uh-huh.” Natalie nodded. “More like a goose laying golden eggs.”

  “I want you to be safe.”

  “And I want to buy some clothes,” Natalie brushed by Ari on her way out the front door.

  ***

  Remi pulled up to a guard booth and slid down the car window. First the voice, then the fingerprints, and finally a light scanned over his eyes.

  “That’s pretty high tech just to pull in the gate.”

  “We don’t have unannounced visitors at Greystone. Anyone past this point is by invitation of Estrella.”

  Remi pressed the accelerator and they sped up the drive. Winding and twisting, until a giant manse with gray stone walls rose from the ground, a fortress in the midst of the city. Remi pulled to a stop on the drive.

  “You’d never know this place was in the middle of Los Angeles,” Beck said.

  “I believe that’s the point.” Remi exited the car.

  Two guys flanked the front door and Remi nodded to both. “Dex”—Remi nodded to the tall guy with black hair and a scar on his left cheek—“and Carson.” The shorter man with brown hair. The guy with black hair, Dex, cocked an eyebrow at Beck.

  The hint of a memory trickled through Beck’s brain. Did he know this guy? Without words or pause Beck followed Remi through the heavy wooden door. “Welcome to Greystone.”

  Beck lifted his gaze. The front hall was three stories high and two staircases arched away from the marble floor to the upstairs.

  Remi walked past the twin staircases with Beck at his flank. “All primary operations are out of this location. We have satellite offices around the world and you’ll receive that information should you need it, but this, this is our primary headquarters.”

  Remi turned a corner and opened the door that led into another giant room, which might’ve been a ballroom once upon a time but now housed dozens of workstations, monitors, and computers. Giant screens adorned the walls.

  “If it’s tech and it’s been invented, we have it.” Remi turned toward a man in a white lab coat who scurried toward them like a gerbil on speed. “This is Zeb Dubrowski. We stole him from . . .” Remi leaned forward. “Actually, I can’t tell you where we stole him from, but he’s the most sought-after tech genius in the world. You need it, he’s got it.” Remi turned to the computer guru. “Zeb, meet Beck Tatum.”

  Zeb stuck out a hand. “Thrilled, just thrilled to have you with us, Mr. Tatum. Can I say that your operational knowledge on the Saharan Sub Z project was really just extraordinary?”

  Beck’s eyebrows furrowed. What Zeb was saying was highly classified, so classified that if the government could find a way for Beck not to remember what had happened with that project, they damn sure would’ve.

  “Thanks,” Beck said.

  “Remi, when you have a moment, we have a situation.” Zeb lifted an eyebrow. “It’s the . . . well, it’s . . . I think it’s what we’ve been waiting to see on the project.”

  Remi’s smile remained affixed to his face, but a flicker of interest pulsed through his eyes. “Let me get Beck settled and I’ll be back. Ping me if it escalates.”

  Zeb nodded to Remi. “Happy to have you as part of the team,” he said to Beck, and turned back toward the dozens of computers.

  Beck’s gaze swept over the setup in the room. A bit over the top for low-level security work. “Only private security work?”

  “We’re on retainer with a number of entities.” Remi started walking down the long hall. “You’re asking about government work?”

  Beck nodded.

  “We help when they ask.” That explained their high-level access. Some tradesies on the intel, although the government wasn’t ever in the position to need to give away information. “But once you’re ours, you’re ours. It’s an easy deal.”

  “Until it’s not,” Beck added. “The US Government is a ten-thousand-pound gorilla.”

  “Absolutely,” Remi agreed. “But even a gorilla needs to be fed. We do what we can, when we can. Plus, you know about Estrella. Her network allows us a great deal of . . . leeway.”

  “Her engagement to Prince Abdhul,” Beck said.

  “Former engagement. As well as other contacts.” Remi turned the corner into a kitchen. A chef and several cooks bustled through the open space. Remi grabbed a handful of blueberries from a half-pint container. “Estrella was never just a pretty face.”

  No. She’d been linked to a myriad of powerful men before she’d disappeared.

  “Is she here?”

  “Nearly always.” Remi turned a corner and stopped. “Let’s be clear: Greystone is Estrella’s agency. She runs it, she operates it. She chooses the cases she takes and the operatives she hires, and she does so carefully and cautiously.” Remi turned another corner into a long open hallway with doors on either side.

  “We’ve got you in number six.” Remi stopped and opened a door.

  The room was more than functional. Not quite as swank as Club Crazy, but there were no bars on the windows or locks on the doors.

  “Your own private patio. Bathroom attached. TV, computer, internet. You can eat here or in the dining room. When you’re in-house, this is your place for as long as you want it.”

  His place for as long as he wanted it? When was the last time there’d been any place like that in Beck’s life? Long before the last mission that’d taken most of his memories and nearly his life.

  “Meet me in the main hall in thirty. You’ve got paperwork and I’ll show you the rest of Greystone. Exercise room, rec room. You name it, we’ve got it.”

  Beck dropped his rucksack on his bed. “This setup is a little unorthodox.”

  “So is Estrella.” Remi smiled, but a sadness filtered through his eyes. “I guess when you go through that kind of trauma, you come out different than the way you went in.”

  Remi’s words struck at Beck.

  “Keeping people safe is Estrella’s mission in life. She only works with people that are as compelled as she is.”

  Beck’s chest tightened. Keeping people safe. He’d failed at that mission requirement the last time he’d been sent out. He put his hands on his hips. “She sure she has the right guy?” His voice was hard. “The last time I was sent to protect didn’t end so well.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly why you’re here. People like us, when we fail? Doesn’t sit well, because failure is never an option. See you in thirty.” Remi walked out and shut the door.

  Bright light poured into the room. Beck opened his closet door. Three suits and a half-dozen handmade shirts lined the closet. Shoes. All the right size. The dresser was the same, filled with clothes that would fit. Good thing, because aside from the jeans and T-shirt that he wore, his rucksack was filled with threadbare pajama bottoms, a couple shirts, and a pair of shorts. Maybe he’d burn the whole damn thing—there had to be a fireplace somewhere in this castle.

  Chapter Four

  “Doll, do your daddy a solid.”

  Natalie took a long breath and walked away from the sales clerk at Barney’s who’d been helping her before the phone rang. Why had she answered? She’d known, even if she didn’t recognize the number—hell, it was because she didn’t recognize the number—that she’d known this call was from one of two people. And she’d been right. This call was from her deadbeat dad.

  “I can’t,” Natalie said. She kept her tone firm, just like her therapist had told her. Nothing personal, no anger, just a clear and healthy boundary with her dad.

  “Yes you can.” There was a playfulness in his voice, but his tone edged toward pissed, and Natalie knew what happened once Dad
dy got pissed. What had always happened when Daddy didn’t get what he wanted or what he thought he deserved, or his way, or his charm didn’t work, or someone told him no . . .

  “No.” Natalie repeated the words. “I can’t.”

  There was a pause, like the moment before a car wreck or right after you hit your toe on a piece of furniture and you know the pain is traveling from nerve ending to nerve ending but the actual neurons to make you feel the pain hadn’t yet fired. For a split second in the silence Natalie hoped that maybe Daddy had also been seeing a therapist or working on healthy boundaries or thinking of ways that he might rebuild his relationship with her, but then—

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Dallas Warner bellowed. “You little bitch—you realize you wouldn’t be anything without me?”

  And no. Daddy was still Daddy, and this was when the abuse would start.

  “Daddy, please listen, I can—”

  “No, you listen to me, you ungrateful bitch. I worked my ass off to get you where you are today and now, when you’ve finally hit it big with this damn Shemax role, you want to turn your back on me and—”

  “That’s not how it happened, Daddy. You spent all my money.”

  “Your money? Why the fuck would you think that was your money?”

  “Because the checks had my name on them.”

  “Bullshit. You know how expensive it was to get you to that first role?”

  “Was it more or less expensive than the four Corvettes you purchased in five years?”

  “What the fuck, Nat? Did you want to drive around L.A. looking like the white trash you are?”

  Enough. She knew this conversation would go nowhere except into an abyss of swear words on Daddy’s part, tears on her part, and self-loathing after the phone call.

  “Daddy I can’t help you, I just can’t . . . I . . . I don’t think you should call me again.” She needed to distance herself from Daddy, but he still called when he needed money for booze, women, bail, or drugs.

  His laugh was a harsh sound, like shards of glass shattering against a marble floor.

  A sick feeling coiled through Natalie’s gut.

  “You think you can get rid of me that fast? Shuck me like you do all the other people in your life? You can’t. I’m your father. We share the same DNA, little girl. You’re mine until the day you die. Don’t you ever forget I brought you into this world and I sure as hell can take you out. You think on what I need, because I’m coming to get mine.”

  An ice-cold trickle of fear threaded through Natalie. The line went dead. She glanced around the department store. She’d wandered away from the saleswoman helping her when Daddy started screaming in her ear. Pinpricks of heat in her eyes and her vision blurred.

  “Miss Warner, can I—”

  “No. No, I . . .” Natalie broke away from the woman and walked down the hall, her head bent. She had to get out of the store. She needed to be alone. She wanted to go home.

  Her belly tightened and she wrapped her arms around her waist. Daddy wouldn’t hurt her, would he? He’d never struck her, but he’d hit Mama when they were still together. The drugs, the damn drugs and the booze, he’d changed . . . his mind . . . he wasn’t the same. He’d never been all that great at being a daddy, but he’d been good for a quick laugh and some fun times. All that was gone now. Since the emancipation he’d become meaner and meaner. His phone calls more vicious. His trouble more permanent. He’d actually served jail time on the last DUI.

  She broke out of the back door of the store. The sunlight bit sharp into her eyes. Natalie beelined for her convertible parked right by the door. Daddy’s gambling was out of control, or so she’d heard from Ari. Daddy could be in trouble, serious trouble. But Daddy’s troubles weren’t her responsibility . . . were they? Her therapist said no, but damn, Natalie felt like she was meant to make things right for her parents, all the time.

  She slid behind the wheel of her car. No emotion. No feeling. No tears. She wouldn’t be weak. She’d be strong. She’d force herself not to feel, no matter how it hurt to pretend like she didn’t care.

  ***

  “Yo, Tatum, it’s Dex.” A hard knock on the door of his room and Beck was up off his bed. He pulled open the door. The black-haired guy with the scar from earlier that afternoon was in the hall. “You want to join? We’re shooting the shit and watching the Lakers kick some ass. Might be beer involved.”

  A beer? Beck hadn’t drunk a beer in nearly a year. There’d been no beer involved during his last mission and at Club Crazy booze didn’t mix with his meds.

  “Sure.” Beck walked into the hall.

  “You ate in-room tonight.”

  “By the time I finished with paperwork and orientation, the mess was closed. They fixed me up a tray and brought it down.”

  “They’re good like that. Kitchen is available twenty-four/seven. You pick up the landline and press 2, you can order anything you want. And I mean anything. Trevor spent three weeks trying to confound those guys in the kitchen. He’d dial in at 3 a.m. and ask for some weird-ass stuff he knew was only in Southeast Asia or Fallujah. They’d make it and bring it to him. Finally, Chef was knocking on his door asking him to at least give them twenty-four hours for the eccentric dishes. We laughed our asses off over that one.”

  Trevor . . . Trevor was blond and big, grew up in Nebraska and played football in college before joining the army. Remi’d given Beck a list of all the operatives working for Estrella, and he’d been memorizing names and faces when Dex knocked on his door. “You’re from Texas. Former Navy.”

  Dex nodded. “And you’ve lived in nearly every state, once a Marine but then, who the hell knows? Guessing you can’t talk about what exactly you did.”

  “Might be a problem for me, if I remembered half of it.”

  “Got beat up pretty good?”

  “Middle East. Six tours and then South America.”

  “But you’re back now and here with us.” Dex rounded the corner to the rec room at the back of the house. Pool table, bar, two flat-screens on either side of the room. The Lakers were on one TV while two guys sat in front of another wearing headsets and playing a video game. Three guys and one woman watched the game and one guy leaned against the back wall with a beer in his hand. All of them, but the guy holding up the wall, sat with that stiff look like they were ready to jump to attention and salute at a moment’s notice.

  “What you drinking?” Dex asked.

  “Take a Sculpin IPA if you got it.”

  Dex walked around the end of the bar. “We got anything you could ever want at this place.” Pulled a beer from the refrigerator and popped it open. “Did you meet everyone?”

  Beck shook his head. He hadn’t met any of them, but he’d read their bios and seen their pictures.

  “Nah, you wouldn’t have if you missed dinner. Remi keeps you pretty busy before your first assignment. All kinds of formal shit, and I heard you were already assigned.” Dex took a long pull on his beer.

  Beck’s eyes skimmed over his new colleagues. Every one of them high-end elite services or former spooks. Each with a backstory they weren’t allowed to tell.

  “Takes a little while getting used to the idea that we can talk about what we do,” Dex said. “Took me six months before I felt like I wasn’t doing something wrong by talking about my assignment with anyone but Remi.”

  Beck nodded. Secrets had been his life. Now, here, these people were meant to be his colleagues, and according to Remi he was meant to utilize them as a resource. “How long have you been working for Estrella?”

  “Going on two years,” Dex said. “Best civilian security gig on the planet.”

  “She treats you well.”

  “She does. As long as you’re the right fit.”

  His belly churned with the conditional response. “Right fit?” He tilted his beer and the liquid flowed easily down his throat, maybe a little too easy. He was halfway finished with the first beer he’d had in nearly a year and he
wanted another one already.

  “We’re a tight group. We take care of each other and Estrella takes care of us, but she demands loyalty, transparency, expects us to walk what we talk. No bullshit, no drama. You down with that?”

  Was he down with that? Hell yes. He’d built a career on doing what he was told and respecting his oath.

  “Everybody been here a while?” While the folder on his colleagues told of their specialties and what branches of the military they came from, the number that was missing was how long they’d worked with Estrella.

  “Most, yeah. Some come and go and others, well, they go.” Dex upended his beer. “Meet the rest of the crew. Except for those two boneheads over there.” He smiled and jerked his thumb toward the two guys on the couch playing Xbox. “That’s Trevor and Hudson, and they won’t get off that thing for at least another two hours.”

  Beck followed Dex to the giant couch in front of the TV. “You met Connor out front earlier today. That’s Fallon Mackenzie.” The woman with thick blonde hair was all muscle and sat beside Connor on the couch.

  “Welcome,” she drawled in a silken southern accent. She was tiny but looked to be a powder keg that could explode. Seven years in the foreign service, which meant spy and operative. “Heard you arrived today. Got a gig starting?”

  Beck nodded. Yeah, hard habit to break, that he couldn’t talk about his gig with his colleagues.

  Fallon leaned back into the leather couch. “I get it.” She smiled. “Tough to talk about things at first. Think we all went through that. Especially the first gig. But we’re here. We’re meant to be here for each other. Estrella prefers it that way.”

  “There’s about twelve in-house?”

  “Thirteen right now.” Dex slid his gaze toward the back wall. “Take that for what it’s worth.”

  Beck glanced toward the guy standing solo. Leather jacket. Black boots. A tattoo on his . . . neck? Not military, not at all.

  “Jax. Got here three months ago. He’s new too.”

  “He wasn’t on my list of operatives.”

  “What would they write for his resume?” Dex upended his beer. “Felon? Knows all the drug runners in L.A.? Well-connected in the criminal underworld?”