Deadly Testimony (Safeguard #2)
Piper J. Drake
Chapter One
The people standing between Isabelle Scott and a hot bath needed to move. Immediately. Or violence would occur.
However, the event she’d been covering as private security had just ended and she wasn’t technically on the clock at the moment so she wouldn’t be paid for the violence. Nor would she have a convenient justification should legal repercussions ensue.
So she’d try to be patient with the four men managing to block the way to both elevators of the hotel. As she approached, she assessed the situation automatically out of habit. The four of them weren’t friends, per se. Actually, three of them looked to be surrounding the fourth and the poor bastard was backing right into the wall between the two elevators. He was obstructing her access to the button she needed to call her ride up to the ninth floor and she’d be damned if she was going to take the stairs if she didn’t have to.
Not that she had a problem with stairs in moments of necessity. Stairs were a lot safer than elevators in certain situations and there were times when making the choice to step into the elevator was basically the equivalent of entering a kill box.
She drew her brows together in a scowl. Not the line of thought she wanted to end the night with and, allowed to go further, those kinds of memories would result in nightmares. No thanks.
“Look, fellas.” She tried to pitch her voice for politeness. Pleasantry? One of her former teammates, Victoria, was better at it than she was. But she wasn’t the ruffian Victoria liked to say she was, in teasing. Well, not completely. “Could you please step aside?”
There. Victoria would’ve been proud.
One of the three threw a hostile glance over his shoulder without taking time to get a real look at her. “Walk away, bitch. Go get a drink at the bar or something. This’ll take a few minutes.”
Lizzy clenched her jaw.
The bar was crowded and she wasn’t in the mood for a drink. After heading up security for a private party for eight hours and watching important people schmooze with others of equal or greater “status” in a wine-infused corporate boondoggle, all she wanted was to soak out the tension of the day and get some sleep. Maybe order room service. Their client had reserved a block of rooms for the security detail as part of this particular engagement and she’d been looking forward to putting the hotel’s hot water heaters to the test.
Her plans aside, the three men closing in on the fourth had the kind of build and stance that stood out in a hotel full of less rough-and-ready corporate types. These were men of physical action. From the less than perfect fit of their suits and the way the fabric of said suits draped oddly over their forms in a few strategic places, she was guessing they were hired help and armed. Very out of place and definitely moving on the fourth with a predatory intent.
The remaining man was about six foot, give or take an inch with his dress shoes. His suit was properly fitted across broad shoulders and an athletic build. He had a well-defined jaw and high cheekbones. Sharp intelligence was evident in his dark eyes as he took in everything around him, darting around to each of his aggressors and beyond them looking for exit routes.
His pale complexion was not unusual for Seattle in early spring. But in combination with his facial features and thick, stylishly crazy hair, his skin tone was a characteristic of East Asians as opposed to Southeast Asians, who were a few shades darker in skin tone throughout the year.
She’d guess he was Korean as opposed to Chinese. Taller than most Asians and in better shape than most people in general. But it wasn’t going to do him much good against three opponents of equal or larger size unless he had the kind of training to handle multiple aggressors. The kind of training she had.
And if he did, he’d have stepped out of the situation by now.
Isabelle sighed. No wingman or cavalry coming to his aid. He needed help but it wasn’t forthcoming. This was not going to resolve in the next thirty seconds and that was all she was willing to wait. Besides, she couldn’t leave a person alone to face odds like these. She’d been on her own in these situations plenty of times and it’d never been fun.
“Gentlemen, get out of my way.”
Humor and interest sparked in the Asian man’s eyes. He understood English, apparently. Seattle being a major city for travelers, it was always good to note rather than assume a listener could understand the conversation. Especially if she might have to advise him to take action.
The hulking goon who’d originally spoken to her turned then. “What did you say?”
Maybe the English language, or conversation in general, wasn’t goon number one’s strong point.
“Get. Out. Of. My. Way.” She put some steel into her voice this time. No need to increase volume when intensity works better.
Beady eyes narrowed at her as goon number one flexed his thick fingers into a meaty fist and released them. Threat clear.
Ah, well. Intonation could work on people with more neurons firing inside their heads. She might not have a whole lot of stature going on at five foot four, but her new friend should’ve at least spared a moment to ponder that maybe a woman in a black suit with white dress shirt and an earbud hanging over her collar from a wire might mean something.
He was a thug dressed in a monkey suit.
She was a much higher pay grade.
He advanced on her and made a grab for her arm. She saw it coming with plenty of time to react, rising up on the balls of her feet and keeping her limbs loose in anticipation, her joints relaxed to maximize her range of motion. As his left hand reached her upper arm, she stepped forward slightly with her left foot to meet him and seized his wrist from the inside, her thumb pointing downward. Swinging her hips and right leg around so her butt lined up with her attacker’s forward leg, she bent her knees briefly and hip bumped him to rock his weight upward. She completed her move with a full upward body twisting motion, throwing him completely over her and onto his back.