Executive Protection(69)

He must have found out more about the man who’d chased him.

“You’re free to talk in front of all of us,” Kate said.

Darcy’s gaze passed over Lucy before he started in. He must have been surprised Thad had told her. Maybe he thought they’d grown closer.

“Andrew Lindeman is an ordinary guy. Shocked me when I got the background information. Mechanic at a small garage. Wife and two kids. Except he hasn’t shown up for work in weeks and his wife left him recently. Apparently, he hasn’t been home and she doesn’t know where he’s been going or staying. Acting very strange.”

Mechanic-turned-henchman. Lucy agreed, that was strange.

“Why did he follow you and give you a warning?” Thad asked.

“Good question, and one I can’t answer. Nothing in his background suggests he’s a criminal. Has no record. Until he left his job and wife, he was a dependable worker and husband. The wife’s pretty upset over it.”

“When did you talk to her?” Thad asked.

“Yesterday.”

“You’re supposed to be watching my mother.”

“Oh, Thad, I have countless agents swarming this place,” Kate admonished. “I told him to go.”

“Of course you did,” Thad said cynically.

“I wasn’t gone long. And I had to talk to some people to learn about this guy,” Darcy said.

“And as you can see, I’m fine.” Kate opened her arms to indicate her healing form.

“Why would an ordinary guy go after you in relation to Kate’s shooting?” Lucy asked, more to herself. “Is he a political fanatic?”

“I found nothing in his background to indicate that,” Darcy said.

“He’s an average family man one day and an extremist the next,” Kate said, voicing her thoughts much as Lucy had.

“Your theory about an organization behind all of this must be right, Thad,” Lucy said.

While Darcy nodded his agreement, Kate looked off to the side as she pondered that. It was bad enough one shooter had gone after her, but a group?

“And they’ll obviously go to any length to see that they succeed,” Darcy said, and then murmured to Kate, “Sorry.”

She held up a hand. “No, it’s the truth. We have to find a way to stop them.”

Thad’s austere face revealed his determination to do just that.

“I have officers looking for Lindeman,” Darcy said. “He seems to have disappeared. Found his car abandoned in a parking lot of an abandoned warehouse.”

Another dead end.

“Do you think he was killed? It was so easy for you to find him,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, all I had to do was run his plates.”

“They know you looked in to him,” Thad said.

“My guess is the chief is the one keeping them informed, whoever ‘they’ are. I assume he never got back to you on Sophie’s kidnapping...?”


“No.”

“I checked Layne’s phone records on my own and isolated a number from Lindeman’s mechanic shop.”

That helped prove Lindeman had been the one to arrange the kidnapping, but Lindeman was now missing. And if Lindeman had been killed, they’d lost a solid lead. The only lead they had unless Jaden talked.

* * *

Thad sat with Darcy down in the media room at his mother’s estate. His feet were up on the reclined theater chair, Darcy a mirror image beside him. They each had their own bowl of popcorn. The Carolina Hurricanes–Buffalo Sabres hockey game played, the giant screen and surround sound making it feel as though they were there live. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Thad wasn’t in the mood for sports. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy.

“What’s going on with you?” Darcy asked from beside him. “The Sabres just scored and you didn’t even notice.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been moping all week.”

Thad ate a handful of popcorn. Moping. Brooding. Bothered. Yeah. He’d rather be excited about the game, but the nagging sense that he was making a big mistake wouldn’t leave him alone.

“Did you and Lucy hit it off in Carova?”

Thad had to hand it to Darcy for letting this much time go by before asking that. Thad didn’t have a reply. “Hit it off” didn’t come close to what he felt.

“You’d be yourself if you didn’t,” Darcy continued. “But now you feel something and you’re freaking out.”

Thad sent him an unappreciative look. Like Lucy, Darcy knew him too well. Darcy, he’d expect. Lucy? How had she picked him apart so fast?

Some people find it that way. Had they hit it off so well that they knew each other already? Were they so much alike that it came naturally? Or had she simply focused on his commitment issue?

“Just because your parents screwed things up doesn’t mean you will,” Darcy said.

Thad sent him another look.

“Seriously, Thad. You’re a good friend. I don’t want to see you pass up something that’s worth more than you’re allowing. Let it go, man.”

Thad didn’t engage. He was too torn over the whole thing with Lucy. Making love at the Carova beach house. Sophie. All of it.

“Avery and I are getting married.”