Saving Serena (Hawk Security #1)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Duke

We arrived at Cardinelli’s in Westwood fashionably late for lunch.

I ushered my client, Ariana, and her lunch date, Missy, inside without incident. This was the best white-tablecloth restaurant if you wanted good Italian in this part of the city.

I scanned for threats as I followed them and the ma?tre d’ to their table.

“Sorry for the delay,” Constance said over my comms earpiece. “I’m on the way now.” Constance Collier, a new addition to our team, over from Hanson Security, was supposed to be my partner on this job. Then her doctor had called and moved up her appointment.

“Copy that. No issues here.” I’d told her to skip this and go. This was a simple lunch gig, nothing I couldn’t handle alone.

“But we want the VVIP section,” Ariana complained. The daughter of a Russian oligarch, she was the epitome of a spoiled, entitled Hollywood brat. She didn’t settle for VIP status. Everything had to be better than her competition.

Her real name was Zoya Zolotarev. Try saying that three times fast. And so, with Daddy’s money, a nose job, and a boob job, Ariana Harmony had gotten her start in Hollywood. Her big break came when her father financed a film that then cast her in the lead role. Her bouncing tits in the plentiful nude scenes did the rest. Now, she was on the reality TV show Real Models of Beverly Hills , which of course had no reality in it whatsoever.

The ma?tre d’ gave the girls the pick of two other tables.

Ariana chose the one by the courtyard window. She didn’t seem to notice the ma?tre d’s eye roll as he left.

I knew for a fact that there was no VVIP or even a VIP section here.

As the girls ordered drinks and looked over the menu, I scanned the room, assessing and determining threat levels. In a high-end restaurant like this, the maximum threat was usually a two on a ten-scale.

Technically, my job was to keep my client safe from kidnapping, assault, theft, and harassment. With Ariana, it usually amounted to keeping overzealous selfie-seekers at bay, regardless of how innocuous they seemed.

And then there were the paparazzi. I hated dealing with those pricks.

While the girls discussed the menu, I opened my phone and checked on Constance’s location. The icon on the map showed she had a long way to go.

“Asian chicken salad, medium rare,” Missy ordered.

The server nodded with a wry smile, knowing enough not to comment on the airhead’s apparent desire for undercooked poultry.

Ariana also ordered salad, typical fare for actresses out in public.

What the public didn’t know was that as soon as she got home, a bucket of hot and spicy Kentucky Fried Chicken would be on the way. After that, she’d go into the bathroom and puke it up. Also typical Hollywood.

Having grown up with very little food on the table, I couldn’t understand it. Eating and then barfing it up didn’t compute for me.

Standing by the wall and smelling all the food I was not able to taste made this part of my job annoying, but at least I was done having to worry about roadside IEDs. Plus, I got to sleep in a bed instead of on a dirt floor in a country where I didn’t speak the language.

As boring as it could be, guarding a celebrity was a lot easier than dealing with the rock groups that came through town. Trouble sought those guys out, and they were always high, or drunk, or both. It was worse than herding cats, and my ass was on the line if trouble got past me.

“Cobra, get our waiter,” Ariana said, moments after their food had been delivered. “I don’t like this dressing.”

Cobra was the code name I’d carried over from my time in the military. On assignment, I preferred it over my legal name. Having a client look me up after an assignment could get problematic.

I didn’t see the server but kept an eye out to flag him down.

“Yeah, Cobra.” Missy giggled. “Go get our waiter. Chop, chop.”

“No,” I answered without even turning my head in her direction.

“Why, Cobra?” Missy asked.

I ignored her. Missy got my protection at this lunch because of her proximity to my client, but that was all.

“You can tell her,” Ariana prodded.

I turned my head and gave her the stare. “A cobra strikes without warning and is deadly.”

Missy’s eyes bugged out when I added a hiss.

“Cool, huh? And he’s not allowed to leave me,” Ariana whispered. “Rules.”

My comms earpiece came alive with colorful cursing from my pal Winston Evers. Our ace tech guru, Jordan Hawk, my brother, was getting a tongue-lashing. And this time, it sounded like he deserved it.

“It’s not marked that way,” he tried. Jordy had been giving Winston directions to follow a target and had messed up by trying to send him the wrong way down a one-way street. The target now had a quarter mile of separation.

“Jordy, save it for later,” said my brother Lucas, our boss, cutting off the bitch session. “Give him a parallel route to catch up. And Winston, pedal to the metal until you get back in position.”

I clicked off my comms. The boss had it handled, and I didn’t need the distraction.

Missy nodded toward me. “Does he ever smile?”

“Nope. Probably also against the rules.” Ariana took another dainty bite of her rabbit food just as I heard a series of camera clicks.

The pap scooted out through the kitchen door so fast I couldn’t have the pleasure of chasing him and fixing his camera for him.

“Want to take this seat so they get a better shot?” Missy asked Ariana.

“Good idea.”

They traded places. Staged casual shots were another Hollywood staple I didn’t understand. But reality-TV stars like Ariana were zero percent real. The nose, the boobs, and the tan were all fake.

I reconsidered that and decided on ten percent real. The Russian accent and the on-screen temper weren’t fake.

Incoming. A giggly pair of teenagers with phones in their hands headed our way. I left the wall and intercepted them, holding my arms out like a fence. “Hey, girls, give us some privacy. They’re here to eat. She’s not doing selfies today.”

“Cobra,” Ariana said from behind me.

The girls’ eyes went wide.

“It’s okay,” Ariana said.

I let the girls pass. When my phone vibrated, I checked the alert I’d set. The picture of Ariana and Missy at lunch had already been posted on ZMT with a caption that gave everyone the location. That meant fans were on the way, and our exit would be a zoo.

I stood back as the giggling girls took selfies with Ariana and Missy.

Why people put up with this shit, I would never understand. They never got any privacy. I knew firsthand that Ariana couldn’t do any normal things a girl her age might want to do, like go out to a movie, visit a pizza joint, stop at Baskin-Robbins for a cone, or sit outside Starbucks sipping coffee and watching people walk by.

After the giggleygirls left, Missy poked at her salad and made a face. “Don’t you just hate it when they put all the croutons on one side?”

“Yeah, that’s like rude and unusual punishment,” Ariana agreed.

The conversation only got more childish from there.

When they’d finished complaining about everything under the sun, I prepped for the exit by peeking out the front window while they paid. The fan swarm had arrived, along with two paparazzi I noticed.

“It’s a madhouse out there,” I told them at the door. “We’re going to make a rush to the car.” Today, I was driving the armored Suburban instead of one of the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GTs Lucas had chosen for us.

“Right.” Ariana nodded.

The group mobbed us as soon as we got out the door, demanding autographs and yelling questions. The fans were even more aggressive than the paparazzi, shoving their way to the front.

“Sure,” Missy said, accepting an invitation to sign a guy’s chest when he pulled up his shirt and offered a Sharpie.

Ariana had started this two weeks ago. The internet went crazy, and now it was her thing. She took selfies with the girls and signed the guys’ chests. Marketing genius or perversion, I didn’t care, but it had made the crowds larger and rowdier.

The cascade began when other guys copied that one idiot’s move.

Not wanting to be one-upped by her friend, Ariana pulled away from me and took a Sharpie to a different guy’s chest, then a selfie with the girl next to him.

I stayed close to my client and tried to keep an eye on the crowd, looking for any crazies. In a crowd this size, there was almost always one who needed to be kept away.

I reconnected to comms. “Constance, we’ve left the restaurant, and it’s getting a little busy here. I could use your help.”

“Traffic sucks,” she said in my ear. “I’m still fifteen out.”

“Make it ten. Cobra out.”

The paps were snapping away, loving the free-for-all as the girls entertained more fans.

Then I saw it, a knife protruding from a guy’s pocket. If Constance had been here, I would have corralled the guy while she kept watch, but she wasn’t. Escape from the threat became the only option.

I pulled Ariana away. “We have to go.” With my other hand, I yanked hard on Missy’s arm and pulled the two toward the car.

The swarm of fans followed us.

“Let go of me,” Missy complained.

“I’m not done,” Ariana hissed.

“There’s a guy with a knife,” I said. “It’s not safe here.”

You’d think the mention of a knife would have scared her into complying, but no, not Ariana. She planted her feet. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Missy copied Ariana. “Me either.”

A fan pushed in and held out a camera, trying to get a selfie. Another lifted his shirt. “Do me.”

I tried logic. “You’re not safe here.”

Ariana took a pen. “I said I’m not done.” She inked the idiot’s chest.

I tried calm and insistent. “We have to leave now.”

“I told you. You’re not the boss of me,” Ariana said, posing for a selfie with her tongue sticking out.

“We have to go.”

“I’m sick of this,” she said. “You’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me,” I snarled.

“I just did. Now get lost.” She made a shooing motion. “You’re ruining the vibe.” When I didn’t move, she raised her voice. “Leave. I don’t need you, and I don’t want you.”

A chorus of yeah, get lost , rose from the crowd.

I walked away. She didn’t want me or need me, and I certainly didn’t need her attitude. On my way, I grabbed the guy carrying the knife, disarmed him, and tossed the knife down the storm drain.

The idiot opened his mouth to complain, but I cut him off with a pointed finger and one word. “Don’t.”

He took off.

I double-clicked my comms. “Constance?”

“Still five out,” came her reply.

“We’re not needed anymore. This assignment is terminated.”

“What do you mean?”

“The client has terminated the engagement. I’ll see you back at the office.”

A silence followed before she acknowledged. “Copy that.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” Ten-year-olds were more eloquent—and nicer.