Cindy Spencer Pape - [Guardian Investigations 01] Read Online Free PDF

was
okay—neither was I. I lifted my coffee mug with a shaky hand and took a sip.
    “Is the FBI involved?” It took me a couple
tries, but I managed to get the words out. For sure, I wasn’t ready to deal
with the Feds again.
    He shook his head, making the silvery tips
of his hair glitter in the sun. “The clients have solid reasons for not
trusting the Feds. Right now, they haven’t even called the cops. Just
Guardian.”
    “Where are the clients?”
    “Less than an hour from here. That’s why
the office called me. I’m the closest.”
    “And I just happened to be here.” The donut
tasted like ash now, so I put down the uneaten half. “Coincidence or fate—or
maybe Will set this up somehow. No matter how you look at it, there’s no way I
can say no. I can’t stand aside if a life is at risk. That’s why I became a cop
in the first place.”
    He nodded again, and reached over to clasp
one of my hands with one of his. “Anything you need, you tell me. If it gets to
be too much, you back off. I’m not about to face your brother and tell him I
let you get hurt. Got it?”
    “Got it.” I smiled. He wasn’t worried about
Will, he was worried about me. And that was so sweet, it felt like a big warm
blanket being wrapped around me. “Hope the client doesn’t mind jeans. I didn’t
bring anything else with me.” I hadn’t brought my sidearm, either. I hoped that
wasn’t going to be a problem. All I had was my little snub-nosed .22 that I
kept in an ankle holster. Honestly I’d thrown that into my bag in case of
rattlesnakes. Hadn’t even had it on me when I’d run into the damn bears. I’d have
made a lousy Girl Scout.
    “They’ve worked with Guardian before,” he
muttered. “They’ll cope.” I watched the muscles of his throat work as he
drained his coffee and fought the urge to lick my way up that strong, tanned
column. Later , I promised myself. Hopefully we could wrap this up
quickly and be back to the cabin by nightfall. Yeah, right. Nothing ever
worked out that easily. Not in my life.
    We finished breakfast in a rush. I called
the auto club about my car while Evan used his laptop to print out directions
to the clients’ home. I put on my ankle holster and grabbed my purse, while he
put on socks and hiking boots, along with a well-worn shoulder holster and a
big-ass handgun. The fact that he handled it like he knew what he was doing
reassured me more than a little.
    Evan’s Jeep was around the side of the
cabin, which explained why I hadn’t seen it the night before. That and it was
olive green with so much mud on it that it was pretty much camouflaged amid the
trees. Evan scooped up a sheaf of papers from the passenger seat and tossed
them into the back. I kicked aside a couple of empty cardboard coffee cups, and
settled in. “So tell me about the clients.”
    He drove with the casual confidence of
someone who knew these mountain roads well and trusted his reflexes. He sipped
coffee from a thermal mug as we went. I’d opted for a bottle of water—Evan’s
coffee was nothing to write home about.
    “They’re not your typical Californian
yuppies,” he began. “Very wealthy and kind of eccentric.”
    “Wealthy, how?” Criminals?
Hollywood
bigwigs? Neither idea was reassuring. “Give me
the background here, big guy. I don’t like going into situations blind.”
    He stuck his coffee mug between his knees,
put both hands on the wheel for a second, and sighed. “This is where it gets
tricky. Will told you a little bit about Guardian, but he doesn’t seem to have
mentioned that we cater to a rather—unique—clientele.”
    “Unique in what way?” Dread pooled in my
stomach. Whatever was going on, I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to get
involved in.
    “There are more things in heaven and Earth,
Horatio…” He quoted. “Than are dreamt of in your—or any—philosophy.”
    I went silent, waiting for the bomb to
drop.
    “As a psychic, you know how hard it is to
have powers, abilities that most normal people don’t believe in, let alone
understand,