Sweet Child o' Mine by Lexi Blake Page A

Brie had
been filming their very high-end picnic when someone had taken a shot at Hoover
with a high-powered rifle. Unfortunately, they’d only managed to hit the bottle
of Cristal that had then splattered all over Brie’s overpriced shirt and she’d
thrown a fit. She hadn’t been pissed someone had nearly taken off her
boyfriend’s head, but damn she wanted to hurt whoever had ruined her designer
wear.
    Ian
wished whoever had tried to kill the fucker had been better at their job. He
sighed and leaned forward. “Why don’t you go and join your crazies in the
conference room. Alex and I will be right out. I want to take one more look at
that footage before we talk to…god, I hate even saying his name…Hoover.”
    Sully
stood. “Yeah, his parents had more money than sense. I often think they named
him after the vacuum cleaner, which is oddly appropriate since he sucks the
intelligence out of any room he enters. But damn that kid’s got a million-watt
smile. And if you can solve this case without Hoover dying, I can use all of
this as a storyline for next season. If the kid dies, so does the show. But you
aren’t going to let that happen. I know you, Ian. You’re going to solve this in
no time.”
    Sully
was smiling as he left the office. At least someone was happy.
    “I
say we set Si and Jesse up on this case,” Alex said. “Phoebe and Chelsea won’t
mind a couple of months in LA. I’ll estimate the project at roughly six to
eight weeks. We’ll need to interview everyone involved and get a feel for what
the victim’s life is like. I’ve already been on the phone with LAPD. Derek has
a friend in the Threat Management Unit. They’re overtasked and apparently Brie
and Hoover are difficult to deal with. What a surprise.”
    Ian
flipped a button on his computer and looked over the footage again. The shooter
had been roughly five hundred feet away, in a cluster of trees. The shot would
have taken off Hoover’s head if he hadn’t caught sight of his reflection in the
bottle of champagne. The dumbass actually picked up the bottle and started to
admire himself. His narcissism saved his life.
    The
cops had found the spot where the shooter had likely stood, but they couldn’t
determine much. The spot was a hiker paradise. There had been too many
footprints to make any kind of guess.
    “I’ll
talk to them. Maybe we should send one of the new guys, too.” He’d recently set
up a close-cover bodyguard unit within McKay-Taggart. His operatives were
almost all family men, and that didn’t seem to go well with twenty-four seven
close cover. So he’d talked to a friend of Sean’s and allowed him to run his
business as a subsidiary of McKay-Taggart. “Do you find any of Fisher’s men
annoying? Because I want to set someone annoying on this guy. Jesse and Si will
be too nice. Hey, maybe Chelsea can do some of that rat bastard stuff she used
to do to me.”
    Like
putting him on a no-fly list and subjecting him to body cavity searches for
months when he flew. It had been a complete dick move and one he respected. He
didn’t fuck with his sister-in-law much anymore. She was mean and he could
understand that.
    Charlie
could be mean, too, but when she was he would spank her sweet ass and show her
who was boss. Well, she was boss and he damn well knew it, but in the bedroom
there was no question who topped who.
    God,
he wanted to top her. Lately, he was too worried to. He looked at that big
belly of hers and worried things were going to change again.
    “Stop.”
    Ian
looked up. “What?”
    “You’ve
got your ‘worried dad’ face on.”
    “I
do not have one of those.”
    “You
do. It’s a little like your ‘I’m going to murder someone’ face but slightly
less happy. You’re going to be fine, Ian.”
    He
hated this. Hated all this touchy-feely shit. Still… Alex was kind of his go-to
guy. If he couldn’t talk to Alex, he couldn’t talk to anyone. “I have no idea
how to raise girls. Why couldn’t they