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would turn to him.
    “I need you to eliminate the risk.”
    “The girl?”
    Ted paused—in that split second a dark, hard, cold part of Ted understood that to eliminate all risk to his beloved wife, he needed to eliminate the girl. The warm, loving, human part of Ted—a piece kept alive by Cici—realized that Nikki as a casualty would create more pain than necessary. Ted shook his head no.
    Ted stopped in front of Rush. He squared his shoulders. “Jeb Schmaltzer is dead.” A hard look flexed in Ted’s eye, unbreakable with the somber knowledge that with a megastar wife and a naïve niece, Jeb Schmaltzer, dead D-lister, would lie down on Ted’s proverbial front door. “Shot once in the chest in his own backyard.”
    Not a muscle in Rush’s face moved, but his chin angled down as an indicator that he heard Ted.
    “Nikki was working with Jeb on a project called Boundless Bound . What the hell?” Ted pulled one hand out of his pocket and waved his palm upward as though seeking a more-than-obvious answer to a frustrating question. “The kid wants to make movies, she could work at my studio. Why muck around in the shit?” He walked to the window behind his desk and peered into the dark night on the other side of the glass.
    “This kid.” Ted shook his head. “Nikki thinks it’s so easy. Turns her back on the help we offer.” Ted swiveled his head toward Rush. “Until tonight. Gets her ass in a real mess and then she calls.” Ted stepped away from the glass and toward his desk. His eyes swept the room and landed on the wedding photo of him and Cici, taken on their private island in the Pacific.
    “Here’s the thing.” Ted placed his palm on the desk’s mahogany surface. “Nikki has no idea of the human excrement floating around Hollywood. Nor does she understand the inherent value of her last name. That”—Ted tapped the second knuckle of his pointer finger onto the wooden desktop—“is what worries me.”
    It worried Rush too. Nikki Solange was a priceless Ming vase sitting atop the trash heap of Hollywood.
    “She’s been rolling around in some wannabe rock star’s bed for a month. Some little shit out of Wyoming or South Dakota who can’t keep his dick in his drawers—”
    “Adam McWiggin,” Rush said.
    An oily feeling slid into Rush’s gut with the mention of Nikki’s fuck buddy’s name. Rush’s jaw locked tighter. Adam McWiggin was a solid musician but a complete douchebag where women were concerned. Not a guy that Nikki should be involved with. “Security started a file.”
    “I need you to find the risks, assess the risks, and eliminate the risks.” Ted’s voice traveled through the shadows in the room, soft and low. “Cici and Nikki aren’t to get hurt.”
    “Understood,” Rush said.
    “Nikki doesn’t want security. She’s a pain in my ass, like her aunt. Stubborn. Impossible.” A huff of breath came from Ted. He gazed past Rush and a memory played through Ted’s mind. The left side of his mouth curled into a smile. “But I love Cici.” His eyes reconnected with Rush, “And dammit, that means I love her family too.” Those words were all the reason Ted needed to let Cici Solange and her niece drive him to the hard edge of insanity.
    “Follow Nikki, protect her, find out what the hell is going on without her knowing.”
    Rush had been assigned tougher jobs than watching Nikki Solange. Before his discharge, one job had involved sitting on an ice-capped mountain with a rock piercing his thigh for thirty-eight hours, looking through a scope and trying to find a piece of Afghani scalp. Working for Ted was a luxury, as was following Nikki Solange, getting close, protecting her—an easy gig that included a fast car, swank expense account, and some serious threads.
    “My intention is to play this close,” Rush said. “Without her awareness.”
    Ted nodded. He eyed Rush from top to toe. “Do it.”
    Rush turned on his heel. He was on the hunt for one very young, very