Read Renegade Alpha (ALPHA 5) for Free Online

but I’m not going to America with you!”
    Lijah ignored her protest. “Do you have your passport with you?”  
    As it happened she did, had pushed it into her bag before leaving the house this morning. Just in case she needed it, she had told herself at the time. But… “I’m not going to America with you,” she repeated stubbornly.
    “Go now, Seth,” Lijah instructed.
    “I hope you find Peter soon, Callie,” Seth told her before hurrying from the office, his cell phone already back against his ear as he issued a string of instructions into it.
    Lijah waited until the other man left before answering Callie’s outburst. “With your father gone, the safest place for you for the foreseeable future is right beside me. And I have a feeling I’m going to America,” he added challengingly.
    He was right. What was more, Callie knew he was right. It was just that for the past week, she had put off thinking too deeply about anything except finding her father.
    The father who had sacrificed his career for her and put his own life on hold to help her recover from her ordeal, and who may now have put his own life on the line for her. She owed it to him to put her trust in the men he had trained.
    If Lijah Smith said she needed to go to the States with him, then that was what she had to do.
    She nodded abrupt acceptance. “So what happens next?”
    Lijah took his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, pressed speed dial before raising the phone to his ear. “Everyone in. Now!” He ended the call. “What happens next, Callie, is I do what I do best.” He gave her a hard and determined grin.
    Callie quickly learned that what Lijah did best was phenomenal.
    Within minutes, it seemed all the offices of Grayson Security were occupied with people on telephones and computers, all talking at once, gathering information, checking and double-checking.
    And all of them reported directly to a Lijah who was brisk and decisive—and nothing like that laid-back, uninterested cowboy Callie had first spoken to just hours before.
    Somewhere amid all that efficiency, he also managed to remember to instruct someone to order a late lunch to be brought in for everyone, and for someone else to go and buy clothes for Callie.
    He also spoke to the owner of the company responsible for security that night at the Hammond Gallery. The conversation had started out politely enough, and ended abruptly after Lijah called the other man an incompetent asshole.
    Callie sat on the sidelines and watched and listened in awe.
    She also learned a healthy respect for a man she already found far too personally disturbing for comfort.
    She hadn’t so much as looked at a man since Michael died, and yet she couldn’t stop watching and listening to Lijah. Admiring him. For the way he cut through any and all red tape, including those airlines that had been so difficult with Callie this past week. The quickness of his mind as he processed and spat out information before anyone else. The easy way he led his team, and in such a way none of them seemed aware he was even doing it.
    Most of all, she couldn’t stop watching the way that he moved.
    For such a big man, he was incredibly light on his feet, catlike, even graceful, muscles rippling in his arms and back, jeans fitting snugly over a taut butt.
    Partway through the afternoon, he had thrown off the Stetson too, revealing very dark overlong hair brushed back from his face and inclined to curl a little about his ears.
    Several busy hours later, Callie realized she had seriously underestimated Lijah Smith, been fooled by his initial appearance and laid-back attitude.
    “Is there anything I can do to help?” She stood hesitantly in the doorway to his office, after feeling totally superfluous all afternoon.
    He looked up from where her father’s papers were spread all over his desk, so focused his expression was blank for several seconds as he stared at her, as if he was having trouble placing who she was.
    Then his