What’s sick is I can commiserate with her. I know exactly how losing someone close to you feels. Except I don’t say a word. I don’t want to ruin her moment, and I don’t want to share my own pain. That’s what the alcohol’s for.
“I’m sorry. I bet he was a great guy. What was his name?”
She gives me a watery smile. “Oh, he was. His name was Paul. Paul Ramirez. That’s what made moving on so hard. None of it seemed fair at all. I didn’t see the point in getting up in the morning for a long time after he was killed. It was like I lost two lives. His, and the one we were going to make together. There came the point when I knew if I stayed in Florida, I’d never move on. As much as I love my family, they baby me. They would have let me live like a bump on a log for the rest of my days if I didn’t change. So I did. I applied for the job at Catherine’s firm, and here we are.”
“It takes a strong person to do what you did. A lot of people wouldn’t have been able to make that step to move on.” I know I haven’t and I wasn’t even engaged.
Her gaze meets mine. “He wouldn't have wanted me to be sad forever. He would have been the first one to tell me to get off my ass.”
“He would have been right.”
I don’t tell her I’m glad she’s here.
I don’t tell her I know how she feels.
I don’t tell her all the things I wish I could because, between the two of us, I’m the coward.
Clearing my mind of the memories, I toss my trash out the open window into a trash can. “I know what will distract you.”
Twenty minutes later, Phoebe trots behind me, her heels clicking against the sidewalk. “Where are we going?”
“Hyde Park.”
“And why, may I ask, are we going to Hyde Park?”
“Jackson Cole’s contacts came up with a location for the IP address. We’re going to go pay them a visit.”
“Shouldn’t we contact the police first? I thought IPs were easy to trace. Shouldn’t they have found out by now?”
“You’re more than welcome to let them know if they haven’t already. I’d rather not wait until I find you dead for them to do something about it.” I pause with one hand propped on the door handle. “Are you coming or not?”
Her mouth sets into a firm line, and she squares her shoulders. “Of course I’m coming,” she snaps. “I just don’t understand why you have to be so damn secretive about it.”
Atta girl.
“I’m not being secretive. I found out right before the interview, and I didn’t want you distracted. Let me make it up to you. The next time I take you out after this, it’ll be on a real date instead of Chinese food in the park.”
She sends me a wary look. “That wasn’t a real date, Griffin, and there won’t be another.”
I hadn’t planned on pushing the issue, but the sound of abject horror in her voice makes me look at her twice. “What’s so wrong with it being a date?” I ask, a little offended. Not to sound conceited—okay, maybe a little, but I consider myself to be a good-looking guy. I’ve been in my fair share of relationships. To be frank, I don’t think I’ve been turned down before, even unintentionally. The combination of military hero and actor seems to do it for most women.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I wasn’t before, but now I’m interested. You wouldn’t go out on a date with me?”
“We can’t be having this conversation,” she says, more to herself than to me. “You’re a client. I’m working with you. Stalker issues aside, going out on a date with you would be highly unethical. I have enough to deal with as it is.”
“But if we weren’t working together, you’d be interested?” I say jokingly, but when she pauses, the catch in my throat is my first clue that maybe it really isn’t a joke.
Maybe I do want her to say yes.
“That’s neither here nor there, considering we are working together.”
She chews on her bottom lip and fidgets with the necklace around her throat. I know fear. This isn’t fear. If I pressed her, I could get her to say yes. As though she can read my mind, she trembles.
I have a feeling Phoebe Hart could be the most challenging risk of them all.
If she hadn’t trembled, I wouldn’t have backed down. I would have encouraged her to accept my offer. I would have persuaded her back to my sorry excuse of an apartment, and I would have seduced her into bed. But she did. And it reminded me of the story she just told me.
That little full-body shiver had the words locking in my throat because, deep inside, I wanted to tremble too. No woman has ever made me consider the consequences of my actions. What if I got her back to my place, and it went south? What if I did or said the wrong things, which is very possible, and fucked everything up?
Knowing myself and knowing how none of my relationships have ever been anything more than a come-and-go type situation, I say instead, “We’re here.”
“Where exactly is here?” she asks, no longer fidgeting.
“Whoever emailed you rerouted the email through various servers, but Cole’s guys were able to track the IP address down to an apartment here. I’m going to go take a look. You wait here. After, we can talk about where you want to go for dinner on our date. It can be your treat if me paying gets your feminist back up.”
I leave her stewing in the parking lot and head toward the main entrance of the apartment building. I’m carrying— there aren’t many times when I’m not—but for a second, I miss the backup that came with being in the military. Someone always had your back. The camaraderie and brotherhood are second to none.
The apartment the IP leads to is registered to Smith Johnson, the same name as Phoebe’s internet troll. Guaranteed fake, but I check the names on the mailboxes, which are ancient and peeling, but not so bad that I can’t see the fucktard is in apartment 5B.
The front door opens and closes behind me. I take a discreet look over my shoulder and find a thoroughly pissed off Phoebe glaring at me.
“I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
“What makes you think you have any right to tell me what to do?”
“That isn’t what I said or what I meant, and you know it. It’s safer for you to wait in the car.”
“Screw that. I’m not waiting in the car while you track down this asshole. I’m going with you. I’m the one they’re after. It’s my life they’re screwing with. If anyone deserves to be there, it’s me.” She opens her suit jacket and turns to show me a Glock strapped in a flank holster close to her kidneys. “I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not saying you can’t, but I’d feel better if you were out of harm’s way.”
“If I cared about how you felt, I’d ask. Now let’s do this. Which apartment?”
She starts up the stairs because, for some god-awful reason, there’s no elevator. I jog to catch up to her. “Fifth floor, apartment B. But if you’re coming with me, we’re going to do this my way.”
“Or what?” she asks with a challenging glance back at me.
“Or I’ll hog-tie you and throw you in the car. Unless you also have years of actual military training that helps you to navigate possibly hostile situations?”
“Fine. What is your way?”
“You stay behind me at all times. Don’t do anything stupid. If shit goes down, you get the hell out of dodge. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“Fine.”
The fifth floor is deserted, which should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. The place is a dump, literally falling apart, and should probably be condemned. It doesn’t make sense that someone in the cast or crew would live here. Crackheads don’t exactly have the brains to hack into an email or keep a steady job with a production. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I wish I knew exactly what the fuck was going on.
Phoebe follows close behind, keeping silent and alert like I instructed. Girl has steel ovaries, that’s for sure, and I respect the hell out of her for it.
We reach
the door, and I knock hard three times.
No answer.
I wait a few minutes and then knock again. This time, I press my ear to the door to listen for movement inside. Hearing none, I try the doorknob. It turns easily, and I signal for Phoebe to follow close behind and hope she listens.
I step inside and find complete darkness.
It presses around me like a shallow grave.
Whatever waits here for us is giving me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Phoebe presses close enough to shut the door, closing us in.
Chapter Eleven
Phoebe
I try to control my rapid breathing because it’s so loud, but it’s pointless. Adrenaline floods my system. My heart beats so hard I can hear it.
Griffin moves deeper into the gloom, or at least I think he does. After a few steps, I can’t see him anymore, but I can hear the whisper of his clothing and the soft tap signaling each footstep. If I weren’t paying such close attention, I wouldn’t know he’s there at all. I try to mimic his movements while my brain screams about how we just committed a crime. How I shouldn’t be here.
I close off those thoughts and try to focus. What we’re doing is wrong, but it may lead to answers. I refuse to let someone derail my life ever again, and if that means breaking a few rules, then so be it. If there are consequences, I’ll face them.
The scent of stale air and rotting food is strong. It seeps into the back of my throat and nose as we venture deeper inside, and I choke back the bile threatening to make me gag. We clear the living room and kitchen and enter a short hallway that leads to a small bathroom, which smells even worse than the living room. Then we enter the bedroom.
After a quick search, Griffin lowers his gun and flicks on the lights. I wince at the change in brightness and holster my Glock. “What is it?”
“No one’s home. We’ll take a look around and see if we can find a real name on something or even the computer they used. Stay where I can see you. I have a bad feeling about this place.”
I would worry about his mental state if this place didn’t give him a bad feeling, but I bite my tongue and nod.
It’ll be a miracle if we find anything. The floors are littered with trash and papers, and God only knows what else. I pick my way through the maze of takeout boxes, old soda bottles, and dirty clothes to a desk in the corner of the room. There isn’t a computer, but there are bills and paperwork. Most are in the name Smith Johnson, like the name on the IP address.
This place is so dirty it would have taken more than a couple of weeks alone to accumulate the trash on the floor. They were here, using a fake name long before I got to California. So there must be some other reason they’re targeting me. Some way that I provoked them.
As I sift through the papers on the desk and then in the nightstand by the bare, stained mattress, a sense of desperation builds inside me. My hands are damp with a cold sweat, and my knees are loose and weak. We have to find something, anything. We have to.
I’m so distracted, so obsessed with finding a clue, any clue, that I don’t hear the footsteps coming up behind me until a hand clamps down over my mouth. A shriek rips from my throat before I catch the scent of the man behind me. Griffin.
“Be quiet,” he whispers harshly. “Someone’s here.”
Carefully, so as not to make a sound, he guides me back across the room, shutting off the light as we go. Somehow, and I don’t know how because my eyes are still adjusting to the darkness, he makes it to the small closet and shuts us inside.
Seconds later, heavy footsteps signal someone coming into the bedroom. Griffin’s arms are a vise around me and guide me deeper into the closet. He carefully arranges clothes in front of us, blocking us from view if whoever is out there decides to look inside. It doesn’t cover us completely, I imagine, but it’ll have to do.
A television turns on somewhere in the apartment, followed by muffled footsteps. Furniture squeaks in the bedroom, and the footsteps stop. A game show, it sounds like, begins to blare just outside the closet door. Minutes later, the scent of pot smoke filters into the closet, tickling my nose. I resist the urge to cough, causing my body to tense against Griffin’s.
He must feel my struggle because he turns and pulls me close to him. Even though I still can’t see him, I know he opens his jacket and presses my face against his chest. The woodsy, honey scent of whatever aphrodisiac he uses for cologne smothers the scent of weed, and the scratchy feeling in the back of my throat begins to abate.
I find that my arms are wrapped around him, but I’m not sure when that happened, and I don’t move to drop them. He anchors me to his body, rubbing his hands up and down my back to soothe me. I should be focused on the person in the bedroom, the one who almost caught us, but Griffin makes me feel safe despite the threat on the other side of the doors.
Minutes pass, maybe a half-hour? My legs begin to cramp and shake from holding themselves so stiffly in one position for so long. Griffin’s stroking hands have stilled as he cocks one ear to the bedroom to listen for sounds of movement.
He leans close to me, and the side of his cheek brushes mine as his mouth reaches my ear. I can’t stop the resulting shiver or the goosebumps that pop out along my arms. The sound of his whisper fills my ear.
“I’m going to go out there and see if I can catch him before he leaves. You wait here. I mean it.”
My hands clutch at his jacket. “No, you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be fine, but I really need you to stay here.”
“I can hold my own.”
“I know that, sweetheart. But I’ll be too distracted if you come with me. Please do this for me. You can kick my ass for it later.”
“Fine.”
“You promise you’ll stay here?”
“I promise if you promise not to do anything stupid.”
“Say you’ll go to dinner with me, and I’ll promise.”
I glare up at where I imagine his face is. “I already agreed to go have dinner with you.”
“I meant a real date.”
“Now is not the time.”
“Say it,” he says.
“You’re going to lose him,” I hedge. Really? What is he thinking? When he doesn’t move, I hiss, “Fine, I’ll go to dinner with you. But it’s under duress.”
“I’ll be right back. Don’t move. Get your gun out, just in case.”
He’s gone before I can say that “I’ll be right back” is exactly what everyone in a horror film says right before they’re horrifically murdered.
As much as I want to find this bastard, I don’t want Griffin to get hurt. I keep my gun aimed at the floor in front of the door, push my back against the wall, and wait.
Minutes or an eternity later, the door to the closet swings open, and I gasp, aiming my gun for center mass.
“Whoa, sweetheart, it’s just me. Whoever it was is gone. We’d better get out of here before they come back.”
“You didn’t see them?” I ask when we get into the car.
“No, they were long gone by the time I checked the apartment.”
“That’s so weird. They didn’t stay long.”
“I’m thinking of getting some surveillance on this place. Maybe we’ll catch the person coming or going.”
I don’t say anything as I stare mindlessly out the window. What little hope I had of finding out more information has ebbed.
The sound of a gunshot explodes in the air around us, and the window next to me explodes into a thousand pieces. I duck automatically, feeling a sting of pain lance across my temple when my head collides with the dash and then a hot wash of blood along the side of my face.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Griffin shouts and guns the car into traffic. Tires squeal and horns blare as we cut off other drivers. The car shudders around me, and another shot pings off of the back.
Someone is shooting at us.
Someone knows who we are and why we were here.
Someon
e has been watching.
Chapter Twelve
Griffin
I’ve never been more scared in my life. I knew I should have pushed harder to make her stay outside. I shouldn’t have let her come at all.
Phoebe is curled into a ball beside me, practically motionless. The shot came through the passenger side window just as I was pulling out of the apartment complex and onto the highway. Not that there is ever a good time to get shot at, but getting shot at while trying to merge into traffic has to top the list because I can’t exactly stop in the middle of the road.
“Are you okay? Were you hit?”
Glancing over, I find her sitting up this time, but there’s a dark waterfall of blood spilling down from a wound in her head.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck.”
Not caring about those around me, I whip the car onto the first off-ramp I come across and pull into a gas station parking lot. I had to make sure we weren’t being followed, but I curse myself the whole time. Seconds are precious with any wound.
The car rocks as I slam on the brakes and yank off my seat belt. I reach over and undo her belt. She moans when I put an arm around her, and my heart stumbles in my chest.
I take off my jacket and press it to the wound on her head. She tries to shrink away from the pain. “Shh, baby, I know it hurts, I’m sorry. I have to get a look at it because head wounds bleed like a bitch. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
She cracks her eyes open, and I’ve never been happier to see those different-colored eyes. “No. It just hurts. A little dizzy.”
“I know it does. Let me see if we can stop the bleeding so I can get a look. Just stay with me, okay? You need to stay conscious.” Her eyes flutter closed again. “Stay with me, honey. Come on.”
I shrug off my button-up. With quick, efficient movements, I wrap the arms of the button-up around her head and knot them to hold it in place. Using the tail of the shirt and an old bottle of water I had in the car, I wipe away the blood on her face. Her skin beneath is white as snow.
Reckless: A Salvation Society Novel Page 7