Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series
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BLACK DOG SECURITY
Complete Series
by: CAMILLA BLAKE
Copyright © 2018
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to events, businesses, companies, institutions, and real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
PART TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
PART FIVE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
PART ONE
Prologue
Sonnie
Six Months Earlier
Facing reality was never easy. Or at least that’s what I’d always heard. My reality had never been all that bad, not until the summer Jake lost his job, anyway. Married to my high school sweetheart, working my dream job, adopting the perfect little kitten. My life had been perfect. I figured we’d carry on along that path, have a couple of children (one boy and one girl), and grow old and gray together.
I’d grown up in a cul-de-sac that would’ve given the Cleavers a run for their money and I assumed that the rest of my life would have that same glittering touch to it. Things seemed to be going in the right direction. Up until the point of Jake losing his job.
It should’ve been fine. I made enough for both of us to live comfortably. He didn’t have to stress about it. He could’ve just gone out and taken his time finding another job that he liked. Things should’ve been fine. I kept saying that over and over again to myself as I stared at my reflection in a three-way mirror at a JCPenney’s off of Mallard and Grant. It wasn’t the good store. The good store was at the mall, but I would’ve had to walk past Flora’s Nails to get to it and Flora loved to talk. Those days all she was talking about was how she’d heard that Jake had snapped inside of the Piggly Wiggly down on Hersher and had been taken away in handcuffs.
The bad JCPenney’s didn’t have the good stuff. It was full of stuff like returned swimsuit bottoms and T-shirts that advertised that the wearer was sexy or juicy, stuff that Paris Hilton would’ve worn in the early 2000s. It also proudly boasted a lingerie section that reminded me of Melanie Griffith. In Working Girl. From 1988.
That’s where I was. Standing in front of a three-way mirror, in a bad department store, wearing lingerie that someone would’ve worn in the eighties. I had to say… facing that reality wasn’t easy.
When had my stomach grown rounder? My thighs looked huge. I had bags under my eyes that could’ve held multiple designer dogs. My boobs had grown larger than I remembered and the C-cup bra I’d tried on made them look like two hams being smuggled in a slingshot. And my hair… When had I stopped dying my roots? Christmas, three years ago?
Reality was crying in a dressing room and having a sixteen-year-old ask you if you needed her to call someone for you. Reality was considering asking her to be your best friend because you couldn’t remember the last time someone had been so kind. Reality was also realizing that she wasn’t being kind, but needed the dressing room for a mom of six who was going to be buying her kids’ full wardrobe on one rainy Tuesday in April.
I wasn’t budging until I found lingerie that could help me spice up my marriage, though. Kate plus six could wait her turn. Sonnie was trying to get her groove back. How, I wasn’t sure. What I lacked in knowledge, I more than made up for in determination.
My marriage was on the rocks. If on the rocks meant it’d taken a running dive off a tall cliff and landed on the rocks below. In a billowing heap of smoke and despair.
That was also my reality. Somewhere along the way, the fairy tale had turned into a Grimm Brothers’ special. I’d missed it. I felt like I’d fallen asleep in that sweet cul-de-sac and woken up somewhere south of hell.
Jake and I didn’t touch. We didn’t really even talk. Since he’d lost his job, he’d become sullen and bitter. That was four years ago. I’d just waited for things to get better until they were worse than ever. At some point I had to face the reality that I was finding so unpleasant and see that my marriage wasn’t going to save itself.
I wasn’t sure th
at high-waisted, high-hipped crotchless panties were going to save it, either. I needed something sexy. I needed something to bring some magic back to my marriage.
I stared at my reflection and blew out a rough breath. Melanie Griffith’s slightly overweight, slightly white-trash cousin stared back at me and shook her head. I was going to have to go to the good JCPenney’s. I was going to have to face Flora. I knew that it was go time for my relationship and it was either face Flora or face “divorce-a.”
Melanie’s cousin scowled back at me. Even adding a cute little “a” at the end of divorce didn’t make it sit right with me. The Cleavers didn’t divorce, darn it. Reality could change. Change back. I just had to put the work in.
So, off to the mall I went. I rushed past Flora, pretending I didn’t see her when she all but killed herself to get my attention, rushed into the good lingerie department, and then rushed back out. I’d grabbed the first thing that looked like it hadn’t existed in the eighties and paid without allowing myself to face the reality of my body in another three-way mirror.
Flora was waiting on my exit, however. I didn’t know how she was running her shop, but she was standing there, like a guard, ready to pounce on me for daring avoid her.
She waved her arm at me, sending her fringed shirt flying in every direction. I watched as a young child was almost taken out by the leather strings. And that wasn’t the most alarming part of the whole scenario; her larger-than-life hair stayed perfectly still as she rushed me. Almost a foot tall, wild with curls, it should have moved. Instead, it just stayed perfectly in place.
“Sonnie Stovall! Did you not see me earlier? I was trying to catch you, hon.” She put her hand on my arm and shook her head. “How are you?”
I forced a smile on my face that felt as brittle as thin, dried clay. “I’m great. How are you?”
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to be strong with me. It’s me! Flora.” She held her arms open like she was going to hug me, but then just dropped them and gave me a pursed-lip, sympathetic smile. “I heard all about Jake down at the Piggly Wiggly. Isn’t that the saddest thing? How’s he doing?”
My teeth made grinding sounds as I snapped my jaw shut. Jake had been shopping and had had his personal debit card declined. He’d screamed at a young cashier about their machine being on the fritz and had forced the manager to run the card again and again until finally the manager had called the cops. There were no charges, but the officer had thought it best to remove Jake and let him calm down in the back of a squad car.
Another reality that I didn’t love. Our money situation. We had plenty. We actually had more than plenty. I made good money. It seemed to get under Jake’s skin that all of the money we had wasn’t money that he’d made, though. His savings account had run out years ago and I just casually put money in his account each month.
We didn’t talk about it. He hated it. He’d gotten more and more angry about it. I didn’t know what to do, though. I couldn’t stop making money. He wouldn’t take a job that he felt was below him, but he hadn’t worked in so long that he couldn’t find any job, much less one in his field.
I’d put the same amount of money in his account that I always did. Somehow, he’d used it all before I could put more in. I couldn’t even ask him about it because he was so sensitive to the whole thing.
So, as I stood in front of Flora, I had no clue what my husband spent his money on, or why he’d lost it so horribly on a cashier who was just doing her job. I’d barely seen Jake since the incident and he wasn’t the type to talk about stuff like that.
“Jake’s fine.” At least I assumed he was. He’d been fine, sitting on the couch with his feet propped up that morning, before I left for a meeting. “I’m sorry to rush off, but I’ve got another meeting to get to. I just had to run in here to grab something while I had a few minutes.”
She gave me a knowing smile and patted my arm. “Bless your heart, honey. If you need anything, just call.”
I made myself smile back. I would’ve rather a snake swallow me whole than call her to tell her about my problems.
Problems that I was going to handle soon. Jake was just stressed, I was sure. We’d let time and life get between us and we just had to reconnect. I was going to jumpstart our dying relationship with the sexy little number I held close to my side. Things would go back to normal and everything would be okay.
Or I’d put the lingerie on and just cry because I’d somehow become the personification of Mother Goose. I wrote children’s books, but that didn’t mean I wanted to look the part of the motherly figure in them.
With a grunt, I climbed into my car and started it. I let the air blow on me for a few minutes before actually moving, using the time to think about my marriage.
Jake was a good guy. Sure, he was angry more and more often, but he was stressed and lost. I couldn’t accept the fact that the kind boy I’d married had grown into a jerk. It was easier to believe that the kind boy was playing the part of the jerk because he had a lot going on.
Deep down, so deep that I would’ve needed heavy machinery to get to it, a fear existed that I’d made a mistake. At almost thirty, the idea that I’d chosen the wrong path terrified me. I couldn’t go back to start. Not with my Mother Goose body and desperation to be June Cleaver.
I’d already cleared my afternoon. I wanted to surprise Jake and make an effort to be with him. I’d been so busy that I worried that he felt neglected.
I drove home, to the subdivision with houses so similar that I still sometimes got confused about which street was mine. Everyone decorated their houses similarly and it turned me around. The neighborhood was full of families, though, and it seemed perfect for raising children in. Someday, Jake and I would have children who would be perfectly raised in the perfect neighborhood.
Our driveway had an oil stain on it. Off to the left, where Jake used to park the motorcycle he insisted on needing. I knew that you could get an oil stain up because I’d seen the other men in the neighborhood doing just that from time to time. Ours sat, proudly or not, I wasn’t sure, in plain view and had been the subject of more than one conversation. Outside of the house and inside of it.
The front door held a sad wreath that I’d tried to make at a meeting of the neighborhood wives. Theirs all looked perfect. Mine was sparse and lopsided. Just another beacon that everything wasn’t perfect inside.
Parked in my spot was a red sports car. We didn’t own a red sports car and I didn’t think any of Jake’s friends did, either. I parked over the oil stain and sat in my car, staring at the front of my house.
My stomach twisted and dread crept up my spine. It was worsened when I caught sight of Laney Bulton in my rearview mirror, across the street at her house, staring with her hand over her mouth. She looked horrified, but immediately reached for her phone in her pocket and started typing away on it.
I swallowed and pushed the rearview mirror into an angle that didn’t reveal anyone but myself. Wide green eyes stared back at me, the pupils dilated to an abnormal size. I rolled them and shoved my car door open.
Reaching into the back, I grabbed the lingerie and headed for the front door. I was being dramatic. Though I wrote children’s books, my imagination was more of a Stephen King novel. I felt ashamed for thinking the worst about Jake. I knew better.
Things were tough, but he loved me. Just like I loved him.
The front door was locked when I tried it, so I pulled my keys from my purse and unlocked it, making more noise than was necessary because my stubborn heart was still in my throat.
Suddenly, the question of my sanity popped into my head. I’d just admitted to myself that my marriage was as healthy as milk left out in the summer sun for days. Yet I talked myself off the ledge of thinking it was possible that my husband was visiting with someone who drove a little red sports car in the middle of the day, while I was expected to be gone all day. I bit my lip and wondered what the chances were of me not finding him spread across the dining-room table wit
h someone who’d remembered to dye her roots.
Stalking into the house, instantly a battering ram determined to discover the thigh circumference of the hussy in my house, I stopped short when I heard what sounded like all of the Dallas Cowboys’ cheerleaders in my kitchen.
I looked back out of the still open front door at the little red car and wondered if my husband had invited clowns over.
“Oh, Jake!”
The first shout rang out like a slap in a silent room. My first thought was that he’d never made me scream his name. My second was that I was divorcing his sorry ass and never stepping foot into that kitchen ever again.
“Take it, you little slut.” Jake’s voice was deep and guttural, animalistic.
I dropped the lingerie and hiked my purse higher on my shoulder. I wouldn’t be staying long. I steeled myself to any feelings, other than anger, and marched into the dining room, which connected to the kitchen.
In front of me was a circus act, the likes of which I never wanted to see again. Jake and three women were twisted and bent around each other, each just as sweaty and slick as the next. Tiny, miniscule thighs spread in every direction. No roots to speak of.
I crossed my arms over my chest, mainly to press against the pressure building there. I had time to think about what I wanted to say. They were so enthralled in what they were doing that they didn’t see me.
“Hey, Jake?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the moaning. “Honey?”
The little nest of bodies separated in a hurry when they finally noticed me. Jake stood in the middle of our kitchen, as naked as the day he was born, and looking like a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. And just like that little kid, I could see a gleam in his eyes that said he wasn’t done with his cookies.
“Sonnie? What are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “Just stopping by to let you know the divorce papers will be delivered soon. Good luck.”
I turned and walked out and didn’t look back. Mainly because there were tears slowly streaking my face and I didn’t want to ruin my badass delivery of that line. My pride had been beaten down to pretty much nothing, but it was still there. I couldn’t allow Jake to see me cry over him when he obviously thought so little of me.
Leaving my house, I saw Laney had gathered a few other wives from the neighborhood and they were all standing around, watching. When they saw me, they didn’t have the decency to look away and pretend that they weren’t watching for my reaction. I wanted to give them one. I wanted to march across the street and scream at them for watching my house slowly burn to the ground. It wasn’t their fault, though. How could I blame them for drawing to the flame like moths? The only person who deserved my anger was in my kitchen with a trio of perfectly sized women who knew positions that I’d never even seen or begun to imagine.