Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series

by Camilla Blake

  “I’ll find it. When?”

  “Tomorrow night. Five-thirty.”

  “What are you? Sixty? No one eats at five-thirty. Make it seven. I need time to get home from work and get changed.”

  He sighed again. “Fine. Apple’s, at seven.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Chapter 7

  Branson

  Sitting in Apple’s, my eyes moved around the small diner, taking everyone in. I was half an hour early and anxious to get the “date” over with. I didn’t know what Lauren was up to. I’d been at work the whole day and then at home, getting ready. I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, feeling angry and horrified that Lauren had set up some kind of date for me.

  She knew I didn’t date anymore. She knew it and yet she’d still had some lunatic call me and demand I go on a date with her. Once I got over some of the anger, I full planned on ripping Lauren a new one.

  It wasn’t like the date would last longer than a few minutes. Once women saw me, they backed away like I had a fucking bomb strapped to my chest. So it hadn’t made any sense that I’d been so frustrated while looking at myself in the mirror. Nothing was ever going to change. I was never going to be the guy I’d been before the accident. I needed to get used to it.

  I’d worked myself into a serious bad mood when the bell over the door chimed. I looked up and felt all the blood in my body heat up. Standing under a vintage sign that advertised Coke for a quarter was possibly the sexiest woman I’d ever seen.

  She was painfully overdressed in a tight black dress and black heels that made her long legs look impossibly longer. Her bold red hair curled wildly down to her elbows, demanding attention and getting it. It was her eyes that held my attention, though. As she scanned the room, there was a sharpness to them that made me sit up straighter. Something in that gaze said she demanded more.

  When those eyes moved over me, I felt a zing of awareness. She locked in on me and one of her eyebrows quirked up. Unaware of the attention she’d gained, or just unconcerned, she stretched those long legs out and swayed her hips as she unhurriedly walked over to me.

  I stood up because I didn’t know what else to do. I was struck by her and suddenly itching to get my hands on her.

  “Branson?” Her voice was husky, filling my head with thoughts of her screaming my name the whole night long.

  I blinked a few times and forced myself to snap to attention. As soon as I was out of her trance, the self-deprecating thoughts came back. Here was the woman that Lauren decided to set me up with.

  Seeing her that close, or from across the table as we were, I realized that she was just as alluring up close. With wide eyes, a lightly freckled nose, and full lips that curved just as much as her hips, she left me speechless.

  After a few seconds, she frowned and crossed her arms under her chest. The motion pressed her ample breasts up and begged my eyes to flick down to them. “Are you Branson, or not?”

  I cleared my throat. I towered over her, despite her heels. “Yes.”

  She stuck her hand out in a formal gesture, but there was something in her eyes that said it wasn’t what she wanted to do. They were emerald green, so clear and bright that I was sure they’d intimidated weaker men from talking to her. They were the eyes of a woman who took men down when they didn’t please her. They took what they wanted.

  “Elizabeth Shore. Nice to meet you.”

  I took her hand in mine and looked down at the pretty pink nail polish. “Pretty.”

  Elizabeth didn’t blush. Her knowing eyes moved over my face, taking me in, the same way I was taking her in. Her eyes moved over my scars the same way they moved over the rest of my face. She didn’t hesitate or freeze over them.

  It’d been a while for me, but I knew chemistry when I felt it. There was something strong between us, instantly. My body was on fire under my clothes and I wanted to pull the curvy little redhead into my arms.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.” Her lips curved up in a sexy smile and her eyes trailed down the rest of my body. “Unfortunately, that’s not really why I called you.”

  I frowned, confusion like a cold shower to the heat I’d been feeling. I watched as Elizabeth moved her chair even closer to mine and sat. She looked up at me and motioned for me to do the same. I sat, my thigh brushing against hers, and remained silent.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and leaned in closer. To anyone looking on the outside, it would’ve seemed like she was getting ready to whisper sweet nothings to me. Her lips parted and her tongue poked out for a second as she licked them. “I need some help.”

  “Help?” I still wasn’t getting it.

  “Lauren told me that you could help me. I need some advice about what to do.” She glanced around and when she looked back at me, all the heat was gone. In its place was worry. “I think I saw a crime.”

  All at once, the air deflated from my body. I sank back into my chair and had to use all of my training to keep my face blank. Self-consciousness riddled me, the same way it always did when I thought about my scars. Of course the sexy little redhead wasn’t actually feeling the chemistry that I was feeling.

  Anger ate at me, but the part of me that had fought to save people wasn’t ever far from the front of my conscience. It was obvious that she was worried about something. “What do you think you saw?”

  “I think… I think I heard someone die.” She blew out a rough breath like she’d been holding on to that sentence for a long time. “At work. I think I heard a coworker die at work.”

  I leaned forward and then remembered my scars. No one needed to be too close to them. Leaning back, I rolled my neck from side to side. “You said a crime. Do you think the person was murdered?”

  She nodded. “Yes. By my boss.”

  “Maybe we should go somewhere private to talk about this?”

  Elizabeth shook her head and reached her hand out to touch my arm, but I pulled it back. She frowned, but didn’t let it get to her, obviously. “I… I don’t want to look like I’m talking to you in a professional capacity.”

  The longer I sat there with her, the crazier she sounded. “You’re not making a whole lot of sense.”

  “I work at the Stelton Firm in the city.” She raised her eyebrows. “My boss is—”

  “Helena Stelton?” I laughed. “You think Helena Stelton murdered someone?”

  Elizabeth’s face paled and she looked at me with real fear on her face. “You know her?”

  “Everyone in the city knows her.” I planted my arms on the table and was about to call her insane when Sue came over to our table and winked at me.

  “Hey, Branson. You cheating on me?”

  Elizabeth looked from me to Sue and then back at me. Something akin to jealousy brightened those green eyes and she crossed her arms again. Still, she didn’t say anything. Those plump lips were pressed together tightly and no sound would’ve dared escape.

  “Hey, Sue. This is Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Sue. She makes the best pie in the whole state.”

  “Got the ribbons for it, too. What can I get y’all?”

  “I just need a coffee.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “That sounds good. Decaf for me, though.”

  Sue gave her a weird look, but left it at that before strolling away.

  “So, you think Helena Stelton murdered someone.” I tried not to sound like I was considering that she was crazy.

  “I can see that you’re questioning my sanity. It’s written all over your face. I saw her with a man who was found murdered the next morning.”

  “Saw her with him how?”

  Her cheeks did turn red then. “I saw her doing things to him. I heard him gasping. It… it scared me when I heard it because I couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain. She was choking him with a leather belt and he was found choked to death.”

  I sat forward. “You’re telling me that you think you saw and heard Helena Stelton choking a man to dea
th?”

  “Yes.”

  “Helena Stelton of the Stelton Firm?”

  She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw and heard. It’s driving me insane, just thinking about it. I think she killed him.”

  I shook my head. “You think she choked a man to death and so you set up a fake date to tell me about it?”

  Her eyes darted to mine and then away again. “I know who I’m talking about here. I can’t go around accusing her. If I did, I’d lose my job. I have a company cell phone. I couldn’t talk about it on their phone. I’m not stupid. I wasn’t trying to lead you on.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged off the feelings that I didn’t even want to admit to myself.

  When her eyes slid back to me there was something else in them. “It could be a date.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “What?”

  She crossed her legs towards me and wrinkled her nose. “It’s not my finest move, but it’s not every day that I walk into a place and find a man who looks like you waiting on me. So, you could give me advice about this whole Stelton situation and then we could have our date.”

  I just stared at her. Part of me was shocked and the other part of me really believed that she was insane. “You’re serious?”

  She nodded. “Crazy as it sounds, I am. I need help with this Stelton thing first, though. I’m going insane worrying about it. What if I saw this guy in his last moments alive? He was an asshole, but still. No one deserves to die with their face buried in that ice queen’s hoo-hah.”

  I let out a burst of laughter that I hadn’t been expecting. It was deep, from my stomach, and so rare that those muscles felt strangely achy after just a few short seconds. I couldn’t get past the Helena Stelton shit to appreciate that she was attempting to act like she wanted to date me.

  “I’m being serious.” The tips of her ears that were exposed went red and her mouth twitched from side to side.

  “Me too. My advice to you is to leave Helena Stelton alone. Even if you did see her with some asshole—”

  “I did.”

  “Okay, you did. So, you saw her with some asshole with his face buried in her hoo-hah.” I shrugged. “That alone could get you fired and blacklisted. She would eat you up and spit you out in a second. If you start accusing her of murder, she’ll have her lawyers on you faster than you can wiggle your cute little nose.”

  “But—”

  “Let the police do their job. What do you do?”

  “I’m a secretary.”

  “You do secretary shit and the cops will do their cop shit. That way, you don’t lose everything you own.” I noticed her face burning red and sighed. “Leave her alone. She’ll ruin you.”

  Elizabeth grunted. “And in the meantime, when I can’t eat or sleep, I’ll just tell my conscience to pipe down.”

  “Yeah. You probably just saw some explicit sex shit, anyway. I find it hard to believe that Helena Stelton would kill someone.”

  “I take it back. I don’t want to go on a date with you.” She stood up and pushed her chair in. “You may be hot, but you’re kind of a dick. The least you could’ve done is taken me seriously.”

  I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. The day I believed a woman like her was calling me hot was the day I believed Helena Stelton was a murderer. “Go back to your job and leave shit alone, Elizabeth.”

  She all but snarled at me before storming out of the diner. Heads turned in my direction, but I ignored them. I was used to the stares.

  Chapter 8

  Elizabeth

  I yanked the sleeves of the dress off my shoulders and shoved it down my hips. It normally required someone to help unzip it, but the chances of that went down the drain when that asshole had all but laughed me out of the diner.

  I kicked off my heels and walked out of the dress before pulling on an oversized T-shirt and curling up on my couch. The arms were worn and almost ragged, but my dad had sat at the same spot for nearly thirty years, running his hand over it while he thought or watched TV.

  I ran my hand over the soft material, just like him, while I thought of the night behind me. I’d walked in expecting someone that looked like a meathead with wraparound shades and a polo shirt on. Instead, I’d found Branson Wright, the spitting image of every war hero I’d read about in my mom’s Harlequin romance novels when I was young.

  He was drop-dead sexy in a worn and ragged way, not so unlike the couch I was still stroking. He looked like he had a story, a big one. The pale scarring on his face couldn’t hide the fact that he was sex on two legs. With thick, dark hair and amber-colored eyes, he was a dream. Strong jaw? Check. Muscles? Check. Tattoos peeking out of the top of his black T-shirt? Check. Hot enough to make me squirm? Double check. Triple check. Checked out of the fucking park.

  I was angry that he was rude. I’d been more forward than I’d planned on being with him, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. The man did it for me. Even after he was such a jerk, I was still working at it, like some strange math problem, in the back of my mind. Like, one rude man plus insanely good chemistry might equal great sex and tons of regret the morning after. Did the great sex outweigh the regret? I was still considering it, if I was being honest with myself.

  I was agitated, but almost relieved to be worked up about something other than Paul Porter’s potential homicide by Helena Stelton. And then, like some sick magic, I was reminded of Paul Porter, buried in the crotch of Helena Stelton, gasping for his last breath.

  I buried my face in one of my many throw pillows and screamed. Immediately, the knocking from the Joneses’ side of my apartment started up. A loud shout, too muffled to understand, followed.

  “Sorry!”

  Another muffled shout came from the other side of my apartment. Again, the words weren’t intelligible, but coming from the weirdo in that apartment, I felt like he was probably encouraging the screaming.

  I hugged the pillow to my chest and squeezed my eyes shut. I was going to go insane if I didn’t do something. I was already on the verge. Branson Wright, though hot, had been an absolute bust. I knew I couldn’t go to the cops. They’d laugh at me more than Branson had. The professionals weren’t going to help.

  As more yelling came from the Joneses’ place, I looked over at the wall we shared and scanned my bookshelves. They were some of the only things I’d brought with me from my last apartment, besides my dad’s old couch and my clothes. Grandma’s apartment had been otherwise fully furnished.

  On the shelves were copies of the old Harlequins that I’d read and a massive collection of cozy mystery and suspense novels. I had my romance itches and my murder-mystery itches. Staring at the collection of novels about a young twenty-something solving murders, I blinked a few times and then hurried over to them.

  Grabbing an armful of them, I hurried back to the couch and opened the first one. It’d been a while since I’d last read them and I was going to need pointers if I was really thinking of doing what I was thinking of doing.

  A few hours later, I was energized and pacing back and forth in my kitchen. A book in one hand and a cup of cheap coffee in the other, I stopped occasionally to make notes on a pad of paper I’d dug out of my purse. When my pen ran out of ink, I searched through the junk drawer until I found a single crayon and used that.

  If Sherlock Holmes had a niece that people weren’t too sure about, it would’ve been me. I was cracking the code on how to solve a crime. I knew what I should and shouldn’t do. It was like I’d gotten a degree in sleuthing at one of those for-profit online colleges. Or just as good as it, basically.

  I knew I was doing the right thing because for the first time in what felt like weeks, I slept like a baby. When I finally got to bed, anyway. Skimming through ten books and taking notes took time, after all.

  The next morning came too soon, but I felt lighter as I dressed for work and headed in. I was on time and downright chipper as I sat down at my desk and
started work. I had a plan. Helena Stelton was going down.

  If there was one thing that my parents had taught me while they were living, it was that justice always caught up with you. It just wasn’t always at the hands of the people who were supposed to dole it out. That was where I was going to come in.

  Elizabeth Shore, amateur PI. Luckily for Paul Porter’s poor mother, the amateur part didn’t mean I wasn’t determined to solve her son’s murder. Luckily for me, I was pretty sure I already knew who did it. My job was half done already. I just had to find proof.

  Mr. Caldwell seemed pleased with my mood change. He was peppy as he started his day and sent me out to lunch early. On my way to lunch, I got my first chance to spy on Helena.

  She was entering the cafeteria with one of the board members. I swore her nose twitched at the smells around her, probably unused to such commoner food. They picked a table close to the back and the manager of the cafeteria was instantly on them, taking their order.

  I decided I could skip lunch for the chance to eavesdrop. I sat close to them, at Helena’s back, and pulled my phone out, pretending to be on it. In the crowded cafeteria, I blended in.

  I opened a notepad app and sat back so I could hear.

  “Mark and I were talking about it again last night. We think it’s a great idea.”

  “The board agrees. It looks good on the company’s part.”

  “Let’s get it set up, then. We can vote on it at Thursday’s meeting.”

  I sat there while they picked at their meals and talked about more mundane crap. I got nowhere on my investigation, but I wasn’t worried. Eavesdropping hadn’t been planned. I knew my planned sleuthing would work.

  I closed my notepad app and brought up my texts as they stood up and pushed their chairs in. I held my breath while they walked past me, but Helena didn’t even cast a single glance in my direction. As soon as they were out of the room, I stood up and hurried through a line to grab something to inhale on the way back up to my desk.