Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  “What?” Geo asked, snatching the cackling baby out of the air with a practiced ease. “She likes it! Isn’t that right, you perfect little sugarball? You’re a daredevil just like your Aunty Geo.”

  Over the eight months since Brooke had been born, Sequence had gotten used to seeing tough-as-nails Geo turn into a sugary, cooing mess when it came to his kid. But he still hadn’t gotten used to the Niagara Falls-style downpour of love he felt anytime he laid eyes on his little girl.

  Sequence held out his arms for her, and Geo, knowing the drill at this point, tossed Brooke through the air. Sequence caught her.

  “Hi, Peanut.” He kissed his daughter’s perfect nose and then her forehead, that was, in fact, as big as it had looked in the sonograms. Sequence had been hoping for a redhead, like her mommy, but their baby had the same white-blonde hair he’d had as a baby. And she had his green eyes. And she was starting to develop his nose. In fact, Brooke looked absolutely nothing like Naomi.

  “Are you sure you didn’t give birth to this kid?” Was something that Atlas asked Sequence pretty much every chance he got.

  “The next one will look like me,” Naomi assured Sequence every chance she got.

  And that was enough for him.

  A baby that was his carbon copy and a wife who wanted to make more babies with him.

  “We should be back around 11,” Naomi told Geo, digging through her purse.

  She missed the look that Geo and Sequence gave one another. Naomi didn’t know yet that Sequence had packed a bag and stowed it in the car. They weren’t going to be back at 11. They were going to be back tomorrow evening, just in time for Brooke’s bedtime bath. He’d wanted to surprise his wife with a night at the hotel where Rachel and Blue Eyes were getting married. Actually, he’d wanted to surprise her with a whole weekend away, but Sequence knew her well enough to know that too much time away from Brooke was liable to hurt more than it would help.

  They both kissed the baby, thanked Geo, and went down to the car. As they drove over the bridge, Naomi smiled and played with the prism that Sequence had hung from the rearview mirror to remind himself of her.

  “That’s what you brought into my life, Fancy.”

  “Hmm?” She turned to him, pulling herself up out of her own thoughts.

  He nodded toward the prism, sparkling in the late afternoon light. “Light. Color. Freaking rainbows. You brought all that with you when you came to me.”

  She grinned that pearly smile. “Your life was not that bad before you met me. You had Atlas and friends and a good job.”

  “Yeah. But I was… hibernating. I thought that’s who I was. But no. It was just me waiting. Until I met you, I think.” He turned and looked at her. “It’s like you were my springtime.”

  Naomi’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re right. This is a stupid wedding. Let’s skip it and go somewhere and get pregnant again.”

  Sequence laughed and held her hand over top of the gear shift. He glanced at Naomi, lit from the side by the setting sun, sparkling like a jewel. She grinned at him. And he grinned back. There was no stopping it. He smiled because he felt it. Because she was smiling. Because he’d never stop himself from smiling again.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “She wore a raaaaaspberry beret,” Atlas Bone sang to himself as he stepped off the elevator in his building, heading down the hall to the farthest door. He passed the door to his brother’s place, heard his ten-month-old niece squawking from inside and grinned to himself. He kept singing even though he didn’t know the rest of the words to that particular Prince song. “The kind you buy if you wanna something-something.”

  He wasn’t the kind of person who cared about the actual lyrics of songs. He misquoted famous people and got the titles of movies wrong. All with the kind of confidence nobody could fake. Because, he figured, who really cared?

  He also wasn’t the kind of person who liked to shower at the gym. Though, at the moment, he wished he was. Because he stank. And not the cute way that girls stink after they work out. No. As Atlas unlocked his front door, he caught a potent whiff of himself and his eyes nearly crossed. But it wasn’t his fault if he had an irrational fear of foot fungus. You couldn’t pay him to use a public shower. Not when he had a fresh, clean shower all to himself just on the other side of this door. It was worth the stink, if he did say so himself.

  Atlas pushed through his front entryway and dumped his gym bag to the side, toeing off his running shoes and kicking them into the basket. He realized, with a little internal whoop, that all of his other shoes were also currently in the shoe basket. Which meant… The elf had come!

  His cleaning lady wasn’t an actual elf, obviously, but he’d found her through a cleaning service and he’d never learned her name. Not that he was one of those guys who’d never bother to learn his cleaning lady’s name. He hadn't had the opportunity to learn her name because this woman was like the Jason Bourne of cleaning ladies.

  She was sneaky. He’d never once been able to formally meet her and introduce himself. He’d seen her once through the closing doors of the service elevator. And it had taken him entering his house and smelling that lemon smell, seeing the ends of the folded toilet paper, to realize that that had been her. He’d been expecting an older, portly woman, like a cleaning lady on TV. But the person on the service elevator had looked more like a pre-teen boy than a woman. He hadn’t seen much, but he’d seen a very skinny person with mousy hair cut like a boy’s, swimming in an oversized t-shirt.

  Atlas had always been a curious person. The kind of guy that read the last chapter in a mystery novel before he read the first. He opened the biggest Christmas presents immediately and he’d never once made it home from the grocery store with an entire chocolate bar intact. He figured that life was short, so why deprive himself?

  The fact that he’d been unable to catch a glimpse of the woman who folded his afghan into a perfect triangle and arranged his remote controls by size was absolutely driving him up the wall. He’d begun to leave her notes, hoping that she’d respond at some point. Just little friendly things. Something like: Hi there! Hope you’re having a good day. Thank you for cleaning my apartment. By the way, I never caught your name.

  The note would always be in the exact place where he’d left it and there would never, ever be a response. He was starting to think that the elf, whoever she was, got off on depriving people as much as he got off on instant gratification.

  Atlas strode through his living room and was on the way to his shower, when he threw it in reverse and walked backwards so that he could look again through the doorway of his kitchen.

  Because if he wasn’t mistaken…

  Um. Yup. There was an elf asleep at his breakfast bar.

  The elusive cleaning lady was real! There was proof! He recognized that short, boyish haircut and another humongous t-shirt, which seemed to be her personal style. He just stared for a moment because even though she was in his apartment once a week, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman in his kitchen. Maybe never. Occasionally, his sister-in-law, Naomi, would come over. Or his friends Geo or Elena would stop by. But for some reason, this was different. This was a strange woman. A strange woman who’d touched every corner of his home.

  He shook his head and took a step into the kitchen, feeling a little stymied. Should he wake her up? Let her sleep?

  She sat on one of the bar stools, the front of her body draped across the breakfast bar, her head tipped to the side with her cheek resting on the back of her hand. As he watched, her back rose and fell with the deep, slow breaths of REM.

  He took another step closer and saw just how bony her shoulders looked beneath her shirt. Jeez. Next to her on the counter was a brown paper lunch bag with the remnants of lunch carefully arranged over top of it. There was an apple eaten down to the seeds and stem and its spindly little core. There was half of a white bread sandwich and the eggshells of a hardboiled egg left behind. There was a paper
cup half filled with water.

  For some reason, that hit him especially hard. The paper cup. She was wiping spilled ketchup out of his fridge and folding his boxers into perfect squares every week, didn't she know that she was invited to use his cups?

  He surveyed the woman passed out next to the sad little lunch. He suddenly had a feeling that this wasn’t some accidental catnap. No, this seemed like the deep sleep of someone who’d damn near face-planted with exhaustion. He took one more step around the corner of the breakfast bar and sure enough, in the hand that wasn’t acting as a pillow was the partially-eaten other half of her white bread sandwich.

  Jeez. How tired would someone have to be to fall asleep mid-sandwich? When he'd first seen her, he'd been elated that he was about to get all of his questions answered about his cleaning elf. But now, he realized that there were probably bigger things at play here. His curiosity immediately hit the back burner. He started to back pedal. He could shower at his brother’s house. He needed to get out of here and give her some space. Hopefully, in a few hours or so, she would be rested enough to wake up on her own and finish her lunch.

  He paid for her services through an app on his phone, and he always left a tip in cash, which he saw was still on the table, as if she wouldn’t pocket it until the job was completely done. Suddenly, he resolved to start leaving her twice the tip. No. Triple.

  He was almost all the way out of the kitchen when his big dumb elbow smacked hard as hell into the tile backsplash that lined the wall behind the stove. That familiar synthetic rage that always comes on the tidal wave of funny-bone pain had Sequence slamming his eyes closed and rubbing his elbow like crazy.

  He heard a gasp and the scrape of a stool as he turned back around, still rubbing at his elbow.

  The woman was awake, standing up, and looking utterly terrified. She had a thin face, a very deep frown, and dark circles under her eyes. Her hands trembled as she shoved the remains of her lunch back into the paper bag.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she gasped, her voice much huskier than Atlas had expected from someone so slight.

  “It’s fine. It’s totally fine. No problem at all. Please, you don’t have to rush. I was just leaving anyways.”

  It was as if he hadn’t spoken though; she still scrambled. Even in her haste, she was still incredibly thorough in her clean up. She removed every single crumb off the countertop, wiped the ring of water left behind by her cup with the tail of her shirt, and straightened the stool to line up with the others.

  When she stepped back, obviously fixing to leave, her eyes darted behind Atlas to the door of the kitchen. It was the only way out and apparently he was blocking it. Her eyes dilated as she took a step backwards from him.

  Atlas’s stomach clamped down. He and his twin brother, Sequence, had had a rough childhood. He knew what cornered looked like. He knew what hunted looked like. And he knew what terrified looked like.

  His mere presence in the kitchen was terrifying this woman.

  Atlas took absolutely no pleasure in it at all. If he could have snapped his fingers and transformed himself into a giant, inert teddy bear, he’d have done it for her.

  Seeing as he couldn’t do that, he strode to the sink and filled himself a glass of water, clearing the way for her to pass without being too close to him.

  She took the opportunity and skittered out of the kitchen.

  He wanted to give her space, but he couldn’t help but follow at a polite distance. He watched as she jammed her feet into two tiny tennis shoes he hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t bother with the laces as she tried twice to get his front door open and failed.

  “You gotta get that top lock first,” he called to her.

  She jolted at the sound of his voice. But nodded her head and undid the top lock. She flung open his door.

  “Bye,” Atlas called to her. To his surprise, she turned in the doorway, making eye contact with him for the first time.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  He held his hands palm out and gave her a very toothy smile that he hoped offset some of the apparent scariness of his appearance. Though with his long, blonde beard and floppy hair, his brother often told him that when he smiled he looked like a psycho. Maybe that’s why she was falling all over herself to get the hell away from him. Perhaps it was time to trim the beard down. “I never mind when a pretty lady sleeps over,” he told her.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her gaze skated over his appearance. For a moment she paused at his gymwear, her suspicion collapsing into confusion. Atlas looked down at himself. He was wearing some of his favorite running clothes, a Dolly Parton concert tee and hot pink running shorts with flamingoes all over them. What was the big deal?

  “Sorry,” she whispered one more time and then she was gone.

  By the time Atlas got to his door and pulled it open, the doorway to the stairs was slamming closed.

  Dang. She hadn’t even bothered to wait for the elevator.

  Atlas stroked a hand over his beard, caught a whiff of himself and winced. Maybe she’d been scared of him or maybe she’d just smelled him and ran for her life.

  Wasting no more time, Atlas showered off, changed into some pajama pants and headed back out to his kitchen.

  This time of night, he’d usually be next door with his brother and sister-in-law and niece, bumming a bite to eat and butting in on all of his niece’s absolutely adorable nighttime routines. But tonight, he wasn’t quite in the mood. He was well and truly bothered by the woman’s reaction to him.

  Atlas knew he was a big guy. Both he and his brother were well over six feet tall. Though Sequence was more built than Atlas, Atlas was certainly no slouch. If Sequence wasn’t present, Atlas was almost always the biggest dude in the room.

  Maybe she was nervous around big men? She couldn’t have weighed more than a buck, a buck ten soaking wet. Or maybe it was his tattoos. He, like his twin, had tattoos over his chest and shoulders, ranging down to his fingertips. He supposed it might freak anyone out to wake up from a dead sleep to a strange giant with tattoos.

  Or maybe she’d just been terrified he was going to fire her. So far, she’d been scrupulously professional. Perhaps she really needed this gig and was scared off her rocker that he’d fire her for falling asleep.

  Atlas turned and scratched at his beard, leaning against the counter and eyeing the place where she’d been sitting. He frowned when he realized that the cash tip he always left for her was still sitting on the counter. But his frown turned into a smile when something caught his eye beyond that. There was a bucket with cleaning supplies, a broom and a mop leaned against the far wall. Next to it was a little cart that she obviously used to get her stuff from job to job.

  He didn’t like that she’d bolted so fast that she’d forgotten her things.

  But he definitely liked that she’d have to be back to collect all those things. He might have the chance to make amends with her, show her that he was friendly and meant absolutely no harm whatsoever.

  He grabbed his phone from the counter and called the help line on the cleaning service app. He informed them that his cleaning lady had forgotten a few supplies here, in case she needed them. He paused, thinking that this was probably the perfect time to inquire about her name. But he held back. For some reason, he wanted to learn her name directly from her. Asking about it behind her back seemed like an intrusion on her personal space.

  Atlas jounced his leg and played with his beard as the woman on the line put him on hold. She came back on a minute later to inform him that she’d gotten a hold of the cleaning person and she’d be by to pick up her things in an hour, if that was okay with him.

  “Yeah yeah yeah, totally great. Perfect. Thanks.” His brain moving a mile a minute, as it usually did, Sequence ordered an early dinner from the Mexican place down the block. He ordered his usual and then a few of the blandest things he could think to order, hoping his cleaning elf didn’t have any food allergies. Then, looking down
at his wide, bare, hairy chest, he went into the bedroom and tried on three different shirts, trying to will one of them into making him look at least a little bit smaller.

  ***

  Rebecca’s hands trembled as she stood quietly in the hallway of the Lincoln Place apartment building. She stared at the door marked 9J. In a minute, she was going to have gather her courage and knock on the door.

  She hated knocking. The whole point of it was to announce one’s presence, draw attention to oneself. Two things that Rebecca spent her life avoiding.

  Though she’d been in front of this particular door once a week for at least six months, she’d never once knocked on it. She always used the spare key that was left for her at the front desk. She was able to slip in quietly, do her work, and leave, no one the wiser.

  She had to admit that the apartment behind this door always did make her a little nervous however. There was just something about apartment 9J that made her pulse kick up a notch. She figured it was the scent.

  It smelled like a man in there. And not in a bad way. Sure, the entryway often kinda smelled like the resident’s gym bag and that was a little gross. But the rest of the apartment smelled… strong. She couldn’t quite explain it. But there was something about the scent of this man’s living space that made her think he watched TV at a loud volume, got a solid eight hours of sleep every night, and could swallow a Big Mac in two enormous bites.

  She cleaned lots of different houses and each one was like a fingerprint for the people who lived there. And even though, before today, she’d never actually seen the resident of this house, she could always feel him there. She’d wondered about the resident whose presence was so strong that he could be there even when he wasn’t there.

  Well, she didn’t have to wonder anymore. Because she’d met the man an hour ago and her heart rate still hadn’t leveled out. He looked like… a mountain man. In flamingo shorts.

  Maybe it was because she was used to being alone in his space, but the sheer size of him had made his apartment shrink by three sizes. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the building. Suddenly Rebecca had felt the walls creeping toward her, shoving her toward this gigantic, hairy, sweaty man.