by Shandi Boyes
I grimace. Those guys are the worst of the worst. “Kinda.” Although it's only one word, it kills me to say it.
I joined the agency because I wanted to bang my chest and proudly declare I am an agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I thought the title would make women swoon like the stay-at-home moms did any time my dad arrived to pick me up from school. When you’re six, you have no idea that popularity isn’t solely gained by a job title. It takes a shit ton more effort than that. Fortunately for both the Bureau and me, I fell in love with the job more than the praise.
Although I’m not seeing it with the same esteem right now.
My eyes drop to Regan when she questions, “Have you investigated incidents like this before?”
“Uh-huh. That’s why you’ll do precisely what I tell you to do at the exact time I tell you to do it.”
My heart rate breaks into a can-can when anger flashes through Regan’s eyes, proving my attempt to goad her paid off. I much prefer her temperamentally unhinged than on the verge of crying like she was mere seconds ago.
With a stomp of her foot showing years of study didn’t tarnish her diva attitude, she shouts, “Like hell I am!” She breaks away from me, her strides as wobbly as the vehement snarl of her top lip.
I shadow her to a fancy crystal bar at the side of her living room. “We either do this the hard way or the easy way, Regan. I’ll get pleasure from them both.”
She slams down the tumbler of whiskey she was in the process of pouring to glue her eyes to mine. “No man but my daddy tells me what to do, so why the hell would I listen to you?”
“Because you know I’ll keep you safe. That I’ll never let anything bad happen to you,” I reply without pause for thought.
The little vein in her neck that’s been working overtime since I walked in on her bathing stops fluttering when I take a step closer to her. I can see in her eyes she wants to deny my statement, but the honesty of my pledge is too potent to deny. I will protect her. I will keep her safe. And I will do it all without having her beneath me.
When Regan remains quiet, I strengthen my campaign. “You either let me investigate this case, or we call in the authorities.”
From how her face pales, anyone would swear I just told her I’m her brother. She’d rather prostitute herself out than have police enter her premises. I don’t know which notion pisses me off more.
After swallowing down three fingers of whiskey as if it isn’t scorching her throat, Regan utters, “I’m not agreeing to anything until you spell out your terms.”
I shake my head when she dips the whiskey my way, wordlessly asking if I’d like a drink. Although I am not officially on the job, I don’t drink when I’m on a case.
While Regan downs another hefty serving of whiskey, I scan her apartment. It doesn’t take long to note her lack of security. Except for the camera in the hallway, there isn’t a single safety measure in place.
“You need better security measures implemented in your home.” I sound pissed. Justly so. I am pissed—peeved as fuck. Regan is a beautiful, highly successful woman. She's a prime target for neurotic, insolent men with too much time of their hands. "You don't need cameras like the ones in the hall, but something more than a lock that can be kicked in without effort."
Regan grumbles something under her breath, but with a whiskey glass attached to her mouth, I miss what she says. Before she can swallow her fourth double shot in less than a minute, I swipe the glass out of her hand and place it on the circular table she's standing beside. She attempts to protest, but pressing my finger to her lips stops her.
I wait for lust to overtake the panic in her eyes before saying, “I want you to come stay with me at my apartment.”
“Nope. No. Nada. Uh-huh. No,” Regan replies, imitating Tracy Morgan’s character in Cop Out. “That's not happening. I’d rather be mutilated than go anywhere with you.”
I ignore yet another rejection. “Then once better security has been installed, we can return here.”
“We? What do you mean we? There's no we! You walked out of here, leaving me hanging. I couldn’t even. . .” She paces on the spot, seemingly lost on how to voice the rest of her reply.
“You couldn’t even. . .?” I push along, unashamed. The best thing I can do for her in her panicked state is keep her talking. The faster she releases the tension in her stomach, the faster she’ll help me identify the person responsible for her anxiety. It will be a win-win for both of us.
My plan goes to shit when Regan locks her furious green eyes with mine. Her flaring nostrils and gritted teeth reveal she isn’t panicked—she’s frustrated.
The reason behind her frustration comes to light when she sneers, “Even with how badly you left me hanging, I couldn’t get myself off! Why do you think you heard ‘moans and groans’?!” She air quotes my earlier reference. “They weren’t happy ones! They were made in frustration!” She steps closer to me, aligning her thrusting chest with mine. “You don’t need to rush in and protect me, Mr. Fancy Pants. I haven’t come in over two months. I’m as dangerous as I can get, so you’d do best not to cross me.”
I’ve got nothing. No words. No reply. Just a raging fucking hard on that’s in the process of busting the zipper in my jeans. Thank fuck I wore jeans tonight as the flimsy fly in my suit wouldn’t have withstood the pressure.
Recognizing I’m five seconds from relieving Regan from her predicament, I mutter, “You need to pack quickly. The last bus arrives in twenty minutes.”
Disgust crosses Regan’s features. I don’t know if the mention of public transport is the reason for her greening gills or the fact I failed to acknowledge her inability to climax since I arrived in her life.
Upon spotting a tempestuous storm brewing in Regan’s eyes, I yank my cellphone out of my pocket. “Fine. If you don’t want to do things my way, I’ll call in Ravenshoe PD. At least you’re wearing black; the ink stains on your fingers won’t be obvious.”
The facts included in my admission cause Regan to balk. “Why would I be fingerprinted?”
Although she is asking a question, I don’t need to answer her. I can tell when she reached her own conclusion as she growled a curse word under her breath.
“You play dirty,” she sneers before pushing off her feet.
“You have no idea,” I mumble as I follow her through her palatial apartment.
Once she reaches her bedroom, she yanks down a bag before setting to work on packing her belongings. She hasn’t given in. The constant murmur of checking into a hotel assures me of this. There’s no way in hell she’s staying at a hotel, but since she's packing of her own free will, I have no reason to advise her of this. Not yet.
I stop grinning at the number of F-bombs she drops while shoving designer clothes into her bag when she enters her bathroom. Although not as clear as it was earlier, the evidence of the crime committed here tonight is still shocking. She didn’t just have her privacy invaded; her life was targeted.
“Come on,” I say, curling my arm around her shoulders to guide her out of the bathroom. “I’ve got spare toothbrushes at my place. Anything else you need we can get in the morning.”
I gather her bag off her monstrous bed and a coat from her closet before heading for her front door.
Regan remains mute the entire time, only shaking her head when I ask, “Do you want to drop by reception on the way out to request a new door?”
I manage to close the door, but with the wood swelling under my boot, it’s a tight fit. I doubt it can be reopened without a crowbar and a whole lot of muscle.
My swollen chest stops inflating when Regan advises, “I have a friend in construction. I’ll ask him to drop by tomorrow and replace it.”
I don’t know what compels me, but I can’t help but ask, “Does he happen to own this building?”
Relief swallows me whole when Regan shakes her head. “I’d rather my landlord remain unaware of my adventurous night.” Put off by my surprised expression, she qu
ickly adds on, “He might raise my rent if he thinks I’m destroying the place.”
After a quick nod to hide my suspicion, I chaperone her to the elevator bank at the end of the hallway. We ride the elevator in silence, my thoughts elsewhere. Regan’s confession was one development I never anticipated. I thought she’d run to Isaac at the first sign of trouble. Instead, she’s hiding from him.
I shouldn’t get pleasure from this, but I do.
“I thought you said we were catching the bus?” Regan murmurs when I flag down a taxi outside of her building.
“I thought you said you were staying in a hotel?” I reply with an arrogant smirk.
With a roll of her eyes, Regan clambers into the taxi idling at the curb. In a true show of defiance, she slams the door shut, then advises the taxi driver to leave without me.
It takes me threatening the driver with a lifetime of parking tickets before he finally relents. Lucky—I wasn’t joking.
“You shouldn’t have given in. He’s only a PI,” Regan advises the driver when I slide into the seat next to her.
With her words hindered by both alcohol and laughter, it's a struggle for me to understand what she says, but her sneer when she mentioned my fake title was as bad as the time she believed I was an accountant. Both were laced with disgust.
While our taxi makes the ten-mile trip to my apartment, I seek Brandon’s details in the FBI database. I don’t have to be discreet. Regan is too busy glancing out the window, lost in thought, to pay me any attention.
I find Brandon’s information relatively quickly. As suspected, he's so fresh out of the academy, he’s still wearing diapers. He was recruited to Theresa’s division only four days ago.
Preferring old school conversations over evidence-encrypted text messages, I dial Brandon’s number then raise my phone to my ear.
He answers two seconds later. His greeting isn’t one fellow agents generally give. “How did you get my number?”
I smile, pleased by the evidence his tone just unlocked. Brandon is as methodical as me when it comes to his job. Otherwise, how did he know it was me calling?
“I have my ways.”
A groan is the only reply Brandon gives.
“Listen, I need you to gather evidence from Regan’s apartment. Fingerprints, photos of the scene, and anything else you might think is useful. . .”
My words trail off when Brandon asks, “Such as a bright pink vibrator sitting discarded on the bathroom floor?”
I pull my cell away from my ear, clear any congestion inside with a quick wiggle of my finger, then reattach my phone. “What did you say?”
“A bright pink vibr—”
I cough, drowning out the remainder of his sentence. “I heard what you said. You don’t need to repeat it.”
Brandon chuckles, amused by the pain in my tone. I’m glad he finds our conversation entertaining. The only reaction I’m gaining from it's suspicion.
“Why are you already at Regan’s apartment?”
The mention of her name for the second time in under a minute gains Regan’s attention. I smile to assure her everything is fine before twisting my torso away from her.
“I saw you leave, figured you wouldn’t have had time to adequately assess the scene,” Brandon answers.
Although he's right, it doesn’t weaken my suspicion. I don’t like others up in my business, and Brandon is so far up there, I feel like the evidence he just unearthed is being used on me as his intrusive instrument of choice.
“Vibrators don’t get logged into evidence—”
“They do if they pertain to the crime,” Brandon corrects.
“In some cases, that can be true. But in this case, it’s not required,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
Brandon’s life hangs precariously in the wind when he laughs. “I know, I was just messing with you.”
His hearty chuckle is pushed aside for a noisy swallow when I snarl, “Do it again and see how it ends for you.” Even knowing he's helping me hasn’t lessened my jealousy in the slightest. This isn’t a standard case for me. This is as personal as it gets.
My focus shifts from Brandon to the taxi driver when he pulls into the entrance of a hotel on Westward Way. “What are you doing?”
Regan’s swift exit from the backseat answers my question on his behalf. I call out for her, but she's swallowed by a sea of foot traffic not even two steps later.
“I’ll call you back,” I advise Brandon before thrusting my FBI identification onto the glass panel separating the driver and me. “If you so much as budge an inch from where you are parked, my threat won’t be a threat.”
His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror before his head bobs up and down. Confident he’ll follow my order, I take off after Regan. Since she's lugging a bag full of clothes and a stomach full of whiskey, it doesn’t take me long to close the gap between us. She's standing at the check-in counter of the hotel, her foot tapping in sync with the clerk attempting to check her in.
The alcohol in her system must be affecting her smarts. Every man, woman and child knows the first thing a manic stalker does is search for their target in the hotels and motels bordering their town. That’s why they scare you out of your home, to drive you out of your comfort zone.
Regan’s eyes rocket to mine when I snatch the hotel card from the receptionist’s hand and dump it back on her side of the counter. We fight like a couple on the verge of divorce when her bag is the next thing seized. She already wants me dead for forcing her out of her apartment without all the girly necessities she believes she can’t live without. Now she wants to kill me with her bare hands for stripping her beloved clothing from her grasp.
Realizing she’d rather live with me than without her shimmery slips and tight skirts, I wretch her beloved bag from her grip and hightail it to our taxi.
Just as I anticipated, Regan is on my heels two seconds later. “This is against the law. I could have you prosecuted!”
After throwing open the taxi door, I fling her bag inside. When she dives in after it, her flaring coat awards the men eyeing her a rare peek at her bare backside.
I scan the men’s faces into my memory bank before sliding into the taxi after Regan. The tightness of my jaw and narrowed eyes is all the driver needs to see to understand my demands. He locks the doors in a jiffy before continuing our trip.
Regan jingles the locks for the next three miles. When they fail to unlatch, she resorts to pleading with the driver. When he suddenly develops an inability to understand English, she snatches my cellphone out of my hand and slides her finger across the screen. “What moron doesn’t have a lock code on their phone?”
Since her question isn’t rhetorical, I don’t answer her. She dials a number known by heart before pushing my phone close to her ear. I could shut down her attempts to flee more diligently, but I’m hoping a little bit of leniency will reveal I have no intentions of keeping her against her will. I merely want to keep her safe.
My efforts appear to go unnoticed when Regan stammers, “Isaac, it’s Regan. I. . .ah. . .” She sighs softly before adding on, “I left my cellphone on the entranceway table. I know how upset you get when you can’t reach me, so I just wanted to let you know if you need me you’ll need to contact me via this number.”
She shifts her eyes to mine, wordlessly asking if my number is private. When I shake my head, she says, “It should be displayed on your screen. I don’t know how long I’ll be out of town. Probably just a day or two. Don’t panic. Hunter ran a full background search before I agreed to meet with him.”
Even though I know she’s lying, jealousy blackens my veins. I hate the idea of her with anyone, much less the fact Isaac keeps tabs on who she's dating.
“If I don’t talk to you before, I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”
She waits as if she expects him to answer. It's a clever ploy of deception I didn’t think her hazy brain could create in her inebriated state. If I hadn’t heard the familiar beep of a voice
mail kicking in at the start of their call, I would have assumed their conversation was two-sided.
After a few more seconds, she says, “Bye,” hangs up, then wipes Isaac’s number from my recently called list. With a shit-eating grin spread across her beautiful face, she hands my phone back to me.
“Just a lawyer, eh?” I ask, sliding my cell into my pocket. Deleting Isaac’s number from my phone won’t stop me from finding it, but for now, he’s the least of my problems.
Well, for the most part.
“Who’s Isaac?”
“Who’s Brandon? I thought PI’s went it alone?” Regan retorts, proving she's more clued in on underhanded surveillance than I first gave her credit for.
“He’s a colleague of mine,” I answer truthfully, hoping it will open a line of communication between us. “I only met him tonight. He seems alright, but I’ll hold my verdict until I know him a little longer.” I lick my dry lips. “Your turn.”
Confident I am telling the truth, she says, “Isaac is also a colleague of mine. I’ve known him for a few years. He’s a little overprotective, especially when it comes to bozos overtaking his protective detail.”
I smile, my acting skills top notch. “Ah, he’s the guy from the hospital? Your knight in shining armor?”
Regan nods, believing my pathetic attempt to act coy. Her eyes fall to her thighs when I ask, “If he's a friend of yours, why didn’t you tell him what happened tonight?”
“As I said, Isaac is a little overprotective.”
I return her eyes to mine via her chin. I try to ignore the extra flutter her neck gets when I cup her jaw, but my acting skills have been so overused tonight, I have no talents left.
“What happened tonight isn’t normal, Rae. There's no shame speaking up about it.”
“I know,” she agrees with a halfhearted nod. “It’s just not something I want vocalized.”
“That you have a stalker—?”
"That I have an extensive collection of sex toys," she interrupts, gaining the attention of the cabbie.
His attention is so rapt on Regan, he veers into oncoming traffic before an overcorrection hurls us toward a railing. Once he has us back on the right side of the road, he apologizes profusely. It's lucky his eyes are brimming with remorse, or I’d arrest him with a lot more than just reckless driving to his list of convictions.