This turmoil followed me out into the kitchen, where I tried to make coffee—only to remember we no longer had a coffee pot. With a sigh, I tried not to throw my mug back into the sink.
“Hey.”
Hassan’s voice startled me. I hadn’t noticed him sitting on the couch in silence.
I ran a hand through my bedhead. “Morning. I noticed his clothing was fresh and he looked like he had showered. “You’re up early.”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“Hm.” I plopped down onto the sofa. “Me neither. At least you seem to have some energy, though. I’m jealous.”
He half-smiled. “That’s because I don’t rely on coffee to survive.”
“I resent that.”
Ever the businessman, Hassan spoke in that clipped, professional tone as he debriefed me. “We have to leave today. This morning.” He held me against the couch with his icy stare. “I went out this morning and found trails—footprints all around the cabin and beyond. Someone has been following us for….” He sighed. “Most of yesterday.”
I paled, wondering if they were still around. Maybe they were listening to us now. Watching and waiting for who knows what.
“So, the vacation’s over.” It wasn’t a question.
Hassan stood, his boots heavy as he made his way towards his room. “Pack your things. We’re leaving in an hour,” he said, before shutting his door.
8
Hassan
The drive back to Fred’s place was quicker than the journey out.
I kept a steady pace, admittedly going over the speed limit but with good reason. Whoever was after Fred—be it Henry or someone else—could be tailing us, and I wanted to lose them as soon as possible. Not that it made much difference, I guess. They knew where Fred lived. They knew how to sneak up to the front door without notice. Every car that appeared in the rearview was a suspicious one, my brain splitting between watching the road and cataloging every license plate that seemed important enough.
It was impossible to not think it was Henry. I wanted to believe otherwise, even dared to hope that I was wrong in my suspicions, but the signs were there and growing more and more each day. The voice of the ominous letters, the stealthy tracking, the easy knowledge of moving undetected in the woods…. It wasn’t looking good.
The radio droned quietly, not much said between Fred and I for most of the trip. Until, of course, he broke the silence with one of his brilliant ideas.
“I want to go after them,” he said, eyes trained on the rolling mountains outside.
My hands gripped the wheel tighter. I didn’t want to have this fight again. “You need to sit tight and let us handle this, Fred. We’ve gone over this—”
“I know.” His face morphed into a sort of grimace. “You’ve made every worst-case-scenario perfectly clear, and I appreciate it. It’s your job, but…. I want to try and talk to her. Him. Whoever they are.”
“We still don’t know enough about them.” I tried to keep an even tone. “You wanted us to stay on the defensive. We aren’t actively pursuing any suspects right now, so we don’t have enough intel. We already know they’re capable of hurting other people. If you want to change out tactics, we’re going to have to do things my team’s way. More tracking, more research.”
Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, his body was rigid in his seat, and he wouldn’t look at me. It was unusual; something was slightly off. “We can revisit this conversation then,” I told him, giving an inch. “When we know more about who it is, we can evaluate the risk of contacting them, and—”
“I think I know.” He blurted it suddenly, and the silence in its wake was filled only with the static of the radio. Fred sighed, eyes shutting as he collected himself. “I think I know who’s stalking me.”
I wasn’t paying attention to much of anything anymore, except whatever it was Fred was saying. “What?” Had he been keeping important information from me? Things that would have been pertinent to the investigation? I exhaled loudly, shoulders squaring despite my best efforts. Faces from my own past began to pop up, Henry’s face the most. I couldn’t help the firmness of my voice, though. “Who?”
I waited for a name that had been on our list: a friend or mentor or family member, an employee. I waited for Henry’s. It never came.
“Her name is Abella,” he told me, finally meeting my eye. “She used to work for me. Years ago. I fired her for a stupid mistake.” He ran an exasperated hand through his hair, but already his body was relaxing, if not slumping slightly in his seat. The burden of keeping a secret seemed to weigh on him heavily. “I think she’s the one doing this. She’s got a proper motive.”
“We brushed over a name like that with the employee files Lorna gave us” I said slowly. “All you did was fire her, right?”
He nodded. “I feel terrible about it. And, I’ve done some asking around on my own—no one seems to know where she is or what she’s doing.”
I imagined Fred playing detective on his own, and relaxed slightly. “Okay.” I didn’t have it in me to be mad. “We’ll look into it again. I’ll have Jackson talk to Lorna, and look at what records you have of her, and we can go from there.” I noticed him staring out the window, thoughts busy behind his eyes. “Hey.”
Fred looked at me.
“We’ll look into her again.” I wanted him to really hear me. “But, I don’t think it’s her. Abella.”
I expected relief; what I got instead was suspicion. “How are you so sure?”
“From what information we do have, we believe it’s a man behind all this, not a woman.”
Fred studied me a moment, hands tightening in his lap. “You’re not telling me everything.”
Clamping down on whatever uneasiness began to turn in my chest, I kept an even gaze. “I am.”
“You’re not.” He huffed, looking away. “I don’t know everything about you, Hassan, but by now I know when you’re hiding something from me. You try to play cool, but it’s a tactic. I can see it.”
“What do you want to hear from me, Fred?” I asked slowly. He was right, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I want to know who you really think it is.”
I clicked my tongue. Fred may have been my employer, but it was my job to keep him safe, and if that meant withholding information for the time being, well then it was what I had to do. But, he wouldn’t understand that. “I told you. We don’t have enough evidence—we haven’t been compiling a list of suspects so I’m not sure—”
“This whole time you’ve been giving this… feeling off, Hassan.” And, for the first time, I could hear a sliver of distrust in Fred’s voice. What was surprising was how much it hurt to hear it. “Signals that you….”
I held the wheel tighter, but tried to seem preoccupied by the road. “Signals that I what, Fred?”
“That you’re hiding something.”
Silence followed, heavy and uncomfortable. He was waiting for a confession that I would never give.
“If you don’t trust me anymore, then fire me,” I told him, voice detached. I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay close; I couldn’t trust anyone else to protect him. “Otherwise you need to let me do my job. This person… they want your attention. I don’t have to be a private eye to know it. Everything you do, every glimpse of attention you give them—they thrive off of it.” With a sigh, I flipped on my blinker, merging onto the highway. “I have your best interest at heart, Fred.”
Fred didn’t say anything, which was fine. I didn’t want him to.
The ride back to Los Angeles was tense, the both of us trying to ignore the other while being hyper aware of everything the other did. We were each waiting for an apology, or something like that.
Unpacking went about as strained as it possibly could. Jackson, to my great misfortune, was manning the front door tonight. He greeted us both with his usual banter, and usually Fred would engage in some way. But, tonight, he simply slung his bag over his shoulder and marched into the
mansion, clearly not wanting to talk.
Jackson grimaced as the door shut behind Fred. “Jesus, what the hell is his problem, huh?”
I slammed the trunk particularly hard, my duffle bag in my hands.
Jackson groaned. “Oh, c’mon. Not you, too.”
“Can it, Jackson.”
“What happened out there?” He stepped aside as I opened the door. “You two finally decide to fuc—”
“I said,” and, casting Jackson a razor-sharp glare, I paused halfway through the threshold. “Shut up.”
Jackson shrunk, and as I slammed the door behind me, I heard a weak, “Yes, sir.”
The evening passed in its usual fashion. I relegated myself to the small office the team kept on the first floor, thankful that I was working with Mikhail and Doc. They could both tell something was off, but didn’t bring it up. I distracted myself from wanting to yell at Fred and fire Jackson by designing new security measures for the house. Updated ones. The stalker had crossed another line, entering the cabin while Fred and I were away. He was getting bolder, and clearly wanted to be closer than ever to Fred.
We needed to adjust accordingly.
Three hours into being bent over a pad of paper, I felt Mikhail’s hand on my shoulder. He was looking at me with genuine concern, which, if you knew him, was hard to read. He always kind of looked a little bit constipated. “Take a break.”
“I’m fine,” I told him, turning back to the papers on my desk. “I’ll take a break when I’m done with this.”
“Hassan.”
I sighed. You didn’t argue with Mikhail. “Only half an hour.”
Mikhail nodded towards the door. “Get yourself some coffee.”
“And a couple of mugs for us, too,” Doc added cheekily, not looking away from the surveillance television.
“You’re all so fuckin’ needy,” I poked, waving dismissively as I headed out. The mansion was quiet at this hour—it was nearly midnight, and the staff that kept this place feeling alive and filled out were all tucked into their quarters, prepping for another day of work tomorrow. It was nice to roam the halls freely. I grabbed some coffee—two cups—and wandered thoughtlessly. It was a big enough house to be able to do that: take a walk.
I could have gone anywhere. I could have gone outside and sat by the pool. I could have meandered over to the garage and back. I could have done any number of things.
Instead I found myself standing outside Fred’s door.
I could hear the occasional sound of him moving inside: soft footsteps, ice hitting the sides of a glass tumbler, the sound of a chair sighing under new weight. With my hands full, I wasn’t able to knock.
“Fred.”
My voice was loud enough for him to hear through the thick wood. I heard him stop, then footsteps coming closer to the door. I kind of wanted to turn and leave, now that I knew we were going to be face-to-face in any moment.
The door swung open and he looked up at me, already frowning—though I could see surprise written easily across his face. He hadn’t expected me. It felt wrong to appreciate how easy he was to read when I was supposed to be angry with him.
“What do you want, Hassan?”
I swallowed. “I don’t apologize often.”
Fred leaned against the doorframe, looking unfairly attractive in his late-night state of dress: hair damp after a shower, shirt soft and unbuttoned. I realized he was waiting to hear more.
“But, um….” I extended a coffee cup to him. He watched it hover in front of him. And, then he grinned.
“Put it on the desk,” he told me before turning into his study again.
Okay, I thought. Not an apology accepted, but he didn’t slam the door in my face. I did as he said, setting the mug beside a script and half-drained glass of alcohol on his desk.
We sat in his study for a moment, watching each other. Maybe the silence would be okay, I thought, before remembering who I was talking to. This was Frederic Reyes. He was stubborn, and always wanted the truth. I could feel the tension in the room again, like it had been in the car, but less cold. We were ready to talk again; this argument needed to be finished.
“You’re not drinking your coffee,” I murmured, pointedly taking a sip of mine.
Fred’s smile was crooked as he touched the rim of the cup. “It’s too hot.”
“Hm.”
“Hassan—”
“I’ve told you everything I know, Fred.” It was a lie. He didn’t need to know that. It’s to keep him safe, I reminded myself, before briefly wondering who I was trying to protect. Was it Henry? Was it Fred? Or was it somehow both?
Looking at Fred now, though, he was the only thing I wanted to keep safe. Henry was only a shadowy thought in the back of my head.
Fred stood, pacing slowly. “Hassan.” He stood before me, and spoke like an employer about to do something he really didn’t want to. “If you don’t come clean—if you don’t tell me everything—I’m going to fire you.” It was curt, but gentle. “I’ll keep the others on. Jackson, Doc, Mikhail, but you….” He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me.”
Fred was being thoughtless. He was letting his emotions get the better of him, I thought; this childish need to know everything was going to get him hurt.
I set my cup down next to his, hot coffee splashing out onto the desk. “Fire me.” I dared him to, holding his gaze unfalteringly. “Go ahead. Fire me. You clearly don’t believe me.”
He broke a little. “Hassan, I can tell—”
“Maybe you don’t know people as well as you think you do, Fred.” It came out biting. “You clearly can’t tell when I’m telling the truth, and if you think the fucking stalker will back off when I’m gone—if you think you’ll be able to stay safe without me—then you’re in over your head way more that you think.”
The argument was mounting, and it wasn’t until Fred spoke that I realized we were yelling. “I’ll be able to stay safe. I’ve stayed safe—”
I barked a laugh. It was mean-spirited and it only made Fred’s face twist in anger. “You were desperate,” I told him. “You’d exhausted every P.I. from here to fucking Washington. No one could trace him, he’s harmed people at your studio, followed you into the woods—”
“On your watch,” Fred snapped. He pointed his finger accusingly, the point of it hitting my chest.
“Then fucking fire me, Fred.” He was driving me crazy. I could feel a heat in my face, in my neck. He didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. How could he be so blind to the danger he was in? I gave him a light shove to the chest. He took a step back, and I followed. “How are you going to defend yourself, Fred?”
“Hassan—”
“If he shows up here, and the others are gone—if he climbs in your window and corners you.” Another push. “What are you going to do?” Another push. I wasn’t pushing hard—just enough to make him stumble slightly with every step backwards he took.
“Hassan, that’s enough—”
“No, you don’t get it, Fred.” Another. He swatted at my hand. “If I’m not here, I can’t protect you.”
And that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t expecting to hear it, and I didn’t expect to say it. If I was gone, how could I be sure he was safe? Without me, how could Fred feel safe?
I pushed him backwards once more, harder this time, his back hitting the wall. My fist curled in the front of his shirt, tugging tightly as I pressed my body against his and our mouths collided. Caging him in, I could feel the truth of what I had said; I needed to protect him, to stay and be sure he was unharmed. The need burnt between our mouths.
He moaned at the roughness of it, but kissed back instantly. The pressure of it was bruising, and I had him trapped between me and the red walls, chest to chest. He bit at my lip, tugging it hard between his teeth, and his ability to match my fervor surprised me.
I shoved him harder against the wall in retaliation; in this fight for dominance, we grabbed at each other blindly, until my han
ds pushed his wrists into the wall at either side of his head, tongues brushing and teeth bumping, and all I could think was this:
Frederic Reyes was going to be the death of me.
9
Fred
“Turn left, and your location will be on the right.”
I followed whatever the GPS told me, and found myself pulling into the unkempt parking lot in front of a family shelter. It was deeper into Los Angeles, in a part of the city I didn’t frequent much. I felt out of place, despite having grown up poor; my car felt too expensive, sticking out like a sore thumb. I set my head on the steering wheel, taking a deep breath.
Abella had to be here. She just had to be.
Information from Lorna had turned up that morning (nothing amazing, just a potential address, but it was better than nothing), and, thankfully, production for the morning had wrapped early. I was out of there at noon, and I kept my detour a secret from Hassan. He wouldn’t understand, I thought. Even after bringing Abella up on the way back from our short weekend in the woods, he’d dismissed me, but… I felt a pull towards Abella. She was my stalker. I was sure of it.
Hassan was too focused on being punitive. Abella had problems, but she wasn’t dangerous. She clearly needed help.
And, by the state of the family shelter, I knew she wasn’t going to get it here.
I parked, turned off my car. With another deep breath, I climbed out. This was going to be it. I was finally going to confront her. It would be over after this—
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
A hand slammed my car door shut for me, effectively trapping me in against it. My back hit my window, and I looked up to find Hassan crowding my space, looking very displeased.
It reminded me of the other night, when he’d crowded me just like this. The moment had felt like a dream after it had happened, but now it was flooding back, very real and very warm beneath my collar. He had me pinned against a wall, and—I shoved the thought away, finding the memory distracting. I needed to contend with him, not think about making out with him. “How—?” I cleared my throat, standing up straighter against his intimidating hovering. “How did you find me?”
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