by Hazel Hunter
If she hadn't been so frightened by the daggers, she would have felt terrible at how uncertain he sounded. As if sure that she would not have left, he walked by her to the kitchen, and peeked in the bathroom, where the door hung open to show that there was no one brushing her teeth or showering. He even opened her closet door, and when none of this searching found her, he looked around, confusion and sadness in his eyes.
Sophia stood very still. She had been in situations like this more than once for her job, and though she could never explain it, her strange gift had never failed her. She had always been a champion at hide and go seek when she was a child, but in the last few years, she had found out that it went a lot farther than that.
She plastered herself to the wall, not wanting to be standing where he wanted to walk, and he passed her several times as he paced. She thought he would dress and leave. But even though he put on his t-shirt and jeans, he showed no sign of going anywhere. He made the bed and threw away the condom wrapper, which had landed on the floor, and half-hopefully, he opened her refrigerator. But there was nothing there but cottage cheese and some old milk. He made a noise that sounded like a cross between sadness and pity. Sophia watched as he sat down on the bed, and to her surprise, Zora sauntered up to him to present her head for pettings.
“Clever little beastie, aren't you?” he asked with a chuckle, and he scratched her behind the ears, making her purr.
“Guess you can't tell me if Sophia's off getting doughnuts or something, can you?” he asked hopefully, and though Zora gave every evidence of being sympathetic, there was no answer forthcoming.
He sighed, glancing towards the door again, and from her place by the wall, Sophia could see the worry on his face. She was almost tempted to reveal herself, even if that would have shown him something that was potentially terrifying, but then his phone rang.
Dominic answered it immediately. His bearing went from comfortable to sharp in a second. It made her think of a military demeanor, and she shivered.
“Sir. No, there's been no headway yet. No...no, no sign at all, but...”
He pulled out the crystal she had seen, and she saw him startle slightly and frown.
“No, nothing new to report,” he said, “but if Stephan is there, I need to talk to him.”
Dominic started to pace, and though he relaxed from his military bearing, there was still something sharp about the way he moved and talked. The gentle lover of the night before had disappeared. In his place was someone entirely different. This man was dangerous, and this man was armed. She didn't know how she felt about him now, even if her heart insisted that she definitely did.
“Yeah, Stephan, you know what you said about how good your charms were? Well, you were wrong. This thing looks like a piece of rock candy.”
He paused, scowling at nothing, and his gaze passed over Sophia completely without seeing her. She shivered at how intense it was, how harsh he looked, and how very angry he seemed. If she could have dissolved into the wall, she would have.
“No, I don't know how to fix it. You know me. I can barely use the internet. No, I really don't care how good video chat is. Stay on topic, man.”
He listened intently and bounced the crystal in his hand a few times.
“Yeah, no. I'll get going, do some walking around. It might be that she skipped town.”
She?
“Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, I got a few flickers, and I'm pretty sure I was in the right neighborhood. I'm shit out of luck if she hopped a flight, but if not, I'll find her. I've been looking for two weeks, it's not going to hurt me to look a little longer.”
He laughed, and there was a rueful note to it.
“Girl doesn't want to be found, that's for sure, and it's not like I've got good news for her when I do.”
Faster than Sophia could see, he crouched to free one of the daggers from his boot. He flipped it in his hand as he listened to what the man on the other end of the phone was telling him. The shining blades made silver cartwheels in the air and, horrified, she could only imagine what Dominic's bad news was going to be.
“I'm going to find her.”
The stark determination in Dominic's tone shocked her. There was nothing of the gentle lover she had met the night before, nothing of the kindness that he had shown her. This then was the real man, even if her heart protested that it could not be true.
“She's been running for four years. Well, Phoenix, Arizona is a long way from Milwaukee, so she's probably learned a few tricks or two.”
If the previous words had chilled her, those words turned her blood to ice. It had been four years since she had fled from Phoenix, since that fatal night when her life had changed. She had realized the world she knew was nothing more than a fragile eggshell floating on top of a very deep, very dark ocean. Sophia fought the panic that threatened to claw its way up her throat, and she shook her head hard. She couldn't afford to let go now, not when she was hiding just inches away from Dominic. Learned a few new tricks since Phoenix? She absolutely had.
“Right. Right. I'm going to hit the road, and hopefully– What?”
He scowled, and Sophia tensed.
“I don't want to talk about it. She wasn't some piece of meat, okay Stephan. She was–”
He looked impatient as the man on the other end of the line spoke, and then, to Sophia's surprise and shock, he grinned. It was sunny and surprisingly boyish, and even as her heart cried out for it, she remembered the way the knife had flipped through the air, at how stern and foreboding he had been just a moment before.
“She was amazing, let's leave it there, okay? We'll...we'll see how it turns out. Maybe I'll have more to tell you before I come back.”
He ended the call, and then he looked around her apartment. He found a piece of scrap paper on her desk. He hesitated for a long moment before he started to write. When he was done, he folded it up and left it at the center of her desk. As he headed to the door, Zora stalked over to him, mewing softly.
With a startled laugh, he knelt down to pet her.
“She told me you were shy, but she might have been telling me about herself, huh? What do you think, little bit?”
Zora only lapped at his hand, and he shook his head, standing up.
“Put in a good word for me, will you? I have a feeling I could use it.”
Shaking his head, Dominic undid the chain to the door, and then he paused. Sophia held her breath, as they both realized that if the chain was still done, she couldn't have left through the door. He crossed swiftly to the window to ascertain that there was no fire escape, and then the expression on his face turned to something significantly more stern. He walked through her apartment slowly, Zora at his heels, and this time, she could see that he was using some kind of actual method. He started from one corner, and to her horror, he was holding his arms out as if to catch something he could not see.
Panicked, she held her breath and ducked under his arm, and when he had gone passed her, she hopped up on top of the radiator, keeping out of the way.
He searched for a solid fifteen minutes, but finally he shook his head.
“All right,” he said out loud. “All right.”
He closed the door behind himself gently, and she didn't breathe freely until he had been gone for almost an hour.
When she did, when she was sure that he was gone and that she could move freely, she picked up the piece of paper that he had left behind. When she unfolded it, her first thought was how nice his handwriting was. He wrote with a firm and sure hand, dark and bold.
Sophia-
I'm sorry to miss you, and I can only hope that nothing I did last night gave offense or made you feel you had to run. I need to go myself, but please, I want to see you again. I understand that it can be a little difficult to know who to trust with things this personal, and I will understand if you want to leave last night as a simple memory, though it will be one that I will cherish.
I want to see you again. Please. You can get in touch wi
th me at the number below. I'll always pick up if I can.
There are so many things I want to say to you, but right now, I'll just say that you are a wonderful woman, and I want to know more.
Dominic
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE BUILDING WHERE Sophia worked was gorgeous. It was one of the old Florentine revival buildings in downtown Milwaukee, dating back to a time when the town had decided that it would like to bring a touch of the Renaissance to a large lakeside city in the Midwestern United States. It was a discreet building in many ways. Though the shops in the front—a used bookshop and an exclusive spa—were well-advertised, the only way to get to Brent Koeniger's investigative services was through a back entrance up a narrow flight of stairs.
She had once asked her boss why he picked such an out of the way place, and he had grinned lopsidedly.
“Who wants to be seen entering a private investigator's office?” he asked her. “Someone you know sees you, they know you think someone's cheating on someone. Back in the day when I used to do my own legwork, I camped out at plenty of the competition's offices, looking to see if someone was going to get wise and send a dick after my own client.”
The hallway to Brent's office was narrow and dark, but she had almost gotten used to that over the last year. It was worth it when she opened the door to her workplace. It was lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, letting in the bright, mid-morning light. Her own desk was next to the wall where she could see the front door. At the end of the waiting room was Brent's office.
She dropped her purse off behind her desk, and then checked the small cardboard placard hanging from the door handle. The green side was facing out rather than the red, and she knew that he wasn't talking to anyone at the moment.
“Boss? You in there? I've got some stuff for you.”
“Enter.”
Brent Koeniger, of Koeniger Investigative Services, had once told her that he was fifty-eight. But when she had asked him what his secret was, he had laughed oddly. He’d told her it had more to do with witches than she would ever think possible. He might have been in his late fifties, but no one would think he was a day over forty. Several clients had guessed he was far younger than that, and none of the guesses would have surprised Sophia.
He was a lean man with a quick walk, and gray eyes that could sharpen with laser-like focus on the person he was talking with. He seemed like nothing as much as a hunting hawk to Sophia. She had always said with more truth than joke that she was happy to avoid being what he was hunting.
Today, he was dressed in a sharp blue suit, and his tiepin was a lovely little sword charm that caught her eye.
“Family heirloom or something?” she asked, and he shrugged.
“It's the 'or something,'” he responded. “What did you get for me?”
She handed him her phone. He scrolled through the photos that she had taken the night before. From over his shoulder, she could see the man she had been looking for, out on the balcony and obviously naked under his robe. Not for the first time, she thought about how his wife would feel upon seeing those pictures. It hadn't been a happy marriage, and both parties would likely be better apart than they were together, but still, seeing evidence of that kind of betrayal was something else again.
Brent whistled when he got to the last photo, the one where the man's face was twisted up with rage.
“Looks like you got spotted, champ.”
“And how.” She winced. Her ankle was mostly better, but there was still a faint soreness when she landed on it too hard. “You better get those to Mrs. Turner sooner rather than later. If the guy has any of the sense he was born with, he'll be lawyering up this afternoon.”
Brent sent the photos to his own computer, and Sophia smiled to see him so comfortable with the procedure. Brent might have been good at his job, but he was far from proficient with technology. That was why he had brought Sophia on and, a year later, she was pleased to see that he was picking things up at long last. Some people might say that she was being careless about her own job security, but the truth was she would likely be leaving sooner or later.
Her thoughts turned to Dominic again, and she realized that it might be much sooner rather than later.
“What's up with you? You've got a face like a month of Sundays.”
“Well...”
“Spit it out. You know you won't shock me.”
Brent hooted with laughter when she blushed, and she shook her head, giving up.
“After the guy came after me...well, he actually caught me...”
Brent frowned. “What've I told you? This pay isn't worth your skin. Never is.”
“I know, I know. I was on my way out of there, but I twisted my ankle. He probably would have smashed my phone and maybe me if I didn't have some help.” Sophia shrugged. “It was fine. This guy coming down the street broke us up. He thought I was getting mugged, and I guess I let him think that. Sent Mr. Turner running, and helped me home.”
“Helped you home? Kiddo, you know how dangerous that is, right?”
When Sophia was silent, Brent's eyes sharpened, and she was reminded all over again of a hunting hawk, of something that was not going to stop until its prey was dangling from its claws.
“You do know, but that's not all, is it?”
“Look, Brent, seriously, I just want to get to work, I'm working on–”
“Doesn't matter.”
Brent got up so quickly and smoothly that it startled her. He shut the door behind her. She blinked when he locked it, and when he turned to face her again, his expression was deadly serious.
“This guy who rescued you. What did he look like?”
Sophia stifled the first few things that came to mind because she doubted her boss wanted to hear about how good looking Dominic had been.
“Um. Big. Really fit. Blonde, green eyes, I guess?”
The answer didn't seem to please her boss. “Was he good looking?”
“Uh, wow, boss, are you looking for a date?”
“Not since my wife passed away many years ago,” Brent said impatiently. “Answer the question.”
“Well, um, since you ask, uh, yeah, I guess he was good looking. Do you understand where this could be a fairly strange question for me to answer for you?”
“Not even in the slightest. Look kiddo, you need to come stay with me.”
Sophia gaped at her boss. She was usually no slouch at making sure that she stayed on top of things. Once she had managed to talk herself out of an altercation involving a very drunk, very large man who was being accused of insurance fraud who had her cornered in the back of the men's restroom at a bar. She was fairly certain of her ability to get out of trouble, but right now she wasn't even sure that she was in trouble, let alone what kind it was.
“Look, Brent, I don't know what's going through your head, but no. That's not a thing that is happening. I don't think that one bad night, a bad night that was prevented from being far worse, I might add, is something that I should run and hide from.”
“It's not safe at your apartment. You need to come stay at my home.”
Sophia laughed, staring at Brent with wide eyes. “You're seriously going to pull this dad shit on me? What the hell?”
“You're in danger,” Brent said insistently. “You are in a place where you are vulnerable, and if you don't do what I say now, you are going to regret it.”
While he talked, he had stood and come around his desk. Now he was standing close to her, looming over her, and those eyes were as sharp and hard as flint. She had seen clients under the sharpness of that gaze. She had seen grown men and women crumble under it like children.
However, she had also helped Brent through the discovery that he couldn't check his email when there was no Internet available. Somehow that was the conversation that gave her the strength to step back from him.
“No. That is not something that is negotiable, Brent. You're my boss, and you're a good one. However, you are not my dad. You are
not going to pull this 'not in my house, young lady,' crap. Now, am I going to do the filing on that new fraud investigation or are you going to push me further on this? Because if you pick the second one, I am walking right out of here.”
Brent held her gaze for a moment longer, and just when Sophia could feel beads of sweat break out her forehead under his intensity, he looked away.
“I just worry about you, you know,” he muttered. “It's not safe out there.”
“It wasn't safe when you sent me out to go spy on those guys with the dog fighting ring, either, but I did that. Are we done?”
“Fine. We're done.”
There was such a peculiar flatness to the way he said it, sending a shiver down her spine. She wasn't sure what ‘done’ was, but the way he’d looked at her made her feel less than human. It was chilling, but it couldn’t be true. She shrugged it aside.
“Good call, boss man. I'm going to file a few things, and then I'm headed out to the suburbs for that Hennings case. I promise I'll call if I have any trouble, okay?”
“Can't tell you anything,” Brent groused. “Be careful. I don't give you enough insurance to get hurt.”
“Now who's fault is that?” Sophia asked, relieved.
The whole incident was strange, but then so was Brent. He was odd, cranky, and downright unpleasant when crossed, but on the whole, he had always looked out for her.
Determined to put the whole thing behind her, she simply unlocked the door and exited to outer office, glad to just get to work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER THE DOOR closed behind Sophia, Brent straightened. Upright and ram rod straight, he could pass for a man in his thirties. Underneath a suit that was designed to wrinkle, crease and hang off of him like a paper bag, his frame was thickly muscled. When he allowed the frown to ease off his face, it was like an another person had simply taken Brent Koeniger's clothes and put them on.
Brent fingered the sword pin, staring out the window. He could see the parking lot, but beyond it, there was the wide expanse of the lake. He had been in Milwaukee for just a few years. It was a tiny spot in his very long life, but it stung. Many things did.