by Vivian Ward
He’d already told me how much work he had cut out ahead of him. I’m sure the last thing he wanted to see was a messy house and an empty plate.
We could start there and see where things led us because I wasn’t so sure that even I knew which road was traveling down anymore.
Chapter 10
Damon
After we had dropped Julie’s car off at the house, Lee climbed in the front of my jeep and started giving me the details on Mask and Bethany.
“So he’s got some third party billing the credit card,” Lee started. “Aside from the initial charges that I found on the latest card, he’s been a ghost, and I’m still working on cracking where the charges originally came from.”
“Have you talked to Mr. Turner?”
I dreaded knowing that answer. He’d called my phone a couple of times, and I’d sent him to voicemail while I was dealing with Julie and the kid. I was sure I’d pay hell for it later knowing him.
“Yep, and he’s pissed. He says he’s called you and you haven’t been answering his calls. He wants to know why—from you.”
“Shit,” I chewed on my lip as I tried to think of an excuse I could give him.
“Oh, it gets better,” he reassured me in his smart ass tone. “He wants to bring in another guy to help find Bethany.”
“What?! Why?”
“Because we’ve been following her a couple of weeks now and the trail’s ran cold. He thinks getting some fresh blood on it would help revive some life back into it before she winds up sold or dead.”
“Damn it!” I punched my dash. “I don’t want another guy coming in and fucking things up. We’ll find her, no matter how long it takes.”
“Look, I haven’t been able to formally apologize for the other day. I know I said I was sorry, but I didn’t know that you still cared about her or that she had a—you had a kid with her. I didn’t know anything, and I feel like a jackass.”
“You should,” I gave him the evil eye. “What should I tell the boss?”
“I didn’t want to get too much in your business.” I looked at him with my eyebrow cocked. “I mean, more than I already was, so I told him that you were busy handling personal family problems of your own and—”
“You did what?” I pulled over and slammed on the breaks. “That’s the worst thing you could have done.” Lee looked at me with big doe eyes like he didn’t know what was going on. “Mr. Turner knows about my old man, and he knows that my mom’s a homeless transient. What the hell am I supposed to tell him now?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know he knew all that,” he looked forward, staring at traffic. “I didn’t even know all that.”
“Well, you said you had a good idea that they’re somewhere in St. Louis, which is 30 minutes from here. If he sends some other clown in, you keep him busy here in St. Louis. You let me catch the son-of-a-bitch that we came down here for.”
“You’re in charge,” he said, and he meant it.
After the shit that had gone down, I knew from here on out, he’d have my back no matter what. He didn’t know any of the shit about the kid, my feelings or what was going to happen, but that didn’t change the fact that there’s an unspoken code you don’t get with your friend’s old girl.
He blew it and because of that, he’d spend the rest of his trip making it up to me which was good news for me.
I started driving again, back to the hotel where he was staying, so we could try to track down any new traces of Bethany for the day before I headed out to the property to see if anyone had returned for the items in the woods. Traveling down the road, I thought about how Julie had looked the in the long tee shirt from the night before when she walked out of the bathroom.
I’ve always loved it when she wore oversized men’s shirts and those long socks that she loves. It wouldn’t matter if it were eighty degrees at night, she’d still complain about how cold her tiny feet were. Everything about her was so petite, except those thick, luscious curves of hers that I never got enough of.
Thinking about how I’d like to grab a hold of her and trace along those gentle curves was making my cock throb against the zipper of my jeans.
I readjusted myself and vowed that I wasn’t going to beg her for sex. It was going to have to be a mutual consent. I had done a lot of things to fuck shit up; this time was going to be different.
Before the end of a painfully long day, I couldn’t wait to get back home to my new family, but first, I had to stop by the property to check on her parents and look in the woods to see if anything had been touched.
I couldn’t get over the fact that her family refused to leave, but I understood where they were coming from. It would take a lot more than some buried shit in the woods to kick me out of my home too.
No sooner than I pulled up, I saw her dad sitting in the front window of the office at the car lot busy doing paperwork.
“How’s it going, Shawn?” I asked him as I walked in and took a seat opposite of him at his desk.
“Eh, same as always. Busy,” he barely looked up at me.
“Business is always good around here.”
Looking around I saw their new mechanic who was doing my old job. Even though I was now professional security, I still had an itch to work on cars and get all greased up. The smell of oil was refreshing to me.
“It’s what I’ve always worked for,” he muttered. “What are you doing here anyway?” “Just dropping by, checking on things.” I nodded towards the mechanic, “That guy any good?”
“Well I don’t need a babysitter regardless of what you or my daughter thinks, and yes, he’s very good, but he’s a bit older. A little slow at times, but very reliable,” he continued working on invoices.
“Everything okay at the house?” I asked.
He stopped working for a moment to look up at me and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“It’s quiet,” he pursed his lips. “But I guess I knew it would happen one day, and that she’d leave. You guys get everything finished?”
“Not really, but it shouldn’t take much longer. We’ll have to have you over for dinner so you can see the place once we get situated,” I replied as he went back to the pile of invoices he was working on. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to head out to the woods to check on things.”
“Suit yourself,” he waved me off.
Walking through the woods, I didn’t notice anything unusual—if bombs and guns in the woods are a usual thing.
Everything was just as it had been since we initially discovered it all. It gave me an eerie feeling. Why would whoever did this leave these things and not come back for an extended period of time?
Behind the wheel of my jeep, I shut the engine off as I pulled in front of the house. Looking around, it was a good little neighborhood; nice and safe. A few houses down the street was a young mother, about Julie’s age, playing with a small girl. It was hard to see, but it looked like they were playing hopscotch.
The delicious aroma of fried chicken filled my senses as I walked through the front door. For a minute, I thought I’d been gone for a week by the look of things. Almost the entire house was unpacked; the boxes were all gone, and everything almost looked normal. Setting my keys on a small end table, Julie walked through the living room carrying a clothes basket filled with folded clothes and Bentley followed close behind.
“Need some help with that?” I took the basket from her.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow.
She looked beat; exhausted, yet beautiful.
“Shit!” she called out and took off to the kitchen. “I almost forgot to turn the chicken,” she grabbed a fork and started flipping the meat in the pan of oil.
“Julie, slow down. You don’t have to get everything done in one day. The lease says we’ll be here a year.”
“I know, I just wanted things to look nice; plus, I don’t like having boxes all over the place. Bentley could get hurt on stuff if you don’t watch him,” sh
e looked down and smiled at him. “He’s pretty quick!”
“Yeah, but he’s a boy,” I picked him up. “If there’s one thing he’s gonna do; it’s get into everything and by everything, I mean trouble.”
“Very funny,” she said, fishing the butter out of the fridge. “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes sound good?”
“Sound good? Are you crazy? They sound—and smell—wonderful. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in ages.”
“I figured,” she laughed.
It was nice sitting in the kitchen, just talking to her and laughing. We hadn’t hung out in two years, and as tight as the tension was between us, it was almost like we’d picked right back up where we’d left off.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I bounced Bentley on my knee.
He smiled and smiled, and I loved his little grin.
“Knowing you, if it’s not fast food then you’re idea of a ‘good meal,'” she did air quotes with her fingers, “is having a bag of beef jerky with one of those drinks.” She thought about it for a moment, “What was it that you were always drinking? Green teas?”
I laughed. She knew me pretty well.
“We’re not talking about that right now.”
Bouncing Bentley higher, he started giggling uncontrollably. It was the cutest damned thing I’d ever seen, and it made me sad that I’d missed out on so many laughs but I at the same time, I was happy to be here now.
“I’m just going to put this laundry away in Bentley’s room, and I’ll start making plates in a minute.”
I couldn’t help but watch that sweet ass of hers sway back and forth as she headed for the kid’s room.
Damn. She still had it.
Dinner was so damned delicious that I hadn’t noticed that I’d eaten almost my entire plate of food until my fork scraped the bottom of the plate.
“There’s plenty for seconds,” she nodded towards the counter. “I figured if you still ate the way you used to, I’d better make plenty of food.”
“Thanks,” I sucked the juices off my fingers.
I had to hand it to her; she sure knew her way around the kitchen. Eating the second plate of food was much harder.
Not because my stomach was full; no, because she had Bentley on her lap eating off her plate and every time he grabbed onto her low-cut blouse, he exposed the perfect amount of cleavage to get my dick hard enough to shoot to the moon and back.
“I’m going to put him in the tub,” she announced after he was finished. “You can just leave your dishes on the table, and I’ll get them when I come out.”
There was no way that I was going to make her clean the kitchen by herself, not after the way she’d unpacked almost the whole damned house plus went shopping and did it all while she dragged around a toddler. I could hear them laughing and playing in the water as I scraped the last of our plates and loaded up the dishwasher.
Standing at the bathroom door, I watched the two of them play in a tub filled with bubbles. If someone had told me before I came back to St. Louis that I was going to have an instant family, I would have told them bullshit, but here I was: a genuine family man. And it wasn’t a bad thing at all.
The little man was out cold not long after his bath.
“Can I put him to bed?” I asked as she finished rocking him to sleep.
“Yeah. You want to?” she handed him to me.
I picked him up out of her arms, and I swore I was holding my entire heart in my arms; this baby owned the very breath that filled my lungs.
Gently, I laid him inside his crib and carefully covered him up. Inch by inch, I finally made it out of his room where Julie had been watching the entire time.
“You’re good with him,” she complimented me.
“You think?” we stared at the kid snoozin’ in his bed.
“Yep. A natural.”
We listened to him snore and smiled at each other. To me, it was the most wonderful sound that I had ever heard.
“Oh! I was talking to your dad today, and I invited your folks over for dinner to check the place out once we get settled but it looks like you’ve pretty much taken care of things. I’m going over there tomorrow if you want me to bring them home so they can check it all out.”
“That’d be great.”
It was another long night on the couch for me. Normally, I wouldn’t give a shit about sleeping on a sofa, but my balls were so damned heavy that I thought I was gonna start looking like a chick with a bad case of camel toe if I didn’t do something about them soon.
Between not having a solid piece of ass since I first got here and watching her firm, round ass sway and perky tits bounce, I was about to lose my damned mind.
I laid on the couch with my cock rock hard, pre-come pooling at the tip, thinking about all the things I’d like to do to her. All the things I’d like her to do to me.
What I wouldn’t give to spank her ass for walking around with a perfect body, showcasing it in front of me without giving me a little taste. It was like candy she was keeping for herself.
She wasn’t gonna break me, though. I wasn’t begging and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna handle business myself. If anything she’d have to be the one to do the begging. I wanted to hear her say how bad she wanted it, and I wasn’t gonna give it to her until she wanted it as bad as I did. Simple as that.
Lee hadn’t made much progress on Bethany, and Mr. Turner was threatening to bring in a new guy by the end of the week if we didn’t come up with something.
It bought us a few days, but it wouldn’t buy us forever. The problem was that Mask was so damn elusive; it was next to impossible to catch the guy.
“He’s gotta be doing something. Something he’s never done before,” I pounded my fist on the hotel table.
“What do you mean?” Lee asked.
“If you haven’t been able to catch this fucking tool by now, he’s gotta be doing something different.” I grabbed a bottle of green tea out of the mini fridge. “You ever think maybe he’s using another identity? Like someone else’s or an alias?”
Lee leaned back in the chair, rubbing his temples as he blew out a heavy breath of air.
“Here’s the thing. I have thought about it,” he nodded, “I have. The problem is that if he is, I have no way to track him. Those identity rings buy and sell names, credit cards, and social security numbers faster than a snow cone melting in hell. As long as the two of them have been off the map, he could have easily used more than a dozen people’s identities.”
“We’re so fucked. He’s gonna send that one guy, isn’t he?”
“I’m not sure who he’s sending, but all I know is that it’s not good for either of us.”
“Backtrack to the last trace of activity that you can find and try to retrace his digital footprint from there. Let me know what you find,” I started heading for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the car lot, and then I’m having my soon-to-be in-laws over for dinner.”
“Pfft, good luck with that.”
“You too.”
Waiting for Shawn to finish up with a customer, I walked around the lot to check out a few cars that might better suit the kid. My jeep was old, beat up and ran a little rough; it was tough and rugged, but I needed something more practical for Bentley.
“Thinking about getting something a little more reasonable now that you’re a family man?” he walked up on me as I was checking out an SUV.
“Yeah, something like that,” I backed away from it. “You almost finished?” I nodded towards the office.
“The lot doesn’t close for another 30 minutes. Why don’t you come in and have a seat? We can talk pricing,” he laughed and slapped me on the back.
Sitting down at the front desk, he worked on invoices as we talked about his inventory.
“The whole purpose of me coming wasn’t to buy a vehicle. I wanted to invite you guys to dinner tonight; Julie’s gone out of her way to get the house all set up and she�
��s excited for you to come see it.”
“She is? Why hasn’t she called me?”
His question caught me off guard.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”
“Mmmhmm. It wouldn’t be because you won’t let her, is it?”
“What?” I was shocked. “No! Why would you say something like that?”
“My daughter talked to me every day, we worked alongside each other for years, and we were close. You roll up in town, and suddenly, she has to move out, she doesn’t work here anymore, and I haven’t heard from her.”
“That’s not my doing. She’s been busy.”
He eyed me suspiciously like he didn’t believe me. I had nothing to hide from the man; I wasn’t the reason. As far as I knew, everything was fine between her and her dad.
“I didn’t know that you two hadn’t talked; I’m telling you, she’s been super busy.”
“Let me file these papers and lock up the shop and the house before we follow you over there. It should only take me a few more minutes.”
While I was waiting for him, I sent Julie a text message.
Your parents are going to follow me home after your dad locks everything up. We should be there in about a half an hour. Give the kid a kiss for me.
Pulling into the driveway, I saw Julie on the front porch watching over Bentley as he played in his playpen. Her parents got out of the car and made a beeline straight for the baby.
Her dad’s dull face came to life as he picked him up and snuggled him against his chest; her mom beamed at the two of them in admiration while she awaited her turn.
“There’s my boy!” he said, kissing the top of Bentley’s head. “Papa missed you, baby.”
“Hey dad, come on in. Let me show you two around,” Julie opened the door and nodded inside. “It’s not finished, but pretty close.”
We all filed into the house as Julie led us from room to room, showing and telling her parents all about the place and what her plans were for everything in the house. I had no clue she had so many plans and the place was nowhere near finished like I thought it was.