by Jen Talty
“I can’t believe she stole from you. It’s not like her to do something like that.”
“Yeah. That was a shocker, but what she stole really broke my heart.”
“I’m glad you got the rings back. Did you have the batch of weed you confiscated sent to our friends at the local office?” Hank asked.
“They said they should be able to tell me if it’s from a legal farm or if she bought it off the streets, which I’m guessing she did.” Dakota pinched the bridge of his nose. “Candice was a great sitter until about three weeks ago, and then weird shit started happening, and I have to think it has to do with that new boyfriend of hers.”
“Chad Hooker and he’s a smooth-talking, low-level loser,” Hank said. “But he has a way with the women and is a master at talking his way out of trouble. Not to mention his family is rich, corrupt, and trying to connect with the big-time mafia, though that doesn’t seem to be going their way.”
“I felt bad firing her. I respect old man Benny, but I have to protect my girls, and I can’t have that shit hanging around my home.” Dakota glanced over his shoulder. Alabama loaded the dishwasher while River and Sky sat on the floor with Wyoming playing with a bouncy ball.
“I would have done exactly the same thing,” Hank said. “I know that leaves you without daycare. I just assigned Taz a case where he’s going to need some tech backup. You can do that working from home.”
“I already solved my nanny problem.” Two years ago, he left the military to return home to help his wife battle breast cancer. Last year, she lost that battle. Since then, he’d gone through two nannies. Sure, some of his buddies at work were more than willing to help out, but he wanted stability for his girls. He wanted something akin to normal. He wanted permanence for his daughters.
“Oh really, who?”
“Alabama Love.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Dakota asked as he stared at the moon dance over the mountaintops. A lone wolf howled in the night.
“No. But we both know she’s running from something or someone.”
“Yeah, but she’s doing it to protect herself and her son,” Dakota said. “I’ve talked to Clayton and Sage about it, and they both agree. We’ve all seen it before. The question is how well did she cover up her past life and is the man she’s running from a powerful one with the means to find her?”
“That is if she didn’t kill him,” Hank said. “Because we both know that’s a possibility too.”
Dakota’s heart dropped like a cement brick to his gut.
“Do you want me to dig into her past?” Hank asked.
“If we do that, we run the risk of poking a hornet’s nest that could land right on my front doorstep.”
“If we don’t, you run the same risk, and you won’t even see it coming. Take the time to do it and use company resources. Fly as low as you can under the radar but do it.”
“Lunar would just tell me to make sure Alabama and her son had a safe environment where they didn’t have to constantly look over their shoulders wondering when the next fist was going to land in their faces.” His wife had a huge bleeding heart, especially when it came to battered women and children. She dedicated her life to helping them find safe havens.
He could be that place for Alabama and Wyoming.
“She would also want you to make sure her girls were safe, and that’s what you’re doing,” Hank said. “I’m going to take you out of the rotation right now and use you in-house, at least until we know more about Alabama. You won’t be able to give any case I hand over your full attention until you know more.”
“You’re right. Thanks. I’ll be in the office first thing.” Dakota ended the call.
Chapter 2
Dakota always preferred the great outdoors to sitting behind a computer, but sometimes his job required massive amounts of research and piles of paperwork.
Though, right now, his so-called research was for personal reasons. He wished he didn’t have to take advantage of his position and his experience in the military, but he had to keep his family safe.
As well as Alabama and her young son.
“Where did she say she was from?” Kujo asked as he strolled across the main room at the Brotherhood Protectors office.
A few years back, as the Brotherhood grew, Hank built office space and staffed it with a couple of full-time techies and support personal. When not on assignment, any of the protectors could come in and use the offices and state of the art equipment for their cases or to offer assistance to those out in the field. It also allowed all the members to get to know the new recruits and develop the necessary trust they needed when working on dangerous missions together.
“A small town in upstate New York called Clifton Park.” Dakota shuffled some papers around on the desk he’d chosen to work from. There were eight in the main room along with four other private offices, but those were generally used for phone calls or the occasional private conversation. But mostly all the protectors preferred working in groups.
A collective think tank of sorts.
“So, she’s probably really from the other side of the country,” Kujo said. “Or, close to that small town, keeping her lie close to the cuff.”
“And then there is her name. Alabama.” Dakota knew there was a story behind every fake name, as with real ones. Usually, it had some meaning. In this case, it could be tied to her family name. “She said she was named after where her father proposed, which was actually Birmingham.”
“That’s interesting,” Kujo said. “We can run her image through records and see if we get a hit.”
Dakota nodded as he scratched at the side of his face. He still hadn’t gotten used to the light beard. “She mentioned she thought she’d be moving to Wyoming, not Montana.”
“Depending on what underground network she originated from and how long she’s been hiding out, she could have picked her location.” Kujo slipped behind one of the desks and started tapping at the keyboard in front of him. “And if anyone thought whoever she’s running from was onto her location or plans, they would have told her to switch it up.” Kujo wasn’t telling Dakota anything he didn’t already know, but sometimes it was good to speak out loud both the knowns and the unknowns.
“Kind of a brilliant plan to stick her in the middle of the Brotherhood Protectors,” Dakota said. “Of course, if she was with the underground, when she surfaced with her new identity, where she went and what she did was up to her, so it’s possible they don’t even know where she is.”
“I struggle with it being a coincidence that she ended up here, and this isn’t the Witness Protection Program. Someone on our team would have a hint if that were the case, so either she just tossed a dart on a map, or she knew about the Brotherhood and made her way here,” Kujo said.
“But we both have to admit, this is a great place to hide, and Clayton, Sage, and I all know people in the underground.”
“That’s true. But I would think if she was sent here for protection, someone would have called us.” Kujo flipped the computer around. “Trish is running a facial recognition software across social media sites starting in Alabama and New York. We’re not hitting any police or government databases, but she’ll expand as needed.”
“Good. I don’t want to flag anything and bring some abusive asshole back into her life, and mine.” Dakota also had her fingerprints, but he wasn’t going to run them, not yet anyway. Maybe never. She and her son deserved a fresh start.
“I’m only playing the devil’s advocate here.” Kujo held up his hand as if in protest. “But not every woman who is on the run with a kid is hiding from a douche bag. She could have just kidnapped her kid because the ex-husband got remarried and she didn’t want to share.”
“Is that what you think?” Dakota had run a million and one different scenarios racing through his mind between last night and this morning. He’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep while he contemplated them all,
mulling them over in the ways he thought his late wife might have done. Only, her approach would have been to take care of Alabama and make sure she had a safe environment. Well, Dakota was doing exactly that.
But he needed to know exactly who and what he was dealing with.
And what danger might be lurking around the corner. If he didn’t know who the enemy was, he had no way of protecting his family from the threat.
“I have no thoughts or opinions on the matter, currently. She could also just be an uneducated woman with little money searching for a better a life for her and her kid,” Kujo said. “But I’d like to see that birth certificate and have a better look at who she is.”
“Spend five minutes with her, and you’ll know without a doubt she’s had an extensive education, but I’m not sure it’s a useful one, as in I have this weird feeling she’s from mad stupid money.” Dakota pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled sharply. The idea of searching Alabama’s things put knots in his stomach. His job often required him to invade people’s privacy, but that felt very different, especially when he knew someone was in danger.
He didn’t know anything for sure.
But he knew he needed to, for the sake of his girls.
“Why would you say that?” Kujo asked.
“Just the words she chooses to use sometimes. The way she carries herself during a conversation. Lunar came from the kind of wealth that could solve a third world country’s problems but chose not to. That’s why my late wife went into the kind of work she did and why she stopped speaking to her family a few years after we married. I know that kind of money, and I know someone who is trying desperately to separate themselves from it, but it goes deeper than that, I believe, for Alabama. I think she’s accepted being poor as a means of protecting her son, but she hasn’t come to terms with the past, not completely.”
“You’ve made a lot of assumptions for someone who has only spent a month with her,” Kujo said.
“My wife worked with abused women, and when I wasn’t deployed, I volunteered with her. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and Alabama has that same terrified, yet determined expression etched in her gaze. It’s so classic it’s almost cliché.”
“That might be true, but keep your eyes and ears open. You don’t have any of the facts.”
“And that’s what we’re doing here,” Dakota said.
“So, what’s the plan outside of a slow paper chase?” Kujo asked.
“Tomorrow, while Sky is at a birthday party, she’s taking River and her son to that party zone place in town. That will give me and Clayton at least two hours to go through the tiny house.”
“I can search her car while she’s there,” Kujo said.
Dakota leaned back in his chair and swirled it back and forth. “I sent an email to a guy Lunar and I used to know. He ran the safe house for battered women, and I know Lunar helped him make at least two women disappear, but what always bothered me about the way they did things was once the women went underground, Lunar had no idea where they went or if they remained safe. It’s got to be ten times harder when kids are involved.”
“The bigger problem is that when adults go missing, it’s not necessarily a big deal. Adults are allowed to do so if they want. But go missing with kids, and it’s criminal.”
Dakota didn’t like the sound of that. “What if she went missing before she gave birth? Before the father even knew he was going to be a father?”
“Totally gray area,” Kujo said with a wave of his hand. “What’s the new nanny doing right now?”
“She’s just hanging at the house with the kids. They have this entire week off from school.”
“Ah. February break.”
Dakota nodded. “They go back on Monday, and then her hours will change drastically, but I’m going to let my cleaning service go. They don’t do that great of a job anyway, and if Alabama wants the work, it’s hers.”
“You’re getting yourself quite entangled with this young woman,” Kujo said. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“As long as it’s the kind of work she wants, and I can provide and pay for it, then absolutely.” Dakota knew he was taking a risk, but if he did nothing, or sent Alabama packing, the consequences could be worse.
Alabama stood in front of the stove and tapped her fingers on the counter as if that would guarantee her lasagna would come out not only looking like perfection, but more importantly, tasting like something other than garbage. She also worried about it boiling over the top of the pan. The one time she tried to make a cake for her husband right before they got married, she made a mess inside the oven.
That had been the first time he used his fists.
It should have been the last.
Buster barked and she jerked.
“Shit,” she mumbled as she glanced over her shoulder. Getting used to being around that massive beast wasn’t going to be easy. Nor would spending any amount of time with Dakota. The second she’d laid eyes on him, he’d stirred that same raw passion that her Josh had. The kind of desire that started at her toes and burned a path to her lips. She’d fallen so hard and fast for Josh that she never really got to see the real him until it was too late.
Well, that was never going to happen again. A lot of women raised their children alone. She didn’t need a man in her life ever again. She could do this on her own.
She bent over and flicked on the oven light as if that would make the timer go any faster. She had no intention of staying for dinner, even though Dakota had insisted when he walked through the door thirty minutes earlier than he said he’d be home. She figured he did that on purpose, which she could understand. He wanted to see how the new girl was handling three kids. Well, the girls she could cope with.
Noodles and meat sauce, not so much.
Thank God she’d already put the food in the oven and was just about done cleaning the kitchen. If he’d seen the mess she’d made, he might have fired her on the spot.
She chuckled. Growing up, her family had maids that came every day and also had a full-time cook. A sweet older woman named Janel who came every day around three in the afternoon to cook the family dinner. When she’d gone off to college, she’d been forced to live in the dorms the first year, but that didn’t stop her from hiring a gourmet cook to bring her food every day and hiring someone to clean her room.
When her parents died, things really changed for her. Not so much financially, but her world crumbled. She was lost and didn’t know where to turn.
In walked Josh and all the answers.
And when she’d married Josh only ten days after graduation, she’d already hired a full staff which included a couple of cooks and a cleaning lady. She might suck at cooking, but she sure as hell knew how to manage the staff that she now realized she never needed in the first place.
Only, she had no idea if this was going to taste like sewage, or food, but she suspected mac and cheese from a box wasn’t exactly what Dakota expected when he added meal preparation to her list of duties.
“Your son is going to be walking any second now.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and squeezed.
She jumped, lunging forward, away from his grasp, and knocking over the glass of wine she’d just poured. It tumbled to the wood floor and shattered into a million pieces. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. Her hands trembled as she knelt, reaching for one of the larger pieces of broken glass.
You stupid bitch.
Why do you make me do this to you?
Josh’s voice boomed between her ears. Deep down, she knew Josh wasn’t here, and he couldn’t hurt her, but spilling wine and breaking an expensive glass, that was exactly the kind of thing that would push him over the edge.
“Don’t touch that,” Dakota said with a stern voice.
With a shaky finger, she tucked a hair behind her ear. She blinked, fighting back the tears as she stared up at Dakota’s intense gaze.
But she didn’t see rage glaring from his soft-brown eyes. She saw s
omething that could only be described as concern.
He stretched out both arms and lifted her off the floor.
She wanted to protest, but fear gripped her vocal cords, preventing her from speaking out. If she ever spoke against Josh, he’d more than likely hit her, or at the very least, belittle her.
Pull it together. He’s not Josh. You’re not in Manhattan. You’re safe.
“You’re not wearing any shoes, and I didn’t want you to cut yourself,” he said. “Let me pour you another glass, and I’ll clean that up.”
“Thank you.” She took in a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth. “I hope that wasn’t a very expensive or sentimental wine glass.”
“We probably bought them at Wal-Mart,” he said with a chuckle. “My wife didn’t like to spend money on designer things, so we always went with cheap, except for furniture. But even then, she didn’t want name brands, just quality.”
“Smart woman.” Alabama’s heart beat so fast she thought she might be having an actual heart attack instead of a panic attack. She continued to control her breathing, quietly, hoping he didn’t notice. When she’d first left Josh, she suffered from severe anxiety, something she’d never had before. She’d always been confident. Cocky, actually.
But Josh destroyed her self-esteem.
And stole her life.
“Most intelligent person I’ve ever known.” Dakota swept up the broken glass, wiped up the liquid, and poured them both fresh wine before sitting at the table.
“The girls told me she passed away. I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said. Her pulse still pounded frantically in her ears. She shouldn’t pry about his personal life, but curiosity got the better of her, and she found herself wanting to know more about the kind of man who seemed to be too good to be true.
“Thank you.”
“You’ve done an amazing job with your daughters. They appear to be handling their mother’s passing with a lot of maturity for their ages.” Alabama had enjoyed listening to River and Sky talk about their mother with love and admiration. Even though their sadness of her death still rose to the surface, their deep devotion to keeping their mother’s memory alive in their hearts shined through.