by Peach, Hanna
“Huh.”
“Anyway, I followed him here this morning. He lives here. Or at least, that’s what I think.”
Mick frowns at me. “What is this man to you? Did he hurt you?”
“No. No, nothing like that.” I decide that if I am dragging Mick into this then he deserves to know why. “We’re seeing each other but he’s hiding something and… he may be connected to my past somehow. And that isn’t a good thing.”
Mick scratches at his chin.
“I think I love him,” I say in a small voice. “You have to help me, Mick.”
“Ah shit,” Mick says. “Alright, kid. I’ll help.”
I squeeze his knee. “Thanks for doing this, Mick.”
He grunts. But I can tell he appreciates my thanks.
It doesn’t take long for Caden to reappear out his door. I sit up in my seat. “There he is.”
“Careful with those claws, woman.”
I look down and realize I have grabbed Mick and my nails are digging into his thick forearm. “Sorry.” I snatch my hand back.
We watch from the safety of the car as Cade sits on his motorbike and rides away. I slide down into my seat as he flies past us and around the corner.
“Do you know where he’s going?”
I shake my head.
“How long he’ll be?”
Again, I shake my head. Mick snorts, and I sense that he is groaning in exasperation at me on the inside.
“Al-bloody-right. We’re just gonna have to hope he ain’t just gone out for a pint of milk. Let’s do this before the whole dang neighborhood is awake and taking their dogs for a shit.”
We get out of the car and walk towards the building side by side.
Mick talks low to me as we walk. “So I did a bit of quick digging into the property records before I came. There are five flats in that building. One on the ground. Two on the other two floors above. Most of them are rented to couples, but there is one which doesn’t supposedly have a lease on it. But the listed owner has a different address than this one. My best guess is that the owner leases it out to your guy cash in hand. It’s one of the units on the top floor.”
I nod. I am listening, but my ears are peeled for the sound of Cade’s motorbike returning. My skin jitters and I feel ready to run a marathon. My eyes are darting around me and come to rest on the windows of the top floor. What will we find?
At the lobby door, Mick reaches under the hem of his shirt, where I see a small black kind of tool bag strapped around his waist. “Keep a lookout, kid.”
I keep one eye out on the street while he fiddles with the door. Within seconds it’s unlocked. I can’t help but feel scared at the fact that it’s this easy to gain access to anyone’s building. I think about the locks on my door and pledge to have them upgraded.
If I stay.
We slip inside and climb the stairwell to the top floor. Cade’s apartment is supposedly the first door closest to the stairs. Mick presses his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anyone in there,” he whispers. “You still want to get inside?”
I nod. I’m not walking away until I find out what the hell is going on. I need to know.
“Alright. Keep an ear out for anyone coming.” He bends to the lock and puts his tools to work again. After a few seconds Mick has breached that lock, too.
“After you, kid.”
I nod and push open the door. I know immediately that Cade lives here because I smell his scent of musk and wood smoke. The apartment is a studio. It looks old and little cared for; cracked walls and the smell of mold hangs in the air under Caden’s scent. The small kitchenette on the left is aged. There is no microwave, only a small fridge. The only other furniture in the place is a double bed and side table. Through a door I can spy what looks like a basic bathroom. Another door, I assume, is a built-in cupboard.
I frown. If Caden has so much money, why is he living in a place like this?
“I’ll go stand by the window and keep a lookout,” Mick says. “Don’t dawdle.”
I nod and head to the bathroom first. The bathroom is just big enough to fit a toilet, a small basin and a standup shower. I open the medicine cabinet. Inside, a single glass holds a skinny toothpaste tube and one toothbrush. One toothbrush. Which means that Cade lives here on his own.
I crouch down and open the cupboard under the sink. One general purpose cleaning spray, a rag and a half-empty pack of four toilet rolls. I am about to close the door when I notice a small flap of tape hanging down from the top of the underside of the cupboard. I lean in and peer under the sink. There is a gun taped to the underside of the sink. I run my finger across the black steel. It’s a Smith and Wesson, but it’s bigger than the one I have in my bedside drawer. Why does he keep a gun? I stare at it until my knees hurt from the tiles. Then I close the cupboard doors and get up.
I step out from the bathroom and head for the cupboard. Inside there’s a suit jacket, a white button-up shirt, two pairs of dark pants and one pair of denims hanging up. Folded in a drawer are several dark shirts and a jumper. A handful of briefs and socks occupy another drawer. A single pair of brown shoes sit on the open space at the bottom. More evidence that it is just Cade living here. But this can’t be everything he owns. Where are the rest of his things?
Then I realize that Caden mustn’t live here. This must be where he stays when he is in town. If so, where is his real home? I search the drawers for any hidden things. I lift up the shoes and peer behind the dark space. Finding nothing I place them back down. I frown. Did the base sound hollow when I placed the shoes down? I pull out the shoes and tap at the base of the cupboard.
It is hollow.
I feel around until my fingers find a break in the wood. I slide the thin wood base out. Underneath is a safe built into the floor. I test the handle, but it is most definitely locked.
“You don’t know how to crack open a safe do you?” I call out to Mick.
I hear him grunt. “I could… if I had the tools and the time. But I have neither.”
Dammit. I’m not going to find out what he keeps in his safe today. I replace the lid and the shoes, then stand and shut the cupboard doors.
As I move around the bed, my fingers skim along the dark blue cover. This is where Cade sleeps when he’s not with me. Why has he never invited me over? Why, if he has a place here, do we meet in hotel rooms?
I stop in front of the bedside drawers. Besides a lamp and a half-empty glass of water there is nothing on the surface. I open the only bedside drawer. Inside it is a single manila folder. I frown. I take out the folder and open it. Inside there’s a stack of photos. I can only see the top one. It is a photo of… me. I am standing on the road I recognize as my street. The photo is grainy and I’m not looking at the camera. My stomach clenches.
What the hell?
I flick through the rest of the photos. Me. Me. Me. All me. From various angles. Wearing various clothes. Outside my house, outside my gym, outside my work.
Cade has been following me. And taking photos.
This must have been what he meant when he said he had followed me in the last few weeks to make sure I was okay.
And I can’t decide whether I feel that this is creepy or kinda sweet in a messed up sort of way. Then I see a photo that makes me stop. In the picture I am standing at a set of traffic lights outside of the place I sometimes get my coffee. I am wearing my hair up in a ponytail and I’m in workout gear, obviously coming back from the gym. I’m holding a takeaway cup in my hand. But it’s the shirt that gets my attention. That white t-shirt with “nerd” written across it. I love that shirt. Correction. I loved that shirt. Some douche knocked their frozen raspberry slushee drink over me in that shirt. I couldn’t get the red stain out, so I had to throw it away.
But that was during the first week or so of me moving to this city – almost eight months ago. Which means that this photo was taken before Cade and I had ever met. The realization sends a stab of fear through my heart, making my chest const
rict. Cade was stalking me before we even met. He knew who I was before he saw me at the club.
The folder slips from my hands and the photos of me go everywhere. My face scatters across the floor and under the bed.
“Shit.” I hear Mick say. I look around and see him peering through the curtain of the window. “I think your boy is coming back.”
Oh God.
I start to collect the photos from the floor. Mick rushes over to help.
“What the fuck, kid?” he demands when he sees that the photos are all me.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” I say. I can hear my voice is shaking. But I refuse to admit to myself yet that Caden deliberately inserted himself into my life for some reason.
I take a stack of photos from Mick’s hand and I shove the photos back into the folder. I don’t have time to put them back in the order they were in when I found them. Hell, even if I did have time I don’t remember what order they were in. I drop the folder back into the drawer and slam it shut. Mick is already at the front door.
“Come on,” he hisses.
I run over to him and we slip outside, Mick relocking the door behind me. I cringe when it makes a loud sharp click as it shuts. I creep to the top of the stairs. I lean over the railing but quickly jump back when I see the top of Caden’s dark head below. And I hear the steps of boots echoing up the stairwell.
“He’s coming,” I mouth. I’m not sure what Caden would do if he found me here. But I don’t want to find out.
Mick starts to wave frantically for me to hurry the other way down the corridor. I run with him, trying to keep my feet light. The echo of Caden’s footsteps follow me down the corridor and they get louder as he climbs the stairs, getting closer.
I feel a hand grab my collar and I almost yelp out loud. It’s Mick. He yanks me back and pulls me through an open grey door into a dark stairwell. The fire escape. As he closes the door behind us, shutting out the light, I see the fading image of Mick holding his finger up to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. I hear a soft click as the door slips into place.
In the dark, with nothing to see, I am reminded of all those nights spent behind blindfolds with Caden’s hands and lips all over me. My traitorous body still reacts with heat even after what I have discovered. Along with this heat is another feeling… another feeling that I have never felt before with Caden.
Fear.
Oh my God.
I let him touch me. I let him inside me. Inside my body and inside my heart. I let him into my life, as far as I have let anyone in over the last five years. He’s just another man with his own secret agenda, another man I’ve fallen in love with and don’t truly know. Suddenly, I feel sick. I make a small retching noise from my diaphragm. I put my hand on my stomach and the other over my mouth and try to keep my breaths calm. I can’t freak out right now. I could still get caught.
We. We could get caught.
Mick is here, too. If Mick got hurt because of me I couldn’t forgive myself.
“You okay, kid?” Mick whispers to me in the dark.
I nod then remember that he can’t see me.
I slowly take my fingers from my lips, testing my nerves with each one. “I’m okay,” I whisper back.
Then I hear, “He should be in his apartment by now. I’m going to find a light switch so we can go down the fire escape.”
There is some fumbling before the light flickers on, illuminating the grey block stairwell. Mick directs me down the stairs. We don’t talk as we descend.
The stairs lead to a small back courtyard. Mick leads the way as we slip around the side of the building. I wait against the building as Mick gets the car and pulls up in the driveway. I slip in and he pulls out. I slump into my seat and keep my face turned away from the windows in case Caden is looking out.
“Let me take you back to your place,” Mick says.
I nod and give him quick directions.
He frowns. “That sounds close.”
“It’s only four blocks away,” I admit.
Mick lets out a string of curse words. “The fucker lives four blocks away from you? What the hell, kid?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know either, Mick. I thought I knew him.” My voice sounds wooden. It sounds like a stranger’s voice. A stranger. Like Caden Thaine is to me. Or Harper Lexington. Or whoever this son-of-a-bitch is. I can’t deny anymore that I don’t know Caden at all.
I have to blink back hot angry tears. He stalked me. Took pictures of me at my gym, at my work, at my goddamn home. My home. Then he orchestrated his arrival in my life. And he made sure that I would trust him. And care for him. Bastard.
Why would he do this to me? Was I just some kind of sick game to him?
Jacob Tyrell flashes back into my mind. Is there a connection there?
Inside, it feels like part of me breaks off from the rest. But Cade loves you, it cries. You have to have faith.
Fool. Look at the evidence. You’ve seen those pictures of you with your very own eyes.
But remember how he speaks to you, how he looks at you, how it feels when you are with him. You know he would never intentionally hurt you.
Do I really?
“I’m going to keep digging into him,” Mick says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I’ll see what I can find. I can pull some favors with my friends still on the force. In the meantime, you stay the hell away from this guy, okay?”
I can’t speak. I am staring numbly at the blur of things moving past my passenger window, my mind whirring over all those photos, then to the night we met.
“You don’t want to mess with me…I never should have approached you.”
That night he sounded like he was warning me away from him. But why? If he was deliberately trying to insert himself into my life, why would he warn me away? Or was this another manipulative trick of his to make me feel like he wasn’t trying to push his way into my life? To make me feel like it was my choice to bring him into my life.
This small voice inside keeps screaming that there has to be some other explanation, some other reason… but I shut it off. No. There needs to be no damn room in my heart for doubt, no doubt about what I saw and about Caden’s devious intentions for me. I’ll get enough attempts at creating doubt from Caden when I confront him.
“Kid,” Mick’s harsh voice snaps me back to the present. I notice that Mick has pulled up into my driveway. “Did you hear me? Stay the hell away from him.”
I nod, mutely. But hidden by my side I have my fingers crossed.
I’m sorry, Mick. But I’m not staying away from Caden Thaine. I’m going to follow him like he followed me and find out why the hell he wanted to fuck with what little of my life I have left. Then, if I have to, I’ll put a bullet in him.
Chapter 27
That night, I’m sitting in a car outside of Caden’s building. Earlier today, I traded in my white ratty car for this black sedan with tinted windows. I couldn’t take any chances. Caden would recognize the other car. Under the passenger seat I restashed my small bag of clothes and cash. My GPS sits on my new dash and my gun is in the glove box.
I match the car in head to toe black. It’s my first official stakeout and I’d probably feel like a badass if I wasn’t so God damn twitchy. My fingers tap on the steering wheel. The radio is on, but I can barely hear what is playing as it’s set so low. I can’t sit in silence, but I can’t turn up the radio so loud that it will block my hearing.
The street is quiet. Most of the residents are inside having dinner. Just like I should be. My stomach growls. What am I doing here?
But my growing hunger is put aside when I hear a low rumble, then see Caden driving from the building on his bike. My heart skips. As he moves under the driveway light, I catch a glimpse of him. He looks devastating in his dark blue denim, black t-shirt and his brown leather jacket. It sends an ache through my stomach. I grip the steering wheel, trying to focus on how much I hate him instead.
He pulls out into the street and rides
towards me. I duck into my seat and wait until the rumble of his bike moves past me. I slide up, turn on my engine, pull out and start to follow him, my eyes glued to his red back light.
Caden stays away from the main roads, making it easier to keep up with him but easier to spot me, so I drop further behind him. I don’t want to hang too close to him, but what if I lose him in the night?
It doesn’t matter. If I lose him tonight, I’ll follow him again tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that if I damn well have to. Oh, how the tables have turned.
The buildings start to change from the houses and apartments of a well-lit blocky residential area into warehouses and concrete lots when he enters an industrial part of town. We’re near the docks. What is he doing by the docks? My nerves ratchet up as I notice fewer and fewer people on the street and more and more dark buildings.
Finally, he pulls into a fenced warehouse area up ahead. I slow down as I approach.
I hold my breath and grip the wheel as I pass the open gate. Just inside I see Caden parking his bike in a small flat parking area with several cars already parked there. Odd. I wouldn’t think that a place like this would be open this late at night. I catch the outline of boxy structures behind the car park, but I don’t have time to notice what they all are before I have passed the gate and my vision is obscured by the wall that fences off this lot. I keep driving along the road. I need to find somewhere safe to stash my car.
A few driveways down I spot an empty warehouse parking space lit up by a single spotlight. This lot is more open with no gate, just a line of concrete-trimmed garden beds to separate the lot from the street. I pull into this lot and park in the far corner away from the light. From the glove compartment, I take my gun and a small torch and tuck them into my pants.
I take a deep shaky breath before I get out of my car. Slipping through the shadows, I creep out of this parking space and onto the cracked sidewalk. Here the streetlights are far apart and make sick looking pools of light against the concrete, made rough and cracked from the treads of heavy trucks. I keep against the fencing as I make my way towards the warehouse lot that Caden entered, my neck twisting and my eyes darting around, alert for anyone. I can’t see anyone else walking on this road at this time of night. I can’t decide whether I am happy that I’m alone or not.