by Mia Faith
The personal stuff she was used to. She’d always been a failure when it came to men, so no big deal there. Not really. But business? Technology? She’d flourished there. A prodigy, some had called her, and she finally had started to feel like she had her life in order. Things were going her way.
And now they were coming crashing down all around her.
That note had called her a fake. A fraud. It had gone out of its way to single her and her system out.
“Why me?” she asked the empty elevator just as it arrived on her floor.
The door opened to reveal an older couple standing just outside, waiting. At seeing her, their eyebrows rose. The woman looked a little uncomfortable and Shelly wondered if they’d heard her whining.
Straightening up, she gave them a quick smile. “Have a good night.” Then she hurried out of the elevator and down the hall towards her room.
But it wasn’t fast enough. She still heard the woman ask, “Isn’t that that Shelly Hartness woman?”
“Why yes, the woman from the paper. I think you’re right,” replied the man.
Shelly groaned. She reached her door and slumped forward a little, leaning against it. The night couldn’t get any worse.
Fumbling around for her key, she managed to get her door unlocked, then she pushed it open and stumbled inside. The door shut automatically behind her. She slid her hand along the wall for the lights, at the same time trying to get her shoes off. It meant that both tasks took her twice as long.
“Damn heels,” she muttered. She threw them at the wall where they clattered and clunked to the floor.
She managed to get the hall light on, which was enough for now. All she needed to do was get to her bed. She’d sleep and in the morning, she’d be gone. Out of this place. Away from all those people from tonight.
Tomorrow, she’d worry about the Maitre.
Tomorrow, she’d worry about her infallible system that had suddenly become fallible.
Tonight, she’d sleep.
Making it to the bed, she let herself fall face first onto her pillow, not even bothering to get out of her dress. The bed was lush and comfortable—and crunchy?
Frowning, Shelly lifted her head to take a look at what had been left on her pillow. It didn’t feel like a chocolate…
“What the hell?”
It was a note. A plain, basic note on a white postcard with a plain, basic, black scripted note on the front. Shelly paled as her hazy mind slowly put those pieces together. It can’t be. Sitting up on the bed, she snatched up the paper and read it.
“Nothing is impenetrable.”
“It… it can’t be. This…” she muttered to herself, shaking her head. No, this was some sort of joke. It had to be. And yet…
Her phone went off, indicating that she’d received a text message. Standing, she went to find her clutch which she’d left by the door. She grabbed it and dug around inside for her phone. The message was from a number that was listed only as PRIVATE. When she opened it, she just stared. It was impossible.
I can even break in here.
“Oh, god.”
Another tone notified her that she’d received an e-mail. She was going to ignore it, her mind quickly sobering as she put together the pieces of what this all meant. But when she received a second notification, she opened it just to be done with the damn beeps.
She didn’t recognize the address, but very quickly she realized it wasn’t spam.
Scared yet?
The second one read, Don’t be. I’m a nice guy. I just like pretty things.
She dropped her phone. Then she stood up and kicked it with her bare feet, sending it sliding across the room and underneath the couch. With wide eyes she stared at the couch where it had disappeared, watching and waiting like it was the monster under the bed. When the next notification came, she let out a small scream.
“No!”
Jerking away from the couch, she ran for the bedroom to use the phone that was in there. She dialed the front desk, her hands shaking and her heart hammering in her head.
How did he get in? she asked herself silently.
She didn’t have an answer. Was it someone in the hotel? Had they been bribed to give out her key? Her room number? Had he come in through the window, scaling up seven stories just to break the lock and leave messages on her pillow? And what about her email and her phone? How had he gotten her personal information?
Calm down. He probably did a Google search for you, Shelly tried to comfort herself, but her nerves were shot.
When the front desk picked up, she interrupted the man’s greeting instantly. “I need a new room. Now.”
“Ms. Hartness? Is there a problem?”
On the verge of hysteria, it took everything Shelly had not to start screaming at the polite young man on the phone. “Yes! Someone broke into my room. I need a new one. Now.”
“Right away, Ms. Hartness. I’m sending security up now.”
Shelly hung up then and gathered up her things. She threw them into her mostly still packed overnight luggage, then grabbed her shoes. She briefly thought about digging under the couch for her cell, but quickly decided it wasn’t worth it. She’d get another one.
Then, without waiting on security, she stepped out of her room and into the hall. She could meet them there, but they could all burn in hell if they thought she was waiting one more minute in that damn hotel room.
Not one more minute.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the fiasco in LA, Shelly took precautions. Increased security for herself and her museum, though she still couldn’t shake the feeling that things were all messed up. The Maitre had struck again since her massive failure of an awards ceremony and it was at yet another of Shelly’s museums.
Shelly was gathering up her files, a massive pile of data both on the Maitre and her Hartness Systems. She was hoping to find the weak point that the Maitre was exploiting, but as of yet, she was at a loss. Everything should have been perfect. The monitoring system, the artificial intelligence was accurately learning from different scenarios and acting accordingly. And yet, still, the Maitre had broken in.
She was beginning to wonder if he was more magician than thief.
Carrying the folders in her arms, she turned off the desk lamp and gave the monitors recording the Metropolitan one last glance. It was the end of the day and she was grateful it was over. It had been an especially long one.
As she made it to the door, the phone rang. She winced, groaning at the obnoxious sound. I’m unplugging the damn thing tomorrow, she thought ruefully, though she knew that was a lie. The phones would remain on and she would have to deal with the barrage of calls she would receive just as she had today.
Debating answering it, Shelly ultimately chose to ignore the damn thing and leave. They could leave her a message and she could deal with it tomorrow.
She closed the door behind her, making sure it was locked, then made her way down the hall. Everything else was already closed up and dark. The others had left probably an hour or so ago, leaving Shelly to pull a longer shift on her lonesome. Not that she minded. Since the Scottsdale event, things had been tense at work and she was stressed out because of it.
“I need a break,” she muttered, punching in a digital code as she locked up the front doors and headed out.
Shelly made her way down the huge staircase that led to the sidewalk below. She glanced at her watch, knowing she was late. She frowned and hoped that her driver would still be waiting for her.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw that around the corner the black car was parked. It wasn’t hers, but rather the vehicle provided by the security service she had recently employed. After that fiasco in LA with the Maitre sneaking into her apartment, she wasn’t taking any chances.
She waved at the driver, then headed over to him. He got out of the car quickly and hurried to her door, though she’d insisted at least three times in the last two days that the man wasn’t her chauffer.<
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“Ms. Hartness. I was beginning to worry that something had happened,” said the attractive man with a smile. “Glad to see that you’re fine.”
He went by the name Deuce and spoke with a light southern accent. It wasn’t quite that deep southern drawl, but rather sounded more like a Cowboy. She’d had him and the four men he rotated shifts with all checked out extensively before hiring them and she remembered vaguely that he’d originally been from Oklahoma, not New York. It made him seem more wholesome and genuine than the others, and if she were being honest with herself, it made him more charming.
She nodded. “Sorry. You did get my text, right?”
He smiled wider. “I sure did. I was about to head in though and check on you. That text was almost thirty minutes ago.”
Flushing a little at his sweet charm, Shelly smiled at him. “Well, thank you. I appreciate the concern.”
He tipped an invisible hat in her direction. “’Course. It’s my job, right?” He winked at her.
Shelly’s spirits fell marginally. His job. Of course. She’d hired him as extra security for herself to ensure that the Maitre didn’t get to her again—the break into her hotel room had really freaked her out. “Right. Um, thanks.”
She slipped into the car and he closed the door after her. As soon as she was seated, she let her head fall back, slumping down into the leather. Her life was a mess. A complete and total mess.
Deuce got into the driver’s seat and pulled out into traffic. Of course, it was around seven in the evening at this part so traffic was unreal. They were moving at a snail’s pace and there was no denying that Shelly would have gotten home sooner if she had just walked.
And left me open to an attack from the Maitre, she added silently.
While they sat in traffic, the music turned on some classical station at a low volume that it was little more than background noise, she noticed Deuce glance in the rearview mirror towards her. “You doing okay there, Ms. Hartness?”
She let out a sigh. “Not really. It’s been a miserable day.”
“Wanna tell me about it?”
She lifted her head so that she could focus on him. He was looking at the road again but would glance in the mirror towards her frequently between their slow movements in traffic. “Do you really want to know?”
He lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and black jeans and though she hadn’t glanced at his shoes, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had cowboy boots on. “Sure. I don’t mind hearing about it.”
She hesitated. “Well, I suppose you know who I am?”
He smiled at her, all pearly white teeth and dimples. He really was quite attractive, if a little dumb. “Sure do. You’re Ms. Shelly Hartness. I hear you’re super smart, though I didn’t know you were gonna be so cute, too.”
She laughed a little at the compliment but admitted to herself that she liked him saying it. “Then you know about the Hartness System?”
“Yep.”
“And have you heard about the break-ins?”
He hesitated. For just a second, he seemed like more than just some dumb cowboy with his shit kickers and his dimples. Like maybe he understood more than what he let on, but then the moment was gone and he was giving her a sympathetic look. “’Fraid everyone’s heard about that, ma’am. It’s been in all the papers.”
That was exactly what she wanted to hear, but it didn’t surprise her. She sighed. “Yeah, well, that’s the story of my life these days. The papers. I’ve been fielding phone calls from reporters wanting an interview all day and you can guess that they don’t want to hear my struggles to make it in a man’s world.”
Deuce smiled a little at that but didn’t say anything. He just waited for Shelly to continue.
“Then you add in complaints from people who have invested in the system and the museums that have it installed, plus my own boss—the curator of the Metropolitan?—and it’s made for one hell of a day. Everyone wants answers and I just don’t have them.” She shook her head, slumping again. Her hand landed on the stack of folders beside her. She patted it. “And I’m trying to figure out where my system’s gone wrong, but I just don’t know.”
Deuce mulled it over for a bit, then said, “Nothing lasts forever, right?”
She pursed her lips together. “Don’t expect perfection, right?” she said a little snidely, thinking of that cop in LA. “Well, I do expect perfection and if my system is failing, I want to know why so I can fix it.”
“I don’t know about all of that, but it’s only been a couple of days since Scottsdale. Cut yourself some slack.”
She fell silent. Although she knew that Deuce was just trying to make her feel better, it wasn’t effective. She didn’t want to cut herself some slack. Instead, she wanted solutions and answers. She wanted to nail the Maitre’s ass to the wall.
The drive through traffic was miserable. Smog, honking horns, and the slowest pace known to man as they headed inch by inch towards her apartment.
“This is why I walk,” Shelly muttered under her breath from the back seat.
“What was that, ma’am?”
Shelly shook her head. “Sorry. I was just thinking that this is why I usually like to walk, you know?”
Deuce nodded his head in agreement. “Sure. Simpler that way, right?”
“Yeah, exactly. There isn’t all this… crap.” She gestured towards the cars surrounding them.
“You know what you need, Miss Shelly?”
Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “What?”
“You need to make your man take care of you. You know, romance and all that. Bring you chocolates, flowers, rub your feet. The whole nine yards. Sounds to me like he hasn’t been doing his job.”
Her shoulders slumped. Great, now I have to admit that my ex-boyfriend is so far out of the picture that we might as well be in different stratospheres. Clearing her throat, she said, “I don’t have one. A boyfriend, I mean. We, uh, recently broke up.” She didn’t mention that he was gay or that he’d cheated on her to let her know that little fact.
Deuce met her eyes in the rearview mirror and she could see them flash with surprise, then with something else. Something… sexier? It had been so long since she’d done the flirting thing—she was going to flat out ignore the gay bartender in LA because she was so not ready to add that moment to her hall of humiliation—that she wasn’t quite sure if she recognized it anymore. Was he giving her signals? Like, flirty signals? Or was that just wishful thinking?
“Now that I find hard to believe.” His voice had dropped to a low, gravelly tone that Shelly immediately decided she liked it.
Smoothing at her hair, which was pulled back in the French braid she usually wore for work, she cleared her throat. “Why is that?”
“A beautiful woman like you?” Deuce said easily with a wink and a smile. “Your ex must be an idiot. Where the hell else is he going to find someone as sexy and as smart as you are?”
Her face flushed as she took a moment to process what he’d said. That, to her, seemed like a very clear indication that he was interested… right? “Um, I… thank you. But you give me too much credit.” Even as she said it, she hoped he’d contradict her.
“I’m not. I know what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen. Yep, your ex is certifiable.”
She laughed but admitted to herself just how much she loved the attention. She basked in it.
They flirted the rest of the drive and Shelly found herself laughing easily and Deuce watching her in the mirror more frequently. By the time they finally made it through traffic to her apartment, she was almost disappointed that it was time for them to part ways. He got out again and went to her door, opening it for her. She smiled. “Thank you,” she told him, stepping out.
“You bet, Miss Shelly.”
Shelly made sure to grab her files from work and turned to head towards her apartment building but paused before taking more than a step. Her mind warred with itse
lf. Suddenly, she swiveled around to face Deuce again. “Did you want to come up?” she heard herself blurting and wondered when she became so forward. First the bartender, now her driver?
He glanced at her in surprise, but didn’t look horrified, so that was good. In fact, he looked pleased. A boyish grin stretched over his handsome face, dimples and all. “Well, how can a man turn down an invitation like that?”
He closed the door to the car and followed her as she led the way to her building. The doorman greeted her warmly, “Ms. Hartness,” and she waved in response. She glanced behind her to find that Deuce was glancing up and around as though in awe of the large high rise she lived in. Hiding an amused smile, she wondered if he’d ever been in a place like this. How easily impressed he was.
They took the elevator to her floor, then she led him to her apartment. “My roommate’s out this week visiting family, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.” Instantly, she realized how that sounded and blushed. But she didn’t take it back.
He smiled at her. “Glad to hear it.”
She fumbled momentarily with her key but managed to unlock her door and let them inside. “Make yourself at home,” she encouraged him, gesturing towards the couch. “Would you like a drink?”
He nodded as he plopped down on the couch cushions. “Sure, you bet.”
She headed into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine, then carried them back. She handed one to Deuce, settling into the seat beside him. “So, you’re from Oklahoma?”
He laughed. “Yeah. You read my file?”
“Of course. I did thorough background checks on everyone I hired for my security detail.”
“That’s just being smart, right?”
She nodded, then sipped at her wine. “That’s right.”
“Well, then you already know I lived in Prior—tiny little place where the tumbleweeds are huge and the wind howls all through spring. Lived there with my daddy until he died about ten years ago. Then I moved out here, determined to make a living.” He shrugged. “Guess I’m sorta doing that.”
“Do you miss it? The howling wind and the tumbleweeds?” she asked, leaning towards him.