by L. A. Witt
I considered using the time in the car to carefully pick his brain some more about what the fuck was going on, but decided to keep it benign for the moment. “You, um, have any music preferences?”
“Not really.”
Of course not. That would be too easy.
I switched on the radio, which was still tuned to a country station, and I left it there. That usually ended any musical neutrality in a hurry. Even the most passive passenger would suddenly develop specific tastes when prodded with the sound of a steel guitar.
Troy didn’t say anything, though. Naturally.
His fingers tapped quietly on the console between us. When the song changed from a Luke Bryan ballad to an upbeat Keith Urban song, I realized he wasn’t just drumming his fingers out of boredom or annoyance—he was keeping perfect time with the bass line. I chanced a look from the corner of my eye, and I’d be damned if he wasn’t bobbing his head slightly too.
I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised by that point. Twenty-four hours, and I’d already learned not to take a damned thing about Troy at face value. Why should it have surprised me that the punk look didn’t necessarily mean he was the kind who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to country?
Whatever. At least I had some music to listen to now.
The Dalton family estate was like a beacon. Something to save me from this uncomfortable arrangement and the ongoing silence. Once we were out of the car and I’d checked in with the house security team, I was home free, and Troy was someone else’s problem until tomorrow at 0700.
I parked behind another car—must’ve been Max’s, since it was here yesterday—just past the steps leading up to the house. The silence continued as he pulled his books from the trunk and we went inside.
As soon as we were in the house, Troy whistled. “Talos!” He whistled again.
A second later, the biggest of the household’s four Rottweilers appeared, trotting down the stairs.
“Hey, buddy!” Troy knelt and held out his arms. “You miss me?”
I thought the dog was going to bowl him over, but he halted in front of Troy and dropped onto his haunches. Troy wrapped his arms around the enormous animal’s neck.
Troy was broad in the shoulders, and he wasn’t exactly short—I was six four and had maybe three inches on him—but the dog made him look tiny.
And he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Talos. I viewed a dog like that as something that would take my arm off at the slightest provocation, but Troy hugged the massive thing like he was grateful beyond words for its presence.
I kept my distance and glanced around, searching for the other three dogs. At least they were big enough they probably wouldn’t have much luck sneaking up on me. One would hope, anyway.
It wasn’t that I disliked animals—my mom thought it was hilarious that I almost never set her cat down when I came home—but dogs scared the fuck out of me.
Troy stood but kept a hand on Talos’s head. “Well, um.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to go upstairs and catch up on e-mail. I guess we don’t have anything to study today, so…”
“Yeah. I’ll just go check in with Max and drop off my weapon so I can get out of here.”
Troy’s jaw tightened just slightly, and he subtly drew Talos a little closer to his leg. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right. See you tomorrow.”
He and Talos headed up the stairs. I watched them go, then continued down the hall to the security office.
As I stepped into the converted bedroom, Max was working on paperwork at the desk. Sitting up, he smirked and singsonged, “How was your first day of school?”
Laughing, I flipped him the bird. “Real cute.”
“All right, all right.” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Download your weapon and put it in the safe. I’ll sign you in.”
I took my service weapon out of the shoulder holster, dropped the magazine, and cleared the chamber. After I’d signed the log, I went to put the gun in the safe.
As I stepped around the desk, though, a huge black thing moved, and I damn near fell on my ass.
“Fuck!” I stopped hard enough I had to grab the file cabinet for balance. “You could’ve warned me he was in here.” I waved a cautious hand at the dog lying on the floor between me and the safe.
“Who, her?” Max laughed. “Calm your tits, MA1. Unless you’re a burglar or a squirrel, the worst she’s going to do is get in your way. Like that.” He nodded toward her, and as if on cue, she rolled back onto her side with a groan.
“Um.” I glanced at the dog. “So how do I get her to move?”
“Charlie.” He snapped his fingers. Immediately, the dog jumped to her feet, moved toward him, and sat beside his chair, resting her head on his leg. As he petted her, he said, “There. You’re all clear.”
“Thanks.” I gave the dog—Charlie, apparently—a wary look and felt like a bit of an idiot. Deep-seated fear or not, I always felt a bit ridiculous being afraid of an animal who was being so placid and gentle.
“What is it with you and dogs, anyway?”
I shrugged as I entered the code on the gun safe. When the latch clicked, I pulled open the heavy door. “Bad experience when I was a kid.”
“With a Rottweiler?”
“No.” I put my gun into its slot, then closed and locked the safe. “I don’t even remember, to be honest. Happened when I was like two. I’ve never been comfortable around dogs since then.” I gave Charlie another glance and almost fell for those who, me? brown eyes, but then went around the desk.
Max just chuckled and murmured a quiet command to Charlie. She wandered back to her spot in front of the safe, dropped with all the grace of a three-legged rhinoceros, and let out a long, heavy sigh. Then Max turned to me. “So how did it go with the kid?”
I eased myself into a chair and propped my boot against the desk. “Weird.”
“Weird? How so?” He smirked. “I mean, besides the fact that every girl on campus looks like jailbait.”
I laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah. Besides that.” I rested my elbow on the armrest and scratched my jaw, nails hissing across the heavy stubble. “Well, uh. What happened to the notes that were left on Troy’s car last semester?”
Max rolled his eyes. “As far as I know, they might not even exist.”
“Really?”
“Well, I mean, they exist.” He leaned down and opened the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. “But I’m not sure if they’re real.” He sat up and dropped a couple of sealed plastic bags on the desk. I picked one up.
The handwritten note made my skin crawl: Fags end up in bags.
I lowered it. “So why the doubts?”
“Have you seen Troy’s handwriting?”
I shook my head.
He pointed at the bag in my hand. “You’re looking at it.”
“What?” I blinked. “You think…you think Troy is writing the notes and putting them on his own car?”
“The handwriting is damned close. And no one’s seen anything. There have been no other reports of homophobic harassment at Virginia Southern. No notes. Not even so much as a dirty look or any Facebook trolling. And there’s no witnesses except Troy.”
I glanced at the bag containing the note. “Why, though?”
He shrugged. “Attention? Status symbol?”
“If he wanted to flaunt the fact that he’s got a bodyguard, why would he insist I go in plainclothes? Without any evidence I’d ever even heard the word ‘Navy’? You’d think he’d want me in uniform and openly carrying a damned M16 if he wanted attention.”
“Beats me.” Max shrugged again, even more dismissively this time. “But that kid’s not right in the head.”
Well, something is definitely going on in his head, but…
“It just doesn’t seem—”
“Zander, it’s not our job to decide what’s going on in his head, but that kid…” He waved his hand.
“Iskander,” I said tersely. “And, if you’re right, what do you think we’re doing? Protecting him from ghosts?”
“Protecting him from ghosts, giving him attention his old man doesn’t give him.” Max put up his hands. “Hell if I know. But the admiral tells me where to be and what to do, and as long as the Navy keeps paying me to do it, I will.” Before I could speak, he leaned forward and folded his hands. “Look, Ayhan. You’re not working as a cop right now. You’re personal security. This isn’t an investigation. It’s just protective detail.”
“Okay, but does that mean I should ignore any possible leads? We’re here to protect this kid, so if there’s something we should be protecting him from, I think—”
“Ayhan.” He shook his head. “Every cop goes through this. We all did.” He locked eyes with me. “All you need to do is stay with him, keep your eyes open, and make sure nothing happens to the kid. If someone poses a threat, do something about it, but this isn’t some targeted assault on him. It’d be more interesting that way, but it’s just random harassment, assuming it’s even real and not all inside his head. When the day’s over, go home, get some sleep, and be ready to come back the next day. That’s it.”
“And what if there is a threat specifically targeting him?”
“If there was, we’d already know about it.” Max waved a hand again. “It’s just some assholes with a low tolerance for queers.”
I ground my teeth. “Are we sure of that, though?”
“Do you have a reason to believe otherwise? Besides the kid being jumpy?”
I swallowed. “Nothing concrete. Just a gut feeling.”
Max shook his head. “Don’t read too much into it. Honestly, the only thing this kid needs is a therapist, not a bodyguard.”
“Is he going to a therapist?”
Max snorted. “You want to be the one to suggest that to the old man? Really, I dare you to tell him something might be all in his golden child’s mind.”
You haven’t seen what I have, Max…
I cleared my throat. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Good idea. Now get out of here, man. Get some sleep.” He grinned. “And do your homework.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Your grades reflect on your eval, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Have a good night.”
“You too.”
I headed out of the office but paused in the doorway.
“Something else?” Max asked.
I chewed my lip. Then I closed the door and faced him again. “What’s the deal with Troy and the dogs?”
“Fuck if I know, man. The head of security before me said the family’s always had Rotties, and the kid’s always liked dogs, but ever since that shit started last year?” He shook his head. “I’m surprised he didn’t try to get the university to clear him taking Talos with him to classes.”
I inclined my head. “And that doesn’t seem weird to you?”
“Of course it does. What isn’t weird where this kid is involved?”
Though the sarcasm made my teeth grind, there was something to his question. This entire assignment was weird. Troy’s behavior and demeanor were weird. Everything about this was weird.
“Fair point,” I muttered. “Anyway, I’m going to call it a day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. G’night, MA1.”
“G’night, Chief.”
On my way down the hall, I slowed my gait at the grand staircase. Though there was no one else around, my mind superimposed Troy shuffling down the steps like he was annoyed with gravity and me and God knew what else. Combining that phantom Troy with the one who’d broken out in a sweat on the way to the cafeteria…
Shaking my head, I continued toward the front door.
I wondered if it was a deliberate choice on the admiral’s part to keep Max in the security office while someone else accompanied Troy to classes. Max didn’t strike me as malicious, but he obviously didn’t take this situation all that seriously. If anything, he reminded me of a gate sentry who’d been on a quiet base so long he didn’t believe anything bad could happen. When it came to standing sentry duty on a gate, there was a difference between a normal day and being hypervigilant because of a confirmed threat. In the former, we checked IDs, watched for suspicious behavior, and generally prayed for the long line of cars to go away so we could slip into the heated or air-conditioned guard shack for a few minutes. In the latter, we stopped just short of keeping a finger on the trigger. Everyone coming onto the base was a potential suspect. No one passed through the gate without being scrutinized from their car to their ID card to their body language. Bomb-sniffing dogs were a constant presence.
For Max, guarding Troy was everyday sentry detail. Cake duty with an almost zero percent chance of anything actually happening. The more time I spent with Troy, the more I couldn’t help wondering if this was an ID-inspecting, bomb-sniffing scenario.
I continued out to my car and headed down the driveway. As the plantation-style house faded in the rearview, a knot grew in my gut.
High-ranking officers were notorious for fraud, waste, and abuse. There was, after all, a reason “fraud, waste, and abuse” had become a catch-phrase around the military, and it wasn’t just lower enlisted guys stealing office supplies. No one within the ranks would ever be surprised by Navy royalty like Admiral Dalton having frivolous bodyguards.
But something wasn’t adding up here.
Admiral Dalton seemed genuinely concerned about his son’s wellbeing, as any father would be, and I couldn’t convince myself that he didn’t legitimately believe his son was in some kind of danger. Whether having a bodyguard and full security detail was overkill or not, I was having a harder and harder time believing this was fraud, waste, and abuse.
And more and more I was convinced there was something going on in Troy’s head. Was he delusional? Was this a bid for attention? He wouldn’t be the first kid to go to insane lengths to get a high-ranking parent’s attention. My last commanding officer’s daughter had used the pool table in his basement as the setting for a gangbang porno involving half a dozen Marines. I never did find out how their court-martial ended, but the video had gone viral and she’d certainly gotten Daddy’s attention.
My mind kept going back to that moment in the hallway when Troy had nearly jumped out of his skin. He couldn’t have planned that. He wouldn’t have downplayed it so much if the whole point had been attention.
And then there was the way he interacted with Talos—that wasn’t a typical guy who loved his dog. I had no doubt Troy did love the dog, that Talos was his companion like my cat had been when I was a kid, but he was a completely different person when he had the Rottweiler beside him. As if he could breathe as long as Talos was close by. As if the enormous dog was his sworn protector. But from what?
What are you so afraid of, Troy?
Chapter Four
“What the hell is going on today?” I looked around the packed courtyard between the campus’s main buildings. “I’ve never seen it this crowded.”
Troy shook his head. “No idea. Must be another one of their festivals.”
“They do this often?”
“A buddy of mine started here last year, and he said this place has a festival for every fucking thing.” He snickered. “Don’t be surprised if they have one for Hug Your Hamster Day or Pirate Appreciation Week.”
I tilted my head. “Please tell me those aren’t actual things.”
Troy shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
“Guess we will.” I gritted my teeth. “Ugh. I fucking hate crowds.”
“Me too.”
“We can take the long way around. Looks like it’s less
crowded.”
Troy shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine.” He pushed his shoulders back. “It’s just a festival. We can walk through it.” He glanced at me. “Besides, the coffee shop’s on the other side, and I am dying for a hit of caffeine.”
“Works for me.”
Goddamn, I hated crowds. Especially when I was in cop mode. Too much noise, too much motion. There was no way to home in on anything, to anticipate any movement that might create a dangerous situation. My worst nightmare was working riot control, and dealing with docile crowds was only marginally better than that.
As the mob around us thickened, I stepped closer to Troy. Not quite close enough to crowd him but enough to keep anyone from slipping in between us. I was tempted to put a protective hand on his back but decided that was overkill—this was just a bunch of college kids celebrating…something. And if the danger to Troy was from homophobes, then even the most platonic physical contact probably wasn’t a good idea.
So I just stayed close as we inched our way across the packed courtyard. We were definitely taking the long way around after this. Because fuck crowds.
Almost to the other side, though. Almost. Then we’d be home free, and we—
Troy halted so abruptly, his sneaker squeaked on the cobblestone.
“What’s—” My blood turned cold. “Troy?”
His whole body went rigid, his eyes widening.
“Troy?” I touched his shoulder. “You with me?”
He didn’t respond. Color rapidly drained from his face, and his eyes were wide and unfocused. Each breath was shorter and shallower than the one before it.
I stepped in front of him, cupped his face, and forced him to look right at me. “Breathe, Troy. I’m right here.”
He looked at me.
No. Through me.
Wherever he was, and wherever he was looking, it wasn’t here. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and herded him through the crowd to the nearest building. Inside, I guided him into the alcove just behind the doors, and helped him into one of a few metal folding chairs up against the wall.
Jesus, he was shaking. Sweating. Breathing fast.