I expected to be on a wild goose chase for at least a week.
Having a lead almost immediately was going to make this a whole lot easier. Which would lead to a paycheck much sooner. And then I could wash my hands of the asshole once and for all.
So I needed to set my mind to more important problems.
Like who the hell I was going to bring to Sunday dinner next week.
TWO
Reagan
It's not like I ever had any intentions of becoming a stalker.
I don't think it is a profession or hobby any of us start out dreaming about. Okay, well maybe those creepy guys with the cut out words from the newspapers were always a bit inclined to sit in their cars for hours on end waiting for someone to move around.
For me, though, I felt like cops were going to storm me when I went to buy my set of binoculars. In my anxiousness, I had prattled on endlessly to the poor cashier about my newfound love of bird watching. I even asked if she knew of any good places to find said birds. To which she mumbled something about the local park as I jabbed my credit card into the machine so hard, I nearly snapped it. Then grabbed the binoculars out of her hand without waiting for a bag and rushing out the door.
It wasn't suspicious at all.
Luckily, no one came storming after me, demanding to know what my true intentions were with the binoculars.
A criminal mastermind, I was not.
But this was a one-time thing for me anyway, so I figured I could get away with not being the best at it.
Hell, I didn't even rent a car or anything for my stakeouts. And, let's face it, my car wasn't one most people saw very often. Especially in Jersey, where charging stations were nearly nonexistent. I figured I would get away with it, though, seeing as Michael worked in an area where expensive cars were a dime a dozen. And where my Tesla likely wasn't even in the top ten most luxurious cars parked on the street at any given time.
It seemed to work.
I blended in as far as I knew.
I figured I would know if I didn't.
The one thing you never really considered about stalking someone was the amount of time you spent alone with nothing but your own thoughts. I guess maybe if you were the creepy sort of stalker, you may have been able to have your mind occupied by your obsessions, picturing yourself with your stalkee.
The idea of being with Michael made me want to vomit.
Since I wasn't the creepy 'we're meant to be' sort of stalker, I found other ways to occupy my time.
I re-learned French.
I binged true crime podcasts.
And I whittled away at my hundred-title-long classics reading list in audiobook format.
I got a lot of shit done while getting my stalk on. It was more productive than I would likely be if I went home instead.
Even if I had needed to freeze over the last winter and sweat over the last summer since my car was not the sort that would allow me to sit in idle for any length of time.
Small sacrifices in the grand scheme of things.
Some things were worth suffering for.
I was deep into a set of Kegels. Which was probably too much information, but it was the truth, and sexual health was a woefully undiscussed topic anyway so, yeah, I was getting my Kegels on when it happened.
There was a knock on the passenger window.
The adrenaline surge from the surprise mixed with the Kegel damn near gave me an orgasm. And wouldn't have that been a great story to have.
Oh, yeah, I was doing my stalker thing when suddenly the cops finally found me, and knocked on the window while I was doing intimate exercises, and then I was crashing through an orgasm when they dragged me out to arrest me.
My glance went first to my rearview, sure I would see a telltale police car--white with red and blue markings, driver seat empty because he was about to take away my freedom.
But it was the same Land Rover that had been parked there when I pulled in, empty because the occupant had been inside working.
My head whipped over to glance out the passenger window.
Not finding the police.
Or even Michael.
Nope.
This was a face I didn't even recognize.
A face worth feargasming for. Or, really, any orgasming for.
Even bent over to look in my window, I could tell he was tall. And the lean kind of strong I always found more attractive than guys with bulging muscles that made me think they would struggle to clean certain parts of their bodies properly.
His dark hair was cut neatly into a style that wasn't really a style at all. Which was somewhat refreshing since I had stood behind some guy at Starbucks that morning who had his hair styled like a freaking Viking.
If you spent more time on your hair than I did, my level of attraction toward you went down several steep degrees.
There was a small bit of scruff on his face, but nothing cultivated, or even careless. It was as though he went two days past his shave. The kind of facial hair that left a burn when they went down on you.
Jesus.
Not that I was envisioning a stranger going down on me.
Alright, fine. I was. A little.
But he had heavy-lidded whiskey-brown eyes surrounded by lush black lashes, the kind of eyes that always made me melt just a little. Pair that with his straight, aristocratic nose and his broad forehead that gave the impression he scowled a lot? Oh, hell yeah. He was a hottie. I mean, who didn't love a scowling man?
Another knock, this time with a brow raise. Almost a... bored brow raise? If brow raises could be bored. And in this case, I was saying they could be.
Sure, he might have been insanely good looking, but that didn't mean my brain melted the same way my lady bits were starting to.
You didn't acknowledge strange men who were trying to corner you when they knew you were kind of trapped.
Then again, I was the one in the car. And short of unlocking the door, I could always get away.
Feeling a little bold--and maybe having a strong urge to see if he had a voice to match the face, or if he was going to sound all nasally or squeaky--I rolled down my window about an inch. Just enough for some audial porn if it worked out in my favor.
"What are you doing here?"
"If that is a pick-up line, it is the... twelfth worst I have ever heard," I told him, though nothing about the words had sounded interested to me. If anything, they seemed almost bossy, authoritative.
Maybe Michael hired new security guards in his office building. And somehow forgot to tell them to put the usual uniform on. Though, given how anal Michael was, I had a feeling that wasn't the case.
"Twelfth?" he repeated, brows furrowing.
"Well, There must be something wrong with my phone because it doesn't have your number in it is a hard one to beat. Yet it lacked the cutesy originality of Say, didn't we go to different schools together, so I feel safe ranking it at twelve for now."
There were a few beats before that stern brow of his went from confused to disinterested. "You aren't supposed to be here."
"This is a business district. I have business here," I told him, leaving out the fact that my business involved stalking. Normal people generally didn't want to hear things like that.
"Not anymore. Go. And don't come back."
"Okay, Mr. Bossypants," I said, rolling my eyes. I had a pretty long fuse, but holier-than-thou people and bossy people rubbed me the wrong way. "I don't know what voice in your head told you that you have any authority here, but you can fuck right off. Off," I added when he just stood there, brows pinched, "You. Fuck," I added when he didn't seem to get the point.
My finger was just jabbing into the window button when his voice rang out once again.
"Whatever issue you have with Michael, get the fuck over it. Stop stalking him," he added as my finger jabbed the ignition.
Nope.
No no no.
I couldn't have him finding me out.
Scaring me off.
I had to get out of there before he could figure out who I was.
I would like to say I peeled out, but cars like mine, well, they didn't do much peeling. They silently hummed out of there.
Which was what mine did.
It hummed.
Until it maybe thunked.
Just a little.
Like the back bumper did a little bump.
You know, into the guy.
But just a little bump.
Fine.
Enough to make him hit the ground.
But he got right back up.
I checked.
I even stopped for a minute, waiting to see if he was reaching to call an ambulance or something.
I wasn't stupid. I wasn't going to risk a hit-and-run charge just to avoid a stalking one. Since there was no actual proof of my stalking either.
He didn't reach for his phone.
He just stood there, shaking his head at me.
Figuring it was safe to go, I floored it.
Electric cars got a bad rep sometimes. It seemed like my car was aware of this, and decided to overcompensate on acceleration, careening me down a side street before I could even pull in a full breath.
"Shit. Shit shit shit," I hissed, slamming my hand against the steering wheel as I waited at a red light.
I will admit to just about anyone that I was a pretty horrible driver. But even I obeyed red lights.
My heartbeat skittered around the whole time I drove, doing so on autopilot, barely even aware of my surroundings, too consumed with the swirling thoughts in my head about the potential repercussions that came with Michael hiring a private security team.
See, I grew up around people like Michael. I knew the kinds of people they hired when they got worried about their safety. And they weren't the kinds of guys you found on a quick Google search.
No.
They were the kind of people who knew how to make problems go away. Permanently. You know, if legal channels didn't work out.
I wasn't sure which was more unsettling--trying to dodge an early grave, or having my name dragged through the mud if Michael tried to prosecute me.
Because, well, it wasn't just my name.
It was my family name.
"Jesus," I mumbled when I finally pulled the car to a stop, finding that I hadn't driven myself home at all.
Nope.
I had driven myself to work.
In a way, I guess that made sense.
Work was where I spent the lion's share of my time. So much time that I actually had a little storage room's cabinets ripped out so I could shove a twin mattress in there for the nights when I worked too late and was too tired to drive home.
I hadn't always been a workaholic, but things had changed over the past two years. In amazing ways. And tragic ways. And amazing ways again.
I felt emotionally whip-lashed by the way my life had jerked around for approximately the past couple of years.
There was grief so deep it had etched itself into my bones.
And there was joy that made me feel like a terrible person for experiencing.
This building, though, this was the best thing. As well as the people inside of it. Well, that would be inside of it again when it was open.
It was a bittersweet victory, though, seeing as the only reason I got to be in that building was because of the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
I shook my head, slipping the car into park, resting my head against the wheel, taking a few deep, clarifying breaths.
I wanted to tell myself to stop thinking about those bad things. But those bad things were the reason I left work, drove across town, and parked outside an office building, why I spent my weekends following a car around.
Unexpected, like they always chose to be, the tears sprang up and slid out of my eyes, trailing down my cheeks, hot and familiar.
I'd been to counseling. So much counseling. I had spent so much on therapy that I could fund a village in a third world country for a decade with what I had dropped on psychology sessions and retreats and alternative medicines when the drugs made me feel worse.
Even after all of that, even with all the tools I had learned, the tears came with a fury, leaching all the moisture from my body, making it impossible to do anything but turn into a desert inside, until there was nothing else left.
Then I could breathe, wipe it away, jerk up my chin, draw up the gumption my father had always instilled in me, and move on.
A part of me was dying for the grief to stop someday. The other part, though, was horrified about what it would mean if that did happen. That I was over it. That I was okay. Because I never wanted it to be okay. I never wanted to move on, knowing that in doing so, I would be leaving so, so fucking much of myself behind.
So, for right now, the crying was okay. It was okay. And it would be okay for a while. Especially because they mostly managed to happen when alone, when no one was there to judge me for it, when no one was going to ask those impossible questions.
Hasn't it been long enough?
Don't you think you should have moved on by now?
Or maybe worse yet, the comments.
You should see someone.
You have a right to be happy.
This has gone on long enough.
I had heard it all until the crying got a little more under control.
It looked like I was moving on.
I wasn't, though.
And I was okay with that.
I knew I wouldn't be able to move on until I finished this chapter, until I put this story to bed.
I couldn't do that if I was prosecuted or buried in the woods somewhere.
So I needed to figure out what Michael knew, who he had hired, what they may or may not have on me.
Then I could change tactics, figure out a new way to get the job done.
With that thought in mind, I sniffled back my congestion, wiped away any tears clinging to my lashes, reversed out of my work parking lot, and made my way home, promising myself a glass of wine, a short soak, and then a decent night of sleep.
I would figure it all out in the morning.
I was one of those people.
The ones who were useless after eight p.m.
The ones who functioned amazingly at around five in the morning.
Cue the looks of disgust.
I had my parents to blame.
My father rose before dawn to bike eight to ten miles, then came home, showered, dressed, and made his way to work.
My mother had a similar schedule except she chose the indoor swimming pool year-round for her chosen exercise.
In turn, as the oldest, I mimicked their behavior until it became a habit of my own. My siblings took the other route, rarely ever getting up before noon on days when it could be helped.
I was someone who liked to be in bed before ten then got up at five-oh-one. There was no grumbling, no hitting the snooze button, no wishes for one more hour.
My eyes opened, and I was ready to go.
I milked that speed all day. Until the sun went down. That was when I started to fade. I was like one of those prayer plants that folded up when the light went away.
I took my wine into the bath, taking long sips as the nearly too-hot water soaked away the tension that had built in my system after the incident with the random guy.
The random hot guy.
The random hot guy who might have the power to alter my entire universe in the near future.
With a sigh, I climbed out of the tub, going through the rest of my nightly routine in a bit of a fog. Whether that was from tiredness or the anxiety that was crippling my brain--unfamiliar and more unsettling than I could have anticipated--I wasn't sure.
Never one to toss and turn, I lay awake for over an hour. Not compiling lists as I was known to do. Not thinking about ways to make my work life even more fulfilling. I didn't even mull over all the ways I would need to change how I was handling the Michael situation if he hir
ed the kinds of people I was worried he may have hired.
Oh, no.
Nope.
I thought about dark eyes.
I thought about a stern brow.
I thought about thick lashes.
And a noble nose.
I thought about a thin, but strong body.
I thought about brows that said more than words did.
Lastly, I thought about his voice.
God, his voice.
It was the sort that was smooth and full-bodied at the same time. A voice that held weight, but somehow still managed to shiver over your skin, sink down in, curl its cool fingers around interesting parts of you. Throat, chest, stomach, lower.
Yes, lower.
Yep.
That was just like me.
Get the warm and tinglies for the guy who was probably going to murder me then inventively hide my body.
Sounded about right.
THREE
Nixon
My fucking hip hurt.
And it pissed me off not only to be in pain but to be in pain in my hip like some crotchety old man.
"What'd you do to your leg?" Atlas asked, having blown back into town sometime early that morning. Which likely meant that something had gone south with whatever woman he'd been away with. His life story. But he had a fresh tan and absolutely no stress.
Being back in town meant he would likely take on jobs for a couple weeks before he would take off again without warning. Atlas, you could say, was not someone to carefully sock his money away, build up a healthy retirement fund. He was too afflicted with wanderlust, too restless to stay put for any length of time. He managed to keep his place year-round--a townhouse that he was out of more than he was in--but the rest of his income seemed to go toward traveling.
Me, well, I got plenty of moving around to last my lifetime back when my family and I ran our own little criminal empire. Retired from that, I was genuinely happy to have roots, a home base. Sure, a vacation would likely be good, but I could never live half my life on planes and boats, in hotel rooms. For a family raised so close, we all turned out vastly different.
King with his dogged ambition. Me with my uncertainty. Atlas with his wanderlust. Rush with his phone sex business. Scotti with her family life and florist shop.
Lock You Down Page 2