A Sense of Security: A Christian Romance (BlackThorpe Security Book 6)

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  As she stared at the painting, though, tears pricked her eyes and peace was elusive. The Bible study earlier had touched on never being at peace when harboring sin in one’s life. Her lies were a sin. She knew that, but she kept thinking that they were justified, that she’d had a good reason for not being honest about her mother’s death. Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to tell just one lie. One lie had led to two which had led to…more.

  It wasn’t just the outright lies she’d had to tell about the damage to her face, but the lies, by omission, about her mom and even the threatening texts she had received, that were weighing on her. She’d agreed to let BlackThorpe know of anything like that, and yet she hadn’t kept her word. She was so scared of what the person who held information about her might do with it.

  She didn’t want to have to reveal everything. As she’d been welcomed into the lives of people there in Minneapolis, she hadn’t wanted to take the chance that information about her mother and the revelation of the type of life she’d led with her Mom would taint their acceptance of her. Coming to Minneapolis was supposed to have been a fresh start with a new life, but Alicia now knew it was foolish to think she could have the life she wanted when it was built on lies.

  Sooner or later, it was all going to come crumbling down around her. The only question was…would she be the one to reveal those lies? Or would someone else? And what would be left standing when it was all over. The very thought that she would be left alone…not even standing, but brought low by the decisions of her past…caused her stomach to tremble, and she gripped the frame even more tightly as if willing its promise into her future.

  ~*~

  Marcus looked up from his breakfast when Alicia walked in. He noticed right away that she looked more pale than usual, and, in spite of the makeup on her face, he could see the bags beneath her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept at all.

  “Is everything okay?” Marcus asked as she moved toward the coffee maker.

  She glanced over at him and gave him a small smile. A weak smile. Though she wasn’t one prone to give him a lot of smiles, even the small ones she gave him usually had strength behind them. This one looked like it had taken considerable effort to maintain, even for a couple of seconds.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said as she poured coffee into a travel mug. “Just one of those nights where sleep didn’t come easily.”

  Marcus knew all about those, but for some reason, he had a hard time believing that was all there was to her tired look. His senses had been tingling a lot lately where Alicia was concerned. Sometimes it was a positive reaction—like when they’d danced together—but other times—like with the damage to her face and now her sleepless night—Marcus just had the feeling that she wasn’t telling him the truth. Or wasn’t telling him everything. But how did he call her out on it? Technically, none of that was interfering with her work, so he couldn’t even approach it from that angle. They weren’t super close friends…at least not yet, but he found himself wanting to move in that direction and beyond, more and more these days.

  But first, he needed to figure out what was going on with her.

  Maybe Trent would finally have some answers. Because it wasn’t work related, he’d given Trent permission to work on it only if he had time, but he was nearly to the point where he was going to ask the man to give it some priority. If he hadn’t heard from him by the end of the day, he was going to talk to him again.

  He’d barely made it into his office before Trent appeared in his doorway asking for a few minutes of his time. The troubled look on the man’s face and the way he’d barely greeted Alicia was causing a bit of alarm to rise within Marcus.

  “Have a seat,” Marcus said, gesturing to the chairs opposite his desk. “What’s going on?”

  Trent closed the door to the office, then took one of the offered chairs. “It’s about that investigating you wanted me to do into what might have happened to Alicia.”

  “Okay. What did you find out?”

  “More than I wanted to, that’s for sure,” Trent said with a shake of his head, sadness crossing his features.

  Marcus didn’t like the sounds of that. He leaned forward, trying to keep his voice even and calm. “What do you mean?”

  “The altercation that Alicia was just involved in wasn’t with some random stranger,” Trent began. “She knew her assailant because they have a history.”

  “Was he an ex-boyfriend or husband?” Marcus asked, thinking that it would make perfect sense for Alicia to have run halfway across the country to get away from an abusive ex. But why had she gone back, if that was the case?

  Trent shook his head. “Not her ex, her mother’s.”

  “I don’t understand. Did she really go back to California to visit friends? Even knowing that someone who had beaten her up before was hanging around?”

  “That’s the thing.” Trent sighed. “She didn’t go to visit friends. She went to visit her mother.”

  “You mean her grave, right? Was it the anniversary of her mother’s death or something?”

  Again, Trent shook his head. “Her mother’s still alive.”

  “Alive? I was under the impression that she had passed away as the result of an accident of some sort.”

  “We all were,” Trent said. “From what I remember, she told Eric and his family that she had lost her mother in an accident. And I guess, technically, she was right. Her mother is in jail.”

  “In jail?” Marcus asked, shocked at Trent’s revelation. He hadn’t anticipated anything like that when he’d asked him to look into her past.

  Trent nodded as he looked down at his hands. “Her mother attacked her ex with a knife, nearly killing him.”

  “Alicia’s ex?”

  “Nope. Her mother’s ex-boyfriend. Alicia happened upon them during the attack, and apparently, her mother took a few swings at her as well. Medical reports I was able to access showed that it wasn’t anything too serious for Alicia—more like she got in the way—but the ex was bad so they pressed assault charges on her. She got five years. For the original attack, anyway. She’s had further altercations in prison that could lengthen that sentence.”

  Marcus tried to imagine Alicia in a situation like that but couldn’t. “So was Alicia’s attack just random?”

  “No. Her attacker was the ex. Apparently, since he couldn’t reach her mother, he settled for going after Alicia. But it almost seems like someone tipped him off.”

  Marcus felt sick listening to what Trent was revealing about Alicia’s past. Now more than ever, he was glad he’d convinced her to move into the mansion with him, Meredith and Derek. “Someone tipped him off?”

  “Not sure how he might have figured it all out unless he made connections with someone who worked at the prison where her mom is in order to find out when she visited her.”

  Marcus stared at Trent. The man’s consternation over the information he’d brought to Marcus was palpable. “Why do you think she lied about her mother?”

  Trent shook his head. “I have no idea. But what am I going to tell Victoria? They are so close.”

  “You’re not going to tell her anything,” Marcus said.

  Trent’s eyes widened at Marcus’s statement. “I don’t keep secrets from Victoria.”

  “You tell her everything?” Marcus asked.

  “Well, no.” Trent’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t tell her about confidential work stuff.”

  “Then consider this confidential work stuff. I asked for the information. You used BlackThorpe resources to get it. It’s work related.”

  Trent frowned, but then he nodded. “At least I can say you made me keep it private when Victoria finds out I knew this stuff and didn’t tell her.” Trent sighed. “I’ll probably still end up sleeping on the couch for a night or two.”

  “Really?” Somehow Marcus doubted that.

  “Okay. Probably not. But still, she’s gonna have a difficult time accepting that I knew this stuff about her sister,
her best friend, and didn’t tell her.” Trent paused. “So what are we going to do with this information?”

  “First and foremost, I want to make sure that that guy doesn’t get anywhere near Alicia again. He was arrested, right?”

  “Yeah, but who knows if the charges will stick since Alicia left without giving a statement. They have witnesses but obviously not a victim statement.”

  Marcus wanted to march out of his office and tell Alicia to book two tickets for California so he could take her back there to give her statement. What was she playing at?

  “Okay, let’s go back to making sure Alicia is safe,” Marcus said, trying to keep his emotions out of the situation though it was much harder than it should have been.

  “If we start needing security guys, Eric will have to be told” Trent reminded Marcus. “And if I have some difficulty with this, he’s going to have even more.”

  Marcus hadn’t thought about that, but he knew that Trent was right. For all that Eric said that he and Alicia didn’t have a close sibling relationship, he was still looking out for her. Marcus really wished he knew why Alicia had tried to keep her past in California a secret. Was there something else she was keeping from them?

  He had no idea how to go forward from this point. This was the first time something had come up that seemed to combine both his work and personal life. After all, she was now living in his home. And whether he liked it or not, she had a significant presence in all areas of his life. Including his heart.

  But he had no plan to tell Trent that. He had an idea that that would be a secret Trent just wouldn’t be able to keep from his wife.

  “Just leave this to me right now,” Marcus said. “I’m going to think it over and see if there’s some way to sort this all out without upsetting Alicia. Are you going to be able to act normally around her?”

  Trent sighed as he got to his feet. “I’ll make sure that I do.” He turned to go, then swung back around. “One other thing, it seems that her mother’s defense cost a pretty penny. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alicia is still trying to pay off that bill.”

  Once the other man had left, Marcus sat at his desk, drinking coffee, and trying to figure out a solution to this particular problem. Lately, his personal life was getting intertwined with his work life in a way the two had never intersected before. First there was Jeff and all that had gone down with him. And now Alicia.

  Just the other night she’d talked to him about having lost her mother. He supposed that in a way, she hadn’t lied. If her mother was in jail, it would likely seem as if she’d lost her mother. Still, she could have shared the actual situation her mother was in, and yet, she’d chosen not to do that. Which left him with questions.

  Unfortunately, they were questions that wouldn’t get answered unless he revealed to her what he knew. That he had delved into her personal life without her knowledge. Alicia struck him as a fairly private person. She didn’t seem to want to talk much about her life. The moment they’d shared the night he’d told Meredith about Jeff was likely an aberration for her. He wondered if there was a way he could encourage her to share more. Would that mean he’d have to share more about himself as well?

  Marcus leaned back in his chair and swung it around to stare out the window at the city. He was a bit surprised that the idea of sharing parts of himself with Alicia wasn’t as daunting a thought as it usually was. He wanted her to let down the walls she’d obviously erected to keep people out. For the first time ever, he wanted a closer connection with a woman. With Alicia. He wanted to know what was going on with her, but he also wanted to protect her from the threats of her past.

  “Marcus?”

  Hearing Alicia’s voice, Marcus swung back around to see her standing in his doorway. He got to his feet and picked up his coffee mug. “What’s up?”

  “Is everything okay with Trent?” she asked as she stepped further into his office. “He looked a little upset when he left.”

  “I think he’s fine.” Marcus was going to have to rib Trent about how they were never, ever going to send him undercover for anything. Clearly, the man couldn’t act to save his soul.

  “That’s good.” She held up a file. “You have a Skype meeting with Jamie Melton in London at nine o’clock.”

  Marcus nodded, happy to be focused on business. “Right. This was a follow-up to the one we did last week.”

  Alicia nodded as she approached with the file. “You had asked for Trent to have his team research a few things. The reports are in here.”

  Though they were a high-tech company, when Marcus held meetings via video, he much preferred paper copies instead of having to read things on the screen so he could make notes on the copies and highlight things if necessary. Alicia had caught on quickly to that and always made sure that he had access to hard copies as well as virtual ones when he had video calls with clients.

  “Once I’m done that meeting, I’m going to be out at the training and wellness centers for a couple of hours.”

  “Okay. You don’t have any other meetings for the rest of the day.”

  Marcus tried to go to the other BlackThorpe locations at least once a month to touch base. Melanie Thorpe and Justin Morrell were present at the main office each week for meetings, but Marcus liked to actually see the locations to keep abreast of what was going on at each place.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” Marcus said. The idea had just popped into his head, but it made sense. Alicia needed to be aware of the other locations as well, and this would give him one more opportunity to speak with her and perhaps draw her out.

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “Sure. You haven’t been to those locations yet, and I think it’s a good idea for you to be familiar with them.” He paused. “Did you have something else you needed to do?”

  Alicia shook her head. “I’ll be ready to go when you are.”

  “You can come here whenever you want to use the shooting range or the gym,” Marcus told Alicia as they toured the BlackThorpe training center. “Although if you want to work out, we have a gym at the house. And maybe I can set up a self-defense course for you and Meredith if you’d like.”

  “I have taken a few courses already,” Alicia said as she looked around the large gym space. Some of the equipment was in use, but it was fairly quiet since it was the middle of the day.

  “Those didn’t help you when the person hit you,” Marcus said, aware that he was treading into the murky waters of Alicia’s past. “You should have hit him right back.”

  Alicia turned to look at him, a frown on her face. “I wasn’t his target.”

  “Are you sure?” Marcus asked. “And self-defense courses allow a person to automatically react to an attack—whether it was directed at them or not.”

  “It came out of the blue,” Alicia told him, her gaze on the room. “And he knocked me out.”

  Marcus reached out and laid his hand on her arm. He waited for her to look at him. When she finally did, he said, “I want you to be able to protect yourself. I need to know that you’ll be able to take care of yourself if I’m not there. You need to be safe.”

  Her eyes widened momentarily and took on a glassy sheen. She blinked rapidly then looked away from him. “I want to be safe.”

  “Then let me set something up for you and Meredith. I can teach you myself or arrange for an instructor through Justin. Whatever your choice is, I’ll be fine with it.”

  “Let me talk to Meredith.” She glanced up at him. “So, I can come here and use the shooting range? Learn how to shoot a gun?”

  “Sure,” Marcus replied. “The only time you might want to steer clear is when we have a outside team in residence for training. Actually, you could probably come out with Trent and Victoria. I think they come out fairly often. I can even bring you out if you’d like.”

  Alicia glanced over at him, her arms cross over her waist. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I want you to be safe. To be able to pr
otect yourself.” Next to Meredith, Alicia was the one person he felt compelled to keep safe. It was a new feeling for him, but strangely enough, he wasn’t having a problem embracing it. “There are things going on with BlackThorpe that mean there is the possibility of personnel being attacked. I want to make sure that you are equipped to handle that possibility.”

  Alicia nodded. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  Marcus wasn’t sure what there was to think about, but he wasn’t going to pressure her. He moved to stand beside her and placed a hand on her upper back. “Why don’t we head over to the Wellness Center.”

  They left the training center and drove over to the Wellness Center where they met up with Melanie Thorpe. She was more than happy to give them a tour. She interacted mainly with Alicia as they walked through the different areas. He found it interesting how much more outgoing Melanie was recently. It no doubt had something to do with her relationship with Tyler. They seemed to bring out the best in each other.

  As he thought about it, he realized that Alicia brought out the best in him. Her presence in his life had made him start really looking at how he interacted with people and how he could be better in some instances. None of his other assistants had brought out that side of him.

  And for the first time, he was actually considering the role that faith seemed to play in so many of the lives around him. Alex and his sisters. Derek. Trent. Eric. Than. And now Alicia. Alex and Eric had shared about their own personal experiences with their faith, but Marcus hadn’t really been interested then. He’d been glad for them, but it hadn’t seemed relevant in his life. But lately, with both Alicia and Derek living out their faith so closely to him, Marcus was finding it on his mind more frequently.

  “How is Bond doing with Meredith?”

  Melanie’s question drew his attention back to their conversation. “He’s doing incredible. The two of them are inseparable. Something I’ve noticed with Bond recently is that he doesn’t save his talents for Meredith. He has helped soothe other people if he senses they’re getting upset. Well, he does that as long as Meredith herself isn’t upset.”