She started to sing, but then she stopped mid-sentence.
“Can you come, too?”
For a second, I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then she leaned forward and tapped Vincent’s shoulder.
He glanced at her in the mirror. “Is your seatbelt on?”
She sat back and patted the seatbelt where it fit across her chest. “Can you come to my concert? Some of my friends, they bring their grandparents and their aunts and uncles. I bet cousins can come, too.”
Vincent glanced at me before catching Olivia’s eye in the mirror again.
“Of course. If you want me to.”
Olivia clapped her hands, then began to sing again, hitting all the high notes, but flubbing most of the words. I stared out the window, wondering what I’d done. It was going to break Olivia’s heart when Vincent walked out of our lives and never came back. How could he make such a promise when he knew this thing was going to be over in a month? The last thing I needed was more questions about why we had no extended family, why there were no grandparents or aunts and uncles. Or why she didn’t have a dad like all her little friends, or even a stepdad. This was why I didn’t date, why I didn’t introduce the people in my life to my daughter. Ninety percent of the time they were temporary. And when they weren’t, it was hard to explain how we met. It was easier to just keep my life compartmentalized and not allow one part to spill into another.
Only Susie knew Olivia. And Beth. There was no one else who was welcome in the Olivia compartment of my life.
I should have kept it that way.
“I think we need to talk,” I said to Vincent, as he pulled the SUV into my driveway.
He didn’t answer. Something at the front of the house had caught his attention.
“What is—?”
“Stay here,” he said, sliding out of the SUV, locking the doors as he did. I watched him cross behind the car in the side mirror, saw him slide a gun I hadn’t even realized he was wearing under his light jacket—but I should have known because it was much too hot still for a jacket—and head up to the front of the house. He didn’t go inside. But as I watched, my brain struggled to wrap itself around what I saw sitting there on my front stoop.
It was a dead cat. Someone had slit the throat of the stray cat I’d gotten into the habit of feeding.
Oh, hell!
Chapter 6
Vincent
I’ve seen some really depraved things, but slitting a cat’s throat took a special sort of person, you know? I stared down at the cat, noting the lack of blood here on the porch. It was pretty clear that the killing had happened somewhere else and the cat was left to frighten Quinn and Olivia.
I couldn’t help but glance back at the car to make sure they’d stayed inside like I told them. I couldn’t quite see Olivia, but Quinn was looking at me with such a look of shock and disgust that I almost went back to the car to…I don’t know. Cover her eyes?
But my training kicked in. The front door was still locked. Whoever had done this, they hadn’t come and gone from this door. Remembering the flimsy lock on the French doors in the kitchen, I walked around the side of the house, my sidearm in my right hand against my thigh. The side gate was open and swinging a little on well-oiled hinges. It had been locked when I did my rounds last night. I slipped through, raising the gun as I checked out the yard here. There was no one around, but there were small drops of blood on the white, decorative rocks.
Just as I’d been afraid of, someone had jimmied the lock on the French doors. The doors stood wide open as though inviting the neighborhood inside. The kitchen looked undisturbed, though there was a knife missing from the magnetic strips that held them snug against the backsplash. I cleared each of the rooms on the first floor before making my way upstairs. Again, there were little drops of blood here and there, mostly on the kitchen floor and the stairs.
I had a sick feeling in my stomach as I made my way upstairs. If this sick person had defiled Olivia’s room…
But it was Quinn’s bedroom. There was blood smeared on her open bedroom door, the bright red drying against the white door like something out of a bad horror movie. I cleared the other three rooms first—Olivia’s bedroom, the office where I’d spent the night, and the small room where Quinn had set up a treadmill and small weight set.
I stood outside Quinn’s bedroom, remembering the sight I’d accidentally enjoyed the night before. I felt as though I were invading her privacy somehow, taking advantage, by stepping through the threshold into her private domain. I held my gun in both hands now. If the perpetrator were still here, this would be the place he would be hiding.
The smell hit me first. The smell of blood was intense in here, reminding me of the kitchen of my parents’ house after my father and brother went hunting. And then I saw it, the blood pooled in the center of Quinn’s bed. It was pretty clear that the perpetrator had killed the cat here. And then he used its blood to leave Quinn a message.
“I know who you are.”
It was written across the wall over the bed, drying to a dark, crimson in the cool afternoon air.
This anger roiled up inside of me and I seriously considered putting a fist through the wall. I couldn’t believe that someone would do something so awful to someone they knew almost nothing about. Just because of what she did for a living…it was inexcusable in my opinion. But it wasn’t my job to do anything about this. My job was to protect the two young women waiting for me down in the SUV.
I made my way quickly back downstairs, dialing as I walked.
“Vulture,” I muttered, giving my code name so that the call could quickly be routed to the right person.
“Vincent? What’s up?” Megan asked, surprising me by picking up the call herself.
I described the scene, including the message on the wall upstairs.
“The security team is on its way right now to put in the new system. They got delayed by a case across town.”
“The blood is drying. I think this was done early. Probably soon after we left the house.”
“Well, I’ll send Hayden over to assess the situation and call in the police, if we deem it necessary. For the moment, it’d be best to get the target as far from there as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have them with you? They’re secure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There’s a motel out on the Forty-five just outside Hitchcock. Take them there, rent a double. I’ll contact you when we have more information.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel old.”
I hesitated, not sure what to say. But then she laughed.
“Loosen up, Vincent. We’re in a very serious business, so we need to learn to laugh whenever we can, okay?”
I started to say, yes, ma’am, again, but caught myself. Instead, I offered a lame, “Okay.”
I walked quickly around the side of the house, my eyes on the ground, searching for anything—a gum wrapper, a shoe print—that might suggest who’d done this. That wasn’t my job, either, but I hated the idea that someone had done this on my watch. But there was nothing.
I climbed back into the SUV. Olivia was still singing in the backseat, but Quinn’s eyes were on me from the moment I returned from the back of the house. I threw the car into reverse and sped out of the driveway, turning the car in the proper direction and heading toward the interstate.
“What?” Quinn asked.
I shot a glance in her direction and then looked in the mirror.
“So, do you like to go on trips, Miss Olivia?”
Olivia’s eyes instantly widened. “A road trip?”
“Exactly.”
She clapped her hands together. “Cool. Where are we going?”
“Well, I thought we’d just get out of town and go find a motel. Then tomorrow we’ll decide what to do.”
“Okay. Can we stop for hamburgers, Mommy?”
Quinn�
��s eyes were a little frantic. But her voice was calm as she said, “Sure, baby. What’s a road trip without hamburgers?”
We drove for about forty minutes, listening to Olivia chatter about all the options we had. Quinn stared out the window, only speaking when Olivia addressed a question directly to her. Much to her credit, her voice remained calm, and she even managed to dilute the panic in her eyes. But when we pulled off the interstate to grab dinner, she let Olivia go check out the jukebox the moment we sat down and began to interrogate me in a low, harsh whisper.
“What was that on the porch? Was that a cat?”
“Someone broke into your house.”
“But you said they were putting in a new security system.”
“They were supposed to, but they got delayed.”
“So someone just walked into my house?”
“The locks on the kitchen doors. They were so flimsy, it didn’t take much for someone to jimmy them open.”
She shook her head, her eyes moving from my face to Olivia by the jukebox to the busy waitresses bustling around the crowded dining room.
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
She focused on me again, her big green eyes wide with more than just fear. Determination seemed to seep from them like tears. I couldn’t help but look away.
“There was a message on your bedroom wall.”
“My bedroom?”
I nodded. I could see what a violation that was to her; I could see it on her face like I could read the pages of a book. She reached up and buried her fingers in her hair, just under the heavy elastic that held her ponytail in place.
“What did it say?”
“‘I know who you are.’”
She turned a little green around the gills, but she simply nodded. “That’s what this is all about, right? Someone’s figured out who I am, and they’re determined to punish me for it.”
“Quinn…”
I reached across the table to touch her hand, but she pulled away. She wasn’t interested in comfort.
Olivia chose that moment to come running back over, talking a mile a minute. She’d found a couple of her favorite songs on the jukebox and she wanted money to play them. Quinn got up and walked over with her, digging a couple of dollar bills out of the front pocket to her jeans. I watched, finding it harder and harder not to admire the way she moved, the way her slender hips filled out those ordinary, high-cut jeans. She didn’t wear low riders like everyone else. She didn’t seem to feel the need to show off her tight curves and her delicate navel. But there was something about the way her body filled out those jeans that made them even more erotic than low riders could ever be.
I could see other men in the diner admiring her, too. And then they would glance at me and drop their gazes, like they were concerned about some sort of retaliation. They thought we were together. And, for a moment, my chest puffed with pride at the idea that other men would admire and want something that belonged to me. But then I had to remind myself that Quinn didn’t belong to me.
This was just a job.
They came back to the booth, and Olivia jumped onto the bench beside me.
“Do you like bacon on your burgers, Vincent?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Olivia stuck her tongue out at her mom. “See! I told you it wasn’t anti-American to like bacon on a hamburger!”
“It’s not traditional is what I said,” Quinn corrected her. “And I still don’t see the fascination.”
“Salty and crispy bacon?” I tilted my head, regarding Quinn closely. “How could you not see that as the perfect complement to a perfect burger? Don’t tell me you don’t have cheese on your burgers either?”
“She eats mayonnaise on hers,” Olivia whispered to me.
“Now that’s truly un-American.”
Quinn just shook her head. “Now I’m outnumbered.”
When the food came, I leaned over and made Quinn taste my burger. She took a small bite, and Olivia cried foul.
“That’s not enough! You have to really taste it, Mommy.”
She took a bigger bite, her eyes glued to mine for a moment. Then she sat back and sighed as she chewed.
“Okay…” She shook her head and pointed her finger at Olivia. “Don’t get too big of a head, but maybe you were right.”
Olivia laughed, as I offered her a high five.
“I knew we could do it.”
“Yeah?” Quinn just shook her head. “Eat your dinner.”
Chapter 7
Quinn
We checked into a motel out in the middle of nowhere. Vincent insisted that we wait in the car while he got the room and then while he checked it out. Once inside, Olivia suddenly realized that we didn’t have any clothes. She thought it was pretty funny when Vincent went out to the car and came back with a spare t-shirt for her to wear.
“Look, I can completely disappear in this,” she said after her bath, sitting in the center of one of the beds and ducking her head into the shirt while she pulled her arms inside the armholes.
“Now you’re a turtle,” Vincent told her.
She giggled. “Then I win the race! Isn’t that how the story goes, Mommy?”
“It does.”
It took a little time to get her to settle down. I had to lie on the bed with her, her small body pressed up against mine. I smoothed her hair back from her face, stroking her cheek until she reached up and pushed my hand away. Then I just snuggled close to her, wondering what the hell I’d gotten her into.
Olivia was everything to me. If anything ever happened to her, I would never forgive myself.
Once she was settled, I became a little restless. My body just didn’t want to lie still anymore, my thigh aching and my head spinning with thoughts that were not really conducive to relaxing.
Vincent was standing by the windows, studying the parking lot that was nearly empty.
“Everything okay?”
He turned, those dark eyes unreadable in the dim lights.
“You should be sleeping.”
“Can’t.”
He pulled a chair out from the small table set there by the windows and gestured for me to sit. He sat close to me, leaning forward a little so that his hands were less than a breath from my knees.
“I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have happened.”
I shook my head, my eyes jumping to Olivia, snoring lightly in the center of the far bed. “It’s not your fault. I should have gotten out of this business long ago. I always imagined I’d get my GED, then a degree in business. But something always seemed to stand in the way. We needed to save up for a house. We needed to put away money for Olivia’s education. We needed to go on a trip to Europe…”
“Life got in the way.”
“I told myself that it was okay since I wasn’t doing any of the hardcore stuff anymore and I wasn’t putting my face out there. But I never imagined it would lead to this.”
He stared down at his hands, moving them until the slightest movement on my part would have forced him to touch me. A part of me desperately wanted him to touch me.
“Could someone close to you be doing this? Someone you work with?”
I sat back a little, lifting my arms to rub away the tension that was quickly causing a headache. “I thought about that when this first started. I even came up with a tentative list of people who might have a reason to hurt me. But I had a private detective check them out and he came up empty handed.”
“You know that’s something we’re going to have to look into.”
“I know. I gave a list of my employees and colleagues to Miss Wagner when I went in to talk to Ms. Bradford.”
He sat back. “Are there any videos out there with your face in them?”
“A few. But they’re from way back in the beginning of my career, nearly nine years ago. Someone would have to really dig to find them.”
“We’ll figure this out, Quinn,” he said after a moment’s silence. He leaned for
ward again, reaching to touch my knee. But, again, he stopped with his hand just inches from me. I found myself staring at that hand, at how long and thin his fingers were. The power in the muscle and sinew that was visible through his skin. He could have been a pianist, his hands were so perfect for that sort of thing.
I don’t know what I was thinking, but I wanted to feel that hand against me. I pressed my hand to the back of his and pushed it down onto my knee, holding it there even as I could feel him spread his fingers and press his palm tight against me.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For being so good with Olivia. She’s never really had a strong male presence in her life.”
“She’s a good kid. I like her.”
“She likes you, too. I just…” I stopped myself before I said something I might regret. But he heard it anyway.
“I shouldn’t have promised to go to her concert. I’m sorry if I overstepped any boundaries.”
“No, it’s fine. I just don’t want her disappointed.”
He nodded, his eyes falling to his hand on my knee, my hand still resting on the top of it. I was afraid he was going to pull away and something inside of me was convinced that if he did I would completely lose it. And I really didn’t want to do that.
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his. It wasn’t really a kiss, more like a touch of skin on skin. But when he didn’t pull away, I tried again, pressing my lips against his until I felt his give just a little, just enough to show me he wasn’t pulling away, that he wasn’t totally repulsed by the idea of kissing me.
I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was kissing a man I hardly knew, a man who I already knew was temporary to my life. Maybe that’s what it was. Maybe the fact that I knew he wouldn’t be around for the long term made him safe. Most of the men in my life had hurt me. My father. My stepfather. The porn stars who chewed me up and spit me out at the beginning of my career. The men who controlled my career and threatened to out me when I tried to leave. There had never been a truly good man in my life. I’d never had what could be called a normal relationship. And this…it wasn’t any different, really. This man was in a position of power over me. But I employed him, so, really, didn’t I have all the power?
VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2) Page 5