“How do you know that?” I repeated, studying his face a little closer.
“It’s a small office. You pick up a lot.”
I stepped out of the way, gesturing for him to come inside. He did, striding into my house like he owned it. I watched him move into the living room, his eyes moving to the collection of framed pictures I kept scattered on the walls and shelves throughout the room. He paused to study a photograph of Luke and me taken just weeks before he disappeared. I walked up and slipped the picture out of his hands.
“What do you want, Dante?”
“I still have friends at the New York Police Department. One of them is a guy who runs the accident reenactment department.”
“Yeah?”
“He could use the local cops’ investigation into your brother’s accident to reconstruct it. Prove that another car was involved.”
“We already know another car was involved.”
“Yeah, but from what I’ve been able to gather, your information is based on assumption and circumstantial evidence. My friend can give you something more concrete.”
He was right that we didn’t have proof that another car was involved beyond the paint scrapes found on the side of Peter’s car. Concrete evidence might convince the local cops to take another look, maybe even begin a search for the other car. Hayden, however, didn’t think that would ever happen.
“There’s not enough information in the investigation to point to another car. What would your friend use?”
“Tire marks on the street. The location of the paint scrapes on the side of Peter’s car. Damage to Peter’s car.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if we should be sharing what we have with other departments.”
“It could help.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
“Because you’re my boss. Because I want to show you I’m a team player.”
I studied him a minute, those caramel brown eyes making my heart do something it shouldn’t. He was a good-looking man, but there was more to it than that. He reminded me of Luke. He didn’t look a thing like him, but he sounded like him. Every time he opened his mouth, my soul stood up and sang. And there was something about those eyes…lots of guys have brown eyes. But Dante’s were so much like Luke’s that it killed me to look at them.
I’d never been drawn to someone other than Luke. But Dante…
“Why did you leave the NYPD?”
“Wasn’t that in my file?”
“Yes. But I want to hear your version.”
He turned away slightly, looking around the room again as though he had every right. “There were things they wanted me to do, loopholes in the law that they wanted me to take advantage of. I wasn’t comfortable with it.”
“Like what?”
“Like arresting a nice old lady simply because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like ruining some teen’s life because he wouldn’t snitch on his buddies.”
“They didn’t respect your morals?”
“They didn’t respect anyone’s morals. You have to follow certain rules in this life, or you allow yourself to become too bogged down in dirt and you pull everyone else down with you.”
Now he sounded like Peter. My brother had always believed that everyone had a responsibility to society as a whole to behave within a certain code.
But look where that got Peter.
“Okay. I’ll get you a copy of the files. But this is to be kept between you and me only. Understand?”
“Understood.”
He turned to me again, his eyes moving slowly over the bathrobe I was wearing. I thought I saw a touch of amusement in those eyes. But then it disappeared behind this mask Dante seemed to wear the majority of the time.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then, boss.”
He walked past me and his scent enveloped me for a second. He smelled like a woodshed in the summer. And I thought I saw a tiny, silver chain just under the collar of his shirt. I wondered what it was, what was important enough to him that he wore it around his neck. But then he was gone, and I was alone once again with my ghosts.
An overwhelming sense of loneliness suddenly overwhelmed me.
Would I forever be alone?
Chapter 12
Quinn
I woke as the sun began to peek through the thin blinds, not quite sure where I was for a moment. But then I felt Vincent shift beside me and it all came flooding back, the heat of his body against mine, the whispers we’d exchanged late in the night, the story he told about the girl he once loved. We were lying tangled on the couch, never bothering to pull out the sleeper hidden inside, my fingers brushing against her name and date of death on his chest. I knew what drove him to do such a thing. I’d done the same, years ago, marking my inner thigh with the tinniest blue heart with a crack down the center. It’d hurt like hell—especially after it got infected—and the pain was almost a catharsis against the man it symbolized.
But it was a bitch for Susie to cover for every movie I did.
I leaned close and kissed him over the tattoo, then slipped out of bed. I didn’t want Olivia to wake up and find my bed unslept in. But I shouldn’t have worried. She was sound asleep still, curled up on her side, her hands tucked under her head. I stood there for a long minute, never able to drink her in enough. She was the best thing I’d ever done. My masterpiece. The idea that someone could hurt her…I was putting a lot of trust in Dragon Security. In Vincent.
I showered quickly and was downstairs making breakfast before either Olivia or Vincent woke. But then it was chaos as Olivia rushed around searching for her schoolbooks, Vincent teasing her as he tried to help. I barely got a pancake down her throat before she was mumbling under her breath about the homework she should have done instead of playing on the beach all weekend.
Was she ten or sixteen?
Vincent trapped me against the sink as I tried to rinse the dishes, tugging my hair out of the way so he could drop a kiss on my neck.
“Morning,” he whispered against my ear.
I leaned back into him for a long second, but then we heard Olivia running back down the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the bare wood floor.
“Can you help me with my writing assignment, Mommy? I have to turn it in as soon as I get to school.”
The doorbell rang just as I settled at the table to take a look at what we were doing. It was simple paragraph, something Olivia could do completely on her own in about five minutes, but I helped anyway as Vincent went to answer the door. He came back a second later with Cole in tow.
“Olivia, this is Cole Bradford. He’s my friend that we told you about last night.”
Olivia looked up from her homework and politely held out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Cole smiled, his attractive features turning into something brighter and even more pleasant as a dimple appeared low on his left cheek.
“Nice to meet you, too, Olivia,” he said in a warm, deep voice.
Olivia blushed a little before turning her attention back to her homework.
“There’s coffee and pancakes, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, but my fiancée got up early and fixed me breakfast before I left.”
I looked up just in time to catch a look of amusement on Vincent’s face.
“You’re engaged?” he asked.
“As of three days ago.”
“Well, congrats, brother!”
They did this fancy handshake that I lost track of after the first smack, and then they were doing that stupid bro hug that guys do, the thing where they slap each other on the back so they aren’t accused of actually showing any kind of affection for one another.
“Congratulations,” I said when an awkward silence began to fall.
“What’s engaged?” Olivia asked.
“It means that Cole’s getting married.” Vincent shook his head, pure amusement on his face. “And that, in itself, is a miracle. If you’d known this gu
y the way I did, you would not believe it.”
“Hey,” Cole said, a little color coming into his face, “I wasn’t that bad.”
“You were worse. Do you remember that leave we took in Germany? All those girls—”
“If I recall properly, you were right there beside me, brother.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not engaged.”
His eyes jumped to me almost the second the words dropped from his mouth. I wasn’t sure what it was about the way he was looking at me—if he was wondering if there was hope that he might one day be engaged, or if he was remembering the story he’d told me last night—but I felt like someone had doused me in ice cold water. I got up, suddenly remembering that I’d left my cell phone upstairs.
“Quinn,” he said as I walked past him, reaching for my hand, but purposely not grabbing it.
“I’ll be back. Can you help her finish that assignment?”
If he said anything else, I didn’t hear it.
I ran upstairs, taking the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping once or twice because my legs weren’t quite long enough for such exercise. My phone was on the dresser in my bedroom. I stopped just inside the threshold, my eyes moving to the bed across the room. It was a new bedspread. No one mentioned it, not even Vincent when he said they’d be cleaning the mess the intruder had made in here. He never even gave me details of the mess that was made, just the mention of the message on the wall—which had been covered with fresh paint that I could still smell. But I knew it was a new bedspread because mine had a slight tear on the bottom left corner that had happened late one night when Olivia was sick and I was trying to get her to the bathroom, but my bracelet caught on a loose thread. The tear wasn’t there anymore.
I was creeped out by the idea that some stranger had been close enough to my bed to require the cleanup crew to replace my bedspread.
I grabbed my phone just as it began to vibrate with a call.
“Quinn, thank goodness! I thought you were never going to answer the phone.”
“Coleman?”
“I’m at the studio. You need to get down here as soon as you can.”
“Why?”
“There’s been a break in.”
I cursed under my breath, my mind already spinning. “Can we film?”
“No. It’s bad, Quinn. Really bad.”
“Okay. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
“Should we call the police?”
“You haven’t already?”
“No. I wanted to check with you first.”
“Call the police. I’ll be there in twenty.”
***
The damage was overwhelming. The intruder had disabled the alarm system at the electrical box then proceeded to destroy everything that wasn’t nailed down. The sheets on the bed were slashed, the mattress ripped open and the matting inside pulled out and scattered around the cavernous room. There was spray paint used to create multiple lewd pictures on the walls, most of them red and dripping like blood. The dressing rooms had been completely destroyed, the furnishings broken, the costumes cut and shredded. My office was the same, furniture smashed, the cushions on the couch ripped open, the filing cabinets open and their contents shredded or simply scattered across the floor.
But what really got me was the message that was written…six feet tall on a back wall.
“You’re mine. I will have you.”
I was sick to my stomach when I saw it.
The cops were no help. The moment they realized what we did there in the studio, they were more interested in my right to work than in what the intruder had done.
“Do you have a permit to film here?”
“Do you have a lease for this building?”
“Are you aware of city ordinance allowances for a business such as yours?”
It was ridiculous. Someone had just set my business back a week, maybe longer, and they wanted to know if I had my paperwork in order.
“Someone broke into my place of business. That’s against the law.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the cops said, eyeing me over the top of his notebook. “But we need to ask these questions.”
“Don’t you want to know about the damage to my property? Do you not see the spray paint on the walls, or the pieces of cloth scattered all over the floor? We’re damn lucky we didn’t have our cameras here!”
“If you’ll calm down, ma’am—”
“Calm down? You’re grilling me over my business permits when it’s pretty obvious what happened here. First they break into my house and now my place of business. And you’re doing nothing?”
Vincent moved between the cop and me. I caught the look of surprise on the cop’s face, but he had no reason to fear Vincent—except for the fact that he towered over the short, stout cop.
“The lady would simply like to know if you’ll be investigating this crime.”
“We’ll write out a report. But with cases like this, there’s little chance anything would come of an investigation.”
“Especially if you don’t investigate,” I said, leaning around Vincent. He grabbed my hip and pushed me back behind him even as the cop’s face registered anger.
“We’re not miracle workers. A break in like this…it’s usually a disgruntled employee. I’d suggest you start there.”
The cop handed Vincent a piece of paper with a case number on it and walked out, gesturing for his partner to follow.
“Quinn!”
Susie came running through the door around the cops. She threw her arms around me, pulling me into the world’s tightest bear hug.
“Coleman called me. When he described what he’d found…” She pulled back and stared into my face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The studio, however…”
I turned so that she could see the full impact of what had happened. She took a step forward, then stopped, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“My God!”
“It’s bad. We’ll have to cancel production for the rest of the week.” I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to wrap my mind around the complete destruction of my fledgling business. “Maybe next week, too.”
“What about the production staff? And the actors?”
“We’ll have to pay them a partial salary.”
Susie turned and stared at me. “Quinn…”
“It’s fine. I can do it. I just…I hope the insurance pays out.”
“It will.” Vincent moved up behind me. “I need to get you out of here.”
“I need to clean up. And I need to arrange for the furnishings to be replaced.”
“I can do that,” Susie said. “Coleman will help.”
“That’s not your job.”
“Quinn, you can’t stay here. We shouldn’t have come at all. But we need to go now.” Vincent touched my hip, tugging me close to him. “It’s not safe.”
“Neither is the house. Neither is Olivia’s school.” I turned, a feeling of desperation suddenly building in my chest. “Is there any safe place?”
“Away from here.” He made me look at him, his hand cupping my chin. “You need to listen to me and follow my instruction. Remember our deal?”
“Go,” Susie said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll take care of things.”
I found myself staring into Vincent’s eyes, those warm eyes that were fringed with such incredible lashes. There was something about the way he was looking at me that calmed the tension that had been building inside of me since I got Coleman’s call.
“Okay.” I slowly turned and hugged Susie. “Thank you.”
Vincent escorted me out of the building. The cops were gone, but there was a small group of people gathered in the parking lot, talking. Probably about the nature of the business that was located inside the building. I felt eyes on me as Vincent helped me into the SUV, more whispers behind hands.
“I guess my secret is out.”
“For the moment. The gossip will blow over.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I sat back and ran my fingers through my hair, remembering how we’d been driven out of a business sector in Austin because some of our neighbors found out what we were doing inside the office building. It actually happened twice to me when I was working for Diamond Productions in Austin. And it was about to happen again. Only this time I was in charge.
We were conducting legal business. But people didn’t want to know where it was happening; they didn’t want details. They just wanted to be able to watch it in the privacy of their own homes.
Vincent didn’t say a word as we drove back across town to my empty house. I let us in, quickly inserting the proper code into the alarm system so that it wouldn’t start bleating at us. Then I dropped my bag and walked back to the kitchen, pulling a bottle of wine out of fridge.
“Little early, isn’t it?” Vincent asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
I took a long swallow, biting back angry tears that were burning my throat. I wanted to scream, to throw something. I wanted to cry, but it’d been so long since I allowed myself tears that I wasn’t sure I still knew how to go about it.
“Quinn…”
Vincent took the bottle of wine from my hands, taking my face between his hands. “Don’t let this guy win. Don’t let him get into your head.”
“I feel like I’ve been violated. Like my stepfather snuck into my bed again, you know?”
“I can’t know what that was like. But I understand your anger and frustration.”
“He’s playing with my life. My income! If this business goes under, I don’t know how I’ll pay for Olivia’s tuition at school, or how I’ll pay our bills when our savings runs out. This is my livelihood.”
“I know.”
“First they break into my house and soil my private space. And now my business. I can’t…I’m not going to just sit back and wait for them to hurt my daughter or someone else I care about.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Cole is watching Olivia, I’m here with you, and Marcus, another guy from Dragon, has been watching Susie for days now.”
“What?”
Vincent’s eyes softened as he studied my face. “Megan knew Susie was important to you, and they cleared her as a suspect, so she assigned Marcus to keep an eye on her. Just in case.”
VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2) Page 10