Not paying any attention to her, he continued ravaging the sock.
“In the pack that came with him, it says that I have to be strict with him when he misbehaves so that he’ll complete his training. Apparently, if they get too relaxed, they can’t follow orders like they should.”
This I already knew. “You’re gonna have to toughen up on him, or he’ll have to be boarded with them until he finishes.”
Her horrified gasp got his attention away from his kill, and he went running out into the hallway. “I can’t put him in military school—”
“It’s not a military school, it’s a boarding kennel with a company that trains him to—”
“Well then, I can’t put him into boarding school. He’s only little!”
A crashing sound and snarling followed, and when we ran into the living room, he was attacking the end table he’d knocked over.
“Tomorrow, when Phil gets here, speak to him about this and see what he says. It might be why they do the last two weeks of their training with the owners, just in case he tries to slack off?” I suggested, rubbing her back. “Go find out what the information he gave us says about discipline and shit, and I’ll clean this up.”
According to the information, we were to be strict with him, so any misbehavior on his behalf at all was to be dealt with. Not like beating the poor thing, but by following the guidelines they set out for us.
He also had to be kenneled at night until his training was finished, which was just as well because she had an alarm system that she turned on at night, and until he learned how to control himself properly, he’d be setting it off repeatedly.
Letting Clyde out to the bathroom, I cleaned up the mess he’d made with the end table and put it back in place before locking everything up and ignoring the puppy eyes he gave me when I put him in his kennel. I wasn’t made of stone, so it was fucking hard to do, but if it was what was best for him, then it had to be done.
I couldn’t handle a shitty kid, but I could handle a puppy. I think?
Chapter Eight
Zuri
I was just going from dozing to a deep sleep when what sounded like a police siren started screeching in the house.
My reaction was automatic as I threw the covers off my legs and then tried to jump out of bed at the same time. It shouldn’t have gone wrong, but my feet ended up getting caught up in the sheet, and I crashed to the floor, landing on my bad arm.
I could feel the pressure building in my chest for the screech that wanted to come out of me and join the siren noises, but then I saw the screen of my phone that’d dropped to the floor with me and freaked out at the message from the camera attached to my alarm system on it.
Motion detected in the living room.
Clyde was in the living room. Whoever was here was hurting him.
So, holding my arm to my chest, I struggled up off the floor, eventually needing to dig my uninjured elbow into the bed and use it to help me get up, and started running in that direction.
Before I’d gotten Clyde, I would’ve been hiding and calling 911. Now, I had a puppy to look after. Priorities!
I expected to hear snarling and barking, but instead, all I could hear was him howling along to the siren noise like he was singing with it.
I’d just cleared the entrance to the hallway when Garrett shouted, “What’s the code again?”
“9911,” I shouted back, watching him key it in—then it all went silent, apart from the tail end of Clyde’s howl.
That was until something ran into the side of my ankle, and I screamed my ass off.
“It’s the Roomba, pretty girl. That’s what tripped the alarm sensors, too.”
Ah, my new toy. After four days of trying to vacuum and clean with my left hand, I’d given up and ordered it. I’d been about to order the cheapest version possible, but the reviews on this one sold it to me, and now it did the work for me.
Nodding, I glanced up at him and tried to stop my lower lip from trembling when the new pain on top of the old pain in my arm kicked in. “Garrett?”
He was typing something in on his phone, so he didn’t look up when I called his name. “Yeah?”
“I think I broke my arm again.”
And that’s how I ended up fucking up my arm again and getting a new cast. I was starting all over again, joy. I’d also torn some of the stitches on my back, but because the wounds had mostly healed, it hadn’t reopened them. What it’d done instead was tear the skin they were stitched into, so now I had some new cuts on it being held together with steri-strips.
As we walked across the parking lot to where he’d parked, Garrett put his arm around my waist and pulled me into his side. “Don’t worry, I’ll be your hair slave for another six weeks.”
That’s what was worrying me. After six weeks, was I going to have to give him back?
The trainer, Phil, came to the house the next morning to discuss Clyde with me and show me what I needed to do.
Apparently, his behavior last night with the tables had been him testing boundaries. He was trained to protect, but he was still a puppy, and I had to make sure I kept him within the set limits so he didn’t get ‘sloppy’.
“I don’t know if I can be that mean. Have you seen those eyes? How do I say no?”
Garrett had come home to speak to Phil with Dave in tow, so the two of them burst out laughing at the same time when I stood there anxiously chewing my thumbnail at the prospect of telling Clyde off.
Had they seen those puppy eyes? He killed me.
“Zuri, you’ve got to be tough. I’m not saying be mean to the guy, I’m saying you’ve got to be firm and keep the boundaries firmly in place, or he’s going to forget his training. So, when you say no, you mean no. When you give a command, he gets rewarded for obeying it. When he reacts how he should to things that impact your safety, he also gets rewarded,” Phil explained calmly. “This is why we do these last weeks with y’all together. We’re not only training you individually, but we’re also training you together.”
Looking down at the sad eyes staring at me, I had to wonder if mine looked the same to him. “I’m weak. All I want to do is sit on the couch and feed him treats.”
The problem was, Garrett had bought him for me to not only keep me safe but also because I’d never had a dog. It was his way of ticking both the boxes for us. However, Dave knew my story and why I was here, so saying this in front of him was the wrong thing to do.
“I think you know better than anyone how important it is to be safe, Zuri. You know as well as I do how much bad shit can happen and that you need to use whatever you can to stop it and protect yourself,” he said quietly.
I felt the blood drain from my face and had zero doubts that Garrett didn’t see it when he frowned and looked between the two of us.
“What do you mean?” he asked Dave.
Keeping his eyes on mine, Dave lifted his chin and gestured in Phil’s direction to remind him that we had company. “Zuri will talk to you later, and she will be talking to you, or I’ll be over to tell you myself.”
Oh, fuck my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Garrett, it’s just that I knew once he had all the details, he’d treat me differently. He’d either look at me like I had an infectious disease, or he’d go nuts when it came to my safety.
I knew I had to be careful. I’d spent the last year living like I was afraid to breathe until recently.
I’d even been running through ways to tell him everything in my head, but I could never get the guts to go through with it.
That’s why I’d been on that damned chair hanging up the frame in the first place instead of waiting until later that night. It’s hardly like one of the first things you do is hang up pictures when you move. Usually—at least for me—that was done once you’d put everything away. I’d planned to tell him that day and was freaking out, so I’d picked up the frame and started messing around with placement and that level thing, with the bubble in the fluid inside it, to make su
re it was even before I’d even put a nail in the damn wall.
Sighing, I nodded at Dave and focused back in on what Phil was saying. If Garrett ran screaming from the house later on, at least I’d have Clyde to keep me safe.
Seven hours later…
After another five hours of training with Phil, I’d been left alone with my thoughts and Clyde for too many hours. So, when Garrett opened the front door and slammed it behind him, I almost pooped my pants. It wasn’t a hulking grand slam, like a dramatic movie one, but more of a muted bang if that was possible.
Placing his vest next to the door, Garrett held his hand up in the air as he bent over, then undid his boots and toed them off. This I already knew was his ritual. He never wore his work boots into the house because he said he knew what he stood in all day, and he didn’t want to trek it through his home—which I appreciated.
Once he’d straightened up again, he moved closer to where I was sitting on the floor, spinning a puppy treat around on the wooden floor. It was my makeshift fidget spinner, bacon-flavored for your delight.
“Okay, I’ve spent the last six and a half hours going through movie, book, and crime show plots, trying to figure out what DB was talking about today. I’ve thought of an arranged marriage to an abusive husband, to controlling parents, to you witnessing a crime and running to save yourself, to being a princess from some unknown island who wants to live a normal life away from royalty.”
I had to bite my lip to stop the smile that wanted to break free at these ideas.
“Will you please put me out of my misery,” he begged and then turned a glare on Clyde. “And you can fucking bark like you’ve been trained to, asshole.”
Moving onto my knees so that I could get up off the floor, I tried not to look graceless as I stood up, but my muscle game was weak, so I probably did.
“Phil said because you’re being trained with him, Clyde considers you to be a safe person when you arrive. If you come with someone else, he’ll pick up the scent of the person—like he did with Dave today—and bark to warn me. He also said if you drove erratically, he’d do it then, too. There are some exceptions to the rules, but if you pull up normally and everything is as he knows it, he won’t react and bark. It was one of the biggest complaints about protection dogs once they went to their new homes, so they began to train the dogs at Phil’s around that.”
Raising his eyebrows, he glanced down at Clyde, who was sniffing his leg and wagging his tail, not at all upset by what Garrett had said to him. “I apologize, Clyde. Your momma’s driving me insane is all.”
Sitting down on the sofa, I rubbed my lips together while I waited for Garrett to take a seat. When he chose one of the armchairs instead of next to me like he usually would, I had to breathe through the sting in my chest, but it also spurred me into just saying fuck it and letting it all out without waiting for him to ask again.
“Dave helped my dad when I needed a place to be safe,” I started, lifting my head to look at him. His face was blank as he listened to me. “Just over two years ago, my dad was involved in a case—”
“Wait, your dad’s a police officer?”
Frowning, I realized I probably should’ve started with that nugget of information. “A detective for the New York Police Department.”
Whistling, he nodded slowly. “Lots of work there.”
Cocking my head slightly to hide how confused the comment made me, I continued, “He’s done it for twenty-nine years.” I explained, then added, “Well, maybe not being a detective for that long, but he’s been in the NYPD for that long.” Then, with nerves riding me, I clapped loudly, “No, thirty-one years now, it was twenty-nine when it all happened.”
Sensing how nervous I was, Clyde whined and came over to shove his head between my knees, allowing me a moment to take a deep breath and calm the hell down.
“Zuri,” Garrett called, and I slowly raised my head. “Settle down before you have a heart attack at twenty-four, baby, yeah?”
Knowing he was right, I gave myself a shake and nodded. “I’m good now, and it’s probably better that I just get it all out.”
When he gave me an encouraging nod, I braced and just went with it. “Almost two years ago, my dad was on his way home when a call went out to request any personnel in the area attend a report of a man who was holding a woman hostage on the roof of an apartment block in New York. Dad was in the area, so he rerouted and got to the scene almost immediately. He spoke to dispatch, who told him that there were three ongoing scenes in the city, so SWAT and other units would be delayed getting there. That included the hostage negotiator.”
Groaning, Garrett rubbed his face with both hands. “Yeah, there’ve been some cutbacks, so things were already stretched thinly. Even bringing in teams from other areas was going to be delayed by traffic jams and the rush hour, which was made worse by a ton of roadworks and maintenance that they had going on. Basically, the whole thing was a nightmare from the very beginning.”
“So was it just your dad?”
“No, some other officers were able to attend to help him out, but the chief told him that he was to go up there and assist because they had high profile situations with multiple persons at risk in other locations across the city at that time.”
“Jesus,” he winced.
“Dad’s been doing the job long enough that he’s been in situations like that before, so he went up and used his training to talk to the man and find out what was going on. He was just your average Joe, Garrett, but he’d invested all of his savings and income in some sort of hedge fund run by a businessman called Cevdet Gjorka. The man was about to lose the home his family was in because he’d been so set on gaining money that he’d missed mortgage payments.”
Groaning, he tipped his head back. “I know this case. He lost his footing as they were walking back up the roof tiles, and they went over, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Cevdet had just arrived at the scene to talk to the man. They landed on his car.”
“Fuuuuck,” he drawled, rubbing both eyes with the palms of his hands. “Yeah, it was being broadcast live.”
It had been. A news crew had set up five minutes previously to report live on what was going on as it involved such a high profile businessman. One of the apartment block’s residents had heard the shouting and the guy’s name and had been Tweeting about it the whole time, alerting a news crew to what was going on. The reporter was in the middle of telling viewers about what they were being told by the resident about the situation when the man slipped. They cut the feed as soon as it happened, but it’d been seen by tens of thousands of people.
“After it was all investigated and the inquest was over, people associated with it started either going missing, or they ended up dead. Then it turned to the police, and Dad was advised to take precautions as they believed—but couldn’t confirm—that he was involved and getting revenge on the people he felt, and still feels, played a part in his daughter’s death.”
Garrett’s eyes almost drilled into me with their intensity. “Including you.”
The smile that I plastered on my face was brittle. “As a way to get back at my dad.”
Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees and stared at me. “What happened?”
“I was walking along Hudson River Waterfront Walk with my friend after we’d watched a charity golf game at Liberty National Golf Course when we heard bangs. I don’t know if it was a warning or if the person was a really shitty shooter, but he kept missing us and hit three other people instead. We had to run to get to where I’d parked, and on the way home, someone tried to run us off the road. I drove straight to Dad, and when we got there, we saw someone had scratched into the paint are you afraid of heights. Dad also had swords stabbed into all four of his tires with his name engraved in them.”
He was staring at me in shock when I finished, absorbing this. “Why didn’t this ever make the news or become public knowledge.”
“Because then
photos of me would have been broadcasted, or my social media would’ve been. That’s what always happens nowadays, and any hope of disappearing would’ve been gone because I’d have had no anonymity.”
Nodding slowly again, he murmured, “Makes sense.”
“I left a couple of days later in the trunk of my neighbor’s car, and I kept changing vehicles every eight hours because we didn’t know what kind of intel Cevdet had. Dad knows Alex, so he spoke to him, and he recommended Piersville. Dave and Tabby came to meet me, and I relocated here.”
He didn’t say a word when I finished, and my palms started to get sweaty as the silence dragged on. Finally—effing finally—he dropped his head and sighed.
“What in the fuck is wrong with people? I spent years involved in shit overseas with terrorists and stains on the souls of society, and all the time we’ve got assholes like this here?” His head snapped up, and he glared at the wall behind me. “Do people even watch international news and take it in? Do they even think that with that shit going on somewhere else, it’d be nice to keep their home country clean and fresh?”
I wasn’t sure if he was looking for me to reply or just letting off steam, but I squeaked, “No?”
When his eyes moved to me, and I was now on the receiving end of the glare, I wanted to sink into the couch and hide.
“No, they fucking don’t.” Then he stood up and started pacing. “Like your dad could’ve prevented the guy from slipping. Yeah, he shouldn’t have been up there with her in the first place, but the guy—”
“Cevdet Gjorka.”
Frowning at me, he repeated, “Cevdet Gjorka should be taking a huge chunk of the responsibility for this on his shoulders. He was the one who went into business with the man, and the man was holding the daughter on the roof because of that business. And why hasn’t he been arrested?”
This was the truly fucked up bit. “There’s no evidence that it’s him. He’s been arrested and questioned but was released without charge on all of the occasions. He always had a solid alibi, and nothing was ever found to tie him to it,” I sighed.
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