Daddy Next Door - The Complete Series Box Set (A Single Dad Navy SEAL Romance)

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Daddy Next Door - The Complete Series Box Set (A Single Dad Navy SEAL Romance) Page 53

by Claire Adams


  My father pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please, for the love of God, don't tell me this, not now. From what I see, all you love is hanging out in the basement playing video games. How are you going to turn that into any sort of respectable career?"

  I turned the car, taking a shortcut through a neighborhood towards the pizza place. The drive could not be over quickly enough for either of us. "It's an entire international, multi-billion-dollar industry. People have very successful and very respectable careers in it."

  "People? You mean like that Owen Redd? Please, Quinn, you cannot be drawing inspiration from a guy like him."

  "Owen is creating his own career, his dream job. How can I not be inspired by that?" I asked. I realized too late we were on the street where Owen lived. His apartment, the top-floor loft of a three-story six-plex was two blocks ahead. I had driven Sienna there dozens of times.

  "Turn right up here," my father said. "Looks like the police are causing some kind of detour.”

  I bit my lip and turned. Two squad cars were parked outside of Owen's apartment building. One of the uniformed officers at the curb was pointing to the top-floor apartment. "I hope there wasn't an accident." My heart flopped and my ears buzzed; the memory of the last time I saw flashing emergency lights squeezed my heart.

  My father ignored me. "You need to understand something about people like Owen. He's taking the easy way out. Just because he has a talent does not mean he'll make a living at it. If he's telling you that then it’s a lie."

  "How can you say that? You don't know anything about Owen," I said.

  "I've seen enough guys like Owen. I've had to defend them in court. If he's telling everyone he's made a successful career out of sitting around on his couch, ten-to-one there is something illegal going on. Sure, it might look good on the surface, but he's cheating the system somehow," my father said. "Your sister understood the only way you get ahead is through hard work. Following your dreams means you're either dirt poor or you are running a scam."

  I drove the rest of the way to the pizza parlor without saying a word. I was worried about Owen, but my father's words filtered into my brain like acid. What did I really know about what Owen did?

  Chapter Four

  Owen

  I looked out the window and noticed the streetlights had come on. Most people thought I played in a windowless basement. They would never believe I sat in a third-story loft apartment with a great view of the Nevada sunset. The sky had gone from dark pinks and oranges into a purplish blue and now it was dark.

  As I turned back to Dark Flag, another display of lights lit up my window. The rolling reds and blues of a police car grew brighter. I watched as two squad cars converged and left the lights on. The officers got out and met at the curb. One of them pointed up to my floor.

  I logged out of the game just as the sharp knock hit my door.

  "Police. Open up."

  I pulled open the door wide. "Can I help you, officers?"

  "You can step aside, sir. We have a search warrant for this residence. Are you Owen Redd?" the bald and tight-mouthed officer asked.

  "Yes, sir. What is this about?" I stepped back and let them in.

  Three uniformed officers entered behind the one that spoke. He brandished a folded piece of paper. "We're going to take a look around."

  I almost laughed. The loft apartment was a wide open room. A kitchen island separated one end from a wall of appliances. The other end was divided by a short hallway with two bedrooms off either side and a bathroom at the end. An L-shaped sofa delineated our living room. There was no dining room table, just a wide area rug where a few bits of my roommate's exercise equipment were scattered. Every inch of the apartment besides the bedrooms was on display.

  The officers drifted to opposite corners of the apartment and started poking around. One eyeballed the built-in bookshelves that stood against the wall to my bedroom. Another strolled through the kitchen and opened kitchen cabinets at random. He left them hanging open. The third officer walked along the picture windows and I half expected him to wave to his partner on the curb watching the squad cars.

  It had to be a joke.

  The bald policeman handed me the folded paper before he turned and opened our entryway closet. Suddenly, all of the officers were going through things with both hands. Books were taken off shelves, drawers dug through, and clothes pushed aside to reveal the back edges of the closet. I opened the paper and discovered a very real search warrant.

  "You're looking for drugs?" I asked.

  The policeman near the windows was running his hands along the top of my television. "Pretty nice set-up you have here. Play video games?"

  "Online, multi-player," I said.

  "What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Redd?" the bald officer reappeared from the back of our coat closet.

  "I'm a sponsored player for the game Dark Flag," I said.

  "You're telling me you sit around all day playing video games and someone pays you for it?"

  "Yes, sir. I have the pay stubs to prove it. Though from the looks of this search warrant, I don't have to show them to you," I said.

  "You might want to ask your lawyer about that," he said with a mean smile.

  "Why exactly do you think there are drugs here?" I asked.

  All four police officers scoffed and continued their digging without another word. Another stereotype of the gaming world: I sat around high while I played or somehow funded my sitting around by selling drugs on the side.

  I sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island as they delved deeper into their search. All of the books came off the shelves and the officer sneezed as he flipped through the dusty pages.

  "Yeah, those are more for display than anything. I mean, I don't know what else to put on that many shelves," I said.

  The policeman in the kitchen had light duty as there were only two pots and a cast iron skillet in the lower cupboards. The upper cabinets had a random collection of pint glasses, a few mismatched plates, and coffee mugs with ridiculous sayings printed on them.

  "Looks like he's a gourmet," he said. The pantry was bare except for a bag of brown rice, a few loose power bars, and a box of popcorn. The refrigerator had a stack of lunchmeat packages, a loaf of bread, and two drawers of fresh vegetables. "What, no cheese puffs and rocket fuel soda?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "I'm more of a stir fry guy. Better protein stops snacking."

  He eyeballed my trim waistline and scowled. "Sure, buddy. There's an awful lot of take-out containers in the trash."

  "My roommate," I said.

  As if that was a cue, the officers divided up and headed by pairs into the two bedrooms. I waited for twenty minutes until they reappeared.

  The bald one was on his cell phone calling in a K-9 unit. "Gotta be thorough. Don't want to waste tax-payer money," he said.

  The officers then ignored me and talked about football until the K-9 unit arrived. A German Shepherd with intelligent brown eyes and an eager pace pulled its partner into my apartment. After the third zig-zagging trip around, it looked up at its partner with a lopsided expression of boredom.

  He turned the dog towards the bedrooms and it dragged him down the short hallway. It was in and out of my roommate's room in five minutes. Four minutes into my room, there was a low woof. The officer reappeared with the prancing dog; a sport coat in his hand.

  I recognized the sport coat as the one my roommate had lent me. It had been in contention for wearing to the memorial service until I decided to wear my suit. If something was found in the pockets of his coat, he'd catch hell at work and most likely get fired.

  "Nothing in it, but Gertrude likes it for something. Marijuana most likely," the officer said.

  "My roommate wore it to a club a few days ago," I said.

  Even the dog gave me a disbelieving look. I sat back down on my stool – it was going to be a long evening.

  #

  "Convenient that your roommate lent you this coat we found in your
room," the bald officer said.

  I was glad when my phone rang. I looked down and saw Quinn's name. My stomach jumped more from her than from the suspicious looks the police gave me.

  "One of your clients?" the second officer asked.

  "The fading scent of pot on a sports coat that was worn to a dance club doesn't really prove intent to sell, does it?" I asked. "And since I'm not the average under-informed, sub-intelligent criminal I'm sure you're used to making you feel smart, this whole search is over." I opened the door to let them out.

  The K-9 officer was pulled through the open door by his eager partner. Two of the others shrugged and went to follow him, but the bald policeman blocked the door.

  "Funny thing about stereotypes," he said. "They always come from some sort of truth. Like the fact that most criminals get all cocky like you are now before the weight of the law chokes it out of them."

  I found a beer on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and cracked it open before sitting back down on my kitchen stool. The police officers looked thirsty. "Go ahead and keep searching. You've got your warrant, and I'm not stopping you."

  He scrubbed his bald head. There was no reason for them to remain at my place, but he could not let me have the last word. "Tell us about this alleged roommate of yours."

  "Alleged? His name is on the mailbox and all that mail over there. I would have thought you would know all about him from your search of his bedroom."

  "Are you going to cooperate or what, Mr. Redd?" He crossed his arms over a beefy chest.

  "Fine, yes. My roommate's name is Jasper Collins. He does freelance web design, mainly for commercial businesses and corporations. He's always telling me he's after the 'big fish.' I think he even sent a proposal to your precinct after he got fed up trying to pay a parking ticket through your website."

  "Freelance? So you two just sit around all day staring at your screens?" the officer asked.

  "No, Jasper is more of the go-getter type. He gets most of his clients through face-to-face meetings. Encourages the techno-afraid to let him help," I said.

  "And who was his last client?"

  "A bakery over on Tenth," I said. "He said they have good donuts, maybe you know the place?"

  The cops all sneered, but the tallest one stopped and tilted his head as he thought. "They did. The place closed down two months back."

  I mentally ran through the list of clients Jasper had talked about. As I thought about it, I realized three of the clients he mentioned recently were local businesses I had seen closed or for rent. I never paid much attention because Jasper always paid his share of the rent on time and in full. There were holes all through his work stories, and I had just tripped into one in front of the police.

  "A lot of businesses try shutting their brick and mortar stores and going online," I said.

  One of the officers ducked into Jasper's room and came back out with a business card and folio. "Looks pretty polished to me. Your roommate's got a solid business plan. What? I went to business school before academy."

  The bald policeman shook his head at his partner. "So, your roommate is a go-getter with a business plan and real clients. And you play an imaginary game for money."

  Quinn called again. I took another swig of my beer and enjoyed knowing her quick-wit was only a button away. What would she say to the room full of police? The thought made me smile.

  "Another client?"

  "No. Same person," I said and showed him my phone.

  "Oh? You get a lot of ladies by playing video games?" the bald officer asked.

  "You'd be surprised how many attractive women play Dark Flag, officer. She's actually very good at it. A novice, but I think if I trained her up a bit she'd be amazing," I said.

  He took the phone and considered the photo of Quinn that accompanied her ring. It was one of my favorite pictures.

  Sienna and I had gone together to visit Quinn the day she arrived on campus. She had just pulled on her UCLA sweatshirt. Her hair was a riot and she was brushing it back and smiling a wide grin when I snapped the picture. Sienna dismissed it for not being posed or polished. That was what I loved most about it. Quinn looked natural and happy with a bright shine to her eyes.

  "Is that why so many people come and go from your place?" he asked.

  "What?" I put down my phone.

  "Sounds like people are in and out of here all the time. You 'training' other people?" the officer asked.

  "I did not know it was a crime to have people over to our apartment," I said. Jasper had a very lively social life. He could not bear to be in the apartment more than twenty minutes on his own. He was always inviting people over for a drink, to watch a show, or to gather and head out on the town.

  The only person I ever had over regularly was Sienna, and that had stopped nearly a year ago. She did not have time to leave UCLA except to visit her parents and she much preferred the interior designed surroundings of her family's home to my bachelor pad.

  "We both work off-hours and know a lot of other people with the same work-from-home type schedules," I said. "Jasper works with other freelancers – logo-designers, artists, etcetera. I have an agent and other industry colleagues that come here. So, yeah, people come over a lot."

  "Well, Mr. Redd, all I can say is you should stay in town. This is not over yet," the bald officer said. He was happy with his final word and lead the way out the door.

  I took another long sip of my beer and hoped that Quinn would call again.

  #

  After a few minutes, I picked up the phone to call Quinn. Then, I put it down. It wasn't like I did not have other people to call. Other women, too. It just seemed like she was the first one on my mind. I shook my head and moved away from the phone.

  Then it rang. It was Quinn. I picked it up on the second ring.

  "Owen, are you alright? I was driving to pick up a pizza and I think I saw cops outside of your apartment building," she said.

  I forced myself to take a sip of beer and slow down. "Yeah, they were here, but everything is alright."

  "Seriously? Why were there cops at your place?"

  "I don't know, someone trying to mess with me." The first explanation that came to mind took hold. "I bet another Dark Flag player got ahold of my address and thought they'd rattle me a little bit. There's actually a tournament coming up and maybe they hope I'll cancel."

  "People do that?" Quinn asked.

  It made sense. The players who focused on taking me down were usually very serious gamers and hacking came easily to many people in that set. Finding my address from my IP would not be impossible. I made a mental note to adjust my security settings and encrypt my IP address.

  I heard the front door opening. There was one other explanation to why the cops were searching my apartment for drugs. "Look, I gotta go. Everything's fine. Maybe I'll see you in Dark Flag later."

  I hung up on Quinn and waited for Jasper to untangle himself from his leather messenger bag, suit coat, and scarf. No matter what the weather was like, he always dressed like a man out of GQ.

  "Hey, Owen, didn't see you there. How's my playah?" Jasper asked.

  "Your timing is perfect, per usual," I said. "The police were here not too long ago. Spent good quality time searching the place for drugs."

  He dropped his bag hard onto the floor but laughed. "Seriously? And I missed it? I've been meaning to follow up about that proposal I sent over to the precinct."

  "Yeah? I told them about that. Right after they handed me a search warrant and went through everything," I said.

  Jasper grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. "How long did that take them? Did they thank us simple bachelors for making it easy on them?"

  "They brought in a K-9," I said.

  Jasper took a long time to open his beer and take a heavy gulp. "Man, what have you done to piss off the authorities lately?"

  "Who says it’s me?" I asked.

  "People love to jump to stereotypes when I talk about my gamer roommate. You
know, cheese puffs, high octane sodas, and a shut-in in sweatpants. I could see how the cops might jump to 'deals pot on the side.'"

  "Except I don't," I said. "I don't even smoke pot. It would be in violation of my contracts. It'd be my career, too, you know."

  "You say that like I'm the one that's guilty," Jasper said. He leaned against the counter and crossed his leather dress shoes. "All I'm saying is one of our nosy neighbors probably got the idea from some movie and tipped off the police. Gets a bit boring around here. Man, I'm sad I missed all the action."

  "Me too. Especially when the German Shepherd was very interested in the pocket of the sports coat you lent me," I said.

  "Oh?" Jasper asked. He straightened up, then stopped himself and leaned back casually. "Where is it? I was going to wear it out tonight. There's a great new band over at The Alley."

  "Is that your way of telling me you're not dealing pot on the side?" I stood up and crossed my arms, taller and wider than Jasper.

  "Seriously, man? Why would I be doing that? Things are going great for me," Jasper said. He looked around the loft from one end to the other. "In fact, I've been meaning to tell you I signed up with this head-hunting company. They've got a lead on a job for me in L.A. Looks like I might be moving on soon."

  "Really?" I asked. "And this just comes up now?"

  "Yeah, well, I didn't want to jinx it. So, anyway, come out with us tonight. Help me celebrate," Jasper said.

  "No, thanks," I said. "I think I'm going to get some fresh air. Apparently, I need to think about getting a new roommate."

  "How about that Quinn girl you've been mentioning? Maybe she's moving back to town," Jasper said. "That's gotta be a good thing for you."

  I did not like her name on his lips, but I uncurled my fist. He knew too much about Quinn. He also knew everything that had happened with Sienna.

  Jasper was moving on soon, and it occurred to me that now I had the chance to do the same.

  #

  I made it to the corner before my phone rang. I pulled the car over and answered, thinking it might be Quinn again.

  "There you are. I've left at least three messages," an impatient, fast-paced voice said.

 

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