“Want to join me?” he asked, thinking they could trade dinner for a trip around the marina.
“What?”
“You like to go for walks, right? I thought you might want to join me.”
Her smile froze. For a second she didn’t move. Another man might not have picked up on the sudden smack of tension in the room or the sudden stiffening of her shoulders. He did.
“I have a meeting.” She picked up the bucket and walked toward the kitchen. “Do you need anything before I lock the door?”
She still wore a smile but her mood had shifted. There was no warmth coming off her, and her tone turned short and clipped.
The fucking walk.
He’d mentioned it and an invisible wall rose up between them. Because he shouldn’t know she liked to walk. That was information he’d know if he followed her. Of course, he did, but she couldn’t know that.
He’d screwed up. He never screwed up. Not on a mission. Informal or not, he knew better. He didn’t even deal with people and gather intel like this at Quint, but he knew better.
“I’m good.” He wasn’t sure what else to say to tip the conversation back in his favor.
All the inroads he’d made, all the goodwill. Gone.
He toyed with the idea of coming clear, of launching into questions. He could throw her off balance and maybe catch her saying the wrong thing.
Then he looked at her face. The stern line of her mouth and wariness in her eyes. Yeah, they’d leapt backward. She wasn’t running, but he sensed her internal struggle.
Standing there, he mentally debated strategy. He couldn’t afford to let her race away and change names. Not again.
“Dinner?” She said the word and stood there.
She’d managed to flip him onto the defensive and he didn’t like the sensation at all. “What?”
She leaned the mop handle against the counter. “A onetime offer. Daleo’s. It’s seafood, about three miles down the road. You’re paying, by the way.”
He would have been less stunned if she threw the bucket at him. “Tonight?”
This was a setup. A way to lure him to one place and race to another.
Impressive.
He didn’t bother looking at his watch or asking about a reservation. He knew they wouldn’t need one because they wouldn’t be eating. This was a game and an intricate one. “I can pick you up at—”
“I’ll meet you there at six.”
Of course she would. Right.
Matthias shot her his best time-to-battle smile. “Perfect. I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you to be careful what you wish for?”
One of the many trite words of wisdom he’d ignored over the years. “I don’t listen to advice.”
“I’m learning all sorts of things about you today.”
He could play this game better than anyone. There wasn’t a pivot she could make that he couldn’t anticipate. “Imagine what tonight will bring.”
“Oh, I know exactly what’s going to happen next.” She winked at him as she slipped into the back. “Be ready.”
She played the role right to the end. Didn’t give away her fear. He only picked up on the new wariness because he was watching for it.
Damn, she was good.
But he was better.
Chapter 7
He knew about her schedule. The walks and her routine. Kayla had sensed someone had been watching her. Now she knew the truth—Matthias was much more than a coffee date.
Kayla intended to get on a bus and slip out of town. That was the plan. That was always the plan. She had done this dance so many times that she knew it by heart. Rip up the roots she’d planted, only take what she needed and then run. Talk to no one. Don’t leave any ties, no matter how much that hurt.
But this time she had someone she hated to lose. A friend. The only real one she’d let herself make in seven years. Lauren worked a few doors down from the café and had introduced herself immediately. Kayla had tried to maintain her distance, but Lauren didn’t allow it. The first week she’d stopped by at closing with wine. The next day she showed up with a bad action movie and day-old cupcakes. That was four months ago and they’d been friends since.
Lauren didn’t know the bits and pieces about the past, but she knew it had been bad. Deadly bad. Kayla appreciated that Lauren didn’t push for more information. She talked and laughed, told ridiculous stories about her clients. Their friendship formed over all those nights and all that girl time.
Lauren ran a pleasure-boat crew and took couples, families and businesspeople out on recreational and fishing trips. Being on the water made Kayla need to heave, so she never went along, but she loved that her new friend intended to rebuild the place after inheriting it on the brink of bankruptcy.
Despite the burst of loyalty and pride, Kayla knew she should take off and leave Lauren behind. Calling or checking in once she changed her name didn’t really work. She’d tried that with her dad, and the press and private investigators had hounded him until he died.
There also was the very real possibility that she could bring danger into someone else’s life. She’d been threatened so many times over the years. All it would take would be for one person to act on the harsh words. And if Lauren was there, in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . She couldn’t handle that, so now when she cut ties she shredded them.
None of that explained why she was standing at Lauren’s door or why she’d zigzagged her way there from the marina, hiding behind bushes and on the lookout for the broody guy who left the ten-dollar tip for two cups of coffee. She still had no idea what Matthias really wanted or what he hoped to gain, but she knew the dinner date was a farce. She did not have the luxury of waiting around to find out more.
“It works better if you actually ring the bell.”
At the sound of Lauren’s amused voice behind her, Kayla spun around. “You’re not inside.”
Not the most intelligent response but her brain refused to function. She couldn’t blink without seeing Matthias’s face. His deep voice. The way he just showed up. Even when he wasn’t there she thought about him.
“Man, you’re quick tonight.” Lauren laughed at her own joke but her smile soon faded. The gym bag slipped off her shoulder but she caught it from falling as she moved closer to the porch’s bottom step. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Lauren frowned. “Try again. You’re pale and look like you’re half a second from jumping in the bushes.”
That sounded about right. “Well, I was thinking of trying to hide in the mailbox.”
Kayla held her voice steady but her brain cells kept sputtering. She had a note in her hand. Short and not very clear, but it was something. A reassurance that their friendship had meant something to her, so if Lauren ever doubted that, she could read it and she’d have proof.
For whatever reason, Kayla could not get her fingers to unclench the crumpled paper and hand it over.
“That sounds totally rational.” Lauren walked past her to the door. After a second of fumbling with her keys, she unlocked the door. “Come inside.”
But Kayla didn’t move. She stayed right there, standing on the faded redbrick porch. “Not a good idea.”
“You’re freaking me out. And since I spent an afternoon listening to a group of forty-something accountants pretend they were big-time sailors then squeal in terror at the idea of actually taking a fish off a hook, that’s saying something.” Lauren’s eyebrow lifted. “I managed not to drown any of them, so yay for me.”
Kayla would miss this. The way they fell into comfortable conversation. Lauren’s stories. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”
“I’m not accepting that answer.” All the emotion left Lauren’s face and her mouth fell into a thin line. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Kayla glanced around before tightening her grip on the note locked in her fist. “There was an . . . incident.”
“Define incident.”
“The guy at the café . . .”
Lauren smiled. “Mike or . . . wait, that wasn’t his name.”
Kayla hadn’t meant to mention him but he wouldn’t leave her head. And now this. “Someone’s following me.”
“Then why are we hanging out here? Get your butt inside.” Lauren didn’t really offer an option that time. She tugged on Kayla’s arm and pulled her into the small cottage. Slammed the door behind them and threw the two locks before setting the alarm.
“Uh, he’s not here now.”
“Who? You know the person who’s following you?”
“Matthias.”
Lauren spun around to face Kayla. “Talk.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Oh, please. You’ve been talking all your life.” Lauren dropped her keys on the table next to the loveseat and headed for the kitchen. “Besides, I’m not asking for your résumé. I just want to know why a guy you’ve been hanging out and having coffee with is stalking you.”
“Maybe it’s nothing.”
Lauren grabbed two bottles of water and came back to stand in front of Kayla. “Maybe it’s something, but I won’t be able to tell if you keep talking like a bad spy movie.”
“He got weird.”
“Oh, my God. It’s like you’re trying to make me frustrated.” Lauren held out one of the bottles. Shook it until Kayla finally grabbed it. “Are we talking handsy or dickish or he put a fork in his hair . . . what?”
That was Lauren. She didn’t ruffle. She couldn’t be thrown offtrack. And she could shoot a deadly stare like no one Kayla had ever met.
“He knows what I do after work. I don’t know how to explain it.” She didn’t. It all jumbled in her head. “It almost felt like he knew I wasn’t always Kayla and was testing me.”
“That’s more than annoying.”
“My past refuses to stay buried.”
“This past that clearly includes a stalker.” Lauren sighed. “And you still sound like a spy movie. Just so you know.”
Kayla stuffed the note into her shorts pocket and grabbed on to the water bottle with both hands. “I’m not trying to be cryptic.”
“You’re failing, but that doesn’t change the facts. We need to call the police. Do you have a last name for this guy?”
It sounded like the most logical step, but Kayla knew better. “That won’t work.”
“Look, I get that things happened that you can’t talk about, or won’t or aren’t ready to. I respect all of it and am not going to push. But”—Lauren pointed to the chair as she sat down across from it on the loveseat—“I am not okay with you being scared.”
Kayla started peeling off the bottle’s label. “Look, I—”
“Nope.” Lauren eyed the open chair again. “Stop acting like you’re going to run and make a Kayla-sized hole in my wall. Sit.”
Kayla couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You’re bossy.”
“That’s one of my nicer traits.” Lauren put her bottle on the coffee table and leaned in with her elbows on her knees. “You are private and tough. I love that about you, but do you know what you’re not?”
“What?”
“Running away. From what I can tell you’ve spent years in hiding and, damn, Kayla, that has to stop. I’m exhausted for you.” Lauren sat back on the loveseat. “And you’re not going anywhere while you still owe me twenty dollars from that bet about that guy I hired two weeks ago.”
“Paul what’s-his-name? You told me he gets motion sickness, so I never thought he’d make it on your crew for more than three days.” Kayla thought about the water and her stomach flipped over. “Trust me. That constant need to heave is not fun.”
“Paul probably would have left if I’d actually made him go out on the boat.”
She should have known. “That’s cheating.”
Lauren tapped a finger to her forehead. “You need to be a smarter gambler.”
“Who knew the bet was fixed?” But it made sense. Lauren was hypercompetitive and completely steady. It was what helped her survive an upbringing with a suicidal mother and the shock of a husband who drowned at sea.
Lauren snorted. “As if I’d part with twenty dollars without a fight.”
After what felt like a lifetime of tamping down her feelings and refusing to care about anyone deeply enough for the pain of losing them to so much as sting, Kayla’s heart ached. With Lauren she’d lowered the wall and now . . . “I’m going to miss you.”
Lauren sank even deeper into the loveseat cushions. “You’re not, because you’re not going anywhere.”
“It’s not that easy.” Though it was cute that she thought she could just order it and make it happen. Kayla used to have that sort of confidence. Then it faded. Now she just operated in survival mode.
“We all have demons, Kayla.”
“Not like this.” She winced after she said it because it was a jerk move to assume her pain was somehow greater than Lauren’s. “Sorry.”
But Lauren didn’t flinch. She actually smiled. “Give it a week and we’ll see if we can’t solve this.”
A week might be too late. Hell, a day could be too late. Still . . . the temptation to stay and force her stalker into the open. To make him or her finally try to follow through on the threats or maybe stop forever. “Look at you being all optimistic.”
“What does this Matthias guy look like?”
It took Kayla a second to catch up in the conversation. Her mind had gone back through the years and all the notes and promises to make her bleed. Now it snapped to the guy in the café. The walking definition of tall, dark and smoldering. “Why?”
“So I know to kick him in the balls if I see him.”
And she would. Kayla could bet on that. “He might not be guilty of anything.”
“He scared you. That’s enough.”
Kayla’s mind shifted in a totally different direction. An unwanted one. A hot and dirty one. “Not at first.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure.” All Kayla knew was that when she saw him, when she first felt his stare, she needed to stare back. Wanted to strip him down.
Yeah, he was definitely dangerous. She just wasn’t sure how.
Matthias hung up his cell and tucked it in his back pocket. His car keys clanged together in his hand as he watched the clouds roll in. He had more than one problem to deal with, but Kayla had his focus now.
He’d put a tracker on her car earlier, lodged it near the back tire. As expected, she didn’t go anywhere near the restaurant or their supposed dinner date. He made the mistake of checking in with Garrett, who insisted on tagging along. Now they both stood outside his car, a few houses down from the one Kayla had entered more than a half hour ago.
Damn, real-life surveillance was boring. No wonder he hired people to do this shit now.
But he had to handle this job on his own. He’d promised to check in and give his mother a status. With that done, the air had changed. The thick humidity gave way to a cooler breeze as the spring storm prepared to hit.
Mother. He hadn’t thought of anyone as that for most of his life. Even now the word sounded wrong in his head. He got the part about her being young and desperate and alone all those years ago. The issue with drugs. All of it.
Feeling bad about all she’d gone through did not mean he wanted to connect. Not at thirty-four. But he could give her closure on Nick.
Garrett reached for the door on the other side of the car. “Who called?”
“Not your business.” Matthias was not in the mood for a game of show-and-tell. He certainly wasn’t ready to talk about his mother, or the only way he could think about her—as Mary. Not yet. Not when knowing her was still such a new and not all that pleasant sensation.
She talked about Nick all the time. The sadness and despair pulsed off her seven years after his murder. Except for those moments when her fury took over. She wanted Carrie Gleason—now Kayla—to pay and she expected he would make
it happen. Almost demanded it the day after she burst into his life and announced she was his birth mother.
Garrett rapped his knuckles against the hood of the car. “You are a hell of a conversationalist.”
“You can always leave.”
Garrett tried to open the passenger door but it was locked. “I actually can’t since I can’t get in the damn car.”
When Matthias hit the button and the locks opened, Garrett still didn’t move. “How about now?”
“That’s no longer an option. I called Wren.”
Not a surprise. Matthias figured he wasn’t the only one with an obligatory check-in tonight. “And?”
“I explained how you’re even worse with women—and other humans in general—than he is.” Garrett opened the door. Also took off his suit jacket and hung it on the hook in the backseat. “When I told him about the walk and the messed-up date he told me I might be babysitting you forever. He also said to have bail money ready at all times.”
Matthias hated all of it. “You tattled on me?”
“I’m trying to believe you, a grown man, and a lethal one, just used tattled in a sentence.” Garrett’s expression said what the fuck, but he didn’t actually say the words.
“Admittedly the walk thing was a slip.” One that Matthias knew he should have kept to himself. That would teach him to report anything to Garrett.
“Since when do you have slips?”
Almost never. Since he wasn’t accustomed to having family issues, or even a family, he wanted to chalk the aberration up to that. But on some level he sensed Kayla was the issue. She was this mystery he wanted to unravel. In bed, out of bed. He actually wanted to have a real dinner date, which made no sense at all.
But he’d already overshared with Garrett and wasn’t about to do that again. “I am human.”
“I’m pretending you didn’t say that.” Garrett gave a quick look around them. “For the record, it’s not just the walk. It’s how blinded you get near Kayla. You’re watching her, having coffee chats. I mean, come on. What the hell?”
“I didn’t do anything abnormal back at the café.” A guy couldn’t talk to a woman without everyone having an opinion about it.
The Enforcer Page 5