“Yes,” she said, and she snuggled into him, her head on his hard shoulder, her arm over his chest.
He turned his face to hers and kissed her.
They had to get up.
He knew that.
But first he needed this. Bianca, in his arms. The feel of her not just against him, but inside him.
Inside his heart.
He was in a place he had never been before, a place he had not believed existed.
And of everything he’d ever faced, it was the most frightening.
• • •
“What do you mean, we’re going to Santa Barbara?”
Chay looked at Bianca’s reflection next to his in the bathroom mirror. He had showered again, with her, and they’d had another fruitless discussion about the ethics of sharing information about her patients with him.
“It’s against the moral code of my profession,” she’d said.
And he’d said that a patient trying to scare the shit out of his shrink was against the moral code of anybody’s profession, and she’d said she understood what he was saying, but that it was against—
“—the moral code of your profession,” he’d growled, and she’d put her hand on his arm, turned her face up to his and looked so unhappy that he’d sighed, kissed her, and told her he’d work something out.
The something was Sanchez, but why tell her that?
She was having enough difficulty dealing with what he’d just said—that they had some errands to run and then they were flying to Santa Barbara.
“Chayton? Why would I go to California?”
He considered telling her she’d go so she could be with him, but he knew she was too smart for that. So he wiped off the last bit of shaving cream from his face, dumped the towel, and swung around.
“Because it’s where I can keep you safe.”
Her eyes searched his. “I don’t understand.”
“Somebody’s after you. Somebody who means to harm you.”
“To frighten me. We don’t know that whoever it is actually wants to—”
“If you mean, we have no proof, well, you’re right. We don’t.” He clasped her shoulders. “But when you add up the phone call, the condom, the very fact that this—this—” This lunatic, crazed, insane sociopath was what he wanted to day, but logic warned that his beautiful shrink might object. “What I’m saying is when you tally things up and add in the fact that this person has obviously been in your home… Put all that together, sweetheart, and it’s probably a safe bet to act as if you are, in fact, in physical danger.”
He could see her thinking it through.
Then she nodded.
“Okay. Perhaps.”
Perhaps? Well, at least they were making progress.
“I’ve gone through all the possibilities,” he said. “One, we could stay on in the hotel, but I don’t think either of us would be comfortable stuck here for much longer, no matter how luxurious the accommodations. Right?”
Bianca nodded.
“Two, we could stay in your apartment. Get the locks changed, but…” She shook her head vehemently. “Yeah. My feelings, too.”
“I don’t ever want to go back there,” she said, and shuddered.
“Then there’s option three.”
“What’s option three?”
“You have family in Texas.”
“In New York, too. Well, some of them have condos here.”
“Right. You could stay with family while I work this thing through.”
He waited. Option three, while viable, was the one he didn’t want her to take. He’d tried telling himself it was because it would worry him not to be at her side to protect her and that was true enough.
But there was another truth, a deeper one, and it was a lot more basic.
Option three would take her away from him.
And he wasn’t ready to be parted from her.
Not yet.
He was a realist. He knew it would happen eventually. He’d find the man who wanted to hurt her, she’d be safe, and this—this episode would end.
Life would return to normal.
She’d go back to her job.
He’d be deployed.
Except for sex, he thought bluntly, a woman who saved souls and a man who took them would not have a hell of a lot in common, and anyway, he wasn’t looking to tie himself down…
“Option four,” Bianca said.
Chay frowned and brought his thoughts back where they belonged.
“Option four?”
She nodded. “I go with you to Santa Barbara.” Her voice was soft. “If that’s what you truly want…”
He kissed her, and gave her all the answer she’d need.
• • •
He ordered in breakfast.
In case someone had followed them here, why go somewhere public?
He’d considered throwing away her cellphone—he was almost sure Bianca’s stalker had planted a GPS program in it—but it was too late for that. If he was right and her stalker already knew her location, it was too late to eliminate that knowledge. Besides, tossing the phone out would simply alert the stalker to the fact that they were on to him.
Besides, Chay had a better plan for the phone.
So he ordered orange juice, coffee, toast, scrambled eggs and bacon. The waiter set things up on the table in front of the window, and they sat down to eat.
Bianca said she wasn’t very hungry. He knew that all the talk of stalkers and stalking had probably taken away her appetite. It hadn’t done much for his, but experience had taught him that you ate when you could, so he downed some eggs and bacon, and encouraged her to at least have some juice and toast.
Then he got a pad and pencil from the desk and they got down to business.
He asked her to go through the last few hours of the rainy afternoon at her office.
“Tell me everything that happened as you best recall.”
She did, starting with the impending storm. When she got to the part about Lacey coming in to say she was leaving, he stopped her.
“Spell her name for me.”
Bianca did. Chay wrote it down.
“Do you know her number?”
“I have it in my phone… Chay. Surely, you don’t think…”
“I don’t think anything, honey. I’m simply trying to get all the pieces of the puzzle in one place. Maybe the receptionist saw something. Or somebody. She may have a bit of data that we can use.”
Bianca checked her contacts list and gave Chay the woman’s cell number and address.
“You say the power had failed before?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the building management said they’d had the electrical system updated after that.”
“Yes.”
“Do you happen to know the name of the company that manages the building?”
“Actually, I do.” To Chay’s surprise, she laughed. “It’s Avido Management. Avido means ‘greedy’ in Italian. Dr. Epstein once mentioned the monthly rental that East Side Associates pays, and the name was amazingly appropriate. It just stuck in my head.”
“Great. That makes things a little easier.” He scrawled a couple of words more on the notepad and then he looked at Bianca. “Have you given more thought to those names?”
“Patients and study subjects?” She sighed. “Give me a little more time, okay?”
He leaned forward, cupped her chin and kissed her.
“I’ll give you until we reach Santa Barbara. How’s that?”
“That’s fair enough, I guess.”
“How about the names of friends?” Family, too, he almost said, but he could only imagine how she’d react to that. “And your co-workers.”
She frowned. “Co-workers? Well, that isn�
��t a problem. I mean, the people at East Side are all listed right on the building directory in the lobby.”
Chay pushed the pad and pencil towards her.
“Write down their names, honey. Their addresses and phone numbers, if you know them, or at least a general idea of where I can find them. And I’ll want the same info for the people you work with in the psych department at the university.”
Her face clouded over.
“Chayton. I do not want to involve all these good people in a witch hunt.”
But they weren’t all good. That was the problem. He knew that, and he was certain that Bianca knew it too. It was just hard for her to accept.
That was another difference between their worlds.
She believed people were innately good.
He knew better. The good guys weren’t always good.
“Chayton?” She put her hand over his. “Why do you look so sad?”
He turned his hand over and clasped hers tightly.
Because we have no future.
The realization rang inside his head, as loud and clear as a rifle shot.
They had no future, even if he’d wanted one.
Even if he’d wanted one…
“Chayton?”
He took a breath, stood and drew her up with him.
“I’m not sad, sweetheart. I’m just thinking of all we have to accomplish before we get on that jet for California.”
“What jet?”
As if on signal, the phone in his pocket vibrated. Chay dug it out.
“Olivieri,” he said briskly.
“Dude, you’re flying out at thirteen-oh-thirty from Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York. That’s about sixty miles from Manhattan. Got you two first-class seats on a transport. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect,” Chay said. “I owe you one, Dec.”
“Damn right,” Declan Sanchez said, laughing. “See you soon. You and your lady.” Dec paused. “She must be really special to you.”
Chay looked at Bianca. Then he turned away.
“Yeah,” he said softly, “but it isn’t what you think.”
“That’s what we all say,” Sanchez replied, just as softly.
And the call ended.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
He began tossing things into his carry-on.
Bianca was doing the same with her bottomless tote bag.
Suddenly, she stopped.
“Chayton?”
Hell. He could hear that tone in her voice. The one that said she was about to take a stand.
Telling a woman as determined as his Bianca that you were about to disrupt her life wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. Yes, she’d seemed to accept it, but he should have known things were going too smoothly.
“Chay. I cannot do this.”
“Can’t do what?” he said, as if he had no idea what she was talking about, when, of course, he did.
He started towards the closet. She stepped in front of him, effectively barring his way. “I cannot simply leave New York.”
“Bianca.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “We’ve been all through this. You’re not safe here.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. A couple of seconds went by. Then, to his relief, she nodded.
“No, maybe not. But I can’t simply leave for the West Coast.”
He moved around her, took a couple of shirts from the closet, walked back to the carry-on and placed them in it.
“Because?”
“Because…” She threw out her arms. “I have responsibilities.”
“Such as?”
“ I have appointments with patients.”
“Reschedule them.”
“I have to collate the data from my study.”
“You have your laptop. You can work wherever you are.”
“Well, yes. But—but—but—”
“But what?” he said. Stay calm, he told himself, but how could he? “Goddammit, we’re talking about a maniac, and you’re worried about appointments and notes?”
“You think I do not understand this? That someone wishes to turn my existence inside out? That someone hates me enough to—to want to hurt me?”
Shit.
Chay leaned over his carry-on, caught hold of her chin and kissed her.
“I’m sorry, baby. Of course you understand. But you also have to understand what I’m telling you, that there is no other way to end this thing except to keep you safe while I figure out who this crazy son of a bitch is.”
She nodded. “I know.” Her eyes met his. “The thing is, I cannot think of anyone who would do this to me.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
He’d been waiting to ask her that question, but she’d already been through so much that he’d intended to wait until they were on the plane, heading away from here.
“Think back, honey,” he said gently. “Do you have enemies?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Somebody you inadvertently hurt.”
Another shake of her head. “No.”
“Someone who wanted something you had. A grade. A class. Anything, anything at all, because crazies don’t operate the way the rest of us do.”
She put her hand on his arm. “I know about mentally ill people, Chay.”
“Yeah.” He laughed, folded his hands, placed them on top of his head. “I forgot that.”
“I know they see things differently, but I honestly can’t think of anyone I’ve had a personal relationship with who would wish me harm. Harm like this, I mean. And it would have to be a personal relationship to trigger such behavior.”
“Couldn’t it be a relationship the stalker sees as personal even though it really wasn’t? What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean. And you are correct. Still, there would have been signs. Indications of interest beyond the norm.”
“And you can’t think of any situations you’ve been in that were like that?”
Bianca shook her head. “No.”
“All the more reason I have to get you out of here.” He bent to her and kissed her again. “I can’t predict what this guy is going to do next. And I need you in a safe place while I work it out, a place this—this individual would never think of.”
“California,” she said slowly.
“Yes.”
She paced away, then swung towards him.
“The man you thought you saw last night... Do you really think—”
“What I think,” he said, “is that it’s possible someone is keeping tabs on us. And if you think something is possible, the only way to operate is to assume that what you think possible is actually happening.”
“But California…”
“I need a base, sweetheart, where I can coordinate and plan, where I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder, where we’re not going to stand out. My cottage in Santa Barbara is perfect. I can come and go without anybody so much as noticing.”
“Yes, but what about me? Surely people will notice that I’m with you…”
She paused and did that little biting-her-lip thing again. Any other time, he’d have caught her face in his hands and soothed the tiny bite with his tongue.
“…Or,” she said quietly, “are you counting on the fact that they’ll see me as just another woman spending a couple of days with—”
He kissed her. Deep. Hard. With enough passion to make her moan.
“They’ll see me,” he said, when he lifted his head, “as a man who’s so crazy about a woman, he wants her all to himself for a while.” Gently, he brushed his thumb over her lips. “And just for the record, I’ve never had a woman staying with me before.”
“No?” she said, and told herself it was ridiculous that
the admission should make her heart lift, because, after all, this was simply a matter of expediency, because what he’d said about what people would see and believe wasn’t, couldn’t be true…
“No,” he said, and kissed her again. Then he smiled. “Is it really so difficult to think of trading hot, crowded city streets for a long stretch of blue water and white sand?”
She put her hands on his chest. “Sort of like that beach near the hotel,” she said softly.
“Better.”
“How could anything be better than that?”
Her smile almost brought him to his knees. He clasped her hands and lifted them to his lips.
“My beach is much more private.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
He kissed her. How could he not kiss her? Then he framed her face with his hands and looked into her eyes. “And I’ll be able to keep you safe. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said, except he was wrong about keeping her safe.
Her heart would not be safe.
How could it be, when it was time to admit the truth to herself?
She had fallen for Chay. She had more than fallen.
She was head over heels in love with her lieutenant.
• • •
Leave no trace of yourself behind.
That wasn’t often important when you were on a mission, but there were times it could be. In the field, it meant leaving behind no equipment, no footprints, no sign you’d been where you weren’t supposed to have been.
Here, it meant something different.
What they couldn’t leave behind was any sign that they’d left the hotel or the city, or any way to follow them.
That made the first thing he had to do the most difficult.
He put in another call to Sanchez.
“Dec. Remember, I asked you about GPS programs? A tracer that might have been programmed into a smartphone?”
“Yeah, dude, I got that.”
“Is there a way for you to find out if something like that’s on a phone without actually having the phone right in your hands?”
Sanchez snorted.
Chay rolled his eyes. “Is that a yes?”
“I assume you have the phone,” Sanchez said.
Bianca’s phone was on the table, next to his. Chay reached for it.
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 20