“You and I haven’t had a regular conversation since we met.”
His dry comment makes me laugh. “Touché,” I say, gesturing to the laptop. “Ready to help me check out this security footage?”
“This isn’t at all how I pictured getting you alone in the dark,” he says, pulling out a chair for me.
His honest comment sends tingles shooting through me, but I pretend I don’t hear him as I sit down and move the mouse to stop the screen saver that has popped up.
Once he pulls his chair close to mine, Bash clicks on the security footage folder. “Is this related to what you wanted to ask Donald about?”
I nod, then quickly explain what I’d discovered about the two readers who’d attended Hawthorne resort in the past year. He doesn’t say a word until I’m done.
“You really should’ve told me.”
The reprimand in his tone puts me on instant defense. “Why? I barely know you. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t trust easily.”
“I think getting you back to the resort safely last night should earn me some trust points,” he says before turning back to the screen. “What date are we looking for?”
And just like that, he’s back to all business. Nodding to acknowledge that he did help me before, I straighten in the chair and give him the date I need.
A couple hours later, we’ve only made it through the noon footage. I close my burning eyes briefly and arch my spine, pushing my fingers against my back. I’m sure it’s sore from crazy pool swimming. “I’ll have to get coffee soon.” My eyes flutter open as I finish one last stretch.
Bash isn’t looking at the screen. His eyes are on my breasts framed by my fitted navy blue halter-top. Lifting an unrepentant gaze to mine, he frowns, “Are you done distracting me?”
Distracting him? Does he think I’m that desperate for attention? Gritting my teeth, I wave my hand. “By all means, let’s continue.”
He grunts and turns back to the screen. Another hour of footage passes as we watch more people check in. I still haven’t seen any of the front desk employees hand a guest Hawthorne’s distinctive voucher with the red-berried Hawthorne tree crest stamped on it.
A few minutes later, Bash stops the video. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
He clicks the mouse to scroll back a few minutes, then hits the play button. I watch the footage, but don’t see the voucher I’m looking for. “I don’t see anything.”
Bash reverses the same amount of time, then clicks play once more. “Watch.”
This time, he hits a button that makes the video move much slower. When I start to shake my head, he clicks the stop button, freezing the screen on a frame of the tall fern next to the main desk. “There. Do you see it now?”
I stare at the fern for a couple of seconds before my eyes adjust to what I’m seeing. Someone is hiding behind the fern’s fronds. The person can’t be more than five-and-a-half feet tall.
I blink at the screen. “How did you even see that?”
Bash smirks and clicks the start button once I nod and we watch the video move forward together. We never see the person in the video, due to a delivery of a huge bouquet of flowers that blocks our view, but we do see one of the desk clerks move to her computer on that end of the desk to speak to someone. Then the clerk types on the computer screen before handing a voucher to someone who’s completely hidden behind that bouquet.
When Bash closes out of the video clip folder, I sigh in frustration. “Great. The person who bought the voucher is blocked.”
He doesn’t say anything as he opens another folder and checks the camera’s footage outside the hotel. When I see him sliding the fast-forward to the same time of day, I smile. “Ah, we couldn’t catch him inside, but we can catch him entering, huh?”
“Exactly,” he says and freezes the picture on a dark-haired, freckle-faced teen entering the resort.
“He’s just a kid,” I say, surprised. “How are we ever going to track him down?”
Bash shakes his head while clicking through the shut down sequence on the laptop. “We don’t have to. I recognize him.”
“You do?” I glance his way just before the room goes completely dark.
He clasps my hand and pulls me to my feet. I try to ignore the sensation of his hand wrapped around mine and the warmth of his body just an inch away. “And no, I’m not telling you where to find him.”
“Why not?”
He bends close to my ear, his masculine smell wrapping around me like a warm seductive blanket pulling me into his charismatic space. “It’s the only way I can guarantee I’ll get you all to myself.”
“You don’t have me,” I say, annoyed at the huskiness in my voice. Why has my body decided to betray me whenever he’s near?
His warm breath, smelling of mints and orange juice, slides along my jaw and up my cheek, stopping so close to my mouth, I feel the mint’s coolness on my lips. “I haven’t tried yet, sweetheart.”
Firm fingers settle at the base of my spine, tugging me against his hard body. “Are you ready for me to begin?”
Why haven’t you? I want to scream as sexual tension roars through me, but instead I quickly step out of his hold and say in an unsteady voice, “Please take me to this kid.”
His low chuckle sounds a few steps away just before he opens the door. “Then let’s go find your impersonator. After you, Miss Lone.”
As he gestures for me to go in front of him, I set my jaw, irritated by the smug satisfaction in his tone and walk past him without a word.
“Nice car,” I say while he pushes the button to fold back the Mustang’s convertible roof.
“Yeah, Trev does all right here.”
Buckled in, I retrieve my sunglasses from my purse and slide them on, enjoying the feel of mid-morning sun on my skin. The weather is perfect. Not too hot or cold. Once we pull away from the resort, I stare up at the few white clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky and inhale the briny smell of ocean permeating the air. “It really is beautiful here. It’s sad that the couple other times I’ve visited I haven’t explored beyond the resort, so thanks for taking me. Where exactly are we going?”
He turns onto the main road and flashes a smile. “We’re going to West Tisbury. I’ve seen the kid trying to sell his caricature drawings to guests outside the resort before Simon ran him off. He’s actually pretty talented. I have a good idea where I can find him keeping himself busy.”
I study his profile, trying to decipher his mood behind his dark sunglasses. “So tell me how you spotted him behind that plant. Simon was right. You do have an eagle eye. I wouldn’t have seen that if you hadn’t slowed it frame by frame.”
“Do you know what Stereograms are?”
“You mean the 3D pictures? I have a really hard time seeing them.”
“A lot of people do. I see them instantly.”
I nod. “Ah, now that makes more sense. It’s like your vision is hyper-focused.”
He lets out a low laugh. “I guess you could say that.”
Tilting my head, I eye him. Did I detect some self-deprecating sarcasm? “So what do you do when you’re not filling in for buddies in need of vacation or kicking bar guys’ asses? Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“A gang tried to recruit me when I was a kid, so I’ve been in a few fights.”
“Did you join the gang?”
“No.” He glances at me briefly. “What do you do when you’re not writing a book?”
“I perform odd swimming techniques and accept rides with complete strangers while on investigative adventures,” I say, offering a wide smile. When he snorts at my non-answer, his mouth twitching upward, I nod. “Your turn.”
Laying his wrist along the steering wheel, he stares at the road. “I own my own asset protection business.”
“Asset protection?” I furrow my brow. “As in finances?”
He shoots me a sideways smile. “Sometimes.”
“That’s not vague
at all.”
He shrugs. “That’s pretty much it, asset management. I have a few employees. The business is growing. I’ll expand later, but right now I’m satisfied with the way things are going.”
I open my mouth to ask more about it, but his phone rings.
He glances at the screen. “Sorry, I need to answer it.” Putting the phone to his ear, he smiles and his tone completely lightens. “Hey! How are you doing?”
Who is this person in his life that makes him light up like this?
No sooner did the thought enter my head then I see his hand instantly tighten around the phone. “He’s been in the hospital all of what? Five minutes? Okay fine…two days. Why is she selling it?”
Whoa, that’s a quick change from friendly to cold.
Pausing, he pulls the phone away and glances at the screen, then puts it back to his ear, his tone settling somewhat. “That’s her calling. No, I’m talking to you right now.” A pause. “Should you be doing that? Get the others to help you.” Another pause. “Why don’t you just send it to me at the resort. I’m here for a bit longer.” After he rattles off his room number at the resort’s address, he asks, “Are you feeling okay now? Good. Don’t over do it. Better yet, make your mom do all the work since she’s the one selling. Yeah, yeah, I know how she can be. Just don’t let her push all the work off on you.” Another pause, then he’s back to smiling. “That’s just how I’m wired. Someone has to look out for you. Let’s get together when I’m back in town.”
“Sorry about that,” he says, setting the phone into a slot in the console. “Family stuff.”
“I’m sorry someone is sick.” When he looks at me in confusion, I clarify. “You said someone’s in the hospital.”
“My father just had his appendix removed. He’s fine now, but while he’s out of commission my stepmother has decided to sell the family beach house. My pregnant sister is there clearing stuff out, while I’m sure my stepmother is piling on more work.”
“I don’t detect any bitterness at all,” I say, offering an empathetic smile.
“My stepmother is not my favorite person.”
His phone rings again and this time, he swears before he answers. “I figured you’d be calling. Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long. Ah, camped out on your lawn, did they?” A devious smile tilts his lips.
I can’t believe the difference in Bash’s tone. A sharp edge of condescension mixed with pure dislike. It must be his stepmother. Obviously she picked the wrong guy to get crossways with.
“Probably because I told my lawyer to take care of it last week, making it a matter of public record. Screw the tabloids. I signed the deal three years ago, but I just now got around to filing it. Go ahead, show it to him. I don’t give a damn about the agreement. I never did. Tear it up if you want.”
When he pauses, I cringe at hearing her screech through the phone, “You’re such a manipulative son-of-a-bitch.”
Bash calmly speaks over her shouting. “It’s done. You may as well get used to it.” Then he hangs up on her. Two seconds later his phone starts to ring again, but this time he turns off the ringer. A few more seconds pass, and his phone must’ve been set up to read texts out loud, because the automated voice says, “Message from New York area code. ‘You must not care about him at all. He’ll hate you for this.’”
I gasp when Bash grabs the phone and throws it as hard as he can into a field of sunflowers as we zoom past.
When he sets his jaw and continues to drive like he didn’t just chuck a thousand dollar phone into a flower field, I say, “You ah, want to talk about it?”
His aviator-covered gaze swings toward me. “Just family BS. I’m sure you deal with it all the time too.”
I look out at the passing farmer’s fields. “Not phone-tossing worthy.”
“Are you saying you get along with your parents all the time?
“My mom died when I was a baby and my dad’s not in the picture.”
He blinks at my comment, sympathy taking over his own anger. “I’m sorry. You don’t have any siblings?”
Amelia’s sweet cherub face and blonde hair comes to mind, but when I try to picture the details of her features, I can’t. My eyes suddenly water at the realization. I’m losing my memories of her. Why did all the pictures have to burn in that explosion? “My younger sister died when she was little.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nod and lift my head, letting the wind dry my eyes. “It’s just me and my aunt. We’re very low key. Never any drama.”
He snorts. “You can have mine.”
His wry comment takes the edge off my dark thoughts about Amelia’s death. “Your sister or the family drama?”
“The drama.” He grins. “I’ll keep the sister.”
I snicker. “I think I’ll pass. If tabloids are involved, it sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Nodding toward the windshield, he says, “We’ve got about five minutes until we get to the festival grounds where I’m pretty sure this kid works. Do you have any enemies from your past who would try to impersonate you?”
When I shake my head, he continues, “What about your readers? Have any of them acted strange or displayed any kind of obsessive or stalker-like behavior?”
“No, none of my fans have been stalker-like that I’m aware of. Yes, they’re excited and supportive of my books, but they respect my privacy.” I furrow my brow, thinking further back in my past. “For a few weeks in college, not long after the story broke in the school paper about a professor using his authority over students to blackmail them into dealing drugs for him, I felt like I was being followed while the internal investigation was undergoing.”
“Why would someone follow you?”
“Because I was the ‘anonymous author’ of the story. In the article, I alluded to a certain well-loved professor who was involved with the drugs. I gave enough info so that anyone who went to school there would know whom I meant. Needless to say, once the story came out, students started coming forward. I wrote the piece anonymously to protect my source, whom I never gave up. Only my editor and my source knew I wrote the article, but I’m sure some suspected it was me.”
We pull in front of the festival’s main gates and park in the gravel parking lot. A few hundred people are spread throughout the festival’s grounds, children running from game to game, cotton candy or ice cream cones tight in their hands. Among the press of people, huge park rides rise up like odd-shaped towers. Bash and I walk past the center of the amusement park, beyond many big rides, then pass through the food and carnival games section until we reach an area along the back fence, where several artists are sketching drawings of people or painting elaborate temporary tattoos on their customers.
Bash bends close to my ear. “I’ll take the lead on this.” Before I can discuss strategy with him, he walks over to a thin, straw-haired boy of about ten who’s helping customers flip through a book to pick the art they want before they get to the tattoo artist’s chair.
“Hey, kid,” Bash calls.
“Yeah?” the boy says, eyeing Bash’s tall height.
Bash hands him a twenty, then points to an empty easel with a caricature drawing of an old man on it. “Can you go get the artist who drew that for me? I recognize his work and would like to talk to him.”
The boy’s attention darts between Bash and me before he quickly pockets the twenty, then nods and runs off.
“He won’t be back,” I say, expelling a sigh.
Bash crosses his arms, adopting a confident stance. “Yes, he will.”
I laugh and pull a twenty out of my purse. “Bet you the twenty you just lost.”
“I didn’t just lose—” He stiffens, then relaxes. “You’re on.”
After twenty minutes pass, I look at Bash and hold out my hand. He just grunts and walks over to the artist the boy had been helping. “Do you know where the kid who was helping you earlier went?”
The guy with pockmarked skin
and a long black ponytail pushes his hair over his shoulder. “His shift ended thirty minutes ago. He won’t be back today.”
When Bash jerks a glaring look my way, I manage to hold back my laughter, but I can’t keep from grinning.
Annoyed, he addresses the artist as he points to the empty easel. “Where is the kid who owns that stand? I’m trying to find him.”
The tattoo guy’s dark brown eyes narrow in suspicion. “What do you want with him?”
Bash waves like it’s no big deal. “Just to ask him a couple of questions.”
I notice we’ve started to draw attention among the artists lined up along the back gates. Many have glanced up from the their work. Just before I say something, a big hulking guy, his brown hair cut in a bowl style, speaks in a very deep voice behind Bash. “He’s not here. You can leave now.”
Bash turns from the artist to address the tall guy, who has to be almost seven feet. He’s massive. “We’re going to stay and enjoy the festival.”
The giant clamps a beefy hand on Bash’s shoulder, his face folding into a scowl. “You would’ve bought a festival bracelet. I don’t see you wearing one, so you need to leave.”
Tension grips me when Bash grabs the guy’s massive hand and yanks his grip away from his shoulder. The next thing I know, he has the big guy’s arm twisted behind his back. “I’ll leave when I’m ready to leave,” he says in a hard voice.
“Wait!” I touch Bash’s arm, pulling him back. Something about the giant’s face had snagged my attention. Taking off my sunglasses, I step around his huge body to stare into his face. No facial hair whatsoever. My God, he’s young! Like twelve-years-old, young. Apparently, this kid happens to reside in a body that can crush a car.
“What’s your name?” I say to the hulking boy, holding my hand out.
He shoots Bash a dirty look, but when he looks back at me, pink floods his cheeks, even as he folds his oversized hand around mine. “I’m Howie.”
I can barely get my fingers to touch either side of his wide palm to shake it. “Hey Howie. My name is T.A. Lone, but you can just call me T.”
“Hey, T.” When Howie nods while continuing to hold my hand, I smile and gesture to the empty easel. “Can you help us find your brother?”
Scarlett Red: A Billionaire SEAL Story, Part 2 (In the Shadows) Page 6