by Paula Stokes
I feel lines forming on my forehead. Sitting up, I reach down and pluck my dress from the floor. I tug it over my head. Grabbing my coat and my shoes, I head for the doorway.
“Wait.” Andy follows me downstairs, but he’s still got the phone to his ear. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m done being ignored,” I snap. I am out the front door. The freezing cold energizes me. I am walking at a fast clip toward the front of the neighborhood. And then I see a shadow of someone crossing behind me. I stop. Turn. My eyes study the manicured lawns.
“Rose, please,” Andy hollers. He hurries toward me.
I force myself to concentrate on the periphery of my vision. The moonlight illuminates the silhouette of a man hiding in the bushes. He’s got his head ducked low, but then he turns at the sound of Andy yelling, and I catch a glimpse of his face.
It’s Baz, Gideon’s head of security.
CHAPTER 22
“What are you doing?” Jesse taps me on the shoulder.
I open my eyes. Immediately my bedroom overlays on Andy Lynch’s neighborhood, and a burst of nausea assaults me. I pause the recording and curl onto my side, slowly breathing in and out through my nose until the urge to vomit dissipates.
“I thought you never vised,” Jesse says.
After our talk last night, I can’t bring myself to lie to him. “I’m playing my sister’s recordings.”
He kneels down and brushes my hair back from my face. “Are you going to throw up?” He reaches out and grabs a small trash can from the corner of my room.
I shake my head slowly. “I just need a minute.”
“Where did you get Rose’s ViSEs?” he asks.
“I found the originals in her room.” I sit up slowly and show Jesse the heart-shaped music box.
He paws through the memory cards. “How many are there? Is this all of them?”
“There’s nineteen, but that doesn’t seem like very many. Maybe she only recently started saving them.”
“How many have you played?” Jesse’s fingers skim across the memory cards again.
“Eight. It’s slow going for me.” I show him my notebook. “Even when I try my best, the overlay still makes me sick.”
“You should give them to Gid. Let him and Baz go through them for clues.”
“I will,” I say. “After I finish playing them. No one knew Rose better than me. I might be able to pick out things no one else can.”
Jesse nods to himself as he consults my list. “Can I help? I could play some of them for you. Maybe the ones that would make you … uncomfortable?”
“Sure.” I have no desire to experience my sister grinding up against drunk frat boys on the dance floor or making out with total strangers at switch parties. “Look at this,” I say, removing my headset and handing it to Jesse. He loosens it slightly and then slips it over his ears. “Just start from where I paused it. You see the guy in the bushes?”
Jesse leans back against the wall, closes his eyes, and plays a few seconds of the ViSE. “It looks like Baz.”
“It does. I think he’s the guy in the hat and coat I’ve seen on three of Rose’s ViSEs now. Pretty sure that was him at Zoo last night too.”
Jesse pauses the recording and opens his eyes. “You know we could’ve gotten killed, right? You scared me a little.”
“I scared myself a little. I’m not sure what came over me.”
Jesse closes his eyes and fidgets with the headset again, his mouth scrunching up in a frown. “But why would Baz run from us? Why would he be following us in the first place?”
“No idea.” I hop to my feet and start pacing back and forth across my room. “What reason would he have to hurt Rose? They barely even knew each other.”
“Should I play this from the beginning?”
I flush. “Not unless you want to hook up with Andy Lynch.”
Jesse snickers. “Maybe before he went all choke in the national championship.” He gives the headset back to me and I add the ViSE to my list. Backyard party—Andy Lynch—last week? Jesse arches an eyebrow at me as I label the memory card with a number 8. “Did you play the whole thing?” he asks. “How far do things go with Superchoke? I bet someone would pay for that action.”
“Quit being an ass.” I ignore the questions as I snap the lid to the music box closed and lock it in my cabinet. “Forget Andy. Do you think Baz could really be involved with what happened to Rose? I need to go talk to him.”
“We should wait and talk to Gideon first.”
I glance at the time on my phone. “Gideon is probably in a meeting.”
“Yeah, but Baz might be dangerous, Winter. You heard the way he talked about not involving the cops. I wouldn’t mess with him.”
“Gideon trusts Baz and I trust Gideon. There has to be an explanation. I’m going to go talk to him, with or without you.”
“Okay. Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready.” Jesse ducks into the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later smelling suspiciously like my deodorant. He looks thoughtful as he rubs the beginnings of a beard. “I’ll come back and help you with the rest of the ViSEs later, if you want. That way we can play them all and the overlay won’t get you as much.”
“All right.” Jesse knows I have them now, so there’s no point in refusing his help. Plus, there’s no guarantee I’ll find the answers I want, but there’s a high probability I’ll end up seeing things I don’t want to see. I don’t want my last thoughts of my sister to be of some guy disrespecting her.
“What are you going to say to Baz?” Jesse asks.
“Oh, probably something like ‘Why the hell were you following my sister?’”
“I’m sure that’ll go over well.”
* * *
It actually goes over better than Jesse imagined. Baz is sitting at an out-of-use gaming table when we arrive at Escape. His head is bent over a screen.
Adebayo is behind the bar with a clipboard, doing what appears to be inventory. The main room of the club is empty except for a smattering of die-hard gamers. Up on the platforms, a group of kids are playing Rock Wars, two of them fighting over who gets to be the drummer. A couple of tables over from Baz, a group of Korean college kids in headset microphones are hunched over their laptops, playing some kind of role-playing game.
I slide into the chair next to Baz. I’m not going to tell him I saw him in one of Rose’s ViSEs. He’s one more person who will try to confiscate them. I peek over his shoulder. He seems to be reviewing security footage on his tablet.
Jesse stands behind my chair, his fingers curling around the edges of it protectively.
Baz hits a button and his tablet goes blank. He looks up, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than usual. “Was there something you needed, Winter?”
“I know you were following Rose,” I blurt out. “Why?”
“Following Rose? Why would you think that?”
“Someone told me,” I say.
Baz slips the tablet into a black leather sheath. “Fine. It’s no big secret.” He lowers his voice slightly. “Gideon asked me to keep an eye on her.”
“Why?” I ask again.
Behind me, Jesse says nothing, but his hands move from my chair to my shoulders. I’m not sure if the motion is meant to be comforting or restraining.
“Because he was worried about her,” Baz says. “Why do you think? She was a hot single girl running around the Lofts by herself. Not to mention she’d been acting reckless.”
My sister was always kind of strong willed, but I never viewed her as reckless. Probably because I never saw anyone willing to stand in the way of her doing whatever she wanted. “How long were you following her? Did you ever see her with a boyfriend?”
Baz folds his hands carefully and rests them on the table. “A few weeks. As I’m sure you know, I saw her with different men.”
A few weeks? Gideon said he got a threatening phone call a couple of days ago. “Why so long?”
“I don’t know. I don’t get pa
id to ask questions.” He stares at me. “You’re not supposed to be asking questions either, are you?”
I ignore his warning. “Was there one guy who stood out more than the others? A guy she actually seemed to like, who she wasn’t just recording?”
Baz shrugs. “Not that I could tell, but I generally only followed her to the clubs and casinos.”
“What about in the Green, at Andy Lynch’s house?” I say sweetly.
Baz doesn’t answer at first. We all know I’ve caught him in a lie. His eyes flick rapidly around the club. “Gideon wanted to be sure she wasn’t involved in anything dangerous,” he admits, squaring his shoulders. “Andy and his teammates have a reputation for gambling, for extending their credit a little too deeply with the Riverlights pit bosses. Gid didn’t want Rose caught up in that.”
“Have you been following me too?”
Baz looks up at Jesse, who is still hovering behind me. “You already seem to have a shadow.”
Jesse lifts his hands from my shoulders as I swivel around on my chair to glare at him. “I have not been following you for Gideon,” he says. “Thanks, dude,” he tells Baz. “I have to work with her.”
I turn back around. “Did you follow Rose two nights ago?”
Baz shakes his head. “I can’t watch her twenty-four seven.”
“Why were you at Zoo last night?” I ask. “Why did you run from us?”
“Wow. You know everything, don’t you?” Baz’s lips slant upward, just slightly. “Gideon wanted to know if you were putting yourself in danger, looking for Rose’s killers. I told him how you appeared to be behaving, staying with Jesse. I left out the part about how you almost got crushed by a train. I figure he has enough to worry about right now.”
Before I can ask anything else, my phone rings. Gideon.
Baz glances over at the display and smirks. “I’ll let him answer any other questions you might have. I’ll be in the back office if you need me.” He rises from his chair and strolls across the gaming floor.
Jesse wanders toward the bar area to give me some privacy. I answer the phone. “How are your meetings going?” I ask.
“Fine. Jesse told me what happened. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I’m suddenly glad Gideon is out of town and not here to see the bruises that have sprung up around my neck from nearly being strangled. “You told me you didn’t think Rose was in any danger; so then why were you having her followed for weeks?”
“Why are you questioning my judgment?” Gideon continues without waiting for a response. “So Jesse didn’t see the guy who jumped you? It was just you and the intruder?”
I pause. Around me, the video games chatter and sing. The table of college boys are still focused completely on their laptops. Adebayo is chatting with a female gaming attendant. No one is paying me any attention.
“I didn’t make this up, all right?” I say softly. “Jesse might not have seen the intruder, but he saw the gun the guy left behind.”
Jesse is sitting at the next table now, which is unfortunately only a few feet away. He’s pretending to be doing something on his phone, but I know he can still hear me. He thinks he doesn’t care about my past, but would knowing about the PTSD—the hospital, the crazy—change how he feels?
“What can you tell me about the guy?”
“I don’t know. He had a mask on. He said he wanted all the ViSE equipment. I told him I didn’t have any.”
“What happened to him?”
“He ran away after I stabbed him.”
“Hang on. I have another call,” Gideon says.
I turn to Jesse. He’s still fiddling with his own phone.
He glances up at me. “Your turn to get a lecture?”
“Basically.”
“He lectures because he cares, you know?” Jesse gives me a half smile.
“I know. I just wish he—”
Gideon comes back on the line. “Is Jesse there with you?”
“Yes. We’re at Escape, actually. Everyone is here.”
“Take the phone to a ViSE room and put me on speaker so I can talk to you both at once.”
I wave an arm to get Jesse’s attention and gesture for him to follow me. We cross the main gaming floor and duck into one of the ViSE rooms. I flip on the light and close the door behind us. Moving to the center of the room, I set the phone on the ViSE chair and activate the speaker.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“I’m sending you both to Miami Beach tomorrow to record a shark-diving ViSE,” Gideon says.
“Cool,” Jesse replies.
I give him a dirty look and turn back to the phone. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I want to be here until we…” I trail off. If I say something like “know for sure,” I’m going to get another lecture. “In case there’s anything I can do,” I finish.
“I understand your hesitation, Winter.” Gideon’s voice softens. “But there’s nothing you can do to help. Detective Ehlers has people investigating. Sebastian is doing additional work on his end. We might as well continue building our ViSE inventory while I work on a new editor and more playback headsets. You’ve always wanted to dive with sharks, haven’t you?”
I am both terrified of and fascinated by sharks. “Yes, but not now,” I say. “Oppa, I can’t just go to work like everything is fine. Let me stay here. You can use me as bait. Maybe the guy will try again.”
“We are not using you as bait,” Gideon says firmly.
“Fine. But you don’t need to send me away. I don’t even know how to scuba dive.”
“The dive operators will teach you.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to go.” My voice hitches. I know I’m whining, but I almost never ask Gideon for anything. He can’t make me go out of town now. I’m not going to forget what happened just because I’m in a different place. It won’t help. “Plus, who will take care of Miso? You’re always working. You’ll probably forget to feed him.”
“Natalie can take the cat for a few days. This is for your own safety. You’re a decent fighter, Winter, but if someone wants to grab you, there are plenty of people who can make it happen.”
“That’s not true. You’ve made me strong. I can defend myself.”
“You’re strong, but you’ve become a bit rash.” Gideon pauses. “I reviewed the footage from Saturday night. You should’ve let Jesse handle the security guard. You got shot at. You could have died.”
“I’ll be more careful,” I say, suddenly glad Baz didn’t tell Gideon about the close call with the train. “If you let me keep the gun the intruder left behind, I could—”
“No,” Gideon says. “No guns. The most dangerous weapon you have is your brain. Give someone a gun and they tend to quit using it.”
“So then why do Jesse and Baz have guns?” I protest. “Come on. If you let me keep it Jesse will show me how to use it safely.”
Gideon sighs. “Jesse. Take the phone off speaker for a moment, please.”
Reluctantly Jesse picks up the phone. He nods. His eyes darken. “I don’t think now is the time to—fine. I understand.”
Jesse sets the phone back on the ViSE chair. “Do it.” Gideon’s voice is tinny through the phone speaker.
Jesse removes a gun from the small of his back and slides out the clip. He hands the weapon to me with the barrel pointed down.
My pulse accelerates. The weight of the gun in my hands feels powerful. It feels right. “I can’t believe it,” I start. “He’s actually going to let you—”
Before I can even think, Jesse drops low. His elbow connects with my gut. I stumble backward toward the ViSE chair. Jesse slams my hand against the chair. The gun falls to the ground.
We both dive for it, but he’s quicker than I am and has obviously done this before. He scoops up the gun with one hand and then lunges at me.
“Sorry, Winter.” Jesse’s muscular arm snakes around my throat. My neck ends up wedged between his forearm and biceps, the chain of Rose’s necklace cutti
ng into my skin. My throat burns as I gasp for air. And then I feel the cold steel of a gun barrel jabbing into my ribs. “It’s done,” Jesse says.
A long beat of silences passes. Then Gideon clears his throat. “Now do you understand why I don’t want you to have a gun?”
“Tell him you understand,” Jesse whispers in my ear.
“No.” The same sick desperation from last night engulfs me. I need to win this, just like I needed to beat the train.
Hurt him, a little voice in my head says.
CHAPTER 23
I don’t want to hurt him. Jesse is not the enemy. I refuse to let my sister’s death turn me into someone who is violent and unhinged.
But I still want to win.
“Winter?” Gideon says.
I make a wheezing sound and Jesse loosens his hold a tiny bit. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s just trying to prove a point.
A point for Gideon.
I stop struggling and lower my eyes to the ground. “Fine. I understand.”
The instant Jesse starts to let me go, I strike backward with my fingertips, aiming for his eyes like I learned in Krav Maga. He grunts in surprise and releases me completely. I duck low and rear back with my elbow, landing a direct hit to his groin. As I spin around, he doubles over.
“Shit.” Red faced and gasping, Jesse sinks to his knees.
I wrench the gun out of his hand. “Guess who has the gun now,” I tell Gideon.
“She fights dirty,” Jesse says.
“You probably went easy on her,” Gideon replies. “She is well aware that not all men will be so kind.”
I lower my body onto the ViSE chair next to the phone, rubbing my neck with one hand. “Are we talking about Kyung? Was it one of his men? Is that why we’re bringing up the past?”
“What did I tell you about using that name?” Gideon says coolly.
“I told Jesse,” I say. “He knows about Los Angeles.” I expect to get a lecture about how we’re not supposed to talk about our past, how privacy is paramount, but Gideon just brushes it off.
“Fine. I do not know if Kyung or his men were involved in this,” he says. “All I know is that I’m not there to watch you, so you’re going to Miami where you’ll be safe. It’s not up for negotiation.”