For Kaitlyn's Sake

by Dani Criss

With a small nod and a big yawn, Steele walked over to the keypad and punched in the code. As soon as she spotted the green light on the pad, she opened the glass door and stepped out onto the carpeted balcony.

  Breathing deeply, she turned her face to the sun, leaning against the railing that overlooked the south section of the parking lot. The heat was wonderful. The fresh air, hot and humid from last night’s brief thunderstorm, blew across her cheeks and neck. Free. She felt free, as if a burden had been lifted temporarily. For a moment she forgot her fears, forgot Fallon existed. For a moment she could pretend...

  Then Steele walked onto the balcony and she remembered why they were both there. He eased his tall frame into a plastic chair, slouched down in it, then stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “So, what is it you like about being outdoors?” he asked her. “The heat, the sun?”

  “The fresh air. I get antsy being inside all day. I like to feel the wind on my face.”

  “It’s the sun for me. I hate those long stretches of cloudy days in the spring, the fall and winter. Give me the summer and the sunshine twelve months out of the year.”

  Kaitlyn could have guessed as much by merely looking at his bronzed skin and the blond streaks in his light brown hair.

  “Don’t care for those windy days we get, either,” he went on to say. “Interferes with my golf game.”

  “Golf?” Kaitlyn asked, stretching out in the chaise longue across from him, leaving the book she didn’t want to finish in her lap.

  “Sure. Jake and I have closed a lot of important business deals on the golf course.”

  “I just figured you for something more...physical,” she said, taking in his muscled biceps.

  “Basketball. My second love.” He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Jake’s first love. He plays golf only as a necessity. That’s why he loses his shirt every time we play.”

  “You bet on the game?”

  “We’re men,” he replied, as if that explained everything—and it nearly did. “We bet on our scores for each hole, how long our drives will be, whether we can make a putt, how many tries it’ll take Jake to get out of a sand trap. Hell, I’ve made a fortune betting on how bad his slice will be.”

  Didn’t sound very sporting, Kaitlyn thought, but she could tell by the humor in his voice that it was all done in fun.

  “I can look at the way he stands and how high his shoulder is and tell you how bad the ball will slice, what direction it’ll take and damn near where it will land,” he said, shaking his head. “I can even tell you how far he’ll throw the club after the ball hits the ground.”

  Kaitlyn found herself laughing as he continued with tales of various incidents on the golf course. She smiled as he told of Jake’s prowess on the basketball court—and the betting that went on there, also. She was pleased to learn that Jake usually managed to win back what he lost at golf.

  Before she knew it, she’d been in the sunshine for over thirty minutes and Jake was walking in the apartment door. Steele, she realized with a touch of gratitude, had entertained her—deliberately working to take her mind off her worries and fears. Perhaps she would be nicer to the man in the future.

  “Out here, Boss,” he called to Jake.

  Pocketing his keys, Jake stepped onto the balcony. He looked so tempting in those jeans and the black knit shirt, she thought as he took the chair beside her and reached for her hand. A small touch, holding her hand, she mused, but it made her want more—to have his arms around her again, to lie next to him and feel safe and sheltered, to give herself to him.

  She was quickly losing her resolve to stand on her own. And after reading most of this book of Jake’s, she was even more afraid of Fallon, more afraid of being on her own. How she would be able to remedy any of it, she didn’t know.

  “Everything all right at my house?” she asked him.

  He nodded, then squeezed her hand. “Thought we’d have some sesame chicken and wild rice for dinner.”

  She gave him a small smile. She still didn’t have much of an appetite, but she would try her best to do justice to his cooking.

  “Sounds great to me,” Steele put in, getting to his feet. “I’m going to grab a couple more hours of sleep before dinner.”

  “Did you invite him?” Kaitlyn asked Jake teasingly.

  “I don’t stand on formality,” Steele told her. “Especially not when Jake is cooking. He can’t golf worth a damn, but he can snooker me in basketball and he can cook. And I’ve got dibs on anything you leave on your plate,” he finished with a wink at her, then sauntered back to the couch to catch another nap.

  Kaitlyn managed to hide her smile until his back was turned, but just barely.

  “Does he get under your skin?” Jake asked quietly.

  She shrugged. “It’s that damned cocky attitude of his. But now that I’ve spent some time with him, he seems to be growing on me.”

  Jake smiled at her. “Good, because he’s my first choice to stay with you if I can’t be here.”

  Kaitlyn nodded her understanding, then inclined her head toward the book in her lap. “Will things get as bad as this book indicates?”

  “It’s very possible,” Jake told her reluctantly.

  The conversation had just begun and she was already biting her lower lip. He didn’t like that. Wished there were something he could do to change this whole situation. But all he could do was protect her, take care of her.

  She opened the book to a page with the corner bent, then read a passage. “‘This crime—unpredictable and long-term in nature—is one of the most life-altering and emotionally scarring ordeals a person can go through.’ I think I’m finding that out already.”

  “We’ll get you through this, Katie,” he said sympathetically.

  She flipped to another page. “‘Events may taper off for a short time, then start up weeks later.”’

  “Katie, we’ll take all the precautions—”

  “Precautions,” she said, finding another page. “This one advises taking precautions, then hoping you can outlast him. Outlast him, Jake.” Her voice rose slightly.

  “Yes, but—” Panic was setting in, he realized. Fear of what she might have to face. She was finally absorbing the horrible realities of the situation and it was scaring her through and through.

  “How do I outlast someone who creates his own version of reality and acts accordingly? How do I deal with someone who is not rational?”

  “You don’t,” Jake said firmly in an effort to calm her as much as possible when nothing she said could be refuted. “You put yourself out of his reach. Eventually he is likely to become interested in someone else.”

  “Eventually can be a really long time.”

  “It could also be much shorter than that,” he told her. “Meanwhile, our primary goal is to prevent encounters between you and him. That’s one of the reasons I brought you here last night instead of taking you home.”

  Another was that she’d needed a break—time to think about her situation without fear of what Fallon might do to her. And Jake had needed to be with her, looking after her. He hadn’t wanted her to be alone.

  “So, are you saying I can never go home?” she demanded.

  “Of course you can—”

  “How, though?” She slammed the book shut and handed it to him. “I’m scared to death at the thought of what he might do. How am I supposed to handle being alone in my own house?”

  “You’re not alone in this,” he told her emphatically. “We can arrange for someone to stay with you. And you can stay here as long as you want to.”

  He wanted her to stay, he realized. He could take care of her here, make certain she ate and slept, that she was free of worry, that no harm came to her. There were too many variables when she was away from him, too many chances she might get hurt. When she was with him, he could protect her.

  And when she was with him, he felt whole, he decided. As if she was the element that had been
missing in his life lately.

  “I can stay here and you’ll take care of me?” she asked, testing the idea and his response to it.

  “As long as you need,” he said, hoping the idea would appeal to her as much as it did to him. Last night, holding her, comforting her, had felt very good. He didn’t want their time together to end. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  But when he glanced at her, for the first time he could remember he couldn’t read her expression. She’d become quiet, had averted her gaze. It felt as though she was withdrawing from him. He frowned, not liking the thought of that one bit.

  “Katie, there are ways in which you can take control of this situation.”

  She shot him a skeptical look.

  “You start by making yourself inaccessible. Mary’s already helping you with that. She doesn’t leave you alone in the office and she doesn’t put through his calls. You simply do that on a larger scale.”

  “Larger scale,” she repeated flatly.

  “Yes. When you want to go to the grocery store, the post office, the dry cleaner’s, say, you give me a call and I’ll go with you. When you want to go shopping with Shelly, or you want to have lunch with her, have her pick you up rather than meeting her.”

  “What about delivering tickets? I can’t discontinue the service to my clients.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I think you should hire an older retired person or a young college student to do that, someone who wants just a few hours a week. Or use an overnight delivery service.”

  What about making calls to drum up business? she wanted to ask. A part-time person couldn’t do that. But neither could she—not without great personal risk.

  Her freedom to come and go at will would be curtailed completely. She would have to alter the way she lived entirely. Impose on her friends. Give up her privacy. Her independence. Let her business suffer.

  “Then you start documenting every single thing the way we discussed,” Jake continued. “Mary should write down each time he phones you at the office. You let your answering machine at home screen all your calls so you’ll have him on tape when he gets your new number and starts calling again.”

  When he gets her new number? Kaitlyn found herself clenching her teeth. She couldn’t even answer her phone at home. Jake wouldn’t bring up the possibility of Fallon’s getting her unlisted number unless he thought it was likely to happen.

  “You keep a copy of these records in your safe-deposit box,” Jake said.

  Meaning it was also likely that Fallon might get his hands on or destroy the originals? She didn’t want to know the answer to that, not right now.

  “Who should I have accompany me to the bank to put those records in the lockbox?” she bit out instead, fury and frustration getting the better of her.

  “I’ll be glad to drive you. I’d like to have copies of everything for my files, too. It’s good to have the backup documentation.”

  “I suppose I should ask the bank to put me on the list for a bigger box,” she said angrily. “It sounds as if I’ll need it.”

  Jake’s mouth tightened in a thin line. “Katie, you have every right to be upset about the situation, but understand this. In these situations we have to change the one person who can be reasoned with. Nothing any of us say to Fallon will make him act rationally. So you change the way you do things to protect yourself.”

  There was no alternative to that, she realized unhappily, unless she chose to disappear, as Fallon’s ex-girlfriend had done. To do so effectively she would have to give up her dream of running her own travel agency, become an unknown face in a sea of nameless office workers. Move her mother to another hospital, and with her current fragile state of mind, that was not something Kaitlyn wanted to consider.

  And what about Jake? How would she feel about leaving him?

  “The main thing,” Jake stressed, “is to avoid dealing with Fallon alone. There is safety in numbers. If you’re always with someone, he may become discouraged and latch onto someone else.”

  How likely is that? she wanted to demand, but she already knew the answer. Knew that she would have no choice but to go along with all the courses of action Jake had laid out. Knew that her life would not be her own for a very long time, if ever.

  Jake would look after her, keep her safe. She trusted him completely. She could depend on him. That’s not what she wanted for herself, to be dependent on anyone, but it appeared she had no other options. She was scared to go home and even more panicked at the thought of staying in his apartment.

  “I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” she said, standing. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down before dinner.” She handed him the book, then went down the hall to the guest bedroom.

  She wasn’t asleep when Jake went to call her for dinner, and she hadn’t slept the two hours she’d been in the room, he could tell. She was too tense, too distant. She’d lain in there, mulling over what she’d read and what they’d discussed on the balcony, and none of it was sitting well.

  As he and Dallas dug in to the chicken breasts, wild rice and fresh asparagus, she picked at her food, putting something in her mouth only when she caught Jake’s gaze on her. He glanced at his friend and the two of them launched into a lively discussion of the KC Royals. When baseball didn’t draw her out, they turned to the Chiefs’ preseason football games, then to movies, the economy, the upcoming presidential elections. Their efforts were futile. Nothing they talked about drew her out of her melancholy.

  “Jeez, Red, Jake and I could save our breath,” Dallas finally said, helping himself to half of the untouched chicken breast on her plate and a couple of asparagus spears.

  She blinked at him as if it took a moment or two for her to catch his meaning. She’d been that lost in her own unpleasant thoughts. Jake wanted to pull her into his arms, but was afraid that would be the wrong move this time. She wasn’t reaching out to him as she had last night. In fact, the opposite was the case this evening. Perhaps she just needed a little time to herself. He’d given her a lot of serious stuff to think about.

  “At least finish off your rice,” Dallas urged. “I know Jake made it especially for you. I’m a potato man myself.”

  Jake glanced at her and caught the hint of a smile of apology she gave him, then watched as she managed a few bites of the rice. She wasn’t enjoying the food, though, not the way she had with the Mexican rice and enchiladas. He would give her time, he figured—wouldn’t push. In a day or two she would see that things would not be as bleak as she must be imagining.

  In the meantime, he decided later as they sat in front of the television, not really watching the romantic comedy that was playing, it was tearing him apart to see her anguish. From time to time he looked over to catch her biting her lower lip, her gaze unfocused as she stared into the distance. When he spoke to her, she gave him her attention, but would give little response to his small talk.

  Things would look better to her after a good night’s sleep, he finally decided, switching off the TV after the nightly news was over. He tried to coax her into sleeping in his bed again, promising to behave himself, if that’s what she wanted. She wanted to be alone.

  Jake wasn’t certain that was such a good idea. She needed sleep, not more long hours of chasing her gloomy and frightening thoughts around in circles. But when she insisted she would be all right—and as close as the next room if he was concerned about her—he reluctantly let her go, then lay in bed, worried that she was fretting about the future rather than sleeping.

  He managed to doze off for a few minutes, then was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. Groggily he fumbled for the receiver.

  “Riley,” he mumbled into it.

  “We have a silent alarm at your garage,” the woman on the other end said. “Do you want the police to respond?”

  “Let me check it out first,” he told her. “Send a patrol unit and I’ll call the police if I need them.”

  He hung up, then found his jeans folded on a chair a
nd stepped into them. Katie was opening his door as he pulled on his shoes. She didn’t look as though she’d been asleep. Her eyes were clear and alert, and worried.

  “My house again?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  He shook his head as he reached behind him to position his revolver at the small of his back. About then the wail of a car alarm traveled up to the apartment.

  “My garage,” he said, grabbing for a shirt and yanking it over his head. “That’s my car alarm.”

  He rushed past her and headed for the apartment door. Hurriedly he disarmed the security system, then showed Kaitlyn how to arm it again after he left.

  “Stay inside,” he ordered, planting a light kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He took the stairs, catching up with his maintenance man and the building security guard in the parking lot. Eddie had his nightstick in one hand, flashlight in the other. Frank had brought a hammer. Carefully and quickly, the three made for the garage. As they approached the open overhead door, Eddie aimed the flashlight beam inside. Jake pulled out his keys and shut off the screaming alarm.

  The patrol unit arrived a moment or two after that and Max Slater got out. By then the other three had determined that there was no one inside the garage. Jake switched on the lights and walked over to his car. The windshield had been shattered and the tiny fragments of glass were everywhere—inside and outside the vehicle. There were deep dents in nearly every piece of sheet metal. The intruder had used silver paint to spray obscenities and the words she’s mine on the sides and trunk.

  “Fallon,” Jake muttered along with a few choice curses.

  “That the perp’s name?” Max asked, shining a light on the driver’s door.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “Think he left any prints?”

  Slater shook his head. “Didn’t have to touch the car to do any of this.” He got down on the ground to look under the car, then got up and glanced around the garage. “Took his paint cans with him. Looks like he may have used one of your golf clubs on the windshield and the body,” he said, peering into the car to see a club lying on the front seat. “Might—might—get prints off the grip, but I wouldn’t count on it.”