She glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
“You never once looked to see if anyone was following you from the parking lot. Your security light is out. And you didn’t check to make sure I was still behind you to secure the front door.”
“I just assumed you’d get it.”
“You should never make assumptions.”
She shrugged her shoulders and turned, padding her way across the living room to the narrow hallway tucked behind the dining room. I was annoyed by that, annoyed by the fact that she clearly couldn’t care less about her safety. A lot of my clients were that way, but this really annoyed me.
I sat on the couch and pulled out my laptop, immediately pulling up the camera feeds on the cameras the security team had set up here this morning. The cameras were tiny and completely wireless, stuck high on the walls with double-sided tape. I could see the kitchen and living room clearly; I could even see myself sitting there on the couch. I could also see the dining room, the hallway, and inside both bedrooms. The bathroom was the only room in the apartment that didn’t have a camera, but the cameras in the hallway and the bedrooms covered all three of the entry points.
Tierney, completely unaware of the cameras, was undressing beside her bed. My eyes were drawn to her, to the long line of her back, as she slipped her blouse from her arms. Then she reached behind her and unzipped the back of her skirt, her hips doing a little shimmy as she pushed the skirt from her body. She stood there for a second in just a flimsy pair of panties and her dark bra. And, for that second, I was having thoughts that I’d never had for a client, even the few who’d thrown themselves at me.
I pushed a button and the camera feeds changed, showing me Vanessa’s house instead. I could see her sitting in her bedroom, curled up on the bed in a familiar position. Whenever a sound or a movement or something in her head scared her, she’d crawl onto the bed and draw her legs up to her chest, laying in a sort of fetal position.
Fuck! I wondered what it was this time.
Tierney was still in the bedroom, so I pulled out my cell and called Vanessa.
“Answer the phone,” I said, as I watched her ignore the first few rings on the camera feed.
She finally did, after four rings, reaching for the phone where it sat on her bedside table.
“What’s the matter, kid? What happened?”
“I saw something,” she said in a low whisper I could barely decipher. “Outside the window.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. A black figure.”
I pressed a button on the computer and pulled up the camera feeds from outside the house. There was nothing there, but the lawn I paid a pretty penny to have mowed and fertilized monthly.
“Did you look at the cameras, Vanessa?”
“I left the computer in the other room.”
“Well, I’m looking and there’s nothing there.”
“Can you come over, Alex? I swear I saw something. What if it comes back when you turn off the feed?”
“I’m on a case, babe.”
She groaned, and when I brought back up the camera feed from her bedroom, I could see her moving back into that fetal position.
“Do you want me to call Knox? Or Ingram?”
She didn’t answer. Alarm bells began to sound in my head. I knew what it meant when she won’t answer me. She was shutting down, refusing to deal with anything.
“Vanessa?”
“What’s your case?” she asked softly.
I closed my eyes, relief washing over me. “I’m just acting as a bodyguard for a lady who has been getting death threats. It’s an easy one, babe.”
“You have to be safe, Alex. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I will be safe. And you need to get off that bed and go get your computer. I’m telling you, you’re fine.”
“Can you…can you call Knox?”
“Of course, baby. I’ll call her right now.”
“And keep watching the cameras until she gets here.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Alex.”
“I love you, Vanessa. Everything’s going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I opened my eyes as I said that last part, surprised to find Tierney watching me. She immediately brushes past me to go into the kitchen. I disconnected the call and pressed the speed dial button that would connect me to Knox. She answered on the first ring.
“Hey. Vanessa’s having a rough night.”
“Say no more,” Knox announced in her southern drawl. “I’ll go right over.”
“Thanks.”
I took one more look at the cameras broadcasting from Vanessa’s house, then closed the lid of the laptop. Tierney was in the kitchen, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt now, her feet bare. I watched her for a moment, watched as she opened the refrigerator door and bent low to see what might be inside. She was impossibly thin, her hipbones sticking out above the top edge of her sweat pants. Her shirt pulled up when she reached for something, exposing quite a bit of her side, her belly, and the bottom edge of her dark bra. It would be so easy to go over there and…
I cleared my throat, and she immediately straightened up.
“Hey, hi,” she said a little awkwardly, refusing to look me in the eye. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize you were on the phone.”
“No problem.”
She gestured at the refrigerator. “I’m sure you’re starving, because I am. But I don’t have a whole lot in here. I don’t really have a lot of time for household chores, like grocery shopping.”
“What do you usually do?”
“Order out.”
I gestured. “Go for it. I’m going to go walk the perimeter of the building, check for any potential problems.”
I didn’t wait for her to say anything. I left, walking too fast to see much of anything around the building. There was this tightness in my chest that I knew all too well. I wanted to go check on Vanessa, but I also knew that she was in good hands with Knox. And going to her every time she got scared by some little sound or a movement out of the side of her eyes wasn’t helpful. That doctor, Dr. Arden, had told me that dozens of times, but how was I supposed to ignore her cries for help?
I wasn’t there. When Vanessa needed me the most, I was overseas. But I was here now, and I was going to do everything I could do to keep her safe.
Knox—what an incredible friend!—texted me when she got to Vanessa’s house, sending a picture of the two of them standing in the living room, laughing.
Crisis diverted. But, somehow, that didn’t make me feel better.
I walked the perimeter of the building, nodding to a couple of Tierney’s neighbors who were out walking their dog. Then I headed back up, again looking at the dark, dead end of the breezeway. There was an open space between the two sections of the building, but it was narrow and blocked off by wrought iron that was set in the concrete floor and the wooden eaves hanging out from the roof. No one was going anywhere there.
I knocked on the door, and Tierney opened it too quickly to have looked through the peephole.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped, as I brushed past her into the apartment.
“Do what?”
“Open the door without looking to see who it is.”
“I knew it was you.”
“I could have been an attacker. You can never know who’s on the other side of the door unless you look.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be safe.”
I dropped onto the couch and opened my computer again. I pulled up the camera feed from Vanessa’s and watched as she and Knox settled in the living room to play cards. Vanessa was glancing at the windows from time to time, but she seemed better now.
I took a deep breath, telling myself to focus.
I pulled up the cameras situation outside this building and the one next door. I could see most of the parking lot and the grassy area between the buildings.
“Is tha
t here?”
Tierney was sitting on the couch beside me, looking over my shoulder at the computer screen.
“We set up cameras inside and outside of our client’s homes so that we can monitor any unusual activity.” I glanced at her. “A lot of the time, the person making the threat will come to the target’s home or office to either leave more notes or to commit some sort of violence. This way we can record it and have evidence for the cops.”
“Inside the apartment, too?”
I pushed the button that showed her the feeds from inside the apartment. She leaned forward and stared at it, her finger pressing against the picture of her bedroom.
“You…did you…?”
“This is not something that I sit here and stare at. When you’re in your bedroom, I’m respectful to your privacy.”
“Who else can see this?”
“It feeds into the server at the office, but no one watches it unless an alarm sounds.”
“What sort of alarm?”
“The system is designed to alarm if it detects something unusual.”
“How does it know the difference between us coming into the apartment and a potential attacker?”
I touched another button, bringing up the program running in the background. I pointed to a couple of lines of code.
“One of the ladies back at the office who monitor these systems uploaded information about you. They took pictures back at the office, right?”
She nodded.
“They scanned the pictures and created all kinds of things out of it…code…that they uploaded to the system to let it know you were okay. And then they told the system to only sound the alarm if someone who is not you or me comes within two feet of your front door or the car down in the parking lot.”
She leaned forward again, studying the line of code that was racing over the computer screen in front of us. Then she shook her head.
“I wish I understood computers, but I don’t.”
“This stuff is pretty advanced. If David were ever interested in selling it on the open market, he could make a killing.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
I shrugged. “From what I understand, he doesn’t need to. His dad was some sort of politician and his family had tons of money.”
“Then his dad was Ashford Grayson, Senior?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“My mom worked on his campaign to become the congressman from our district. She was pretty upset when he was killed in that car accident.”
I didn’t know a lot about David. He didn’t advertise his past, but I had read about it on the internet. It was pretty bad, the accident that killed his parents on the night his father was elected to Congress. Must have been a difficult thing for him to live with.
The doorbell rang as I closed the open windows on my computer. I immediately pulled up the camera that showed the front door even as the perimeter alarm made my phone vibrate. The video showed a man in a Pizza Hut uniform standing at the door with a big, red bag in his hands.
“Pizza’s here,” Tierney said, jumping up from the couch.
I followed, grabbing her arm and pulling her back before she could open the door.
“Let me do it.”
She was pressed against my chest, her hand resting just above my heart. She looked up at me, her lips soft and full, especially that bottom lip that just begged to be—
“I’ll get the wine,” she said, pulling away from me.
I watched her duck into the kitchen before I yanked open the door. I paid the guy with money from my wallet and took the pizza and hot wings Tierney had ordered. When he was gone, I pulled out my phone and reset the alarm on the system. By doing so, I informed the people back at the office that everything was okay.
“Where do you want this?”
“I usually just eat on the couch.”
I carried the pizza into the living room, pushing my computer to one side so that we’d have room for everything. She came into the room behind me, a bottle of red wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.
“Is this okay? The only other thing I have is tap water.”
“That’s fine.”
She settled on the couch beside me, setting the glasses on the table to fill them. She handed me one and took a long sip from the other, sighing with her eyes closed as it flowed over her tongue.
“This has got to be the best time of the day. No more stress, no more rush. Just me, good food, and a glass of wine.”
“Do you want me to give the three of you a little space?”
She peeked at me and laughed. “He does have a sense of humor!”
“I do. On occasion.”
She threw the lid of the pizza box open and took the biggest piece, pushing it in my direction with her knee when she was done. We sat back and enjoyed the food for a few minutes, not really speaking or looking at each other. I found myself looking around the room, admiring her top-of-the-line entertainment system and the flat screen that came with it. There were pictures, too, mostly of her and a blond woman who must have been her mother, and a few with a dark-haired woman I suspected was her friend, Sara.
You could tell a lot about a person by the pictures they felt strongly enough about to frame and set around their home. Some people will decorate their homes with impersonal artwork, paintings that don’t really mean anything to them except for the price tag. Others fill their rooms with pictures of them with celebrities or politicians, as if they’re trying to prove how important they really are. But others will have highly personal pictures. There was once this man I worked for who displayed pictures of his stillborn granddaughter. He looked at them and saw beautiful potential. I looked at them and saw the mottled skin of a dead child.
Tierney’s pictures said she was close to her mother and that she had very few people in her life whom she trusted. They said she wasn’t much of a party girl and that she worked hard, but she played hard, too. They said that she was the kind of girl I would normally like to get to know.
But then there was that whole lawyer thing.
“Am I allowed to ask questions about your personal life?”
I glanced at her as I reached for a third piece of pizza. “It’s your house. You can ask anything you want to.”
“I just wasn’t sure how it worked within the rules of your firm.”
“David leaves that sort of thing up to us. If we want to talk about our lives, we can. If we don’t, we’re not obligated to.”
“Do you often share your life story with your clients?”
“I find that offering little pieces of information often makes the target feel safer in my company.”
“The target? Is that what I am?”
I studied her face for a moment, watching her blue eyes dance with emotion.
“That’s just how we refer to our clients in the office. It’s a military term.”
“Were you in the military?”
“I was a Navy SEAL.”
“Impressive. Did you see any action overseas?”
“I was in Afghanistan. Two tours.”
Her face was intensely expressive. I watched as she took that information in; I saw surprise and something else cross her face. She was impressed.
I picked at the pepperonis on my pizza. “It’s not as glamorous as people think it is. I mostly went on patrols, looking for people or items that could pose a threat to the caravans that were constantly coming and going out of our base.”
“It’s brave, going to a place like that.”
I shook my head. “It was my job.”
“How long have you been back?”
“Almost three years.”
“Did you consider making it a career, or were you always planning on only going for a few years?”
The conversation was crawling toward too personal. I set my pizza down on the lid of the box and picked up the wine, taking a deeper swallow than I probably should have. When I looked at her again, she was watching me, as her finge
r played over the top lip of her glass.
“Why did you become a lawyer?”
“Because my father’s a lawyer.”
“Why do you defend criminals?”
She shrugged. “Because someone has to.” She smiled, but the smile quickly died. “Because I like the challenge of criminal law.”
“Does it ever bother you that some of your clients are guilty? That you might be allowing a criminal out on the street so that he can commit his crime again?”
“Sometimes. But our justice system doesn’t work if the criminal doesn’t have a defense attorney. Besides, sometimes they’re innocent.”
I snorted. “Rarely.”
“Do you know how many people have been wrongly convicted because they had inadequate representation? Do you know what would happen to people if our justice system didn’t work the way it does? It might be broken, but it could be so much worse.”
“It’s not just broken. It’s fucked! If someone has money, it’s guaranteed he’ll get off. If you’re poor, then so fucking sorry!”
She stared at me, and that made me realize that I had raised my voice. I got off the couch, snatching my wine glass as I did. I downed the last of the wine and took the glass to the kitchen, rinsing it out like a proper guest should do. When I turned, she was standing in the doorway.
“Did something happen to you?” she asked.
I brushed past her, but she grabbed my wrist. My instinct was to push her away, but I caught myself.
“You don’t like lawyers.”
“I can’t stand them.”
“Then why would you agree to work this case?”
I lifted my arm and peeled her fingers off of my wrist. “I’m going to go take a shower, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s fine.”
I was already halfway down the hall before she spoke.
I’d brought my bag up from the SUV. I snatched it as I passed it, carrying it into the bathroom with me. I quickly stripped out of the suit I’d been wearing all day and climbed into the shower, the hot water running over my body a pleasure that had few comparisons. Mondays were always long days, but this one seemed to have gone on far longer than any other had.
That discussion with Tierney…it brought up too many memories. That, combined with Vanessa’s meltdown tonight, and it was like I couldn’t breathe. I thought she would be okay. She was in school, going to the University of Texas here in Austin. She was a good student, smart as a whip. When we talked on the phone or over email, she’d tell me how great her classes were. She was about to graduate, just a week or two away from the ceremony. I’d already arranged leave. I was going to surprise her the night before. But then I got the call.
DEFENDING TIERNY (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 1) Page 4