Hushed Guardian: Brandon's Story

by Shandi Boyes

  I suck in a relieved breath when Grayson responds, “No. They haven’t gotten that far in yet. Fuckers. They’re seeking any electronic devices in the area.”

  “Do you think it’s Alex’s team?”

  Grayson starts his reply with a grunt. “No. I got tabs on him. He’s nowhere near Izzy’s apartment.”

  “You’ve got tabs on your brother?” When Isabelle pivots around to face me, my voice too loud for her to brush off as a weirdo who talks to himself, I point to a well-known gossip magazine on her entryway table. “Royals these days. Can’t even have a conversation with your grannie without someone listening in.”

  “Or go on a fucking date. This is Isaac. It has his murky fingerprints all over it,” Grayson hisses on a growl.

  I wait for Isabelle to shift her focus back to scrounging up the sauce not burned to the bottom of the pan before twisting away from her and lowering my head to the microphone in my shirt. “How do you know it’s Isaac? His hacker never leaves a trace.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I know it’s him.” Grayson waits a beat before disclosing, “The timestamp is also very telling. The instant the guy sitting at the front of Isabelle’s apartment ends his call, my surveillance is infiltrated.” Another handful of keystrokes sound down the line before Grayson says, “He’s in.”

  “He’s in?” I move away from the mirror I’m standing in front of before lowering my hand to cover the camera I rigged into my shirt this morning.

  “Not your feed, dipshit. I forced him into the camera in the hallway. When you leave Izzy’s apartment, be sure to give Isaac a real show.”

  “A show?” I slowly float toward Isabelle when she requests for me to join her at the dining table where she’s laid out the meal she prepared for us. “What kind of show?” When Grayson makes noises not suitable for a fellow agent to do to another agent, I whisper, “I’m not doing that. You know my thoughts on that.”

  “Jesus, Brandon. Are you sure your dick end has ever been wet? I’m not asking you to sleep with the girl. Just give me the chance to back trace the data. If you do something invigorating enough to gain Isaac’s attention, I guarantee he’ll watch it. All the sadistic ones do. When he watches it, most likely on repeat, I’ll have a chance to follow his feed back to the source. It could lead us to his real residence.”

  His suggestion has many valid points—regrettably. Isabelle is under Isaac’s skin enough to have his security team monitoring her twenty-four seven, so who’s to say how he’ll respond if he thinks he has competition.

  “Can I at least enjoy my meal before I’m sent to slaughter?”

  Isabelle returns to the dining room and gestures for me to take a seat at the same time Grayson replies, “Of course, because from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, this could be your last meal.”

  His laughter doubles when I grumble under my breath, “Shut the fuck up.”

  14

  Brandon

  “Shut the fuck up, Grayson!” My roar is so loud, I hear it twice when it bounces off the brickwork in the alleyway siding Isabelle’s apartment. “There was nothing wrong with my kiss. Isabelle said so herself.” It’s also been a while, but I sure as fuck am not disclosing that to Grayson.

  Grayson told me to do something drastic to force Isaac to respond. I racked my brain for the two hours of our ‘date’ striving to think of something profoundly moving. I thought a kiss was the ideal solution. It would have been if I didn’t have Grayson in my ear, egging me on. Have you ever tried to kiss someone with a thirty-three-year-old man catcalling and wolf-whistling in your ear? I got stage fright. Kill me.

  Luckily for me, Isabelle was cool about my sudden desire to lock lips. She even jested about how she would have dragged me into her apartment if she didn’t have a three-date rule. Did I believe her? Not really. I may have if she hadn’t mentioned chasing an unattainable man. If that wasn’t a flashing alarm alerting me to just how deep Isaac has crawled under her skin, I don’t know what will.

  While jabbing my finger into the key of my BMW, I tell Grayson to shut the fuck up for the third time. My ego is already blown to shit, I don’t need his laughter.

  “I’m not laughing at you, dipshit. I am terrified about how fucking hard I am. That was almost as good as porn for a saint like me. I have precum seeping into my pants and shit—” His chair popping into place drowns out his words. It’s quickly chased by his fingers tapping the keys of his keyboard. “It fucking worked.”

  I yank open the driver’s side door of my car and slide into the driver’s seat. “Isaac is watching the feed?”

  “No.” Grayson’s one word shoots out of his mouth so fast, it replicates the crack of a whip. “He’s in Izzy’s apartment.”

  My jaw quivers with annoyance more than excitement. “You rigged Isabelle’s apartment?”

  “No,” he fires back again, his voice extra loud.

  “Then how the fuck do you know Isaac is in her apartment?”

  He jabs at his keyboard another three times before a voice I’ve heard on surveillance many times the past eight-plus months filters through the device in my ear. “No more men in your apartment, Isabelle.”

  “Your kiss with Isabelle got him so riled up, he had to pay her a visit,” Grayson mutters, his voice husky with humored excitement.

  As I crank my neck to watch the main entrance of Isabelle’s apartment building, I ask, “How did you get the audio?” I’ve only just asked my question when the answer smacks into me. “I left my jacket in her coat closet.” When Isaac bursts through the rotating doors of Isabelle’s apartment a few seconds later, my lips curl into a grin. “And I’m going to need to get it.”

  “Yesss,” Grayson replies with a hiss. “Play the fucker at his own game.”

  My steps back to Isabelle’s apartment are nowhere near as weighed down as the ones I used when leaving it. They’re extra springy and have me reaching Isabelle’s front door in a record-breaking forty-eight seconds. Yes, I was counting.

  “Play it cool, BJ,” Grayson suggests, throwing me off my game with his unusual nickname. Usually, punk, dipshit, and dickface are his go-to terms of endearment. He must be cautious my overzealous knock has me walking into a trap like I did the night I babysat Olivia after Tobias informed her that her brother had gone missing. She was as miserable as me, and just as drunk. We stumbled into bed—once—and I’m still paying for it. “Be the charmer you were most of the night. Be the opposite of the man she’s craving. She isn’t seeking a hookup right now. She needs a friend.”

  “I am her friend,” I mutter back just as Isabelle cracks open her door.

  I’m taken back when I take in her red cheeks, water-brimming eyes, and cracked lips. I thought euphoria would be pumping out of her, not fear. “I… umm… forgot to get my coat. But you look busy, so I’ll come back later.”

  “Where the fuck are you going?” Grayson asks at the same time Isabelle assures, “Brandon, it’s fine. I’m not busy.”

  When she ushers me into the foyer of her home before moving to the coat closet to gather my jacket, Grayson reminds me to survey the area. “Is anything out of place?”

  I shift on my feet to face the table we dined at. The glasses have been moved—mainly, my wine glass that’s minus the lipstick print Izzy’s has.

  “He mentioned something about the glasses. Any chance you can offer to wash those at home for her? One of them could possibly have a print on it.”

  After jerking up my chin, I head for Isabelle’s dining table. I’m barely a foot out of the entryway when Isabelle grumbles something under her breath before she curls her arm around my waist and forcefully evicts me from her apartment. “I’m sorry, Brandon, but I have to do something really important.” She bumps me with her hip to dislodge me from her doorway before jabbing her key into the lock and twisting it into place.

  The confusion on my face triples when Grayson coughs out, “Nine o’clock.” When I glance at the side wall of the hallway, he laughs. “Not your nine
o’clock, dipshit. Nine o’clock on her neck.”

  “Jesus.” I breathe out when I catch sight of what Grayson is on about. Even with her hair pulled over her shoulders, a massive love bite is peeking out of Isabelle’s dark strands. It looks recent like it just happened, which I can testify to since it wasn’t there the two hours we dined together.

  We ride the elevator to the foyer of her building in silence, my voice only finding itself when Isabelle makes a beeline for a taxi idling at the curb. “I can give you a lift if you want?”

  She doesn’t give my offer any thought. After waving her hand through the air, she shouts, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The cab’s door slamming shut gobbles up my reply.

  I wait for her taxi to merge into a sea of traffic before sprinting for my car. After snatching a parking ticket off the windscreen, I toss my jacket onto the passenger seat, crank the ignition, throw the gearshift into reverse, then back out of the alleyway at a speed too dangerous for the number of people still on the sidewalk. I swear Ravenshoe is worse than New York when it comes to its residents’ sleeping patterns. It doesn’t matter what time it is, the streets are always littered with cars and foot traffic.

  “Slow down, punk. I’ve grown too fond of you the past eight years to scrape your insides off the pavement.”

  I grin before firming the slant of my foot on the gas pedal. I’ve got nothing to lose, so I also have no fear.

  “Take a left on Tracer. There’s a collision on Clarence causing traffic to back up.” Even though Grayson can’t see me, I nod. “Remind me never to get in a car with you.” He chuckles when the back end of my BMW slides out in the slippery conditions. “How do you know where she’s going?”

  “Do you remember Joey saying his zipper scar was proof he had a heart?”

  I hear Grayson’s cheeks rise into a smile before he says, “Yeah. It was around the time he said love bites were proof he had a girl.”

  “That’s right.” I shake my head as a good memory hidden by a vault load of bad ones breaks through the haze in my head. “I thought I’d give his theory a whirl.”

  Grayson laughs. “Your girl wasn’t a fan?”

  “Not. At. All. I swear she mentioned castration at one stage.” I stop talking as my smile sags. “I thought it was because she didn’t like the idea of being owned.”

  “That was what she meant, Brandon.”

  “You don’t know that,” I fire back. “She—”

  “Made a mistake… once. One. Time. You’ve given Isabelle, a girl you barely know, chance after chance after chance, but you can’t give the woman you grew up with the same leeway. That’s shit, Brandon, utter and absolute shit.”

  Still incapable of arguing the truth, I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know if it appeases Grayson’s anger or doubles it, but I lose the chance to find out when I catch up to Isabelle’s cab at the front of Isaac’s nightclub. She throws a wad of cash at the driver before peeling out of the back seat. She looks as angry as Melody did when I marked her skin with a line of hickeys from the shell of her ear to her right rib.

  “You’re going to need to follow her inside if you want to hear their conversation. Isaac’s goons scan his premises multiple times a day for listening devices.” Grayson’s tone reveals he’s more pissed than happy about my silence.

  I find a parking space at the very back of the lot. Once I have the engine shut down and my game face on, I exit my car. I barely make it two steps away when my approach of the back exit of The Dungeon is stopped by a face I’ve seen hanging on a wall more than in person.

  Special Agent Phillipa Russell props her hip onto the rear quarter panel of my car before draping back her knee-length coat to display the badge on her hip, wordlessly announcing she’s on the job.

  “Do you regularly conduct surveillance on fellow officers, Agent McGee?” She overemphasis my surname to ensure I can’t miss it. “Or just the pretty ones?”

  I play it cool even with my eyelid dying to twitch out. “Surveillance? I’m off the clock. I heard this place makes good margaritas. Thought I’d test the authenticity of the claim.”

  “Margaritas? Right.” She drags her eyes down my frozen frame, taking in my designer shirt, brand name jeans, and boots that cost more than most agents make in a month. “I heard you were more a whiskey type of man.”

  “Depends on the occasion. Tonight isn’t really a whiskey kind of night.” I scrub my hand across my jaw, curious as to why Grayson is noticeably quiet. Usually, I can’t shut him up, but he hasn’t even whistled in a breath since Agent Russell joined our duo. “Is that all, Agent Russell? I’d like to enjoy the remainder of my night off before I’m back on the field.”

  “Just one final thing.” She clicks her fingers at a second agent I didn’t notice lingering in the shadows until now. He hands her a single sheet of paper before once again becoming one with the late hour. “How’d you manage to tamper with evidence before you joined the Bureau?”

  What the fuck is she on about? “I’ve never tampered with evidence.” I can say that with the utmost honesty. I’ve conducted private investigations and hacked into files I shouldn’t have access to, but I’d never meddle with evidence.

  “Oh. Then how did Crombie’s prints end up on a candle that was never logged into evidence?”

  When Agent Russell slides the sheet of paper across the boot of my car, my eyes drop to it. It’s as she states. The candle Crombie’s prints were found on isn’t in the evidence log she photographed. There’s no mention of anything flammable. Not even the hairspray found in the cab of Crombie’s truck.

  “Fire accelerant was sprayed on Melody’s curtains—”

  “I’m not disputing that,” Agent Russell interrupts, her tone surprisingly calm for how snappy mine is. “But that doesn’t mean Crombie was the man responsible for it.”

  “He was found guilty by a jury of his peers! He was served a twelve-year sentence for his crime.”

  She steps closer to me, engulfing me with her honeysuckle smell. For how strong it is, I’d say it’s in both her shampoo and body wash. “On fabricated evidence. The candle was never submitted to forensics, Brandon. There’s no record it was ever dusted for prints, and not a single member of the forensic team from that case recalls seeing it.”

  I want to argue with her, I want to tell her to get her facts straight before spurting lies, but I’m too stumped to speak. She’s not giving off the vibes of a liar. She isn’t sweating like I am, and the only person I can hear scratching their face is Grayson in the earpiece in my ear.

  “Choose your friends wisely, Brandon, because more times than not, they’re looking out for no one but themselves.” After lowering her eyes to the printout I’m strangling with a death-grip, Agent Russell says, “You can keep that. I have extra copies.”

  I watch her walk to a black Navigator with my fists opening and closing and my jaw tight. Once she’s joined inside by the agent hiding in the shadows, they exit the parking lot as quickly as I entered it.

  I wait all of two seconds for the dust of their tires to settle before projecting the rage tearing through me onto the trunk of my BMW. I just got painted as a rogue agent, and the man responsible for it is sitting on the other end of the wire in my ear as silent as a church mouse.

  The blood on my knuckles drips onto my jeans when I rip off the camera button from my shirt and hold it out in front of myself. “Speak. Now.” The tightness of my jaw doubles when the noise of Grayson scrubbing his beard sounds down the line. “If you fucking lie to me, Grayson, I’ll tell Alex everything. Every. Thing.”

  “It didn’t go down how she’s saying—”

  “Then how did it go down?” When my question is met with silence, I growl out his name. “Did you falsify evidence?”

  After a beat, Grayson murmurs a simple, “Yes.”

  “Grayson… fuck! Why would you do that? Why fuck with evidence in a case that’s a slam dunk?”

  His voice bellows down my eardrums when he
shouts, “Because it wasn’t a slam dunk case. If I didn’t forge his prints, Crombie would have walked. He would have gotten away with attempted murder.” When I balk, physically shunted by his admission, he uses my silence to his advantage. “Crombie wasn’t in Melody’s apartment because he had a fascination with her curtains. He was there to finish the job a member of his association failed to complete.”

  “A job?” I’m shocked I can talk. My mind is reeling as it struggles to slot in all the pieces of the puzzle.

  Mercifully, Grayson loves a good puzzle. “The Greggs’ accident wasn’t an accident. They were targeted.”

  “By who?”

  I hear him swallow. “That’s what Tobias and I were endeavoring to find out when I broke protocol to speak to you.” He exhales a big breath before he continues, “Do you recall your father saying Liam didn’t brake for the stop sign?”

  I lift my chin since words are above me right now.

  “That’s because someone severed his brake lines. There was a trail of brake fluid from the front gate of his property to the intersection. Even if he’d pushed down on the brakes, they wouldn’t have responded.”

  “Melody asked you specifically if there were any links between Crombie and her parents’ accident. You told her there wasn’t.” Nothing but unbridled anger sizzles in my tone. I’m beyond pissed. All of this should have been admitted years ago.

  “I had to follow protocol. Their accident was way above my paygrade.”

  My roar projects over the music bellowing out of Isaac’s nightclub. “So you lied? You lied to the two people who trusted you to be honest!”