“Or that’s where this person wants to lead us,” she says, shoving a wayward strand of blonde hair from her eyes and pressing her fingers to her temples. “That seems too obvious.” Her voice is heavy again.
I reach in my pocket and grab the last BC powder I have with me, before setting it on the counter in front of her. “You need this.”
“That obvious?”
“To me, yes. To others, you’d just seem like a stone-cold bitch, which I imagine in your job, works for you.”
“Says the man who is the king of the stone-cold bitch look.”
“Bitch does not sit well with a man,” I say. “I prefer stone-cold asshole, spoken affectionately, of course.”
She smiles but then frowns, pressing fingers to her temple. “I do not have time for this,” she murmurs.
“And on that note,” I say, we need to order lunch, groceries and more BC powder, because I’m out.”
“Groceries?” she asks, attempting to sound off with her usual teasing snark and failing. “You don’t like cereal?”
“Funny thing about me. I like milk with my cereal.”
“I knew there was something suspicious about you,” she jokes but her lashes lower on the delivery and she reaches for the BC powder.
I round the island and open the fridge, snagging her a bottle of water. “Take that powder,” I order, joining her and twisting the top off the water.
She nods, tears open the pouch and downs the medication, grabbing the bottle from me and gulping water afterward. “Still nasty,” she murmurs, making a disgusted face. “Ah God. It’s horrible, but it works.” She rotates to face me and rests a hand on the counter. “Thank you, Jacob.”
“You’re welcome, Jewel,” I say, reaching up and wiping a droplet of water from her lip, when I really want to kiss it away.
She catches my hand, and despite her headache, and a fuck session behind us, that touch sets off ten degrees of heat between us. “I like you better naked and with stubble,” she says. “In case I didn’t fully express that up to this point.”
“I like you better naked and with your hair down,” I reply, aware that she is always looking for a reaction in me. Even more aware of the fact that she always gets it, even if she doesn’t know it. “In case I didn’t fully express that up to this point,” I add.
“I like it when you laugh,” she says. “It’s a good laugh, all sexy and deep. Almost awkward, like it’s unfamiliar to you.”
“Always trying to kill my tough guy routine, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to kill the tough guy routine,” she says. “I just want to see beneath it.”
“You have. You are.” I shackle her waist and walk her backward, easing her onto the barstool behind her. “Now,” I say, my hands on the wood arms, framing her body, “let me see beneath yours. What don’t I know about you and your slayer, Jewel?”
She looks upward, eyes to the ceiling, seeming to battle with whatever this has become for her, before she looks at me again. “It’s ridiculous. It’s a crazy theory that I would normally keep to myself until I had more time to investigate.”
“Crazy ideas, have saved my life more than a few times, sweetheart. Tell me.”
“Okay then.” She breathes out. “Crazy it is. When I was at my uncle’s funeral, I looked up to find a man standing a good distance away. He was wearing a hat and trench coat. I couldn’t make him out. The funeral was a big deal with uniforms, the playing of taps, and a big tribute in general, to my uncle. I thought maybe he was just watching that.”
“How does that tie to this, now?”
“When I got home after the funeral, I was about to go into the gated area when I saw him again. He was standing far enough away to make it impossible for me to make him out. I thought maybe he was one of my uncle’s informants, looking to me in his absence. I went after him, but he disappeared around a corner. I couldn’t find him. When I was returning to my building a few days later, I got to the security panel and found a sticky note on it. I didn’t connect it to the man, but now, I think I might.”
“What did the note say?”
She walks around me, and I turn to find her standing at the refrigerator and indicating the note I’d noticed before. “This is it,” she says. “You’re not ready yet,” she reads and then looks at me. “I thought it was about someone being late to a date or something like that. But now, I’m not sure anymore. You know this, but my uncle always told me that if I thought I was ready, I was being overly confident.”
“Therefore, you weren’t ready,” I say, not even trying to hide the disapproval in my voice. “Yes. You told me.”
“And you told me, you disagree with that way of thinking. I get that but that isn’t the point. My uncle’s words are why that note hit home: You’re not ready yet, is what I always tell myself to make myself work harder. Maybe it hit a little too close to home.”
“How are you connecting this note with the butterfly and the umbrella?” I ask. “Aside from the fact that all three items were found by the security panel.”
“I know they appeared years apart. I know there is no obvious connection, except me, but I’m a big connection, an obvious connection, I have a gut feeling about this. That note, that man, is a part of this. And there’s one more piece of this puzzle anyway.”
“I’m listening,” I say, dragging the stool behind me closer to her and perching on the edge.
“Every Valentine’s Day, the guys at the precinct write me love letters. Or love letters to Little C. My uncle was Big C. This year I got this strange card. It read: Finally, it’s our time. No one there calls me Jewel.”
“Was it internal or sent through the postal system?”
“Internal. No postmark which is why I tried, and failed, to blow it off.”
“Where is the card?”
“That’s the thing. I left it on my old desk in the general population. I went back to get it, and it was gone.” She points at the note. “You’re not ready yet and then, finally, it’s our time.”
“I see the potential connection,” I say, “but tying in the items found at your door, feels like a stretch.”
“Not to me. To me it feels connected. It does. They do.” She balls her fists at her chest. “I feel it.”
“Then we go with your gut. We operate on the premise that the person who left that note, left the butterfly and the umbrella.”
“That means this person has been watching me for two years and I’m not going to lie. It’s screwing with my head. I’m not supposed to let things screw with my head. This job is how I keep things from screwing with my head. I’m doing something. I’m fixing something.”
My hands come down on the arms of her stool again. “I get it, sweetheart. I do. More than most people and I think you know that. But both of us are human, even if we don’t want to admit it.”
“If I let him, whoever he is, get to me, then he wins.”
“That’s not true, but don’t fight what you feel. Feed it. Get angry. Hurt him before he can hurt you. I’ve been in some fucked up situations, and when I hid from what I feared, I almost lost. Embrace it and stop fucking telling yourself you’re not ready.”
“My uncle—”
“Was a damn good detective and man, but you are your own person. Be you because it’s you in this war, right here and right now, not him. Could you make out any of this man’s features?”
“Not much but—” She considers a moment. “He was lean, and he was agile.”
“You know that we need to tell the Walker team about this. They need to know what to look for, not just for your safety but for your father’s.”
“Yes. Okay. Tell them. And I need to run prints on the umbrella though I know there won’t be any.”
“Walker can take care of that,” I say. “Where is it?”
“In my bag, in the library. The butterfly is in the drawer here beside me.”
My cellphone rings and I pull it from my pocket. “Asher,” I say. “I called h
im about the security footage before I went upstairs with you.” I answer on speaker phone. “I’m here with Detective Carpenter,” I say, setting my phone on the counter between us. “What do you have for us?”
“Hey ho, this all blows,” he says. “I do not have good news. We have extra cameras all over that place, and not a damn thing to show for it but the bag of chocolate Finn ate while we were scanning through the feed. He’s the garbage disposal of Walker Security, detective. In fact, if he wasn’t a sharpshooter and booby-trap expert, he’d probably work at a candy store.”
“Forget Finn,” I say tightly. “Define cameras all over this place. Do we have a full ground view next to the security panel?”
“We did and we do,” Asher says, “but that area by the security panel is recessed and dark. In shot after shot, the position of the legs and feet, blocked camera views. Detective Carpenter—”
“Jewel,” she says. “Just call me Jewel.”
“Jewel,” he says. “I’m going to email you, and the stone-faced dude there with you, the names of everyone who entered the building for the timeline we have footage for now. The list will hit your inboxes in the next few minutes. But I can tell you this now. There’s no one on the footage that doesn’t live in the building, except the mailman, who we’ve been monitoring for days now.”
The obvious hits me, my gaze shoots to Jewel’s. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Whoever is leaving those gifts by the door has to be close,” she says. “As in right here in this building.”
The “slayer” as Jewel calls him, actually lives in this building, or has intimate access to someone who lives in this building. And if she’s right, and this person has been watching her for two years, that’s a whole new level of fucked up and dangerous. “If the stalker is in the building,” Asher says, “we need to get you the fuck out of there, Jewel.”
“We’ll call you back, Asher,” I say, disconnecting the line and focusing on Jewel. “He’s right. Pack a bag. You’re coming to my place. You’ll be safe there.”
“We need to think about this. And I know that your first reaction is to protect me. That’s your job and—”
I stand up and press my hands on the arms of her stool again. “Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t turn us fucking into me using my job to get you naked.”
“No. Jacob, I didn’t mean it like that. My point is that your first instinct is to protect me, to take cover and guard me. My first reaction is to go door-to-door and question everyone because I’m not a civilian. I don’t react to things like a civilian.”
“You’re human. You die, just like everyone else.”
“I know that. Believe me, I know that. I’ve seen enough in this job, to know stupidity doesn’t pay. That’s why I said that I know I need help. But I’ve also learned, that every action has a reaction. Showing brute force, and driving the slayer into a hole for another two years isn’t protecting me. And the idea that he might live in the building has holes. It doesn’t explain the card at my office. No one here could get inside there.”
“You don’t know that the card is connected.”
“We don’t know a lot of things. We’re going with my gut and my gut says that the card is connected. And if I’m right, then somehow this person has access to be wherever I go.”
“All right. Assuming you are right, this is exactly why you need to be with me, at my apartment. The Walker building is a fortress.”
“If I’m right and that card was from him, then he says I’m ready now. Ready for what? This feels like a game and he knows the rules and we’re just charging down the field, perhaps running in the wrong direction.”
“Staying here could be the wrong direction.”
“He’s playing a game. The messages indicate his desire to have me play, too. If I’m there, the game is over. At least for now. He’s patient. He’s proven that. He’ll be back when you’re gone.”
“When I’m gone,” I repeat, and those words illogically bug the fuck out of me. I just met Jewel, but I damn sure don’t want to give her up right now. I push away from the stool but she grabs my T-shirt. “You’re not gone now,” she says, as if she’s reading my mind. “I do need you. And your gun.”
I cup her face. “Yes. You do need me.” I kiss her, a quick slide of tongue, before I add, “And my gun, as well as my team. Walker Security includes some of the best in every field of law enforcement. We’re going to talk to them. We’re going to come up with a plan we all agree on. Non-negotiable.”
“Non-negotiable,” she says. “You know, you’re more of a control freak than me. I think that might be a problem for us.”
“As long as I win all arguments,” I say, my hands settling on her shoulders. “It won’t be a problem at all.”
“You need a name tag that says: Controlling Asshole to warn people.”
“Why would I want to warn anyone? And your eyes are bloodshot again. You need to go lay down and kick that headache.”
“I don’t need to lay down. I need—”
“To lay down. You’re human, detective. I get that you pretend that you aren’t to the rest of the world and I even get why you hide the headaches, but use me, remember? Nap and I’ll kill anyone who tries to join you that isn’t me. In the meantime, I’ll send off the prints, arrange some conversations with the team, and get us some damn groceries ordered.”
“I don’t—”
“You do. You’re in pain.” I tilt her head back. “It’s okay to be human,” I repeat. “I won’t tell if you don’t. I got you. I got this. Okay?”
She inhales and lets a breath out. “I—I don’t know how to do whatever this is we’re doing.”
“Neither do I but I have confidence that we’re both smart. We’ll figure it out, but after you get rid of this headache.” I pick her up and start walking.
“Are you really carrying me?”
“Yeah. I’ve never carried a woman who wasn’t bleeding or in the middle of a warzone. I thought I’d give it a go.” I enter the bedroom and cross to the bed, setting her down on top, and sitting down next to her. “Take a nap.”
“You aren’t as hard as I thought you were.”
She hits a nerve, and I lean over, pressing my hand to the bed on the opposite side of her head. “I am hard, Jewel. I’m heartless. I’m demanding. I’m not as gentle as I was with you today when we were naked and I’m not as gentle as I seem right now. If you make me something other than that, I’ll disappoint you. I’ll hurt you. And I don’t want to do that.”
I stand up and start walking toward the door.
“Jacob,” she murmurs, pain in her voice that stops me in my path.
“Yes?” I ask without turning, because I really just want to strip her naked and show her how not fucking gentle I am.
“If you were as hard as you say you are, you wouldn’t care if you hurt me.”
I grab the doorframe and shut my eyes. She’s right. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing to me, but there’s a heart in my chest I forgot existed. I turn to find her eyes shut and her weapon now by her side. Because she doesn’t know she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t know she’s safe with me. And I have to decide if I want her to feel that safe with me. I have to decide if I really want to open the door between us that damn wide.
I cross the living room and to the island and open my computer, keying it to life, while I dial Ash again. “Are we convoying her to Walker?” he asks when I answer.
“We’re not doing anything until we talk this through. Where’s Sierra?”
“She’s right here with me,” he says, he hits the speaker button. “You’re on live with wifey.”
“Hey Jacob,” Sierra says. “What’s happening? How can I help?”
“First,” I say. “Let me bring you both up to speed.” I run through the entire story with them. The man. The gifts. The notes. The umbrella connection. The limited description.
“Holy fuck,” Ash says. “Does Savage know any of this??
??
“No. I need you to update him and tighten her father’s security. This person, this man if Jewel is right, is fixated on her, but that doesn’t mean he won’t go after her father to hurt her.”
“I don’t like the idea that he has access to her at home and at work,” Sierra says. “This is very concerning, but I reluctantly agree with Jewel. We need to think through reactions to our actions and be ready.”
“Right,” I say. “But doing nothing isn’t an option either. I don’t do the sitting duck routine unless I’m luring in my prey. Which is where you come into play.”
“I’m listening,” she says.
“I need you to talk to Jewel later this evening, and between the two of you, decide how our actions become reactions for this freak.”
“I can do that. When?”
I glance at the closed door. “Jewel can’t do it now. I’ll call you when she is free.”
“That works for me. That gives me some time to take notes and write out some questions for her.”
“Until then,” I say, “for the next however many hours, all her slayer can possibly know, is that I’m working with Jewel, and that has lead to us getting up close and personal. The team needs to stay off the radar until we analyze the facts, and we all, Jewel included, decide what comes next.”
“Let me remind everyone that someone who lives in that building is helping him. There is no other way or other option. They key in their code, and drop the gifts in the shadowed area. That also means they understand the camera placement and limitations.”
“Which means educated and intelligent,” I say. “Someone involved in technology or crime scene processing.”
“The latter feels more on target,” Sierra suggests.
“Agreed,” I say. “And circling back to you, Asher, and those gifts. I have the newest one that needs to be checked for prints.”
“I doubt we will get a hit,” Asher says. “But we have to try. Order food. We’ll deliver.”
“I’m going to order groceries because a man cannot live on cereal with no milk,” I say.