Page 26 of Operation: Unify

“Who are you?”

Randy quickly put his hands up. “I’m Randy. My dad owns this house. I’ve been trying to help Lacy keep watch for you. I didn’t want to leave her all alone. Don’t shoot me, man.”

Connor hesitated for a moment and Lacy gripped his arm, tugging it down. “He’s okay. He’s helped me a few times. Randy told me he feels terrible about what happened to Melinda. I need to get her back.” She let all her thoughts pour out now that she had someone near her who felt completely safe.

“Get her back? That’s not our job, hun. We need to gather all your stuff, report this to the police if you haven’t yet, and go home.”

“I’m not leaving her, Connor.” She’d been praying for Melinda all afternoon. Hopefully, Tod hadn’t done anything permanent. He’d wanted to get rid of Melinda pretty soon though and now that Lacy was here, he had to act quickly or risk losing his chance.

“Lacy, you know better than that. This is for the police.” This needed to go inside before they woke up neighbors and people started talking. He put his arm around Lacy and led her to the door.

Randy moved back out of the way and headed to the nearest recliner. He plopped down on it and flipped the footrest up. “So, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” Connor said as he watched Lacy take a seat.

“Connor, you can’t say that. You wouldn’t let this slide if she was one of our guests. This would eat at you until you went after her. You know you would.” Connor had to do something. If he’d simply come to whisk her away to safety, then he could turn around and go back. That wasn’t what she needed.

Lacy sat next to Connor on the sofa, and he handed her a bag from a takeout taco place.

“I’m also really good friends with the police force near Wayside. This is totally different. I don’t have any right to get involved here. If I go to jail because I’ve gone vigilante, what good does that do for Melinda?”

He had a point, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that the police were doing nothing to save her friend’s life. “He’ll kill her. Then he plans to make it look like self-defense. He’s already made it look like she has been the attacker all this time.” Why wasn’t he even trying to understand?

He rested his large hand over hers. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I do. I’m just not sure what I can do besides save her from impending harm. If we take her physically from his house, that’s kidnapping. He could claim that we took her against her will.”

“I’m just asking for you to take me over there. He might listen to you. He treats me as less than dirt, but maybe he’ll listen to you.” She suspected he thought more of men than women, not only based on how he treated her and his wife, but even how he’d treated the female officers according to Melinda.

“We can try tomorrow morning. Eat now and we’ll talk about what we can do. Have you heard from her at all?” Connor asked.

“No. But last time she contacted me, she thought she’d deleted the information from her phone, but he still knew. Contacting me was a risk. I doubt he’ll let her anywhere near a phone now. I don’t know that we have until tomorrow.” Shecouldn’t even look in the bag of food, no matter how hungry she’d been a half hour before.

Connor looked over at Randy. “What’s your plan?”

He shrugged. “I’m usually at work now, but I can’t because the hotel is closed until they can clean up the water. Cal, my boss, sent me a text a few hours ago that said he’d been to look at the damage and it would probably take 48 hours once they got the right clean-up team to come. That could take a week. He’s really angry. He told me Tod claimed he didn’t trip the alarm, so now he wants an investigation into who pulled it.”

Lacy set the bag aside. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked for your help, but I was so terrified he would get through that door. I didn’t have any way to protect either of us.”

Connor frowned as he looked at her. “Might be time for you to start carrying again.”

Her insides squeezed at the thought. “I have my pistol with me. Maybe I would have the nerve if I had to act. I don’t know. I don’t want to be in that position. The only time I’ve come close is when Viceroy’s team attacked Wayside. Even then, I spent most of my time herding people to safety. I let the guys do the defense.”

He clasped her hand. “I would rather that you have something between you and someone wanting to harm you. It’s one thing to wish you had protection, but you don’t have it and another to choose not to use it because you can’t. Having a choice in that situation makes a difference.”

He wanted her to be able to protect herself so that in case he wasn’t there, she was still covered. “I couldn’t have used it at the hotel, even though I had it. There was a room right across the hall from me and one on either side. There would be no safe way to protect myself that wouldn’t put others in grave danger.”

“You make a good point.” Randy looked at Connor as if to ask permission to speak.

Connor nodded and Randy continued. “In this case, Tod and his brother are narcissists. They would assume Lacy and Melinda don’t know how to use a gun well enough to protect themselves, meaning they would have no fear of the gun. So, that would put Lacy in the position of being more likely to have to shoot than in a normal situation.”

Lacy chuckled. “I thought you were going into computer programing, not psychology, but that was pretty perceptive.”

He snorted. “Thanks. I’m pretty familiar with narcissists, unfortunately. I know their M.O. and Tod is spiraling because he knows he’s losing control of the situation. We need to get her out of there.”

“So you agree with Lacy?” Connor asked.

She hoped that didn’t pit Connor against Randy. She’d been worried Randy’s presence would be a burr in Connor’s skin. Just the fact that he was a man helping Lacy was enough to make him want to send Randy away, but siding with Lacy would probably tip the scale.

“I do. But I know the situation better than either of you because I’ve seen and heard what Tod says. He and his brother come to the hotel late at night and sit in the lobby to talk. They never realize how loud they are because they’re drunk or don’t care. Tod has never come right out and said he wants to kill Melinda, but he’s said enough that I knew she was in danger. Not just from him, but from his brother.”

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