Page 32 of Teach Me
Jack dropped immediately into work mode. “Name.”
“Brit Holbrooke.”
Jack’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “You know who that is, right?” Jack waved the waitress, who’d stopped to pick up their empties, away. “The Atlanta Holbrookes? They run their own tech company?”
“No. I must’ve missed that with all the other touchy-feely shit going on around here.” But it explained why Holbrooke had seemed familiar. It also explained a bit about the man’s arrogance, and how he’d found Con. Having his phone number wasn’t that unusual—it was listed on the company website—but tracking him down, just from seeing him? That was a whole other level of skill, a level that made him decidedly uneasy.
Jack ignored the dig and rubbed his chin, thinking. “They’re Atlanta elite, keyed in to every major family and office in the city, including the mayor.”
“Might be why Jess said the cops came up empty,” Con told him, air quotes giving the final word an opposite meaning.
“Not surprising.” Jack tapped his phone, sitting on the table near his beer just like Con’s, and typed in a note. “I’ll do some digging and find out who handled the case. What’d she say about it?”
Con told him what little he knew from Jess, as well as what Lori had shared from her paperwork. His encounter with Holbrooke at the coffee shop. The longer he talked, the tighter his muscles got, just thinking about that asshole anywhere near Jess. His heart sped up, the metallic taste of fear lacing his tongue. He reached for his beer, needing to drown out the taste, and came up empty.
“Sounds like someone doesn’t want to relinquish ownership,” Jack observed, nodding down at Con’s phone.
“Would you?” Con asked, not really considering how much the question acknowledged until the words left his lips. Jack lifted a brow at him but didn’t plow into the hole he’d just left wide open.
“How bad was last night?” he asked instead. “Any chance she’ll continue her lessons? Because I gotta tell ya, Con, this whole situation sets off every alarm I’ve got, but that”—he pointed a finger at the now blank screen—“blows them all to hell. You knew from the get-go that he was stalking her, but it’s not just her anymore. He’s taken the time to find out who you are, how involved you are, which means he’s following her close.”
“Close enough to track me. Threaten me. He knows who I am, but he’s not afraid.” It wasn’t ego to say most men were afraid of him. He’d taken the time to make sure of it over the years.
“My guess? If he’s following that close, he saw you last night, saw something that pushed him too close to the edge. Any closer and he’ll take the first opportunity he can to get physical again.”
Con swallowed against the sharp tang of fear on the back of his tongue—not for him, but for Jess.
“She needs help,” Jack said. “If she won’t accept you to do it, we’ll sub someone else.”
“Not someone else. You.” He wouldn’t—no,couldn’t—trust Jess’s safety to anyone else. And he wouldn’t leave her unprotected, no matter how much the thought of even his best friend that close to her rubbed him raw. Christ, he wasn’t much better than Holbrooke in some ways, was he? “When she’s not at work or at JCL, I’ll keep watch.” She might not know he was there, but it was all he could give her. That and, if he was lucky, Brit’s head—preferably disconnected from his body.
“I’ll have Lori contact her. Con—”
He met Jack’s eyes, read the conflict there, and knew what his friend wanted to say. “I can’t, Jack. I just…can’t.” Even now.
“You can; you’re just too much of a coward to do it.”
A laugh, more broken than he’d like, escaped. “That’s what she said.”
“Smart girl.” Jack rapped the table with his knuckles. “But I’ll do it. We’ll need to be careful. This guy’s obviously got more resources than your average abuser.”
“And more balls,” Con said, the words bitter. He glanced back down at his phone.Disappear or she will.Heat washed over him. It wasn’t a question anymore: Brit intended to hurt Jess. Con intended to stop him. The fucker was going down; Con would make sure of it.
Chapter Thirteen
She was almost home Monday night when her cell phone rang in the seat next to her. “Hello?”
“Jess.”
Conlan.
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. She let the silence stretch as she pulled into her parking lot and angled the car into a space.
She couldn’t tell if Conlan felt…well, anything. This was the first time they’d spoken since he’d rejected her, but his voice was blank as he asked, “You called to cancel your lesson today?”
“I did.” Lori had asked why, but Jess hadn’t been up to explaining. If the sweet Southern receptionist hadn’t figured it out from her unexpected interruption Saturday night, her boss could tell her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
