Page 1 of My Special Ops Neighbor
Chapter One
Yvette Fisher had documentedseventeen suspicious activities in Vincent Benoit's behavioral pattern, and she was about to make it eighteen.
She adjusted her binoculars and checked her watch. Almost midnight. Right on schedule. Her neighbor emerged from his house carrying another unmarked package, moving with the kind of stealth that screamed guilty conscience. She opened her surveillance spreadsheet and typed:Friday, another late-night delivery. Subject displays consistent evasive behavior.
The spreadsheet made her feel better. Numbers didn't lie, unlike people. Numbers created patterns you could trust, predictions you could count on. Vincent Benoit's numbers painted a clear picture of criminal activity, even if her traitorous body kept focusing on how his t-shirt stretched across his shoulders when he lifted those mysterious boxes.
Professional objectivity, she reminded herself. She was building a case here.
Vincent disappeared into his garage, and she settled back to wait. In her experience, criminals always revealed themselves if you watched long enough. Her father had taught her that lesson early. People said one thing and did another, but their actions created data trails that exposed the truth.
She'd gotten good at reading those trails. Eight years with the Defense Contract Audit Agency had taught her to spot patterns others missed, to follow financial threads until they led to fraud and corruption. Her current investigation into RareCore Industries was her most important yet—a billion-dollar conspiracy that had killed thousands of soldiers through defective equipment.
But watching Vincent was different. More personal. She told herself it was civic duty, protecting her neighborhood from whatever illegal enterprise he was obviously running. The fact that he looked like something out of a tactical gear advertisement had nothing to do with it.
Her laptop chimed with an encrypted message from her contact at the Pentagon. The RareCore evidence was solid. She had uncovered financial records, manufacturing reports, material substitutions that turned life-saving equipment into death traps. Monday morning, she'd present everything to federal investigators and watch executives get arrested for mass murder disguised as profit margins.
Light spilled from Vincent's garage as he unpacked his latest delivery. Even from this distance, she admired the way he moved with no wasted motion. Criminal or not, the man had discipline.
A crash echoed from downstairs. And he looked up. For a second, she thought he pinpointed her exact location. But that was impossible. She was hiding behind her bedroom curtain.
The crash wasn’t the familiar sound of her old house settling or the neighbor's cat knocking over garbage cans. Now she heard more glass breaking, followed by the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps downstairs.
Yvette dropped her binoculars and grabbed her laptop. She heard voices—two men, speaking low but not whispering. They weren't trying to be subtle about their presence.
"The light's on upstairs. She's awake."
"Let’s check the office first. The files might be there."
They knew she was home. They knew about her office. This wasn't some random break-in.
She pressed her back against the wall beside her bedroom door, thoughts spinning through possibilities. Junkies looking for prescription drugs? But they'd spoken too clearly, moved too purposefully. Burglars then, but they knew about her office, knew she was awake.
Her phone showed no signal. They must have jammed the cell towers or something. These weren't desperate junkies looking for something to pawn. RareCore had friends in powerful places. Maybe they'd sent security contractors to intimidate her, steal her files.
The footsteps separated downstairs, one set heading toward her home office, the other climbing the stairs with measured steps. What was she going to do? She was trapped up here. She could hide in the bathroom, but they’d only kick the door down and Yvette wasn’t about to jump out a second floor window.
"Where are the fucking files?" The voice carried from her office, followed by the crash of her filing cabinet hitting the floor.
"She probably has the computer's upstairs with her. Check the bedroom."
They knew her bedroom was upstairs. They knew she was up here. But they weren’t trying to talk to her or negotiate. That had to be bad. She eased the door shut and locked it. It would buy her some time. Time to do what, she wasn’t sure.
The footsteps reached the top of her stairs and started down the hallway toward her room. She pressed herself against the wall beside her door, trying not to make a sound as she heard him getting closer.
Her bedroom window slid open wider.
She stared at it in disbelief, clutching her laptop against her chest. Terror spiked as another intruder climbed through the window. She recognized Vincent Benoit when he dropped silently from what must have been her roof, landing in a crouch that barely made a sound on her hardwood floor.
They'd sent him too. Her gorgeous, mysterious neighbor was part of whatever this was.
Her stomach dropped. She'd been right about him being a criminal, just wrong about what kind. Vincent wasn't running drugs or weapons from his garage. He was working corporate espionage. And now he was here to help those men downstairs get what they came for.
But then he pressed a finger to his lips and moved between her and the door, shoulders angled to shield her from the hallway. His gaze met hers with an intensity that didn't match her theory about his involvement.
"Stay low," he mouthed, pointing toward the far corner behind her bed. "They don't know I'm here."
The concern in his voice didn't sound like someone preparing to hurt her. It sounded like someone preparing to protect her.
