Page 16 of Target Me
I couldn’t wait to see.
6
LOGAN
Despite my best intentions, I found myself backtracking to the top of the stairs after I stormed out of the room. Fine, I’d hightailed it out of there like a bitch. My head was a mess, and I struggled to think objectively about what had happened. I was attracted to her. Of course, I was. She was fucking gorgeous, but it was more than that. She was funny. Smart. Full of surprises.
I had never questioned General Walker. Ever. About anything. And now I was confronted with the irrefutable proof that he was wrong about his own daughter. She wasn’t vapid or flighty. She seemed to not give a shit about clothes or things. I didn’t know what she was doing during all those shopping trips he talked about, but unless all of them were to art supply stores, she sure as hell wasn’t shopping.
The way she had obeyed my orders was probably the biggest head fuck of all. Here was a girl who was supposed to be pure. The virgin type. I knew how the General trotted her out as the lady of the house at his shindigs. But the way she had dropped to her knees, eyeing my cock like it was a fucking ice cream on a hot day? She submitted perfectly for someone who had never played with power dynamics in the bedroom. The image of those hazel eyes staring up at me through her lashes was going to haunt me for the foreseeable future.
A low buzzing started up in the room behind me, and I wondered which art medium she’d decided to work in.
Then I heard her breath catch and release on a long sigh.
My head snapped around so fast my neck screamed in protest, the rest of my body frozen as my mind went to war.
Don’t go in there. Just walk away. Now.
Fuck you. How can I not?
And so, I stayed put, torn between staying and leaving. Hanging on every groan and whimper until a scream echoed down the stairwell. Not wanting to be caught like the peeping tom I fucking was, I ghosted downstairs as quickly and silently as I could. I gathered a change of clothing and put myself in an ice-cold shower.
The great thing about cold showers: the shock of that icy flow on overheated skin wiped your brain clean while you tried to remember how to breathe.
The bad thing? All those thoughts came flooding back the second you wrapped a towel around you when you hopped out. Rather than pulling on the fresh shorts and t-shirt I had brought into the bathroom with me, I wandered out to my bag and found a pair of basketball shorts instead. If I couldn’t wash away the image of Avery on her knees… the sound she made when she made herself come… I’d exercise until I physically couldn’t climb the stairs and order her back into her rightful position at my feet.
* * *
“Logan, please.”The voice reached through my chest, wrapping around my heart like a fist, ready to squeeze as everything flashed white.
I came awake on a gasp, flinging a hand out to catch myself before I rolled off the sofa. Shit.
My ears rang with remembered pain, and my heart pounded, as though making up for the beats missed in the dream. Hauling myself into a seated position, I sucked deep breaths in through my nose, reminding myself that there was no immediate danger. I wasn’t back on deployment. Memories could not hurt me. Much.
I didn’t have to glance at the time, but did out of habit, glaring at the 2:22 as though the numbers themselves were responsible for my continued insomnia. The only nights I didn’t wake at 2:22 were the ones I didn’t sleep at all. The Army psych they had wanted me to see would’ve had a field day with my sleep patterns.
I’d seen the middle-aged white male, who had clearly spent the decades between gaining his degree and finding me in his office sitting behind a desk and not in the field of combat. In the initial assessment meeting—the only one I’d attended due to the threat of disciplinary action if I didn’t—he’d thrown around acronyms like confetti. CPTSD and OCD got a fair run before he’d launched into the bright idea to schedule shit and change my “thinking patterns.” Once he’d really warmed up, he’d hit me with the medication one/two punch, and with that, I was out the door with an apology about conflicting appointments.
What the fuck had that guy known, anyway?
As my heart rate slowed to around normal pace, I wandered out through the French doors on to the patio. I frowned, glancing up at the attic window. Light streamed through the glass, and I wondered if maybe Avery had left the light on when she went to bed. A shadow moved past the window, stretching long over the lawn, and I realized I wasn’t the only sleepless one in the house.
A moment later, the light extinguished, plunging the yard into darkness.
“Bedtime, I guess,” I muttered, scratching my chest and backtracking into the house to retrieve a flashlight.
I’d walk the property, check the cameras, and then do some yoga or something. I always managed to find a way to fill the night hours, and no doubt, the General would want an update sooner rather than later.
The grass was cool and slightly damp under my bare feet as I padded toward the nearest wall and ambled along the property line. A dog barked in the distance; its call echoed by another canine voice farther off. Who knew the suburbs were so quiet in the morning hours? At the farmhouse, there was always a cacophony of frogs, hunting owls, and crickets filling the night with life and comfort. The silence reminded me too much of those long nights on deployment, when the peace of night was so often a cover for those who wanted to keep us from finding our way home. My dream flashed in my mind, but with a stubborn shake of my head, I pushed it back.
The day I‘d arrived, I’d placed cameras around the property at 150-yard intervals. The steady red lights that indicated the units were working had interrupted the darkness for the first half of my walk, but between one tree and the next, the light vanished. Lifting my flashlight, I inspected the now empty branch I’d left the camera on.
Nothing.
I checked the ground around the base of the tree to see if something had displaced it, but again, found no sign of the missing technology. The same was true at the next point. When I found a broken bracket at the base of the third tree in a row, my instincts were screaming that something was amiss. Without finishing the patrol, I sprinted across the lawn back to the house and took the stairs two at a time to Avery’s room. First rule of protection detail: secure the asset in the first instance.
I found her curled up under her blankets, one foot thrust out as though testing the temperature of the room. Her blonde hair spilled across her pillow, more luminous than the moonlight streaming through her pillow. A white streak of what looked like clay painted her temple, and I imagined her brushing her hair back absently while working on one of the pots I’d seen up in her art room.
