Page 17 of Target Me
She looked so innocent in sleep. So vulnerable. She made me want to protect her and force her to submit to my every dirty fantasy, all at once.
Closing her bedroom door carefully, I headed back downstairs, checked all of the locks on the doors and windows to outside, then brought up the footage from the missing cameras.
I was on my fourth cup of coffee and ready to tear my hair out by the time the sun was peeking over the horizon. I’d identified the moment when each of the cameras had been taken out—ten cameras in total—and had been unable to find footage of what had caused the interference. Each camera appeared to have gone offline at twenty-second intervals. The last coincided with the footage of me emerging from the house.
I checked the footage of cameras facing the street, but there wasn’t much to see. An old silver Volvo that had been parked on the curb two doors down since the day before, a red Honda motorcycle, and a couple of garbage bins that hadn’t been brought inside after collection day. No sign of anyone skulking around, no signs of life at all.
With a curse, I pulled out my cell and hit call on a number I knew I could trust.
“Hey, man, still having trouble sleeping, huh?”
“What are you talking about? Sun’s up. This is a goddamned civil hour to be calling.”
Bear’s grunt told me he didn’t buy my bullshit. Of course, he didn’t. Bear didn’t get his nickname because he was seven feet of solid muscle in human form. I mean… he was, but he was also the mama bear of the unit. He’d even managed to make Santa-shaped shortbreads one year when we’d been stuck in the middle of the desert. He’d had to tell us what the deformed things were supposed to be, and the finished product tasted like dirt, but the fact remained that he was a dude completely attuned to his unit and eager to help.
The annoying-as-shit thing? He was also patient as hell.
After an extended silence, I gave up the posturing.
“Fine. So… you know I took that job babysitting the General’s daughter? Turns out, there may be an actual threat. Overnight, someone has managed to disable half of the surveillance I set up around the house. I’ve been over all the footage and there’s no evidence. Not a single frame of imagery of whoever did it. I was hoping you could help with… Fuck, I don’t even know.”
“You didn’t think there was a real threat?”
“I thought this assignment was a knee-jerk reaction. We’ve heard stories for years about how bratty Avery is. I thought she might have set up the stalker line as a bid for attention. She clearly has daddy issues—”
I ran a hand through my hair. Shit, where was my cap? Turning to look for my missing headgear, I locked eyes with the woman in question, frozen at the bottom of the staircase.
“Shit.” Before I could say anything, she was across the room, headed for the front door. There was a jingle of keys, a slam, and she was gone.
“You just fucked up. Didn’t you?” There was no accusation in the tone. A little amusement, because he was still a dick, even if he was a dick who cared, but he wasn’t judging me.
“Go after her. Also, it’s not me you should be talking to. Call Damon. He’ll be happy to have something to do, and you know it. Suicide isn’t contagious. You can’t catch it because you spoke to the family member of someone who completed it.”
I cursed and hung up on him, knowing he was right but unable to think of much past the fading purr of Avery’s car engine as she took off to fuck knew where.
Throwing open the front door, I stood impotently on the stoop, watching the red motorcycle tear down the road. A green minivan was parked in the spot the Volvo had occupied previously and aside from a cat snoozing on the wall a few houses down, the street looked exactly as it had on the video I’d been watching all morning.
I dialed Avery’s cell number and heard the ringing in my ear echo upstairs.
The second she got home, I was confiscating her keys.
Part of me wanted to drive circles around the suburbs searching for her. Another part wanted to stand guard over the house. What if someone caught up to her when I wasn’t there? What if she came home and was vulnerable to attack because I was out searching for her? Where would she go?
The answer hit me, and I was racing for my truck like my life depended on it.
Thirty minutes later, I pulled up a long, empty drive and threw my truck in park. Shit. She’d been so comfortable here the day before. The empty house seemed to laugh at my stupidity. This was my place, not hers. Of course, she wouldn’t have run to the farmhouse if she were upset.
“Shit. The mall.”
Throwing my truck in reverse, I pulled a messy K-turn and headed back into town. There was something in the vicinity of the mall that had meant enough to her to keep secret. Something so important, she’d already evaded my protection detail once to attend it. Breaking several speed limits, I hightailed it to the mall and breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted her yellow Volkswagen beetle snuggled between two SUVs. Parking in the next available space, I locked up my truck, stalked to her car, sat my ass on her bumper, and pulled out my cell.
“Damon.”
7
AVERY
She clearly has daddy issues. I blocked and struck hard at my Chi Sao partner, over-extending my arm and allowing a strike through my guard.
