Page 40 of Target Me
“Did you go outside?” she asked, eyeing the open door. I hadn’t, and my blood ran cold at the possible implications. Had we failed to close it properly last time we left the house? Or had someone taken advantage of our distraction and broken in?
“Any chance Luciana is still around, and we didn’t hear her come through?”
Avery shook her head. “She left before I came in to see you. Almost caught me reading through the kink list. That is not a conversation I want to have with the closest thing I have to a mother figure.”
I wanted to laugh at the look on her face, but my mind was already churning over risk and implications of the house being breached.
“We’re going to move through the house. You are going to stay behind me. If we encounter anyone, you are going to run to my truck, drive to the farmhouse, then wait for instructions. Do you understand?”
Eyes wide, she nodded vigorously, complying with direction as we moved slowly through each level of the house. When we reached the attic, the room looked like a bloodbath. Bright red paint pooled on the floor, spatters decorating the walls in a macabre exhibition of Rorshchach images. The canvas beneath the window had been vandalized, the half-finished landscape marred by the words “Almost time” in a messy hand.
My stomach sank.
“They were here,” Avery whispered from the doorway, her eyes fixed on the ruined artwork before her. “They were in my space.” Her words came faster, aggression replacing the initial shock.
“We’ll get it cleaned up. Let me check the perimeter first, then we’ll fix it. I promise.”
I swept the house on my way back toward the patio door, pausing to assess the entry point to find the lock scratched and evidence of forced entry. Checking every other access point on the ground floor, there was no further evidence of tampering, so I took my sweep outside and checked the perimeter. Two cameras had been disarmed in the same manner as the last time, creating a blind spot that had allowed the individual to avoid triggering the motion sensor alarms I’d rigged.
Damn, whoever this was, they were savvy. I had to get ahead of this person, like yesterday. Avery was counting on me, and I refused to let her down.
After re-engaging the lock and jury-rigging a lashing system to keep the door closed, I sought Avery out in the attic.
“Are you okay?”
On hands and knees, she scrubbed furiously at the paint stains the intruder had left on the floorboards.
“I want to find this fucker, and I want to stop them. No one invades my space to try to intimidate me. This isn’t even about me! My father pissed someone off, and I’m paying the consequences.”
She looked up, her eyes burning with an anger I hadn’t seen in her before, and deeper, something I felt far less adept at dealing with.
“Avery—”
“Don’t. I want—no, I need to be angry. Just let me be angry.”
She returned to scrubbing, her shoulders curled in, knuckles white where she gripped the brush. A single tear fell on the back of her hand, and she wiped it on her shirt, quickly swiping at her face with a broken grunt.
“Look at me, hen,” I said, inserting as much command into my tone as I dared.
I had dealt with men terrified of dying for years. Joking, needling, anything to distract them worked most of the time. Confronted by a woman I was developing feelings for? In the face of evidence that I might not be able to protect her? It was a struggle to keep my own composure, let alone provide comfort to her.
Avery’s hands stilled. Instead of obeying, her head dropped until she almost completely folded in on herself.
“What if it is my mother?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it traveled in the quiet room.
I sighed, closing the distance between us and sinking to the ground beside her.
“Then we deal with it.”
“I’m not okay with you hurting my mother. I don’t care what she’s done.”
She felt too far away for this conversation, or maybe it was because I couldn’t get close enough, but I scooped her up and situated her in my lap, face to face with me.
“We don’t know for sure this is your mother. You haven’t seen her in a decade, and even if, after all this time, she did decide to make a play against your father, why come after you? We need more information, and I need to keep you safe while we find it. I want to go through the papers we found in your father’s study. Will you help me?”
Avery pressed her forehead to mine as though absorbing my words. Her breathing evened out, and eventually she gave a small nod.
“You’re right. Let’s not jump to conclusions. There’s a lot to my father that we don’t know about, and I’d say it’s time we learned.”
