Page 7 of Hiding for the Holidays
“If she doesn’t have a car, that means she walked here from Steamy Pines Cafe, probably further.”
“We need to find out where she lives,” I say, staring back towards the front windows.
“Well, that’s easy; we’ll have her fill out an employment form.”
“Do we even have one of those?” I ask with the rise of an eyebrow.
“No, but I’m sure I can find something online.” He pats me on the shoulder and heads back to the office.
“Hey, Grant?” I look down to where Matt and Callum are in some sort of mutual headlock on the floor behind me. “Do you think we could go back to our workouts now?”
I shake my head at their shenanigans. “Yeah, thanks for your help.” Truthfully, I really appreciated them pretending to take the self-defense class. It was all I could think of to grab everyone in the building to attend the impromptu class so she wouldn’t think I was running it just for her. I could tell that would scare her off.
I’m pretty sure she figured it out anyway, but at least she’s coming back tomorrow.
I head back to the office where Leo’s typing away at the computer and Asher’s lying sideways on the couch, chugging back a bottle of cold water. I shove his feet to the floor and sit beside him with a sigh.
“You saw the bruises, right?” Asher suddenly asks.
“Yeah, we saw them,” I tell him, running my hand through my hair.
“I should have followed her. If someone at her home is doing that to her… we need to know.”
“Asher, we can’t just barrel into her life. We have to think strategically.”
He glares at me as he asks, “So you’re okay with letting her go home to some guy who may be beating her every night?”
“Of course not! But we don’t know what’s going on yet, so we need to be careful not to scare her away.”
“If we were back in the army, we’d treat this as a mission. We’d assess the situation, come up with a plan of attack, then execute it,” Leo says, reminding us of our years spent serving our country before the three of us decided to retire from that life and settle down, starting this gym to give us something to focus on.
Of course, none of us had any real business skills, and it was starting to show. We weren’t exactly swimming in money, but my parents had left me some when they passed, and I used it to open the gym. We were living off our military pensions, so we weren’t at risk of losing the home we shared, but if the gym didn’t start turning a profit soon, we might have to close it down and get jobs. And after spending years in the military, we all appreciated the freedom of being our own bosses.
“The situation is that someone is or has hurt her,” Asher grits out, removing the wraps from his knuckles.
“We need to figure out if she’s actively in danger, or running from it,” I add.
“Tomorrow, one of us needs to look through her bag for clues,” Leo says, peeking up from over the monitor.
Normally I’d argue that was invading her privacy but decide this warrants a little digging.
“And find out where she lives,” Asher adds.
“I’m working on an employment form now,” Leo tells him as he types away on the keyboard. “Do you think it’d be weird to ask what her favorite flower is?” I snort in amusement and shake my head. “How about which of your bosses is the most attractive?”
“Leo…” I say in warning, although I can’t completely hold in the smile from his antics.
“Alright, I’ll delete it. But seriously, back to assessing the situation. I need to know whether she’s injured. She might need my help.”
“She seemed a little hesitant on some of the stretches,” I say with a frown, remembering her limited movements. “But I’m not sure how you get her to open up about that.”
“Me either,” he says with a frown. “That might be phase two.”
“Phase two?” I ask.
“Yeah, phase one is finding out where the danger is, phase two is protecting her and fixing her up.”
“Is there a phase three?” Asher asks.
