Page 32 of Hidden Chaos

13

Patrena

Istood in the shadows of the thick, dark curtains in my office window spying on the man sitting in the white, old-model Ford Econoline van with tinted windows. He was one of two Vallin guards assigned to shadow my every move.

Up until Tywin’s confession yesterday, I’d felt safe. I had allowed myself to become complacent in the knowledge that I had always been someone’s target. There were two questions I was dying to know the answers to. Was I on the syndicate’s hit list and if I was, why?

The men had taken turns sitting outside my apartment and office while I worked. And surprisingly, even though they were members of the syndicate, it didn’t feel odd to have extra eyes on me. Besides, I wanted to know who had taken an interest in me and my tattoo and why? I racked my brain trying to recall if my mother had ever whispered secrets about my tattoo, but I couldn’t remember anything. Had I slept with my enemy when I shared my bed with Tywin? Did it matter? From where I stood, my supposed enemy was volunteering to protect me, leaving me to ask myself if I was ever an enemy to the syndicate or just led to believe I was one.

Tywin had suggested the tempting offer of moving me into the spare bedroom at his apartment, but I’d been smart enough to turn him down. Enemy or not, I would have ended up spending most of my time in his bedroom and we knew it.

After an eight-hour day of solving everyone else’s problems, all I wanted was to solve the problem of my hunger. A box of greasy shrimp fried rice would contribute to clogging up my arteries and help to alleviate the stress of not knowing.

* * *

A half hourlater and although I didn’t spot the guard following me into the mall, I sensed someone at my back and lingering in my peripheral.

Tywin.Whenever I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of being his mortal enemy, I was thinking about being with him again. The man knew his way around my body like we’d been lovers for a damn lifetime. I wanted him again and he still wanted me despite our obvious conflict of interest and the anxiety swirling around my past and my tattoo.

A sigh accompanied by a deep eye roll was my way of putting myself in check and forcing myself to concentrate on something else. The sense that I was being watched wasn’t new, but now I sensed multiple eyes on me.

The swirling colors and energetic flow of the mall crowd smacked me in the face and knocked Tywin out of my head. A quick sidestep kept me from crashing head on with a woman dragging a screaming toddler, and the near collision caused my heels to click hard against the floor. Straightening myself from the near miss led me to narrowly avoid a group of noisy teens huddled in a circle while viewing something on the middle teen’s phone.

Alarming spikes of stress kicked my senses into overdrive. My shoulders stiffened with enough tension that I rolled them in an attempt to loosen up. Why did I get the sense that I had lost the guard who was supposed to have been following me? Why was I all of a sudden more aware of my surroundings? The crush of rapid footsteps. Words and details of nearby conversations. The lack of mall security in this area. My brain registered it all.

Filtering out what I didn’t need, the sound of disciplining parents, rebelling kids, and lovey-dovey couples whispering secrets and endearments to each other became white noise. I listened and watched for triggers. Eyes on me. Lurkers hanging out in corners. My attempts to fight off the anxious energy seeping into my bones failed.

A man materialized, appearing in my peripheral like a sneaky dark shadow. Six-two, abouttwo-twenty, light brown hair, and extremely fair skin, he had my senses tingling. And although I automatically exchanged fake smiles with passing shoppers, he had my full attention.

My brain was flipping through my memories to recall if he had popped up in any of the same places as I had. I didn’t believe he had, but he was following way too close and didn’t seem to care that I noticed him. Where the hell was the Vallin guard? Had he been immobilized or worse, taken out?

The lingering man was the reason I was about to take a seat in this crowded food court and wait him out. I was holding on to the hope that the guard would make a sudden reappearance. I had been told on a few occasions that I was the approachable type so men, who wanted to ask me out, just asked.

However, the malicious intent radiating from this man’s stiff body and the fact that he was eyeballing me erased the hope that this stalker was working up the nerve to ask me out on a date. Wishful thinking on my part, I know.

The mean scowl on his face highlighted his impatience at my lack of movement. Who the hell was he? Why was he standing there aiming his angry attention in my direction?

A stream of erratic ideas ran along the sphere of my brain, causing me to produce outrageous scenarios. The abusive husband I had drugged hadn’t been able to identify me because of the mask I wore, but could he have found a way and sent someone after me anyway? Was this some other angry ex who had figured out I had stolen away their woman trophy? The possibility of being targeted for helping the victims was always there, but being followed so blatantly in a public place had me shook. I accepted that my Vallin-appointed protection was no longer in the picture. I was on my own.

Dammit!

My pistol was in the glove compartment of my car, and I didn’t have anything to use as a weapon except my keys. I had slipped my credit card out of my purse that I’d left on the passenger’s side floor of my car to keep from lugging it around. I turned in my seat, staring back at the man who was staring stone faced at me.

His sinister smirk met me head on before his eyes roamed the busy area surrounding us until they landed on a group of unsuspecting pre-teens. His smile deepened before he turned his gaze back on me and motioned his head for me to head towards the restrooms.

I didn’t move. The sight of him putting his gaze back on those kids while reaching into his jacket caused my heart to sink to my toes and melt onto the black leather of my heels. He hadn’t said a word, but his threat was as loud as if he’d yelled it across the food court.

Fucking dirty son of a bitch…I believed he would hurt those kids without an ounce of remorse. How did he even know if I was the compassionate type?

Fuck! My job, dammit! If he knew that, he knew to play on my weakness. It also meant he had likely been keeping tabs on me before we met in this mall. I stood with a frustrated huff and headed in the direction of the ladies’ room with a stomping march of my heels.

The man didn’t move, but I sensed his eyes on me, his gaze boring into my back like a hot poker. I dialed Mecca first, keeping my phone close to my chest while strolling at a leisurely pace down the long white and unusually deserted hallway. The call went straight to voicemail. It was expected as she was dealing with running a drug empire.

Once I shouldered my way into the bathroom, I turned and locked the door behind me. I ran into the middle door of five open stalls and locked myself inside. When I called up the number that would alert the LoC that I was in trouble, the harsh thump of someone knocking at the bathroom door caused me to jump. The door creaked and groaned at the man’s hard shoves. It sounded like it was giving up the fight on the third forceful thump, letting me know the shaky lock had been a false sense of security.

Metal crashing to the floor sounded before the door burst open with an angry whine. The mall had surveillance, I knew as much, but were the security officers doing their jobs and monitoring this area?

Although the sound of the phone ringing for help sounded, I gave up the reassuring sound and placed it behind me on the little shelf above the commode without hanging up. I prayed that the call would go through before the fucker in this bathroom executed his next move.

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