Page 33 of Luke, The Profiler

“Never mind,” I said, waving my words away. “The point is, I’ve found a way to keep myself safe without too much disruption of my day-to-day life. Today notwithstanding,” I added with a speaking glance up at the ceiling. “By this time tomorrow, I’ll have my house back, I’ll be surrounded by the best around-the-clock security money can buy, and I’ll be able to focus on living life again. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to all that peace and quiet.”

The man who’d gone through the foyer came back, this time with Luke following close behind, a large plastic restaurant bag in his hand.

Welp.

So much for peace and quiet.

“You haven’t eaten yet, right?” he said by way of greeting, nodding significantly at the unopened packets of pumpkin bread. “I brought some real lunch—salmon sashimi and a California roll for two. Your favorite, right?”

If Kels didn’t stop gaping at everything around him, I’d have to start calling him a grouper.

“Shit,” he muttered, so quietly it was almost a whisper. “It’s him.”

“Lucien Keyes, though my friends call me Luke.” Luke went right up to Kels, who had sprung out of his chair the moment Luke entered the room, and offered his hand. “And you’re Kelsey Crosby, the lawyer for HEG. Is there any legal reason for you to be here?”

Both Kels and I blinked at the question before Kels shook Luke’s hand on what seemed to be automatic pilot. “Uh, no I just dropped by for a visit—”

“Until further notice we’ll need you to call ahead to schedule a visit with Eden, in case our protectee can’t be seen. For instance, while we’re setting up the equipment designed to keep her safe, it’s company policy to make sure no one else is on the premises to see what we’re doing and how we’re protecting her. So that being said, my associate here will now show you the door. Don’t forget to give Mr. Crosby a card so he has a number to call to set up his next visit,” he added to the tech who’d obviously let Luke in. “Sometime next week would be good, Counselor. Or maybe the week after that. Bye.”

Kels had just enough time to grab his coffee before he was hustled toward the exit. “Wait a sec—”

I also came to my feet. “Luke, he’s my guest and he’s on my list of trusted people, according to Echo. I want him to stay.”

“He may be on your list of trusted people, but he isn’t on mine. Clear out, Crosby, unless you want to stick around while I figure out every lie you’ve ever told, and why you told them.”

Kels looked like he had a hot poker stuck up his ass as he headed out with the PSI tech. “Talk to you later, Eden. Maybe Facetime, if your watchdogs will allow it.”

“Not sure that’s going to be allowed,” Luke remarked after the front door closed with a definitive bang, an audible exclamation point if there ever was one. Casually he set the restaurant bag on the table and began unpacking it, all the while keeping his gaze trained on me. “He’s an integral part of HEG, and we know that your stalker comes from that world. My money’s on him.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I started to gape at him, only to remember how Kels resembled a fish with all his gaping, so I closed my mouth with a snap. “I’ve known Kelsey since I was eleven years old. He’d never hurt me.”

“Maybe not actuallyhurtyou,” he conceded with a careless shrug. “But I wouldn’t put it past him to threaten you just to get you to do what he and Tru Steadfast want—namely to come back under your father’s control.”

Good grief. “He wouldn’t.”

“At the age of fourteen, young Kelsey was turning tricks as a rent boy in West Chicago before landing at HEG’s New Hope Teen Shelter, beaten up, half-starved and suicidal,” he went on, as relentless as the damn tide. “Considering how his life turned out, making seven figures annually with his only client being HEG, Crosby would do fucking anything his master told him to do, up to and including harassing you in order to get you back in the fold.”

Rage seethed up in a great, hot wave. “You have no right digging into the lives of people who have nothing to do with what’s happening to me.”

“I have every right to do whatever the hell I need to do when it comes to keeping your ass safe,” came the unapologetic reply. “And it’s not like our investigator had to actuallydig. Your old man loves letting the world know what a benevolent savior he is when it comes to saving the lives of the genuinely helpless kids who stumble into a New Hope shelter. You know as well as anyone that Tru Steadfast made Crosby into a New Hope poster boy for that era. Anyone who runs a Google search on his name knows his story. I’m just curious if New Hope is where you and Crosby met.”

I was so angry I couldn’t make sense of his words. “What the hell does that even mean? Of course we met through New Hope. That’s how Kels became a part of HEG.”

“Were you taken in by New Hope when you were a teen? Is that how Truman Steadfast found you?”

“What the hell,” I began before the light went on, and suddenly my confusion evaporated. “Oh, I see. I guess your investigator couldn’t Google search me, could he? You have no idea where I come from. Do you?”

His intense gaze didn’t waver. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

“It is if you want PSI to protect you.”

“That’s debatable. Personally I just see you as a bunch of nosy parkers.”

“Of course we are. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s no record of Truman Steadfast, AKA Marvin Pankey, ever having a child, much less a daughter.”

So they knew my father’s birth name, and no doubt his criminal record. Not too much of a problem, as far as I could see. “Maybe I was hatched.”

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