Page 73 of Begin Again

“I don’t see him. Just walk me to my car.”

“Nope,” he said. “I’ll drive you to it, then I’m going to make sure you’re in it and follow you home.”

She nodded, got in his truck right out front and told him where to go for her car.

They were home within thirty minutes and she was trying to calm her heart down.

She was safe. She knew she was.

“I don’t know what is going on,” she said. “I mean I got called to the desk that there was someone who wanted to talk to me.” She told him how that went down and when she found Tanner.

“He didn’t say what he wanted?”

“I didn’t give him a chance,” she said. “I started to back up. He was pissed I kept him waiting. Then said if I answered my phone he wouldn’t have had to come here. But I blocked him. I had no idea he was trying to reach me. Once we signed the divorce papers, in my mind that was it.”

“But it’s not,” he said.

“Obviously. I looked around and didn’t see him when I left. He’s not the type to stay there all night waiting for me. He must know I don’t live at my father’s. He knew the address of my dad’s. I mean he could have found it somewhere or looked it up if he didn’t remember. He’d been there before. My father would have said something if Tanner went there.”

“He probably thinks your father knows about what happened in your marriage and didn’t want to face him.”

“I don’t know that Tanner ever thinks he’s done anything wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I wish there was a way I could find him. I mean on my terms. I don’t like knowing that he’s just sitting around here waiting for me.”

“I’m not leaving you alone. There is a public record of you buying your house,” Christian said. “He could easily know where you live.”

“I thought of that.Ifhe was going to search. He might not think I could buy a place myself. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“But he found where you worked,” he said.

“Could just be a good guess. I worked there before I moved.”

“Let me make a few calls and see if we can find out a way to see where he is,” he said. “Remember, we know a lot of people in law enforcement.”

“Isn’t that illegal without probable cause or something?”

“No clue, but we’ll find out. Why don’t you go take a shower and change? I know you want to. Then get some sleep. I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll stay here.”

“I don’t want to stay here if he can find out where I live. Can we go back to your place? He won’t know about that.”

Christian had closed on his house two weeks ago. He was now living around the corner and it had been nice to be within walking distance.

They’d finished up her hall bath together so it wasn’t half done and he could focus on his flip.

She thought life was going just great until now.

She was walking out of the bathroom when Christian came in. “I just talked to Dylan. That was the easiest since Zoe works for us.”

“What did Dylan say?”

“He said he’ll see what he can find out and get back to me. He was going to talk to Nathan too. I didn’t ask what he was going to do. Just explained that your ex was in town, and what happened. And that you were trying to find out where he was staying so that you could be on top of it.”

“You had to tell him more,” she said. “I know it.”

He waited a second. “I told him there was some domestic violence.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t want anyone to know that.”

“You can trust them,” he said. “You can. Ryan’s wife, Shannon, had a stalker that followed her here from Seattle. The guy broke into her house in the middle of the night and Ryan caught him and beat the shit out of him and tied him up, then called Josh and Nathan. Or one of them. They both showed up. Not many know the situation because they wouldn’t say anything.”

---