Page 9 of Never Again

“I hide my shame well,” Nathan said with a long-suffering sigh that earned a grumble from the other side of the locked bathroom door.

“I can understand that,” Quinn said while he kept his attention on the bathroom door, wondering what the little brat was up to. A few minutes ago, she’d gone eerily quiet as she’d watched her brother with a calculating look before she grabbed an iPad off the coffee table and walked into the bathroom without another word.

“This isn’t going the way that I’d hoped,” Nathan said, rubbing his hands roughly down his face as he dropped down on the couch with a heavy sigh.

“You need to tell her,” Quinn said, watching the bathroom door for another minute before he decided to have another look around.

“That’s not really an option,” Nathan said as Quinn double-checked the large windows overlooking the back parking lot, making a mental note to have the locks changed before he shifted his attention to the frame and looked for any signs of a security system. When he didn’t find one, he added that to the growing list of things that he needed to take care of and moved onto the rest of the apartment.

“I can’t protect someone that doesn’t know they’re in danger,” Quinn said, taking a look at the door to the far left of the elevator and quickly decided that it needed to be replaced. It was an old wood door with thin hinges and a basic chain lock that had absolutely no chance of keeping anyone out.

“How do you know my sister?” Nathan asked instead as Quinn opened the door and-

“He was obsessed with me,” came the absently murmured answer from the small woman standing in the stairwell, looking down at a file in her hands while Quinn stood there, trying to figure out how she’d managed to leave the apartment without him knowing.

“There’s a door in the bathroom that leads to my room and another set of stairs that lead downstairs,” Bailey said, answering the unspoken question as she looked up from the file to blink up at her brother. “Is there something that you’d like to tell me?”

“Besides the fact that you’re a pain in the ass,” Nathan bit out as he reached over and snatched the file out of her hand.

“Yes, besides that,” she said, waving it off.

“I was handling it,” Nathan said as Quinn’s attention flickered past Bailey and noted the stairs that led up to the roof.

“Who has access to this stairwell?” he asked as he shifted his attention back to Bailey to find her glaring at her brother.

“Everyone that works here. It doubles as a fire escape and a way to move between the floors without having to wait for the elevator,” Nathan explained, tossing the file on the table by the door before crossing his arms over his chest so that he could glare back down at Bailey.

“And the roof?” Quinn asked, already having a bad feeling what the answer was going to be.

“I’m the only one that uses it, but the employees have access to it if they need it,” Bailey said, her glare never leaving Nathan.

“We’re going to need to limit their access to this floor and the roof,” Quinn said, even as he debated moving her somewhere else until they figured out who was behind the attacks.

“And I’m going to need answers,” Bailey said, crossing her arms over her chest as she matched her brother’s glare with one of her own. “Start talking.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Nathan bit out evenly.

Nodding, Bailey said, “We already covered that. Start with explaining why you felt the need to keep the fact that someone cut the brakes on my car from me.”

“Because I took care of it,” Nathan said defensively.

“And the fact that you felt the need to hire a professional bodyguard whose military record is classified, is you taking care of it?” Bailey asked, blinking up at her brother as movement behind Bailey drew Quinn’s attention to find several women standing on the stairs, watching them.

“Told you she’d find out,” one of them said with a sad shake of her head as another woman joined them with a large bowl of popcorn.

“What did I miss?” she asked, shoving a handful of popcorn in her mouth as she looked between Bailey and him.

“Well,” the shorter one of the five said, helping herself to the popcorn, “from what I can tell, the incredibly sexy man that really seems to love to glare used to be obsessed with Bailey, which makes this situation really awkward because Nathan hired him to protect her from all those things that we’ve been keeping from her and she just found out about.”

Frowning, the woman wearing anIndiana Jonestee-shirt asked, “She found out about the break-in?” making Bailey’s eyes narrow dangerously on her brother.

“No, I don’t think they got to that part yet,” the woman said, shaking her head only to add, “That’s shameful.”

“Continue,” a woman who looked vaguely familiar said as she gestured with a large handful of popcorn for them to get on with it.

Mumbling something about traitors, Bailey walked into the apartment and closed the door behind her as groans erupted behind her. “Oh, come on! Don’t be like that!”

“Everyone knew?” she demanded.

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