Monster

by Holly C. Webb

  “What can I say,” Travis smirked as he continued to paint the wall of my bedroom. “My skills in the bedroom have nothing to do with a paintbrush. But should you need some pointers with the ladies; I’m your man.”

  “I think I’ll pass, Romeo,” I laughed, as I returned my focus back to the job at hand.

  It was almost three months since I had moved into my new apartment, but with work being so crazy lately, I didn’t have much time for decorating. But as I was between gigs right now, I finally had the time to try and get my apartment looking a little more like a home.

  We’d managed to get the living room sorted. Now we were working on the bedroom, so finally I might be able to get a proper night’s sleep.

  I laughed to myself at that thought. I didn’t know when the last time I slept more than thirty minutes at one time was.

  Since I returned from Afghanistan three years earlier, sleep was certainly not my friend.

  “So,” Travis said, as he continued to cover the wall and himself in the paint. “You gonna give that girl I was telling you about, a call?”

  “Nope,” I replied without even thinking about it.

  “But she’s perfect for you,” Travis said, pulling his paintbrush away from the wall. “Just meet her, Jax.”

  “If you think she’s perfect, then definitely no,” I replied without looking away from the wall in front of me. “I’ve seen the ladies you said were “perfect” in the past, and I’m not ready for that much crazy. Besides, I like my life the way it is. I don’t need to go complicating it with a damn woman.”

  “But you haven’t dated anyone since Christina,” Travis pushed, and I knew he wasn’t going to let this go easy, so I needed to stop him before he even got started.

  “And look how well that worked out,” I sighed, finally turning to look at him. “I’m not interested, Trav. Besides, no girl wants to date someone who is as fucked up as I am. Trust me; I’m better off on my own. I have my job and my own place, and I have your ugly mug. I don’t need anything else.”

  Travis opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get the words out, my phone began to ring.

  “Saved by the bell,” I grinned as I set down my paintbrush and pulled my phone from my pocket. I looked down at the number, but it was one I didn’t recognise.

  I quickly hit accept and brought the phone to my ear.

  “Jaxson Stone,” I said into the phone, answering as I always did.

  “Mr. Stone,” a man said from the other end of the line. “I’m sorry for disturbing you at this late hour. My name is Jacob Wallace. A Detective Monroe gave me your number and said, you might be able to help me.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Wallace,” I said, smiling when I thought of Richie Monroe.

  He and I served in Afghanistan during my first tour. He was a good guy and one of the small few I kept in touch with after I left the Marines. Richie had only served one tour. His wife had a kid, and she wanted him to stay stateside. So, he quit and became a cop. He often sent business my way whenever he came across someone who might need a little help with security, and given we were living in Washington DC; there was always some rich asshole looking for someone to babysit them while someone else cleared up their mess.

  “I have a situation regarding my wife,” he said before he explained exactly what had happened and what it was, he was looking for from me.

  As a rule, I tried not to get involved in domestic situations. It seldom ended well. I usually worked exclusively with business or political clientele. It made it easier to keep things on a professional footing.

  But this was not your standard domestic thing. I knew that stalking could be very serious, and very often it only ends when either the victim, the perpetrator, or sometimes even both end up dead.

  Plus, the husband was already quite a public figure from his line of work and was about to get a whole lot more public once he announced he was going to run for the Senate. Making this girl, even more of a target for whoever this asshole, who seemed to think he could take whatever he wanted.

  Still, my gut instinct was to say thank you but decline the job offer. Something just felt off with this guy. Besides, I didn’t fancy babysitting some shallow, political wife. I’d met enough of them in my time to know that I didn’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with one.

  “Mr. Wallace,” I began trying my hardest to let him down gently. “While I’m very grateful for you considering me, I really don’t think…”

  “Mr. Stone,” the man interrupted me. “Before you say no, can I ask you to reconsider. Money is no object. I want the best, and Detective Monroe assured me that you were indeed the best. Ally means everything to me, and she is completely freaked out about all this. I need to know I am leaving her with the best.”

  “Look,” I sighed, knowing I should have just said no, then and there, but something stopped me. “I’m not making any promises. I will come to your house in the morning. We can have a proper chat; see exactly what it is you’ll need from me.”

  “Thank you,” Jacob said to me, and I could hear from the tone of his voice, he was confident that I was going to take the job the moment I stepped into his home. “I will text you my address. How does ten o’clock sound?”

  “Perfect,” I said, happy to get this over and done with one way or another. “I’ll see you then.”

  “See you then, Mr. Stone,” Jacob replied before he hung up the phone.

  A few moments later, my phone beeped with a notification that I’d received a text message. I opened it and read the address. I knew the area well. It was a very affluent part of DC. I wondered why Richie had given this guy my number. He knew this wasn’t my usual line of work, so it made me wonder if Richie had seen something more than what I saw with this case.

  If I was honest, now I was intrigued.

  “Who was that?” Travis asked, pulling me back from my thoughts.

  “Just a work thing,” I sighed, slipping my phone back into my pocket. “Some woman is being stalked, and her husband wants me to babysit her.”

  “I thought you were taking some time off,” Travis asked, giving me a knowing look. “Big brother, you work way too hard.”

  “I never said I was taking the job,” I laughed as I picked my paintbrush back up.

  “And I never said I was going to go to the club this weekend and would end up shagging some random chick,” Travis laughed as he returned to his painting too. “But we both know that is gonna happen too.”

  “Too much information, Trav,” I laughed as I continued to paint my wall.

  “Well,” Travis chuckled too. “I’m not wrong.”

  “Okay, okay,” I laughed once more. “Mr. Know-it-all.”

  “I never said I knew it all, Asshat,” he sighed as he returned his focus to the painting once more, then added with a grin. “Unless you’re talking about sex, then yes, I really do know it all.”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I just threw my head back and laughed out loud.

  If nothing else, Travis always knew how to make me laugh. It didn’t matter how messed up our lives got, I knew I would always have him, and he would always know exactly what to say to make me smile.

  Travis was the only person I had left in the world that truly meant anything to me. Dad was a Marine, just like I was. He was killed in action when Travis was only a baby, leaving Mom to raise two boys by herself. She did her best, but sometimes things were hard for us. So, me going to college was not an option.

  Travis was just sixteen when I left for my first tour of Afghanistan. He pleaded with me not to go, but I knew it was something I needed to do. It was like a calling that wouldn’t let me go. Also, I knew Mom needed the money to help with the bills.

  I was on my second tour when Travis wrote to me to tell me that Mom was sick. She had found a lump on her breast. It was already at stage four. I was given compassionate leave to come home to her, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do. Mom died two weeks after I�
�d arrived home from the Middle East. A year later, while Travis was back in college, I headed back to Afghanistan for the last time.

  While there, I was injured by a roadside IED. I was with some of my squad on a routine patrol. All I remember was this blinding flash, followed by the screams of the other guys in my squad. I tried to move, I wanted to get up to help them, but I couldn’t budge. I was pinned under part of our Humvee. Every inch of my body hurt, but still, I knew I needed to help them. So, I pushed with everything I had, freeing myself from beneath the wreckage.

  While I was attending to one of my squad, we came under heavy fire from insurgents. I spent the next two hours fighting them back alone until help arrived. I knew I needed to protect my squad. All but one of them was still alive, but they were all badly injured, so I knew it was my job to keep them safe.

  It wasn’t until a rescue team arrived, and I was able to stop and draw a breath myself, that I realised, I was badly injured too. I had severe internal injuries to both my body and my head, and I had an open fracture to my femur. The medic who examined me said he didn’t know how I was still alive, much less still conscious and fighting off the enemy.

  The last thing I remember was being air-lifted from the side of the road. I woke up two months later in the Walter Reed Medical Centre. I’d been in a medically induced coma the whole time, allowing my body to recover from its many traumatic injuries.

  When I came through, Travis was sitting beside my bed, and till I die, I will never forget the look on his face. I promised him there and then that I was done. I promised him I would never go back.

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” I said as I stepped back from the wall, admiring my work as Travis finished up the final section on his wall. “Another room is done and dusted. We need to let it dry before I move the furniture back in and unpack my stuff for in here.”

  “How will you ever survive,” Travis laugh as he finished the last piece and set his paintbrush down. “Living like a normal human being, with their clothes in a closet instead of living out of boxes.”

  “You know you should be on the stage,” I groaned as I bunched up the cloth I was holding, before throwing it at him. “You’re hilarious.”

  “I know,” he chuckled, throwing the cloth back at me. “But right now, I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” I replied just as my stomach growled with hunger. “How does pizza and beer sound?”

  “Like music to my ears,” Travis replied, giving me a broad smile. “But make sure there is no pineapple on it this time. That stuff does not belong anywhere except on the side of a glass with a Pina Colada inside it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” I laughed as I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialled in the number for our favourite pizzeria.

  It was exactly two minutes to ten when I pulled through the gates of one of the most beautiful houses I’d ever seen, ready for my meeting with Jacob Wallace. I made it a habit never to be late when coming to a meeting. Probably something I picked up from my time in the Marines.

  As I drove up the driveway, I did a sweep of the grounds, mentally picking out possible issues I had with the area from a security point of view. Not that I’d decided to take the job, I hadn’t. If anything, when I woke up that morning, I was even less keen on taking this particular assignment, but the habit still made me take in my surroundings and pick out possible issues that needed to be addressed.

  When I called Richie the night before, asking him why he’d thought this job would be something I would be interested in, he said that there was something about the woman; something a little lost that made him want to protect her, but he didn’t know what from. That’s why he gave her husband my number. He said she needed the best, and that he thought I would be perfect for the job.

  As I stopped my car in front of the house, the door opened, and a well-dressed man who looked to be in his mid-thirties appeared in the doorway.

  “Mr. Stone?” He asked as he stepped down from the doorway, though I was sure he already knew the answer.

  “Yes,” I replied as I walked towards the man and held out my hand. “But please, call me Jaxson. It’s lovely to meet you, Mr. Wallace.”

  “I would like to say it’s a pleasure,” he replied, giving me a nervous smile. “But I really wish it were under different circumstances. And it’s Jacob.”

  Jacob turned and led me into his beautiful house, closing the door behind us before he led me to the living room.

  “Please, have a seat, Jaxson,” he said as he sat down on one of the two beautiful sofas that were sitting face to face, either side of a large open fireplace. “Ally will be with us shortly. She is still rather shaken up by all this.”

  “I can imagine,” I said as I took a seat on the other sofa and looked around the room. “These things can be quite troubling and scary.”

  “Yes, well,” he said as he absentmindedly fixed his tie and straightened his suit jacket. “I suppose I expected there might be some issue if I become a senator, I guess it goes with the territory. But as I said on the phone, I haven’t even officially announced I was running yet. Whoever this scumbag is, it’s something I wasn’t expecting.”

  “And you have no clue who this man could be?” I asked, curious to find out how much he really knew about this thing.

  “I have no clue,” he sighed as he leaned forward in his seat. “Alexandra is from New Jersey. There was a boyfriend in high school. She dated a couple of guys when she moved here to DC, but I don’t believe they have anything to do with this.”

  “Still,” I said, giving him a reassuring smile. “I would suggest giving their names to DC police. You never know.”

  Before he could reply, there was a sound from the hallway, and I instantly looked up to find the most breath-taking girl I’d ever seen standing there, looking like she wished she was a million miles away from here, right at that moment.

  “Ally, Sweetheart,” Jacob said as we both stood up to greet her. “This is Jaxson Stone. Mr. Stone is the man I was telling you about. The one Detective Monroe recommended.”

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Mr. Stone,” she replied as she walked across the room and offered me her hand.

  “You too, Mrs. Wallace,” I replied, taking her hand and shaking it gently as my eyes met hers. It was right at that moment I could see what Richie had seen. There was something about this girl, a sense of sadness, and vulnerability that reached out to me on a very personal level. Instantly I felt something shift inside me; a feeling deep down that told me I needed to protect this girl.

  Jacob began to talk about what it was they needed from me. He told me about the sort of lifestyle his wife had and what I would have to accompany her to in the coming weeks.

  We discussed security for the house, and what I felt needed to be changed and what was already working. Then he talked about his upcoming election and how he now wasn’t sure that being on the campaign trail was the best place for Alexandra, right at that moment.

  As he talked, I watched Alexandra sitting there, lost in a world of her own, hating every minute of this entire thing. It was then I realised two things.

  First, I was wrong about Alexandra Wallace when I assumed that she would be just like every other politician’s wife I’d ever met. She wasn’t a social climber who would stop at nothing to get her husband to where it was; they both wanted him to be. Alexandra seemed to live a more quiet, private life.

  Secondly, Alexandra Wallace was not a happy woman. And something told me that this sadness ran deeper than her being upset over this current situation. No, it was something much deeper. I could see it in her eyes. It was a look I recognised only too well because I saw it in my own eyes every time; I looked in the mirror.

  I didn’t know what it was about Alexandra Wallace, but I knew that I would move mountains to protect her. Whether I wanted to or not, I knew I would have to take this job. I needed to keep her safe, but from what or who, I didn’t know.

  Chapter 5

&
nbsp; Jaxson

  “I thought you weren’t going to take this job,” Travis said from where he was sitting on the bottom of my bed, watching me pack my bags. “And now you’re going to go live with this chick! How long for?”

  “I’m not living with this chick,” I said as I pulled open my underwear drawer and pulled out several pairs of clean boxer shorts. “I’m moving in with my new client for a short period, along with her husband and their housekeeper.”

  “There’s a housekeeper?” Travis asked, raising his eyebrows and giving me a wicked grin. “Is she hot?”

  “Not that I noticed,” I sighed, refusing to take the bait.

  “She is hot!” Travis exclaimed, then let out a loud whooping sound.

  “She is probably old enough to be your mother,” I replied as I threw a pair of my boxer shorts at him. “And I’m not going there to hook up. I’m going there to do a job.”

  “Jeez, Jax,” he groaned as he lifted the boxer shorts off him and dropped them to the bed in disgust. “You really need to learn how to have some fun sometimes. You’re way too serious.”

  “I have to be, Trav,” I said, giving him a knowing look. “If I don’t take this seriously, this girl could be killed by whoever this nut job is, and I don’t want anyone dying on my watch.”

  “Well, that is never going to happen,” Travis said as he pushed up from the bed and walked to the door of my bedroom. “Not with G.I Jax on the job. But you’re not on the clock till tomorrow, and it seems as we aren’t doing any painting tonight, I say we head to Hooper’s. We can watch the game and have a couple of beers. God knows when I’ll see you again after tonight.”

  “You’ll still see me,” I assured him, giving him a grin. “I’m still gonna be here in DC, and I’m sure I won’t be on babysitting duty all the time.”

  “Good,” he replied, smiling too. “But you’re still buying me a beer tonight.”

  “Fine,” I sighed as I dropped my bag down on the bed, deciding to finish my packing later. “Let’s go, Trouble.”

  “That’s Mr. Trouble to you,” he chuckled as he headed out the door before I closely followed behind him.