by Marci Bolden
He stopped moving. This was his house, for God’s sake, but common sense reminded him that she was the one with the gun. No wise man would argue with someone holding a loaded weapon. However, when another noise sounded from the living area, he sat up taller, determined that no man would let a woman face danger alone, even if she were more qualified to do so. He stood and followed her down the hallway, despite the way she scowled up at him.
Pressing her pointer finger to her lips, she silently hushed him. Only then did he realize how heavily he was breathing. He wasn’t the confrontational type, really, so the thought of a burglar snooping through the living room set him on edge more than he had initially realized. His adrenaline was flowing and his heart pounding wildly. He was panting, like he’d run a marathon instead of crept twenty feet in the darkness.
Alexa lifted her hand, another silent motion, this time a clear statement for him to stop closing in on her. He did, and she moved the last few feet of the hallway on her own before peering around the corner with her gun aimed at the floor but her finger on the trigger. She was ready to shoot should the intruder be a threat. The thought caused his stomach to roll, but then he almost laughed as he heard his mother’s voice in his head.
Don’t you make a mess on my carpet, young lady. That was what his mom would have said if she were there. Okay, probably not in that particular instance, but that was what popped into Dean’s head. He heard her voice as clear as the bright blue sky on one of the sunny days at the lake his parents used to take them to over summer vacation. That was one of the few places where Dean didn’t mind having Mandy hanging around. They would bury each other in the sand and laugh as they splashed each other to get rid of the remaining grit. Those were some of the happiest times in Dean’s childhood.
The memory ended with a flash, and he crashed back to reality with Alexa’s lightning-fast movement. One second she was standing there peering around the corner; the next she was standing, feet planted and gun raised, in the entry to the living room.
“Don’t move,” she warned in a loud, confident tone. “Put your hands up and drop to your knees.”
“I-I-I live here,” came a weak voice in response.
“Mandy,” Dean breathed. He rushed down the hallway and flipped the switch for the overhead light. Wincing at the sudden brightness, he managed to keep his eyes open so he could confirm the twig of a girl standing in front of Alexa with her hands up and her eyes wide was his little sister.
Her makeup was mostly worn off, but mascara streaked under her eyes as if she’d been crying at some point. Despite the cooler weather, she was dressed in ripped skinny jeans, a tank top, and a flimsy pair of flip-flops.
Dean crossed the room in three long strides and pulled her into his arms. Hugging her tight, taking note of how her bones poked him back, he kissed her head as she crumbled against him. The sound of her crying brought tears to his eyes, too. She clung to him, her face buried in his chest, as her body shook with sobs muffled by his embrace.
The only other time they’d stood like that was at their mother’s funeral. After the service ended and people started to drift away, Mandy refused to leave the casket. She’d stood there in her brother’s arms, crying and crying, until she seemed to run out of tears. She was weak and exhausted by the time she stopped sobbing.
Tonight, she seemed weak and exhausted before she’d even begun.
Though Dean had a million questions, a thousand things to say, words wouldn’t form. When she leaned back, he brushed his thumbs under her eyes, wiping some of her tears and more of her mascara away. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
She sniffed, swallowed, and looked over his shoulder with confusion. “Who’s that half-naked chick with a gun in our living room?”
He smiled and glanced over his shoulder just as Alexa was returning, now dressed in a pair of his boxers and one of his old T-shirts, carrying clothes for him as well. He accepted her offering with a whispered thanks. “Mandy, this is Alexa.”
“Hi, Mandy,” she said sweetly and held her hand out, but Dean could see her mind working. Silently taking in every nuance of his little sister’s behavior.
Alexa was assessing the situation with an intensity he hadn’t seen since they’d first met and she was sizing him and his story up. He slid his arm more tightly around Mandy’s shoulders, inexplicably needing to shield her from Alexa’s scrutiny.
“Are you alone?” Alexa asked, her voice still filled with the kindness that Dean had come to know, but her eyes remained shaded with suspicion.
“Yeah,” Mandy said, but even Dean questioned whether the hesitantly spoken word was a lie.
“I’m just going to make sure you weren’t followed.” She flipped the overhead light off, and a moment later, Dean noticed her silhouette moving to the door. The lock echoed through the room as she clicked it into place. Then she went to the window and peered through the blinds.
“Who is that?” Mandy asked.
Dean hushed her as he watched Alexa looking outside. “See anything?”
“No.” Turning, she hit the switch on her side of the room for the overhead light.
Alexa asked, “How did you get here, Mandy?”
Tearing her gaze from Dean to Alexa, she narrowed her eyes, clearly resenting the question. “I walked.”
“From where?” Alexa pushed.
“A gas station a few miles away. Dean, who is this?”
“How did you get in?” Alexa continued.
“Who the fuck is this?” Mandy demanded of her brother.
Dean lifted his hand toward Alexa and put his other palm to Mandy’s shoulder. “There’s a spare key in a fake rock outside.”
“That’s going to change,” Alexa muttered as she eased her defensive posture.
“Mandy, this is Alexa. She’s a PI I hired to find you.”
Mandy skimmed over Alexa’s attire. “Oh, is that why you hired her?”
Alexa softened before Dean’s eyes, changing from untrusting investigator to the sweet woman he’d so easily fallen for. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I didn’t mean to come across as harsh. You startled me is all. Yes, your brother hired me to find you. He’s been really worried about you.” She offered that gentle smile of hers that instantly won most people over. “Obviously things have…developed…since then.”
Mandy relaxed as well, but there were still questions in her glazed eyes. “So you’re Dean’s girlfriend?”
Alexa lifted her brows as if surprised by the realization. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Dean said. “I’m glad you’re home. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
She nodded, not clarifying which, but it didn’t matter. He’d get her both. He started for the kitchen, but Alexa put her hand on his arm before he could walk away.
“I’ll get her something,” she said. “You stay here.”
“Maybe you should get some real clothes, too,” Mandy suggested. Alexa glanced down at her bare legs.
“I’ll get something more appropriate for all of us,” she said lightly, as if she hadn’t noticed the underlying accusation in Mandy’s words.
Dean was thankful. He didn’t want to let Mandy out of his sight. He wasn’t sure he ever would again. Leading her to the sofa, he pulled her down and clasped her hands. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged and lowered her gaze.
“Mandy, you gotta tell me everything. I can’t help if you don’t tell me everything. You know that, right?”
She nodded but didn’t speak.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m worried. I want to help.”
“Is that why you’re shacking up with a private dick?”
He ignored the venom in her words. She’d been through a lot, and having a woman pull a gun on her was probably the least of her traumas. “She traced the texts you sent to a phone in Chicago. We went there looking for you. We were this close to finding you when we were told you’d been moved.”
Her eye
s changed from the hard challenge of a borderline temper tantrum to what he could only describe as shame. Tears filled her eyes and fell unchecked. When she spoke, her voice was so soft and broken, he had to lean in to hear her. “That guy who got arrested called my handler and told him what happened. He said people were looking for me.”
“That’s why they were moving you?”
She bobbed her head again. “He was trading me for someone else. Like I’m a fucking football player or something.”
He ran his hand over hers to try to soothe her. “How’d you get away?”
“I recognized the area when he stopped for gas. We weren’t far from the mall. I made a run for it.”
“You walked here all the way from the mall? Dressed like that?” Hugging her to him, trying to warm away the chill that had to have settled in her bones, Dean silently vowed to find whoever had done this to her and kill him. Slowly.
“Here you go,” Alexa said, holding out a sweatshirt from Mandy’s closet.
She then offered a T-shirt to Dean, who pulled the soft material over his head and looked up at her.
He was expecting the sweetness he’d come to know, but she was eyeing Mandy as if seeking some other truth that hadn’t been spoken.
“You were going to get Mandy something to eat.”
“Yeah,” Alexa said as her smile returned. “Give me just a minute.”
“What’s her problem?” Mandy asked with an edge to her tone.
“She’s just analytical. Like me. You know how I like to overthink everything.”
“I don’t like how she’s looking at me.”
He didn’t either, and he didn’t understand it. Alexa was hired to bring Mandy home, and here she sat. Why wasn’t Alexa happier about that? Instead of being relieved, she was obviously uncertain about his sister’s return.
Instead of focusing on the questions in Alexa’s eyes, he put his arm around Mandy again. She was safe. She was home. That was all he had to think about at the moment. That was all he was willing to think about at the moment.
11
Alexa jolted awake again, only this time not to the subtle sounds of someone sneaking around Dean’s house. The phone on the nightstand next to her chirped, and she grabbed it before the noise could offend her ears again.
“Yeah?” she asked, answering the call without looking at the screen.
“She’s on the move,” Rene said. Alexa had called her the moment she got a break from Dean to ask her to keep an eye on the house.
Alexa blinked rapidly, trying to force her brain to start working properly. Between making love to Dean and Mandy’s sudden appearance, she hadn’t slept but an hour or so, and her mind was clouded. “Did someone pick her up?”
“Yep,” Rene answered. “I’m tailing. The plates are local, Lex.”
Alexa rolled out of bed and trotted to Dean’s office in the next room. Grabbing a pen, she found a scrap of paper. “Make and model?”
Rene rattled off the information on the sedan she was following and then asked, “Did you get a tracer on her?”
“Was she wearing a gray sweatshirt when she left?”
“Yes.”
“I tucked it into the hem. I’ll log in and monitor once I get to the office. Be safe,” Alexa said before ending the call.
“Hey,” Dean mumbled from the door, his voice thick with sleep. “What’s going on?”
Turning, Alexa frowned, hating that she was about to dump even more on him. He’d finally seemed relaxed, like he somehow believed everything was going to magically be okay. “She left,” Alexa said, breaking the news as gently, but bluntly, as possible.
He dropped the hand that he’d been brushing through his shaggy hair. “What?” His eyes widened as his brain seemed to process what she’d said. Turning, he crossed the hall and pushed the door to Mandy’s room open.
Alexa didn’t have to look inside. She knew there was no one there.
Spinning on his heels, Dean rushed down the hallway, calling out to his sister.
“Dean.” Alexa followed him. “Dean. She’s gone.”
Turning, he faced her. “Why? Why would she leave?”
Sagging under the weight of the reality she understood far more than he, she frowned. “Do you keep emergency cash in the house? Any valuables she could sell?”
Disbelief filled his eyes, but then he brushed by her to his office and pulled a vase off a shelf. He turned it upside down, looked inside, and then rattled it for good measure. The vase was empty. Moving by her again, he went into Mandy’s room and lifted the lid off the jewelry box on her dresser. Alexa knew he was looking for the diamond ring and emerald earrings that had been sitting on the crushed red velvet lining Alexa had seen when she’d searched her room soon after Dean hired her. By the way he cursed under his breath, she guessed they were gone.
He looked at Alexa with the same desperation he’d had the first time she met him. “What? She… She wasn’t coming home?”
Alexa shook her head. “Honey, she’s a drug addict working for a pimp who probably lost a little faith in her after his john got arrested. He needed her to prove herself to him. And in the process, they made a few bucks.”
“She’s going to pawn Mom’s jewelry?” The hurt in his voice made Alexa’s heart break.
“Rene is following her, and I put a tracer in her sweatshirt. We’re going to know every move they make.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You put a tracer in her sweatshirt? You knew she was going to leave? And you didn’t stop her?”
She wasn’t surprised by the accusation and anger in his tone, but she still felt as if he’d kicked her in the heart. “Dean—”
“You knew she was going to leave, and you didn’t stop her. What the fuck, Alexa?”
“Dean. She is legally an adult. Short of kidnapping, there was nothing either of us could do to stop her.”
“I could have convinced her to stay.”
“Really?” She didn’t mean for the sarcastic retort to leave her lips, but there it was, lingering between them. Taking a breath, she reined herself in. “She didn’t come home for help. If she had, she wouldn’t have left.”
“That man is messing with her head.”
“I know that. I do. But legally—”
“Fuck what is and isn’t legal! My sister is in trouble, and she was right here. I could have helped her, but you let her go.”
“We are following her.”
“So what? What the hell is that going to do?”
“She stole from you, Dean. Call the police and turn her in.”
“What?” He shook his head. “Are you kidding me?”
“She’ll be arrested and placed in a home like the one Sandra told you about. They’ll help her get sober and break the cycle her pimp has her in.”
“You want me to have my sister arrested? You’re insane.” He pushed past her and headed toward the living room.
She followed. “Do you want to know what your other choice is?”
Dean didn’t respond. He marched to the kitchen and started slamming things around as he made coffee.
Pressing her palms against the counter, she watched him. “Your other choice is to hope she comes back and if she does she’s ready for help. Because she’s so far gone right now, she just stole from you and is willing to pawn her dead mother’s jewelry for drug money.”
He still didn’t respond.
“Dean. Call the police, file a report, and have her arrested before she ends up dead of an overdose or murdered by some pervert in a cheap motel room.”
That got his attention. He set the coffee carafe down so hard she was surprised it didn’t shatter. “Fuck you. All you had to do was tell me she was going to leave, and I could have stopped her.”
“How? You would have locked her in her room? Tied her to a chair? Talked reason into her? Maybe you didn’t notice, but that girl was stoned out of her mind sitting here. She wasn’t here to get saved, Dean. She was looking for a way to get more drugs.�
�
“Sandra said she’d take her in. She said she would give Mandy the help she needs.”
“Mandy is an adult.” Alexa pounded her fist against the countertop, furious that he wasn’t listening and they were wasting precious time. “Until she has her rights taken away by a judge, she can sign herself out of any rehab facility you put her in. Hell, Dean, she doesn’t even have to go to a rehab facility. If you have her arrested for theft, you can work out a deal to force her into getting help in lieu of going to jail.” Rounding the counter, she tried to calm herself and him. “Babe, you are not understanding the gravity of this situation.”
“No,” he stated firmly. “You are not understanding. My baby sister was right here, safe from that asshole who is selling her body, and you let her leave. I trusted you to help me. I literally put her life in your hands, and you let her go.” He shook his head at Alexa. “Leave. Get out of my house. I don’t want your help anymore.”
“Dean.”
He moved around her, storming away, and somewhere deep in the house a door closed with a crash. Alexa lowered her face, chewing her lip as she debated whether she should have told him her suspicions. While he’d been sitting on the couch cuddling his sister, she’d been in his room whispering into the phone. She’d called Sam and requested she reach out to the team for backup. She wanted the house watched and someone ready to follow Mandy should she make a run for it. She’d also torn the threads along the hem of Mandy’s sweatshirt and hid the tracer that she always carried.
The little GPS trackers the team used were intended to find each other if necessary, but in this instance, the entire HEARTS team was going to be able to see where Mandy Campbell was…well, her sweatshirt at least. That would be enough to tell the police where to go to arrest her. If Dean would just make the call.
She used the excuse of starting a pot of coffee to give them both time to cool down. When the liquid started dripping into the carafe, she went to his room. The sound of the shower filtered through the closed bathroom door. Alexa hesitated before opening it. Steam immediately surrounded her, and she could barely make out his image through the moisture-covered glass door.
