by RJ Scott
“I can open my own damn doors,” I muttered and beat him to the next one which led into the locker room. With some kind of fancy maneuver he was still there opening the door.
“But can you deal with the gunman on the other side?” Jason asked, and I swear his lips twitched in a smile. Asshole.
“If I had my hockey stick, yeah,” I said, and that small smile widened a little. Was I getting through to the man? Was he finally understanding that I was capable of looking after myself? I relaxed and took a step forward, and in a move so fast I never saw it, Jason had me up against a wall, pressing something under my chin. I couldn’t move; he’d pinned me, and he leaned in close to my ear. A flash of what had happened behind the bar had me stiffening and panicked.
“I have a gun,” he murmured, and pushed up under my chin a little more. “Where’s your hockey stick now?”
“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled, terrified at the thought of his weapon discharging by accident and taking my head off. He backed away, pocketing the pen that he’d been pressing to my throat. The adrenalin that slammed into me at this point made me bend at the waist. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“You weren’t getting it, so I thought a demonstration was in order,” he explained, and then stood back in the empty locker room and put his hands on his hips. How can he stand there so damn cool?
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
He ignored me. “So this is the Dragons space?” he mused, and then crossed to the cubby where our Captain, Alexandre ‘Simba’ Simard always sat, taking a seat and brushing at the crease in his perfectly pressed pants. Meanwhile, I was still bent over, my hands on my thighs, waiting for the adrenalin rush to dissipate, and fantasizing how I would get my stick and wrap it around his neck.
I straightened, and crossed to my own cubby, two down from Simba, picking up my backpack, and hoisting it onto my shoulder, wishing my sticks were where I could get at them. Then I had this strange image of him picking up his own stick and us dueling in the locker room, but that would end in tears.
“We can go,” I said, then waited at the door, gesturing for him to go through first.
“He learns,” I heard Jason mutter, and then before I could even think of a comeback, he was tugging me through the open door and into the hallway. “I open doors, you walk through,” he pointed out.
“Fuck you.” I didn’t know what I expected in response but his snort of laughter wasn’t it.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
“I can get myself home…” Why was I even bothering to argue and defend myself as being capable. Someone out there was messing with my life, and obstructing someone’s help was a waste of everyone’s time. “Okay, fuck this.” I strode down the long corridor, the door to the locker room shutting behind us, and then he caught up and overtook me at the next door.
By the time we made it out to the final exit from the building and to player parking, we’d gotten into the dance of it all, but it struck me that this man was walking into rooms first, and I hadn’t actually seen if he was armed. Did he have a gun under that fancy jacket? And if he did, why wasn’t there a bulge? Unless, of course, he kept the gun tucked into his pants.
He stopped me at the final door and held out a hand. “Keys please,” he said.
I blinked at him. “Now wait a minute.”
“I’ll get the car.”
I gaped at him, because my beloved 1970 scarlet and black Mustang, now with the words that had been carved into it all painted and polished out, was my baby. No one drove it except me. Not even Kyle or Bobby.
“It’s okay,” I began.
He shook his head and pointed upward. “Snipers,” he said.
I closed my hands around the keys in my pocket. “What?”
“On the roof, with guns pointing at you.”
I swallowed my fear. “How did you get from flowers and notes to snipers?”
“Just doing my job, Mr. Howell.”
My internal battle was a mix of impatience, disbelief, anger, and distress that anyone was going to get behind the wheel of my car, but he wasn’t budging, and finally I handed him the keys.
“It’s the red—”
“Mustang. I know.”
“Don’t burn out of the space, treat her carefully. The clutch is difficult and it’s a stick shift. Can you even drive stick shift?” I wanted to explain that finding her with the sides all scratched had been way worse than getting shoved face-first into a wall by the dead-bird-guy, but some things were best left unsaid.
He closed his fist around the keys and nodded. “I can. Stay here.” He headed outside, and wasn’t exactly looking up and around, checking for snipers, or whatever it was bodyguards did, and he didn’t appear to be in any great hurry, but what did I know? Everything was catching up to me, and the thought of the irritating, bossy, asshole bodyguard protector guy who was going to be all up in my space, made my head spin. I couldn’t see my car from there, but even through the glass door I could hear her start. The throaty growl of the Mustang brought a smile to my face even in the middle of everything else.
I’d wanted this car since I was five, when my dad, during one of his rare lucid times, had brought home a tiny Matchbox duplicate and explained it was the best car ever made. From experience, the 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 had an unpredictable clutch, she didn’t do so well in the cold, and sometimes she handled like a bus, but I think I got where he was coming from. When I drove her she was an extension of me, and I would feel the safest and most secure when I was sitting in the driving seat. Okay, so she cost me in gas. And also, how much longer I’d be able to drive her when I was trying to be a responsible grown-up about environmental issues, was open for debate. But for now she was mine, and there was someone else out there probably kangaroo-hopping up the road to this door.
Contrary to my worries, when he pulled up it was smooth, and when he gestured for me to come out, I noticed he didn’t climb out of the driver’s side, but the creeping doubt about snipers on the roof outweighed my need to argue the toss. He headed out of the parking area, pausing at security to talk to Marvin on the gate, a tall stocky man with an intense expression who never once failed in his mission to make everyone’s lives awkward. Of course, if we all remembered our security passes then it wouldn’t be an issue, but I mean, he knew us yet he loved riding us and telling us we couldn’t go in.
There was none of that with Jason though, in fact, Marvin and Jason were having what sounded like a love-in about security issues, and when we left Marvin even called Jason sir. I guessed he was deferring to Jason with respect, but in all honesty I wasn’t there yet with the whole respect thing because I still hadn’t forgiven him for the pen at the throat incident.
“You want to give me directions?” he asked after joining the freeway heading west out of town.
“I thought you knew everything?” Great, now I sounded like a six-year-old. This shit needed to stop now.
“I know your address, there’s no GPS, and my phone is in my pocket, so uhmmm… yeah, directions would be good.”
“Take the next exit, and I’ll talk you through it.” We fell into silence, but it wasn’t comfortable, or at least, he might have felt good, but I had questions. “So I take it you’re not from around here?”
“What gave it away?” He checked his mirror then indicated to take the exit.
“Your accent is definitely Canadian, and you don’t know your way around Burlington.”
“Nope.”
“Left from here, then stay straight until I tell you to stop.”
The worst thing about arriving back at my apartment and driving into the underground parking was the fact that Jason guessed my code and got it right first time. I don’t know what was more annoying, the fact that I was useless and had clearly left my life exposed to everybody, or the fact that he was just too damn clever for his own good.
“I’m going to change the codes to everything.”
“That’s probably a good idea.�
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We walked to the elevator, and this was where I knew I had him, because there was no code to open the doors, but a card instead. I pulled it out of my wallet and smiled at the thought that at least I had control over who came up to the fifth floor.
My pleasure at this stupid simple thing didn’t last very long when he took out his phone and waved it in front of the identifier and it too was recognized.
“Did you just hack into the security on the elevator?”
He shrugged. “I can pretty much get into most places.”
“So you’re telling me, it’s possible that out there, is someone who is just as good as you with tech, who can use this private elevator to get up to my floor?” Hysteria was settling in, and my head hurt.
“It’s a losing battle keeping up with the kind of technology that is available to people who really want to cause harm.”
“That’s not making me feel any better.”
“I’m not here to make you feel better. As I said, I’m here to keep you safe. To do that, I have to stay one step ahead of the person or persons who are messing with you.”
I wonder if he thought that using the word messing was reassuring, because it wasn’t. I’d already amped this up in my head to way past normal levels of reaction, and was well on my way to feeling this was spiteful vindictiveness.
The elevator doors opened and I held back to let him go first, fear poking at my chest as my dread spiked up way higher than facing off with the fiercest D-Man in a game. The reaction was more as if there was an entire team of Kalashnikov-wielding assassins waiting to take me down the minute I stepped out of the steel box. He nodded for me to follow, and the rush of adrenalin subsided instantly when I saw the space was empty.
There were six doors along the corridor. I knew two of the people who lived there, one a team mate, the other a yoga instructor who was currently sleeping with said team mate. God knows who lived behind the other doors. There was no point in me knocking with a casserole and a welcome card when they moved in. Security was good there, and that was why a lot of people had chosen this building—anonymity and security. This was home and I loved it; I had a wonderful view of Lake Champlain, albeit in the far distance, a cleaning service, a pool in the basement, a gym, and plenty of parking for someone like me who took up two parking spaces.
“I’m guessing you’ll be checking out everybody in the building?” I asked as we reached 603.
“We’ve already done that.” He hovered outside my door and I realized I was waiting for him to hack his way into my apartment. But he was staring at me expectantly and I unlocked the door with the key and then waited for him to go in first. We were getting good at this dance.
The apartment was empty as it was most days, the views over the lake just as far away as they were when I’d left the place this morning. The kitchen was clean but then I hadn’t eaten in there for about six days, tending to spend most of my free time either at the arena or out with friends. I had a lot of friends, mostly hockey players or hockey assistants or indeed anything to do with hockey. Even my best friend was a hockey player, but hockey had been my life since I was eight and I didn’t want it any other way. I expanded my world with charity events, endorsement appearances and signings. I knew every single Burlington restaurant, from the magnificent chefs with Michelin stars and vintage wine, to the small hole-in-the-wall establishments that served the best burgers. I was happy.
Sometimes lonely, but mostly happy.
I glanced round and saw the apartment through the eyes of the man who was trying to keep me safe. I realized he might have called it sterile. I did have splashes of bright scarlet and sunshine orange, and the color scheme went from throw cushions to thick drapes, all supplied by my decorator, of course. There were six mugs from scarlet to yellow on the counter that I never drank out of, simply because the designer had lined them up just so, and my cleaner must’ve wiped under them and then returned them to the exact same position. It was the poor decorator’s attempt to brighten up what was otherwise a very white apartment, and to save it from what she called my bachelor blandness.
“Okay then.” He disappeared into my bedroom and was in there for a few moments before checking the other bedrooms, then poking his head into the bathrooms. There wasn’t an awful lot to see in my space, and when he came back to stand next to me, I hadn’t moved. The second bedroom was a repository for endless amounts of hockey gear, brand-new jerseys, game pucks, all in labelled boxes that I would do something with when I finally wanted to move out of this place and into a house.
That was what all the players on my team ended up doing. Falling in love, getting married, kids, houses, sometimes in that order, sometimes not. I wasn’t jealous, I had independence, and I was at the top of my career, I was even the one team member chosen to attend the All-Star game, and how was any of that bad?
So, why me? Why does someone want to hurt me?
“Maybe they’re just trying to throw me off my game,” I blurted the culmination of my internal ramblings, and he cast a glance my way before crossing to the window and staring down at the street below. I got a good look at him in his perfect suit, hands on his hips, a thoughtful expression on his face, and I glimpsed the weapon I’d thought he might have been carrying. It was just a small flash of leather holster and the black of a gun, nevertheless I was confused whether I should fear that he felt it necessary to be armed, or relief that he would protect me if needed.
“Has it worked?” he asked, and I had to try really hard to recall what we’d been talking about. Oh yeah, throwing me off my game.
“Not until the next game, when I’m on the ice and because of you I can now imagine a hundred sniper rifles pointing at me.”
He turned to face me, leaning back against the glass. Should he have been standing in the window? Should I be standing where I was, exposed to whoever could be outside?
“No one is going to shoot you.”
“Then why the hell do I need protection? You read the notes, and the team think it’s a reasonable threat, so please explain why you don’t think I’m going to get shot.”
“Statistically speaking, Deamax hasn’t lost a single client to a bullet.”
I felt relieved, as if all my angst had slipped away from me, and then it hit me all at once, because if there was one thing I knew it was statistics.
“But you have lost clients? Poison? Knives? Cars.”
“We’ve never lost a client. Yet,” he qualified, careful in his choice of the right words to leave me with no uncertainty. “Statistically forty-eight hours and Operations will likely have solved this entire matter. Food? I’m guessing you need to eat?”
After his rapid change of subject, he brushed past me in the small space between the sofa and the coffee table. I caught the scent of him, the leather of his holster, the citrus of shower gel, and the warmth of him so close to me was a reassurance but also a temptation I had to ignore. The guy was statistically likely to be straight, married, with two kids, a dog called Floof, and a minivan that was used by his PTA running, pie-wielding, wife.
“I’ve eaten at the arena,” I said, even as he opened my refrigerator and then shut it.
“It’s empty.”
“Of course it is. I’m never here.”
“You’re here tonight.”
There he went with his need to point out the obvious.
“You’re so observant.” The persistent buzz of my cell was a welcome interruption, and I answered it without looking at the name.
“An opportunity has crossed my desk,” Shaun announced with his usual agent’s happy-to-make-more-money tone.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I don’t care—”
“A journalist wants to do a sympathetic piece about your issues with the stalker—”
“What?”
“It’s not going to stay a secret forever,” Shaun reminded me, “we should get ahead of the curve.”
I pu
lled the cell away from my ear, and stared at the screen.
“What is it?” Jason was at my side in an instant, and I thrust the phone at him.
“My agent says a journalist wants my story.” He took the phone and I didn’t want to listen to whatever the hell they came up with. “I’m getting a shower,” I said to the now empty kitchen, then headed to my bedroom. I dropped my bag on the bed, then stripped as I moved to the bathroom, tugging the door shut behind me, locking it, then running the water. When it reached the right temperature, I stood under the rainfall setting for a very long time. Typically after a practice like today I would do the cool-down, shower at the arena, get food from somewhere, and then end up here to sleep. The meeting had thrown all my routines, but the water on my back felt good. The All-Star event was still three weeks away, Jason had just said that cases they took on were solved in forty-eight hours, so by the weekend this would be over and done with.
All he needed to do was shut down my stupid asshole of an agent, then find out whoever was doing this shit to me.
Then maybe I could go back to being the happy-go-lucky hockey player, with the popular Instagram account and the legion of followers. Not to mention the shit ton of lucrative endorsements which meant I had a savings account that could buy a house in the burbs three times over. I had an image of somewhere I could make a home for real, maybe with a yard, and garage where I could park the Mustang and spend my off days polishing her. I could even get a dog.
Fuck the asshole messing with my life, and Shaun, and the team’s concerns, and Deamax, and most of all Jason, for making me question the status quo. I didn’t like any of it.
Chapter Five
When I went back out into the kitchen, feeling a hundred times better and more in control of myself, Jason was at the stove stirring something fragrant. He had an intense look of concentration and his profile was gorgeous. There, I admitted it to myself, he was exactly my type: sexy, built, kind of confident, and with bedroom eyes I could fall into. I wondered what his story was. Was he an ex-cop? Or military? Or maybe he had a degree in art and knitted in his spare time. Maybe the dangerous side to him was all an act.
