Heartbeats (Innocent Series Book 5)

by Kendall Duke

  Heartbeats

  Heartbeats

  By

  Kendall Duke

  Published by JT Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by Kendall Duke

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder.

  Printed in the USA by JT Publishing

  All material is intended for adult purchase and purview.

  Kayla

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Another one, already. The letter was waiting for me, a red envelope slipped under my dressing room door where anyone could’ve left it. Just seeing it when I pushed past the doorframe made my skin crawl, as if they’d actually made it into the room this time instead of just pushed it beneath.

  I didn’t want to touch it. I felt like its poison could infect me, somehow—and the new head of my security team had made it pretty clear that if this happened again—again, damn it, again already, so soon after the last one—he wanted to be the first one on the scene.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Hey, Jacob?” He was instantly there, all 6’4 of him, muscles piled on top of muscles; my mom hired Slipstream, the security firm he ran, on the recommendation of one of the old-timers that knew his family down in Nashville. He’d been a Recon Marine, they told her, and was ready to do something new. They had not explained that the very sight of him would leave most women breathless. He was probably going to star in at least a couple of the songs on my next album, and most of my daydreams, too, even if I never felt brave enough to say anything to him about it.

  It made it easy to fantasize about Jacob and less easy to talk to him in person, though, when you registered that the handsome face in front of you was simply processing its surroundings like some kind of threat-monitoring cyborg. I’d never seen him with an expression other than blank, almost cold nonchalance, and although I hadn’t exactly known him long I’d known him long enough to have seen a normal person smile once. His eyes were ice blue, his hair a silky black with delicious copper low lights, and his tan skin looked like an ad for men’s body spray… But he was basically The Terminator. I felt rather than heard him arrive behind me, and pointed down at the letter.

  Jacob wordlessly reached past me and picked it up with a gloved hand, apparently anticipating the problem already. My skin flushed where he’d leaned over me, but I knew he hadn’t felt anything more than duty; his expression never changed, not even when he saw it. He slipped it into a broad envelope, then spoke into the wireless mic attached to his lapel. After a show, I generally felt so hyper I could talk to fans for hours, lighting up the public side of the dressing rooms and playing guitar with them in until the sun rose, but tonight… This whole thing really got me down. I’d done a walk-through just now, signed autographs and high-fived and hugged a couple of my superfans, who made it to all my shows on the east coast; maybe I should call it a night.

  And then Jacob unexpectedly turned to look at me, his eyes still blank as ever. “Miss Barton, I would like to advise you to vacate and return to secure premises.”

  “Jacob, my life would be easier if you spoke to me in English.”

  I saw the faintest flicker of amusement behind those blue eyes. “Let’s get you home, ma’am,” he said, and I tried not to go all mushy at the thought of him escorting me home.

  “Only if you swear, hand to God, that you will never, ever call me ma’am again.”

  He nodded only once, but I knew somehow that he was recording my wish, and would follow through. I was eighteen years old. I wasn’t a ma’am yet, dang it.

  Jacob and one of my older security officers, Mark, protectively enveloped me as we made our way through the tunnels to my team’s caravan, waiting in the depths of the parking garage attached to the Central Arena—which wasn’t quite an arena, nor especially central to anything, but I respected the sentiment none-the-less. We were in West Virginia, thank goodness, so I’d be back at my own house in two hours. Jacob stayed close beside me the entire walk down, and I realized that there were more giant men like him surveying every corridor and hall, checking in with him silently as we went. He took his job pretty seriously.

  Or maybe I just wasn’t taking the letters seriously enough. My mom was really upset about them. She’d read the first one, but I started throwing them away after that; when they showed up at the house, though, she’d found one before me and contacted the police. We hired Jacob and his team after that. My mom was my biggest supporter and one of my closest friends, although, because travel was so hard on her, my step-dad was the one that came to all of my shows.

  He’d fought with us about hiring security forces tooth and nail. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, but he thought it was unnecessary and expensive—he didn’t seem to think the person writing the letters was too crazy either. Todd was nice, for the most part, and he’d helped my mom a lot, especially back when she first got sick, but these days… I think when I turned eighteen, four months ago, is when things really changed between us. And not for the better.

  There was that skin-crawling feeling again. Anyway.

  Jacob spotted my car and went over to inspect it before he let me get inside. He revved the engine and used a couple machines I didn’t recognize on the dash, examined the fabric on the seat with some kind of iridescent light, and then waved me in. One of the guys on his team went into the front seat and Jacob sat down next to me. He took up a lot of room. “Guess I’m going to need a bigger car,” I joked, but he just glanced at me sideways before going back to studying the periphery. I tried not to roll my eyes in return.

  So this was my life now, I guess.

  It was a pretty great life, all things considered—even with a blood-thirsty stalker and a new traveling companion that acted like a cyborg, I was still a rockstar, kind of. Not a superstar, certainly, and I still considered myself far more of a country girl than a rock-n-roller, but anyone could agree that’s a pretty fantastic life.

  Even with all of the little things that made you lonely—the fact that you had almost nothing in common with everyone you grew up with, that no guy would ever date you without making sure you were seen in public so his modeling profile or soundcloud account would get mentioned in the press, the fact that no amount of success in the world could bring your dad back from the dead or heal your mother… Life was lonely, sure, but I had a lot to be grateful for. Dang it.

  So I would be.

  I rested my head on the seat and studied the starry night overhead as we blasted down the highway, back to Tennessee.

  ~~~

  Jacob

  Hotter than hell. That’s what they didn’t tell you—Kayla Barton had the face of an angel, and she played one on TV, too. She had a little rebellious streak, sure, that made her music more compelling; it’d even knocked her last three singles onto the contemporary top twenty charts, spreading her reach beyond her country roots. She had thick, gorgeous sandy blonde locks and legs for miles and she was literally barely legal… So all the gospel chops in the world could not hide the fact that under that America’s sweetheart, girl-next-door exterior Kayla Barton was hotter than hell.

  I was glad I’d trained in Iraq. That I knew how to hide what I was thinking. Because Jesus Christ, if she knew for one minute that the first thing that flew through my brain when I shook her hand and said hello was I would fuck this girl in half… Well, let’s just say I think it might’ve compromised our working relationship a little.

  She was innocent, in the ways that mattered. After I shook off the curve of her mischievous little grin and the cute, almost sarcastic replie
s she seemed to have for everything I said, I realized she really was just a girl. A brilliant musician, sure, a tactical genius in the modern age of social media and brand marketing, obviously, but still a young woman with a very limited experience of the world. Kayla had spent her youth working her ass off and taking care of her family. She basically swapped her teens for her thirties.

  It made me feel even more protective of her than I would’ve anyway, the second I saw those miles of tan leg and blonde hair. Any beautiful woman made me look twice; a beautiful woman with an incredible mind matched by talent and wit was one in a million. I’d almost refused the job—guarding a spoiled Youtube-sensation-turned-Country-popstar? No thanks. But the money was significant, and I thought it would be easy for the guys; most of us came back together, and funny enough, our working pedigree wasn’t translating well to civilian life. We needed work. Decent work, with a decent paycheck. How hard could this be?

  The stalker was just cat-nip, really. Made it feel like we would actually be earning our paycheck.

  But the minute I saw that face, I was in it for her.

  I’d do anything to keep her safe, which was good—that’s why she paid me.

  Riley was driving, and when we got closer to her place he slowed down and I radioed the caravan. Everyone got ready—this was only a three car deal, her step-father in the center wagon, her manager and assistant in the third, with us in the front—and went up the long driveway to her house. I’d been surprised; she really didn’t have a mind for security, but I suppose we’re all made differently. It was probably impossible to be good at everything. So her place was great to live in—big old country house, re-modeled with some retro-fit cameras and fencing—but not safe. I wouldn’t use that word to describe it at all. Her mother, Emily, lived in the main house with the step-father, Todd, and Kayla lived in the pool house. I’d describe the arrangement as odd, given the undoubtable bread-winning hierarchy in this family, but it was none of my business, so I didn’t.

  I didn’t say much at all.

  Generally, I was a quiet guy. Maybe that wasn’t true before Iraq, but as I was always telling the guys, it didn’t matter what was true before. We lived in the present. Not the past.

  Let the past go.

  I worked on it a lot, being okay with who I was now, what had happened, what I knew about myself and about people and about life, even, in general.

  I’d been an eighteen year old kid once, too. Nothing like Kayla—I’d barely held down my summer construction jobs, and my family supported me, not the other way around—but I remembered the look in her eyes that still held hope for people. That believed in right and wrong, in absolutes. It was beautiful, on her; it might’ve been on me, too.

  It felt good to protect that.

  So I encouraged the guys to be invested in the job, although I knew most of them weren’t in it for the same reasons. I didn’t care if they only needed a decent job, because they were the best, and that would do. I wanted the best for Kayla.

  And when we pulled up to the house, I knew we needed to be on our A game. Whoever this guy was, he was part of her team. There was no other way a person could’ve made it past us to get that letter under her door; the letter had arrived on its own, not mixed in with a floral delivery or the catering. So someone on her team, someone close to her, was sending her letters describing deranged carnal acts they thought she’d enjoy before swearing their undying love and signing this filth in blood.

  Not their own, unfortunately. We’d have been able to trace that.

  At any rate, I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight.

  Everything looked quiet on the front end. Riley and Jack went around the lateral perimeter, leaving the cars running in the drive, while Milo and Casey searched the house. Rocket had stayed behind and kept all of our systems up, while Dennis and Chase did the stroll. I felt confident that no one would be able to breach while we were out, because the primary target was always within sight of me—arm’s reach, actually, although in my experience that could still be too far… But anyway. The house was almost definitely clear. We were just putting on a show, more than anything, because I wanted the person who did this to feel safe. I wanted them sitting there in the backseat of the other two cars, watching us do our jobs, and growing smug.

  Because then they’d fuck up, and that’s when it would end. Badly, for them.

  And maybe… This bothered me a lot, but there was no way to shield her from it. It would probably be bad for Kayla, too. The only suspects worth considering were her assistant—best friend from high school, and you never knew, so I kept her on the list—her manager—an uncle, dad’s brother from back in Nashville, and again: you never knew—or her step-father.

  My money was on him.

  Something about him was off. He talked about his wife like she was a pet, an animal he’d taken to the vet a lot recently and was waiting to put down out of compassion for their history together. Not how you spoke about the woman you loved, in my mind; it wasn’t how my dad talked about my mom, and after thirty years they were still sweethearts. He got nervous around Kayla, sweating and licking his lips. He reminded me of guys that were connecting more with a fantasy than the reality in front of him, some of them really good people, who just weren’t in touch with life any more. But I had empathy for them. This guy was just a shit-head who’d been living off of his step-daughter’s revenue streams for five years and wanted to fuck her now that she was legal.

  And that was without even getting into the weird shit in the letters.

  I didn’t like to leave her with him when he was around—call me paranoid, but it ain’t paranoia if they’re really after her. And he was. So even though it was only our first meeting yesterday, I told her I needed to be with her at all times until the threat was neutralized. Yes, even in the goddamn pool house. And believe me, the guys gave me so much shit for that I almost regretted it.

  Almost.

  But last night I’d listened to her sleeping and it was the most peaceful eight hours I spent in the last six years, so I didn’t give a shit. And that creep? Nowhere near her. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.

  Kayla asked that I stay in the community area—her words—instead of like, I don’t know, hanging out with her shoe rack by the foot of her bed. I agreed. But she’d left the door open, as if she’d secretly felt relieved that someone was looking out for her. For once.

  I liked Kayla’s mom, though; she would have traded places with me if she could, but it was impossible. She did the next best thing: she hired us.

  It was just that step-father… I could feel it in my gut.

  But we’d have to take it slow. Set the bait, and wait. Being ex-military, we weren’t so good at that second part, but we were learning.

  Kayla watched the guys go through the whole thing and tried to listen in on the quiet murmurs coming through my wireless. When I pulled out my phone and looked at the latest scans coming in from Rocket’s security cams, I nodded at her, and got out. She waited until I opened her door for her, and we went around to the back of the house on a little trail that passed by the front window. She’d checked in with her mom about an hour ago, and Emily had already gone up to bed. Late nights were hard on her.

  But I still found it odd Kayla didn’t even want to go to the kitchen for a snack; she headed straight for the pool house. The stars above us were incredible, and even though there wasn’t a moon tonight everything was bright enough to see. The house had too many brambles and trees around it for my liking, but I understood the appeal for most people; they were pretty in this light, and I could only see their outlines. Kayla wove through the twisted branches on the little pathway around the house, making me wonder how I could persuade her to cut all of it down, then came out by the pool. The water glittered under the sky. It was heated, which would have made it a perfect place for eighteen year old me to hang out on a September night, but Kayla didn’t even glance at it. She went straight to the little square pod in the back, waited f
or me to declare it clear, and followed me in.

  She appeared so dejected that when she slumped on the couch, I stopped and walked over to her. When she seemed to realize I was looking at her, she gave me a big, practiced smile. I’ve seen a lot of them in my day.

  “Can I get you some water, Miss?”

  “So it’s Miss now, instead of ma’am?” She raised an eyebrow, and I kept my face neutral for as long as it took for her to sigh and sink back into the pillows. “Sure, Jacob, that’d be nice.”

  I liked the way she said my name. I’d told her to call me that during our meeting, that it would help pull my attention towards her when she needed it, which was technically true. The fact that she said it in that husky voice didn’t hurt either. I went and got a glass of some fancy-ass water from the tower rigged in the kitchen area. The place was basically an efficiency apartment, except for a separate bedroom area, which she kept notably empty of any personal items. Her photographs, awards and musical instruments were all in here, and there was a large television set and a huge, cream colored sectional that backed up to the ‘kitchen.’ I figured I could hang out back here and see her the whole time she was awake; she might fire me if this played out how I expected it to, but then again, there wasn’t really another way. Our risk assessment was a little skewed, admittedly, because of our profession, but she was a brave girl. And if I was right about the culprit, then… I think she’ll be a little too preoccupied to fire me. Right away, anyway.

  And maybe I could talk her out of it by the time the dust settled.

  We weren’t friends. That isn’t an option when you’re guarding someone; you can’t get that close, because you’ll lose the objectivity that allows you to notice things like the weird vibe from her step-father. You’ll want to preserve her happiness, instead of her safety. So I made sure the distance between us was almost palpable, and didn’t give her anything more personal to worry about than my name when it came to my identity.