Dream Chaser - SETTING

by Ashley, Kristen

  The next day, with any luck after some decent sleep (and more sex), I was finally going to dig into the disaster at the house I wanted to flip while Boone was at work. And since I had that night off from Smithie’s, I was going to finish at the house, come home, shower, Boone was going to take me out to dinner, and after, we were going to spend the night at his place.

  I was looking forward to seeing where he lived.

  I was also looking forward to having sex there.

  This was the zone we were going to occupy until the weekend when Boone was going to come over to the house and help me out, saying he’d ask his buds Mo, Mag, Axl and Auggie if they were in.

  Boone tacked on to this, “We’ll decide whose pad we’ll crash at after, but it’d be cool if we could carve out some time to take in a movie.”

  It wasn’t even up for discussion that we would crash at separate pads.

  We’d be at mine.

  Or we’d be at his.

  All of this led me to believe we were turning out to be one of those new couples who couldn’t get enough of each other. Planned every second together. Left each other’s company reluctantly, making plans for when we’d see each other again, and connecting as soon as possible the minute we were out of each other’s space.

  Case in point: the fifteen-minute makeout session we had at my door before he left and the fact I texted him probably before he drove to the end of my block.

  And he’d texted me back when he was sitting at a stoplight.

  By the by, after that, many further texts ensued.

  I’d wanted to nab some sleep, but I couldn’t. Not while waiting for a text from the man who stayed at my house because I felt safer with him there, liked to splodge his onion ring in as much ketchup as he could get, was in to help me tear out carpet drenched in cat urine and managed the impossible feat of making love to me (rather than fucking me) on my bathroom sink.

  Our first time.

  Romantic and profound.

  And on a bathroom sink.

  There was something awesome about that, something that played to the people we were and the couple I was hoping we’d become.

  Just going at it, at each other, the moment we felt it.

  Furthermore, it was not often a Dom lost control.

  But the sub I was, the woman I was, I liked that.

  I liked that, from what we’d been sharing with each other, it meant so much to him, he wanted me so bad, he couldn’t hold it back.

  So he took what he wanted.

  Oh yeah.

  I liked that.

  And it was only on that thought that I fell into a doze.

  What I didn’t like right then, was lying on my couch with my laptop on my stomach, the screen gone to sleep, and feeling something was wrong.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it until…

  I jerked up to sitting and just caught the laptop before it fell to the floor.

  Shit.

  It sounded like…

  Carefully, I twisted, put my laptop on the coffee table and a foot to the floor. Using my foot to brace my weight, I leaned even deeper, keeping my body behind the wall between the living room and dining room, and peeking around the double-wide opening toward the back of my apartment.

  There was a back door to my kitchen. I never used it. I didn’t because it led to a little deck under which were all the garbage pails for each unit. Beyond that were five parking spaces that were unassigned, and even though there were only four units in the house, they were always taken so I had long since stopped bothering trying to park back there because it was an exercise in futility.

  The door had a knob lock, a deadbolt, and a chain as well as a kitchen cart in front of it since I never used it, but my kitchen was so tiny, I could use the extra surface and storage space.

  There was a window in the door.

  And through that window, clear as day, I could see a shadowy figure through the semi-opaque roman blind I had pulled down over that window.

  I snatched up my phone, and on bare feet, hightailed my ass to my bedroom (importantly, where my Taser was) all while phoning Boone.

  I was standing in my bedroom, still hearing the scratching at the back door, Taser in hand, when, after two rings, Boone answered.

  “Hey, babe,” he greeted.

  “There’s someone at my back door trying to break in,” I hissed.

  No moment of silence.

  No hesitation.

  He clipped, “Is there a room in your house that locks?”

  “Yeah. The bathroom.”

  “Go there. Lock yourself in. Someone will be there soon.”

  I headed that way, telling him, “I have a Taser. I grabbed it—”

  “Whoever they are, I don’t want them close enough for you to use that Taser. Lock yourself in the bathroom, Kathryn. Someone is on their way. Gotta go now, honey. Get to the bathroom.”

  “Okay, Boone,” I whispered.

  “Got your back, baby,” he whispered in return and then he disconnected.

  I locked myself in the bathroom wondering why he didn’t want me to escape out the front.

  I wanted to go out front.

  Did he think there’d be someone there too?

  I couldn’t hear the scratching at the back door anymore. I also didn’t hear someone crashing into the kitchen cart upon entering, a cart you couldn’t see from the shaded window.

  I didn’t hear anything.

  Until I did.

  Gunshots.

  Close.

  Three of them.

  I jerked with the noise, visions of being in a mall parking lot with bullets flying and just how incredibly unfun that was racing through my brain.

  My hands were a whole lot shakier when I hit the button to redial Boone.

  The first ring interrupted itself when he picked up, and I didn’t wait for his greeting.

  I squeaked, “Gunshots!”

  “I’ll call the cops. Stay put. Get low. Axl’s almost there, Kathryn. Keep your shit.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I breathed, staring at the door.

  “And I’ll be there soon.”

  With that, he was again gone.

  I got low and listened…hard.

  No more gunshots.

  No more anything.

  Okay, shit, a break-in in the middle of the day?

  And gunplay in the alley?

  I lived in a city. There were nefarious people who lived in cities who did bad things. Nefarious people that other nefarious people shot at. There were also messed-up people who lived in cities who needed the means to mess themselves up further, and they might have people who wanted to shoot at them. Further, there were itinerant people who lived in cities who maybe weren’t in their right minds but did need food, or clothes, or just were acting not in their right minds, and they might shoot at people willy-nilly.

  But I could not believe after the last few days I’d had that whatever was happening that included an attempted break-in and gunshots had anything to do with those kinds of things.

  Except, maybe, nefarious people.

  My phone rang in my hand and I bobbled it, freaked at the sudden noise.

  I also saw the screen said BRETT (yeah, I’d programmed him in).

  Shit, I forgot.

  He was probably calling to set up the meeting.

  I took the call, starting to say, “Brett, this isn’t a real grea—”

  “The threat has been neutralized, Ryn.”

  I blinked at the pedestal of my sink.

  Brett disconnected.

  “Ryn!” I heard Axl shout.

  I also heard sirens outside.

  Boy, it seemed like Axl was a whole lot better with breaking and entering than whoever that guy was outside.

  “Bathroom!” I yelled, straightening from the crouch I’d hunkered into and moving to the door.

  “Unlock, honey,” Axl said from the hall. “It’s safe.”

  I unlocked and opened the door.

  Axl was
standing smack in the frame.

  He did a body scan which ended in a quick but intense face scan before he asked, “You good?”

  There was a lot happening in that moment, so I’ll quickly break it down.

  Not sure this was priority, but I’ll start with the fact Axl was amazing-looking.

  The kind of amazing-looking that, no matter how often you saw him, or, say, someone might just have been shot outside your back door, you had to take a second to process how amazing-looking he was.

  He was young, probably in his early thirties, like all of Boone’s friends, but he had a thick head of hair that was kind of a creamy silver, a pair of piercing, steel-blue eyes, knockout bone structure, and as was de rigueur with these dudes, a killer bod.

  Second, I had a feeling Brett just called me to share he, or more accurately one of his men, shot someone who was trying to break into my house.

  To communicate this last part to Axl, I began, “I’m okay. Uh—”

  That was as far as I got.

  Axl started issuing orders.

  “I gotta go out and meet the cops. Go to your living room. Stay in your living room. Don’t go to the kitchen. You with me?”

  Don’t go to my kitchen?

  “Just—”

  He gently twisted the Taser out of the death grip I had on it and put it on the bathroom sink.

  He then took my hand in both of his and stated, “A lot is going to happen fast right about now, Ryn. Before it does, take a second, get your shit together, yeah?”

  I nodded.

  He squeezed my hand just as a loud knock came from the direction of the front door and a deep voice shouted, “Police!”

  “Be back,” he said on another squeeze and then he took off.

  Okay, shit.

  Okay, shit.

  Threat neutralized.

  Was there a dead guy on my back deck?

  I went to my living room, eyeing Axl in my front hall who was talking to the cops at the door, but I didn’t take a second to get my shit together.

  I didn’t because I didn’t have a second.

  The cops were in, Axl with them, crowding me like he was a bodyguard and I was a celebrity unsuspectingly caught in a sea of rabid fans.

  More sirens could be heard.

  More cops came in and there was shit happening at the back of the house I couldn’t see that was making a lot of noise and taking the attention of all the police who’d entered the house.

  My kitchen cart was moved unceremoniously, which included the canister I had on it that was filled with flour falling to the floor (I knew this because of the poof I saw rising from it over the counter from where I stood in my living room).

  And finally, Mo showed, had a ten-second huddle with Axl and then glued himself to me before Axl took off.

  “Uh, Mo—” I started but Mo glanced down at me before he looked over my head and did a chin lift.

  I turned and that was when Boone was there.

  Boone did a body scan, which was intense, and then a face scan, which was about seven hundred notches above the intensity of Axl’s.

  He then came to me and pulled me into his arms.

  Okay, that felt good.

  I pressed into him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked his chest.

  I asked this just as a male voice stated, “Sadler, we need to talk to your girl.”

  “A second,” Boone replied.

  “Right,” the man said. Then he went on, “Morrison, need you.”

  Mo grunted and I felt him leave us.

  I pulled slightly away (but not fully out of Boone’s arms) and looked up at him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Babe, fuck,” he muttered. Then, “There’s a dead guy out on your back deck.”

  Okay, first, evidence was suggesting that Brett did not back off like he’d promised Boone he would.

  Second, it couldn’t be argued that Brett was pretty dedicated to making absolutely certain “his girls” were okay.

  Last, if I didn’t keep a lock on it, this was going to freak me right the fuck out.

  “The cops are going to have to do some stuff that’s probably gonna take a while,” Boone kept talking. “But then, I’m sorry, sweetheart, they’re gonna ask you to go out there and have a look at the guy to see if you knew him.”

  Fabulous.

  “Boone, I need to tell you something,” I said, and then I was treated to a face scan the intensity of which had not yet been charted and it was a damned miracle it didn’t sear the skin from my flesh.

  After he did that, he murmured, “Later.”

  Yeah.

  Good idea.

  Later.

  It was then the cops chatted to me.

  I told them I’d been asleep. I told them I saw and heard someone trying to break in. I told them I called Boone. I fielded the now-familiar questions about why I called Boone and not the cops. I then fielded the same question about why I again called Boone and not the cops when I heard gunshots (this had an easier answer, he was the last call I’d dialed so he was the easiest to hit when I was freaking out). And then I fielded these questions again when it came to light that I’d been visited by Englewood police officers the day before due to an acquaintance of mine being murdered and I was up for questioning since I was semi-kinda-kidnapped by an alleged cop killer.

  I did not tell them that shortly after gunshots sounded at the back of my house, said alleged cop killer, Brett “Cisco” Rappaport, popped on the phone to share he’d had someone murdered on my back deck.

  Which was something I probably should have shared.

  After a bit (and during that bit, there were a lot of police officers milling about in my house, all of them going through my kitchen, tramping flour everywhere), one of them gave Boone a chin lift and Boone took my hand.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  I had not seen a dead body before or after the funeral of my Aunt Flo, who was actually my mom’s Aunt Flo, whose husband for some ungodly reason demanded she have an open casket at her funeral.

  Aunt Flo had not been young, but when she’d been alive, she’d been full of life. Always had rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes and a stash of Andes mints she passed off like she was a spy handing over state secrets.

  It never failed to make me laugh and feel important and I figured Aunt Flo knew I needed both of those, especially the last.

  Dead she just looked…dead. And it only compounded all that was lost, seeing her that way.

  After that, I never wanted to see a dead body again.

  So the answer to Boone’s question was, hell no, I was not ready.

  I nodded anyway.

  We went to the open door at the back of the kitchen.

  The first thing I noticed was that, outside, standing beyond the cars and all around the alley, there were a lot of onlookers.

  However, inside the crime scene tape that held the onlookers back were Mag and Auggie, Boone’s two other close buds, along with Axl and Mo.

  Also with them was Hawk Delgado, Boone’s boss.

  Many would disagree at this juncture that it was important to describe Augustus Hero and Hawk Delgado.

  These people were first, not women, and second, had never clapped eyes on Augustus Hero or Hawk Delgado.

  Auggie looked like a Greek god.

  Think about that in every nuance of goodness it could entail.

  The end.

  Now the thing was, there was no way to describe Hawk Delgado.

  The only way I could figure to do it was to share that he was kind of a sensory explosion.

  He was gorgeous and built, for starters.

  But he exuded charisma, machismo and confidence to such an extent, it was almost palatable. Like you could smell it and even taste it.

  He was not my kind of guy, mostly because he was very taken, very in love with his wife and all about the family they made, not to mention, from the beginning after I’d seen him and knew there was a possibility he
could be mine, I’d been all about Boone.

  But I was a heterosexual female, so on a variety of levels I enjoyed any run-in I had with Hawk Delgado (and Augustus Hero).

  Except that one, with the way Hawk’s eyes lifted to mine the minute I hit the threshold and I saw the look of displeasure on his handsome face.

  Yikes.

  “Babe,” Boone muttered, tightening his hold on my hand.

  I turned my gaze up to him.

  He tipped his head down.

  With some hesitance, I also looked down.

  The body was covered.

  Right.

  Phew.

  A brief reprieve.

  “Ms. Jansen, we’ll make this really quick,” a cop standing outside on my deck offered.

  “Awesome, thanks,” I mumbled.

  The cop squatted.

  I braced.

  He pulled the sheet back from the face of a Caucasian man wearing a black knit cap even though it was late spring in Denver and it had to be over seventy degrees outside.

  The good news was whatever killed him was not a head wound.

  The bad news was his eyes were open.

  The uncertain-to-this-scenario news was I’d never seen him in my life.

  “I don’t know him,” I shared.

  “You sure?” the cop asked.

  I nodded and turned my attention to the officer. “I’m sure. I’ve never seen him before.”

  The cop looked to Boone, down to the body, and made a movement that I knew meant he was flicking the sheet back over, but I didn’t look.

  “You done?” Boone asked the guy.

  “Yeah,” the officer answered.

  Boone pulled me out of the door.

  We traipsed through flour that I was relieved to see was mostly sucked up by the years of grease and muck that had made the carpet a veritable sponge.

  I didn’t go on to realize how extremely gross this was mostly because there was a dead man with his eyes open on my back deck.

  “Babe,” Boone called.

  The threat has been neutralized.

  “Ryn.”

  Okay.

  All right.

  Nefarious people tried to break into a house during the day.

  People worked during the day. It was a good chance some random bad guy had targeted my house thinking I was in some office somewhere, slaving away for the man, so my pad was open to take what he wished.

  But that man dead on my back deck was not some random bad guy who had targeted my house.