“What’s that?”
“While what you just did was sort of like having sex in public, it wasn’t really having sex. It was one-sided, and just a warm-up. An...appetizer,” she said flirtatiously.
What was she getting at?
Taking his hand, her eyes sparkled as she led him to the back, where everyone had left their coats, bags and briefcases.
The coat closet?
“Della, I really don’t think we should—”
As she pulled him inside and closed the door, she put her back against the door as she beckoned him to join her.
“You’re experienced enough at covert operations to carry this off, don’t you think?” she teased, peeling off her tights and shoving them in her bag.
Gabe didn’t want to resist, though he knew he should. She had a way of turning things around, making him throw caution to the wind.
As he leaned into her, his hands planted on the door on either side of her head, she unzipped his pants, her nimble fingers closing around him and stealing his words before he could object again. Five minutes later, deep inside of her, Gabe forgot whatever objections he had.
* * *
DELLA MISSED GABE.
She knew that she shouldn’t, but the past week had been so marvelous, it was hard not to feel his absence. But she was an independent, modern woman, determined not to pine over the absence of a lover.
Today, she’d focused on her work, meeting with new grad students coming into the program in the fall and then with Chloe to help with final wedding arrangements and a light dinner.
Having gone through her life pretty much alone as a young person, Della knew the value of her friends, and she wasn’t going to ignore them just because she was with a guy. That was rule number one.
No matter how great that guy was.
Still, Gabe had been on her mind almost constantly in spite of her best intentions, and every time she checked her phone and found no message from him, her heart sank a bit.
Grow up, Della. He also had responsibilities and maybe he had decided to focus on his work today, too. He’d said she was a distraction, after all, she thought with a smile.
She’d never been told that before.
“How is it going with lover boy?” Chloe asked as they strode up the steps to Della’s apartment. “You haven’t mentioned him all afternoon, but you’ve checked your phone a million times. Trouble in paradise?”
Della stalled, unsure how to respond as she grabbed her mail and picked through it, separating the junk from the things she wanted.
“Della?”
“Sorry. No, there’s no trouble. I don’t think so, anyway. We’ve had the best week, actually. Yet I can’t help but feel the hovering of that other shoe about to drop—this wasn’t supposed to be a long-term relationship, and that hasn’t changed. Not that I know of.”
“He hasn’t suggested otherwise?”
Della frowned and leaned back against the wrought-iron rail on her stoop. “That’s where it feels muddy. I know he can’t share a lot about his job, but I can’t help feeling that it’s more than that.”
“Like what?”
Della sat on the cast-iron bench that she’d put on her stoop, and Chloe joined her.
“I don’t know. Like he wants to maintain a certain distance, especially if he feels like we’re getting too close? He’ll let his guard down for a second, but then if I ask anything too personal, he clams up. He almost shared with me about a relationship he had before, a serious one—the woman died.”
“Oh, how awful!”
Della nodded, looking down at her hands. “It is. But then he clammed up and never mentioned it again, and I don’t feel right asking, though I’m curious, of course. And since that moment, while he’s sweet and attentive about sex, that’s pretty much all it seems we have.”
“Hmm. Except on your side, I take it? You have more feelings for him?”
“I could, if I let myself. I wonder, if he lost someone he really loved, if he’s ever going to want to be with anyone else. Maybe that’s why he keeps things temporary and light. And I know I should, too, but it’s difficult.”
“Or, maybe you should tell him how you feel...who knows? Maybe he needs to hear that. If he is gun-shy, maybe he needs a push?”
“I don’t know that I’d like his response.”
“That is always the risk,” Chloe agreed with a sigh, as Della slid the key in the lock of her door, but the door pushed open on its own.
“What the heck?” she whispered to herself. She was positive she had locked her door, and double-checked it. She always did.
“Della, stop,” Chloe said sharply and put a stern hand on her shoulder.
Della was startled, and then realized her friend’s wisdom; she had to be cautious about stepping inside her home if the door was open. Someone could still be there.
Sudden fear chilled her to the bone, especially since she had been ignoring her feelings of being followed, believing that she was being paranoid. Maybe not.
“I’m calling the police before we set foot in there,” Chloe said.
Della, as much as she wanted to go inside her home, agreed.
Minutes later, a squad car arrived, and Della stood outside with Chloe, anxious as the officers disappeared inside her home, guns drawn.
After a few minutes, they reappeared, their weapons holstered, although they looked grim.
“You’re the owner of the home?” they asked Della.
She nodded, her heart in her throat.
“Well, no one is in there, it’s safe to enter, but I hate to tell you that the place is trashed. You should brace yourself for that before you go inside. Also, be careful where you step, and don’t touch anything.”
“Trashed?” Della said incredulously. “You mean someone wrecked my things?”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
Chloe’s hand landed on her shoulder in support, and Della needed it. Her knees were so shaky she wasn’t sure she could take a step.
Still, her legs carried her back up the steps and to the door, where she went inside, needing to see how bad it was. Standing in her entryway, she let out a small cry.
It was very bad.
“Who would do this?” Chloe whispered from behind her, sounding equally shocked.
“Have you had any trouble lately? An ex-boyfriend or someone you might have had an altercation with?” the older officer asked.
Della shook her head, and then stopped. “I was at my office one night and I thought someone followed me, but that ended up being nothing.”
Or so she thought.
“Anything else?”
Della fought tears, taking in the slashed leather furniture, the toppled tables and emptied drawers. Antiques were broken, frames were taken from the walls, where some holes had been punched into the plaster. That was going to be expensive to fix, she thought vaguely. Did insurance cover damage from break-ins? One of her stained-glass lamp shades was shattered, and there was so much more she could barely take it all in. It was a feast of destruction.
“Della? The officer asked if anything else has happened recently?” Chloe said gently.
She quaked from head to toe, and nodded. “Nothing specific, but the past few days, I kept feeling like someone was watching me, but I thought I was being overly anxious after what happened at my office.”
“Okay, that’s not much to go on. This could have been random. We’ll have a car come by here regularly over the next couple of days and evenings. You should change the locks right away, and luckily the windows are in one piece. You may want to stay with a friend or at a hotel for a few days, and be sure to report anything unusual.”
“I’ll change the locks today, but I’m staying here,” she said more to herself than the policeman. “This is my home.”
The officer nodded before rejoining his partner.
Chloe was concerned, too. “Della, you should stay with us. Justin won’t mind, I promise. You don’t know if this person will come back
—this isn’t your ordinary break-in. It’s so...violent,” she said, looking around again, as horrified as Della was, too.
She stumbled into the midst of the mess, still in shock. But as she went through her home, she started to see a sort of shape to the madness.
“It’s as if they were searching for something,” she said to Chloe. “See how things are opened up...emptied out? They didn’t just slash the furniture, they pulled out the stuffing. Why? The holes in the walls are at intervals.”
Chloe shook her head. “What could they have been looking for? That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe they thought you hid money or valuables in those places?”
Della frowned and headed upstairs to find that space less disrupted, though it was clear someone had still rifled through her drawers and closets—perhaps they ran out of time? But why would anyone search and destroy her home?
“Della, please. Come stay with us until this is cleaned up, at least. Justin and I will come over tomorrow and help you start putting it all back together. He can probably repair the holes in the wall—he’s good at that kind of thing. It’s the least we can do for all the help you’ve been with the wedding.”
Della put a hand to her forehead. “Oh, the wedding! There are still so many last-minute things I need to check.”
Chloe put both hands on Della’s shoulders and turned her toward her, making eye contact. “Forget that, it’s not important. Everything is more or less set to go, and it will be fine. I’ll wrap up any loose ends. But I insist you stay with us until your apartment is back to rights.”
Della nodded. “Maybe that would be best. Listen, you go ahead, and I can pack some things and come over later. Right now, I’d like to call Gabe and have him come check this out before we touch anything, and I need to get a locksmith here, too.”
“I’m not leaving you alone here.”
“I’ll be fine, Chloe, seriously. I’ll call when I’m on my way.”
Obviously not happy about the plan, but knowing she wasn’t going to change Della’s mind, Chloe nodded. “Okay, well, I’m at least going to wait until we know Gabe is on his way over.”
Della hugged her overprotective friend and took out her phone, relieved that Gabe answered immediately and told her he’d be there right away.
True to his word, just moments after Chloe left, Gabe appeared on her porch, knocking and taking her immediately in his arms when she greeted him.
Yes. This was what she needed, she thought, as his warmth infused her. Her mind calmed and she stepped back so that he could see the extent of the damage.
“It’s pretty hard to believe, isn’t it? Who would want to do this to me? The police thought maybe an angry student, or a stalker, but... I just find that so hard to believe.”
“It’s pretty thorough, I’ll say that.”
Gabe’s expression turned to stone as he looked around, his thoughts inscrutable if not for a flash of anger that darkened his eyes from hazel to a deep brown.
Della rubbed her arms as she stood at his side.
“But they said it could also be random.”
Gabe stepped into the main room...passing by the sofa where they had made love for the first time. He walked upstairs for a few minutes, and then came back down.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“How can you tell?”
“They didn’t take any of the art or the valuables, your TV, computer...in fact, many of your electronics are untouched. It was meant to look violent, angry, or like garden-variety vandalism, but it’s not. Too much of the same thing, in each room...they went after the furniture, things that would break and make a mess. The upstairs was rifled a bit, but most of the destruction is down here, like it’s staged to shock you when you open the door. It was meant to be upsetting.”
Della huffed out a breath. “Well, it is certainly that. I thought it looked like...they were trying to find something?”
“Do you have any idea what? Do you keep valuables hidden here?”
“No, not really. Nothing that would call for this, unless they had the wrong house. Maybe that’s why they stopped by the time they got upstairs, they might have realized that whatever they wanted wasn’t here?”
Gabe shook his head. “I doubt it—it’s meant to scare you. But why would someone go to these lengths to do that?”
Della thought about her pursuer at the school.
“Like at my office. Nothing happened, but it just freaked me out. I’ve felt like I’ve been being followed for days, but I assumed I was imagining things. It’s been making me a little crazy, though.”
A flicker of something odd moved over his features, but only for a second.
“Fairly typical stalker behavior, actually. Any conflicts at work, with a student, a co-worker? An ex?”
“I had one student who was disappointed I couldn’t work with him on his thesis, and he was unhappy, but not this unhappy—and why would he wait two months to react?”
“Valid point, but give me his name and I’ll check up on him, just in case. This is the kind of passive-aggressive thing someone might do when they don’t have the courage to confront you themselves, though it can escalate.”
“Escalate?” she asked nervously.
“Let’s take care of one thing at a time. Did you touch anything, or the police?”
“No.”
“Okay, good. I’ll get someone in here to dust for prints and see if that tells us anything for starters. I can call someone in tonight.”
“Oh, the police said they don’t usually do that unless there was a death, or a physical attack.”
Gabe caught her eye. “I’m not the police.”
“Of course, yes. Thank you.” She crossed the room to hug him, and took comfort in his strength.
There was a knock at the door, and Della jumped. Her nerves really were on edge. Looking out the window, she saw the locksmith’s van.
“Great, they’re here to change the locks.” She left Gabe to make his calls as she met the locksmiths and let them get to work, before rejoining Gabe.
“You can’t stay here tonight. Especially, not if I have a team come in. It might be smart to stay elsewhere, anyway, to get a room a few miles away, for a while, maybe a week or so, to be on the safe side.”
“Chloe and Justin said I could stay with them, but honestly, I hate to intrude, and I like my time alone. But I don’t want them to have hurt feelings, so I agreed.”
He frowned. “It’s too easy, if there is someone after you, to know who your friends are, and that you would go stay with them.”
Della’s eyes widened. She’d never thought of that.
“Right. I can’t risk bringing any danger to their door. That makes it an easy decision. I will definitely book a room.”
“You could stay with me.”
She peered up at him a bit apprehensively. “Thank you, that means a lot, but I’d rather be closer to my apartment, since I need to put things back to rights and you’re way downtown. But...will you stay tonight? I mean, at the hotel? With me?”
He hesitated for a second, which made her almost regret asking.
“Of course. I can do that, and I’ll tell my team to check in. Hopefully we’ll know something by morning.”
She wondered why he hadn’t said yes right away, but was too exhausted to give it much thought. “They shouldn’t be long with the lock. I’ll go make some calls and pack a case.”
Della turned to go upstairs, and Gabe caught her hand, pulled her back in for a moment, his mouth by her ear.
“It will be okay, Della. I won’t let anyone hurt you. No matter what this is about.”
She lifted her face to his, offering a kiss, which he took, then she went to pack. He’d had that strange expression again, she thought, as she grabbed her clothes. Protective, but also...secretive. Like he was holding something back.
Della shook the thought away. Gabe didn’t deserve her suspicions. Fear was making her suspicious of everything, and everyone. He’d come to
help right away, even though he had his own very important work to do.
She dropped an email to Chloe about her changed plans, and then took her case back downstairs to meet Gabe and wait for the locksmith to finish up so she could leave.
“I’ll stay at the hotel for a few days, but I’m coming back to fix up my place as soon as you’re done,” she said to Gabe, feeling more solid as she took one of her new keys and gave it to him to let his team inside. “This is my home, and I’m not being run out of it.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else, Della, and if there’s anything else I can do to help, just say so,” he told her as he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.
For now, it was everything Della could ask.
9
“THE MISSION’S OVER, GABE. It’s done.”
Gabe leaned back in his office chair in shock. After he’d left Della at the hotel the night before, sleeping soundly, he’d gone back to her place, and then to his office that morning, to find a message from Bart with orders to stop the interviews and pull the surveillance on Petroski.
The lab had given up all of the files and data on the formula to DHS, and it was being transferred to another secure location. Even the scientists he was supposed to interview had gone.
“What do you mean, it’s done?”
Bart’s tone was not apologetic.
“Orders came down from over both our heads, Gabe. With no solid leads and an increasing threat of another attempt by Derian to get the formula, we couldn’t risk him succeeding. I got orders to shut the project down and get the formula and the staff off-site to a secure location. Petroski was fired. If Derian is out there, he’s been cut off.”
Gabe’s head reeled with the news.
“So what now?”
“Well, your investigation into the leak is done, but the mission is far from over.”
“How so?”
“What happened at Dr. Clark’s? Any leads?”
“No, nothing useful.”
“What’s your take on it?”
“The job was professional, though it was meant to look otherwise. But they left no prints, nada. Someone made sure it was staged, clean. They knew what they were doing. But what I can’t figure out is why. It’s like it was meant to scare her.”
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